Tuesday, 2 April 2019

TUESDAY, 2 APRIL 2019

TUESDAY, 2 APRIL 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Bills

Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill

Procedure

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I seek leave for the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill to be set down for first reading after general business today, despite Standing Order 285(1)(b); for there to be no debate on the instruction to the select committee to consider the bill despite Standing Order 290; for the bill to be available for second reading on Tuesday, 9 April, despite Standing Order 296; should the member in charge desire, for the bill to be set down for the committee of the whole House forthwith, following the second reading, despite Standing Order 299; and for the bill to be set down for third reading forthwith, following the committee stage, despite Standing Order 310.

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

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Research, Science, and Innovation

1. JO LUXTON (Labour) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: Will the Government’s research and development tax incentive, which will apply from 1 April 2019, help boost R & D in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Yes, the R & D tax incentive will help a wide range of New Zealand businesses to boost their investment in innovation—

SPEAKER: The question’s answered.

Jo Luxton: How can businesses check whether they’re eligible to receive the R & D tax incentive?

SPEAKER: Order! That doesn’t flow from the question or the answer.

Jo Luxton: What feedback has she heard from business on how the Government’s work on the R & D tax incentive will help them?

SPEAKER: No, that doesn’t flow from the question or the answer.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Will that very, very narrow interpretation of what supplementary questions flow from the answer apply to all 12 questions today?

SPEAKER: I think the member will find that most of the rest of the questions are well enough drafted to have slightly more than a yes or no answer to finish them and, therefore, no available supplementaries.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Acting Prime Minister): In their context, yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is Sir Michael Cullen’s pay of $84,000 by the Government for his work to 6 March on a capital gains tax good value for money?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, first of all, Dr Cullen is being paid in the same way that the criteria was laid out by the National Party when they were in Government, and in that context, given the difficulty of the subject matter and also the composition of that committee of highly trained experts, that’s what we’d expect the cost to be.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he agree with the Hon Willie Jackson, who said recently in this House that at $1,000 a day, Sir Michael is “doing us a favour”, because it’s peanuts?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, compared to what some other people get, yes it is. Anyone who was a serious lawyer would know what I’m talking about—but, of course, you’d have to be a serious lawyer with his own business.

Hon Simon Bridges: Should Sir Michael in fact have been paid more, as Willie Jackson has suggested: “He’s undercharged himself. There’s no doubt about that.”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Could I just say that Dr Cullen has a serious record of being a fine public servant and that’s why the National Party put him in so many jobs.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does the Prime Minister agree he should be paid more than $84,000 for four months’ work?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, to be honest with that member, the reality is that Cabinet left it to the appropriate Minister and he set the rate that the National Party had set in its criteria—no different to what they paid similar people in similar circumstances. So why all of a sudden Mr Cullen is being picked out, despite his frequent appointments by the National Party, is beyond me.

Hon Simon Bridges: Was any of Sir Michael’s pay for deep contemplation or is it only the current, not the former Deputy Prime Minister—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I can answer that one.

SPEAKER: No, you can’t.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does he agree with Willie Jackson that, “We need a capital gains tax because we need a more fairer, a more equitable society.”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I say that the Government has received the Cullen report. We are in deep contemplation of that. We’ll be soon announcing—[Interruption] We’ll be shortly announcing our conclusion and can I say that in that state of deep contemplation we can still beat them any day of the week.

Hon Simon Bridges: Can the Prime Minister elaborate for me what his deep contemplation looks like?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It looks like us over here and him over there.

Hon Simon Bridges: By that, does he mean asleep on the job?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I just say that we decided that the endangerment of New Zealand’s embassies—

Hon Simon Bridges: Wake up and smell the coffee, Winston.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and high commissions offshore and our people in their thousands around the world—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. Sorry. I think the member knows that’s an inappropriate interjection. He’s had his warning for the day.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The reality is we went to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to ensure that they understood the true facts about the circumstances at Christchurch. Can I say that unless you were there and saw the reaction—and I have a colleague who was there—they will never know how successful that trip was.

Hon Simon Bridges: How did he set the record straight when, yet an hour afterwards, the video of the massacre was being played?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I just say that if it’s an hour afterwards, then the President of Turkey was still at the conference. More importantly, before we even left, we had the ambassador for Turkey in to make it very clear how we viewed the repetition of that tape. Now, those are the facts, and you can have all the fake news imitation you like, but that’s what we did—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —and I feel—and my country, hopefully, feels—better for it.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will Māori land recovered under the Treaty of Waitangi settlements be exempted under the Government’s proposed capital gains tax, as Meka Whaitiri has suggested recently to the Gisborne Herald?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I just say that this attempt to provide an ethnic and racist view on a very serious study is bound to fail.

SPEAKER: Order! The member will withdraw and apologise. He cannot suggest that that member is racist.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: I withdraw and apologise. Could I just say that any suggestion of the nature that he is putting out there to try and put a wedge between the people of this country based on race is bound to fail. We will ensure that this is a comprehensive law—[Interruption] I beg your pardon?

Hon Member: It’s a legitimate question.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: How would you know it’s legitimate, given your background? With the greatest respect—

SPEAKER: Order! And the member has a name, and it’s not “you”, because “you” is me, all right? No; further supplementary. We’ve had enough.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the Government considering introducing a capital gains tax that exempts Māori from the capital gains tax?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I say that the report will be decided upon shortly, and an announcement will be made, no doubt, by the Minister of Finance. I can say that it was the National Party who dropped the Māori corporate entity tax rate down to 17 percent—National did that.

Hon Simon Bridges: Can I take from that he disagrees with what Meka Whaitiri told the Gisborne Herald?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Can I just say that in a coalition where the bountiful nature of our ideas requires serious discussion, a lot of members will say a lot of things, but in the end, what we announce officially will be the Government’s policy, and it’ll be sooner rather than later before that member.

Hon Simon Bridges: On that, is it Cabinet’s position—or is it his position—that the response by the Government to the Tax Working Group report will still be delivered “in early April”?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: As I recall, the Minister of Finance made it very clear it would be in April of 2019, and we’re in the second day of that month. So there was no time line set on the first week, second week, or third or fourth week, for that matter, but April was the time given, and if he’s patient, as we have been whilst we go around the country and talk to businesses and farmers and workers around New Zealand, then he will have his answer very shortly.

Hon Simon Bridges: Stuart Nash, the Minister of Revenue, said at a conference in Queenstown recently that it would be in early April. Will the Prime Minister confirm that, or is there a slightly different time line?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: The reality is that certain things have happened in this country in the last 2½ weeks—

Hon Paula Bennett: Just answer the question.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: —I am answering the question—which have required serious attention, not only in our forward planning with respect of our diary. That being the case, there’ll be an answer from this Government on the Tax Working Group’s report in April this year.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement in February 2018, “growth is expected to continue to travel along on average at about 3 percent over the next four years”, and has he revised his view in light of annual GDP growth to December 2018 of 2.3 percent?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): In answer to the first part of the question, yes, that is what Treasury and independent economists were forecasting at the time for growth in the year to June of each of those four years. In answer to the second part of the question, I would highlight for the member that Statistics New Zealand has reported annual average GDP growth for the 2018 year was 2.8 percent or, as some might say, “about 3 percent”.

Hon Amy Adams: Has his view been impacted by today’s Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion from New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, which points to a further softening in annual economic growth to below 2 percent in the first quarter of this year?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I note in the last quarterly survey they were projecting, for the numbers that the member wants to refer to—the December to December quarter—2 percent, and that ended up being 2.3 percent. So we’ll see whether or not they end up being accurate.

Hon Amy Adams: When reflecting on economic growth, how does he reconcile his statement that the Government “knows that growing the economy requires more than just an increasing population” with New Zealand having had zero economic growth per person over the last six months?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I do note that in the last quarter it did go up, and I do note that it’s forecast GDP per capita to be 1.1 percent. We’ll see where that gets when the forecasts are finalised.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, what does it say about this Government’s economic management that, despite an already record low official cash rate, the Reserve Bank is now indicating further rate cuts are likely to be needed to stimulate the weakening economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: If the member took the time to read the statement from Adrian Orr, the very first thing he talked about was global volatility and the decline in growth in a number of our trading partners. New Zealand is not immune from what happens in the rest of the world, but the good news is that the fundamentals of the economy are strong, the books are in surplus, unemployment is low, and this is an economy that will be able to withstand global headwinds, but we will not be unaffected by them.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, given that he wants to blame global conditions, has he seen that ANZ have recently concluded that, while international headwinds remain just risks, a domestic slow-down is concrete?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would note that the New Zealand economy began slowing down at the beginning of 2017, when the party opposite was in place. I would also note that, for the GDP numbers for the December 2018 quarter, New Zealand had 0.6 percent growth compared to Australia with 0.2 percent, Canada with 0.1 percent, the euro area with 0.2 percent, Japan with 0.5 percent, and an OECD average of 0.3 percent. The economy continues to do well in the face of global headwinds.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, when considering the Tax Working Group’s recommended capital gains tax, will he take on board comments from Harbour Asset Management, who have noted that a capital gains tax would lower investment, lower productivity, lower employment, and lower economic growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We consider all of the views that are coming forward around the question of the Tax Working Group, and, as the Prime Minister has said, we are considering that report and our response will be coming forthwith.

Question No. 1 to Minister

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just want to raise an issue with regard to your ruling on the first question. You ruled that because the question was a yes/no primary question, that limited the further supplementaries that could be asked. The question as lodged was changed by your office to remove the word “how” from it. If you are going to change members’ questions to narrow them to only a yes/no question and then restrict the supplementaries that can be followed up, that is going to inhibit members on both sides of the House—

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. First of all, there’s a question of timeliness. The second is that I don’t change questions; members agreed to them as changed. Your office agreed to them.

Question No. 4—Social Development

4. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What are the changes to superannuation and veteran’s pension rates as of 1 April 2019?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): On 1 April 2019, net superannuation and veterans pension rates went up 2.6 percent. The annual net rate for a couple receiving superannuation increased to $32,892.08. When taking into account last year’s increases, the annual net rate of superannuation has increased $1,676.48 since we came into Government. This increase comes as a direct result of growing wages, including changes to the minimum wage. When there is wage growth in New Zealand, everyone benefits, including the 780,000 senior—

SPEAKER: All right. Order! The member has more than answered the question.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What will this mean for people receiving superannuation and the veterans pension?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In dollar terms, this means an eligible retired couple both receiving superannuation or the veterans pension will receive an extra $15.82 per week in the hand. This increase exceeds the 2.1 percent increase in prices experienced by superannuitant households between December 2017 and December 2018, reported by Statistics New Zealand. We hope that a little bit extra in the pocket will help superannuitants towards meeting the costs of living and continuing to lead fulfilling lives as older citizens.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why is this important?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As at the end of March 2018, there were 780,000 people receiving superannuation or veterans pensions. We also know that New Zealanders are living longer. The New Zealand population aged 65 and over is expected to reach over one million in the next 10 years. This represents the largest cohort of people receiving income support from the Government. We want to ensure that they are supported to age positively and continue leading fulfilling lives.

Question No. 5—Housing and Urban Development

5. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many unsold KiwiBuild houses have been bought by the Crown as part of the underwrite and in what developments have these purchases occurred?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I am advised that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has purchased five homes at Northlake, in accordance with the terms of the contract.

Hon Judith Collins: Will KiwiBuild pay any real estate marketing costs of selling KiwiBuild houses that have been purchased by the Crown as part of the underwrite and later sold to eligible buyers?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: KiwiBuild will pay the marketing costs when it’s selling homes that are owned by the Government. At Northlake, there are five homes that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development has purchased, and six out of the 10 homes built in the first tranche have sold.

Hon Judith Collins: Who will pay for the upkeep and maintenance costs while houses purchased by the Crown sit unsold?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The owner will pay the upkeep and maintenance costs, but the fact that these homes are temporarily in the ownership of the Government while they’re on sale and being marketed to KiwiBuild buyers is not a matter for concern. This programme is about sharing the pre-sales risks with developers to ensure that more affordable homes are built, and that is what’s happened.

