Wednesday, 6 March 2019

WEDNESDAY, 6 MARCH 2019

WEDNESDAY, 6 MARCH 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Germany—German Bundestag, German-Pacific Parliamentary Friendship Group

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome members of the German-Pacific Parliamentary Friendship Group from the German Bundestag, led by the Chairperson, Mr Volkmar Klein, who are present in the gallery.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Forestry

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Forestry. What reports has he seen regarding the one billion trees programme?

SPEAKER: Right, the member had a bit of emphasis, but he left a word out. Please read it as on the sheet.

1. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Minister of Forestry: What recent reports has he seen regarding the One Billion Trees programme?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): One report which puts into both political, administrative, and fiscal action is the $1.8 million that underwrites the Ngā Mahuri o Ngāti Hine programme, where 20 young men from 15 to 22 “learn while you earn”. This is a practical endeavour to ensure that we are swelling the ranks of the future workers for the one billion trees programme, and in addition to that, today I had the pleasure of hosting a delegation, of a commercial character, from Germany who had heard about the billion-trees programme and have come to New Zealand to explore investment opportunities.

Mark Patterson: What feedback has he heard regarding this programme?

Hon SHANE JONES: In the interests of time, I shall be uncharacteristically modest and pithy. The feedback is a reminder that pastoral care is an important dimension when creating the new ranks of workers. It’s a reminder to industry as they seek to rely also on migrant labour that in the absence of suitable pastoral care dimensions their entreaties will fall on barren ears.

Mark Patterson: What other training initiatives is the Government supporting in the forestry sector?

Hon SHANE JONES: This Government has rehabilitated an industrial sector neglected for the last nine years. The forestry sector are increasing their appetite for investment, increasing the number of people that they seek to hire, and increasing the number of trees they hope to plant. It’s important that we bear in mind that there are not only opportunities for those youngsters in the four winds of Aotearoa to join this industry; we’re also focusing on boosting the ranks of young women coming through the University of Canterbury, and as does befit my very sensitive nature, I hope to announce that shortly.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. 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: Does she agree with Grant Robertson, who is reported as saying “There was no recommendation in the Tax Working Group report excluding Māori from the capital gains tax”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member was willing to characterise the member’s statements correctly, then I would agree with Minister Robertson.

Hon Simon Bridges: What does she say about volume 1 of the Tax Working Group report, page 15, headed “Summary of Recommendations”, which makes quite clear there are recommendations around Māori being excluded from a capital gains tax—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Hon Kelvin Davis will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Kelvin Davis: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And if I’d been able to tell who the other member was who interjected in that impolite manner, that person would have been too. Please start the question again.

Hon Simon Bridges: What does she say about Tax Working Group volume 1, page 15, headed “Summary of Recommendations”, which makes quite clear recommendations about exemption of Māori and report volume 2, which says Māori freehold land merits “specific treatment under an extension [of] the taxation of capital gains. This could take the form of an exclusion”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Firstly, may I commend the member for finally reading the report. Secondly—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I want to be able to hear the answer. If we have about 10 people yelling, there is no chance of that occurring. The Prime Minister will start again.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What the group clearly recommended was that we engage “further with Māori to determine the most appropriate treatment of transactions relating to collectively owned Māori assets.” They recommended that we think about it. I’d really like to question the member: where exactly is he trying to go with this issue—where exactly?

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept it’s not where I’m going, it’s where her Government’s going on a capital gains tax; and will her Government exclude Māori from any capital gains tax it imposes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I question the motivation behind this line of questioning. Secondly—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. It has been a long practice in this House not to question indirectly the motivations of members in that way, and I’m going to ask the Prime Minister not to do that again. If people have specific things to say, they should say it, but indirect, implicit criticism of that nature is not acceptable.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I refer them back to the report, which encouraged the Government to consider whether particular circumstances such as disposing of Māori freehold land or where assets are—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Are you going to exempt Māori?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —transferred within iwi, whether or not we should give specific consideration to an exemption—in the same way that, for instance, if you had land passed down after death—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Are you going to exempt them?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —whether there should be a 12 months’ exemption. These are exemptions they asked us to consider, and for very good reasons.

SPEAKER: Now before we have any more supplementaries, I’m going to warn the father of the House after—he’s been here since, I think, 1990. I think he made five inappropriate interjections during that time bringing me into the debate. I think I’ve warned him about this about 10 times in the last year and I’d like him to learn.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If any owner, Māori or otherwise, was holding land in trusteeship for future generations, how could a capital gains tax possibly apply when they do not intend to benefit from any capital gains themselves?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, the member is making the point around intent of sale, and, again, I’d like to make the point that of course, as has been the case for a number of years and successive Governments, we have, for instance, a 17.5 percent tax rate that applies to Māori authorities. And now is the member stating that he disagrees with that provision as well?

Hon Simon Bridges: Will her Government exclude Māori from any capital gains tax it imposes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I have reiterated, the Tax Working Group has as a group, including a range of representatives, acknowledged that it warrants consideration. We have made no decisions, but unlike the other side of the House we can see when there are circumstances that are particular that do warrant consideration. It seems to me the National Party now has a strategy where they don’t support 17.5 percent tax rates for Māori authorities. We might be interested in sharing that with iwi leaders.

Hon Grant Robertson: What does the Prime Minister make of the fact that the questioning around this issues says “Will Māori be exempted?” rather than saying “Will Māori freehold land be exempted?”; why does she think someone might make that kind of statement?

SPEAKER: Order! I think asking the Prime Minister to read the minds of other members is inappropriate.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Will the potential tax considerations to be put before Inland Revenue have regard to how much a person feels like they are a Māori or whether they discovered that somewhat the same way as Columbus discovered America—purely by accident?

SPEAKER: I’m going to move on. I’m going to work, I think, for the last time today, on the basis that that was not deliberately disorderly. I think we’ve had a couple from Ministers that are heading in that direction, and from this side as well.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with Grant Robertson, who said yesterday the Tax Working Group report did not include recommendations of taxes like a “capital gains tax, a water tax, a fertiliser tax, a nitrate tax, and agricultural emissions tax.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I sat in this House when member Nathan Guy rattled off a series of taxes where there was no commentary in the Tax Working Group on any of those issues. I am happy, as I said, to debate the facts of the report if there was accuracy around it.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is it the Prime Minister, not me, who hasn’t read Cullen’s report?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, has she read pages 16 and 17 of volume one under the heading “Summary of recommendations of the report”, which recommends not only all of those taxes I outlined before but also recommends here an environmental footprint tax and a natural capital enhancement tax; aren’t all of those taxes recommended in this report?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It would be good to have a rational discussion about the Tax Working Group’s recommendations—all of which, in the environmental section, ask us to consider the entirety of what’s happening in the environmental space without the scaremongering that is coming from that side of the House, and the inaccuracy from that side of the House, and, I have to say, the environmental inaction that we are having to deal with on this side of the House because of nine years of an absolute failed Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: So is she so brave that she’s going to give New Zealand, at page 16, an agricultural emissions tax, a nitrate tax, a water tax, a fertiliser tax, and, at page 17, an environmental footprint tax and a natural capital enhancement tax, given this is, in her words, our “nuclear-free moment”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: At least I recognised we have a nuclear-free moment. On that side of the House, we had such inaction that the Tax Working Group felt the need to have to traverse an entire range of issues because we are dealing with environmental degradation that has built up over years—first point. Second point: we, of course, are still considering all elements of the Tax Working Group, and when we have a response, we will share it. But if the member wants to be a responsible politician, he might engage in a debate based on fact, not fiction.

Hon Simon Bridges: Can we just clear up, given that Grant Robertson doesn’t accept that those taxes are in the report, that she does indeed accept factually there is a nitrate tax, a water tax, an agricultural emissions tax, and the various other taxes I’ve mentioned actually in this Cullen working group report?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When that member releases his workings on KiwiSaver, then let’s talk.

SPEAKER: No. [Interruption] Order! I think it wasn’t an invitation to talk. It was a direct question, which will have an appropriate response.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I accept very few of that member’s assertions based on his record.

SPEAKER: The Prime Minister mightn’t have been in the House yesterday—I can’t remember—at the stage when I did admonish Tracey Martin for, essentially, answering a question indicating that she didn’t accept the word of the member. It was a factual question. It was properly prepared. If it was inaccurate, it’s a matter of privilege, and the Prime Minister will answer it.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: For clarity, I do not accept the member’s characterisation of the Tax Working Group’s report.

Hon Simon Bridges: It’s pretty simple: are there the taxes I have mentioned listed as recommendations on pages 16 and 17 of volume one of Cullen’s Tax Working Group report?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In the interim?

Hon Simon Bridges: Yes or no?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Not with the specificity that the member has detailed.

Hon Simon Bridges: Has she read this report?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course I have.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: When the Prime Minister referred to the possible record of past statements of the primary questioner, did she have regard to the fact that they had their response to the Tax Working Group’s 21 February report out within minutes of it being published? That means they couldn’t have read it.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Certainly a level of detail—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Come on, one of you.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There’s certainly a level of detail that could not have been traversed in that time.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that both Michael Cullen, in his public advocacy for the report, and Grant Robertson, her finance Minister, are clearly treating the report options as absolute recommendations, such as the KiwiSaver offsets and the recommendations such as the Māori exemption from a capital gains tax as merely options rather than recommendations; and aren’t they being incredibly political in their handling of this report since its release?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely not. I think you’ll find that Sir Michael Cullen has had to come out and defend the Tax Working Group because it has been mischaracterised so badly by the Opposition. Again, we on this side of the House, welcome a debate on this issue. All that we ask from the other side of the House is accuracy in the way it’s portrayed, and that’s all, I’m sure, the members of the Tax Working Group are asking for as well.

Hon Simon Bridges: In light of the fact that she doesn’t even know the taxes in the report, who’s being accurate or inaccurate?

SPEAKER: Order! Rephrase the question. [Interruption] Well, you’ve used a question, OK.

Question No. 3—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I have seen a number of reports that highlight the strong future for sustainable growth in the New Zealand economy. Last week, Statistics New Zealand released its building consents data for the year to January 2019. The data showed that the number of consents for new dwellings has hit a 44-year high, at 33,576. Auckland continued to show strong growth, with new dwellings consented rising by 20 percent, while Wellington was up 18 percent.

Kiritapu Allan: What reports has he seen on the international context for the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Overnight, the Chinese Government announced that economic growth is forecast to be slower in China in 2019 than in 2018, in part due to trade tensions. While growth there remains robust, the slowing trend is similar to what we are seeing in the forecasts of global economic growth from both the World Bank and the IMF. Our own economic fundamentals in New Zealand remain solid, but as a relatively small trading nation we must remain resilient to any factors that are beyond our control. This underlines the importance of our commitment to fiscal responsibility, which gives us options in the face of any future shocks.

Kiritapu Allan: How is the Government responding to international economic factors?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We have a plan for modernising and diversifying our economy to be more resilient in the face of this changing environment. Under our Trade for All agenda we are pursuing more trade opportunities for Kiwi firms, including an New Zealand - EU free-trade agreement so that we have a more diverse range of export markets. At home, we are making investments to transition from an economy based on housing speculation and population growth to one driven by more productive, sustainable, and inclusive growth. This includes through our just transitions programme, the Provincial Growth Fund, the Green Investment Fund, R & D tax credits, and record investment in skills and training, among others.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he believe New Zealand’s international competitiveness is an important consideration in setting tax policy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I believe there are many considerations to take into account when setting tax policy. These include fairness across the tax system, inequality, simplicity, and, indeed, competitiveness.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he think that the Tax Working Group’s recommended capital gains tax on 100 percent of the net gain at full marginal rates would be internationally competitive, when that would give us the third-highest capital gains tax rate in the OECD and contrasts with Australia, who only tax half the gain made?

SPEAKER: There were three legs but the—

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I think it’s important not to isolate out any one part of the tax system. As the member will be well aware, the top tax rate in Australia is significantly higher than it is in New Zealand. They also have other taxes both at a state and federal level and stamp duty. So I think it’s unwise to pick out one part of the tax system when making those kinds of comparisons.

Hon Amy Adams: How many of the OECD countries the Prime Minister referred to in question time yesterday tax inflationary gains or include no discount as part of their capital taxation regimes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don’t have all of that information there, but I know that there is a range of regimes, some of which include discounts and some which don’t.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, has he read appendix A of the Tax Working Group report, which says that for the purposes of its recommendations, assets are assumed to grow at a 3 percent nominal annual rate which is made up of 2 percent inflation and just 1 percent real growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I have indeed read that.

Hon Amy Adams: Well then, can he confirm that those recommendations mean taking one third of the capital gain in tax when the other two thirds is just made up of inflation and mean that the Government would be taking every single dollar of real gain made in tax?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, I wouldn’t accept that. I’d want to go and test that more thoroughly. What I would be able to say to the member is that very few schemes around the world can find a way, if they’re going to be simple, of accounting for inflation in the way that she wants. These are the recommendations of the working group that we’ll work through. There are many other countries in the world—in fact, in the OECD all bar us and Belgium—who have some form of scheme like this who make it work. We will look at the international examples as we consider the proposals of the working group.

Hon Amy Adams: How can the Minister, who has acknowledged that the Tax Working Group recommended 100 percent of the gain at full marginal rates be taxed and said that the capital gain is made up of two-thirds inflation one-third gain, dispute that that means therefore that the 33 percent of the tax on 100 percent of the gain is the equivalent of every single dollar of real gain made?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I said that I wanted to go back and check the member’s characterisation of the report. That’s what I will do. But, again, I say to the member, looking at that in isolation from the rest of the company tax regime that the owners of those companies will pay does not give a fair reflection of what the tax impact would be on any company or on any individual person who owns a company.

Hon Amy Adams: How can he claim that he does concern himself with international competitiveness when considering tax, when he is now actively considering a capital gains tax with the third-highest marginal rate in the OECD—twice the scope of Australia’s—and one that the Tax Working Group’s own modelling shows would take every single dollar of real gain made?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said, we’re considering international competitiveness alongside other issues—like fairness, for example; like simplicity. I would note that we’re not the first Government to have undertaken a tax working group. The 2010 Tax Working Group on which the previous Government based their decisions around, for instance, making changes to building depreciation meant that New Zealand had, after that, the highest effective tax rate for foreign investment into manufacturing plants in New Zealand, as a result of a decision that the previous Government made. So international competitiveness hasn’t always been at the top of the mind for previous Governments.

Question No. 5—Housing and Urban Development

5. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: What is the total estimated market value of the 10,355 houses the Government has contracted and committed to build under the KiwiBuild programme, and how many parliamentary terms do these contracts fall due over?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): There is $5.5 billion of new affordable homes contracted and committed through KiwiBuild until 2028. Depending on when elections are called, this could be four terms.

Hon Judith Collins: Why is the Minister confident that he can sell $5.5 billion worth of houses when he only has 313 pre-qualified KiwiBuild buyers?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because the demand modelling shows that across the country there are large numbers of first-home buyers, and those 10,355 that we’ve contracted and committed will be built, and they will be sold over the 10-year period.

Hon Judith Collins: How many of the contracts that the Government has signed to supply future KiwiBuild houses have a provision to allow the Government to withdraw from the contract if it transpires that there is little buyer demand for what has been contracted?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: There are no provisions to withdraw from the contract, because this Government, unlike the party on the other side of this House, is committed to building affordable homes and fixing the housing crisis. That’s what we’re doing.

Hon Judith Collins: How many completed KiwiBuild houses sit empty in Wānaka, not sold?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: There are currently five homes in the Wānaka development that are unsold. They’ve been completed only in the last month or so and they are on the market and available for KiwiBuild purchasers.

Hon Judith Collins: Is the Minister aware that the KiwiBuild contract signed in this term will bind future Governments to underwrite property developers for KiwiBuild houses even if the KiwiBuild programme is cancelled by an incoming Government?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, we intend to be around for a very long time and we’re going to be building affordable homes throughout that period. So I don’t expect that’s going to be a problem for this side of the House or that side.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Is the Minister aware that the housing policy and the contracts entered into as part of the housing policy are consistent with contracts entered into by successive Governments around privatising prisons, using public-private partnerships, or any other range of contracts that Governments enter into that extend beyond the term of a single Parliament?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I am aware; it’s the kind of contract that we’ve entered into to build KiwiBuild homes. In fact, the arrangements that we’re entering into with some of the country’s largest residential builders are multi-year contracts to build hundreds and hundreds of new affordable homes. That’s about investing in the future of the next generation.

Question No. 6—Education

6. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What recent announcements has he made to create space and improve classrooms in secondary schools?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Last Thursday, I announced $25 million for a major redevelopment of Wellington Girls’ College. This school has a growing roll and it’s been relying on ageing, relocatable classrooms to manage their space. This multimillion-dollar investment by the Government will provide Wellington Girls’ College with 16 new classrooms, relieving the pressure that they have on their school, providing them with extra teaching space, extending their hall, and increasing the provision for learning support and student counselling.

Jan Tinetti: What other recent investments has the Government made to improve the quality of classrooms and school buildings for students?

Hon Grant Robertson: There’s more?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There’s more. A few days before that, I announced $20 million to fix Botany Downs Secondary College. This money will pay to fix their leaky roofs and cladding on the nine buildings that contain 70 of their 84 classrooms. It will also cover the cost of temporary teaching spaces so that there is minimum disruption to student learning while the work is being done. These announcements are part of the hundreds of millions of dollars in announcements the Government has made since our first Budget last year.

Question No. 7—Health

7. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Is he satisfied the extra costs incurred by DHBs are having a positive effect on the volume of health services provided; if so, what measures is he using to gauge the effect?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I’m satisfied that this Government’s record investment in health—

SPEAKER: I’m going to get the member to speak up; I think we’re having a bit of a volume problem with our system.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: OK. I am satisfied that this Government’s record investment in health is making a real difference to our public health service, including to both patients and the staff that deliver their care. As health Minister, I’m more concerned with outcomes rather than simply the volume of services. That’s why we’ve reduced the cost of going to the doctor for around 600,000 New Zealanders so that they can get treatment early and prevent small problems becoming more serious. However, as the member asks about the volume of services, we are seeing increases, indeed. For example, so far this financial year district health boards (DHBs) have completed 45,456 MRI scans, which is 5,124 more than the same period last year. Over the same period, we’ve also delivered 8,000 more first specialist assessments, and the number of people waiting for ophthalmology services has reduced from 10,200 people in May 2017 to just over 4,000 in December. Of course, there is more to be done, but progress is being made. Lastly, in terms of measures, the member knows full well there are dozens of performance measures built into our health system that record the delivery of services, and the Ministry of Health uses the data to assist DHBs to improve their services. More health services are being delivered to more New Zealanders.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well is he aware that the Ministry of Health’s own statistics page has not been updated with that data since August 2016?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I’m not sure exactly which page that member’s referring to, but he may need to refresh his web browser. Certainly, the previous National Government’s health targets are being regularly updated, and we’re not printing them in the major newspapers and spending tens of thousands of dollars to promote a narrow range of political targets, but you can see on there the targets being followed through. Of course, there are a wide range of measures. Indeed, in my letter to DHBs in December, I highlighted some of the ones I was concerned about.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he aware that the now defunct health target data indicates reductions in volume and timeliness in four of the five targets since he removed them, and the data on the sixth target, which is elective surgery, has not even been released?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The electives target was retired previously. The member knows that. As to the others, certainly, in the first quarter of the 2017-18 year—since then, in the comparative quarter, the most recent quarter, we’re actually delivering on one more of the targets, even though they’re not ours, than the previous Government was.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the failure to release the elective surgery throughput data due to significant reductions in throughput as a consequence of industrial action?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Of course I don’t have those numbers right in front of me, but what I can say is that we’re seeing more services delivered to more New Zealanders, and that is what we want to see. I’ve related to the member a large list of examples of more services being delivered, and that member knows it.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, isn’t it true that that list is simply what the Minister chooses to share and he has not yet told the New Zealand public what’s important to him in terms of health targets—when will he do that?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: As I’ve said, we are focused on delivering outcomes for patients. That is my concern as health Minister. The previous Government’s narrow targets are not something that I am going to commit us to, because I actually believe it’s more important to have better health outcomes for New Zealanders than to have Avastin injections and skin lesion removals done in more expensive settings just because it pumps up the statistics. That’s what the previous Government did.

Question No. 8—Agriculture

8. Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki) to the Minister of Agriculture: Does he stand by all his statements?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Yes.

Hon Nathan Guy: Does he stand by his statements in the House yesterday that were a capital gains to be brought in, it may mean that farms are more affordable for young New Zealanders; if so, what makes him think that a young farmer wants to purchase land with significant environmental taxes and a potential capital gains tax down the track?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I guess the member’s referring to the independent report on taxation that has been put out by Michael Cullen and a group of people. The issue of affordability is something that has been referred to. There have been many, many comments out around the country on that report, and we welcome them. Most of them are sensible, are considered—except those from the National Party. Can I say that I don’t only rely on my own wisdom; I can refer to, perhaps, independent commentators who have referred to this particular issue. Dominick Stephens from Westpac, in fact, said, “the current ‘uneven’ tax system encourages investment heavily focused on capital gain rather than income generation, such as residential property and farms, and in effect turns people away from investing in more income-focused investments.” That’s just one of many, many comments referring to the issue of affordability of farms.

Hon Nathan Guy: Does he stand by his statement in relation to proposed taxes on farmers on RNZ this morning—and I’m going to quote—“We haven’t been through the figures.”; if so, why hasn’t he worked out the cost of these proposed figures on farmers and rural communities?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Because no decisions have been made on them.

Hon Nathan Guy: What does the Minister say to reassure farmers like Federated Farmers Otago president Simon Davies, who says after he’s worked hard—

Hon Shane Jones: Scaremongering. Making it up—making it up.

Hon Nathan Guy: —and made short-term sacrifices—and I’ll quote—“it would be very disappointing to find … the government then takes a third … when I sell it.”?

SPEAKER: Before the member answers, I’m just going to indicate the National Party has an additional five supplementary questions as a result of the interjection from Mr Jones.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: If that person was one of the 10 people that turned up to that member’s meeting down in Otago, all I’d suggest to him is that he does not listen to the figures put to him by Nathan Guy. I could refer to Stephen Bell, who wrote in the Farmers Weekly, “Young farmers still say finding affordable land, particularly for dairy, is the biggest obstacle to farm ownership. They attribute that to previous generations paying too much for land and banking on capital gains … farming needs to put its focus … on operating profit rather than long-term land value gains.”

Hon Nathan Guy: Why is he refuting our figures on this side of the House when he hasn’t even done the figures himself or asked his officials to do any work on these proposals; and what does he say to Federated Farmers today, who are out there saying that the National Party figures indeed may be a bit light?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Because I’m not prepared to stand up and lie to farmers, like that member is.

Hon Nathan Guy: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’ve taken offence to that comment, and I wish that that Minister should withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Yeah. I do want to think about it. I want to think about it. It’s certainly an offence to indicate that a member has lied in the House. I’m going to get a little bit of advice. Traditionally, it’s not been an offence to—I muted my own mic. Traditionally, it’s not been an offence to indicate that people have told untruths deliberately outside the House, but that was a pretty aggressive reflection on a member. I think I’ve worked myself to the point now where it was such a—yeah, no, I’ve had some advice, which I don’t like very much. I have worked myself to the point where I think it is a comment which could be characterised as being offensive, and for that reason I will require the member to withdraw it and to apologise.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Now, I want to warn the member that he’s not to reflect on the ruling and the apology he’s just had. We’ve had a member very nearly get into big trouble.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I appreciate that, Mr Speaker. It’s a clarity of whether I have the opportunity to answer the question. That’s all I’m asking.

SPEAKER: Well, I think if the member had more that he wanted to say, he should’ve said it before he was offensive. Right, further supplementary?

Hon Nathan Guy: Too right. When he said the biggest challenge in agriculture yesterday was succession, does he not realise the biggest challenge facing agriculture right now is more taxes imposed by this Government, and potentially a capital gains tax?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I absolutely reject that assertion. If he sat down and listened to farmers across this country, he wouldn’t talk such rubbish.

Question No. 9—Social Development

9. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What evidence, if any, has she received that demonstrates a positive impact of the service delivery changes in Work and Income offices?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Recently, I received an update on the work that the Ministry of Social Development is undertaking to strengthen service culture, including an update on the pilot of a client experience survey called Heartbeat. So far, the pilot survey has had nearly 1,200 responses, which rate the client experience at Work and Income as 8.2 out of 10. It’s also great to see the high engagement of Māori clients, who make up 35 percent of survey respondents and who are a key group we want to work better with.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What other evidence has the Minister received?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Between April 2018 to January 2019 and the equivalent period the year before there has been a 3 percent decrease in the average number of trespass orders issued each month. Over the same period, the number of reviews of decisions being sought by clients on average each month decreased by 11 percent, meaning that less people are needing to dispute their entitlements and more people are—

SPEAKER: Fewer.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: —receiving accurate assessments of entitlement. Also, the number of complaints for the December 2018 quarter has decreased by 11.1 percent when compared to the December 2017 quarter.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why is this important?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Good question. Most New Zealanders will need the support of the Ministry of Social Development or Work and Income at some stage during their life, for a range of reasons: support while unemployed, while studying, due to disability or illness, or when accessing superannuation. All of these people deserve to be treated with respect, have their dignity upheld, and be provided with effective support. These survey results and other feedback are valuable for informing continual improvement to the welfare system. Sixteen months in, this is a good start, but there is much more to do, and I am confident that under this new Government, things will only get better for both clients and staff at Work and Income.

Hon Paula Bennett: Is it because of the service delivery changes, where sanctions and expectations on beneficiaries, that the jobseeker benefit has gone up by over 11,000 people in the last 12 months?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That member knows that the proportion of New Zealanders on benefit is currently 9.9 percent. This time last year it was 9.8 percent. The increase in numbers is due to population growth. I think that member needs to reflect on her time as the Minister for Social Development, when, following the reforms, nearly 50 percent of those who left benefit were back on it within 18 months.

Question No. 10—Education

10. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by all his policies and actions around the review of vocational education and his work in the portfolio?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes.

Dr Shane Reti: When asked in Invercargill on Friday “If you make a mistake here, will you resign?”, did he reply “Yes”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes.

Dr Shane Reti: How is it fair to have six weeks consultation on a proposal, which could rip the heart out of communities—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m happy to respond to that, Mr Speaker. I absolutely reject the assertion in the member’s question. With regard to the time frame for consultation, there’s actually a drive from people within the sector to have the consultation period in a very intense and truncated period, because of the uncertainty that the sector currently faces, even without this consultation, and the potential damage that prolonged uncertainty could do to their ability to recruit students, particularly international students.

Dr Shane Reti: When he said in the House yesterday that the Government has not predetermined an outcome on the reforms, why then has the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) issued a hui invitation in Whangarei on Friday to hunt out people for the proposed regional leadership groups?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m not familiar with the TEC proposing to do that. I’ll certainly take the member at his word that they might have done that. I have given the TEC an instruction that they need to be working up the proposals. They need to be continuing to work on the proposals, but we haven’t made decisions on them.

Dr Shane Reti: What is his response to Skills Active industry training organisation (ITO) chair, Mr Sam Napia, who says that the consultation process is a sham, the outcomes are predetermined, and a six-week consultation period and three-day hui invitation are completely inconsistent with Treaty of Waitangi and Māori consultation protocols?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I absolutely reject the notion that the consultation is a sham.

Dr Shane Reti: I seek leave to table an email from ITO chair, Mr Sam Napia, detailing those statements.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that document being tabled? It’s only been sent to the member, has it?

Dr Shane Reti: Yes, it has.

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

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

Hon Grant Robertson: What factors does the Minister believe led to the parlous financial state that the vocational education sector has found itself in?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There has been a significant underinvestment in vocational education and training, including a decision made in the early 2010s to cut significant amounts of funding from the polytech sector, which is one of the reasons we had to put $100 million into them this year alone in order to keep the lights on.

Question No. 11—Statistics

11. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Statistics: What recent reports has he seen on Census 2018?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Minister of Statistics: I receive regular updates from officials insofar as it is appropriate within the bounds of Statistics New Zealand’s statutory independence.

Dr Jian Yang: What advice has he received in relation to reports that Māori risk losing an electorate seat if issues with Census 2018 cannot be resolved?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I believe that the Minister has not received any advice on that thus far.

Dr Jian Yang: What advice has he received in relation to reports that health boards and schools in regions such as Northland, East Coast, and Manukau risk underfunding if issues with Census 2018 cannot be resolved?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I repeat my answer to the previous question: I understand the Minister has not received advice on those things as yet.

Dr Jian Yang: Why did he, two months after the census, reject concerns from the Opposition and state that Census 2018 would be “more successful than previous censuses,”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The census has clearly had some challenges, and there’s no one on this side of the House who would doubt that. But I note that the business case under which the census was operated was approved by the previous Government.

Dr Jian Yang: Why is it that his department over the last year has had the time to create a bingo tool to determine one’s level of privilege but it cannot, a year after the census, count the number of people living in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That would be a question for the Chief Statistician.

Dr Jian Yang: Three-hundred and sixty-five days after the census, can he tell Parliament when the Census 2018 results will be available?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. Again, that would be a question for the Chief Statistician.

Question No. 12—Health

12. Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcement, if any, has he made about mental health facilities in Canterbury?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Last Thursday, I joined the Prime Minister at Canterbury District Health Board’s Hillmorton campus. While there, we announced funding for the construction of new facilities to house a range of mental health services that are currently provided at the ageing Princess Margaret Hospital. These include services for mothers and babies, as well as child, adolescent, and family in-patient services, and adults with high and complex needs. Eating disorder services will also be shifted to Hillmorton. A total of $79 million has been approved for this much-needed project out of the $750 million set aside in Budget 2018 for capital investments in health, which was the largest capital injection in health in at least a decade.

Hon Ruth Dyson: What facilities will be built with this $79 million investment?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The new facilities at Hillmorton will contain an integrated family service centre, with a 16-bed in-patient and day-patient child, adolescent, and family service, and a 13-bed and five- to seven-cot space for mothers and babies. It will also include eating disorders in-patient and out-patient services. A separate high and complex needs unit will include in-patient adult beds. Work is due to begin next year, with relocated services expected to start operating from Hillmorton in 2022.

Hon Ruth Dyson: How will these new facilities benefit patients and the staff who care for them?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The current facilities at Princess Margaret Hospital are far from ideal. Both patients and staff deserve better. We need to ensure that we have physical environments that support people’s treatment and recovery. This development will deliver purpose-built facilities that reflect modern methods of care. It will create a flexible environment for mothers and their families, children, and adolescents, and it will include access to the outdoors and green spaces. It means the incredibly hard-working and dedicated staff at Princess Margaret Hospital, who have maintained a high quality of health support for their patients despite their physical work environment, will also benefit.

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

MICHAEL WOOD (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2019.

I am very pleased to present to the House the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). Before I commence my comments, I wish to thank those members of the committee who attended the hearings, the Minister of Finance and the Secretary to the Treasury for presenting to the committee, and all of the submitters who took the time to give to the committee their views on the priorities that should be within the Budget Policy Statement, which, of course, has a significant bearing on the Budget that will be delivered and on the well-being and the future of New Zealanders.

The Budget Policy Statement is an important part of the Budget cycle. It is a means by which the Minister of Finance and the Government directly signals its intentions in terms of the priorities in the forthcoming Budget to the Parliament, and, in doing so, it is a way by which the Minister and the Government is accountable to the House for the priorities that it is setting as a part of the Budget.

It was notable to the select committee this year that the Budget Policy Statement before us was quite different from BPSs that have been presented to previous Finance and Expenditure Committees. This was a Budget Policy Statement that wasn’t just focused on the fiscals and that wasn’t just focused on how Government will be spending money, although that is an important part of the Budget, of course. It was a Budget Policy Statement that was focused on the Government’s belief that lifting the well-being of people and communities is what really matters.

The way that this has been explained to the committee over a range of engagements about the well-being Budget and the living standards framework that sits in behind it is that while it is very important that the economy is well managed, that we have economic growth, and that the Government’s books are run well, those things are not ends in themselves. The things that really matter to New Zealanders are things like having a good house, having access to good health and education services, having a sense of well-being and safety within people’s communities, and being engaged with the community and our society. The things that we do as Government should be about supporting those different kinds of well-being: the well-being of people, the well-being of communities, and the well-being of the environment.

One of the things that the Minister of Finance noted in his presentation to the committee was that, actually, this is not a revolutionary concept. If you were to pick up the annual report of most major New Zealand companies or most major organisations in our country and you read through that report, you would not just be confronted with tables of figures about how that organisation is spending its budget. The front of the report will generally focus on the purpose of the organisation, what it is there to achieve, and the difference that it wants to make, and that was certainly the case—and this was noted by the committee—with the Budget Policy Statement this year. The purpose of the Government in delivering the Budget was stated at the outset of the document as being about improving the well-being of New Zealanders. In this sense, what we saw in the BPS was a more holistic set of objectives than in previous Budget Policy Statements.

There was a particular quote that is referenced in the Budget Policy Statement report from the Minister, and it spoke to what has been observed when the Government has been assessing the Living Standards Framework and the issues that arise when we consider the well-being of New Zealanders. He noted that New Zealanders do generally have high living standards, and that’s something that we would all feel good about, but there are challenges and disparities to address. He said, “Too many people are being left out and left behind.”

One of the things the Budget Policy Statement did this year—and, again, this is quite different from what we’ve seen in the past—is it actually made an assessment of where New Zealand is at in all of those important areas. So in areas like human capital, there are objective and evidence-based assessments about how New Zealanders are faring in respect of mental health issues. In the area of social capital, there is an objective and evidence-based assessment about New Zealanders’ trust in Government and public institutions. In the area of natural capital—and this will be of interest to members who represent provincial and rural parts of the country—there’s an assessment about the state of soil erosion, a critical factor in delivering long-term prosperity and well-being in our rural communities. In the area of financial and physical capital, there’s an objective and evidence-based assessment about the percentage of housing costs that New Zealanders face as a proportion of their income.

So the well-being Budget, as was explained to the committee, focused on looking at where New Zealand is at and where the gaps and the deficits are, and then how we can best address those to increase people’s well-being. In respect of this, it was explained to the committee that the Government, in the Budget, has decided on five key priority areas. These are creating opportunities for productive businesses, regions, iwi, and others to transition to a sustainable and low-emissions economy; supporting a thriving nation in the digital age through innovation and social and economic opportunities; lifting Māori and Pacific income, skills, and opportunities; reducing child poverty and improving child well-being, including addressing family violence—that one was quite notable because it was pointed out during the hearing that the Government’s original Budget priority didn’t include the language around addressing family violence. It was on the advice of the sector and of science advisers to the Government that the evidence is very strong that if you want to address issues around child poverty and child well-being, you absolutely have to be addressing and prioritising those issues around family violence as well. So that was quite a good example, I think, of the way in which an evidence-based approach engaging the science advisers and sectors has actually helped to shape the priorities of the Budget for the Government, and I thought that was very, very encouraging.

It was very notable that across the 66 submissions received by the Finance and Expenditure Committee, the vast majority of those submissions were extremely supportive of the direction of the well-being Budget and of the upfront focus on the well-being of people and communities. While, unfortunately, we were not able to have formal oral hearings of submitters, Government members of the committee have had informal meetings with a range of the submitters, and those submitters have appreciated their opportunity to have their say. What those submitters have noted is that some of those deficits are very real, in their experience. Many of those submitters have pointed to deficits and gaps that have built up over a number of years that have not been addressed, and they have been supportive of the Government in addressing those well-being issues, but have really been keen to drive us forward in terms of the specific measures that will help to improve well-being in the identified areas.

One of the other things we heard was about the way in which the well-being Budget has changed the way in which Government Ministers have been engaging with the Budget process. So instead of simply putting in individual bids which focus on an output at a departmental level, Ministers have been asked to work collaboratively to deliver outcomes that actually make people’s lives better, and this is leading to more linked-up, holistic decision-making that should have better outcomes for people and communities.

At the level of the committee, there was very good discussion about the well-being framework. I would note at this point that this has been a matter that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has been engaging itself with over a number of months in preparation for the first well-being Budget, and we’ve had briefings from a range of people across civil society to make sure that we are informed on these matters.

One of the discussions at the committee—and this came up during the hearings—was a discussion about the extent to which we are developing a well-being framework that is unique to New Zealand and takes account of the particular way in which we live our lives and live and work together in this country. I was certainly assured by the comments both from the Minister of Finance but also from the Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Makhlouf, that significant effort over the last five years—during which time the Treasury has been developing the Living Standards Framework—has gone into making sure that we have a framework that is internationally comparable, because that’s important if we want to ensure that the framework is robust but also ensure that the framework does take account of the way in which we live our lives in New Zealand. In particular, we had a good discussion on the committee and at the hearing about ensuring that a Te Ao Māori world view is incorporated into the Living Standards Framework and the well-being Budget.

I said before that the well-being Budget focuses on well-being, but sitting in behind that are, of course, the fiscals as well, and what the Minister of Finance made very clear in the hearing that we had is that yes, this is a Budget that is about the well-being of people and communities, but we also do need to ensure that we’re running the books well so that the Government has choices and has the ability to make the investments that do enhance well-being. In that respect, he confirmed that the Government remains committed to its Budget responsibility objectives, and he also confirmed that, largely, the Government is on track in those areas. Growth, in the Budget Policy Statement, is forecast to track at around about 3 percent; wage growth over the next few years at around about 3 percent; and net debt is forecast to fall below the Government’s target of 20 percent of GDP by 2021. So, certainly, the indication from the Budget Policy Statement is that the Government is on track to meet those objectives.

My concluding comment is this. In my observation as a constituency MP, our families, our communities, our faith, and our community groups all understand the concept of well-being—that we are all better off when the people around us are better off and have the ability and the capability to improve their own lives and reach their potential. It is encouraging that this Budget Policy Statement confirms that those are the objectives of the Government, as well. Thank you.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yes, look, I am very pleased to come down and take a call on the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report into the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). I want to start, actually, on the core business of Budgets, which is to address the economic situation of the Government and, frankly, the ability that we have to pay for all of this well-being rhetoric that we are hearing continually from the Government—no doubt, frankly, because the Government is more interested in slapping well-being stickers on everything and standing around and singing “Kumbaya” than actually addressing real, measurable outcomes. But I do want to talk about those fiscals, because here’s the hard, cold reality that Labour is happy to ignore: if you don’t have an economy that’s growing well, you don’t have tax revenue to pay for the well-being initiatives.

So you can talk about kindness and caring as much as you like, but if you’re presiding over an economy that is slowing, the ability of a Government—any Government—to do anything for its citizens is reduced. I’d very much like to hear anyone on the other side get up and tell me that’s not right—that, actually, it doesn’t matter whether or not the economy is growing well to provide revenue.

So here’s the number I want to start by highlighting in the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update, and it is this. Before the election in 2017, this current year we’re in, the year ending June 2019, was expected to have New Zealand growing at 3.7 percent—so 3.7 percent at the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Update. At last year’s Budget, that number had already dropped to 3.3 percent. In the BPS, it’s dropped to 2.9 percent, and, actually, most commentators are saying it’s far more likely to be 2.5 percent. So that is the first real year under this Government’s economic management, and we are seeing about a third whacked off the growth rate of this country.

So while Grant Robertson wants to stand up and talk about well-being and mention very little about the economy, the hard, cold reality is that under his stewardship, the economy is slowing down, and that means our ability to do things for our citizens—to provide healthcare, to provide education, to provide police—is going backwards, and that matters more to the long-term well-being of New Zealanders. Do they have a job? Do they have good incomes? But we’re not allowed to measure that any more or talk about that; it’s all got to be about how many friends they have made and what clubs they have joined. Actually, by the way, even that is only going to be reported every four years. So every four years, Treasury, this Budget Policy Statement tells us, will give us an update on how well-being’s looking.

So if you want to talk about accountability, this is a Government that is getting rid of accountability day by day by day, and now, once every four years, they’re going to have Treasury putting out an update on well-being. Well, my question to the Government is this: where in that framework is there any proper assessment of how you’ll make different choices within that Budget planning process? Where is the framework that says if we want to address mental health—as the Government’s acknowledged they have—which initiative is the best place to do that? And how will we as a Government—I’m speaking for them. How will they hold themselves accountable to the public of New Zealand for what they’ve done? None of that—this well-being Budget has none of that. It has high-sounding, virtue-signalling, and lovely words while the economy slows and the Government gets rid of accountability.

The Budget priorities that the Minister of Finance has come up with include one that talks about helping a productive economy transition to sustainability—and blah blah—and one that talks about building a thriving nation. Well, my first message to Mr Robertson on his Budget priorities: if you want a productive economy, if you want a thriving nation, don’t load up our economy, our small businesses, and our farmers with more taxes. Don’t punish the productive sector by saying “Everybody who gets up, goes to work, saves, invests, and risks their own money to build something to create jobs, we’re coming after you because you’re all rich little nasty people.”, or a word Cullen used that I won’t repeat in this House. That is not how you build a thriving economy. You don’t build productivity by saying to New Zealanders “The harder you work the more tax you’re going to pay. The harder you work the more we’re coming after you.”, and that is the clear message that this Government is giving to the people of New Zealand. That is not about having a productive economy.

Let’s talk about one of the most productive parts of our productive sector, and that’s agriculture. Well, we put out some figures earlier this week because the Government has had none—put out none. They tell us they’ll do that after they make their decision, which is interesting. I would’ve thought you’d normally do the numbers as part of making the decision, but no. Apparently, according to Damien O’Connor, they haven’t bothered with numbers because they’ll worry about that after they make the decision. But our numbers said that farmers are going to be hit significantly by these extra taxes being proposed. Well, do you know what Federated Farmers came out today and said? They said that, actually, National are a bit light: the numbers are much tougher than that. Get this: Federated Farmers quoted a report from another group that said that just one of the new taxes that Grant Robertson is considering, just one of them, could eat up 123 percent of the profits of an average sheep and beef farm—123 percent of the profits. That is just one of the seven or eight taxes that are now under consideration by this Government, and that’s before they take—

Brett Hudson: Oil and gas wasn’t enough for them.

Hon AMY ADAMS: —quite right, Mr Hudson—billions of dollars out of our productive economy through their reckless, ill-considered, poorly communicated ban on oil and gas exploration. So, Mr Robertson, if you truly believed in making a thriving nation and building a productive sector, you wouldn’t be loading this country up with more taxes that go right to the heart of the people who create opportunities in this country, who create wealth.

Now the other thing we hear continually from this Government under the well-being Budget and in the Budget Policy Statement is this notion of needing to address disparities to create fairness. Well again, it’s all lovely, waffly-sounding words, but here’s something they don’t tell you: New Zealand is in the top half of the OECD for the fairness of our wealth distribution—the top half of the OECD for the fairness of our wealth distribution—well ahead of Australia, well ahead of the UK, and well ahead of the US, and yet we’re being told that somehow we have this tremendously unfair system. Well, a few hard cold facts: the top half of taxpayers already pay all the net income tax in this country—all of it, all of the net income tax—and yet we’ve got Michael Cullen saying those under $48,000 need to be given huge numbers of more subsidies—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to interrupt the member and ask her to come back to the debate. It’s a special debate. It is a relatively narrow debate and it is on the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement. I’m giving this member a bit of warning but the rest of the House a bit of warning as well. This is what the debate is on.

Hon AMY ADAMS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I refer the House to the Budget Policy Statement where the Minister of Finance specifically talks about this Budget being about addressing disparities in the economy, and as part of considering distressing disparities in the economy, it is important context to understand exactly where we sit. Now I am debating very definitely on that issue because the reality is you cannot continue to whack those who actually try and build that thriving nation Grant Robertson says he cares about at the same time as looking to support the half of the taxpayers who are not contributing to that net income tax take. That is the reality, but it doesn’t fit with Grant Robertson’s well-being, fairness bumper stickers, and so he doesn’t want to talk about that.

But let’s be really clear. Mr Robertson, if you keep smacking the productive sector, if you keep making it harder and people less incentivised to go out and build a business, you will continue to see what you have seen over the first year of your time as Minister for Finance, and that is an economy slowing down, with more people on the unemployment queue, more people waiting for State housing, and more people needing assistance. That is the reality. The rhetoric doesn’t live up to the reality.

Now, in my final minute, I just want to touch on this well-being Budget framework because we’ve seen over the last little while just how shabbily put together this is. The Living Standards Framework is put together on Statistics New Zealand, the people who brought you the success that was the last census—their Indicators Aotearoa New Zealand framework. Now that framework had some of the most pitiful, pathetic consultation I have ever seen to inform it. What we have is the OECD telling us in New Zealand what a good life looks like, and then the geniuses putting this together telling us things like having a friend or moving house is apparently more beneficial to you than avoiding diabetes. Now there’s no issue with having a CBAx—we’ve had them; they can be useful tools—but when you’re saying that moving house, which is supposed to be one of the most stressful things you can do, is of more benefit to a New Zealander than not getting diabetes, then you know you haven’t done the job well.

So stop telling us about well-being, Mr Robertson. Start doing things that actually improve it—

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I’m very keen to take up the member’s invite to talk about the Budget Policy Statement. Perhaps we’ll kick off where she ended, which is that, yes, the process that agencies and departments are going through in preparing their bids for this year’s Budget is indeed the most rigorous it has ever been in New Zealand’s history. That’s actually what’s happening, because agencies and departments are now required not just to put up a bid and say, “Here’s what we think we’ll be able to do. Here’s how many services we think we might be able to provide as a result of putting the money in.”. It actually asks those agencies and departments, “What’s the impact of this going to be? How will this affect people over a period of generations? What will the distribution of the impact be? How will it actually affect who gets to benefit from it?” Tim Ng, who is the chief economist at Treasury, actually said, “This is the most rigorous approach we’ve ever seen to a Budget.”

So Amy Adams is actually completely wrong in her assessment of this, and in her final comments around the cost-benefit analysis tool, she is in fact misrepresenting that tool, because what she’s doing is comparing the way that tool measures cost to Government for a service and private benefit of something that a person gets. They are two completely different parts of the tool, and they have existed since the member was a Minister. She knows that, and I actually think it really does undermine what is world-leading work by the New Zealand Treasury on their Living Standards Framework which began under the previous Government, and suddenly, now that the National Party is in Opposition, they decide that this is not worthy. Well, I think this is a huge advance for New Zealand in terms of the way we put Budgets together and the way that we measure the success of our country.

We also heard from the member her concern—and the Budget Policy Statement does cover this area—about where New Zealand is going in terms of its growth rates. It may have escaped the member who spoke before me, but, actually, New Zealand’s GDP began to slow at the beginning of 2017. That trend had started then and it was part of a global trend, and, actually, just today, Australia has released its fourth-quarter GDP numbers from last year, which have 0.2 percent growth for that quarter and 2.3 percent growth for the year. That is a slowdown. It’s happening across the world. I’d encourage Ms Adams to get out and about and see what’s actually happening in the world. The IMF have said that advanced economies for this year, in 2019, are projected to have growth around 2 percent. New Zealand is projected to have growth well in advance of that, so, in actual fact, New Zealand continues to outperform those other economies. But we don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re a small, open trading nation that has to make sure we’re resilient and robust when things do turn down in the world, and the good news is that we are.

Ms Adams cherry-picks a few statistics out in her speech, but it would be fair to say that the people I’ll listen to about the strength of our economy are Standard & Poor’s, who upgraded their view about the strength of the economy in New Zealand last year, and Moody’s, who continue to say that we’re in a strong position. So Ms Adams can take the political stance, but the truth is that on those core economic indicators, New Zealand continues to do well. We are part of a global economy—we have to understand that—but the reflection and the negativity on the other side, I guess, is now something that we’re coming to expect.

This is a very different Budget Policy Statement, the report of which is in front of the House today, because for the first time, we have within it a well-being outlook. That outlook includes information about the state of our core finances. It shows that the Government is on track to meet its Budget responsibility rules around issues like having a surplus and managing our debt. It shows that the growth track of the Government is steady and solid and, as I say, is outperforming some economies that we would normally compare ourselves to. It shows that unemployment is heading towards its lowest levels in a decade—indeed, is actually already there at the moment.

So those core economic indicators are part of our well-being outlook, but in addition we’re actually describing the state of New Zealand. Our people—how educated are we? How healthy are we? How secure do we feel? We’re talking about the state of our environment. Are our rivers clean enough to swim in? Can we have air that we can breathe? And we’re talking about the strength of our communities: how much people trust the Government, how much they trust the people around them, how they feel about their own culture, and who they are as a person. Those are a wider set of indicators of success for our economy, but they recognise a fundamental principle: the economy is a means to an end, but it’s not the end in itself.

The problem we get ourselves into as a country if we see it as the end is what we experienced in the last nine years. Yes, the growth rates were higher, but the OECD told us we had the world’s worst homelessness. We’ve got rivers that we can’t swim in. We’ve got child poverty indicators getting worse. So that’s what we’re trying to address through this Budget Policy Statement—a much wider picture of what success looks like.

What the Budget Policy Statement also indicates is that in doing so, we will then have better information to address the real challenges to our well-being and our living standards. I’d really encourage members opposite to take a look at the Living Standards Dashboard that is available, because what that shows is that we’ve developed this Budget on the basis of evidence. So the member who spoke before me spoke about the fact that she had a study where New Zealand was ranked in a particular place on disparity. Well, take a look at that dashboard—take a look at it and input Māori and Pasifika people, and on most indicators on that dashboard of living standards, which covers issues like homeownership and income, Māori have a far worse performance on those indicators than the average population. The ones where they don’t are around issues of social connectedness and the community coming together—something that is a strength of our Māori and Pasifika communities.

So we’ve got that evidence and we’ve made it a Budget priority. We’ve said that the priority in this Budget will be lifting Māori and Pacific income, skills, and opportunities. We chose that priority because the evidence told us that that’s what we should do. So for the Opposition to stand up and tell us that this is somehow or other fluffy or woolly, it’s not—it’s based on evidence. We have prioritised the things that the evidence has shown us will lift the living standards overall for New Zealanders. That is different from the past—I understand that—but it is a better way, in my view, of ensuring that Budgets actually reflect back to New Zealanders both what’s important to them and the evidence that we have about what we do need to invest in.

Within those other Budget priorities that are in the Budget Policy Statement are two critical elements to lifting the productivity of our economy. The first of those is investing in a long-term transition to a sustainable and low-emissions economy. It’s time for everybody to get into the 21st century and understand that not only is this the right thing to do for our planet; it is where economic opportunity lies. We have huge opportunity to be able to be leading the world in new and clean technology in a fair and just transition to a lower-carbon economy, and that is what that priority is about investing in. The second priority is about investing in innovation and in social and economic opportunities in a digital age. This is the future of work. This is making sure that New Zealanders are actually prepared to be able to adopt and adapt to technology and that businesses are able to take that on and use that to improve their productivity. To my mind, these are the two big economic challenges facing New Zealand: how we make that transition and how we lift our productivity, particularly through new technology.

The other three priorities I’ve already mentioned—lifting Māori and Pacific income, skills, and opportunities. The other two are around reducing child poverty and improving child well-being and supporting mental well-being for all New Zealanders. These are critical issues to our success as a country, and it was interesting to note that the member opposite, when she spoke, suggested that there wasn’t an accountability for this Government on these measures. As the Minister of Finance, I am now required to report every year on the Government’s progress to reducing child poverty against a specific set of indicators. I would have thought the member who spoke before me would have known that because her party voted for that legislation. That is accountability. That’s standing up and saying, “We know that the economy is not an end in itself and that we actually have to talk about what it means for people and, in this case, for children.” So there are specific indicators. We will report on them every single year, and, as the Minister of Finance, I will report on them every single year in terms of the way we do the Budget and the Budget outlook.

So I am very proud of this Budget Policy Statement. It represents a significant advance and step forward in measuring the whole of the success of New Zealand society. It includes critical measures around making sure that we continue to have a prosperous society. It focuses on being fiscally responsible, but what it also shows is the sign of a Government that doesn’t care just about prosperity for prosperity’s sake. It cares about who shares in prosperity, and that is a vital step forward for New Zealand.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It was very interesting to hear the speech from the Minister of Finance. I don’t think there’s anybody in the world, or certainly in this party or in this Parliament, who thinks that the economy is the only thing that we should be concerned about. Nobody would say, “Oh, it’s only the economy that matters. It doesn’t matter how people’s well-being is or how connected they are with their community or how the environment is.” We all care about the quality of life for all New Zealanders. That’s why we’re in Parliament here, because we want to improve the quality of life for all New Zealanders, whether it’s the things that we regard as special in terms of the strength of our institutions such as this Parliament, or open, transparent Government, which we’ve heard a lot about from this Government. We haven’t seen it so much, but, nevertheless, we’ve heard a lot about it. When we’ve heard such things as the quality of our environment and our tradition for low corruption and high levels of trust in our society, all those things are critical to what it is to be a New Zealander. So we in Parliament, in the many ways that we go about legislating across this country, are very focused on improving New Zealand’s reputation and experience in all those levels.

What we’re talking about at the Budget, however, primarily, is how we spend our money, and there’s no suggestion that’s the only important thing, but it is an important element of what is a successful society and an economy. Why is a strong economy so important? Well, I’ve never met anybody yet who if contemplating the thought of them or one of their loved ones getting cancer or some terrible disease is not interested in having access to the latest technology and the latest techniques in solving those sorts of health remedies, and those, ultimately, come back to cost. You have to buy them, they don’t come for free, and a strong economy enables us to have access to the latest technologies, not just in health but in every element of society, and a strong economy enables us to have good quality jobs paying good incomes, and good opportunities for ourselves and for our families, such as we had during the era of the last National Government. In the last two years of the National Government, 200,000 new jobs were created in this country, providing opportunities for young New Zealanders and old and for Māori, from all parts of the economy and country, with every region doing well and providing new opportunities for New Zealanders.

Now, we’ve heard a lot about this Government’s great concern about well-being. Well, actually, how many new jobs were created in the last three months? Is it 10,000 a month, like what was happening under National? No, it’s only 667—so a calamitous drop in the number of new jobs being created by this economy. So what we’ve seen and what we see in this Budget Policy Statement is forecasted growth in New Zealand slowing down. It’s not collapsing. Of course, the economy had huge momentum that this Government inherited at the end of 2017—huge momentum had built up—and so we continue to have relatively good times and good opportunities for New Zealanders. But the point is that it is slowing. The growth is not accelerating as fast as it was.

So in the 2017 Budget, we were predicting growth of 3.5 percent in 2018 and 3.8 percent in 2019. Now, what have we got? Well, that 3.5 percent in 2018 has dropped to 2.7 percent and the 3.8 percent in 2019 has dropped to 2.9 percent, and nobody believes that it’ll get to the 2.9 percent. So we’ve seen growth in this economy drop back substantially. That means fewer opportunities for New Zealanders to get ahead and look after themselves and their families, provide jobs, and have access to the latest pharmaceuticals and drugs and opportunities for health and welfare, and there are fewer opportunities to invest, ultimately, in infrastructure and to grow this economy.

So where has that loss of momentum come from? Well, this Government has been systematically undermining some of the foundations of the strong economy that we enjoyed, such as predictability around Government decision-making—such as the way that it went about oil and gas, which was a shocker. Now, in terms of the quality of spending, I do acknowledge that this Government’s desire to keep the core Crown expenses below 30 percent of GDP and to maintain surpluses, and they have, so far, achieved that. I think they could be more rigorous, but they have achieved that, and we acknowledge that. They are making some progress and they are still continuing to focus on reducing net Crown debt to 20 percent of GDP or less.

But it’s the quality of the spending that concerns us, because if we look back to the first decisions that this Government made, the first decision was to do away with the tax cut that they had inherited from the previous Government. They did that because they said giving $1,000 to wealthy New Zealand families with inappropriate and they weren’t going to do it. Then the second decision that they made was to give those very same families $6,000 worth of free tertiary education. Most people struggled to put those two things together. You take the tax cuts away from the wealthy families and then you give them $6,000 worth of free tertiary education, with the result that no more people actually have gone to university since then and all the extra resources that they’re spending on tertiary education have drifted away from investment in the quality of the institutions to—

Hon Shane Jones: Relevance?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah, well, the point I’m referring to here is the desire to keep core Crown expenses below 30 percent, and I’m saying that the quality of the spending that they’re putting in that area is not very good. If we look at the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF), we heard from the Minister of Finance, saying that this is the most rigorous debate they’ve had over Budget bids. Well, it’s interesting. Anybody that doesn’t make it through that vigorous debate gets sent off to the Provincial Growth Fund, and that’s where the money is spent. So we’ve seen the Provincial Growth Fund that Mr Jones looks after, which I thought was about creating jobs, is now about killing possums, which is very interesting. It’s about killing possums rather than creating jobs, and beyond that it’s about employing people in NEETs programmes. I mean, all these sorts of programmes that were part of general Government spending—suddenly, $80 million is moved out of the NEETs thing into the PGF funding because there’s a billion dollars a year just floating around for that member to spend as he likes, in cahoots with a number of other Ministers and his Cabinet when it gets big enough.

But the point is that when we were in Government in 2015, for example, there was only $1 billion allocated to new spending right across the whole of Government. That’s the scale of what has been put in the hands of Shane Jones for his Provincial Growth Fund, which we call a slush fund, and some people think that’s a little unfair. I’m sure he thinks it’s a little unfair, but we have to go back to what he said. What did he say when we asked him about why most of it was going up to Northland? He told us, here in the Parliament, “Well, to the victor goes the spoils.” That explains what it’s all about. New Zealand First chose who was going to be in Government and, as a result of that, they got the $3 billion and they’re going to spend it where they like. So that quality of spending, or the lack of quality in spending, is one of the reasons why we’re not getting the results that we want to get out of this economy.

When we’re spending however many billion dollars on trees and you ask the simple question “What are we getting for that?” and we’re told we’re going to get a thousand jobs, and then you look into the details of what actual jobs there are, it’s a very murky and slippery set of figures that you’re confronted with. So I’ll be very interested to hear from the Minister whether he’s come any closer. We looked at the number of jobs that had been created so far out of the whole Provincial Growth Fund and we found 54 and 118 bureaucrats. The Minister has subsequently told us that in fact there are 560, and I’m very much looking forward to the breakdown of that list of jobs. I think there might be five or six of them, including the gentlemen that went up and did the mulching up in Northland—mulching the seedlings for an hour—but they will probably be counted as five jobs and there’ll be another 15 somewhere else doing something else.

Anyway, if we get back to the question of taxes, what we’ve seen is more taxes, more fuel taxes, and New Zealanders are getting less for it in terms of roads. We’ve got very ideological decisions, so anybody who is sitting on the southern motorway at the moment—there’ll probably be a traffic jam there now—you can rest assured that there’ll be traffic jams there for a long time to come because this Government is not spending anything on Mill Road, a second critical arterial route out of the city. They don’t want to do that. They’re going to extend that in 10 years’ time. They’re not doing the East-West Link, but they’re—strangely enough—doing a light rail project at the cost of $4 billion. I just heard today that the Swedes and the Danish have managed to build, I think, a 12-kilometre bridge between their two countries for US$2 billion. So they can get a lot of bangs for their bucks over there, but we’re going to spend $4 billion on a slow tram to the airport that nobody can work out.