Hon Judith Collins: Is it correct that he has approved binding contracts for more than 200 KiwiBuild houses to be built in Wānaka even when only five of the current houses have sold?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, six of the current houses have sold. They’ve only been completed in the last few weeks, and it’s true to say that the Queenstown-Lakes District has the most expensive housing in New Zealand. Lower-quartile house prices in the district are at $825,000. On average, the KiwiBuild homes in that development are selling in the low $500,000s. Interest.co.nz’s housing affordability report puts mortgage payments in that district at 57 percent of income for first-home buyers.

Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question is: has he approved binding contracts for more than 200 KiwiBuild houses to be built in Wānaka? I don’t think he’s addressed that question.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I have: over the next three years.

Hon Judith Collins: How will costs associated with purchasing KiwiBuild houses impact the Government’s ability to recycle revenue and build 100,000 houses over 10 years?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The point of the underwrite is that we’re sharing the pre-sales risk with developers. Those funds, as in the six homes that have sold at the Northlake development in Wānaka—that money is then recycled back into the programme and more homes are built. As was shown in the business case for the Buying off the Plans scheme, the projected net cost is zero, because the funds are recycled.

Hon Judith Collins: How can the developer be sharing any of the downside on this when, actually, it’s the Crown and KiwiBuild that are going to have to pick up all the costs of any losses?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, there are a number of risks that developers face in building homes. The point of this programme is to share the pre-sales risk. Fewer than 5 percent of new builds over the last decade have been in the affordable price range. This is about incentivising developers to build affordable homes, and it’s working.

Question No. 6—Transport

6. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has been made on delivering the Auckland Transport Alignment Project?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): I’m advised that excellent progress has been made implementing the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP). The $28 billion investment plan—agreed with Auckland Council—is the largest 10-year transport programme in the city’s history. I’m advised that progress includes 15 new electric train carriages ordered, with the first units expected this year; construction has commenced on the Panmure to Pakuranga busway; the Northern Busway extension has been contracted; Crown Infrastructure Partners have unlocked 9,000 new houses at Milldale through a $90 million infrastructure partnership; the business case for the eastern airport access and design work is under way; planning for a new greenfield development that will account for more than 30 percent of Auckland’s growth is progressing on the basis of transport connections included in ATAP; widening of the Southern Motorway is under way; the consultation on Mill Road has been completed, and Auckland Transport (AT) and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) are considering proposals as we speak; and the business case for Penlink has been completed and is now with Auckland Transport.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What’s his response to Shane Ellison, CEO of Auckland Transport, who has written to NZTA outlining concerns that five critical ATAP projects are being held up because “business cases and funding requests are not being approved in a timely way.”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Our Government wants to see transport projects rolled out as quickly as possible, and I’m aware of the longstanding concerns that local government have about the time it takes for transport projects to come to fruition. I’ve instructed the board of NZTA that the agency should work closely with local and regional councils, including Auckland Transport, to clear away any obstacles to rolling out our transport programme.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What are the five critical projects that Mr Ellison is concerned about?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: You’ll have to ask Mr Ellison that.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he telling the House that the CEO of AT has written saying that five critical transport projects in Auckland are being held up because of his key Government agency, and he’s not across it to the extent that he knows what those five are?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: So for the member’s information the five are, according to the letter from Auckland Transport: the Wellesley Street bus improvements, the Papakura to Pukekohe electrification, the Matiātia landside transport networks strategic case, the Puhinui Interchange, and the Huapai road upgrade.

Jami-Lee Ross: What progress has been made on a Botany to Manukau busway—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. He seemed to be quoting from an official document, I would ask—

SPEAKER: No, he was quoting from a letter; the member knew that. The member asked him to quote from the letter and he did. It is not an official document.

Jami-Lee Ross: What progress has been made on a Botany to Manukau busway since I last questioned him on this transport project in February this year?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Early scoping work is under way for the airport to Manukau, Puhinui, and further up into east Auckland—the rapid transit connection. That part of Auckland is perhaps the worst served for public transport services of any other part of the city, and the early planning on that suggests that a rapid transit connection—likely to be bus rapid transit, with a possibility of upgrading to rail—would connect the airport with Manukau, the Puhinui station on the heavy rail line, and further up to Flat Bush and up to Howick.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is Shane Ellison correct to assume that ATAP will struggle to receive 50 percent funding from NZTA due to the National Land Transport Fund being oversubscribed, and therefore there is likely to be a funding shortfall for ATAP projects?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No, in that respect, Mr Ellison is not correct. Our Government’s putting more money into the National Land Transport Programme in this three-year period than has ever happened before. I want to quote Shane Ellison, who said also that “The good news is, for the first time we’ve got alignment on a whole lot of programmes and work, [and] now we’re trying to crack on with delivery,”.

Question No. 7—Forestry

7. CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First) to the Minister of Forestry: What recent announcements has he made regarding the One Billion Trees Programme?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Recently, along with Minister Shaw, I announced that the one billion trees programme remains a grand slam success. In addition to the historical figures, as a consequence of improvements to the emissions trading scheme (ETS), otherwise known as averaging, a colossal additional 89 million trees will be planted. This will have the positive impact of reducing our carbon liability by $1.3 billion.

Clayton Mitchell: How do these ETS changes incentivise tree planting?

Hon SHANE JONES: These improvements incentivise tree planting by stripping red tape—something that has afflicted the ETS system and the forestry sector as it grew, like Topsy, like Turvy, over the last nine years. The averaging simplifies the ability of people to invest in forestry and capture with certainty the carbon up side. It also enables people to identify, with greater ease, land that ought to be moved from current land use patterns into forestry. All up, a substantial improvement on the last nine years.

Clayton Mitchell: What other announcements have been made recently regarding the one billion trees programme?

Hon SHANE JONES: Recently an announcement was made along with the Minister of Corrections that our rhetoric is taking the form of employment reality. The nephs are definitely coming off the couch, and those that are incarcerated are being prepared to work, go and plant trees, and ensure that the devil does not put designs that make idle hands create community mayhem—New Zealand First policy.

SPEAKER: Before we move to the next question, I think I should probably inform a number of members, including the Hon Mr O’Connor, the Hon Mr Goldsmith, and the Hon Mr Bennett, that my hearing is now aided; so I’ve been able to hear a number of your interjections that I might not have been able to previously, and I would recommend that you don’t do it again.

Question No. 8—Education

8. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by all his statements and actions around the Reform of Vocational Education?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes.

Dr Shane Reti: When he said on TV ONE news last night that industry training organisation (ITO) concerns were “scaremongering” and “making it up”, were similar concerns in the New Zealand Herald also scaremongering and making it up in the 7 March editorial titled “Hipkins needs to rethink his tertiary shake-up”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The comments that I was referring to, among many, were things such as that the Government was proposing to take training out of the hands of industry, abolish ITOs, rationalise the polytechs into one mega institute and give that institute the power over all industry training, take industry training away from industry itself and give it to a centralised Government appointed body with no relationship with industry. All of those statements are simply wrong. They are wrong in fact, they are not in the proposals, and they do not reflect what is in the proposals.

Dr Shane Reti: How will there be more tradespeople in apprenticeships under these reforms when electricians employing seven apprentices in Wānaka, four apprentices in Nelson, six apprentices in Invercargill, and 200 apprentices in Dunedin all say they are unlikely to take on apprentices under these reforms?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, one of the challenges, of course, is that we have had a significant drop in the number of people engaged in industry training—40,000 fewer people in industry training during the term of the last National Government. One of the concerns, of course, that we’ve got is that currently only around 15 percent of employers are actually engaged in industry training and there is a very weak link, if any link, between some of the training that’s delivered off the job, through the polytech sector, and the skills that employers are requiring on the job. These are all well-known problems that have been decades in the making, that have never properly been addressed, and that industry training organisations have been arguing, for quite some time, need to be addressed. This Government is addressing them.

Hon Tracey Martin: Can he confirm that the Reform of Vocational Education is still a discussion document, hence why people are discussing it, and that he has also been having intense conversations with ITOs, with business, to make sure that when we do make final decisions, they are going to be the right ones?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, I can confirm that they are currently proposals, although I can’t confirm that consultation is happening with every ITO, because one of the ITOs that’s most loud in its criticism of the short consultation period is refusing to engage in the consultation at all.

Dr Shane Reti: How will there be more tradespeople in apprenticeships under these reforms when an industry employer writes, “If the Government pushes through with this change, I will seriously assess whether I continue training electrical apprentices. In all likelihood, I will probably hire labourers, which is a bad outcome for all of us.”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I understand that employer’s concern, because the information they’ve been given about what the proposals are is factually incorrect.

Dr Shane Reti: What is required for the Minister to delay the 1 January transfer of industry training to polytechnics, given written questions confirm industry is currently training 46,000 apprentices, and polytechnics are training only 1,265?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’d encourage the member to have a thorough read of the consultation document so he understands what the proposals actually are. We’re proposing to give industry and employers more say over the skills that are provided through off-the-job training and on-the-job training, which is something that the industry training sector have been arguing for for quite some time. What we’re also proposing to do is effectively create a one-stop shop for employers around their training needs, so they don’t have to deal with multiple different ITOs and multiple different training providers. They can actually get a much more seamless training system in place, something that employers have been asking for for quite some. The fact that they haven’t had it is probably one of the reasons why only 15 percent of them are currently engaged in any form of formalised industry training.

Question No. 9—Energy and Resources

9. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by her statement made to the BusinessNZ Energy Council breakfast in February that the Government has set the ambitious goal for our country of 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I stand by my full statement to the BusinessNZ Energy Council breakfast in February that we’ve set ambitious goals for our country: 100 percent renewables in a normal hydrological year, and a clean, green, carbon-neutral economy by 2050.

Jonathan Young: Does she agree with Mercury chief executive Fraser Whineray, who, when asked if getting beyond 95 percent renewable electricity was a problem, replied, “Yeah, absolutely. Getting to 100 percent renewable electricity if you are after reducing emissions is the wrong place to go.”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I point that member to the statement that I did make at that breakfast, which was 100 percent renewable electricity in a normal hydrological year. The policy that this Government has set envisions that we will see some peaking through to at least 2035 or beyond. But we are also putting in place the policy work that is required to ensure that, beyond that, we can move to a goal of 100 percent renewable. I also point that member to a comment from Transpower that says, “A renewable future based on New Zealand’s abundance of renewable energy resources is likely to offer the lowest-cost future for consumers.” There are number of industry players that see this as inevitable and desirable.

Jonathan Young: Does she agree with the New Zealand Initiative report that says getting from 97 to 100 percent renewable electricity will cost an extra $800 million, resulting in increased electricity bills for consumers in New Zealand?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I have read the New Zealand Initiative report that came out last week, and what that report also says is that the analysis states that new technologies may change the equation. Again, I point that member to the fact that our policy is 100 percent renewable in a normal hydrological year and envisions some thermal peaking through to at least 2035, and that this is entirely achievable. The numbers that are being bandied about by that member simply don’t reflect our policy.

Jonathan Young: Well, how patient does she think consumers will be for her “100 percent renewable electricity at any cost” ideology, that comes from her and her Government?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I imagine consumers will be incredibly happy about the policy course that this Government is setting, because not only does it allow us to address the issues that we need to but what we also know is that the cheapest forms of generation that will be built are renewables. In 2020, the levelised cost of electricity from solar is 8c a kilowatt hour, wind 6c a kilowatt hour, and gas at 20c a kilowatt hour. If we go through to 2035, that’s 6c for solar, 6c for wind, and 25c for gas; through to 2050, that’s 5c a kilowatt hour, 5c for wind, and 32c for gas. So I’m assuming consumers will be pretty happy with the policy path this Government is on.

Question No. 10—Health

10. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: How is the Government helping to protect New Zealanders against influenza this winter?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Yesterday marked the start of the annual influenza vaccination campaign. Vaccination is the best way to guard against influenza, which each year kills about 400 New Zealanders, with many more requiring hospitalisation. For many New Zealanders, the vaccination will be free. This year’s funded vaccine will protect against four strains of influenza, including updated strains of influenza A and influenza B.

Dr Liz Craig: Who’s eligible for free influenza vaccination?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Vaccination is free for those groups who are most at risk from the flu. This includes those aged 65 and older, pregnant women, and people with chronic or serious health conditions such as heart disease, cancer, or severe asthma. Children aged four and under who have a history of significant respiratory illness are also eligible. A lot of people stand to benefit from the vaccination.