So that quality of decision making is what we are dealing with, with this Government. So the only question I would make at the end of this speech is, yes, they’ve made some progress in keeping the Budget in surplus and keeping the overall spending limits in check, but the quality of the spending just isn’t there. We think they can do a lot better if they apply themselves a little bit more. Thank you very much.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): I fear that the last contribution may have offended the Standing Orders, because it would not be proper for the list member from Epsom to compare his leader to a possum. Not only the fact that it’s a possum in the headlights; he hates the fact that we have spent money on getting rid of a pest that they were prepared to promise to get rid of but never put a penny in the purse. Now, the reality is that’s a characteristic of the last regime which is inversely related to the fact that we have made a promise under the cloak of well-being to fund our rhetoric. I, with characteristic modesty, wear the cloak of having to spread that message, and with my Cabinet and ministerial colleagues, we enjoy the mandate to ensure that the pūtea is delivered into those regions.

Now, I need to acknowledge—

Hon Maggie Barry: The member’s overshadowing the message.

Hon SHANE JONES: Ah! I fear that we might need to increase the dispute resolution employment service bill with more contributions from that particular member, but I’ll leave that point alone for fear of being pulled up yet again by Mr Speaker for bringing colour and character back into the House. But let me move on.

There actually has to be made by me an acknowledgment that there are people on the Finance and Expenditure Committee who do wade through this material, who do wade through the various financial aspects of the State’s administration. My colleague Fletcher Tabuteau—I have to mention him in memorable dispatches because I have a dim and distant memory of being the chairman of such a committee. For a brief period of time I had two mentors as to how I should conduct myself on that committee, one being the current Speaker and another being Doug Woolerton. Doug Woolerton gave me lessons on language—I failed them—and a certain former Minister of Education gave me lessons on diplomacy. That’s a work in progress—a work in progress.

I just want to take us to page 7, and just want to quickly run through the elements that the Prime Minister regularly talks about, along with our leader. Civic engagement: we are prepared to embed in our narrative and meet the pūtea obligations so that people are not atomised any longer, so that people who don’t capture the attention of the big end of town or don’t capture the attention of the rūnanga or don’t capture the attention because you’re not a favoured caste of voter by a Government are brought right back into the middle of the social equation.

Now, if that requires additional pūtea and if that requires us to defend the fact that we can’t immediately monetise the upside of that, that’s called democracy. That’s called civic engagement. Now, I’ve heard Mr Grant Robertson suffer some unwise and largely inaccurate remarks from the other side of the House, but that is called social capital. If we don’t have social capital, we are trading away the birthright of New Zealanders to be in it together, to integrate our effort for gated communities. That was the regime that’s gone. We are not the gated community Government. We are an inclusive, integrated Government, and if it comes to pass that we have to bring the provinces up by taking a risk and increasing the amount of capital that goes into overdue infrastructure projects, whether they be human capital, financial capital, or restoring natural capital, we will do it in a heartbeat, and we will defend it at the end of next year, when judgment day arrives.

Let me just carry on. Income and consumption: the reality is for the last nine years, every week we heard about woeful and awful cases. Now, what do we hear from the list member from Epsom? A celebration of the fact that they were willing to confine themselves to $1 billion, as if that’s some sort of religious, zealous mark of respect. The public deserves to have politicians that are willing to invest in public infrastructure, in public capital, and will gladly stand shoulder to shoulder, pāpāringa to pāpāringa, face to face with the characters on the other side of the House, because that’s what we’re doing. That’s what this public document actually outlines.

Let’s go to another one: housing. Now there’s been all sorts of depredations upon our colleague Mr Phil Twyford. What are the three things that the Government’s doing which will contribute to well-being? We are going to create an uber-authority. Unlike the other Government, we’re not going to tolerate the endless reams of red tape in Auckland that have frustrated housing outcomes. I need only mention the words of Bill English, who surrendered to the planners in Auckland Council, who said that they had more authority than he did as a Cabinet Minister—an abject statement of failure. Mr Twyford’s not going to let red tape in Auckland frustrate the ambitions of Kiwis to enjoy affordable housing and a transport system that we can afford to use because we have the ability to pay for it.

Now, on the question of such infrastructure in Auckland—I need to repeat it again. The last entity otherwise known as the Government under John Key, they promised infrastructure delivery, pipelines, and we had a thousand-page document that no one ever read. It was holding the doors open of Treasury and it was holding the doors open of the bureaucracy, so we’re going to create an independent entity called an infrastructure body because the private sector want it. Although we wear the cloak of well-being, we’re actually working a lot more constructively with the private sector, and they have a champion in the industrial prince of the regions—my good self. So not only are we going to create that entity; we’ll turbocharge the ability of the State housing apparatus to deliver properties at a pace a lot quicker, and in locations that were overlooked by the last regime.

Now, of course, people might say “Oh, this is evidence of profligacy.” and also that the $3 billion over the period of the Government is evidence that we’re not keeping a tight grip on the fiscal tiller. It was so tight under the last regime—the reason we were elected, the reason that we enjoy power, is that people want to see reciprocity. They don’t want to see this flinty, ACT-like approach to how the State should relate to its citizens. They don’t want to see this anaemic, half-starved approach of only those people who represent constituencies that are close to a particular ideological view as reflected under the last regime, such as the recipients of all the agricultural funding and the irrigation funding. No, they want it widespread, because when things are widespread, the net brings the various elements that comprise both our economy and our society closer together. That is worth fighting for, and fight for it we will.

Now, let’s talk a little bit about the 20 percent debt figure that Grant Robertson has announced in terms of our rules, the Budget responsibility rules. That’s to ensure that if—God forbid—we should suffer either an international calamity or a further natural disaster, there’s enough freeboard for the economy to immediately respond and meet the cost of sudden expenses. So that 20 percent figure—from time to time, I debate with myself as to whether or not such a figure is sustainable, given the deficit in infrastructure and the huge need in our communities after a period of neglect. But we do have to maintain good qualities and a good sense of direction and discipline with the international agencies, which this Government is doing. Do we need evidence as to whether or not we’re doing it well? Well, it lies there with the continual high gradings—much higher than Fonterra, I might say—that we enjoy on this side of the House.

So where capital decisions are made—and capital will be required to deal with the rehabilitation of KiwiRail. Capital will be required to meet the full costs of the project committed to, unwisely, in terms of the conditions, by the last regime, otherwise known as Auckland’s railway loop. These things will all take and require capital. The Budget Policy Statement, on page 25, outlines the size of the permission space as a fiscal envelope. That’s why this document is not only very lucid; it shows that we’re willing, within those strictures, to make the hard decisions. We have more pūtea, we have more options, because we cancelled the narrow, the very stingy tax cut regime that the last Government campaigned on—[Interruption] If you thought it was so good, how come you’ve got no power and we’ve got the privilege of governing? That’s how good it was. It cost you the election.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon SHANE JONES: It cost them the election. So we have recycled that pūtea and we are touching those constituencies long since neglected, and they will reward us accordingly in 2020.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think that last minute of the member Shane Jones’ speech speaks volumes about New Zealand First and whose well-being they really are interested in. We’ve heard the use of this “well-being Budget” term a lot, and it’s being bandied about as if it is somehow a new concept, but every Budget is about well-being. There isn’t a single dollar that is spent by any Government that they don’t honestly believe is going to improve the well-being of New Zealanders. If there’s any failure, I would suggest, of the previous Government, I could say that the idea of well-being was so obvious, so fundamental in the raison d’être of that Government, that we didn’t speak about it enough.

But I want to talk about things like the Better Public Services targets. There were about 10 of them, I think—120 separate individual targets under 10 categories. They were categories like reducing long-term welfare dependence, reducing crime, and improving skills and employment. Every single one of those targets was a well-being target. The national health targets: access to better cancer treatment, faster emergency departments, better immunisation—these are all about the well-being of New Zealanders, and if the previous Government didn’t speak enough in the language that we’re now using, it is because it was so self-evident it wasn’t felt necessary.

The disappointing thing about where we’re at now is that this Government has dismantled massive machinery around well-being for one reason and one reason only, and that was it was the previous Government’s framework. That is deeply disappointing because, effectively, we’ve gotten to a point of stasis where we’ve been here for 18 months on things like mental health, where there were specific, measurable well-being targets to improve the mental health services for, particularly, young New Zealanders, and because the previous Government had come up with them, they were dispensed with and we started again. We didn’t start again with new initiatives; we started again with a review—a review into mental health and addiction, which has spawned I don’t know how many other reviews. But we’ve got more committees than you can shake a stick at, all talking and thinking about mental health but not acting on it, despite the fact that mental health is one of the five priorities specifically listed in the Budget Policy Statement.

Before I go on more about the health well-being challenges, I just want to reflect on a couple of things that the Minister of Finance made, because he did make two important points. He said firstly that he, as Minister of Finance, needed to report on well-being matters annually, and he used the issue of child poverty targets as an example of a well-being target that he’ll need to report on. But, simultaneously, with the introduction of the child poverty targets, was the dispensing and non-replacement of any health targets.

He also said that this Government was going to use evidence. I was fascinated by that use of the term “evidence”, because on the basis of evidence, I wonder what the evidence was for the investment into the education system of $2.8 billion of free fees for tertiary students. If one was to spend $2.8 billion today in education, does the evidence show—

Hon Chris Hipkins: We didn’t spend that. That’s not how much the fees-free cost.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Over four years? I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.

Hon Chris Hipkins: No, that’s not how much it cost.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, the Minister was talking it up big time when he announced it. Now he’s trying to make the target as small as possible, actually—

Hon Chris Hipkins: No, because he’s adding in the student allowance increase.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh, OK, so that doesn’t matter. That wasn’t money that was taken out of one taxpayer and given to another, so it doesn’t count—only that’s exactly what he did. So my question remains: if one is to invest $2.8 billion in the education system, does the evidence show that well-being is served by giving free fees to the children of millionaires, or by increasing the number and remuneration of our secondary and primary school teachers, the number and quality of the teaching and learning resources that they have, the number of teacher-aides that we have in our schools, or the number of special education services? The evidence, I would suggest, is that the well-being of this country and its young would be much better served by investing those billions into a different part of the education system, and let’s hope, actually, that the next Budget is less about pork and more about well-being, because that’s my perception of what Budget 2018 was.

In health, the same question needs to be asked—that is, how is the well-being of our population enhanced by the complete removal and non-replacement of any health targets? What has that done? Well, it’s done a couple of things. Firstly, fiscal discipline is gone, and the Minister of Finance, before he even gets to look at new spending in Budget 2019 on health, has to work with his Minister of Health to find out how on earth they’re going to stem the flow of what could be as much as half a billion dollars of combined district health board deficits—complete blowouts. This is before they even look to replace the $100 million of mental health funding that was ripped out in Budget 2018 and before they remedy the issue of the savings in pharmaceutical purchasing that could’ve been reinvested into new medicines so that cancer patients don’t have to have a Givealittle page set up so that they can have their modern cancer drugs paid for. Instead, that money went back into the slush fund to stem the flow.

Where is the well-being of New Zealanders when independent midwives are leaving the profession in their droves because the Minister of Health has sat on a report that says that these fantastic female professionals are worth far more than they are being paid, and the Minister has done nothing but pay lip-service about that? What about the well-being of the adults who are going profoundly deaf and would benefit significantly from cochlear implants when the $6.5 million that the previous Government put in to increase and double the number of adults who would get those implants was taken away? What about the well-being of every single New Zealander who was promised by Jacinda Ardern and David Clark that they would get discounts in their GP fees, only to find in Budget 2018 that that did not happen and there is no prospect in the future of that coming back? A broken promise.

So as we approach Budget 2019, and as we look at this Budget Policy Statement and hear the wonderful warm, fuzzy, virtue-signalling words about well-being, what New Zealanders really want to hear is: “What’s going to happen to my health services and my education services? Will I be protected at home and on the streets? Will my well-being be better or worse as a consequence of this Budget?” It’s a question they may not articulate using those words, but they have done so every year since Budgets were set, and the idea that well-being is something new is completely wrong.

Now, I’ve laid out a few of those very, very profound fiscal challenges in the Health vote alone—and, actually, in education—and what that means is that in order for the Minister of Finance and Cabinet to stay within their own spending disciplines, something else has to happen, and that is that revenue has to go up. The way the Government, clearly, has chosen to do that is to put a tax on the capital increments of the hard-working New Zealanders in our small businesses, on our farms, our cribs, our baches—the things that have been worked at over many, many years—without any recognition of the time value of money and inflation, and without any recognition that the tax gained could’ve been accrued over 15, 20, 25 years and that the actual marginal tax rate at the time of realisation is probably going to be far, far greater than if that impost had been put in over each successive year, which is a reality that other jurisdictions in the OECD represent by simply having a lower tax rate for capital gains.

But these Ministers are so desperate to fund their high-spending promises and their fiscal irresponsibility over the last 15 months—particularly in the health sector—that they are not able to do that. They’re not prepared to do that. In order to keep this fiscal envelope the way they describe it in the Budget Policy Statement, there is a tax coming to a pocket near every single New Zealander, and that can only harm this economy.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I wish to congratulate our Minister of Finance on his work to prepare this well-being Budget. This is a very exciting development for our country. This is a completely different approach, one that we have long been in need of, especially off the back of a previous National Government which left us with embarrassing, shameless levels of homelessness, environmental degradation, polluted rivers, suicide for young people at a level which we should not even dare to speak about that is happening in our country, and so many indicators that said far too many of us were being left behind. So this is the first time that we as a country are taking a small step towards looking at the real value of things and not just their simple price.

The Green Party has always championed a new way of seeing our economy as part of our society and our natural environment and not just the boss of all things, because that has led us completely down the wrong track. My predecessor Jeanette Fitzsimons said in her valedictory speech that her main goal in Parliament had been to find better ways of measuring our economic success and that the aim should be a better economy, not just a bigger one. The work, also, that my colleague James Shaw is doing to establish genuine well-being indicators might be the single biggest change we can make to how our economy is run for the better of the many and not just the few. So we are delighted—the Greens—that our Government is starting to move towards this holistic approach. It’s something that tangata whenua have always known, have always wanted to protect. We see our economy run in a way that should protect the natural world that we all rely on in a way that enhances people’s well-being and not just short-term profits for the few. We have to allow the model to develop in a way that will truly value all the contributions that are often not counted. This year’s Budget is based on interim measures that are good but that don’t yet have the wider perspective that the Green Party’s well-being indicators aim for.

I want to talk about kauri tree as an example. If I go to the Budget Policy Statement, I was pleased to see a statement that said that, additionally, data on New Zealand’s natural capital and research into the natural environment could be improved. Our majestic kauri trees are ancient, living, breathing taonga that, while living, provide a bastion for humans in the air we breathe and the whakapapa we hold dear, because kauri are actually our elders. Kauri are great atua of our forests, and their well-being depends on our accountability to protect our natural world. Kauri both feed off and provide nourishment to the ngahere ecosystem around them. They mark the independent relationship between insects and birds and shrubs and all plant life, and so, as living inhabitants since hundreds and thousands of years ago, kauri have adapted to the soil and bugs and climate in a way that introduced species never will.

Yet with all of this exchange, with all of this value, these elders of our forests, under our outdated system, are valued more when they are dead and being ripped out of swamps and shipped off as goods overseas, sometimes illegally. So I welcome the acknowledgment in this Budget Policy Statement, because if we had been taking proper care of our kauri like we should’ve been and if we had been measuring their value as we should’ve been, we would not be facing the spread of kauri dieback today that threatens these rangatira. I cannot come to grips with a future world that has lost kauri tree to extinction. Instead, I imagine an economic system that properly values all parts of our environment, and this Budget Policy Statement is hopeful in marking and indicating that value.

Imagine an economic system that counted the likes of the kapa haka leaders and performers and volunteers who dedicated a collective thousands of hours of unpaid work to bring just next door here in Wellington a festival featuring Māori arts and cultural excellence second to no other festival in the entire world. Imagine a system that could capture that. Imagine an economic system that counted the time that nanas and koros and parents have spent caring for their families and nurturing children. Imagine a system that asks: are the things that we are doing to increase our well-being today adding to or detracting from the ability of future generations to increase their own living standards? These are the value indicators that the Greens have always stood for and will keep pushing for.

Now I go to the members opposite and their addresses today. Certainly, their leader Simon Bridges and his so-called Bluegreen agenda still cannot see beyond the narrow lens of price and dollars, and they keep upholding that. It’s quite bizarre. They continue to stand and uphold that outdated system that has done nothing but ruin and that has actually decimated the future outlook, unless we start acting now. For example, the National Government starved the Department of Conservation of funding and imposed a model where business groups got to sponsor our native plants and animals. Simon Bridges has promised to restart offshore oil prospecting. He’s said that four-lane highways are good for the environment. How green is actual Bluegreen, though? This is narrow thinking in pursuit of short-term gain, at the expense—the expense—of the environment. There is no green in there.

He won’t support the brave kids standing up for the future of their environment in the climate strikes next week. His entire caucus just pooh-poohed them and rubbished them yesterday out on the tiles—dismissed them, looked down their noses at kids standing for their environment. This is the Bluegreen agenda of the members opposite. Simon is buying into the narrow idea—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): It’s the Hon Simon Bridges.

MARAMA DAVIDSON: The Hon Simon Bridges is buying into the narrow idea that school is simply to train kids up for low-paid jobs so that they can keep paying rents on their mouldy flats to their landlords. That’s what the Hon Simon Bridges has as his idea of education.

I’m actually looking forward to seeing these young people exercise their power and their voice to call us to account. We know that the National Party cannot understand why they are doing that. They don’t get why they would want to exercise their civic duties and raise one of the most important issues facing us here in this House and in the world today. They would rather block the public from a select committee hearing on this very statement that we are debating right now, just to score some meaningless, cynical political points, than hear from genuine submitters about how excited they are with this new approach and what ideas they might have to make it a truly good one. There’s your Bluegreen agenda right there.

We have many examples of Government initiatives with wider benefits—more than what the initial price suggests—and that’s what this new approach is all about. For example, home insulation brings huge social and environmental benefits that go beyond the simple price of a few Pink Batts. It prevents illness, it reduces energy demand, it reduces power costs for households, and it creates jobs in a green industry. With this precedent, we establish a better way of looking at the economy.

We need to do more. We need to find more ways of delivering these benefits that simply go beyond the dollar price of them. I’m pleased that this Government has made a start. Thank you.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to be talking on the MPS—the Monetary Policy Statement—because—

Matt Doocey: Finally, someone is.

ANDREW BAYLY: Yes. It’s nice that we actually talk about the Monetary Policy Statement, which is, of course, a very important document issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. That document, together with the reports that we get from Treasury—

Kiritapu Allan: The BPS.

ANDREW BAYLY: The Budget Policy Statement (BPS). The issue around this is that it gives a clear view of what’s happening with the economy. I’ve got to say, increasingly, I’ve got to look at the economy with some alarm because whilst the Government wants to talk about growing the economy and creating fairness, the issue about this economy is that it’s not actually growing as fast as it should. That is the travesty of what’s going on.

If you look back to the last three years of the National Government, we were growing the economy at about 3.3 percent. That was driving forward, and that’s how we were starting to make sure that we were getting the money to be able to invest in the core services that we need in New Zealand. But the most worrying thing about this—the most worrying thing about this—is that since this Government has come into place, it has slowly, through its actions, reduced the GDP growth rate in New Zealand. This is an issue of lost opportunity for New Zealand, and that’s the thing that’s worrying me.

I know the Government wants to sort of paper over it, but, actually, even the Reserve Bank said in their report that there is a risk that growth and potential output is slowed by more than we assume, contributing to a slowdown in GDP. To put that in context, every 1 percent, roughly, is worth about a billion bucks in lost revenue to spend on hospitals, to spend on education, to spend on mental health, and to actually do all the things that we want to do. Through this Government, we are seeing not only a slowing GDP growth rate, which is quite important, but also what we are seeing is an increase in debt. I keep asking Mr Grant Robertson, every time he comes to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, what’s happened to the GDP on a per capita basis and debt per capita, and, of course, he’s all gone silent on that over the last 14 months.

So it’s interesting. If you go to the latest financial statements of the Government of New Zealand, the debt now has actually increased. In fact, even in the last month, from the December figure, it went up by another $6 billion. So at the moment, the debt is sitting at roughly—this is gross debt—about $68 billion, and so what this actually means is that this Government is playing with mirrors. What it’s doing is it’s slowly running down the economy through lower growth rates—and I’ll talk about that in a moment—but at the same time, because it’s getting short of money, it’s letting its debt increase. If you go back to even a couple of months before, the debt was actually quite a bit lower in terms of its percentage.

What this Government’s not doing—even though they’re trying to portray that they are—is actually saying they’re reducing debt. They’re not. Actually, what they are doing, in the sheer numbers, in the amount of money that they’ve borrowed, is actually increasing debt, and they’re trying to offset that by saying, “At a gross level, it’s OK. On the percentage level compared to GDP growth rate, it’s okay.” Well, actually, what they are doing is using that debt figure as the area to let them expand, to enable them to start to spend and fund some of the programmes we have heard talked about today. We have heard about the Provincial Growth Fund, the 3 billion bucks that Shane Jones has got, the billion bucks that got given to Winston Peters, and all the other stuff—the student fees.

What they are doing is, basically, playing with our future—playing with New Zealand’s future—by actually increasing debt. Then, at the same time, what they’ve done in the last 16 months is raise tax by $2.6 billion, and that is against the policy they talked about. Prior to being made the Government, they campaigned on the fact that they wouldn’t introduce any new taxes, and now—now—they have already increased taxes by $2.6 million. Then, of course, we have got the whole issue around the capital gains tax. The whole thing about this is: “Shovel on another $2.6 billion of taxes on New Zealanders.”—on ordinary New Zealanders—“That’s not enough—that’s not enough. Let’s grow the debt as well. That’s not enough. Let’s talk about another tax.”, which is the capital gains tax.

So that’s all about just building up money so that you can spend your way out, but the issue that I think we should be talking about is not the flabby spend that we hear every day from the Hon Shane Jones when he steps up to the mark and tries to defend yet another piece of flabby spend that’s creating no jobs. We have gone silent on all that foreign affairs stuff that Winston Peters is doing around the Pacific, and the new ambassadorship and consulate in Sweden—all that’s been wasted. So what is happening is that we have got this economy that is just not going as well as it should.

The other thing I heard today in question time is that we’re out there doing trading arrangements. Grant Robertson talked about diversifying the economy—diversifying the economy. He talked about trying to get a relationship with the EU. Well, I’ve got to say to Mr Grant Robertson that that has been in train for quite some time. It wasn’t an initiative that was started by the Labour - New Zealand First Government; it’s actually been in a long time. Trying to take credit for something that you haven’t done is not a good thing.

But the issue is: where are all the other trading relationships? The reason is we’re not out there—we’re not out there. We’re going to talk about the relationship with China. We’re not out there. We don’t have a close enough relationship with them. What about the other fast-growing economies in the South Pacific? We do not seem to be out there, because we don’t have a Minister of trade out there away from New Zealand, not in New Zealand. We don’t have a Foreign Minister out travelling enough around the world creating new opportunities for businesses to be able to go and actually create and build and develop new markets around the world, and all that stuff is helping to contribute towards our slowing economy.

The other thing that’s chilled the economic growth in New Zealand was the industrial relations. So all these things are building up—the industrial relations framework, which employers are now starting to grapple with. Why does the Government set about demolishing the confidence of a New Zealand economy and, particularly, the people that own businesses and make the decisions about investing in new plant and stock and, more importantly, about employing new people? What we’ve seen with this Government is it set about, almost destructively, reducing that confidence.

Ultimately, it is those business owners that will make the decision to hire new people. Once you’ve got that—once you’ve got a growing economy; once you’ve got people employed—issues around social policy and all those other aspects start to fall away because people get paid well, they get jobs that they can feel good about, they have much better relationships, and all their social outcomes are much more stronger. That’s why it’s absolutely essential that we have a Government that actually knows what it’s doing, but at the moment we don’t. We have a Minister that is much more keen on pursuing Budgets that have nice intent, but, actually, are they delivering the outcome for New Zealand? I’ve got to say to you that in my view, they’re not. It’s not, and we will increasingly see the outcomes of that over the next few months, I think, because the GDP rate in New Zealand is slowing, and it’s slowing dramatically.

One of the issues for the Government is how it’s going to fund its operations and continue to do that in the short term, because they will not have the money. They’re already about $700 million down on where they were budgeting probably about a year ago. That is a substantial cost, and that will impact on the ability for all New Zealanders to be able to share the benefits of increasing spend, because this Government is running slowly into a point where they can’t do the type of expenditure they want.

I just feel disappointed for New Zealand, because this is a Government with, in my view, little ambition around how they want to drive a dynamic economy. They might be good on rhetoric, but the ability to actually manage a dynamic economy, to put the right frameworks in, and to make sure that people feel that they can invest and do the hard work and take the risk that many have to do at a personal level—that bit is just missing. We’re strong on rhetoric; we just don’t seem to see any delivery on the actual outcomes.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call Dr Deborah Russell—five minutes.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am delighted to take a call in this debate on the Budget Policy Statement. The Budget Policy Statement draws on work that has been done in Treasury for some years now on the Living Standards Framework. It’s integrated into the Budget Policy Statement—in particular, through thinking about well-being.

As part of the work that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has done in preparation for this well-being Budget, we spent some time talking to absolute experts in the field. This afternoon, I want to report to you in the context of this debate some of what Professor Marilyn Waring talked to us about when she came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. She is, of course, a former National Party MP and an eminent economist and political philosopher.

One of the interesting things that Professor Waring told us about was that GDP is a comparatively new measure. It was first really used in about 1934, and when it was first introduced, it was controversial. There was a longstanding debate as to what got put into GDP and, importantly, what got left out of GDP—what counted and what didn’t count. There’s some interesting stuff that goes into that—for example, carpentry was something that Professor Waring told us didn’t make its way into being counted in GDP until the 1970s. That was when it crossed the production boundary—the boundary of what counted in GDP and what didn’t. So it’s rather interesting to think about what doesn’t count in GDP.

Primarily, the sorts of things that don’t count in GDP are women’s work and work that goes on in the home. Here are some of the items that are not included in GDP—and this comes from an article by Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders. What doesn’t count in GDP? The cleaning, decoration, and maintenance of the dwelling. What doesn’t count in GDP? The cleaning, servicing, and repair of household durables, the preparation and serving of meals, the care, training, and instruction of children, the care of sick, infirm, or old people—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Unless you pay someone to do those things.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: —and the transportation of members of a household or their goods. As my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins has pointed out, those matters only count if they are paid—if someone pays for them—because that’s the definition of GDP. It’s the monetary measure of the market value of all the goods and services an economy produces, but only—only—if there is a monetary value paid for by the market.

GDP is an interesting and worthwhile measure. It is an important measure of what goes on in the economy, but it does not measure all that is important in the economy. It does not matter what counts for well-being—what counts for enabling us to lead a flourishing and a happy life.

The ancient philosophers concentrated on what it was to lead a flourishing and happy life, and what counts for a flourishing and happy life? People say, “What is it? How do we know that?” Well, we know that because it’s been talked about for centuries. We know that what matters to people is good health. We know that what matters to people is social connectedness. We know that what matters to people is meaningful work. We know that what matters to people is standing in their communities. We know that what matters is people. That is what this Budget sets out to count. We are starting to answer Professor Waring’s challenge. We are starting to answer that challenge of what really counts. That’s why this well-being Budget is so important.

Of course it will be hard to develop the measures. Of course this first essay into doing a well-being Budget will be difficult. But, as it took nearly a century for the measure of GDP to settle down a bit, it might take us time to get the measures of well-being right. But we are on our way and we are making an attempt at it, and we have some concrete goals—concrete goals—because we know that what gets counted is what people work towards. So we will work towards productive businesses, regions, and an economy, we will work towards a thriving nation through innovation and social and economic opportunities, we will work to lift Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities, we will work to reduce child poverty and improve child well-being, and we will support the mental well-being of all New Zealanders because we will work for well-being.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a great privilege to follow Deborah Russell. I followed her around for two months during an election once. There are many ways of hiding bad news and camouflaging reality, and this term “the well-being Budget” is the best I’ve heard of yet. I couldn’t understand how they got to that point until I heard Deborah Russell talking about the ancient philosophers, and now I understand the Labour Party policy perfectly.

The real issue with this, though, is earlier on we heard Michael Wood talking about comparing the Government’s annual report to that of a big company. In some ways, they’re absolutely right. They do that. The problem is the difference generally is the standard of bookkeeping, and the thing that really concerns me about where we’ll get to in the well-being Budget is how accurate the bookkeeping is. I think the thing about Budgets is Budgets need money, and, to acquire money, you need a strong and vibrant economy. The thing that primarily concerns me about the state we’ve got to right now is that we’ve spent a fair bit of time in the last 18 months driving foreign investment out of the country and putting foreigners off coming to New Zealand to be educated, to assist in our workforce, and to build our economy. So, once you do that—

Hon Member: Rubbish.

IAN McKELVIE: —well, it’s proved by the facts—you start to weaken the growth of our economy. When you’ve got a massive predicted spend such as we have with the Provincial Growth Fund and with the free tertiary education for first-year students—and, of course, I have said in the House before that I can hardly criticise that, because I got a free education myself and look where it got me. But the thing that worries me most is the way this money is being distributed, and to match that to some of the aspirations of the well-being Budget is very difficult.

I’ve yet to see any evidence of the Provincial Growth Fund and its spend being matched to well-being and people’s better interests. One of the things that bugs me in this House are the bombastic comments of he who refers to himself as the first citizen of the provinces. Well, I hate to disappoint him, but, actually, the Governor-General is the first citizen of the provinces, and if he’d ever read our constitution, he’d find that out—well, not the constitution, but the pieces that make it up.

So I think that the real challenge we’ve got in New Zealand is around the things that, basically, make people’s lives better. If we’re going to invest money in free education for those who were managing without the free education—in other words, there’s been no increase in those people getting into that business—and splash money around the provinces in a manner that has yet to create more than about 45-odd jobs and has yet to create anything concrete for the people of our provinces who need a better lifestyle, then I think that’s probably irresponsible.

I think that when you look at our provincial areas, the places that really need money spending on them are health and education. That is particularly applicable to remote rural New Zealand, where services have been withdrawn over a number of years and where it’s very difficult for young people to get a decent education because there’s just not the scale or the bulk of people that can create an environment that’s challenging and that also enables those schools to be able to provide the broad enough education for those kids going to those schools. Those are the challenges we face in rural and provincial New Zealand. It’s not around growth. Tourism is doing well. Tourism is doing very well on the back of decisions of the last Government.

So those sorts of things are growing well in New Zealand. In fact, they’ve grown too well in lots of parts in New Zealand, and now we’re stretched for infrastructure to support them. That’s where the Government needs to be spending its money—on infrastructure that then provides jobs for those young people that live in rural and provincial New Zealand. I think that if we spent a lot more energy on that and a lot less energy on splashing money around things that don’t matter so much, it would be a whole lot better for New Zealand.

Now, I want to talk very briefly about the well-being Budget and the fact that we’ve spent a lot of time defining well-being and quantifying well-being. We’ve, basically, picked up an OECD definition of all this and adapted it to New Zealand’s conditions, but we haven’t adapted it to New Zealand’s conditions—we’ve just picked it up. New Zealand’s a very different country than the rest of the world, and we need to be specific in what we do. It’s a great opportunity for us. If we want to go down the well-being path, it’s a great opportunity for us to develop our own system, our own measurements, and our own accountability, and I’ve got some serious doubts, having read all the information on this, that we’ve actually got an accountability and reporting factor that will do us any good in the future.

So I don’t have a problem with embedding well-being in the Government’s Budget Policy Statement, provided that we do it in an accountable manner, and I’ve got serious doubts that we will do that. I think that there are some flaws in this system. I think that it will take a whole lot of rectifying and you’ve got to have money to do it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes.

JAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. The buzzword for this debate seems to be “well-being Budget”, and I congratulate the Government. That’s good packaging, good marketing, and they’re doing a good job of selling their approach to Budgets. But I also have to agree with my old friends on the National Party side that are, effectively, saying that well-being is what Governments always focus on, and that’s true.

When I look at the Budget Policy Statement, I see that there’s words in there about taking a long-term, intergenerational view, thinking broadly about impacts, positive and negative—well, that’s, effectively, social investment, and that’s what Bill English and the National Government championed. So the Government’s doing a good job in packaging and marketing their Budget as a well-being Budget. They’ve, effectively, taken social investment and they’ve rebranded it and are selling it as their own, and, you know, in Parliament, we spend all this time arguing who’s right and who’s wrong, but that’s politics for us.

I am wanting to focus on the fifth of the five big goals of the Budget priorities for this Budget Policy Statement around supporting mental well-being for all New Zealanders. This is an important aspect that I think all New Zealanders are interested in. Mental health is a priority for any Government. It should have been the priority for the past Government, and I’m glad it’s a priority for this current Government.

Of course, when we look at all of the wording that’s out there in the approach to mental well-being and the approach taken in the report by the inquiry, there’s a lot of focus on Māori well-being and Māori mental health. There’s a lot of focus on young people as well, and that’s true. Māori mental health challenges are greater than those that are non-Māori, and it’s true that we have a very high proportion of young people that are ending their lives by way of suicide. It’s the highest reason for deaths among young people. But I think we also need to remember that the highest rates of suicides in New Zealand occurred in males aged 25 to 44. That’s an area that isn’t often discussed. It doesn’t often get headlines. Of course, a focus on youth and, of course, a focus on Māori and Pacific health and those issues do get a lot of attention, but let’s not forget that males aged between 25 and 45 need a huge amount of support and focus, as well.

So I hope that when the Minister does put together his recommendations off the back of that inquiry, and I hope that when we discuss this in the future, we can also talk a lot more about males in that category, because they are hurting themselves at a higher rate, and that’s not good enough. We need to ensure in New Zealand that males know it’s OK to speak up and it’s OK to ask for help and that we have community resources there to assist them.

The Mental Health Foundation was correct, I believe, when they put in their submission on the Budget Policy Statement that we need to move some of that balance to not just focusing almost solely on acute mental well-being and support there but also on community-based resources. Of course, if we take the well-being approach or the social investment approach—whichever label we want to put on it—if we don’t address mental well-being early on and if we don’t get in at the community level, and people do get to an acute point, then that ultimately costs the Government and the taxpayer more in the longer term. So my plea to the Government is to of course focus on mental well-being, as you are suggesting, but don’t forget the men aged 25 to 45, as well.

When it comes to other priorities in this Budget Policy Statement, when we look at the wider question of well-being, of course, we don’t lift well-being in New Zealand unless we can address the standard of living. To address the standard of living, we have to address the cost of housing, and if we don’t address the cost of housing properly, then all the well-being initiatives and all the approaches in the Budget won’t amount to much, because the cost of housing is one of the highest costs that any New Zealander is going to face. If the barriers to homeownership and the cost of housing continue to be high and if Governments—whether they’re blue or red—don’t adequately address land supply, then we’re not going to see much improvement in the standard of living and we’re not going to see much improvement in the well-being of New Zealanders.

So I say to the Government that in all of their priorities in the Budget and everything that they do, we must also remember that we have to properly address housing affordability, and that’s going to include land supply. If we don’t get proper Resource Management Act reform and if we don’t open up land more, then we’re not going to see the runs on the board that we want for New Zealanders.

So in terms of the approach of this Budget Policy Statement, I think that if we were to take the politics out of it, whether we’re blue or red or whatever colour, we could probably support that long-term approach. But approaches to mental health and approaches to the standard of living need to continue to be addressed.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Kiritapu Allan—five minutes.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): It’s an honour to be able to stand today in this House and speak to the first ever well-being Budget. I want to commend my senior colleague the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson, and also the executive, who have wrapped around him in terms of showing leadership on the world stage, because we know that for over at least eight years, at an international level, the OECD has been promoting the fact that GDP in and of its own right is an insufficient measure to measure the well-being of a nation’s growth. We all know that it misses a range of different considerations in terms of measuring, indeed, how productive a country can be.

Now, before I turn to my substantive points, I just want to make a brief comment on Jami-Lee Ross, the previous speaker, who drew an alignment between the previous Government’s approach to investing in communities and what we’re trying to do here with this well-being Budget. I must say that I have to fundamentally disagree with that previous speaker. This is a marked change from what the previous Government did over the past nine years.

What the previous Government did over the last nine years when they were in Government was systematically withdraw funds. They focused on fiscal objectives over all other indicia of well-being, which saw us—a country that was one of the most accredited in the world for being one of the leaders in terms of the way that we looked after our community—become, in just under a decade, one of the leaders in the highest youth suicide rates in the world. We had some of the highest-rising wage inequalities in such a brief period. We had a housing crisis that was monumental—

Hon Judith Collins: Ha!

KIRITAPU ALLAN: Whilst they may snigger across the aisle, I would, if I was in that position, feel ashamed of myself. A Government that sat there at the helm, with the public popularity that they had as well, and they failed to make any form of movement in terms of housing those that need to be homed, in terms of investing in the regions and creating jobs and actually giving young folks a bit of hope, and making sure that young people who were coming up through the ranks in our country—why did we have that dearth? Why is it that New Zealand, one of the most productive countries—well, we’re not, actually. But, one of the most pristine countries in the world—how come we had one of the highest suicide rates in the world? Because young people couldn’t see themselves in our future. So that’s really abhorrent.

Anyway, I just really wanted to mark away from the points that the previous speaker—

Chris Bishop: That is trivialising an important issue.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: No, I disagree with that speaker as well. We’re not trivialising it. We’re making a statement that, actually, our Government’s intending to do the exact opposite from what the previous Government were doing. They failed to recognise that there was a mental health crisis, they failed to recognise that there was a housing crisis, and they failed to invest in those people that deserved it the most.

So if we turn to what the well-being Budget does, and in terms of what the priorities are this year, let’s look at that. Well, one of the things that we’re doing is we’re lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities. I must say that in terms of the submissions that we received on the Budget Policy Statement, we were inundated by Māori organisations, who, for the first time, I think, in a very long time, saw themselves recognised within the Budget Policy Statement objectives and the way that this Government was going about approaching how we assess well-being—because you know what? This isn’t something new. This is something that Māori have been doing for a very long time. If we want to talk about models and so on and so forth, Te Whare Tapa Whā is a Māori model that does, effectively, summarise for us the way that we holistically approach well-being. So I want to commend our Minister of Finance for putting it into a policy form and requiring that every single member of his executive is required to show how they will, in this Budget bid coming up, align their objectives for the year with these core Budget policy objectives.

The next one: reducing child poverty and improving child well-being—again, something that the previous Government failed to do. We had one of the highest rates in the OECD of children living in poverty, and it was a shame. This is this country, here—we had one of the highest rates. We turn to supporting mental well-being for all New Zealanders—again, something that the previous Government failed to do. Now, every single one of these Ministers here is required to show that in some way, shape, or form, they are lifting and improving the lives of all New Zealanders. I am absolutely pleased to commend this Budget Policy Statement to the House.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. We’ve heard some very impassioned, excited speeches today, and it’s been a pleasure to listen to so many of our colleagues on the Finance and Expenditure Committee speak with such passion. I thought that Dr Deborah Russell spoke really well. She’s one of the, I think, outstanding members of the Labour caucus, and I look forward to her elevation in due course.

I also just heard, obviously, the full five whole minutes from Kiritapu Allan, and she also was very impassioned. She spoke about this being the Budget. No, it’s not actually the Budget; it is, in fact, simply the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on, not the Budget, but the Budget Policy Statement. So when she talked about all the spending that was going on, actually, none of it is what’s going on today. This is just a statement, a report back from the Finance and Expenditure Committee, of which Kiritapu Allan is a member, which is actually all about what the Budget’s focus is going to be. So it’s not quite what she said, but I thought that that impassioned, excited speech was possibly designed to set off Dr Deborah Russell, who is my personal favourite on the other side—apart from, obviously, Michael Wood, who is also one of my personal favourites, and, of course, as we all know, the Hon Kris Faafoi, who is absolutely our personal favourite. So that should, by the way, finish them off completely with any careers in the Labour Party.

Let’s come back to the issues.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: We can’t vote for you, Judith.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: And the Hon Carmel Sepuloni—well, isn’t she a delight? Just a pleasure.

Let’s come back to the Budget Policy Statement. Well, let’s have a look at this well-being outlook—oh, for goodness’ sake. OK, creating opportunities for productive businesses, regions, iwi, and others, transition to a sustainable—I mean, everyone would agree with most of this stuff, I would have thought. I would have thought most people would say that lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities is a good thing. Frankly, I’d say that’s good for everyone in New Zealand. I don’t think it’s race-specific, although I do acknowledge that Māori and Pasifika are very much overrepresented at the lower end of the income scale. But many Māori and Pasifika are not at that level. Many have done extremely well in life and continue to do so. So I think that’s all about learning from those who have been able to do really well and seeing how we can do that better.

Reducing child poverty and improving child well-being, including addressing family violence—well, who could be against that? I’m very on to that, and I think one of the best ways of doing that is to treat children as though they actually are humans. I think that’s quite good—respecting them. Every Government thinks “We’re going to come in and do something on family violence.”—we certainly did—and sometimes that works, but the vast majority of what Governments do does not work in this area, and I’d be delighted to see something more innovative coming through that’s going to work.

I thought this week we’d hear from the Prime Minister in the press conference following the Cabinet meeting about what she was going to do about child poverty. I thought we’d hear something stunning. What we heard instead was that she’s going to ban ticket scalping. So “Ban ticket scalping” was the topic in the post-Cabinet press conference from our Prime Minister of New Zealand. A whole lot of people who are supposedly affected by all the things they want to do in this Budget are not actually going to be worried about ticket scalping. What they want to know is what this Government is prepared to do.

What we have seen today—yet another example on KiwiBuild—is a Government that’s happy to sign up all sorts of contracts and not get much done. Contracts without an end, contracts that just go on and on and on—currently $5.5 billion spent up in advance for 10,000 houses. The problem with that is that we’ve got 300 buyers interested—10,000 houses. That’s 10,000 houses over the next 10 years, and we have a Government that’s also committed to 100,000 houses over those same 10 years. So if you take $5.5 billion and extrapolate that out by the power of 10, that’s $55 billion set aside—or, actually, one of the liabilities that this Government is signing us up for as fast as it can. The trouble is that we’ve got 330 people interested in a KiwiBuild house. These are the sorts of decisions that actually make this Budget quite an important Budget, coming up, as to how this Government intends to address this issue.

So when I look at the Budget Policy Statement, how could anyone not be in favour of supporting mental well-being for all New Zealanders, with a special focus on under-24-year-olds? We know that the Government has set up yet another working group on mental health—230-something, they have now—yet another one. We had some really good stuff happening in mental health that we’d started, particularly around corrections and police. We had funding for police, and the reason why we had funding for police around mental health is that police are primarily the first responders in any mental health issue. Whether it is a suicide attempt, whether it’s a suicide that has been completed, or whether it’s a self-harming, it’s the police who are phoned straight away, and ambulance as well at that stage. I was so distressed that the incoming Government cancelled the police’s mental health funding that we had set aside from the justice sector fund for projects like this. That was an absolute disgrace. Now, that was 18 months ago. Let’s see if this Budget actually reinstates that money—let’s see if it does. I doubt it will, because so much money is having to be put aside for things like KiwiBuild and other things of that ilk—low-value spend, unfortunately—because it is going to take up a lot of the fiscal room that the Minister of Finance has.

We also see here that he would like to support a thriving nation in the digital age through innovation, social, and economic opportunities. Well, I think that’s a good thing. I think most of us would agree on this side that that’s a good thing. We’re not quite sure how a capital gains tax is going to help that. Most of us would think that that’s going to actually stop a lot of innovation and, let’s say, investment in the digital age. One of the reasons I say that is that many start-up companies—particularly in the IT software area—don’t have a lot of money to start with. So what they generally do is they tend to pay people quite a minimum wage, and at the same time they give them shares as part of their salary. We had to address this issue when I was the Minister of Revenue in the last Government. What we saw was that if we had gone after those shares in terms of capital gain, we would have forced those software development companies that have set up in places like Cambridge and all around regional New Zealand, as well as in the metropolitan areas, offshore. That is actually a very serious issue, because we would all agree, I think, in this House that the digital age is very much here to stay, and it is only going to grow more important for a country like New Zealand.

Let’s have a look at some of the issues that this Government is going to have to face in this Budget. We know that tourism has been a huge bonus for New Zealand over the last 10 years. We are very fortunate that we have had some very good tourism numbers coming through in increases. That’s not something we can guarantee, and I think that the Budget Policy Statement would have done well to address the fact that we are living in quite uncertain times. I say that, having heard Air New Zealand, the biggest provider, I would have thought, of tourism services in New Zealand, saying just the other day that international tourism numbers are down. We know that China cancelled—unilaterally, it appears—the Year of Tourism between China and New Zealand. That is something we should be very concerned about.

So I would like to have seen these issues addressed. It’s all very well saying “Let’s all be happy and have great well-being”, and we all agree with saying “Let’s all be happy and have great well-being.”, but also we have to have a way of encouraging business at the same time and encouraging good employment, encouraging good wages, encouraging people to stay in New Zealand, and encouraging tourism. But what we don’t seem to see in this Budget Policy Statement is any statement at all about where the money comes from—not a dicky-bird about where the money comes from. It’s all just “Let’s have world peace and happiness.” Everyone wants world peace and happiness—especially me, because everyone in this House will know what a peaceful person I am. We do want to have that, but you’ve got to have the money to produce all the things you want to give away as a Government, and that’s the issue here. There’s nothing solid, nothing concrete, about building the economy. They’re talking about it, but there’s nothing in here, in the detail.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Well, that was the same old stuff we’ve come to expect from a tired old Opposition, but what I’m excited about is the fact that we are doing something different, something challenging, something innovative, and, in fact, something which leads the world. I have just heard that the last Government tried to address family violence, tried to address—so they say—housing, tried to address this, and tried to address that, and made what? No meaningful progress. So we’re not going to do it the same; we’re going to do it differently. We’re going to do it a way that no one else has done it before. The Minister’s going to present a Budget which looks across all of a New Zealander’s wellness—not just asking how do we make sure that incomes are good or that tax is brought in, but asking a whole lot of questions that, to be frank, no Government before this Government has asked.

I don’t apologise for asking questions about community connectedness, about civic engagement, about life satisfaction, and about cultural identity. I don’t apologise for that at all, because a meaningful life, a life which is flourishing, a life which we can value and respect, includes those things. In fact, it would be remiss of us not to have a system which takes into account those really important values. Well, this Budget is called the well-being Budget because it’s more than just an absence of malaise, an absence of sickness, and an absence of failure. It’s actually an aspirational Budget—a Budget that says, no matter how good things are, we can do even better. It’s wellness because it’s not just about one thing. It’s not just about a part of the body; it’s about the whole body—body, mind, and soul.

We can look at some physical and some tangible measures, as indeed we should. We mustn’t forget, and we will not forget, the importance of a thriving productive sector: the rural sector, the intellectual property sector. We’ve been examining research and development and the need to stimulate that, and the Minister is doing a great job in making sure that we have a vibrant innovation sector. That is a critical part of the economy, so that we generate the important wealth that can be used to support and enhance other aspects. But we also need, at the same time, to be looking at other measures—not only looking at what we earn as a nation, but how many hours do we spend earning that? Far too many. We’re one of the least productive. We might be generating a respectable GDP, but at the expense of time doing other things, things we love—being in the outdoors, spending time with family. We need to focus on our productivity as well.

We also need to look at the spread of that income. The fact is that many of our people—people who are doing highly valued jobs caring for our elderly, working in our warehouses, driving those forklifts—are being paid a wage which cannot support a family, and we need to address that as well. I’m very proud that we’re raising the minimum wage, and aiming high. We’re aiming for an income upon which a family can be supported—a genuine living wage. So that’s an equity issue. It’s not just about how much; it’s about where it goes as well.

It’s the same with the housing market. We need more houses—we all know that. We know that we’ve got 1,100 more State houses already. We know that KiwiBuild has over 10,000 houses under contract already. We know we need more houses, but we also need good housing stock. It’s about quality. That’s why we’ve got the healthy homes guarantee—why we want to see renters in homes that are warm and dry. It’s simply not good enough to say, “That will drive up the rents. You should be living in a cold, draughty house with bronchitis and freezing cold so you can’t sleep at night because you want a house at a low rent.” That’s just not good enough. Firstly, there’s no evidence for it, and this is an evidence-based Government. Secondly, everyone is entitled to a home which is warm, and dry, and safe.

All this needs to be done with an eye on the future. We can talk about intergenerational equity, and we need to recognise that we have not done right, so far, to future generations—that there has been a slipping. We look at our rivers, our fresh water, and the quality that has been falling behind, and we should be ashamed. We can look at how we deal with waste and recognise that there is a burgeoning problem here in New Zealand as to the amount of waste we generate, and we look at our carbon profile and the fact is something’s got to change.

Again, some brave decisions have been made. The fact is that in the future there will be no further offshore exploration for oil and gas, and I don’t apologise for that either, because it’s time we started thinking of some new ideas. If we are going to be zero carbon in 2035, we’ve got to make some important decisions in a just way, in a way which recognises that change is necessary, and that change, in particular, is an incremental one. There are permits and exploration permits out there which extend into 2050. So let’s not pretend that that’s going to happen overnight. It’s being undertaken in a very careful, managed, fair way.

So I’m very proud that that decision’s been made and that there’s a whole lot of work being done to make sure that that transition is just and fair to everyone, that jobs are protected, and that, indeed, with the Provincial Growth Fund—which is a great example—further jobs are created. We’ve seen some fantastic grants right across the country, including Taranaki, which, to be fair, is where our oil and gas industry is primarily located. So that Provincial Growth Fund is really looking after the regions, and we know that when prosperity is driven in the regions, New Zealand as a whole does well. So we need to absolutely recognise that and recognise the intergenerational aspect of that.

But I want to also focus on those less tangible things—the things that, to be fair, are more difficult to measure. But we need to not shy away from that and to get out there and start measuring them—things like the connectedness of our communities, our cultural identity. How many of our children can speak Te Reo? It’s something I wish I’d been taught at school. How many of our children can communicate across all of our many and diverse cultures? How many of our immigrants have preserved their own language, their own cultural identity? We need to learn that they are taonga. They’re treasures that we need to hold dear so that people can feel connected within their own special community but also across communities. Let’s start looking at that, examining it.

Let’s also recognise the connectedness of all of these things. One thing we do know is that when a society is educated, it is prosperous. It is prosperous and its health improves. All of those things need to be addressed, so let’s recognise further that all education is worthy. Let’s not focus only on a narrow band. Let’s respect and promote and protect scholarship in the arts, scholarship in the humanities—those things which enhance and preserve all of our traditions—and recognise the important skills learnt in the trades. The fact that craft is a fantastic skill to have, the idea that we need to respect and value those people that do physical tasks: the carpenters, the plumbers—all of those people who support us with highly skilled trades with a technical background.

I’m really proud of what the Minister of Education is doing, looking at the trades and the polytech sector and saying “Not good enough.” That sector is really important to enhance our community as we go forward. We are going to look at that. We are going to not be afraid to make significant structural change if needed and to enhance and improve that sector, which is a critical part of our community.

These are all brave decisions. This is a new way of looking at things and that is exactly what’s needed. This wellness Budget is a world first. It’s a great Government to be part of and I’m very proud of it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2019.

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.

Bills

Arbitration Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 12 December 2018.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the second reading of the Arbitration Amendment Bill. A couple of things: the first thing I want to start with—and it does relate to this bill and it relates to this bill because I’m talking about international arbitration, and this bill is actually going to have, I think, a very positive effect for us as a nation in terms of being seen as a genuine destination, location, for international arbitration.

But if you remember the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and I sat on the select committee that had the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement come through it, there was a lot of concern around the investor-State dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions, and the ISDS provisions relate directly to the international arbitration or the arbitration that would be required if there was a dispute contained inside that free-trade agreement or in the Combined and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, as it’s called now. During that debate, there was a lot of opposition around the ISDS provisions and, actually, the TPP free-trade agreement from the Government, from Labour. I noticed that when they went from Opposition to Government, they very quickly embraced that agreement. And that was a good thing because, in terms of trade, historically, both the major parties in this House have tried to support and make sure that there was good quality. Yes, I’m going to narrow it and come back to the bill.

SPEAKER: You’re going to get there pretty soon, I hope.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I’m going to narrow it and come back to the bill. The point that I’m making is this: the reason why there was so much tension around the ISDS provisions was because there wasn’t a high level of confidence in terms of where the jurisdiction would be and how that process would actually be undertaken. And so the reason why having this Arbitration Amendment Bill in the House is so good is that it’s actually strengthening our own legislation in New Zealand that will help us be seen as a genuine location for people to come and actually have international arbitration cases heard here.

I’ve been sitting in the House today and I’ve been listening to a lot of speeches running this down. I was very lucky recently to have a visit to Hong Kong, which of course now is part of Mainland China and they recognise that: one country but two very different systems. And the thing that Hong Kong has been very, very good at doing—and they identified that there was a clear opportunity around international arbitration—is they’ve set themselves up as a hub to be able to attract a lot of that global business, and they’re doing very, very well. They’ve recognised that there’s actually massive international investment going on, especially around infrastructure and that there’s actually a genuine opportunity.

I see here that every case heard in New Zealand around international arbitration is worth, on average, $1 million to the local economy. So if we just stop and reflect on that and we just think about creating and being seen ourselves as a genuine location destination for international arbitration, just think about the amount of revenue that we can actually generate through that professional service in itself. The reason why this bill is going to help us be seen even more as a destination for this type of professional service is because we’re already highly trusted. We already have very strong institutions. We have a very strong judicial system. We’re seen as one of the least corrupt countries in the world. And so for Andrew Bayly to bring this bill—and I just want to acknowledge, actually, Paul Foster-Bell, who, I think, was the original sponsor of this bill and brought this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: Chris Finlayson.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: What’s that?

SPEAKER: Chris Finlayson, maybe.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: It’s Chris Finlayson?

SPEAKER: Well, I think he initiated it, didn’t he?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I think Paul Foster-Bell brought it originally, but the Hon Chris Finlayson did have a lot of work to do on it too, Mr Speaker. You’re right.

So if I could acknowledge both of them, it would be appropriate, but especially Paul Foster-Bell as the original sponsor of this bill, taking it to the first reading. So can I acknowledge him for bringing it into the House, but now can I acknowledge Andrew Bayly, who has religiously come to the select committee during the deliberation and debate around this bill. It’s his input, in terms of the changes that have been made. So can I acknowledge him and the work that he’s done around removing clause 6(4) and other considerations. Well done to him.

So I would just like to finish my contribution by again just reinforcing and restating that, in actual fact, although this arbitration bill has gone a long way to making sure that it’s much fairer, that it’s easier to access, that it removes pressure from our own courts system, not only for our own people—for Kiwis—but it’s also setting us up to develop a genuine professional service that could be world leading and could create very strong revenues and opportunities for us as a country. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Arbitration Amendment Bill. This bill is incredibly technical in nature, and because I didn’t sit on the select committee that heard all the submissions about the bill or was not part of the deliberations, I’m going to keep my comments to be quite high level.

Just thinking about arbitration and the differences between arbitration and going through full court proceedings, there is a number of issues relevant to that, which are highlighted in this bill. I think the first one is that parties can choose their own arbitrator, and I think that’s really important in terms of having somebody who understands the technical nature of the disputes that you’re involved in. And this bill touches on some of those aspects to make them a fairer process. The second thing is that often disputes can be resolved much more quickly by arbitration than by waiting for the full court process to work its way through. And the third thing is that arbitration is usually conducted in private while court proceedings are generally not, and that’s something, again, that this bill touches on, in particular. It’s really important, when you’re dealing with disputes of a commercial nature, to be able to have many of those considerations deliberated on in private. Finally, arbitration has that added advantage that it reduces the pressure on our stretched courts system because it allows a lot of disputes just to be settled via arbitration as opposed to taking up that valuable court time.

Labour supported this bill to select committee because we felt that it did make some big improvements to the arbitration framework; however, what we did signal quite early on at the first reading was that we had a number of concerns, particularly about the changes that were being proposed to the confidentiality of those court proceedings. We wanted to be able to spend that time during the select committee process hearing from submitters and considering what the best way forward was in that area. There were a number of changes to the original bill that were made during the select committee, and so Labour members are happy to support the bill in the amended form. And so what I just want to do is go through in a bit more detail some of those key aspects, and I think the first and most important one relates to making sure that we have retained that open justice.

As I was saying, the default in arbitration is that those proceedings are conducted in private, and that’s really important when you’ve got parties talking about disputes of a commercial nature. People need to be able to get on and do that. However, the issue is that once arbitration is elevated to courts, then the default is that the proceedings are conducted in public, although either party could apply for some or all of those proceedings to be, again, heard in private. So clause 5 of the bill, what it was hoping to do was extend that presumption of confidentiality through to court proceedings related to arbitration, and this was one of the things that was mentioned as a way of then making it much more attractive for people internationally to come to New Zealand, in terms of having arbitration. What this bill, basically, then tried to do was reverse the presumption that proceedings should be happening in public. What it just said is that it allowed the court to make a direction regarding how that information would be published, and making that much more restrictive.

The problem we’ve got is that that goes against the principle of open justice, because the public need to know, one, what the law is, and then, secondly, they need to know how it’s being applied. Basically, what you’ve actually got under the current provisions is that there is still flexibility in that respect, because, while the presumption is that the proceedings will be heard in public, it still allows a court order for whole or part of the proceedings to be conducted in private if it is believed that the public interest is outweighed by the interests of any of the parties involved. And so it was the view of Labour members that the current legislation did strike the right balance between open justice and the private nature of that legislative process. We were considering whether extending that presumption of confidentiality to court proceedings would make New Zealand an international hub for arbitration and, basically, I think the feeling of the Labour members was that it wasn’t sufficient of an advantage to displace the presumption of open justice, in Labour members’ views, and so we were keen to preserve that open justice.

There’s a couple of other things that the bill does do, however, that have been retained, and one was reducing the possibility of late jurisdictional challenges. What the bill does is insert additional clauses, and what we’re trying to do here is reduce the possibility that a party could raise a late procedural challenge on jurisdictional grounds, which could invalidate the award after both parties have spent a lot of time and expense arriving at it—if they were sensing that that award was not going to go in their favour. So what this bill does is it inserts clauses that talk about this, and there were some minor changes to the wording, which happened as a result of the select committee deliberations. Basically, now the clause states that “failure to pursue a request made under paragraph (3) in a timely manner operates as a waiver of any right to later object to a ruling of the arbitral tribunal as to its jurisdiction.” That’s really important; people need to know that they’re committed to that whole process and that somebody can’t pull out quite far down the line after all that expense has been put in.

The other one that was looked at was the process for the appointment of arbitrators, and the committee considered some of the issues around the appointment process because selecting who is going to do that arbitration is one of the key parts of the process. So, at present, there’s a clause in Schedule 2 that sets out the default process if people can’t agree, and it’s often called the “quick draw” procedure, and what that means is that one party can trigger a process to appoint an arbitrator if the other party fails to respond to communications within seven days. The select committee received quite a lot of strong submissions that that particular clause should be repealed, and while it’s not in the amended bill, what the committee recommended was that a new clause should be inserted, when we get to the committee of the whole House stage, that would effect those changes. It was felt that it was really important that we didn’t have that “quick draw” procedure, meaning that there wasn’t that consensus on who should be doing the arbitration. There are a whole lot of other aspects that were covered in the bill, around trusts and other technical matters, but I’ve tried to highlight what I thought were the three sorts of key important ones.