Dr Liz Craig: How many people are expected to benefit from vaccination?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I urge anyone who is eligible for free vaccination to take up the opportunity. Vaccination is also available at GPs and many community pharmacies for a small fee for those who are not eligible. Last year, a record 1.3 million people were immunised against influenza, and I hope that we will see similar numbers again this year.

Question No. 11—Small Business

11. Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki) to the Minister for Small Business: What advice, if any, has he received on what it would cost a small business to value their business ahead of an official valuation date in the event the Government decided to implement a capital gains tax on the sale of businesses, and what is that cost?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Small Business): None.

Hon Jacqui Dean: Does he agree that if every small- and medium-sized - business owner in New Zealand had to pay for a new valuation at around $10,000 apiece, the cost to the wider economy, with no greater productivity, would be approximately $5 billion?

Hon STUART NASH: I have no idea where the member got the figure from—purely hypothetical.

Hon Jacqui Dean: How will the qualifying business assets be valued for the purpose of rollover on the sale of a small business?

Hon STUART NASH: Let me make two points yet again. First of all, the Tax Working Group did not recommend—I’m assuming the member’s talking about the Tax Working Group report—that small businesses had to provide a valuation before V Day. Look at recommendation “n)”. The second thing is the Government is considering all options, and in time—and in time—we will release our recommendations.

Hon Jacqui Dean: If it is impossible, according to the Tax Working Group report, to provide a comprehensive list of intangible property for the calculation of goodwill for small businesses, how, then, will it be possible to calculate goodwill with any sense of accuracy?

Hon STUART NASH: I will just reiterate what the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have said today and what I have said numerous times: we are considering all options, and in time we will make our recommendations known.

SPEAKER: In fact, it was the Prime Minister who said it today.

Question No. 12—Workplace Relations and Safety

12. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety: What is the new hourly adult minimum wage at 1 April 2019 and why did the Government increase it?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): The new adult hourly minimum wage is $17.70 per hour. This Government believes in sharing prosperity more fairly. That’s why we’ve increased the minimum wage by $1.20 per hour, recognising that many New Zealand workers do need more to make do. Unemployment is low, the economy is strong, and the Government books are in good shape. Now is exactly the time to improve wages.

Marja Lubeck: What are the Government’s plans to further increase the minimum wage this term?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: As set out in the coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First, we plan to get to $20 an hour by 2021. I have announced indicative rates for the adult minimum wage of $18.90 for 2020 and $20 for 2021. These rates are subject to market conditions at the time, but indicating these rates in advance allows businesses to plan for the future.

Marja Lubeck: How many working people received a pay increase yesterday?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment estimates that up to 209,200 people received a pay increase yesterday of up to $48 per week. Women, young people, Māori, and Pasifika are overrepresented in minimum-wage roles, and around a quarter of those earning the minimum wage are parents or guardians. This Government is committed to increasing the well-being of all New Zealanders, and steps like this make that a reality.

Bills

Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by Monday, 8 April 2019 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting, except during oral questions, during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, 194(1)(b) and (c).

As we meet today, New Zealand is under a terror threat level of “high”. As we meet today, police are routinely carrying firearms—Bushmaster rifles and Glock pistols—in a significant departure from normal practice. As we meet today, mosques around the country require heightened security measures and a visible police presence to ensure the safety of worshippers. As we meet today, the largest criminal investigation in New Zealand history is under way. Dozens of specialist police investigators, supported by Australian federal and state police, are following up concerns about a number of high-risk individuals. As we meet today, a number of people are before the courts for trying to promote hateful publications and videos of death, for unlawfully possessing weapons, for making threats against our citizens, and for murder.

As we meet today, we are driven by one objective. We are driven by the need to ensure public safety is as strong as it can be. We are also driven by the memory of 50 men, women, and children who were taken from their loved ones on 15 March. Their memory is our responsibility. We don’t ever want to see an attack like this in our country again. We are compelled to act quickly. The Prime Minister announced the morning after the attacks that gun laws must change. That now falls on us as individual MPs and the whole Parliament.

I am grateful for the support of colleagues from across the Chamber, because the attacks in Christchurch exposed a considerable weakness in our current firearms law. The most critical weakness in our firearms law is that too many people have legal access to too many semi-automatic firearms capable of causing significant harm.

The current Arms Act has a legal definition for military-style semi-automatics—or MSSAs, as they are called—that is easily circumvented and is difficult in practice to apply. There are 7,500 firearms licence holders, who between them possess approximately 14,000 MSSA firearms. Many more have semi-automatic firearms in a so-called sporting configuration, and they are easily converted into an MSSA. Far too many people in this country have access to these dangerous firearms for no legitimate purpose but at significant risk to the public. However, more broadly than this, too many people have legal access to the parts and magazines that, in a single change, can easily convert a semi-automatic firearm into a lethal MSSA, which then has the capacity to kill many people very quickly. So, today, we are debating legislation that will substantially tighten the current open and easy access to semi-automatic firearms, to make our country a safer place.

Our current firearms legislation came into force 35 years ago. It dates from the 1980s, a time when New Zealand was more isolated from the rest of the world. There were strong import controls and no internet market place or social media. Since that time, firearms technology has shifted. The weapons market has become global and they’re a significant online community and trading environment.

To bring firearms legislation more up to date and to substantially reduce loopholes and risk, major change is needed. This bill takes the first steps to modernise the Act. It will restrict access to the number of assault rifles and MSSAs, associated parts, and large-capacity magazines. We want to remove firearms that are capable of causing the death and devastation we witnessed on 15 March. We are also banning parts of prohibited firearms or any part that can enable a weapon to be fired as a semi-automatic or fully automatic firearm. It is important to reiterate that the legislation is not directed at law-abiding firearms owners who have legitimate uses for their guns. Our actions, instead, are directed at making sure March 15th never happens again.

Semi-automatic firearms which are commonly used for hunting, pest control, stock management on farms, and duck shooting will not be affected. People can still use a .22 calibre rifle with a maximum 10-round magazine, and a semi-automatic and pump-action shotgun with a maximum five-round magazine. These firearms are widely and safely used amongst our farming and hunting communities. Indeed, today, the Game Animal Council has confirmed that recreational and commercial hunting of large game animals such as deer, pig, and tahr will largely be unaffected. MSSAs and assault rifles are not needed for hunting or stock management.

There will be a small number of tightly controlled exemptions for professional animal cullers and licensed firearms dealers. Those groups or individuals identified as management agencies under section 100 of the Biosecurity Act can apply to the Commissioner of Police for a permit to possess a prohibited firearm. This will include the sort of pest control work undertaken by contractors for the Department of Conservation or a local council. Those applying will need to demonstrate that they will use the firearm only for the purpose stated and must demonstrate that they cannot do the work with any other firearm. I already know that Federated Farmers and professional animal control groups would like to ensure that this applies to pest control on private land, and the select committee will take advice on this. While these types of semi-automatics do not present the same level of risk to the public as MSSAs, nevertheless, they can cause harm. We have already signalled that we will be doing further work on strengthening the Arms Act in a future amendment bill, including the criteria around who can get a firearms licence.

The bill also proposes an exemption for bona fide collectors including museums and for film and theatre companies. They must take steps to disable the weapon and follow other guidelines around security and safety, including storage. The exemptions I have described come with considerable checks and balances around them.

Let us be clear: owning a firearm is a privilege not a right in this country. We need to remove the most dangerous weapons from our communities. The bill proposes the introduction of a number of new offences. This includes possessing, using, presenting, supplying, selling, manufacturing, and assembling a banned firearm. The offences attract penalties ranging from up to three years’ imprisonment to 10 years’ imprisonment depending on the nature and seriousness of the offence. We know this law change will have an impact on law-abiding firearms licence holders. That’s why we have confirmed details of the amnesty and are working on fair and reasonable compensation through a buy-back scheme.

There are good people in all of our communities who will find themselves in possession of banned firearms, parts, and magazines. This is because we are changing the law; not because these people have done anything wrong. Given this, the Government is putting an amnesty in place. This will allow people to let the police know if they are in possession of a newly banned firearm, part, or magazine. The amnesty also means that other firearms, parts, and magazines, and ammunition not affected by the ban can also be handed over. Police are already working with the New Zealand Defence Force around storage and transport and safe destruction of these weapons. The Government recognises that people have invested money in these firearms. Running alongside the amnesty, the Government will implement a buy-back scheme for the newly banned firearms which are surrendered.

The primary role of Government is to ensure the safety and well-being of its citizens and to allow them the ability to go about their lives free from harm and free from the fear of harm. The select committee process will be used to ensure we have got the balance right between the legitimate use of firearms and tightening gun laws to improve the safety and security of all New Zealanders. Just before I close, I want to pay tribute to the brave and compassionate and dedicated women and men of the New Zealand police service. Over the past few weeks, they have shown our country why we have one of the best police services in the world. Our thoughts remain with our Muslim communities and the people of Christchurch. We are doing this for them. We are doing this for our future generations. It is our responsibility. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Can I begin my contribution to the debate and the National Party’s contribution to this debate by starting off where the Minister of Police finished, which is by paying tribute to the hard-working men and women of the New Zealand police force. As the Minister has commented very appropriately, we have seen the best of the police in the last two weeks. We have seen their swift action on the afternoon of Friday, 15 March in the apprehension of the suspect involved, and we have seen our police out and about in the community in a way that New Zealanders have come to expect but is no less noteworthy for that. We have seen them armed—and that has shocked many people—but we have seen them engaging at our mosques, and at our various vigils and memorial services in our parks and our schools, and outside our Parliament, and they have done a superb job, as I know they will continue to do; so I’d like to start by echoing the words of the Minister.

The last two and a bit weeks for New Zealand have been about grieving and have been about mourning, and now the Parliament has to turn its attention to the legislative response to the events of Friday, 15 March. The first phase is firearms law reform and, as the National Party leader and Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, has said, the National Party intends to be constructive and work with the Government to make sure that we get this legislation into place quickly but also make sure we get the legislation right.

Phases two and three and four will be about social media, about hate speech and hate activity, and I think New Zealanders are going to have an inevitable debate about the balance between security and privacy, the balance between free speech and hate speech, and about some of the activities that led up to Friday, 15 March. But, for now, we are talking about firearms.

The public has made it very clear over the last two weeks that they expect the Parliament to act. They have made it very clear, in my mind, that the time has come for quite substantial reform of our firearms regime. Parliament, therefore, has an obligation and a duty to act, and today we start that process. That’s the first point I want to make: that Parliament hears the call of the public that they expect action. It was very humbling for me to stand on behalf of the National Party and accept a petition run through ActionStation alongside Grant Robertson, and James Shaw of the Green Party, calling for a ban on semi-automatics and military-style semi-automatics.

Louisa Wall: What about you and me, Jan?

CHRIS BISHOP: That petition—oh, sorry, to you and Ms Wall—numbered some, from memory, 40,000–plus people collected in only a matter of days, which I think gives you a sense of the public mood around this issue. So that’s the first point I want to make: that Parliament has heard those messages. We will act.

The second point I want to make is that I think this bill strikes an appropriate balance, as the Minister has said, between protecting legitimate law-abiding licensed firearm owners—our hunters, our shooters, those in our farming community—whilst also making sure that the public don’t have access to things like military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. The harm from those is the sheer lethality that exists within them that the Minister has rightly pointed out. I think it is appropriate that small calibre rim fire semi-automatics and lesser capacity shotguns are excluded from the prohibition that the Minister is advancing in the legislation.

A third point I want to make is to say that I think the general exclusions from the new prohibitions are also appropriate. Many members of the House will have been contacted by collectors in the last few days, and I see there is an exemption, which we’ll explore properly in the select committee, for bona fide collectors of historical antique weapons from the past. We would not want to give up that history as a result of this legislation and nor should we. I see there are also exemptions in the regime for museums as well. We’re going to explore the precise balance of those at the select committee in the short amount of time that we have.