So, just in summary, arbitration is really, really important as a way of working our way through disputes of a commercial or other nature, and what we were keen to see was a number of improvements around that to make that a better process. So what we’ve done is introduce the clauses which reduce the possibility of having late procedural challenges just on jurisdictional grounds—around where people have invested a lot of time and money and process into that process to date. And also, while the change hasn’t been put into the amended bill, the expectation is that once we get to the committee of the whole House stage further changes would be made, including addressing that “quick draw” procedure so that there is a bit more of a consensus around the selection of arbitrators.

Finally, the bill as amended still preserves the principle of open justice and ensuring that the public knows what the law is and how it’s being applied, and so what it does is retain the assumption that, when arbitration ends up in court, the proceedings will be heard in public. So this is an important bill, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to stand in support of the Arbitration Act 1996 amendment bill. This bill, basically, amends the original Act and brings in some changes. I would like to acknowledge Andrew Bayly, the present sponsor of this bill, for bringing this, and I would also like to acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell, the original sponsor of this bill.

As we know, the arbitration process is a way that some commercial and other disputes can be resolved, and I feel that, with arbitration, we can have the services of some experts who can contribute in many matters. As we know, in court sometimes technical issues don’t get resolved because the judges are not expert on some of those issues. As was mentioned earlier, in the recent signing of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, there was also a clause where arbitration was an issue.

I would like to give an example of where international multinational companies take those cases to a neutral place where they feel that arbitration will be the best outcome for their dispute. I was reading one of the reports recently where a company in India sold their business for multimillion dollars and there was a dispute later on between both entities, and that was taken to Singapore, where it was resolved. And once we update our Arbitration Act over here, it is possible that for companies—because, internationally, New Zealand has got a good reputation for being transparent and independent—those arbitration cases can come to New Zealand, and that can be helpful for the economy. I remember that that particular case which I have mentioned earlier was resolved over a period of more than six months, and a lot of money was spent over there, which benefited the Singapore economy. We know that Singapore and Hong Kong are two very popular places where international arbitration takes place.

As I said earlier, arbitration is an effective method of resolving commercial and other disputes. We should have a proper mechanism available for companies to resolve these issues, and international arbitration, as I said, is growing with time. In the last two decades, we have seen that more and more cases are being resolved through arbitration. Every arbitration case heard in New Zealand averages about a million dollars to the local economy, including the usage of conference centres, hiring of accommodation, and other means. That means that if we are able to encourage people to use New Zealand as a centre, then our economy will be helped.

Another part of arbitration is that privacy and confidentiality are frequently cited as defining characteristics of the valuable benefits of arbitration—87 percent of respondents to our survey said that it is one of the best ways to resolve their cases, and it was also mentioned that the commercially important aspect not be made public. Most respondents—about 74 percent—believe that confidentiality should be an opt-out rather than opt-in feature. We understand that these issues can’t be resolved quickly, but we have to have a mechanism available. Improving the arbitration proceedings generally in New Zealand is also an important objective.

This is because when disputes arise, many New Zealanders genuinely want to be able to access professionally run alternative resolution systems, because sometimes the court process becomes very expensive and people don’t want to take that route because it will be a very lengthy process as well as being an expensive process. There are many reasons for this. Arbitration is a bona fides option as it offers advantages—a much cheaper process for resolving disputes. It is often quicker and, compared to the court process, it is less confrontational and is a logical first step for resolving these issues.

Once again, I stand in support of, and acknowledge, Andrew Bayly for his contribution in getting this bill to this stage, and I would also like to acknowledge the Justice Committee for their contribution and for their deliberations on this. Some of the recommendations which have been made will be coming up at the committee of the whole House, and they will be resolved there. With these words, I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): I move, That the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

In doing so, I want to just remind the House of what the simple but effective intent of this bill is, and it is to amend the Litter Act, that was first passed in this House back in the 1970s and has been amended a couple of times but not substantially rewritten, so that district councils around the countryside can increase the maximum infringement fine payable for littering from, what I consider to be, a measly $400 to a new maximum of $1,000.

This bill is not of itself a silver bullet in terms of providing answers to litter and litter issues around the nation, but it is intended to be something of an additional tool that can be used by councils to get over some of the challenges that they have in terms of administering the current infringement process and making it worth their while, whilst at the same time ensuring that litterers actually get a very clear message that littering is not acceptable behaviour and that, where they are caught, infringement notices will and can be issued and that those notices will have a maximum penalty of up to $1,000. Now, what this bill doesn’t do is provide that the maximum should be the minimum. So councils would, under this legislation if it’s passed by the House, eventually be able to move within a range of dollar values up to that $1,000 maximum.

I would like to acknowledge and thank the members of the Environment Committee that have recommended in their report back to this House that the bill be passed with a couple of amendments. One of the amendments suggested from the select committee is that clause 4 be removed and that clause 5 and a new clause 6 be inserted to change and improve the clarity of the principal Act without altering the legal effect of the Act. Those are amendments that I support. I want to thank members who diligently paid attention to the submitters. I want to thank and acknowledge the chair of the committee, Dr Deborah Russell, who surely must be, as this Government enters the second half of its term, ready for promotion to Cabinet.

The committee received 13 submissions on the bill and we heard only three oral submissions. Five councils made written submissions and all were in support, although I did notice that the submission from the Hamilton council actually was in blank, and I guess that was not meant to be a littering matter but it was duly noted that the Hamilton council’s submission was in blank and we took that to be in support. The majority of the individual submissions were in support, with several calling for the penalty that is being nominated actually to be higher. There were a couple of submissions that were opposed. One supported the general intent of the bill but thought that the increase would not be effective, and another thought that the proposed fine maximum was out of proportion with other littering offences.

So why is an infringement regime useful in terms of councils being able to sort out their litter issues? Well, quite simply, it is because the other option is to proceed through a long, detailed, expensive, and legalistic court process for littering. That option applies and is available to councils, both regional and district, in order to perform their role in trying to control litter bugs and littering around their regions. But, as I say, it’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, it’s legalistic, it involves lawyers and courts, and it may not necessarily always be the best use of our judicial system’s court time.

An infringement process actually is very effective. It’s quick, it’s efficient, and it works. Ironically, at the same time that this bill was before the Environment Committee another bill going through the select committee process relating to setting up an infringement fine notice regime for the conservation rangers in the Department of Conservation (DOC) was also going through the committee. It’s interesting to note that some of the arguments that were used in favour of DOC officers and rangers being able to operate an infringement fine process were exactly contrary to the arguments that were being used by officials and others in terms of this piece of legislation, and just as a layperson looking at lawyers trying to justify things I found that quite fascinating.

So here we have what is essentially a test for this Government. It’s a test of their commitment to actions rather than just mere words, and the commitment that I seek from them will be to support this bill, not because it intends to be a magic wand and a silver bullet that solves all our waste issues or all our litter issues, but because it sends a clear message of support from this Parliament to the district councils around the countryside who are trying to fight a battle against litter and litter bugs. I think that as a Parliament we should be supporting those efforts and we should be actually sending a strong, clear, decisive message to not only councils that we support their work in this area but also to the people who choose to litter. This is a test of the Government’s commitment—of the coalition Government’s commitment—to the environment, to their often quoted words about reducing waste and litter, and minimising waste and stuff that goes to landfill, and it’s a test of their commitment to the slogans and campaigning rhetoric that they have used in past campaigns.

So this is about making words real and making actions count. One of the questions is where do the Greens sit on this? I had an interesting exchange of text communications with Minister Sage, as that party’s representative, and as a result of that initially they seemed to be in support. There was a bit of a haggling about the prices, and now it seems that they are opposed to this. So that speaks volumes about their commitment to the environment and their commitment to supporting regional and district councils.

I want to just highlight one of the examples that occurred in my electorate over the summer period. As the member of Parliament for Coromandel, nothing really irritates me as much as driving around or walking around my electorate and seeing the amount of litter that is literally on the side of roads, in drains, in cavities, and what have you. It’s a problem that is exacerbated during the summer period when we get literally hundreds of thousands of extra visitors.

SPEAKER: “Litteraly!”

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Yes, literally—good pun, Mr Speaker. I hasten to add, I don’t want to draw you into the debate. But the Thames-Coromandel District Council tries its best and they work very hard. There was a case in January of this year, and some members will be aware of this. An eagle-eyed resident of the Thames Coast spotted a tourist defecating around the rocks on the beautiful Thames Coast, and this good citizen—I’ve taken the liberty of not providing a particularly large photograph of this, but here was the photograph that accompanied the infringement fine. But the maximum fine—the maximum fine—the infringement notice that the council could impose on this awful situation, which regrettably happens far too often around the beautiful Coromandel, was the existing maximum, which is $400. I don’t think that’s enough. I don’t think that’s nearly enough in terms of sending a message to people who not only litter with paper and cigarette butts and what have you, but choose to litter with human waste. I don’t think that sends nearly a strong enough message to people or to councils about the tools that are available to them to work in this area.

As I said, this is a test of this coalition Government’s commitment to the environment, to their support for regional and district councils, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing whether they support this legislation through to the committee stage of the whole House, or whether in fact they choose to reject the support of councils and reject the attack on litter and litter bugs.

I commend this bill to the House and I thank the committee for its work. I’m keen to see what the Government has to say.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I wish to begin by thanking the members of the Environment Committee for their work on this bill. It was one on which we enjoyed hearing the submissions and I think all my colleagues on the committee worked together well on this bill. I’d also like to thank the officials who did the work on this bill, particularly the newish policy analyst for whom this was the first bill that she had worked on and presented to a select committee, so she did very well.

There was a story on the Titirangi Facebook page a few days ago. It was actually posted by a neighbour of mine—literally a neighbour, the next house over, outside the bus stop. She had found a fish crate full of rotting fish heads dumped outside their place. I think someone must’ve come up from—it would have been from French Bay or from Titirangi Beach and discarded the fish heads right outside her place. It stunk. She did the hard work and got rid of the rotten fish heads. She said they were crawling with maggots. I think it was a fairly revolting process for her, possibly almost as revolting as the picture which Mr Simpson just introduced into the House. So littering is a problem.

I want to continue with some stories on this. I go for a regular Monday walk in the mornings. Sometimes it’s leafleting, as one does when one is involved in politics, but mostly it’s down to French Bay and some of the beautiful waterways around in my electorate. But just this Monday morning when I went off walking down by the French Bay yacht club, [shows photos] I came across this bag, stuffed full of—I think it was old clothes, just dumped there by the French Bay public lands down there, and just a few metres from it these two rubbish sacks, again, stuffed full of clothes. I mean, what puzzled me is that someone had clearly gone to the effort of putting these clothes into bags, but then they couldn’t find the proper place to dispose of them, so they just dumped them in my neighbourhood.

A final story, and this one comes from the Taranaki Daily News, where it was published the other day, is talking about why one Taranaki woman is collecting 10,000 cigarette butts. She raises the point that actually cigarette butts are the biggest cause of litter. They’re the biggest source of litter and she says they’re worse than plastic in many ways because they are so incredibly toxic. So she’s collecting 10,000 of them to make a point and to ask people to do better.

What all these stories show is that littering is a problem and it’s something that people actually mind about, that we actually want to do something about, hence this bill, which has come back from the Environment Committee with a number of tidy-up changes in it. The department took the opportunity to just introduce some minor changes and to suggest them to us, so we did that. But the substantive change is the one that would increase the infringement fee for littering from $400 dollars to $1,000. That’s a substantial change in the fee. So the question is: is it appropriate? We need to think about that quite carefully.

There’s something quite important in the Litter Act—because this bill amends the Litter Act, and in particular in the Litter Act one of the issues there is exactly how one gets caught in the act of littering and therefore might attract a fine. As it turns out, local authorities can appoint enforcement officers and enforcement officers can issue fines up to that level, at the moment, of $400, based on the local authority’s own rules. They can do it summarily to prevent the deposit or attempted deposit of litter in any public place. What that means is that the enforcement officer needs to see the act of littering actually taking place. They need to be there, right there and then. So all those cigarette butts tossed aside idly—no fine can be issued unless the enforcement officer is right there, then and there, to impose the fine. That’s probably the case with cigarette butts because it’s very hard to identify them. But they can also impose a fine if they’ve got good reason to believe that the deposit or attempted deposit of litter has been made by a particular person. In that case, an officer would need to have some way of identifying the person who had actually dumped the litter. In other words, it’s a fairly immediate sort of activity. The enforcement officer really needs to be there or to have some pretty good evidence, and, of course, that’s simply not the case with a lot of litter. Those McDonald’s wrappers—they don’t actually have names on them. The cigarette butts don’t have names on them, and, generally, that kind of littering doesn’t get reported—unruly tourists aside, or Mr Simpson’s friends in the Coromandel.

So there’s a real problem with littering. It’s not the level of the fine, necessarily. The problem is having enough enforcement officers. The problem is actually enforcing the fine. I think this is a point that was brought up in some of the submissions against the bill. Mr Speaker, as I think you might know, I’m an habitué of Twitter. I rather enjoy engaging on Twitter with various people, and, of course, I know various people through Twitter. Last night, there was a bit of a discussion about the law going on, and a friend of mine, Liam Hehir, who I think is probably known to various members on the opposite side of the House, had an interesting tweet. He said—because it was a conversation which Graeme Edgeler had entered—“If you mention the law in a tweet, then it summons Graeme. Now you have to try to trick him into saying his name backwards.”—that would be to get rid of him.

Well, we mentioned something about the law and fines and the like in this House, and public law, and then Graeme came along. Graeme Edgeler was one of the submitters who came and talked to us in the select committee about this particular bill, and he raised some real concerns. He said that one of the reasons that he was opposed to this bill was that the fine was out of all proportion. He identified the problem with actually catching someone in the act of littering, and then he said that the fine proposed—up to $1,000—was out of all proportion to the maximum fines suggested for other offences. He said that, actually, the maximum infringement fee of $400 was already in line with other infringement fees for things like speeding or drink-driving, and substantially higher than the fines imposed for parking infringements. So there’s a real issue of parity floating through this bill. Is it reasonable to have a fine of $1,000 for littering?

Interestingly, the department was unhappy with that as well and did a bit of analysis, and they said that, really, if we were going to keep this fine in reasonable proportion, then based on inflation rates, the fine level might be lifted up to, say, $500, but not $1,000—but not $1,000. It’s too much. On this side of the House, we are persuaded by that view, and that is the reason as to why we will be opposing this bill.

Now, we have been told that this particular bill is a test of the Government’s commitment to a clean environment. I’ll tell you what’s a sign of our commitment to a clean environment, and that will be the climate change legislation that comes in front of us. Our commitment to conservation is shown in the $76 million we’ve just added to the Department of Conservation’s funding. Our commitment to conservation is showing we want to do the real work, not the trivia of increasing fines. We are not interested in punishing people, we are not interested in making people subject to the silliest of infringement offences, and we are not interested in whacking huge fines on just for the sake of it. We are interested in proportionality and fairness. That’s what we’re about on this side of the House. So I invite the opposite side of the House, I invite the Opposition, to have a little think about that number—to have a little think and, perhaps, a little discussion with us. But when the number remains at $1,000, we cannot in good conscience support this bill. I oppose this bill.

SPEAKER: Before I call Todd Muller, I am going to ask Mr Simpson not to wave that picture around again. Thank you.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Well, well, well. For the last 10 minutes—well, actually, no, not for the last 10 minutes; for eight minutes of the last 10 minutes, Deborah Russell tried her “I’m going to be reasonable” and then, in the last 120 seconds, the oxygen changed and suddenly we just went “poof” and something else appeared in front of our screens.

Now, what I find absolutely remarkable, as I begin my comments on the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill, second reading, is when you listen to the conversation that, at least for the first eight minutes, we were blessed with, Deborah Russell was stepping through the various examples that she finds in her electorate of rubbish, of litter, of community concern, and of frustration. She then talked to the select committee process that we had, where we had the city councils—five of them—speak strongly in favour of the fact that they needed more teeth in terms of the infringement penalty that’s at stake. But then, right at the last minute, she then says, “But you know what, $1,000 is too much, and I’m convinced by some academic who made a pitch right at the end of the submission.” Well, I’m sorry, you’re either for the environment or you’re not, Deborah. You’re either for actually listening to your community or not. You can’t give a speech for eight minutes talking about the size of the problem, talking about the fact that your community want action, and talking about the fact that from a Government perspective you listen, and then finally, at the last hurdle, say, “I’m sorry, but we think $1,000 is too much.”

Well, that’s a fail from my perspective. It’s a complete fail, because if you actually look—which I’m sure you did, because we had to pore through the detail of this legislation—you would see that, actually, what is proposed by my learned colleague from the Coromandel is not a minimum and maximum of a thousand dollars but a regime that is graduated up to a thousand dollars, depending on the judgments that we would hope would sit in the city councils. It’s not that we have come up with this change out of thin air and suggested that, actually, let’s push this on to a reluctant community; let’s push this on to a reluctant council. This is not a minimum thousand dollars; this is giving them the opportunity to graduate up to that if the severity of the litter meets that fee.

When you look at the various pictures—and I’m sure, even though I can’t draw you into the debate, Mr Speaker, you’ll be delighted that I’m the first speaker without a picture—that have been provided thus far, you can see the need for a graduated response, because one of those pictures that Deborah Russell showed was litter of a smaller amount. One of the pictures seemed to be slightly more confronting, and, of course, Mr Simpson takes the cake in terms of an example of littering that was at the defecation end of the scale.

The whole point here is that we’re providing the opportunity for our territorial authorities to be able to apply a regime, which none of us have said that we have a major problem with, that has the ability to scale up to a thousand-dollar fine. Every one of us knows that this stuff is challenging—well, I would hope so. We haven’t yet heard from New Zealand First; I’m very much looking forward to their contribution on litter. That will be very insightful—an autobiography, perhaps. And I’m particularly looking forward to the Green Party. It makes me think, on the basis that we have a sense here that their contribution may well be one of rejecting this small but meaningful change—it makes me reflect on that little saying that on small hinges, large doors swing, because this—

Darroch Ball: Oh.

TODD MULLER: Well, yes, quite good, isn’t it, Darroch Ball? Let me just repeat that for you: on small hinges, large doors swing. At one breath, people will say, “Oh, look, the National Party”—or Scott Simpson, a fine member for Coromandel, reflecting his community’s concerns. Maximum litter up to $400—lifting that to up to a thousand dollars. Look, it’s not a massive change in the context of the environmental issues that we reflect on in this House, but it is a symbol of intent. It is a symbol of saying, well, actually, we hear the community concern and we’re going to do something.

But I suspect very shortly we’re going to hear, as we’ve just heard from the Labour Party—that when push comes to shove, they’re just all rhetoric; they won’t actually do anything. We’re going to hear very similar from the Green Party, where they will talk about the importance of dealing and prioritising our environment. They will talk, no doubt, about the challenges that our urban environment but also rural—but particularly the built environment—has with respect to litter pressure. When there is an opportunity right now, right here today, to make a statement, to make a small step in the right direction that is aligned with their philosophy, they will say no, largely out of spite, because they cannot be seen to be supporting Scott Simpson from Coromandel, even if it’s the right thing to do, even if it is a small step in the right direction, because, actually, you know, we would rather be ideological on a position like this as opposed to practical. Here is an opportunity to make a difference—a small difference, but a difference none the less—and they will turn down the opportunity, because it’s much better to get very, very high-ambition speeches, but when the opportunity is put in front of them to actually make a difference right here, they will turn the opportunity down.

What a shame that is, because, as we have seen, this is supported by our territorial authorities, local government. They came to the Environment Committee and said, “Actually, on balance, this is a good step forward.” We acknowledge that they didn’t say, “Look, there are no issues around managing litter.” They said they were supportive and they want it to happen. The Labour Party might know somebody by the name of Phil Goff. He is very supportive—

Hon Scott Simpson: He’s independent, apparently.

TODD MULLER: Yeah, apparently he is independent—yes. So that mayor has signalled that he is quite comfortable with this direction and supports it; four other councils do. So I just ask the members opposite to reflect on how small-minded they are with respect to this response. The argument that we just heard, that, actually, you know, from a sort of academic perspective, this isn’t parity, I have debunked. It is up to a thousand; it’s not a minimum of a thousand. This is a small signal to assist in changing the behaviour.

I just want to reinforce how disappointed my community will be on this—

Hon Scott Simpson: And mine.

TODD MULLER: And yours, yes. I’ve mentioned yours a couple of times; it’s time to talk about mine. In Papamoa—fantastic part of the community; you should all come. I know, Kiri, you occasionally drive through on your way through to the East Coast. But Papamoa—fantastic community, beautiful beaches—[Bell rung] That felt like it had just a little half a second too long, that bell. Didn’t you feel that, listening? But anyway, when we walk along Papamoa Beach—and I have been with my community for litter clean-up sessions. We have been there—

Kiritapu Allan: Oh, god.

TODD MULLER: No, it’s not, you know—

Hon Scott Simpson: Hard-working local member.

TODD MULLER: I was, yes, and I’ve got the pictures to prove it. We did a whole morning cleaning up, I took two out of my three children—and you know how that works. Well, it did spread the load, to be fair. But what the three of us decided—my two children and myself—when we finished the morning’s work cleaning up the litter was: why do people do this? There’s got to be a way of making people who do this pay. In fact, my youngest daughter said to me “Why is it that all this stuff’s there?” as we walked through the dunes and cleaned up Papamoa on behalf of the wider community—and there’s a huge community effort; it wasn’t just the Muller family doing this. When your young children turn to you and say, “Why do people do this, Dad? Why isn’t there greater penalty? What is the impact, Dad, if people drop this here?” I said that, clearly, the people who do this don’t value their surrounding environment like we do and so many other people do, and the families of Papamoa do. But I also believe, as part of that answer, we should say that we had the opportunity to make it slightly more painful for those who do this bad stuff in our community to actually pay the price. I think—in fact, I know—that the people of Papamoa Beach who are listening to this will be very disappointed in the New Zealand First, Labour, and Greens failure to actually do something in the space of environment this afternoon. Thank you.

SPEAKER: Before I call Clare Curran, I will remind Mr Muller that when he refers to members from the other side, he doesn’t just use their first names. That was why he got a slightly longer bell immediately after.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Mr Speaker. “Actions speak louder than words” and “commitment to the environment”—those were two phrases I heard from over there. Wasn’t that the party that put up big billboards over the summer period about wanting more massive highways, putting more trucks and cars on the road, and, basically, running down KiwiRail and converting their locomotives to diesel? Is that “actions speak louder than words” and “commitment to the environment”? I could go on for 10 minutes about that, but I won’t because I actually want to say some positive things.

One of the things that I wondered whether Mr Muller has thought about is actually asking his local council—and Mr Simpson, as well—as to whether they’ve thought about putting out more bins in their community, as being a useful way of encouraging behaviour change and education, and that that is actually the direction that we as a nation are being encouraged to go in.

This is a rather small, strange bill, I describe it as. I didn’t sit on the Environment Committee for the whole of it, but I came in at the end and I listened to some of the submissions, I looked at what the departmental report had to say, and I know it was taken seriously. I hope the member acknowledges that the bill was taken seriously, and there were some serious submissions to it, but, ultimately, increasing fines is not necessarily going to change behaviour—it will not stop littering. We were advised against a thousand-dollar fine because it’s disproportionate to the infringement offence, and I’ll talk more about that in a minute. We were—because, you know, we’re reasonable on this side of the House and we’re a very reasonable Government that listens—prepared to consider a $500 fine, which was considered to be in line with inflation and official advice, but that was unacceptable to the member sitting over there.

Most importantly—and this is where we go back to the actions speak louder than words and commitment to the environment—is that this Government has a plan and is enacting its plan and is actually doing a lot more about the bigger picture, whereas for that side of the House, apparently raising the fine to $1,000 is going to somehow change the world and solve the problems of our environment.

I would like to mention, actually, some items in the Government’s plan, and I want to refer to the Minister Eugenie Sage, actually—associate environment Minister—and her waste minimisation work programme, which has been outlined and which goes much, much wider to this. Before I do that, I just want to mention a couple of statistics which are useful to know, and that is that in New Zealand, 84 percent of waste that could become litter is actually disposed of in the correct way. So it’s useful to inject facts into the debate. Of course, we can do better, and this is where the waste minimisation plan is geared to. It’s actually looking at how it can do that in a meaningful way and affect the biggest impact, rather than raising the fine to $1,000 when there aren’t enough enforcers, which the member Deborah Russell referred to in her speech. So it’s actually making a meaningful change.

We’ve got a 16 percent litter rate, so what the Government is looking at doing is expanding the waste disposal levy. New Zealand has currently got 420 known landfills. The levy only applies to 11 percent of them, so there’s a lot of work to be done there. We are undertaking a consultation with the public about the levy expansion. I’m not sure whether the Opposition is actually aware of this work and have actually looked into it, but looking at the levy expansion and the potential increases next year, the levy currently generates around $30 million annually. Half of that goes to councils to help them fund their waste minimisation activities, and the balance goes into the Waste Minimisation Fund and its grants scheme, which is about helping progressive businesses and community organisations to reduce waste. If we actually expand that away from the 11 percent, isn’t that going to make a big difference? Yes, it’s going to make a big difference. Is raising an infringement fee to $1,000 going to make a big difference when you haven’t got the enforcers, when it doesn’t fit into a bigger picture? No, it’s not.

The second and long-overdue task is to improve dramatically the data and information available on waste. We lack a full national picture of what’s going into landfills. Now, why is that? It’s because the previous Government did nothing about that. We don’t know. So where was your commitment to the environment? And your actions speak louder than words. That’s what I would like to know.

I also want to refer to, and I know that Deborah Russell referred to, Graeme Edgeler’s submission. I actually want to elaborate on what she said, because while I describe him as being the prince of pedantry—and I make no apology about that, Graeme—he made a very good submission, and he makes very good points, and I want to let you know what those points were in case the member Scott Simpson didn’t pay attention when he was giving his submission. He says that “Littering is both a criminal offence, punishable by a fine, and an infringement offence, punishable by the imposition of an infringement fee.” That dual approach is relatively common with a range of regulatory offences, and more serious breaches can be prosecuted in the courts as criminal offences—resulting in a conviction, potentially, and a criminal record—while less serious breaches can be dealt with using infringement fees, which are like parking tickets or speeding tickets and don’t result in criminal records.

This bill proposes amending the level of the infringement—the lower level. So it’s recognised as dealing with low-level littering and not with more serious dumping. More serious littering would be prosecuted rather than dealt with by the infringement notice. So if there are concerns about dumping and more serious examples of littering, then amendments to the maximum fine for littering, which is, you know, around $20,000, $30,000 for dangerous refuse—then don’t change the infringement fee; that would be more appropriate. There are other pieces of legislation that that gets dealt with under.

He makes the point that littering is bad, but a possible $1,000 infringement fee is out of all proportion with the offence, especially when we recall we are concerned with the type of low-level littering commonly subject to infringement fees. It’s useful to compare to other infringement offences such as speeding, where the fee is set at $630. I just got a speeding ticket—it was a bit less than that, so clearly I wasn’t going that fast. But the point he is making is that it’s disproportionate.

Is the member clearly saying to the House that he believes that a disproportionate fee of $1,000, in a regime where it’s clearly being said to us by councils that it’s a complex issue, that they find it hard to actually enforce the infringement side of it, is actually going to make a difference? Isn’t it more important to be looking at a bigger picture of the whole of the waste minimisation and making your interventions where it’s actually going to matter, working with councils to look at how they can encourage behaviour change, and ensuring that you are taking a holistic approach to this? Actions do speak louder than words. A commitment to the environment is important, and it’s this side of the House that’s focused on that, rather than the petty approach being taken by the National Party.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): It’s not often that two speakers from the same party get to follow each other on speaking on such an important bill, and so I would like to take the opportunity, which I haven’t had up until this point, and say that I agree wholeheartedly with the previous speaker, the Hon Clare Curran. That’s not something I’ve been able to say, and it’s not something that I can say tonight when I think about the contributions—the two contributions—thus far, as sincere as I’m sure they were, on this, the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill.

The issue is the principle that raising a fine will stop the behaviour you wish to halt. It’s not going to work. In all the examples we’ve heard tonight of littering in the Coromandel and littering in Papamoa and, dear I say, even littering in the great electorate of New Lynn—how many of those perpetrators were seen and fined? None. So there is no evidence to suggest that the current fine system works, and there’s no evidence to suggest that increasing it to some arbitrary figure of $1,000 is going to work as well. That’s, essentially, what this bill, as proposed by the Hon Scott Simpson, suggests.

Us on this House—we oppose this bill because we believe it is unnecessary. It’s not going to be effective, and it’s not actually going to go towards anywhere which we all want to see—we all want to see less littering. If you were to look at the examples that were raised by Dr Deborah Russell in speeding and drink driving, they were used because, often, if you commit those two acts, then you will end up with a fine less than what’s being proposed in this bill. Now, dear I say that the reason us in this House do not drink drive and most people in this country do not drink drive has got nothing to do with the fine, but it’s got everything to do with the potential shame that would be attached to that, the loss of wages that could be attached to losing your licence, or a much more serious nature of actually causing a serious harm to somebody else or your own. It’s got nothing to do with the fine.

I would argue that it is much more effective, if we want to stop littering, to actually look at changing the culture around littering. Why do people litter? Trying to understand this—and there’s a list of Government initiatives that are going around on this that I am looking forward to outlining in the remainder of my speech. I went to Taiwan last year—it was a marvellous trip to a marvellous place—and the one thing I noticed was that there were no rubbish bins. None. I couldn’t find any. There was someone on the delegation that enjoys the odd cigarette, and that person couldn’t find anywhere to put their cigarette butt. So what that shows is that there is a culture over there that you simply do not litter. You take your rubbish with you and you dispose of it at home. Nowhere to be seen was there a rubbish bin. Now, the same cannot be said in this country. In fact—

SPEAKER: Order! The time has come to leave—it’s kai time. It’s time to leave the chair.

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

KIERAN McANULTY: The issue, of course, is when you get on a roll and you start a speech and it stops for the dinner break, you lose your momentum—and, of course, you might also have a different audience. We all know that there are more people that watch Parliament TV after dinner than before, so I thought perhaps a little recap of what I said earlier might be the way to go.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): There are Standing Orders, Mr McAnulty, around repetition.

KIERAN McANULTY: Ha! Well, it was worth a crack. But, essentially, the arguments were that this is a bad idea and we won’t be supporting it. The reasons behind that are quite clear, because arbitrarily lifting a fine from $400 to $1,000 is going to do nothing, particularly when at the moment the system of imposing those fines hardly really exists. As my colleague, Dr Deborah Russell, mentioned in her contribution, in order for someone to be fined for littering they, essentially, need to be witnessed in the act. They can go back if they can prove that it was someone that was littering—so perhaps they may have thrown in a power bill amongst the bag of rubbish or something like that. But, essentially, the Litter Act 1979, which the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill seeks to amend, is really targeting those small-scale litterers: your cigarette butts, your lolly wrappers, and your McDonalds’ packages etc. And so what we are arguing on the side of the House is that we are certainly not suggesting that the intention behind this bill was not sincere—I’m sure it was. But we view this as a rather pointless change, because, ultimately, if we are going to reach the objective that we all want to see where less people litter—ideally, no people littering—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Fewer people.

KIERAN McANULTY: Fewer. Fewer. I’d like to acknowledge my colleague, the Hon Ruth Dyson. Never say “less” in front of Ruth Dyson when you mean “fewer” because she will point it out.

I was thinking about my recent trip to Taiwan, and I just started talking about that before the dinner break. What struck me in Taiwan was that this is an island with 23-odd million people, and I can honestly tell you the whole time that I was there I didn’t see one single piece of rubbish. It’s quite remarkable for a city so condensed that they have that many people in such a relatively small area and I didn’t see one single piece of rubbish, and just as interesting is that I also didn’t see a single rubbish bin. So I started talking about that before the dinner break, and I actually thought to myself, while I was having a feed, “I wonder why that was? Maybe it’s because they’ve got a really strong fine system in place. Maybe the Hon Scott Simpson was on to something.” I’ve got seven minutes of my speech left; it’s not too late to correct the record. If I was wrong, I wouldn’t be too ashamed to say so.

It turns out that they do not. The fine in Taiwan for littering is the equivalent of NZ$40—$40. But what they’ve done is they’ve created this culture where people just do not litter. Taiwan—I’ve since found out, in the last hour and a half—was colloquially known as “Garbage Island”. It’s quite incredible—“Garbage Island”. And yet what they’ve done is they’ve imposed a system, which this Government is arguing would be a much better approach than the one that’s suggested in this bill, where they make it easy for people to recycle and they make it easy for people to dispose of their rubbish, and they’ve created this culture. If we were to compare that to what’s proposed here of simply suggesting that increasing the fine from $400 to $1,000 is going to be effective in stopping people from littering, then I believe that is a mistaken concept.

You couldn’t compare that to Singapore. I read a news report where one resident got fined NZ$21,500 for throwing a cigarette butt out the bus window. We probably wouldn’t litter if the fine was $21,500, but of course we’d still have to be found out. We’d still have to be found out, wouldn’t we? I suppose that’s the point. In Singapore they have this fine system, but they also have the people there to witness the act and impose the fine. And this argument that we can just chuck an arbitrary figure out and hope that it’s going to be successful, this side of the House clearly argues that it is not.

I note that there are some figures here that the vast majority of people in this country do not litter. We all know that. It’s around at 84 percent. And I think it’s actually because even though we do have a fine system in this country—I think people here in this House if they saw someone littering in front of them, they’d probably say, “Excuse me, would you mind picking that up?”, or words to that effect.

Hon Members: That’s right.

KIERAN McANULTY: That’s right, because we do take pride in this country—not everybody, but most of us do. I guess if you consider the arguments that were given by some of the submitters, and also, most certainly, the feedback that was given by the department when the Environment Committee were considering this, they made it very clear indeed that they did not recommend increasing the fine to up to $1,000—

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Killing an ant with a sledgehammer.

KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you, Priyanca Radhakrishnan. I appreciate that. “Killing an ant with a sledgehammer,” she says—an utterly pointless exercise. On that I do agree.

So if we were to consider what the Ministry for the Environment advised the select committee, they said that there are no bigger issues with enforcement that $1,000 is not going to be a deterrent, because, ultimately, that’s what a fine system is for: it’s to stop and deter a particular behaviour, and $1,000, for those in this country that do litter, is not going to stop them littering. What we would argue on this side of the House that is going to be much more effective is the initiatives that the Government is investing in in terms of littering projects. Non-regulatory tools to reduce litter—I know that there’s a lot of pride in the keep New Zealand green and Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign. I remember that from when I was much younger, as a child.

Hon Ruth Dyson: Last week.

KIERAN McANULTY: “Last week” has been the quip from my left, which isn’t bad, because I am the youngest person in the Labour Party caucus, so I take some pride in that.

The fact is that if we just think back to 10 years ago and the amount that we all recycled—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. I call Erica Stanford.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m very happy to make a contribution to my colleague, Scott Simpson’s, member’s bill, the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill. Can I be the first right here tonight in this House to nominate Clare Curran for mayor of Auckland. John Tamihere—I thought he was a nice bloke, but we need a heavy hitter. We need someone with ideas, someone with vision, someone who can think outside the square. When Clare Curran got up tonight earlier and said, “Have the council thought about putting out more litter bins?”, I just thought, “On your bike, Tamihere. This woman’s got answers.” I thought you were on to something. Then she followed that up with “Maybe we just need some more enforcement officers.”—another gem. There will be mayors and councillors around the country, perhaps from Waipā, from Hamilton, from Ashburton, or from Auckland, who came to submit on this bill, who’ll be smacking their heads thinking, “Why on Earth didn’t we think of that? This woman is a genius.” Despite what Kieran McAnulty just got up and said about his trip to Taiwan, where we don’t need any rubbish bins at all—in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Those two really should get together and have a wee chat.

And then her other gem: the Waste Minimisation Fund, which she lauded as a wonderful scheme, shortly after, by the way, she attacked us for not being good environmentalists, forgetting that that was actually something that the National Government set up. But more importantly her great idea is to tax those people more, who do the right thing in disposing of their rubbish, and at the same time arguing against a bill that wants to properly punish those people who literally dump their rubbish—in fact, literally dump on the beaches, as Scott Simpson pointed out earlier tonight—tax good behaviour more, and fine bad behaviour less. I can see why they made her a Minister—all the best ideas.

She then went on to spend a large proportion of her speech on who has the best commitment to the environment, as if this was some argument for voting down a bill that would increase fines for littering. “We are doing some other stuff in conservation.”—she said—“This Government has a plan. We’ve got all the big ideas. It’s about the big picture stuff.” And yet how are those cameras on fishing boats coming along? How are those national parks coming along? How are those marine reserves coming along? How about the 15 percent decrease in the environment budget and doing nothing for fresh water—how about those? That’s all big-picture stuff. They can’t even bring themselves to vote for a little bill that does a lot. What they fail to understand is that this bill is a small part of a wider plan. We’re not saying it is the magic bullet. Some academic might think that $1,000 is out of proportion, but it is not the minimum. It’s a sliding scale. Councils around the country want this increase. They came to the select committee and they put in written submissions because they want this increase.

Now, Hamilton City Council, in their submission, is a really good example of this. The Hamilton City Council employs 19 staff who have duties for litter control. They developed a litter enforcement management policy, which outlines the process for these infringements as well as the council’s resolution as to how they should be applied. Now, like most other councils, they have a stepped, sliding scale for infringements, starting at $100 for something like a cigarette butt or a takeaway container or a drink container—anything under a litre—then 200 bucks for 1 to 20 litres of rubbish like a disposable nappy or a bag of household rubbish, or something like what Deborah Russell held up earlier; $300 for something like a sofa; and $400 for dangerous litter of any quality in any place. The Hamilton City Council have a real and increasing problem. They told us a story of the 3 tonnes of rubbish they pulled out of an open drain recently. It cost them $1,200 just to dispose of it, let alone all the other costs.

The Hamilton City Council put to our select committee that if we were to increase the fine to $1,000, like they want, they would be able to develop a new sliding scale that better reflects the severity of the littering activity. We are not, on this side of the House, arguing that if you flick a cigarette butt out of your car window, you get a $1,000 fine—like it sounds like they believe. It is a sliding scale, like most councils have in place. Of course, this council still have the ability to prosecute for really bad behaviour, but this allows them a better bridge in between the infringement system and a prosecution.

The Thames-Coromandel District Council also wrote a submission in support of the bill, noting that $400 does not reasonably cover the costs of enforcement and removal. They were very supportive of the fine. As I say, it gives them more of a bridge between prosecution and infringement. We know of—and we heard earlier from Scott Simpson—the terrible problem that we have on the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula that’s often highlighted by the hard-working local MP, Mr Scott Simpson. The Waipā District Council wrote a submission, as well, also—again—in support of having an increased fine to $1,000 and they were calling for the further ability of councils to add rubbish removal fines on top of the fine without having to go to court. So they actually want more, because it costs them so much money to remove the rubbish and for the enforcement officer’s time.

The Ashburton District Council wrote to our select committee in support of the bill. These are the people who work under the Act and they enforce the Act. Again, they supported the bill. They supported having a sliding scale infringement structure to reflect the amount and quality of the litter dump, similar to that of the Hamilton City Council.

The last council I want to mention in this contribution is our largest city council—the Auckland Council—who, in the year 2017-18, investigated 1,644 complaints of littering and illegal dumping of rubbish. Again, it is an increasing problem. The Auckland Council submission was interesting to me and I think we should take note of it, because while they agreed that they wanted to be able to use an increase in a fine, they also gave us some other ideas, and while they were out of the scope of the bill, I think we should take heed. They did talk about the difficulty of the evidence being able to be gathered, and they asked us to consider in the future using a different level of evidence required for some kinds of dumping like a cigarette butt or a Coke can, compared to, say, a trailer-load of commercial waste. That was an idea they had.

They also put to us that maybe—at the moment, it’s very difficult for them, even if they have a registration plate that’s been called in. If someone chucks something out of a car window, it is difficult for them to be able to figure out who was driving the car and who actually did it, and they argued that we should perhaps in the future consider just fining the owner of the vehicle, regardless, to try and change behaviour. They put some good ideas to us, and we will take those into consideration. But, overall, all of these councils agreed that an infringement system with a higher infringement at the top end was the best way to go, and these are the guys on the ground. These are the people who are enforcing the law.

When I was a kid growing up, we had a really bad litter problem. I remember it, driving along the roads, and it was similar to now, where you see rubbish along the side of the road. We had a hugely successful behaviour change campaign that many of us have fond memories of. It’s worth noting at this point that this is in line with, in 2017, the National Government announcing $300 million to stop littering—the “Do the right thing” initiative, which was aimed at educating people. The then Minister Mr Nick Smith announced it at our Bluegreens forum. The Auckland Council also pointed out that a holistic approach to education was going to be part of the solution as well, along with an increased fine.

The argument put up by those on the other side of the House is that it’s just all out of proportion. I would argue that $1,000 for serious, large, and/or dangerous littering that doesn’t quite meet the prosecution level, on a sliding scale, is absolutely in line with the public’s expectation. Maybe not some academic, but the country has had enough of people treating our countryside like a dump. Whether it’s Deborah Russell’s fishy neighbours or the people that Scott Simpson has had photographed on our beaches, we have had it, and $1,000 for serious offending is a better bridge of that gap between a low fine and a prosecution. It is a small but vital part of the puzzle that every council who came to us and that we have spoken to wants, and for Clare Curran to call this bill petty, it shows how horribly out of touch this Government are with public sentiment.

We have had it with roadside littering. We have had it with litter in our waterways—

Hon Eugenie Sage: Why didn’t you do something about it, then?

ERICA STANFORD: —that we have to go and clean up. We are—oh, you. “Why don’t you do something about it?”, says Minister Sage. Well, we are waiting on this side of the House for any legislation to do with litter. Have we had anything? Nothing at all. That Minister should concentrate on perhaps bringing something to the House, along with something to do with the Kermadec marine sanctuary or maybe cameras on fishing boats. No—big silence from that side of the room, because they are doing nothing. This greenest Government ever are a horrible failure.

It’s a little bill that has a big heart and it will make a big difference that the councils want. This petty Government—this greenest Government ever—cannot bring themselves to vote for it for purely idealistic reasons, and that sucks.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Before I call the member to take the next call, I just want to remind members that they are to use the correct titles when they are referring to members. There were two members referred to in that last speech which have an honourable title before their name, and I know that the Speaker earlier today was commenting on that point. So I just want to remind people of respectful titles, please.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): I nominate Erica Stanford for Mayor of Auckland. She could stand on an “Increasing fines” platform, or something like “I’ll do a fine job.” You do need to work on your impersonation skills—she needs to work on her impersonation skills—but that’s just a thought to put out there. I know the right are looking for a candidate. I know there are some issues there, and I appreciate that.

It’s an honour to talk about this bill. I’d like to begin by acknowledging Dr Deborah Russell, the chair of the Environment Committee. I’d like to acknowledge the members on the committee, who have shepherded this bill to this point. I’d like to acknowledge all of those who submitted on this bill.

New Zealanders care about litter—they care a lot about litter. As a Government, we get a lot of letters coming in saying “We’re concerned about litter.”, so there’s certainly agreement right across the board. Ninety-three percent of New Zealanders believe it’s important not to litter, and 99 percent—so, almost all New Zealanders—believe it’s very important for New Zealand to maintain its clean, green image. So we’ve got agreement there. The question is, how do we reduce the littering? That’s the key point tonight.

The Opposition are playing politics. I’ll just put it out there, because we haven’t heard that tonight, but I believe that’s what it is. The Opposition have this view, a punitive view, that if we increase fines, everything will be all right—lock ’em up, throw away the key, increase the fines. I don’t believe this is about litter; this is about politics. The right are reaching out for voters around punitive measures.

It is quite clear that New Zealanders care about litter. And there is an issue there. Habits are not always good. We often see this after sports events. I was recently at the cricket at Seddon Park and after the game, the bank was full of litter. We see this often.

Melissa Lee: Yeah, so fine them.

JAMIE STRANGE: We could fine them $1,000 for each cup, maybe, and they could bring in—how much would that bring in? A lot. We had a concert here recently, Eminem, which I may or may not have attended—50,000 plastic cups after the event. So yes, there is an issue. If we had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything the Hon Scott Simpson wanted, would we capture it or would we let it slip? The way we capture it and the key point I’d like to focus on tonight is pride in our communities—a sense of pride that we have as New Zealanders. If you have pride in your country and you have a sense of community, you’ll be a lot less likely to litter.

As humans, we share this planet, and this is the only planet we got, so we need to work together. We need to understand how we look after this planet. The key thing is—[Interruption]—around this issue—I’m pleased the Opposition are awake. The key point here is community. If we look back into the early-1900s, mid-1900s—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Let’s settle, members.

JAMIE STRANGE: If we go back a few years, as a society we relied on community for our very survival. We think of a time before refrigeration, when you had farms and you couldn’t freeze an animal. An animal would get killed and it would get shared out among people. Haymaking time—we’d work together. We literally relied on community for our survival. In today’s society, with the rise of technology, we can survive on our own without community, but we can’t thrive without community, and the sense of community is the key. It’s the sense of connection, knowing our neighbours, working together, and that is the key—not increasing fines.

There were 13 submissions on this bill, and I’d just like to touch on a couple of them.

Melissa Lee: Hamilton council wants it. You should vote for it.

JAMIE STRANGE: We might get to that one, but I’ll start on Kay Jones. So Kay Jones, she said, “While I deplore litter in our streets, I am a realist. Increasing the fine for people littering does nothing to deter them from casually dropping rubbish.” Kay goes on, “This Bill does not provide any means for monitoring or enforcing the punishment.” That’s a key point, and we’ve heard that from a number of speakers tonight. There’s no point increasing fines if you can’t enforce them. The reality is that if I went out on to the street and asked people “What’s the current fine for littering?”, most people would not know. So if it increased from $400 to $1,000, the people wouldn’t even know anyway. It would not make a difference—they would not make a difference. It’s about people taking a sense of pride in their community.

Another submission, from Graeme Edgeler, and Graeme talks a little bit here about the dumping of rubbish. This is a key point that I haven’t heard spoken about in this debate, and I would like to touch on that. In most of our cities—and I’m sure across the countryside at times, but certainly in our urban areas—we often have large amounts of rubbish dumped. There was an example last year over the road from our house. There was a couch; there was—I don’t know. There was a massive pile. There was a trailer load of rubbish, basically—basically just dumped. So we do have to look at why people are dumping, and it is important that we look at things like the cost of going to the dump. It is important that we incentivise people in the right way. You know, we don’t always have to use the stick; sometimes the carrot works as well—or a lolly, Mr McAnulty.

“If there are concerns with dumping”—this is what the submitter said—“or other serious examples of littering, then amendments to the maximum fine for littering (currently $20,000, or $30,000 for dangerous refuse) and not changes to the infringement fee would be more appropriate. Of course, particularly serious dumping abuses are likely dealt with under other legislation: either as criminal nuisances under the Crimes Act, or under the Resource Management Act, and not the Litter Act at all.” But this is an important point, this aspect around dumping—but that point is covered. The current legislation allows for that. But in terms of raising the cost of dropping a piece of litter from $400 to a $1,000, we obviously don’t support that.

Another key point is around education, and as a former school teacher, I’ve spent a number of years encouraging students to pick up their litter. If you can create a culture in the young people—

Kieran McAnulty: Did you fine them?

JAMIE STRANGE: —then that’s how you change. Oh, no, I didn’t think of fining them $1,000. Maybe I should have. It’s about a culture, and the education point—I haven’t heard this spoken in this debate, but it is a very important point here, because if you want to change a society, you start with the young people. You start as young as you possibly can. I believe that good work is being made in this area. Social change always starts with the youth.

As a great man once said, “People litter because they don’t value their environment.” That was spoken by Todd Muller earlier in this debate. He said people litter because they don’t value their environment, and I agree with that—absolutely agree. A wonderful speech, he gave tonight. The key point here is about valuing the environment. I’ve spoken about community, I’ve spoken about the importance of taking a sense of pride in your community, I’ve talked about building community, I’ve talked about valuing community, and I’ve spoken about education. The Government are doing a lot of a lot of things in this area. I’d just like to touch on a couple of them. There are four projects funded under the Waste Minimisation Fund that the Government are funding. So the first one is Keep New Zealand Beautiful, and it has been mentioned before by my colleague Kieran McAnulty. This has a very strong branding, and it is making a difference. The “Do the right thing” project is the key there. There’s is another one, the Packaging Forum: “Litter less, recycle more”. We often hear about reduce, reuse, recycle—the three Rs. But there’s another R that we don’t hear about much: refuse. And that should come first. Refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Refuse or refuse?

JAMIE STRANGE: Refuse rather than refuse.

Kieran McAnulty: Refuse refuse.

JAMIE STRANGE: Well, there we go. We’ve got the slogans coming thick and fast for those members at home there. But we can all do better around refusing, particularly around plastic, and there’s lots of work being done on plastic—lots of work being done on bioplastics. In fact, the members might be interested in knowing that 40 percent of a car can be made with bioplastic now.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: How many percent?

JAMIE STRANGE: Forty percent—isn’t that incredible?

Kieran McAnulty: Get out of here!

JAMIE STRANGE: I know. So there’s a lot of work being done around plastic. As a Government, we’ve banned single-use plastic bags. The previous Government knew about this issue and they wouldn’t act. We’ve just done it. We’ve banned it, and that’s been very well received, particularly among young people.

So as my time is coming to an end, I’d just like to reiterate that raising the fine to $1,000 will make no difference, but community and education is the key. Thank you.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you. I totally endorse the sentiments of the previous speaker, Jamie Strange, in terms of the themes that he emphasised of community culture, education, and valuing the environment, and I’m very pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill. This whole issue is about culture, as the previous speaker noted, and when Keep New Zealand Beautiful did some research earlier, or last year, they noted that New Zealanders are not frequent litterers and we have a culture here of not littering. People endorse the fact and don’t like it when people litter, and others have quoted those statistics of 93 and 98 percent of people not wanting littering to occur and recognising the importance of clean, green New Zealand. So this bill from the Hon Scott Simpson, inherited from Jono Naylor—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I apologise to the member. Could I just call the folk who were having the conversation across the Chamber to order, please. Thank you.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. So this bill is very narrow. It doesn’t deal with the real issues around littering. It was taken up by the Hon Scott Simpson when his Government had nine years to deal with the Litter Act and to deal with the wider issues around the Litter Act that could have really taken action to help here.

Instead, it is just focusing on increasing the maximum fee for an infringement notice from $400 to $1,000. It was the clear advice from both the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry for the Environment that a simple increase in that maximum fee was not going to tackle the issue. It was also completely out of scale with other levels of fee for other infringement offences. It’s two to three times the size of infringement notice offences under the Resource Management Act. It’s significantly higher than fees that you get for speeding. So there’s a coherence about our criminal justice system and, as the Ministry of Justice advised, increasing it to a maximum of $1,000 would cut across that. But, more important, despite the councils that Erica Stanford quoted from their submissions, was the issues that councils have raised about how enforcement can happen and some of the more substantive problems with the Litter Act.

So this bill, on its own, because it is so narrow, is not going to fix that. As the official advice noted, the Hon Scott Simpson is assuming that just increasing the penalty will have a deterrent effect but, actually, the major thing that has a deterrent effect is the certainty around being detected, and the compliance and enforcement regime that occurs. What a number of those councils were raising in their submissions to the select committee was that there were issues both in the legislation and the way in which enforcement regimes operated that were the problem. And we have seen from the report that the Environmental Defence Society did—the Last Line of Defence—how little gets invested in compliance, monitoring, and enforcement by councils. So the severity of the penalties doesn’t produce a corresponding increase in deterrence as the National Party and the Hon Scott Simpson seem to think.

So the Ministry for the Environment and I are aware that the Litter Act has some inadequacies. Those are being looked at, but that is not the priority in fixing the nine years of neglect around waste that we had with the former National Government and that member, the Hon Scott Simpson, who was once Associate Minister for the Environment and who could have taken action in this space. We are focusing on the bigger picture issues which is doing something about expanding the landfill levy which was recommended in a major review of the landfill levy in 2017. The National Government didn’t act.

What else didn’t they act on? They didn’t ensure that there are any mandatory product stewardship schemes. They just relied on voluntary schemes. That’s something where we’re taking action in relation to tyres, so that we have responsibility right through the supply chain. So we need a comprehensive approach to waste. Litter is a subset of that. There is already in the legislation, both in the Litter Act and in the Resource Management Act, adequate penalties to deal with severe offending like fly-tipping, and the councils like Auckland have been increasing their response; making sure that when there are examples of fly-tipping, that that is cleaned up quickly, making sure that there is more effective enforcement through things like cameras, and actually taking prosecutions, and some quite significant prosecutions in Manurewa and the Waitakere Ranges where people were charged with fly-tipping of oil drums. So that taking action is going to have much more effect than simply increasing the maximum fee for infringement notices.

It is an opportunity that has been lost by this member in not looking across the Litter Act and ensuring that this was a real response to the issues around enforcement, around deterrence. It’s only just a very, very, very narrow piece, and a pretence at action, which is what we saw the National Government doing when it was in power. So that is why the Green Party will not be supporting this bill.

The point that Deborah Russell made about others—I think it was in Taranaki—focusing on things like cigarette butts is an important one. Keep New Zealand Beautiful, the educational campaigns that they have been doing to improve the culture around littering and the research that they have done have shown that the issue of cigarette butts is a very real one, and they have recommended that that be the next big area of focus in terms of behaviour change and litter prevention campaigns. I know that in Auckland, where there’s been a trial of a litter traps that can be retrofitted into stormwater grates to catch litter and prevent it going into the stormwater system and into the sea, that in an 11 month trial where 10 kilograms of rubbish was collected at Beresford Street in central Auckland, over that 11 months and in that 10 kilograms there were 2,000 cigarette butts. So people changing their behaviour around cigarette butts, ensuring that if you’re smoking, you put it in the bin, rather than just littering, can have a real difference in protecting our marine environment and stopping this waste getting into our oceans and being eaten by fish, seabirds, and other marine life. So that sort of education campaign will make much more of a difference. The things like litter traps as a practical example of how we can prevent contamination—

Hon Scott Simpson: No wonder Green members are so angry at the lack of action.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —of our rivers and streams and oceans makes much more a difference—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! I apologise to the member. I just have to say to the Hon Scott Simpson, you can interject, but it’s bordering on heckling. And I would ask you to resist being quite so vocal about this and allow the member an opportunity to continue with her speech. The Hon Eugenie Sage.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. So those sorts of practical initiatives, wider education campaigns, reinforcing the culture that New Zealanders have that we don’t like littering, will make more of a difference than just this simple increase in the maximum fee that can be charged for an infringement notice.

There is a real issue too that we don’t have a big handle on data across the country. There’s been really good research done by Keep New Zealand Beautiful, but we need more data so that we can ensure that our response is well targeted. Again, that is something that this Government is doing in the waste space, alongside expanding the landfill levy, ensuring that we get more information on what is going to landfill so that we can have more waste data so that we ensure that our policies are well directed—again, something that the former National Government did not do anything about.

Another thing that it didn’t do anything about was the other issues around the Litter Act and the fact that it is very difficult and an enforcement offence for people who are perhaps throwing something out the window of a vehicle. At the moment, the way the legislation is crafted means it’s difficult for the litter officers appointed by councils to actually pin that on anyone, because they’ve got to find the person who did it, rather than just the vehicle drive. So we recognise that there are issues with the Litter Act, but it needs a much more comprehensive review than this bill has attempted. It is much further down the priority list than the effort that this Government is making to use the tools in the Waste Minimisation Act. I would correct Erica Stanford. That was not a National Party initiative. It was a member’s bill from Nandor Tanczos which the last Labour Government picked up as a Government bill. This Government is making sure that the tools in that Act are well-used, rather than allowing them to gather dust as the former National Government did. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. The Hon Nicky Wagner, you have five minutes.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s been a really interesting night. We’ve heard lots of speeches from the other side of the House about how terrible littering is, and about how New Zealanders don’t like litter. We’ve heard lots of stories of unspeakable messes on our beaches, dumping of clothes, fish heads, all sorts of things around this place, and we’ve also heard that New Zealanders like to keep New Zealand clean and green. And yet, after all that angst, after all those issues that are happening in our communities, the other side won’t vote for this very small but elegant bill that will make a difference.

So I don’t know if they’re trying to be a little bit obtuse, but this is about raising the maximum dollar sign of an infringement from $400 to $1,000. It doesn’t mean that you have to charge somebody $1,000 for dropping a cigarette butt. What it means is you have a choice between $1 and $1,000 to make sure that you can craft the fine that suits the crime—the fine that suits the crime. And we’ve heard there are plenty of littering crimes happening in our communities at the moment.

I agree that New Zealanders are really proud of living in a clean, green country. They’re keen to look after it and—I agree with Mr Strange—they do like to maybe refuse, reuse, and recycle their waste. But some people, a small minority, don’t; they litter. And what’s more not only do they litter but they also fly-tip and they illegal dump right across our communities. We heard in select committee that councils are really struggling to manage this. It’s costing them millions of dollars and in Auckland alone it cost $5 million a year to clean this stuff up. The councils want this bill because they believe it will help.

Now, of course litter looks untidy but that’s only the start. Litter and rubbish are strewn by the winds, by the waterways, by the oceans right across our environment. They clog up our drains, they strangle the waterways, and often they strangle wildlife—and we’ve all seen photographs of plastic around fish necks and seals and things like that. Litter is unhealthy for humans as well. It attracts vermin and it’s a breeding ground for bacteria. And as it decomposes it pollutes both water and soil. And an interesting fact, which I think has been raised over the other side, about the number of cigarette butts that are littered and get into our environment: they take over 10 years to decompose. For over a decade, their toxic waste is going into our environment.

So I do support this bill. I think, if we want to deter littering—and we’ve heard right across the House tonight that we do want to deter littering and most New Zealanders agree and all the councils agree—that an increased amount for this infringement tells people that this is a serious issue. A significant fine is valid because littering costs councils, and I just want to divert a bit: when we say “costs councils”, actually it costs ratepayers. It costs ratepayers—you and me and everybody else—to pick up this litter, to clean up the environment. It threatens our natural environment and it threatens wildlife.

So I’m particularly disappointed when we hear the other side understanding the dangers of littering, understanding that people don’t want it, understanding the costs, and yet they’re still not prepared to vote for this bill. They are quite happy to accept the damage that littering’s doing to our environment and our wildlife and our community amenity because littered communities are not people friendly. They give an air of neglect. They make people feel that nobody cares. They’re a depressing place and they undermine the amenity of our communities. I think it’s really important that we deter littering. Most New Zealanders do and I really hope that the rest of the House would vote for this bill. Kia ora.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I’m not a member of the Environment Committee but, firstly, can I acknowledge Scott Simpson. He’s actually brought a big issue to this House. Littering is a huge issue and so I want to acknowledge his commitment to addressing it. But in preparing for tonight, I was trying to find the evidence about the efficacy of this legislative reform and actually it seems like we’re replicating what the UK did because, essentially, they doubled the fines in 2016 and this year it’s now a £150 fine. So that’s been the tool.