I believe even those in the licensed firearm community who are opposed to some of the measures in the legislation—members will be aware of their email inboxes filling up—will welcome the new penalties but also the strengthening of the existing penalties as well. This is something that many people have been calling for for a long time as part of a general update to the Arms Act 1983, which, as the Minister rightly notes, is now very out of date. I think the new penalty regime will be widely welcomed by many people in the community. For those who are licensed and legitimate firearm owners, who store them safely and store them in the correct way, use them in the correct way, and would never dream of committing a crime, it does bug and grate on them when they see people abusing firearms or not storing them properly or not complying with the terms of their various endorsements or licences. It does grate when those penalties are not enforced, and I know that members of the community will welcome those. That’s the fourth point I wanted to make.

Finally, I want to fifthly cover the amnesty and the buy-back regime. We do welcome this. I’m interested in exploring in the select committee exactly how expensive it will be. There seems to be a range of estimates on the table, anywhere from $100 million to $200 million and all the way up to $300 million that the Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has mentioned recently. I’m aware of some estimates out there that it could be up to a billion dollars to buy back the various weapons. I urge the Government to move expeditiously on the details of the buy-back regime. Many members of the community are awaiting those details, and I think it would be good grace and acting in good faith to provide those details as quickly as possible. I acknowledge it takes time to work out the details. We in the National Party stand ready to work with the Government on those details, but we do need to know exactly how it will work.

I want to put on the record now that there needs to be an answer to how dealers will be dealt with through the buy-back regime. I have seen some comments from the Minister that they will not be touched, that they will not be part of the buy-back regime. There are licensed firearm dealers out there in the community, some of whom have large amounts of stock—thousands of dollars and in some cases tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock—that they have brought into the country in good faith to sell. Once this legislation passes they will unable to do that. There may be circumstances in which they are unable to return that to their particular supplier. They will be out of pocket through no fault of their own, and we will need to work that through, and I’m just encouraging the Minister to work that through with us, as well as working it through the select committee.

This is a substantial piece of legislation. As I’ve commented publicly, the devil is in the detail when it comes to firearms law. I’m aware of some comments from the community already about the misapplication of a variety of definitions. The wording may not be right but we have some time over the next week or so in the select committee to really get down to the nuts and bolts of this legislation. We will work in good faith with the Government to make sure that we reform the law properly and get it as good as we possibly can.

Parliament is now turning its mind away from grief and mourning towards a proper legislative response to the horrific events of 15 March. We in the National Party are looking forward to working with the Government to make sure that our response when it comes to firearms is fit for purpose and right, and we will engage in good faith with them as we continue to do that. Thank you.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. Tuatahi māku e tautokongia ana ngā kupu o tērā o ngā mema arā ko te Pīhopa, wāna kupu e mea ana mō ngā wiki e rua kua pahure ake nei kua tangi te motu. Engari kua tae te wā kia puta atu i te ao pōuri ki roto i te ao mārama kia tahurihia ai ō mātou hinengaro kia whakapakari ai i ngā ture e pā ana ki ngā pū, kia kore anō tēnei āhuatanga e pā mai ki a tātou kei roto i Aotearoa.

[Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Firstly, for me, I support the words of the other member, namely Mr Bishop. He said that for the past two weeks the country has been in mourning. However, it has come to the time to emerge from the world of darkness into the world of light, and to turn our minds to strengthening the laws pertaining to guns so that this type of thing doesn’t happen again to us in New Zealand.]

I’d just like to acknowledge the words of the honourable member Chris Bishop, who said that although we’ve been in a period of mourning and we still do mourn for those who lost their lives in the events of 15 March, it is time for us to turn our attention now to strengthening these laws, the legislation, so that we never have this sort of event occur again here in New Zealand. So I’m proud to stand and support this bill, the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill, and proud to support the Government and, dare I say, the whole Parliament that’s taking action in response to the March 15th terrorist attack so that we do protect all New Zealanders and keep us all safe.

Can I just acknowledge my colleague the Hon Stuart Nash. I know that, within about 36 hours of the attack, he had already turned his attention to law changes that needed to be made in this regard. I’d just like to also acknowledge his words and our gratitude to the New Zealand police force for the sterling job they did on that day and subsequently since then. He also made the comment that the reason we are doing this is that public safety needs to be as strong as it can be. So I’d just like to acknowledge Stuart Nash.

In the aftermath of the Christchurch terror attack, New Zealanders were asking ourselves many difficult questions, such as why has this happened in Aotearoa, how could we help the victims, how could we heal as a nation, and are we safe? New Zealanders around the country have come together to express our grief and to show our solidarity with the Muslim community. We have united to reject the hateful ideology that inspired this attack, and we have begun the long journey of healing. We’re strongly affirming our values of compassion, tolerance, and manaakitanga, and that’s crucial—it’s a crucial way we can make sure New Zealand is safe for everyone.

The Government is taking every action to ensure the safety of New Zealanders. We’ve agreed to hold a royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch attack. We need to get to the bottom of how the terrorist was able to do what he did and understand what we need to do to make sure it never reoccurs. We’ve been asking tough questions about the role social media has played in the attacks, and we know New Zealand will be a leading part of the global conversation on stopping the spread of hate on social media. We’ve maintained a high level of vigilance in the aftermath of the attack. Our threat alert level remains high, meaning that the police and security services will provide extra protection at the border and in public places.

A crucially important way to protect New Zealand is to make sure we have safe and effective gun laws. That’s why, six days after the attack, the Government announced the ban on military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles. We need gun reform now. Any move to slow down the process is a move to stop it, and that is the same rhetoric used overseas to stop gun law changes. For example, the American organisation the National Rifle Association—it’s straight out of their playbook. They claim the legislation is being rushed and they throw out mistruths, they muddy the waters, they create anger and confusion. If we don’t act now, how many further attacks will we tolerate in this country before we will do something, or will we become like the United States, where deaths through use of guns occur so often that they almost rarely rate a mention now?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope the member is not reading his speech. He’s an experienced member and he knows that he doesn’t read speeches.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: OK. So we are banning all military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles that are designed to kill people, to make our country a safer place. There is no reason for us to have military-style semi-automatics here in New Zealand. I don’t mind doing a bit of deer shooting. Deer shooting, pig hunting, shooting tahr—they can all be achieved through bolt-action rifles. We don’t need semi-automatics to do it. In fact, there’s very little point of a semi-automatic. If you fire at a deer and you miss it, it disappears, and you’d have to be spraying bullets around in a pretty outrageous way, and even then the chances of you hitting one are pretty slim.

So the legislation is not directed at the vast bulk of law-abiding gun owners, especially those in rural communities who use .22s and shotguns with limited ammunition capacity for farm work and hunting. This move is widely supported. It’s got the full support of the Government parties: New Zealand First, the Greens. It’s also got the support of the National Party. Federated Farmers, Fish & Game, TradeMe, Hunting & Fishing, and others have all come out in support of the ban. That’s because, as I’ve said, we all know that in order to hunt deer or tahr or pigs, you don’t need military-style semi-automatics.

It’s also no secret that I handed in my own gun to the police—I think it was the Tuesday after the attack. I had a .22 calibre semi-automatic rifle with a 15-round magazine. I had no qualms about handing it in. I used it to shoot pests when I lived out in the rural areas. I haven’t had much chance to use it since I’ve been in Parliament. The reality is that when I’m no longer in Parliament and I feel the need to go and shoot the possum in the apple tree in the orchard, I’ll just go and buy another .22 bolt-action, and I can achieve the same thing. There is a joke in the family that the largest thing I’ve ever shot is a tree. I was aiming for the possum, but that says more about me than the gun. The point is that the safety of New Zealanders is more important than my need or my right to own a semi-automatic .22 with the magazine or the capacity that I explained.

So we want to reiterate that our actions are directed at making sure that this act of terror never happens again. We strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest, and most people will take these changes in their stride—just as they did in Australia when they made similar changes some years ago.

No one is being criminalised overnight. In fact, an amnesty will be put in place for weapons, and, in fact, those people who currently have illegal weapons can hand those in under the current amnesty. They will not be criminalised for handing those in. This is actually an opportunity for those law-abiding New Zealanders to actually go and hand the guns in. Those guns that are illegal—that will become illegal—just go and hand them in. This is what we can do to make New Zealand a much safer place. So our focus is on getting these guns out of the community. Like I say, I was a gun owner—well, I still am a gun owner: I’ve got a slug gun left in the safe now. We need to get these out of the community, and we will work with owners to make sure that that does happen in an orderly way.

So there will be a fair buy-back scheme. We’re committed to that. The exact details are still being worked through, but it will be similar to the Australian scheme that they implemented, and people did receive a fair price for the guns that they handed in. We can’t say with certainty what the cost of the buy-back will be. It’ll be somewhere between $150 million to $300 million—we’re not exactly sure. But then again, what’s the cost of an event like we saw on 15 March?

The public will have a say. We encourage them to submit to the select committee. The select committee will be meeting over the next week. We’re open to hearing the technical issues. We’re open to hearing that the legislation gets finessed and gets made right. This is the first tranche of changes; there will be more legislation to come. So I commend this legislation to the House, and I just again would like to express my condolences to all those who perished.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to join too in speaking in support of this arms amendment legislation and join with other members of the House in recording both our thanks to the New Zealand Police and also our condolences to all of the victims and their families.

When I spoke in this House on the condolence motion on Wednesday of the week following the attack, I said there were two questions that really continue to occupy our thinking. One was: how did this happen? And the second was: how do we stop it happening again? This bill is very much around the second of those questions—how we stop an event like this, of this scale, and a tragedy of this scale, happening again.

I think it’s fair to say that over the last 18 days, in the wake of the Christchurch terrorist attack, a lot of us have learnt so much more around gun rules in New Zealand: what is possible, what is practical, what is legal, and what can be done quite easily. One of the things that we have learnt in the most awful of ways is the utter and devastating lethality of these fast-firing self-loading weapons. The ability of the gunman to go into Al Noor Mosque and, in a matter of just a small number of minutes, shoot more than 70 people before getting in his car and heading off to attack the Linwood mosque tells us so much about the damage that can be done by any gun, admittedly, but by these military-style semi-automatics and semi-automatics that can be amended, adapted, and loaded to create such devastating strike force.

For those of us who hadn’t previously been deeply involved in gun legislation, when we started to understand the, I would say, failings in the current law that came about after Aramoana and the way they were eventually amended before being passed into law, we saw that there are so many gaps and deficiencies that allow a person with a category A gun licence—so that’s a normal garden-variety gun licence—to buy a weapon without any of the oversight and checks that would go with the category E licence and to buy, equally lawfully, high-capacity magazines and the like and yet put them together in a way that creates a gun that, frankly, has no place on the streets of New Zealand and can cause the damages that it’s caused. Now, knowing that, no one in this House can ever now unknow those problems, and none of us can sit here, I believe, and continue to allow the sales of the weaponry of the capacity and the ability that can be created from it with the system we currently have.

I want to just take a moment to reflect on one of the challenges that is raised a lot, which is “Well, that’s fine. You’re going to make it tougher for law-abiding gun owners, but you’ll never do anything about the illegal guns in society.” To a point, that may well be true. There will continue to be illegal and illegally owned guns, I’m sure. But it doesn’t in any way lessen the requirement and the obligation on us and on this House to ensure that our gun laws are fit for purpose. So we may not be able to guarantee that no gun will ever be used in a way that hurts someone or that every gun will be lawful, but we can absolutely make sure that our gun laws require a standard of care of our police and of our gun dealers and of our gun owners that we expect. That’s certainly what this legislation sets out to do.

Now, I do obviously have some concerns that, as we are taking it through in a very truncated period of time, there isn’t going to be the ability to, as the last speaker, Kelvin Davis, commented, finesse the law in the way that a select committee normally would. However, I think the circumstances and the urgency that we’re facing means that in this case we should none the less proceed with what have been well-signalled changes to the gun legislation and then take our time to return back to the issue in a more fulsome way as required.

There’s one final point I do want also to put on record, which is simply in relation to the timing of what we know about the buy-back scheme that the Government has said they will offer and the legislation which they intend to pass approximately a week from now. The Government has said repeatedly—and I thank them for their assurance; it’s certainly the right thing to do—that there will be a fair buy-back scheme operating to properly compensate gun owners in a way that’s similar to the ones we saw in Australia. All of that is good, but I’ve got to say that I’m far less concerned about what the total ultimate cost of that will be, because I accept what the Government is saying, that it’s almost impossible to know; what I’m far more interested in, though, is a bit more clarity from them on how that buy-back scheme will work so that the gun owners that we are about to deprive of their lawfully held possessions—and, in a way, I support—how they are going to be compensated: when, under what schedule, what they can expect.