But I think in communities like mine, Manurewa—and if I look at Auckland Council—I think there’s been a convergence of this littering issue with waste management and minimisation plan initiatives and I highlight that because one of the big issues we’ve had is the reduction in the size of our bins, for example—and to get a bigger bin, it actually costs you $85. So in poorer communities, we’ve tried to force them to recycle to minimise their waste and I think what we’ve seen, and particularly in communities like mine, is that this illegal dumping phenomenon is actually a massive problem and it’s way more than $5 million, because that’s a 2012 figure. So I’m here to say that this is an issue; is this the best solution?

I guess when I look at my council and their submission, I also look at the submission from Local Government New Zealand who’s highlighted that we have a 40-year-old Litter Act. So what they’ve asked us to consider actually as a Parliament are practical ways to help them enforce and issue infringement notices. People may not know but for the council to issue a notice—because that’s what we’re wanting to do; we’re wanting to supposedly give councils more tools to deter people from littering—for one of those littering notices to be issued, a council officer has to either (a) observe a person littering, or (b) have reasonable cause to suspect such an offence was in the act of being carried out or had just being committed. And therein lies the problem.

A lot of these things happen—and I’ve looked at the national litter survey, which was released in July 2018, and the biggest things that are littered are snack food packaging, disposable drink containers, paper. How are we supposed to prove who that belonged to and who should be issued with this littering penalty to deter them from littering?

One of the other things I decided to do was to actually look at effective interventions and I found a paper titled Effective Interventions on littering behaviour of youngsters, published in 2015 from the Netherlands. And these are some of the things that actually work based on evidence. So you use social surroundings; you target groups not individuals. And I certainly would like to reinforce that. I’d like a community approach to some of these issues. You have group commitment; you use leaders as influencers. You also attract attention to the issue, so you connect the views of community members and their interest and their enthusiasm in trying to address the littering issues. You target beliefs about the effects of littering on the environment. So the relationship our children have with the environment is fundamental to any programme going forward, because if our young kids love the environment, guess what? They’re going to look after it.

OK, so we need to promote more outdoor environmental education. We reward proper waste disposal. You need to look at mechanisms that are going to help change people’s behaviour but also for that behaviour to continue and for them to share that behaviour with their children. And you also facilitate proper waste disposal behaviour. In that regard that’s about: have we got enough disposable mechanisms—so bins—so that we can put our litter in. Do we keep away smells? Do we remove litter immediately because actually litter creates more litter? And it is about bins being clean and easily accessible, as I’ve highlighted.

So, Mr Simpson, I want to thank you for bringing the issue to the House, but as an effective legislative reform I’ve got to say it just does not stack up. And it doesn’t stack up for a number of reasons and one of the biggest is that many councils aren’t using these littering enforcement notices anyway. I mean there are a whole lot that I could have talked about where they haven’t actually issued any so if that’s your solution to this problem, it’s fundamentally flawed. Kia ora.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker, for this opportunity and it may surprise this House that I rise in support of the Hon Scott Simpson—

Hon Ruth Dyson: What?

SARAH DOWIE: I do. I rise in support of the Hon Scott Simpson’s bill, the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill in the second reading. It’s a pleasure to work with the Hon Scott Simpson. He is leading our environment policy team and it is a new team with new ideas based on science. So we looking at scientific solutions to environmental issues and this is no different.

I’m not sure actually what the Hon Scott Simpson has done to offend this Government, this greenest Government ever that apparently is taking environmental issues very seriously. I mean the scope of this bill is very narrow. In fact, it is a teeny-weeny bill but has such wide-reaching ramifications that could really assist in the mitigation of litter in our community. And so I’m just really not sure why this Government—the greenest Government ever, the one that takes environmental issues so seriously and calls climate change our nuclear-free moment—is not supporting this teeny-weeny bill that would have wide-reaching ramifications on litter. Could it be simply because it was introduced by a National Party member and if that is the case that is really petty for this country moving forward with regards to litter minimisation.

As I said before, this is a new team with new ideas in the environmental space, and I do want to point out that, as part of the Hon Scott Simpson’s crusade for waste minimisation, we published our first discussion document on 23 February—a National Party environmental discussion document; a starter for six—which included a number of waste minimisation points for discussion.

Isn’t it amazing when all of a sudden you get a response from the likes of Fish & Game and Greenpeace that they’re happy with the National Party’s ideas? I think that’s something that we are showing leadership in in this space. We have shown leadership in the past, and we’re showing leadership moving forward, in that we want our country—New Zealand—to be a fantastic place for our children and our grandchildren to grow in and enjoy our environment. So to the greenest Government ever: watch this space. National is absolutely gunning for you in this space.

Look, I said before that this is a narrow scoped bill but it does have wide-reaching ramifications, and it is about an infringement system. Interestingly, the Government supported the Department of Conservation’s (DOC’s) infringement system and didn’t seem to have any problems with allowing DOC rangers and officers to have that power when it comes to wildlife, but when it comes to councils and litter, they’re not so sure. This is an infringement system that would allow swift justice to be met. It de-clogs the justice system and the courts, and looks at a graduated system of an infringement fine, raising it from $400 to $1,000 for the offence of littering.

As we’ve heard in previous speeches, we would let council officers use their discretion to put in place a fine to the offender that was proportionate to the offence. And, again, the Opposition have even talked about littering acts in their electorates and have shown that there is more offensive-style littering that goes on and then there is quite minimal littering in that graduated system. So it is about looking at how much littering is going on for that one person and then deciding what the appropriate fine should be.

Rubbish is a very serious issue in New Zealand and the Invercargill electorate is no different—the southernmost province, which I represent—and, in fact, when it came to Oreti Beach, that seems to be one of the places in Invercargill that gets littered the most; our wonderful beach, one that you can still drive your motor vehicle on to and enjoy. I ran a beach clean-up in 2017 and in total collected 170 kilograms of rubbish as part of that beach clean-up. We had 150 people show up, and it was mainly bottles, cans, plastic, and rope, but we even found a burnt out car, which is, obviously, more than littering. But it’s quite a significant problem when you have people recreating on the beach and they simply don’t pick up their rubbish when they leave.

As I said before, this infringement system looks to bring about speedy justice, to de-clog the court system, and to penalise those who don’t have a responsible ethic with respect to our environment. And it works; it isn’t true that fines don’t deter people from offending, and that is no different with respect to litter. There was a member opposite who compared the bill to a country, in Taiwan, and I equally would like to compare it to Singapore. Now, many of us have had the privilege of travelling to Singapore. It’s obviously a small country but heavily populated, and so they have to take their environment very, very seriously. Interestingly, they have a serious offence regime with respect to littering. For first-time offenders, with respect to littering, they’re actually fined S$2,000; for second-time offending, S$4,000; and for third-time offenders, S$10,000. That’s how serious they take littering, and then if it goes beyond that, they actually have a scheme where there is a corrective work order and people are actually put to work to clean up rubbish themselves. Now, I don’t think anyone who has visited Singapore can say to me that it’s not a very beautiful country and that litter is at a minimum. So I would say to the members opposite that an infringement system does work, that an infringement system is effective, and that if we have pride in our country, then we would take heed of this bill and vote for it and see it to put into place.

Look, in 2016, 30 councils spent $2.4 million cleaning up illegally dumped rubbish. Now, what could we be doing, better spending that money, if we could deter people from littering? And I think this bill goes to the heart of the problem with respect to litter. Our country is precious, our environment is precious, and the effects of too much litter on our streets and in our environment need to be dealt with. And, as I said before, this is a narrow bill but it is an effective one, and infringement systems do work, just like the Department of Conservation infringement system that that Government voted for to give extra powers to DOC Rangers to get on top of conservation problems swiftly.

So I think that this is a very good bill. It is a small bill, but it is effective and has wide-ranging ramifications. I can’t see why this Government won’t support it. If they are so serious about the environment, then they should be getting in behind this bill, which would have significant effect moving forward for our community and for our environment.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much for the opportunity to stand and take a call on behalf of New Zealand First on this the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill. I’d just like to start off by doing a little bit of a recap as I am the second to last speaker on this bill.

The Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill is a member’s bill in the name of Hon Scott Simpson, and I’d just like to acknowledge the member for bringing this bill to the House, also too acknowledging my members and colleagues from both sides of the House who are on the Environment Committee. Generally, we work very collegially together, with the environment at the heart of the work that we’re doing in that hard-working committee—also too making note of the committee being well chaired by the chair from Labour, Dr Deborah Russell. So I just acknowledge everyone in the committee and this bill and what it sets out to do—amending the Litter Act 1979—to increase that maximum fine for infringements from $400 to $1,000. Through the select committee process, we heard from 13 submitters. Of those 13 submissions, we heard oral evidence from three of the submitters. That happened in Wellington in July 2018; so some six months ago now. The Ministry for the Environment also provided the committee with advice, and I’ll come to that advice in just a moment.

During the Christmas holidays, previously in my former incarnation, working in a newsroom, we would spend the summertime, particularly over the Christmas and New Year period, wondering what kind of fluffy animal story we would be able to write that day to fill up the bulletin. This year over the summertime, newsrooms all around the country were particularly obsessed, as the rest of New Zealand became obsessed, as it hit the headlines here and overseas. You probably may have read or heard or seen about the path of minor destruction that was caused by a British family on holiday, as they wreaked havoc through Auckland, then down to Hamilton, into Levin. Even Levin’s mayor had Levin on high alert.

This unruly family—“unruly tourists” as they were dubbed—certainly held the attention of most New Zealanders. They probably didn’t realise that it was the rubbish that they spread at Takapuna that really raised our ire, because people of my generation were raised to be a tidy Kiwi. Now, this was an education campaign all about picking up litter, making sure that if there was litter on the ground, we actually went and picked it up. At school, we were on litter duty. So it became part of our collective consciousness to actually be tidy and to pick up litter. So the unruly tourists actually didn’t realise how much New Zealanders actually hate rubbish, because it has been well entrenched into our psyche to be tidy Kiwis. So it’s about this education. That is really the strength of how we can change behaviour, and doing that when we are young informs a type of behaviour that sticks with us through our lives, and it certainly has with me.

Coming back to the select committee, I mentioned that the Ministry for the Environment came to us and talked about this bill, and their advice was that raising the fee to $1,000 would be “unusual and inconsistent with the infringement fees that exist for more serious offending.”—such as the discharging of a contaminant into the environment from maybe industry or trade premises. “In addition, given the issues around enforcement there is no certainty that a larger infringement fee would result in a greater, or any, deterrent for littering.”—this is the Ministry for the Environment; this is their advice that they gave to the committee. And they also said that “proportionality is an important factor and … there are other policy tools available to communicate the seriousness of littering,”.

Auckland Council made a submission, and they had in the year 2017-18 received and investigated 1,644 complaints regarding littering and illegal dumping, which is at the other end of the scale, and “of these 1,644 investigations, for various reasons, only 67 infringement fines were issued.” And the total of those 67 fines netted them $8,500. So they also explained to us why they believe that simply raising the fine would not necessarily resolve the problem of littering.

We heard from Graeme Edgeler. He came and made a verbal submission and he suggested also that the $1,000 infringement fee for littering is actually “out of all proportion with the offense of littering, and out of line with infringement fees for other infringement offences at a similar level. Local authorities”—and I’m quoting now—“do not need the power to adopt bylaws providing for a $1000 infringement fee for littering. They already have sufficient powers under the current legislation.” And then he made note later in has submission that “An increase in the infringement fee to $1000, would see low-level littering punished with an infringement fee much higher than those imposed for driving 49km/h over the speed limit, or drink-driving in respect of the new lower limit is clearly disproportionate.” Also Diana Duncan made note that we need to not just think about littering but also “reduce the production and importation of single use plastics across New Zealand.”

Reduce, reuse, recycle: those are words we’re hearing a lot at the moment. So what is the Government doing? Because littering, as we heard the Minister Hon Eugenie Sage mention, is only one small section in this whole great waste minimisation and how we’re dealing with our waste across the board.

So there are four projects that the Government is currently working on: the Keep New Zealand Beautiful project, “Do the right thing”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! It is about reporting back what came from the select committee rather than saying what is general Government policy. So come back to the bill, if you could.

JENNY MARCROFT: Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. Of course, New Zealand First—we do support reasonable measures to clean up New Zealand. However, we actually feel that the suggested $1,000 fine that’s set out in the bill is actually excessive. So, by and large, applying a punitive approach in and of itself actually does not and will not achieve stopping of this littering behaviour. We believe it’s actually all about education. It’s about educating the next generation, just like we were educated to be tidy Kiwis. So that’s what we need to do. We need to bring back those types of campaigns. We need to teach our young people to be tidy. So this Keep New Zealand Beautiful campaign, which was originally founded back in 1969, that’s all about litter reduction. It’s about waste minimisation.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: National Government!

JENNY MARCROFT: You did have some averagely OK ideas, so let’s bring some new ones forward, which this Government is doing.

I’d like to finish off by just concluding that New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. We did not support it at first reading and we continue to not support it now, but on that I’d like to say kia ora koutou katoa.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Like the previous speaker, I too came to this debate very late in the piece today, but my jaw simply dropped when I heard that the Labour Party and the Green party are going to oppose a bill that raises the fines on people who litter throughout New Zealand. My jaw dropped because the people of Northcote will be very upset at this move. If you want any proof of how far the Green Party has strayed from their true core environmental beliefs, it is to look no further than tonight. This Government is again all talk and all platitudes and very little action. They’re all very big on making you feel good and dropping those fluffy phrases, but not on delivery and not on substantive behaviour.

I’ve heard many speeches here tonight, and I want to traverse some of the key arguments that are coming from the Labour Party and the Green Party on why they are not supporting the member’s bill of my very good colleague, the Hon Scott Simpson. We all know that the Prime Minister wants rational debates. So this is where we will have a rational discussion around some of the key issues that have been raised this evening. The first is that fines don’t deter behaviour. That’s what we’ve heard from the opposite side. But what I’m saying is let’s debate how to make these fines work, how to make this enforceable, because fines, if you can be very blunt, act in the way that negative taxes do, or taxes on negative actions. Think about taxes like the capital gains tax—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! [Interruption] Come back to the bill, thank you. I’ve already admonished one speaker for straying from the report back from the select committee.

DAN BIDOIS: Madam Assistant Speaker, thank you. I want to be clear that having a fine on targeting negative behaviour, and I’m actually making a comparison to taxes that in fact also deliver—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Was that part of the discussion during the select committee?

DAN BIDOIS: No, but I’m—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: You’re not constrained; it’s the third reading.

DAN BIDOIS: No, no, it’s the second reading—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Second reading.

DAN BIDOIS: But, Madam Assistant Speaker, I do think it’s important because—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): You may consider it important, but I would like you to confine yourself to the matters at hand, which is submissions, discussion at select committee, and how the bill has come back to the House.

DAN BIDOIS: OK, Madam Assistant Speaker. So on this topic I simply want to put to the other side: let’s debate how to make these fines work.

Another point that’s been raised in the discussion tonight is that the fines imposed are disproportionate to the offence that has occurred. But let’s have that debate, and we could have the debate in the committee as a whole about exactly what that fine level should be at. We’ve heard that there has been support from the other side for a $500 penalty, so why not have that discussion in the committee stage and convince us that in fact $500 is worthy and not $1,000.

Let’s get to the third key point that this Government is using as a way to vote this bill down. They’re saying that they have a better plan. So let’s talk about their plan. They’ve got a Waste Minimisation Fund, an expansion of the disposable levy fund, and the waste disposal levy level that they want to increase as well. But my question to that side of the House is: can you tell me how the Waste Minimisation Fund will stop the person down at Little Shoal Bay throwing their can of Coke in the river or in the stream? Can you tell me how somebody who goes and drops litter on private property is going to be affected by improving data, which we say that side of the House is trying to do? Because it’s very clear from where I sit and where we sit on this side of the House that their action plan does not in fact get us to a case where no one is littering in New Zealand.

So I want to come to the reasons why we support this very important bill. We know that it’s a big issue in New Zealand—16 percent of all trash is done through litter. It’s not going through some formal waste disposal mechanism. Now, that side of the House wants to say that that’s not an issue, that that’s OK. I’m sorry, but the people in Northcote—frankly speaking, 16 percent is far too much for them.

The second point is that this is part of the solution. Improving the fines and raising the fines level is part of the overall solution. We know that it’s not going to—hand on heart—solve the issue of litter on our streets, but it’s part of the solution. Like any problem that we debate in the House tonight, it is a multifaceted problem, and to say that raising a fine isn’t going to make a single difference makes a mockery of all the other fines that we actually have in New Zealand. So enforcement is important and it’s part of the challenge, but it’s not the full picture. So I do want to agree with the other side of the House on one point they’ve made this evening, which is around the cultural change that needs to occur in New Zealand.

The previous speaker, Jenny Marcroft, raised the “Be a tidy Kiwi” campaign and how successful that was, thanks to the Sir Keith Holyoake - led National Government in the 1960s. I would like to see this campaign revitalised, because I think that it is time for us to revitalise and change our culture because not all of us grew up in that era and some of us, particularly new New Zealanders, may not be aware of those cultural changes and that value that we had when we were growing up.

But to just throw out the fines system because it’s simply a cultural issue, I think, is a silly and irresponsible idea by that side of the House, because to put proactive but also practical suggestions on how we can reduce litter in New Zealand is extremely important. But no, this Government is playing politics. They, in fact, lack integrity, and let me elaborate on what I mean by that. Their words do not reflect their actions in the House tonight—their words do not reflect their actions in the House tonight. The Green Party, I thought, was all about getting litter off our streets, improving our environment, and they have the opportunity to demonstrate the congruence and the integrity that I believe that the Green Party had, but unfortunately lacks in the House this evening.

So we will be supporting this bill, and it is a shame that this Government is deciding to vote this bill down, because we want a tidy country in New Zealand, but behavioural change doesn’t happen overnight. It is part of a long-run series of reforms that includes the carrot and stick methodology, increasing fines, holding people accountable, educating the public, and improving information, and I believe that through that we can get there in the House tonight.

I’m disappointed that the House is not going to pass this bill. The people in Northcote will be particularly unhappy about this bill being voted down and, dare I say, the environmental groups in the area of Northcote will be very upset that we are not looking at improving the fines structure. I would have liked to have devoted more time to this in the committee as a whole, but I commend this bill to the House. Thank you very much.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Litter (Increased Infringement Fee) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

HARETE HIPANGO (National—Whanganui): Tēnā koe. E tū ahau ki te karanga o tēnei Whare. E tīmata taku kōrero mahi tuatahi o te tauhou i roto i Te Whare. E mihi ana ki ngā tāngata katoa.

[Thank you. I stand to the call of this House. I commence my first work speech of the new year in the House. Greetings to all the people.]

I take my first call in the House for 2019, and in so doing I pay homage to my colleagues here in the House but also I take the opportunity to speak in Te Reo Māori. It’s something that rather than just once a year for a week—that we make an effort to revive and speak and use the Reo, and I encourage my colleagues to make a concerted effort.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member, but there’s a motion that the member needs to move first.

HARETE HIPANGO: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I move the motion, That the bill now be taken to its second reading.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Oh, we’ll get the words to her.

HARETE HIPANGO: The correct wording? Thank you. I move, That the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Kōrero mai.

HARETE HIPANGO: Thank you. So, Mr Assistant Speaker and members of the House, I continue in terms of acknowledgment of Te Reo Māori, and I encourage everybody around the continuation of the using of it, otherwise we lose that as we embark on the journey with this. I just hearken members also that this year, I believe, for the first time lessons will be offered to us, and I invite people to embark on that language learning journey on 20 March.

Now, I turn, importantly, as well to the bill, Mr Assistant Speaker, and with your indulgence may I seize this moment—being the first opportunity to address the House this year—to acknowledge not only the passing of 2018, going into the new year, but also the acknowledgment of loved and treasured ones. And, briefly, I turn to acknowledge a well-regarded member of my community in the Whanganui electorate, councillor Sue Westwood, who gave service for 30 years in that capacity as a councillor but also as a lifelong volunteer to our community in Whanganui. Councillor Sue Westwood—a robust, statuesque, powerful, and strong woman whose contribution over the course of her lifetime to our community, particularly our volunteer sector, was notably significant, and I pay homage to her. She added value to the health, the well-being, and the safety of our community in Whanganui and also further afield, giving immeasurable and invaluable service over the course of her lifetime.

Now I turn to the bill, and just on reflection, with the passing of a year and the passing of life, I turn, just briefly, to make mention of the bill that was before the House. I make mention of that because last weekend, as the member of Parliament for Whanganui, I joined with a number of volunteers back in Whanganui to spruce and clean up the waterways. The relevance of the bill being debated previously—before this bill before the House—is that it also engaged the service and the time of volunteers.

Now I turn, importantly, to what this amendment is about. Clause 4 is seeking to amend section 17 of the principal Act, in that the definition of “volunteer association” is changed so as to include associations which have people in paid employment for the association for not greater than 100 hours per week. The report back to the House from the Education and Workforce Committee is dated November 2018. I sat and presided with the other members of that committee, and I acknowledge them for their contribution, as well as the submitters to that bill. There were a total of 34 written submissions to the bill, eight of which were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. What’s of note is that those submitters to the bill who spoke to the committee and were opposed were predominantly large organisations. The eight who spoke in favour were smaller voluntary organisations, and that was very much indicative of the strained resources and the difficulties that our smaller volunteer associations in our community have in terms of the provision of a valued service within the community.

When I first spoke to this bill at the first reading, that was 4 April 2018. We’re now some 11 months down the line. I note across the House my colleague from New Zealand First who was one of those speakers at that time who literally threw a lifeline. The member spoke about being a volunteer member of a surf lifesaving club. I made mention at that first reading that that lifeline that had been thrown enabled this bill to go before the select committee for submissions to be heard. Regrettably, this bill is going to sink because that lifeline has been withdrawn.

I also shared with the House at this time last year that, coincidentally, I had just returned from Australia, where my daughter had competed in the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships. She came away from that—and a proud Mama moment—as a champion. However, the problem that I stand confronted with, facing the House and members across the floor there, is that in my attempt to champion this bill, that lifeline has been withdrawn. This bill is sinking rapidly.

However, in saying that, I invite members across the House to heed and factor in that the debate and the argument that had been presented is very much on the basis that those submissions were from the focus of large organisations, well-resourced organisations, and referenced some of what I would consider, with respect, misrepresentations of what this bill is really about. I harken to the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway in the debate speeches referring to this as a normal part of doing business. This bill is about volunteer organisations, not in the nature of doing business, and that word was repeatedly—and that concept and construct—referenced by the member, that this is about business. This is not; this is about our small, voluntary organisations, many of which run on the smell of an oily rag and do not have those oil-rich resources in the way of funding to be able to continue in their service without the necessity of having to employ or pay persons who would otherwise give their time voluntarily.

The member from the Labour Party referenced being a volunteer service fireman, and, on reflection, in reading through the Hansard notes and speeches, the member was somewhat considerably inflammatory around the representation of what this bill is about. I seek to extinguish that by stating that the focus and the emphasis is about the survival of our smaller volunteer organisations, that many of our organisations, community-based, would not exist if not for the efforts of them. Ninety-seven thousand non-profit organisations, 1.2 million volunteers—most if not all of the members in the House have at some stage or another volunteered our time and our service, without which having done so, much of the goodwill and constructive, positive contributions in our society and community simply would not exist.

The difficulty that our society and communities are now confronted with is that that voluntary goodwill is not able to keep these organisations afloat, if not for the fact of having to pay for some of those small administrative tasks whereby the legal responsibility of any sinking or any misdemeanour that goes on is onerous under this law. My other colleagues will address the House in other aspects that were submitted before the select committee, regrettably to say this bill is to be drowned, and it does not heed the valuable contribution of our volunteers in our communities. Kia ora.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Labour Party to oppose the motion and to encourage other members of the House to follow the recommendation of the Education and Workforce Committee that this bill should not progress. I want to acknowledge all members of the select committee. I don’t get to participate in the select committee these days, but I want to acknowledge all the members and the chair, Parmjeet Parmar, for their work in considering this legislation and hearing the submissions. I understand that the select committee received 34 written submissions, of which eight were in favour, four were neutral, and 22 were opposed, and amongst many of those submissions in opposition to this bill were voluntary organisations and umbrella organisations that represent a large number of small, voluntary organisations across the country. The overwhelming message that submitters wanted Parliament to hear was that with the right support, with the right tools, and with the right education all workplaces, whether they be businesses for profit, whether they be large NGOs, or whether they be small, voluntary organisations, should be able to operate and can operate under the auspices of the Health and Safety at Work Act.

In fact, many submitters said they found that the rigour and the opportunity to learn more about their obligations under the Act made them more effective employers, made them more effective as voluntary organisations, and gave them an opportunity to provide a safe working environment for everybody that they were responsible for, whether they were paid employees or whether they were volunteers. So I think we as a Parliament should listen closely to those submitters, but I also think that this bill is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a flawed premise, which is that health and safety is onerous, that it is compliance-driven, and that it is about ticking boxes, when it is absolutely not that at all. It is about creating a culture that encourages people to speak up, that encourages people to identify hazards, to identify risks, and to encourage employers and people who are in charge of workplaces, whether they be profitable businesses or whether they be volunteer organisations, to take all reasonable and practicable steps to keep everybody who they are responsible for safe in the workplace. It also encourages everybody in that workplace—workers, volunteers, contractors—to take responsibility for the safety of themselves and the safety of others that they are working alongside.

So the premise of this amendment bill is flawed, but even worse than that, it suggests that the Act itself is flawed, and I would be very interested to know what the Hon Michael Woodhouse thinks about that. The Hon Michael Woodhouse was the Minister in charge of the principal Act that this bill seeks to amend, when it was passed through Parliament, and I want to acknowledge the work that he did, because this is an important piece of legislation. It’s not perfect, and I’ll possibly come to some of the imperfections later on in my contribution this evening, but it is fundamentally a good piece of legislation, and it reflects where modern thinking throughout developed nations is at on health and safety. This amendment bill suggests that it’s flawed because it suggests that it cannot apply to small, voluntary organisations. The language that I heard used in the first reading debate is that health and safety obligations are onerous and difficult for small organisations to comply with, which suggests to me that the National Party may even be wondering if they think this is applicable to small businesses. I think that’s a shame, because they did good work in Government seeing this legislation through, and now, to see them turn around the moment they get into Opposition and start playing politics with what is such an important piece of legislation, frankly, disappoints me. I know that the Hon Michael Woodhouse is better than that; I hope that his colleagues can realise that they ought to behave in a better fashion as well.

One of the concerns that I expressed during the first reading, and it continues to be a concern of mine, is that this bill sends precisely the wrong message at precisely the wrong time. We have made good progress as a nation on health and safety since the wake-up call that was the tragedy at Pike River. We made good progress because everybody suddenly returned their focus to health and safety in the workplace and realised that New Zealand needed a new approach to health and safety. However, the latest data tells us that between 2016 and 2017, we are seeing a plateauing. We are seeing the fall in injury and death rates in the workplace starting to level out—we’re not seeing the progress on those statistics that we saw in the years after Pike River—and we are seeing a change in attitudes. People are starting to lose their focus again. This is precisely the time where we as a Parliament need to show leadership and remind everybody in New Zealand that we must not lose focus. In fact, there is an awful lot more work to be done. We have made progress, but we are still a very, very long way behind other developed nations such as Australia, such as the UK, and such as many European nations. We kill and maim far too many people in our workplaces in New Zealand, and this bill sends the wrong message at the wrong time.

Now, I acknowledge that the Health and Safety at Work Act is not perfect. Every single one of the parties that are now in Government expressed reservations about it when we were in Opposition. We could, like the member in charge of this bill, perhaps try and make amendments to this Act even though it is still new, even though businesses, employers, workplaces, NGOs, and volunteer organisations are still coming to grips with it, letting it bed in. I think that’s the wrong approach. We have signalled—I have signalled as Minister—that we will undertake a review of the Act in 2020. That will be timely; the Australian Government have just completed a review of their model legislation, upon which New Zealand’s legislation is based. The report from that review is a very useful document, and it will inform our review of the legislation, but now is not the time to create more uncertainty for those employers, those persons conducting a business or undertaking, those workers, and those volunteers who are getting used to the new legislation and putting it into operation at the front line.

Likewise, the work of completing the regulations or improving the regulations that give effect to this legislation has not been completed. That work needs to be allowed to continue, and we need to see the Act in operation before we rush to judgment about what changes might need to be made to it. So I encourage the member and her party to engage positively when it comes time to review this legislation and acknowledge that New Zealand does need robust health and safety legislation that puts workers at the centre and helps to create the culture that we need.

To that effect, late last year, the Government published the Health and Safety at Work Strategy, which sets out the priorities for this Government over the next 10 years. This is something that is required in the Act, and we saw that through at the end of last year. It has two overriding priorities: one, that we have to focus on what will make the biggest impact to reduce harm. That’s not about compliance, that’s not about ticking boxes, that’s not about paperwork; that is about looking in your workplace and making relevant changes in the workplace that will reduce the risks and hazards that exist in the workplace. It has a focus on work-related health, including mental health—those workplaces with the greatest need, sectors with the highest harm, and small businesses; workers with the greatest need: Māori and other workers at greatest risk—and it also makes as a priority building everyone’s capability to do health and safety well. That, as I say, was a strong message that we heard from submitters, that we do need to encourage leaders at all levels to integrate health and safety into their work and enable workers to be represented, engaged, and to participate.