I don’t like as a matter of practice passing legislation and saying, “Don’t worry; we’ll compensate you for all that, but we’ll tell you what the compensation looks like later.” I think the public of New Zealand deserve to know a little bit more about how that will work, and, frankly, this House should know more about it as part of passing the legislation. So, to me, that piece is the piece about which there are far more questions to be answered sooner from the Government. The total bill will be what the total bill will be, but I certainly hope that, before next Tuesday, when the legislation is passed by this House, the Government sees its way clear to give us more information on that.

Coming back to where I started, we will never be the same as we were before 1.40-odd p.m. on 15 March and, as a result of that, New Zealand expects and demands, and I think rightly so, that this Parliament acts quickly and thoroughly to address what are now very clear deficiencies in our gun legislation, and for that reason I’m proud to support the bill.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise to confirm New Zealand First’s support for this arms amendment bill. As our leader, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, said at the time, at 1.30 p.m. on 15 March our world changed for ever and so will our gun laws. The gravity of this situation is not lost on anyone in this House: the murder of 50 of our citizens in cold blood. But the reality of that is that this gunman was operating legitimately on an A class gun licence, with a military-style semi-automatic weapon legitimately purchased through a retail outlet. Quite frankly, he has exposed the gaping holes in our legislation. The system has been found wanting. We have not learnt the lessons of Aramoana and the lessons, frankly, from the likes of Port Arthur and other international incidents. We have been naive, and we have paid the price. We have failed to act, and I think we have all acknowledged that, but I would also acknowledge that we have acknowledged that and, across parties, we are looking to act decisively to remediate that situation.

Of course, this is the first part of the response, dealing with the availability of these military-style semi-automatic weapons, and it’s required. We need to give the public some semblance of safety and decisiveness of action by taking these weapons out of circulation as soon as practicably possible. It is also required to give certainty to the users of these weapons—the owners, the dealers, etc.—who need to know what the implications are for them. We note the buy-back and the figures that have been bandied around, but it will cost what it costs. It’s important that it is fair. These legitimate gun owners have, through no fault of their own, been caught up in this situation, and we must be fair to them. I trust that Cabinet and the Parliament will recommend that course of action.

We also note that, being the first part of this response, there is much else to do—of course, the royal commission that will come in behind this and look at things like a register of all firearms, police vetting and how this individual was allowed to get a licence in the first place, and the holes in that system and how we need to tighten it up, around storage, and, of course, there are those wider social issues around freedom of speech, which we are all going to have to grapple with, certainly in light of this new world that we find ourselves in with social media, etc.

New Zealand First have been strong supporters of recreational hunters and legitimate users, and we note that the likes of farmers legitimately need firearms to euthanise stock and for pest control. And recreational hunters—that is something that we value in this country: the right to be able to go out and hunt for deer or tahr or whatever it might be. That is a legitimate use, and, of course, there are some quite sizeable businesses around this—tourism businesses and the like, and legitimate pest-control businesses. So we have to move, in terms of certainty, to give these people the certainty of what will be available to them but also to acknowledge that they are legitimate users and, where there needs to be exemptions, we will look, through the select committee process, as truncated as it might be, to make sure that their views are heard. We do note the likes of Federated Farmers and the Game Animal Council have engaged willingly and supportively to date, and there is still the .22 calibre up to 10-shot mags, and five-shot shotguns, as the Hon Kelvin Davis said. They still have legitimate firepower that is capable of doing the roles for which they could legitimately be expected to be used.

We note that there is no exception at this point for international sport, and that’s something that will have to be looked upon in the second tranche, and we do also encourage the penalty provisions. This is a serious buy-back; this is not a voluntary situation. We are acting decisively and we do need the penalties for not complying to be significant, and they will be. As Minister Nash said in his introduction of the bill, owning a firearm in this country is a privilege; it is not a right. We must strike the balance through legitimate use, but the actions that we are taking as a Parliament we are doing quite simply because it is, in this circumstance, the right thing to do. So New Zealand First will be supporting this legislation and participating actively in the truncated select committee process. Thank you.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): I’ve been really proud of Parliament and the way in which we have dealt with this very difficult issue. I think it’s important for us to remember that most people in New Zealand do not own firearms but many who do own firearms need to own firearms either for farming purposes or for their hunting or even for sporting activities.

We have a very low homicide rate in New Zealand. We have 0.9 homicides per 100,000 people. If you put that against Australia, they’re one per 100,000 people—very close to that. The United States is at 4.7. So we are, essentially, four times less likely to be killed in New Zealand, when it comes to homicide rates, than in the United States. I looked at some figures produced by New Zealand Police: 15 people committed murder with a firearm in the 10 years before the Christchurch massacre, and those people had firearms licences. Many other murders were committed by people without firearms licences but who did have firearms.

In 2016, when I was Minister of Police, we asked the Law and Order Committee, here in Parliament, to look at how gang members and other criminals were accessing firearms. One of the ways that came out is that they were stolen. Because there’s no firearms register in New Zealand, there’s no obligation on anyone to advise the police of a stolen firearm and there’s no obligation to keep serial numbers—unless it’s a category E type firearm. The other way that they were getting firearms is that they were buying them, or someone else was buying them for them and passing them on, because, again, there is no obligation to pass on that information. That select committee came back with 20 recommendations. Some were accepted by the Government, but then there was a change of Government.

One of the things I thought was most important was the issue around firearm prohibition orders to enable police to go into gang houses and seize firearms whether they know for certain they’re there or not. Now, one of the opportunities for this new legislation is to think about, in the second tranche, bringing in that firearm prohibition order. My colleague Chris Bishop, who’s spoken today, had a member’s bill last year around this, and it was defeated in Parliament. I would hope that, given another chance, it would be successful. I say this because we have all seen the way in which New Zealand has come together around this terrible massacre in Christchurch, but we also saw people like gang members—patched gang members—coming out and saying they were here with the people of Christchurch, they were with the Muslim New Zealanders, and they were going to help protect them. Then someone asked them the question: “And what about giving up your illegal firearms?” Oh no, they didn’t want to do that. Well, I’ll tell you what: the best way forward is to give the police the powers, give them the firepower to do it, and get on and take them. I’m sick and tired of listening to people emoting about how they’re feeling sorry but they’re not going to give up their firearms.

Do you know our lowest rate for homicides in New Zealand, that I can find, was in 2017, when we had 48 people murdered. In 2016, it was 58. We’d had a steady drop over the years, and we also have now got 50 people murdered in one day. So that should give us all some perspective—a little country with a population smaller than Melbourne, Australia with 50 people dead in one day.

The buy-back for the legally held firearms is absolutely crucial. It’s also important for people to hand in their firearms which they hold illegally, and they can hand those in to dealers or to the police. That buy-back has been estimated to cost, from the Minister of Police, $100 million. The Deputy Prime Minister said, this morning, it could be $300 million. I think it could be anything—it could be $500 million. The fact is it will cost what it costs. The point is it has to be successful, and I think that is really important.

One of the things I think that we need to think about here is the education of people who are otherwise law abiding New Zealanders who own firearms legally. A lot of those people are telling us that they are frightened, they are worried, they are upset, they are concerned, and they feel that they have been demonised by this mass killer who came to our shores and did what he did. Of course, it’s not right for us to demonise people who have legally bought firearms and use them legally, but it is important that everyone understands that everything has changed now in New Zealand.

The Thorp report was a good place to start—that was 1997, from memory. That ended up going nowhere. All sorts of other inquiries and reports—we’ve never really had an urgency ever since Aramoana to actually deal with this situation. I think that the general population that owns firearms acts extremely responsibly and, by the way, will not even be affected by this legislation. There is, however—in my experience as a former Minister of Police—a small group, particularly around some dealers, who will, in fact, rark-up people and get them to think that they are going to be demonised. I heard this morning on Morning Report on Radio New Zealand one of those people referring to this legislation as criminalising the 240,000 New Zealanders who own firearms. That is totally wrong, totally unfair, and absolutely about rarking-up and, no doubt, getting themselves membership. That’s what I consider totally irresponsible, and it will set people thinking that they are going to be picked on or somehow have their rights taken away from them.

There needs to be a register, and this bill does not deal with that register, but there needs to be a firearms register. I’m not naive enough—as some will be—to think that if there’s a register, that will show every firearm that there is. No, but what it will do is that when a firearm is sold or a firearm is lost or a firearm is stolen, there will be an obligation to advise the police and for that to be noted. I have to register my car. I have to register my little 16-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Holly. She is not a dangerous animal. She can, however, sort out a rat still—but she takes about 10 days to get over it. But, having said that, if I have to register my dog, why would I not have to register a gun? Even my little Jack Russell terrier—if I had a little bichon frise or, heaven forbid, a Maltese terrier, which is like knee high to a grasshopper, I’d have to register that—but, apparently, not a gun. That seems, to me, totally crazy.

We’ve heard some scaremongering about, “In Canada they tried to do this and it took a billion dollars, and it was not particularly successful.” They’re a much bigger country than us. We pretty much either know each other or are probably related to each other somehow, and, if not now, probably in the future. So, you know, I don’t think it’s that hard. Also, we have entirely different software applications and mobile phones. Police have smartphones. They can take pictures of serial numbers. You can have apps set up. People in software development can do all sorts of things.

We could do this as a nation if we wanted to, but we need to understand why we should do it, which is where the education comes in. My plea to the Government, from the time that this legislation is passed to the time when the buy-back finishes and when all this legislation comes into being, is to start a very clear education programme so that New Zealanders who do love their guns, do have their guns, and have always been law abiding understand how it affects them.

I’ve said to some of those New Zealanders who have raised it with me: “I don’t get why you need 30 rounds in a magazine. What are you trying to do? Are you a really bad shot?” Then the answer to me, from a person quite close to me who told me this, was actually—he said, “Judith, you can get them with 70 rounds.” And then I told someone else who was ex-military and he said to me “Now”, he said, “you can get 140 rounds in a magazine.” They’re like a round thing, like a Gatling gun. That stuff being sold? No, Madam Deputy Speaker, that’s not OK for New Zealand, and we will stand against it.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Kia hora te marino, kia whakapapa pounamu te moana, aroha atu, aroha mai, tātou i a tātou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[May the calm be widespread, may the sea lie flat like greenstone, love and be loved, all of us together, greetings to all.]

I rise again in remembrance and with deep sorrow for the victims of the terror attack against our Muslim community in Christchurch on 15 March. The weeks since that harrowing tragedy have been filled with grief and shock for our entire nation and for the affected communities. For our migrant, our Muslim, our refugee communities, they have also been filled with very real fear. So it is a great comfort to see today that our Government is not only committed to standing with those victims and with the communities directly affected in their grief but also committed to making all the necessary hard changes that are needed to make New Zealand safe. To amplify the voices from within that community, I want to note the words of Saeed Ahmed, president of the Hawke’s Bay Islamic centre, who said just a couple of days after the terrorist attack, “Many of our brothers and sisters have been scared of more attacks happening, but the sense of community of locals and Government action on gun law reform has put many of us at ease.”

We are all grieving for what we lost over the past weeks. Tighter gun laws honour the victims, because our previous laws failed them. The cost of doing nothing has been too high. Too many people have been hurt, and today we draw a line in the sand. Fixing our gun laws is just the beginning, but it is an urgent and necessary first step, one that was tragically overlooked though repeatedly recommended before now. This is the beginning of the change needed to make New Zealand a place where we all feel safe and truly at home.

I want to acknowledge too that this change comes as a result of people power. Just a day or so after this tragedy, Nik Green, Brad Knewstubb, and Hannah Clarke were all looking for what they could do to change things. They all separately started petitions to ban semi-automatic weapons and for stronger gun advertising laws. ActionStation got involved and within five days of the terror attack a petition of around 70,000 signatures was presented on the steps of this House. New Zealanders want this change. They want it now, and with that strong mandate we are making the change today. We don’t need special interest lobby groups with big money influencing our nation’s gun laws. People power is driving this legislation today.

This bill is in the House just over two weeks since the terror attack. It will ban all military—well, most military-style—semi-automatic firearms and modifications that make legal guns act like semi-automatics; essentially, banning weapons that have no place in civil society, weapons that allow massive harm. They maximise harm and they allow mass crimes like the terror attack that happened in Christchurch. This legislation creates new definitions of prohibited firearms, magazines, parts, and ammunition. It will also establish an amnesty for firearms owners who take steps to hand over their firearms lawfully, their parts, their magazines, their ammunition to the police by 30 September. Establishing an amnesty is the right thing to do. I call on all gun owners to re-evaluate their need for semi-automatic weapons and to hand in their weapons now or as part of the amnesty. Urgency in the House is appropriate on this to address the fears and the shock of the New Zealand public, who didn’t even know, mostly, that this kind of weapon, this kind of military-style weapon for mass crime, was actually out there on the streets.

The Green Party has a longstanding policy to better regulate gun ownership in New Zealand. It is a privilege not a right. Our policy to ban all semi-automatics and reform gun laws to restrict violence is part of our founding charter principle of non-violence and our commitment to peace. The Green Party was formed from anti-war movements. Building a society for peace means taking action on guns. It means coming together and answering those lingering questions about violence, this type of violence, and why it took place in New Zealand today.

I’m uplifted. I’ve been so uplifted over the past couple of weeks in seeing the difficult conversations that are taking place all over New Zealand. People are reflecting. People are reflecting on our violent history and colonisation, on the rise of white supremacy here and around the world, online. We’re having those difficult conversations and people who might not have previously considered these uncomfortable truths are now joining the calls for a more peaceful and inclusive Aotearoa.

We must address these issues by putting our guns away and talking with each other, listening to our diverse communities, who have been raising alarm bells for some time. Our culture must take steps to build peace, to address the hate festering in pockets in our communities in a constructive manner. Taking action on gun control will benefit many New Zealanders, from our migrant communities, other minority communities at the receiving end of the hate to domestic violence victims and their families, and let’s not forget our record-breaking rates of domestic and gender-based violence. This will go some way towards keeping those victims safe as well.

The first steps introduced today pave the way for further action, which the Green Party looks forward to wholeheartedly supporting, in gun law reform, in restricting the way that licensing works, in creating a register, and we also look forward to the findings of the royal commission, which will look more specifically at the environment, at the response, at the circumstances that led to this specific terror attack against the mosques in Christchurch. We need to look at all the things that we need to change, to bravely shine a light on the pockets of hate, and on all that we can do that’s more in our laws, including law enforcement, our intelligence agencies, on hate speech, on hate crimes.

In gun control we look forward to supporting future legislation that will introduce a gun registry, which is long overdue. Today, New Zealand is proudly joining the modern world in adopting much needed and appropriate gun control laws; so I commend the bill to the House.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before I start, I just want to pay homage to the 50 people who were killed in Christchurch and, obviously, to their families, who will still be grieving and troubled by the events of 15 March, and that process will go on for quite some time. Whilst the matter of the despicable event may be coming off the headlines in New Zealand, I don’t think for a moment that this issue is ever going to be dismissed from the consciousness of New Zealanders, as it’s one that’s going to be deeply ingrained in the psyche of New Zealand in the way that we regard ourselves here in this beautiful land. But the time is right, now, to consider how we best respond to this issue and how this event actually occurred.

The first point I want to make is that I think we should acknowledge that New Zealanders are entitled to own firearms, provided they do it in a proper and legitimate manner and they act in a safe manner as well. And those rights are very important to all of us in New Zealand and particularly to the firearms owners. I think we also need to recognise that there are sometimes very legitimate reasons for having firearms, such as pest control for farmers but also for people who wish to go out hunting and for bona fide collectors.

All of those people have a right to own firearms and should have to go through the right processes to have that right. No one ever should dispute that, and that’s important. But I think the big issue that Christchurch has made us all realise is whether military-style semi-automatic (MSSAs) and semi-automatic guns should have a rightful place in New Zealand. I think witnessing today what’s happening in Parliament—and sometimes it’s a real privilege to actually hear people and see what’s happening today first-hand—is to see how Parliament is coming together on that very issue. I think that is the answer today—and we will see it over the next week or so as we work our way through the elements of this bill—that we do not believe that MSSAs and semi-automatic guns have a rightful place to play in New Zealand.

The only issue—and I heard New Zealand First acknowledge it before—is where competition elements may be referred to, and it’s something that’ll be, obviously, dealt with in the second stage of the reforms. But, in the main, there is no need for any MSSA or semi-automatic rifle, particularly in the context of hunting or whatever.

I think also the issue is that if we, as a Government, are forcing people to surrender these weapons, which they’ve acquired under legitimate purposes, I think it’s very important that the compensation provisions are fair and equitable, because, after all, these rifles were bought under a previous regime that meant that they were legitimate. So the lack of detail around the reimbursement of firearms is very, very important. I think, upon passing this bill over the next week, we’ll make it an absolute requirement that these guns are surrendered. It’s absolutely essential also that the fair terms of those are made known to those people as early as possible, so that everyone understands what it means if you do surrender those weapons, so we get everyone surrendering them voluntarily, and that means it needs to be fair representation and fair payment for them.

The other thing is that this legislation deals with the issue of the sale of large-scale magazines and accessories, and I think that’s a very important component. The ability to scale up a semi-automatic machine by putting on it a large magazine is one that should have been addressed and has been addressed in this bill, and it’s a very important aspect. But I think, in supporting this bill, it’s important to note that this is only a first step towards addressing this issue in New Zealand. The next stages of working through after this initial bit are around making sure that we’ve got a framework that’s fit for purpose in New Zealand and that protects New Zealanders in general but that also affords some protections to rightful and legitimate gun owners to own a rifle and to be able to conduct their use of that rifle in a safe manner—it’s very, very important. To get that framework, there’s a lot more work to be worked through, and I think we will, as a Parliament, get to that point, and I look forward to participating in that debate.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So this next call is a split call, five minutes each. I call the Hon Damien O’Connor.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s indeed an honour to be in Parliament, and, from time to time, one feels very proud to be a Kiwi and to be in Parliament. I’m proud, in spite of the terrible tragedy that this country has faced, in the way we as Kiwis have reacted to that. I want to acknowledge the Muslim community and the terrible loss to not just the 50 families who lost loved ones but those who are, of course, affected by injury.

Can I say that I’m proud of the way that we rejected the attempt, through that terrible tragedy, to brand this country as a place where kindness is not at the forefront and where bigotry and prejudice and hate are considered to be part of our society. I’m proud that we rejected that and are moving forward in a way that says we want to be an inclusive society and we will be an inclusive society, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religious belief.

I’m also very proud to be part of a Parliament that has committed to change in the pace that we need to make it. That hasn’t always been the case, particularly around the world, when it’s come to similar situations. I’d like to acknowledge all members of Parliament who have committed to change law that we know is necessary to create a safer place in our country. As a representative for the rural communities and sectors in New Zealand, I am particularly proud with the response from people across New Zealand—with very few exceptions, I have to say—by way of email, all of them supportive of the changes that this Parliament is considering through this piece of legislation. Rural people do use guns. Guns are used to kill. Most, if not all, rural people use them in the way that they were intended: for pest control, for humane animal welfare issues, and also for recreational hunting. Nothing that we are changing here will make a change to the way that those decent New Zealanders have utilised guns.

But we must take from those few people who will choose, from time to time, to be completely unreasonable, irrational, and, indeed, descriptive in words that I won’t use in this Parliament. They are not the Kiwis whom this Parliament should represent or should work to uphold rights for. We are here to represent the vast majority of New Zealanders, who want to respect the rights of each and every one of us, regardless of our race, our creed, our religious beliefs, or our pastimes or recreation. But what we are moving to do—and I acknowledge the work of my colleague Stuart Nash. I acknowledge the work of the Prime Minister. I must acknowledge her incredible leadership, international leadership that provides New Zealand with an opportunity to lead the world in better gun control.

What we are asking is that military-style semi-automatic guns be taken out of circulation. We are leaving in place guns for pest control. We’re leaving in place guns for recreational hunting and for appropriate animal welfare use. On the farms, most of those uses will be covered by 10-shot .22 calibre guns, or five-shot shotguns. I’d say to some people that if you can’t hit something or achieve your goal with either of those two types of weapons, then perhaps you should give up and give up your firearms licence.

Can I just say, look, there are issues, legitimate issues, around pest control in some private land that farmers are asking questions about: whether they should be, or are, able to have access. Wallabies are a new pest to this country, but they do need to be controlled, and those people in the rural communities are asking—and they will ask of the select committee—how can they legitimately have access for rightful pest control purposes to the firearms that we are otherwise banning. I trust the select committee process, as I trust this Parliament, to work through this legislation and to deliver to New Zealand a safer, more humane place—a place of kindness that doesn’t ban the utilisation of guns but bans the utilisation of dangerous weapons that were designed to do nothing more than kill unnecessarily. This Parliament should be applauded for what we are doing—each and every member of it—in bringing this piece of legislation into the House, and I ask that the select committee deal with it swiftly and bring it back so that we can pass it into law.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The events of Friday the 15th have shifted the mood of the Rangitīkei for ever, and I can only imagine the profound impact they’ve had on the people of Christchurch and, indeed, the rest of New Zealand.

I believe all of us probably wish we were not in a position of having to push a piece of legislation like this through the House in such a hurry, but I accept that we’re at this stage, and I think it’s necessary we do so. I want to commend Minister Nash on the speech he made at the introduction of this bill, because I thought it was a very good summation of where we’re at as a country and, indeed, as a Parliament. I’m proud to be part of a Parliament that can agree on something that’s as important as this—and as difficult as this, frankly—because this Parliament’s never been able to deal with this issue in an easy manner before. In fact, I’ve sat on the select committee that went through an inquiry into a similar issue as this a few years ago, and I can imagine many of those submissions will come back to the select committee in the next few days, and they will be dealt with in the manner they should be. I certainly support this bill and hope that the short select committee stage can ensure that a piece of legislation is produced that will deal with the manner in the best way we can given the short time frame we’ve got to do it in. But I note the Government is proposing to bring a further piece of legislation to the House at a later date, and I’m sure that will enable them to pick up any issues that, I guess, come out of the submissions to this bill that aren’t included in this bill.

I myself hold a firearms licence and went through what I thought was an onerous process of getting it. In fact, I’ve been through it a few times, actually, as you can probably tell. But it clearly isn’t enough, because the people that are committing these crimes have also had firearms licences, and so I agree with those who’ve said in the House today that it’s indeed a privilege to own a firearm, and I think it should be treated as that. I note there are nearly 250,000 other New Zealanders who have a firearms licence. There are also 7,500 New Zealanders who have what is known as an E-Cat licence. We also know there are about 14,200 E-Cat firearms owned in New Zealand. There’s a whole lot we don’t know about. The people that have got the licences—and we understand the types of guns they have—are not the problem here, but it’s the unknown number of owners and the unknown number of military-style semi-automatics and the associated parts that are the problem. However, in order to clean up the unknown, we must also tidy up the known, because, as has been mentioned a couple of times in the House already today, the unknown owners of these guns often acquire them from the known owners of the guns. That is the challenge that we face as a country.

I think that the evidence I’ve seen in my time in Parliament certainly points to the need for this piece of legislation. I don’t accept that we need these things for anything other than sporting activities, and I’m not sure that that’s required either. The problem we’ve got with them, even if they are used for sporting activities, is that the security of them is almost impossible to guarantee, and I think that’s the real challenge we have.

I want to just raise a couple of issues very briefly. One is the exemptions, and I think once we start in on exemptions, we’ve got to be very careful how we deal with that, because there are almost always loopholes in exemptions. So I think that’s an area that the select committee will need to pay very close attention to in the next few days.

The other area I think is hugely important is the buy-back proposition or provision. Whilst some of that stuff will become known as we go along, I think the sooner we have something definite here, the better, because to achieve a good result from an amnesty, we need to be certain of where we’re going, and I don’t think people will participate in that amnesty unless they are certain of where they’re going. The quicker the better, frankly. I also agree with the number of comments that have been made round those people who have firearms whom we have no record of. The sooner those are dealt with, and the more harshly we deal with them, the better off the country will be. I’m sure that the legitimate owners of firearms will be much more comfortable with this type of legislation if we clamp down very hard on those people who have no business owning or possessing these firearms.