Members, this is not the time for this legislation. This is the time to redouble our efforts to ensure that more of our working people and our volunteers go home at the end of the day in the same state and health as when they started this day. I encourage members to vote this bill down.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand in this second reading debate on the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill in the name of my friend and colleague Harete Hipango. Now, I listened carefully to the speech from the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, and I was somewhat surprised that he found time amongst his busy schedule and pile of papers that he needs to read as, apparently, a busy Minister to come down to the House on a members’ night to speak, effectively, about just kicking the can down the road until 2020 on an important piece of legislation. That he’s found time to do that I think is interesting in itself, particularly when we know that between first reading and this reading, the New Zealand First Party has changed their view on this, based on him kicking the can down the road until 2020. That surprises me. So here we have, yet again, another situation where a Government that was so full of promise and hope and sloganeering has actually just kicked the can in a way that means that nothing—nothing—will be done.

As they come towards the end of their term in Government, 2020 will be far too late—far too late. I would have thought that a Minister, on an evening like this, would have had maybe some more important things to be doing than coming down here to bolster the Government’s pretty feeble approach to this bill.

The Education and Workforce Committee, chaired very capably by my colleague Dr Parmjeet Parmar, received 34 submissions on this bill—eight were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. Although I don’t sit as a permanent member on the committee, I do from time to time get subbed in in terms of matters that relate to workplace relations legislation. I have to say, wearing that hat as the National Party spokesperson for workplace relations but also as the MP for the Coromandel, that I actually thought that this bill had some merit. It really does trouble me that as a Parliament, we seem not to have the wit or the imagination to confront and address obvious issues such as those that are raised by this bill.

The reason I say that as the member of Parliament for the beautiful Coromandel is that throughout my very large geographical electorate, many of my local communities depend utterly upon the work and the voluntary support that comes from generous volunteers’ giving of their time, of their energy, of their enthusiasm, and of their commitment. For many of those organisations, they are small organisations. They are not organisations that are well resourced, that have enormous financial resources available to them. They inevitably are small in number and small in financial resource. So this bill seeks to carve out a practical solution to a problem, and that is where as soon as an organisation hires somebody, then that organisation becomes constrained and restricted by the provisions of this bill.

Now, increasingly those small organisations have to contract out, by way of employment, specialist expertise that can’t be obtained through their normal volunteer recruitment processes. I’m thinking here, for instance, about the many conservation groups that exist around the Coromandel Peninsula. Most of those people do trapping and pest control, and some very good tree planting and all that sort of thing, but they do have some income from money, and they have some other administrative duties, so often they have to go out and hire a financial accountant or the services of some kind of secretarial support—all those sorts of things that are not core to their day-to-day voluntary operations but are none the less pivotal to their organisation’s success and their ultimate achievement of their goals.

Now, as soon as they go out and hire a person—maybe it’s a financial consultant or an accountant or a secretary or something of that sort—the Act gets triggered, and that’s really the matter that this legislation seeks to resolve. I’m very disappointed on behalf of voluntary organisations up and down the country that New Zealand First, who often try and pitch themselves as being some kind of saint in terms of supporting regions outside urban New Zealand, in this case have, sadly, let rural and provincial New Zealand down, and particularly the volunteer organisations that operate within those organisations. So in this short contribution, I wish to support the bill, support the work and the initiative taken by my colleague Harete Hipango, and wish her well in this bill.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): I’m delighted to actually take a call here in this particular bill, because I’m a bit concerned about some of the material that I’ve heard coming from the other side. I’ve had concerns about this bill from the word go, because I believe that we’ve got to be completely concerned in our country about the health and safety of all our workers—not just some but every single worker in this country—whether they are working for large organisations or whether they are working for small organisations or whether they are working in small voluntary-level clubs.

We’ve heard a lot that we’ve had 34 submissions. We’ve heard that from every single speaker so far, but we also heard that the 22 against were from mainly large organisations. Well, one of those organisations was Volunteering New Zealand. Volunteering New Zealand is an umbrella organisation which represents a number of volunteers, and a number of volunteer organisations feed into it. I know that because the fishing club that I’m a member of, which is quite a small fishing club, is actually one of those clubs that will go to Volunteering New Zealand to seek out their volunteers. Now, in our fishing club, we actually employ staff. As a member of the club, I would be horrified to think that any of those staff members were not as worthy of the health and safety regulations as any other paid staff member of any organisation in this country. It is vitally important that we protect those.

We’ve heard tonight that New Zealand does have a woeful reputation on health and safety at work, and the premise of this bill, the way that I could see the whole way through, is that this bill undermines the whole concept of health and safety at work. It creates—and we heard this in the submissions from a health and safety adviser—another tier of a second-class worker. So if you are someone that is employed by a volunteer association, this bill almost made it seem that you are a second-class worker in that situation, and I can’t see that there is any way that we can condone this in this House.

The Health and Safety at Work Act, in the first place, as we’ve heard from our Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety here this evening, was and is a very good piece of legislation. It is a piece of work that we are working on and extending all the time. That came from both sides of the House, so it surprises me that one side of the House here, with this particular bill, wants to water that piece of legislation down, wants to make it less than what it is, and wants to give people less rights than what they currently have. Now, yes, we did hear from those eight small organisations who were in favour of the bill. One of their main concerns around wanting this piece of legislation was that they felt that it was onerous and a burden on them, and they felt that that was hard when trying to get volunteers into their associations or into their organisations. I think there’s a wider conversation that needs to be held there.

I think the nature of volunteering has changed somewhat in this country, and that maybe organisations—and I know that I have gone through this in my own clubs and service clubs that I am a member of. We need to relook at what we’re meaning when we’re saying “volunteering”. We need to look at whether there are alternatives and ways that we can make things different for those people, to encourage different people to come in to help volunteer. I do not believe for a moment, hearing those organisations speak in the select committee process, that the health and safety Act is completely—or is at all, even—behind why they are not getting the number of volunteers into their organisation. I think that, as I said, a different conversation actually needs to happen there.

I think, though, for me, this is the big point that I took out of the whole of the select committee process: the advisers said to us that they considered that the bill as introduced presents a risk that it could extend the exclusion considerably wider than intended. So as it was written in that particular bill, this didn’t, or could be interpreted that it didn’t, just go towards looking at those small volunteer associations. Our advisers told us that it could be interpreted quite differently, and that’s where we could have a big risk to education.

We had some people who came in to present to us on education: people that were representing sole-charge schools, representing kōhanga reo playcentres, who do have a large volunteer base or are actually based on a volunteer base—mainly volunteers—but could actually employ someone for under the 100 hours.

Now, in those situations our advisers did say to us that there is a chance that that could be considered and interpreted under this particular bill—that they would come and this exemption would apply to them. I struggle with that when you’re working in an education setting that you wouldn’t have the same rights and health and safety rights as anyone else. I think that was the point for me where I thought that, really, this cannot progress and I know that for a lot of members on this side that that is when they felt exactly the same.

We heard from the member opposite, Harete Hipango, who put this bill forward, that in the first reading it talked about business as usual, and this wasn’t business. I think there is probably a little bit of a misinterpretation of the phrase “business as usual” there, because, for these organisations, health and safety is the business of keeping their workers safe. It is absolutely critical that they are keeping their workers safe so that we are not creating that second tier of worker. It is that business. To interpret that statement as business, as in the business realm, is a little bit—well, not quite as it was intended in that first reading. So this should be business as usual. It is really important that we see health and safety in every single organisation in this country, whether it is a paid, big organisation—as I’ve said right at the beginning—or whether it is a small volunteer organisation. It is critically important that we see health and safety as central to that business or that organisation, and it is business as usual.

We heard from organisations such as, as I’ve said, Volunteering New Zealand, who very much said the whole way through the organisation that the workers and the volunteers should not be subjected to a lower level of protection at all. We heard from the National Council of Women, who believe that the health and safety of every New Zealander is equally important, regardless of their employment status. We heard from the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, who also oppose this bill, Mr Assistant Speaker, and I ask your indulgence that I read this particular quote out, which states, “this bill undermines fundamental principles of a coherent and consistent approach to health and safety at work and would compromise the health and safety of volunteers.”

Many of our people that actually presented to the Education and Workforce Committee and presented orally to the select committee weren’t just concerned about the health and safety of the paid staff; they were concerned about the health and safety of the volunteers, as well. One last quote that I’d ask your indulgence that I read out here, Mr Assistant Speaker, is from the Cancer Society of New Zealand. They said, “Excluding certain volunteer-involving organisations goes against the principles of the [Health and Safety at Work] Act that workers have the right to go home safely after work (the pay scale is irrelevant) and the cost of compliance cannot be more important than the health and safety of the workers.” That is the crux of it. Every single New Zealander wherever they work is important to this country. We need to take it really seriously here in this House that we keep their health and safety paramount. Thank you.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you very much. I stand on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call on this Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. Before I start my contribution, I want to genuinely thank the member across from me, Harete Hipango, for bringing this bill to the House. We did support it in the first reading to get to select committee to hear from submitters, and, genuinely, New Zealand First supports the intent of what it is that you are trying to fix right here.

As you’ve already articulated, and as we’ve already said to you, we won’t be supporting this moving forward, and there’s good reason—

Andrew Bayly: Why?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Well, if you listen, I’ll tell you, Mr Bayly. That reason is quite simply because we don’t think it goes far enough when it looks at the unintended consequences that the employment relations health and safety amendment bill originally did. Now, I can say that New Zealand First was the only party in the House, in 2016, when this bill was actually introduced, that didn’t support the bill. Now, we 100 percent support the health and well-being of every single New Zealander going to work, whether it be for volunteer or other, but there was a number of unintended consequences that this bill raised. This was one of those unintended consequences.

It was actually the select committee that I sat on with Mr Bayly where we had serious debates about some of these unintended consequences, and there was agreement even in select committee about some of these issues. But when we put our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) forward to try and fix up some of these unintended consequences, we were actually shot down. Now, we’re not opposing your bill for that reason, and we’re not playing petty politics here, but we believe, as part of the five-year review, we need to look at a wider scope of work to tidy up some of those anomalies.

Let’s just go through this bill—what this actually does. Where you’ve got two identical volunteer, not-for-profit organisations—and there’s nearly 100,000 of these types of operations around the country—but where we’ve got two identical operations working next to each other, one which has 100 percent volunteer organisation, with no persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), there is no legal culpability for any of the people giving their time in service to this specific industry. And there are hundreds of examples, from football clubs and rugby clubs and fishing clubs and hunting and tramping clubs, netball clubs, etc. There’s a plethora of them, but an identical organisation set up right next door with the same structure—with the exception that they’ve got a chairperson that’s got a remunerated salary, because they do all the rosters or they submit all of the council application forms; they’re having a paid position. We’ve got one organisation over here which, if there is any issue with health and safety, then nobody is legally culpable, but just because we’ve actually put somebody with a small remunerative package, or up to 2½ full-time staff, this person is legally culpable for any mishap or accident in a workplace. Now, that is an anomaly. It wasn’t designed to be that way, that you could have identical situations in a volunteer situation. So in discussions with the Minister at great length as part of this review, this specific issue will come up again, and it will be looked at seriously as to how we can best tidy it up.

The other unintended consequence, which is in alignment with this one here but comes up in section 37 of the principal Act, is around PCBUs, where a PCBU is also an employee or a worker. In this situation, where you’ve got a husband and wife, a de facto relationship, or a partnership in a farm—and I’ll use the farm as an example, because it’s a great example—where the husband and the wife in this situation are both a PCBU and a worker. Say the husband goes out on his quad bike, doesn’t put his helmet on, and has an accident where he’s seriously harmed; automatically, the wife becomes the PCBU, because he was the worker that was injured. The wife, who’s still alive, the wife that is dealing with being a grieving partner, is legally culpable for that. Now, that’s not the intention of the Health and Safety at Work Act. This was raised with Minister Michael Woodhouse when we were going through this. This was raised at great length with National. There are a number of these minor technical issues—unintended consequences—that this bill has, and to fix this up today right now leaves a whole lot of other work that still needs to be addressed.

So we’re not turning our back on this at all. In fact, we believe that more work needs to be done, and we need to see collegiality across the House when it does come up. These are real situations, not undermining the fact that every single member in this House, every single person in this country, every worker and every volunteer in this nation wants to see our workers and our volunteers come home safely every single day. We do have an abominable record for the harm that is caused in workplaces, largely in the non-voluntary sector, but in certain sectors—agriculture and forestry, etc.—we need to do as much as we can, and I go back to that point. New Zealand First did not support the bill going through the House. We were the only party that didn’t, not because we don’t want to see safety in the workplaces but because we wanted to make this bill better than what it was. We knew that the National Party agreed with our concerns. We talked about it at great length, but when an SOP was put forward, they were shut down.

Another unintended consequence of the current bill right now is that when it comes to very, very important personal protective equipment (PPE), we all understand that an employer should ensure that their employees have got their personal protective equipment in—their PPE. But under this bill, no levy or charge can be put on the employee. Now, I agree that every single employee should have protective equipment given to them free. However, with no personal responsibility being labelled on the worker, they lose their equipment, they give their equipment away, and it is an absolute cost to a business—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How is that to do with volunteers?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —that we could tidy up. By fair wear and tear and looking at the personal protective equipment—I mean, Mr Woodhouse, you’ve got your head in the sand if you don’t understand.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, I just know what this bill says. It’s got nothing to do with what you’re talking about.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: When you talk to the businesses, this is a problem. This is—I’m talking exactly about why our support for this bill is not going forward. It is very important for people to understand some of the other unintended consequences that the National Party didn’t pick up on when they had the opportunity to. You were playing petty politics, and we want to fix this bill up to make it a better bill, moving forward.

The submissions were exactly as we said—what we wanted to hear from was those voluntary organisations. We had a small but significant amount of submissions put forward. Going through and reading those, I heard those for and I read those against. I have to say that I think some of the intent behind some of the unintended consequences of this was a little bit lost. People were diminishing and saying that people that were working inside a voluntary organisation were somehow less protected, and that’s not true. The reality is that every single person in a workplace has got an absolute duty of care, a responsibility, to their own health and safety as well as that of other people. This bill didn’t undermine that at all, and I think that was misconstrued.

What we think is the right pathway moving forward is that at the five-year mark of this current legislation, we give it a serious review. We as a Parliament should come together to look at this objectively, to think about the well-being and welfare of people. There is a heck of a lot of bureaucratic overload put on inside this legislation and I think we can cut through some of that red tape and put genuine health and safety first. Those costs are, obviously, being put on to some of these workplaces, and some of them, dare I say it, are a little bit ridiculous. I mean, it’s great if you own a scaffolding company, but I’ve just built a house, and I had to have scaffolding all the way up around my house for about three months at some ridiculous cost because of the concerns over health and safety.

So I think there is some clarity and some tidying-up of some of that bureaucratic overload, but there are just those unintended consequences. So, again, to the member Harete Hipango: for bringing this bill to the House, we thank you. It’s not a lost cause. It’s not a lost bill. New Zealand First is still there. We haven’t changed our view on it, but we believe that more work needs to be done, because I believe this issue is larger than just this one point that has been raised. So thank you to the House for listening, and we will continue our work together.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. I want to start by congratulating my colleague Harete Hipango for her bill coming to this stage, and it came to this stage because, as we have just heard from the New Zealand First member Clayton Mitchell, they supported it in the first reading. It’s quite disappointing to see that they are not supporting it any more. I was actually waiting to hear a reason from that member for not supporting it any more, and the only reason I heard was exactly what the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety, the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway said, which was that they are doing a big review. The review is going to happen in 2020—that’s what we hear—but here is an opportunity to fix this right now, because we have this bill in front of us. So why miss this opportunity and wait until 2020? I couldn’t see any reasonable argument for that in that whole speech.

This bill is not intended to undermine the health and safety of anybody—volunteers or workers—because when we passed the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, which came into effect in April 2016, at that time we decided to exclude volunteer organisations. We decided to exclude clubs and recreational bodies, and at that time we were not saying that we were undermining the health and safety of those volunteers. No, the reason was because we knew that those volunteer organisations have a special contribution that they make to our community, and we wanted to make sure that they are able to continue to make the contribution that they make. Volunteer organisations are there to help others in the community, and we have full confidence in them to look after themselves.

Health and safety rules apply to everybody—yes, everybody has to take care of health and safety rules. So to say that volunteer organisations don’t comply with health and safety is not acceptable. The reason for exclusion from the definition of a “person conducting a business or undertaking” is, this time, by allowing them to have somebody working for a maximum of 100 hours. Volunteer organisations allow people to participate in the community in the real sense to provide services that they really believe in and that they are passionate about.

During the select committee process, as we have already heard from various members, we received 34 submissions, and I heard a member saying that it was a small number of submissions. In my view, 34 submissions is a reasonable number for this very simple and pragmatic bill. Of course, we can’t compare this with the End of Life Choice Bill, but if we compare this bill with other bills and compare the numbers of submissions, I think we received a reasonable number of submissions. There was a reasonable amount of interest in this bill. Twelve submitters spoke to the Education and Workforce Committee, and, as the select committee chair, I am really thankful to them for their contribution. I also want to thank all members on the committee as well for their contribution.

The important thing to note here is that this is to allow volunteer organisations to deliver and to be able to do what they actually are intending to do. So there are various ways they can make their services efficient, and that is what we want to do through this legislation.

For example, if volunteer organisations are working in the field of providing help to victims of domestic violence, they’ll be out there, talking to clients and taking them to various places. It could be the Ministry of Social Development, for financial assistance, or it could be a safe house or it could be a lawyer. So they are really good at doing those things. Maybe they need somebody to do some work in their office—just simple admin work. Maybe they need somebody to actually come and advise them on health and safety, for argument’s sake. So the health and safety of those volunteers is important too, and maybe they are not able to find a volunteer who is able to come in and advise them on health and safety. These people are dealing with these other people that are going through some really traumatic situations and maybe they need some counselling.

So this would have allowed these volunteer organisations to have the ability to have someone come and work for a maximum of 100 hours to provide such services, or it could be just applying for funding, because these volunteer organisations do struggle with funding applications because they don’t have the expertise and they have to apply to 50 or 20 different donors or funders to be successful—to get enough money to keep going.

So I think the Government members need to reconsider their approach, and I challenge Government members. There is still time, because we are going through the second reading—we haven’t finished the second reading. So I’m asking—I’m urging—Government members to reconsider their approach, because there are 1.2 million people in our country that are contributing their time as volunteers. They’ll be really grateful—these 1.2 million people will be really grateful to Government members if they consider supporting them. But no, I don’t see any response from Government members sitting there, and it looks like they have already decided. New Zealand First, of course, supported this bill in the first reading, and now, of course, they can’t support it. We know that, because they have to vote in line with Labour and the Greens. So I think it comes down to that.

Why wait until 2020? This is the opportunity. So I’m urging Government members to reconsider their approach. There is still time; we are going through the second reading. It’s really disappointing to see that the Government is not supporting this very important bill, and I support this bill and commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koe to the member Harete Hipango for bringing your first member’s bill. It’s always a great privilege to have a member’s bill before the House. We’re not supporting your bill tonight, but I commend you for the work that you’ve done on it and the work in the Education and Workforce Committee. I just wanted to talk a little bit about what the bill actually does—it actually amends section 17 of the Health and Safety at Work Act—just so that the people sitting at home listening tonight and thinking “What the hell are they talking about?” might actually get an understanding of exactly what the change is that’s being proposed.

The meaning of a PCBU—I think people may have heard that used a few times tonight: it stands for “a person conducting a business or undertaking”. It was introduced in the 2015 Act. Currently, there’s a section which includes a definition of a volunteer association. The Health and Safety at Work Act as it stands excludes volunteer organisations that are solely run by volunteers. So that’s the Act as it stands. Now, this bill before us tonight amends that section and extends that exclusion—so away from just volunteer organisations that are run by volunteers—to associations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours a week. I haven’t heard an explanation—and I didn’t sit on the select committee for the whole time that this bill was discussed; I came in at the end—as to why 100 hours a week; where that came from. Was it plucked out of the air? Was it based on some sort of analysis? I’d be interested for any further speakers to actually expand on that, because it is a curious number.

So the bill as it stands tonight before us would exempt volunteer associations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours a week from their person conducting a business or undertaking obligations that stand under the Health and Safety at Work Act. So what are those obligations? Those obligations include not levying workers for protective equipment or requiring them to provide their own. So that means that if you’re doing something that is not safe that you need protective equipment for, your employer or the association that you volunteer or work for actually is required to provide you with that. That means that they’d be exempt from that, so people would have to provide their own protective equipment. The obligations include a duty to engage with workers on health and safety—well, goodness, that’s kind of a bit basic—and a duty to ensure as far as reasonably practicable that workplaces are without health and safety risks. So could somebody tell me across the House tonight what is onerous about that, and why should there be an exemption for volunteer organisations that employ staff for fewer than 100 hours per week from those obligations?

I’ve got a couple of questions for the National Party tonight. Does this reflect the policy of the National Party? I think the Minister, earlier, when he spoke, raised the question: is this the direction that they’re going in, and is this going to move into other areas, such as small business? So the former Minister in this area is actually sitting in the House, and it would be great to hear whether or not it is National Party policy and what he thinks about it, because it’s not onerous. In fact, when the eight submissions that were in support of this bill—which were nearly all from smaller sports and recreation clubs and smaller special-interest groups that were actually involved in things like animal welfare, etc.—came to express their concern about the compliance burden arising from their obligations as PCBUs, which is, again, persons conducting a business or undertaking, they were asked to talk about actual compliance matters that they were struggling with or that directly impacted on their activities. Now, my understanding is—and please correct me if I’m wrong; I didn’t hear those submissions personally—that they struggled to say what those onerous compliance burdens actually were, and that the issue was more a perception issue.

The Minister mentioned this again tonight—that it was a perception issue, and that it did raise some issues around what the perceptions were, but they couldn’t say what their compliance issues actually were. I’ve just read out to the House tonight what the obligations are: protective equipment, engaging with workers, having a safe workplace. Isn’t that what we should all have in New Zealand? Isn’t that what we should all aspire to? There should be no exceptions.

So I struggle to understand what it is that is actually trying to be achieved here through this legislation, unless—and this is where I’ve got real concerns—as a couple of the submitters have suggested, there is a second tier of health and safety that is being sought here which, essentially, creates a second tier of workers or people who are working in volunteer organisations where the standards that are expected where they work are different to other workplaces. Now, is that what we want in this country? As Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said tonight, “At this time in our history as a country, surely we do not want to be going in that direction.” Not after Pike River, which should have taught all of us a fundamental lesson that we should never ever compromise on health and safety in our workplaces ever again, and that we should never ever want to dilute it in any way ever again.

The Cancer Society of New Zealand talks about the devaluing of voluntary work and voluntary associations that this bill signals, and their fear is that it signals—and I am desperately concerned that it signals this; and this is what I want to know from the National Party—a policy shift towards a two-tier system for health and safety. I can’t believe—well, I hope that I can’t believe—that the former Minister Michael Woodhouse would ever support that. Therefore, I am perplexed as to why this bill was actually brought before the House in the first place.

This is the second bill tonight that I’ve spoken on which really talks about culture. It goes to a culture change issue and the importance of a culture that is around health and safety where it becomes endemic in our country, where moving away from highest possible health and safety standards is just not tolerated. This bill moves towards a situation where it becomes tolerated for a certain sector of our workforce. We cannot tolerate that as a country. That’s why we oppose this bill.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you very much. I’m pleased to take a short call. I absolutely congratulate my colleague Harete Hipango on bringing a members’ bill into this House. On one level I can understand the rationale behind wanting to make it easier for volunteer organisations. The rationale put up has been that it is about making it easier, removing the heavy—and what my colleague Harete Hipango sees as an overdone—burden of compliance; for volunteer organisations to be exempt from health and safety in work law so that they can retain and recruit more staff, volunteers, and be able to pay volunteers, and still remain as a volunteer organisation for the purposes of that exemption under law.

I have some sympathy, not so much with the rationale but the intentions behind it, because we all in this House understand the importance and the backbone of volunteer work in our community and in our country. And that has always been the case, and particularly picking up on the examples that have been used of those types of volunteer organisations that might be a focus of the member’s bill, thinking of sole-charge schools, te kōhanga reo and playcentres. Even in that specific description of the types of organisations, I have alarm bells ringing. We will not be supporting a bill that removes that duty of care and that compliance, removes the importance for every worker, every volunteer to come under health and safety regulations and health and safety standards—and really what my previous colleague Clare Curran indicated, which is that culture and urgency of health and safety.

I will even concede that the member Harete Hipango does not want to see people unsafe—absolutely understand that. It is simply that this bill is not the way that we will address that perceived compliance. And I absolutely urge us all to take note of the select committee report recommendations which says instead we must provide those volunteer organisations with the training, with the knowledge, with the support to ensure compliance. What really struck me, reading through this very short bill and the report, was thinking of those volunteers who might be at risk and vulnerable with such leeway—vulnerable if it is even something as simple as not being able to speak up about some safety measure that they know—or that they might not even know—should be there and that adds a further risk of danger or of being unsafe in the workplace in any way.

I’m thinking about those volunteers who—and it may not at all come from bad malice intention from the volunteer organisation, but it simply would mean a lesser safety standard. And so I’m thinking of those particular volunteers as well and that we actually don’t end up even helping the organisation by removing, by lessening and watering down, the health and safety standards.

I think I wanted to pick up on—I was quite confused, actually, by the term “community purposes”, and then it appears that advisers also said that because that is not clearly defined, it could create uncertainty in the law. So my understanding is the term “community purposes” has been proposed in the member’s bill to be changed under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and so immediately I think I want to support the committee’s flag of the possible confusion.

Now, I think it might have been my colleague Jan Tinetti who raised the issue of the submissions and that there were 34 written submissions: eight were in favour, four neutral, and 22 opposed. I think—correct me if I’m wrong—but I think Jan Tinetti was raising that those submissions that opposed perhaps have been unfairly bagged as larger voluntary organisations who have a head start. But I think my colleague Jan Tinetti went on to highlight that that’s not strictly true and wanted to bat that back. So I did pick that up, reading through this select committee report, that submitters were clear that more targeted training is what needs to happen as opposed to using a legal avenue and removing legal requirements for health and safety.

So the Greens are very clear: we want all workers—all workers—to be protected. We want that duty of care to apply for all organisations. The bill doesn’t align with the Green Party policy on ensuring that all workers have the right to work in a safe and healthy workplace and that all paid employees should be covered by health and safety legislation, because we just start to tip it far too much in the wrong direction. So a short call from me tonight. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. We will be opposing this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call—five minutes. I call the Hon Alfred Ngaro.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s an honour to take a call in the second reading for my friend and colleague Harete Hipango, as we are talking about the Health and Safety at Work (Volunteer Associations) Amendment Bill. Having previously been the Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, the sector is one that is often misunderstood and underrepresented in many different ways. There are 157 million hours per annum that are gifted to this community—to this nation—every single year. That’s quite significant: 114,132 not-for-profit organisations and 27,900 registered charitable trusts. That’s really significant. The significant point that I want to focus on in this speech, in regards to this bill, is that 90 percent of those who are part of those organisations are volunteers—only 10 percent are paid staff. And the biggest challenge, and those of us who have run not-for-profit organisations know, which relates to this bill, is the challenge to get certain expertise. It could be legal, it could be accounting—financial, in fact. Those are the skill sets that have the most burden on those organisations in regards to having that support.

So why does this bill becomes significant? I want to point to three reasons why. First of all, this was a bill that came from the community. There were a number of providers who said, “Look, with this bill around the Health and Safety at Work Act, there was a need to understand the unintended consequences of that bill.” And, in particular, it was around the person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU), and I know that the member the Hon Clare Curran has talked about that and the PCBU. She asked the question “So where was the burden?” First of all, I want to also declare that Marama Davidson was talking about the duty of care. This does not remove the duty of care. Where the burden lies, in regard to this bill, is in particular around the PCBU. It’s the personal liability.

Now, for someone who’s an accountant who wants to contribute maybe 10 to 15 hours to a not-for-profit organisation—it could be a refuge; it could be a welfare organisation—they know that they need that support. Back of office becomes critically important to the integrity of that organisation. So when they offer their services, they purely want to do it, come in, do the books, and leave. Under the current legislation, they are now liable for $300,000 under personal liability, and as an organisation the organisation is liable for $600,000. So what we are asking for is discretion here. It does not remove the duty of care of responsibility to supply those sorts of services, whether it be counselling, youth work, or social work. This is purely around the back of office support services that are critically important.

And that’s the submission that you would have heard. Members on the opposite side talked about small organisations. It was almost demeaning those small organisations. Well, that’s the point of the bill: a private member’s bill is all about small changes—tweaks that happen to a major piece of legislation. It’s those tweaks that actually help because they come out of unintended consequences. The message that we want to send to our communities out there, who have come to us in this regard, to my good friend and colleague Harete Hipango, is about the fact that this unintended consequence will impact the service and the generosity of support that we want to give.

I want to tell the members on the other side, and those who are listening, that we now have at the moment 157 million hours, but we have a reduction over the period of the last 10 years of those who are volunteering as far as personnel. They are reducing because they’re time poor; they don’t have the opportunity to give as much time as they used to. However, what they will do, in the time that is available to them, is they want to be able to enter into that organisation, provide their service and their support, and be able to leave. Under this legislation at the moment, what it will currently do is put the burden of responsibility—and, no, I’ll just remind the member across there who’s shouting—the personal liability of $300,000. It’s not too hard to ask that there be discretion here that would allow for those. It does not mean that they will be in situations to provide a service that could jeopardise the integrity of that organisation; it’s simply to support them. That’s what this bill was. We would hope that New Zealand First would see that. They supported it at the first reading to go to the select committee. When it came out of the select committee, yes, it did say that they didn’t want it; however, it is only a small bill. Members’ bills are only small changes—tweaks—to the biggest legislation.

I just want to reiterate, and I hope that in the few hours that we have left—well, we probably won’t, because we won’t finish the reading of this bill, but maybe this is important because it’ll be given consideration over the next week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.