So I commend the bill to the House. I think it’s been a good effort to get it this far, and I hope the select committee stage can iron out any little difficulties there might be with it. I look forward to it passing. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. David Seymour, you have five minutes.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill, and let me start, as other members of the House have, by paying tribute to the victims of the Christchurch terror attacks only a couple of weeks ago. It is because of that incident that we are here. Let me acknowledge the will of New Zealanders to be safe, and let me acknowledge the very human urge, in times of crisis, when a group such as New Zealanders are under attack, to fall in behind and follow the leader who promises decisive action. That is human, that is normal, but that is not necessarily what is best for New Zealand.

We in this House have a different role, and that is to ensure that the laws that are made are made properly, with public consultation that is sincere and parliamentary scrutiny that irons out the ruts and the potential unintended consequences of the laws that we make for New Zealanders. That duty, if it’s important normally, hasn’t become less important by these circumstances. It’s not made less important by the fact that gun law is so critical. It is more important right now than ever. The fact of the matter is that we as parliamentarians have a greater duty to do due process and scrutinise laws than at any other time, because if gun control is important, then it’s important to do it right.

It’s the fact that the timing of this legislation is somewhat curious and it makes me, for one, somewhat sceptical, because right now, thanks to an Order in Council on 20 March the Thursday before last, this Government has ensured that semi-automatic weapons are all but on lockdown, only able to be possessed, used, traded, and imported by people with E Category licences. For everyone else, they are on de facto lockdown, and that Order in Council, that restriction from the Government, lasts till June next year. So we have a situation where there’s a moratorium on the dangerous stuff—a pretty sensible one—and the Government has a year plus to make sensible, thoughtful legislation, and the Government is indicating that it will do that as soon as this piece of legislation has been passed. So one has to wonder what exactly we are doing with this piece of legislation. It would appear that it is more about political theatre than public safety. This piece of legislation, were it completely harmless, might not matter in that regard, but it very well may be harmful.

Here’s a scenario of where this piece of legislation, that will barely be scrutinised by a select committee and that will barely be scrutinised by Parliament, could go wrong. What will the Government say come September when the amnesty period that the bill sets out is over and the estimates are that there are still tens of thousands of dangerous semi-automatic weapons unaccounted for that haven’t been bought back, that weren’t registered with E Category licence holders and that we have good reason to believe are out there? Well, that genuinely scares me. And, by the way, if this goes through the way the Government plans and the law-abiding gun owners, whom we need as allies, have been alienated by this process and its abruptness, then we’ve got a bigger problem than we’ve got now. What will happen if one of those weapons—by the way, it’s not just me saying that; it’s the New Zealand Police in their regulatory impact statement, saying that we risk forcing arms into the black market—is used for another tragedy? How smart will we feel then having been the leaders that rushed legislation through Parliament in only nine days?

So I urge caution. I urge public consultation. I urge that we do our job as a Parliament and truly honour the victims of this tragedy by defending our democracy and our due process of public consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and making good laws, because if gun control is important, it’s important to do it right, but doing it in nine days before we go on Easter break is not doing it right, and I can’t support this legislation at the first reading.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Kia ora koutou katoa. Assalamo alaikum. My electorate of Mt Roskill School is home to the largest Muslim community in New Zealand and the largest collection of multicultural communities in New Zealand, and over the last two weeks, as I’ve spent time with that community and at mosques and vigils all around Auckland and New Zealand, the beautiful people of New Zealand’s Muslim community, in amongst their extraordinary grace, forgiveness, and resilience, have actually asked New Zealand and our Government for very little. The one thing they have asked us for is that we take the required steps to make them as safe as possible.

We are here because on Friday, 15 March, 50 men, women, and children in Christchurch were murdered by a person with an evil ideology and armed with a modified military-style weapon that granted him the power to kill large numbers in mere moments, with a twitch of his hateful finger. That is why we are here. We are here in spite of the fact that, over 25 years, these issues have been canvassed in New Zealand’s public life. Recommendations were made after the Aramoana massacre. The 1995 Thorp report addressed these issues, and, of course, there was a very good select committee report from 2017. So my main message for anyone who says that this process is moving too fast is that it’s actually the reverse. If anything, this process has moved too slowly for New Zealand, but we are moving on it now. That is all that we can do as a Parliament: listen to those calls for safety and do what we can do now.

There is a movement for change in our communities and in this House. I want to pay tribute to some of the people who have led that movement for change. To our Prime Minister, who, I think, the day after the attacks—and I think it was without consulting polls or focus groups or testing it out—said that change will come because she knew it was the right thing to do; to our Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, who has worked assiduously over the last two weeks to bring together experts, the community, and legislation to mobilise around a legislative framework for change that I believe the vast majority of New Zealanders can support; and to parties all around this House—and I acknowledge Government support parties but especially the Opposition, who, I believe, have acted in an honourable way over the course of this issue and are doing the right thing in the way that they engage on an important issue for our country—I thank you. I thank all of those people in our communities who have done something that I think is really special.

One of my favourite quotes is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, shortly after his election, met a big room of his supporters, who had elected him into office on a radical agenda. He said to them, “I know what I have to do. Now, go out there and make me do it.” I feel like that’s what the people of New Zealand have been saying to us over the last couple of weeks. They know that we want to do the right thing, and they have said, “We’re going to support you to do that.” I want to acknowledge all of those people who have petitioned and emailed and spoken up so that we can have sensible and safe firearms laws in this country.

The changes sought in this bill are sensible changes. They are carefully thought through. They allow for most legitimate firearms activities that currently take place to continue taking place—for legitimate uses on farms, for people who hunt animals in our forests, for people on the rifle ranges to continue with those activities. It is only this extreme end of military-style assault weapons and rifles that we will be taking action on. I’m a licensed category A firearms owner. I own a single-shot rifle; so I’m not someone who instinctively is opposed to any person owning a gun or using it for lawful purposes. This is about keeping people safe.

I’m pleased that this bill is coming to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. On our committee over the next week, we will work assiduously on this bill. We will respond and listen to submissions in good faith. We will engage on the detail to make sure that the bill is as effective and fair as possible, and I want to emphasise that, on our committee, we have representation from every party in this House to ensure that the range of perspectives are heard. I know that all members will work in good faith to make this an effective bill and to make our country as safe as possible. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It’s an honour for me to stand and take a call in the House this afternoon, too. Can I take the opportunity again to pay tribute and send our thoughts to our Muslim community in Christchurch and those that are still trying to recover from their injuries. Can I acknowledge the Christchurch-based MPs as well who have stood up and provided enormous support and leadership at an extremely difficult time for us as a nation.

What tends to happen when there’s a tragedy like this, and we’ve seen it in our country, is the nation rallies and it comes around those that need support, but the real testing time is in the coming weeks and months. Can I just make a commitment to those in Christchurch, to our Muslim community, that this Parliament is going to remain 100 percent focused on making sure that we do everything that we can to prevent a tragedy like this from happening again in New Zealand.

Can I acknowledge the police Minister, the Hon Stuart Nash, and the work that he’s done in putting this legislation together as quickly as he could and bringing it to the House. Can I acknowledge him and the leadership that he’s provided as our Minister of Police through what’s been an extremely trying time for us as well.

I personally believe there is no need to have military-style weapons in New Zealand, other than for the exemptions that we’ll see. Obviously, for our law enforcement, our police, and our New Zealand Defence Force, it’s part of their equipment. It’s a tool that they need, but I just do not see the need for everyday Kiwis to have a military-style weapon in their house. I fully support the legislation and the intent behind this in making sure that we don’t have military-style weapons in our homes.

Can I just talk very quickly about the magazine capacity, because this is something that I felt very strongly about. The type of terror attack that we witnessed relies, basically, on two things. It relies on time—the person having as much time as possible to do as much damage as possible—and the capacity to do that. In an attack like this, the capacity to do that lies quite simply in the capacity or the number of rounds that can be passed through the weapon, and so restricting that capacity just makes perfect sense in terms of being able to restrict or prevent the type of tragedy with the number of casualties and the number of deaths that we witnessed in Christchurch.

An in-built magazine simply means that the person takes much longer to reload the weapon, and it’s restricted by the number of rounds that can actually be put into the weapon, whereas a detachable magazine can be bought online. You can buy—I think one of the previous speakers referred to it—a tumbler magazine with up to 120 rounds. So, basically, with a semi-automatic weapon, you can fire as many rounds as quickly as your finger can move. So I think that the intent of the bill around reducing and restricting magazine and load capacity is a very important part of this bill. I fully—100 percent—support it.

Just lastly, can I comment on the gangs, because it has been raised in the House today as well. Can I again acknowledge the Minister, who came out very strongly against gangs this week and the fact that they were flouting the authority that this Parliament has, that this country has, and that our police service has by saying that they’re not going to observe the legislation that this Parliament is passing. I 100 percent support taking the strongest possible line that we can against gangs. It’s no secret how I feel about gangs. I had a lot to do with them in my 14 years in law enforcement here, and another 10 years overseas. There is nothing good about gangs. There is no upside to being a member of a gang. There’s no upside for our community in which these gangs operate.

In my time, I saw men in gangs who did actually have some leadership capability, who actually weren’t completely evil—but why do they choose to wear a patch? A patch sends a message to the community of one thing: the fact that they’ve been prepared to commit violent crime to earn the right to wear that patch. I find it highly offensive. I think that as a nation, over decades we have tried the best that we can to take these gangs on. I think we have had some success at the fringes. For me personally, I’m hoping that this presents us with an opportunity now, as a Parliament and as a Government, with a Minister that’s showing that he’s willing to take a stand against them, to actually start dialling it up a bit, to actually start developing some legislation that will give the police the powers that they need to really go after these guys. Not just the military-style weapons but the sawn-off shotguns or the converted .22s or the handguns that they procure illegally—yep, there is an issue there, of course. The ones that are procured illegally and operate outside our regulations present a whole different challenge, but let’s go for it. Let’s start to put pressure on these guys. Let’s start to get meaningful. Let’s start to make sure that our police have got the equipment, they’ve got the intelligence, they’ve got the resources, and they’ve got the backing of this Parliament. They’ve got the backing of the Minister and Cabinet and the Prime Minister to actually start applying genuine, real pressure on organised crime in New Zealand.

I’ve had three people come to me in the last six weeks with video footage showing that the gangs are starting to control the Auckland CBD and that they’re carrying and using weapons more and more. It’s time to send a message to the gangs and say, “You don’t run the town. Actually, we do.”

Can I acknowledge my own police area commander, Mark Fergus, who was in my office a fortnight ago, for the regular contact that we have. You may know him. He also heads up the disaster victim identification unit.

Hon Grant Robertson: I went to school with him.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Oh, you went to school with him, yeah? He’s an outstanding police area commander with a real heart for our community, and I want to acknowledge my local police service, who do an outstanding job.

We had a gang. Admittedly, it was a youth gang, but it was still dedicated to committing crime and creating havoc in the community. The police area commander decided that he’d use every resource available to him to apply pressure to them to make sure that they could disrupt, dismantle, and, effectively, drive the gang out—it was actually up on Whangaparāoa Peninsula—and that did mean using every tool available to him. It can be done.

So I just want to support the Minister of Police and the comments that he made in the last 48 hours around applying pressure to gangs. You’ve got our full support on that, but we want to go harder. We want to dial it up. We want to actually start making some meaningful change in terms of how we can start to reduce, drive out, and get rid of gangs and organised crime in New Zealand. Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): This is a bill I’m proud to rise in support of, but it is in circumstances that I would have given anything to avoid. The horrific attack on 15 March on two mosques in Christchurch has broken hearts and wounded spirits across the country. It has changed us. New Zealand has united in its grief, in its solidarity with those attacked, and in our determination to never let anything like this ever happen again. The bill that we begin passing today is a way of making that determination tangible.

Since 15 March, we have seen an outpouring of love and compassion and support for the victims who lost their lives, for families who lost loves ones, and for the Muslim community, who were targeted because of their faith. Our country’s response has filled me and, I think, everybody in this House with pride. We’ve seen rivers of flowers, the enormous crowds at the vigils, and the haka. All these acts of kindness and solidarity have been a powerful symbolic expression of the solidarity New Zealanders feel with the fact that, as our Prime Minister has said, they are us.

We have seen powerful expressions of that feeling from right across the country, but today is the day that we write that solidarity into our books of law. It is our role as legislators to ensure that these acts of kindness and compassion are not just symbolic, ephemeral tokens but are translated into lasting, practical change by this House. So, today, we take the concrete action to prevent attacks like this in the future. Today, we begin the process of banning the weapons used in that horrific attack. Today, we start to make our country a safer place for the future. This was a monstrous attack on innocent men, women, and children who were doing nothing more than going about their daily lives, as they expressed their faith and as they knelt in the silence and serenity in their place of worship. They should have been safe here.

The Al Noor Mosque is located on Deans Avenue in Riccarton, in my electorate of Wigram. I know this community well. This is a community that I have formed a relationship with over time. These are my neighbours. This is a community that has gone out of its way to welcome me and has only ever made me feel loved and accepted, a community that has welcomed me to their Eid prayers and to their celebrations, and to see this community so hatefully targeted on the basis of their religion with such shocking violence is evil.

Last week, I attended the burial of one of the victims. To stand by that grave alongside a family was hugely confronting. I will never forget the feelings of intensity of the grief and seeing the horrifying spectacle of mass graves as I did. I simply could not understand how someone could visit such hate and horror on innocent, loving people like this. But what I do understand is this: as legislators, we have a responsibility to keep this community and all New Zealanders safe. This is not too fast; this is what leadership looks like.

We have a responsibility to the 50 lives that were lost to make sure this country is a safer place for all New Zealanders in the future. We have a responsibility to the memory of people like Husna Ahmed, who escaped that mosque and was killed when she ran back to look for her husband, Farid—a couple who live only a few metres from my electorate office. We have a responsibility to the memory of 49 other human beings who were killed on 15 March; and we have a responsibility to everybody in this country. We have that responsibility, and I am proud that we are acting on it. With the passing of this bill, every weapon used by that terrorist will be banned. We are banning all military-style semi-automatics with assault rifles that are designed to kill people.

This legislation is not directed at the vast bulk of law-abiding gun owners, especially those in rural communities who use .22 calibre rifles for farm work and hunting. We are mindful that some guns serve legitimate purposes in our farming and rural communities and have, therefore, set out exemptions for .22 calibre rifles and shotguns commonly used for duck hunting. These will have limitations around their capacity.

It is entirely reasonable and proper that we should do this, but we are very clear that owning a gun in New Zealand is a privilege and not a right. We strongly believe that the vast majority of legitimate gun owners in New Zealand will understand that these moves are in the national interest and will take these changes in their stride, just as they did in Australia when similar changes were made there.

An amnesty will be put in place for weapons to be handed in, and people will have till the end of September to do so. Even people who have semi-automatics illegally will be covered by this amnesty. Our focus is simple: it is getting these guns out of the community, and we will work with the owners to make sure that that happens in an orderly way.

We have determined that it is only reasonable that people should have access to a fair buy-back scheme. There will definitely be a fair buy-back scheme—we are committed to that. The exact details are still being worked through, but it will be similar to the Australian scheme that saw people receive a fair price for their guns. I am pleased that this move is so widely accepted and supported.

I’d like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, for the speed with which he has worked on this legislation. I’d also like to acknowledge the leadership of our Prime Minister, who, only hours after the attack, was talking about the need for us to reform our gun laws. It is with the full support of the Government parties—Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens—joined by the National Party, Federated Farmers, Fish & Game, and hunters and fishers and others that have come to support this, and I would like to also acknowledge the Opposition. This is the kind of day when Parliament can be at its best, and we appreciate the support. The public will have a say. We encourage people to submit to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and we are open to hearing technical issues with the application of the legislation in order to iron out any problems that may be there.

So these changes that we are making today are reasonable. They are thought through and they are the right thing to do. These changes are also timely. These changes need to be made. These are changes needed to ensure that our communities are safer, that those who wish to cause New Zealanders harm cannot get their hands on weapons of war designed only to kill and maim, and that those that want to weaponise their hate cannot get their hands on these weapons of war.

These changes that we are beginning the process of making today will protect innocent people. They will change lives and they will save lives. The changes that we are making today are the most proper and fitting service that we can make to the memory of those who lost their lives on 15 March. This bill is the tangible expression of the sentiments of kindness and aroha and determination we have seen from our nation in the past two weeks. It is a promise on behalf of the people of New Zealand to our communities and to our future generations. The promise is this: together we will make New Zealand a kinder, safer country. This bill is an important part of doing that. I commend it to the House. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 119

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.

Noes 1

ACT New Zealand 1.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I move, That the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines, and Parts) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by Monday, 8 April 2019, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill

Second Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a second time.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill be now read a second time.

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.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill

First Reading

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): I move, That the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 27 May 2019. I also intend that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day where there has been a sitting of the House, on a Friday in a week where there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193, and 194(1)(b) and (c).

The purpose of this omnibus bill is to give effect to the policy to raise the upper age of the youth justice jurisdiction to include 17-year-olds, as enacted by the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017. The bill contains amendments to ensure that 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction receive appropriate and consistent treatment, benefits, and protections from 1 July 2019. It will also enable the judiciary, New Zealand Police, and other key stakeholders to exercise their functions consistently and effectively in relation to 17-year-olds. The bill makes technical and consequential amendments to 11 Acts and to one set of regulations including the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, the Bail Act 2000, the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, and related regulations, the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and the Sentencing Act 2002. The bill removes ambiguities in the current legislation that may cause confusion, inconsistent treatment, or operational difficulties.

While technical and consequential to the 2017 amendments, the changes proposed in this legislation are necessary to make the reforms work. The decision to raise the upper age of the youth justice jurisdiction to include most 17-year-olds was a majority decision made by the previous Parliament. The expansion of the youth justice jurisdiction will take effect on 1 July 2019 after a two-year lead-in. I am confident that Oranga Tamariki has the capacity to respond to the inclusion of 17-year-olds in the youth justice system both immediately following 1 July and over the longer term. Oranga Tamariki are developing extra residential capacity by redesignating Whakatakapokai care and protection residence in Auckland as a youth justice residence and by adding additional capacity at Te Au rere a te Tonga youth justice residence in Palmerston North.

In consultation with iwi partners, Oranga Tamariki is developing community-based, custodial options which will take some of the capacity pressures off residences. Oranga Tamariki are looking at a range of options to reduce custodial remand including better supporting young people who are on bail: 70 to 80 percent of the population in residences are on remand. Many 17-year-olds will have spent time in the youth justice system prior to turning 17, including time at Oranga Tamariki residences. Staff will know them and have built relationships with them. I know that having more time to work with them in a restorative, care-based environment will increase the likelihood that they will not end up on a pathway into the adult justice system. In addition, Oranga Tamariki are developing programmes and services tailored to the 17-year-old cohort. These include vocational training and employability and independent living support.

Since 2017, other pieces of legislation have been identified as needing amendment to ensure alignment with the age increase and to address errors. It is important that processes and procedures affected by the expansion of the youth justice jurisdiction are clear and that the policy is consistently applied. The consistent treatment of 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction will ensure that our young people are given the rights and benefits that should be available to them and support New Zealand’s compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and its Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice.

Features of this bill include amendments to the definition of “young person” to reflect the expansion of the youth justice jurisdiction and transactional provisions to clarify whether a 17-year-old should be managed within the adult or youth jurisdiction. Broadly speaking, this will depend on whether proceedings have commenced prior to 1 July or not. Transitional provisions are required to ensure that there is certainty for all parts of the system including the judiciary and the police at the front line when the new jurisdiction takes effect on 1 July. I note that serious charges—those that have a maximum sentence of no less than 14 years taken against 17-year-olds—will remain in the adult jurisdiction. This bill does not alter that policy.

The bill will also clarify the making of urgent interim orders that may be required in care or protection proceedings under the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989. This covers custody, restraining, or guardianship orders. Some current provisions, due to come into effect on 1 July, contain drafting errors in the original legislation from 2017. They would allow the court or a lawyer for the child to take action without knowing whether they had all of the relevant information available to understand the interests of the child, and this needs correcting.

There are established processes in the Act to ensure that, when required, children and young people can get the urgent help they need, including where the court or a lawyer for the child hold serious concerns for them. Moving a child away from their whānau requires an interim order and it is a decision that should not be taken lightly and without the relevant information needed to determine the risk to the child. This is why a robust process is needed to ensure that it is the right thing to do. The Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill ensures that children are only moved into State custody under defined circumstances and with an appropriate amount of information. To allow these drafting errors to remain would undermine the process and, therefore, present a risk to children.

This bill also addresses three other drafting errors in the 2017 Act, as well as making a consequential amendment to the Children’s Commissioner Act 2003 to correct a cross-referencing error. These changes are also required ahead of 1 July 2019.

I ask that my colleagues across the House support these amendments so that the original intention of the Oranga Tamariki Act can be truly implemented on 1 July without unintended consequences. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. As it is the first time since the Christchurch tragedy that I’ve been able speak in the House, can I just briefly give my condolences to those families that have lost their loved ones and also to the city, too. I want to acknowledge the solidarity that has been given right across the whole of the nation in this regard, and so, with that, I give my remarks for that.

I stand on behalf of the National Party as supporting this bill—at its first reading—to the select committee. I want to acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin and the work that she has put in, in putting this legislation forward so that we can progress what is, as she has said, a very technical piece of legislation, which completes the original legislation that was put through in July 2017. In saying that, it is a bit of a concern that we’ve now fast-tracked to here, because we were in the process of about eight weeks—if I take it rightly—from the report-back date that’s now being given. We would have hoped, again, that there would have been more time. So I want to go on the record, on behalf of the caucus, to register our concern where again we are now beginning to see, for no just cause, process being rushed, when we could have had an opportunity where we would have had a bit more time to be able to go through a submissions process—again, so that others could contribute to that. I’ll allude to some of those concerns that will be raised, I believe, through the submissions process as well. But I do want to go on record about the issue around the fact that, again, we are rushing a piece of legislation that we are supporting right across the House.

I want to make remarks to the comments that the Minister’s made in regard to the original bill in 2017 that was passed in this House, where she made the remark that it was by majority. Unfortunately, it wasn’t by majority with the support of New Zealand First. I have looked through the Hansard and the remarks that have been made by the spokesperson of that time for New Zealand First, which was Darroch Ball. On his remarks, looking through the Hansard, right the way through the first reading, second reading, the committee of the whole House, and the third reading, he was disparaging in the sense of where the then current Government, the National-led Government, was progressing this form of legislation—that actually is before the House as we speak today. In his remarks he would say and indicate: “There was so much promise, opportunity. It has been wasted. Issues around living costs: none of these will have been addressed. A number of issues that are to do with issues of youth in the justice system have not been addressed in this current bill.”—which is the current bill that is before the House.

So while across this House and on the side of the House we are in full support of this legislation, I just want to go on the record again: it wasn’t by full support of New Zealand First in that regard. So I want to go on the record of saying that I’d like to hear from New Zealand First, if there are other speakers, in regard to what they see has changed, which has shifted their position to where they are now, inside the House, with this piece of legislation that’s before us.

This bill is a bill that is an omnibus bill. It gives full effect to the aspects of Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017 and by seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy do include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction and are fully realised in addressing drafting errors in the original 2017 Act. This bill tightens up legislation, particularly around procedures and process related to 17-year-olds within the youth justice system.

Can I go on the record to acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley, who was the Minister at that time who put through this legislation? It was significant because the initiation of this was probably one of the most significant shifts within about 30 years of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act and also within the whole sector itself, shifting from what was, in a sense, just under the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Act, to then include Oranga Tamariki in its focus, and refocusing its direction and its purpose, and hence the reason why this technical side of it is important.

One of those, in particular to the scope of this bill that’s before the House, is increasing the age of care. I, like other members, also heard the submissions and actually went to those residential facilities for youth. It was there that they petitioned us, lobbied us, to ensure that we would increase that age of care. Many of these young people in their words would say, “We need at least another year. We need another year so that we can have that support.” But at the same time, in this particular area here, in regard to youth justice and the jurisdiction that is there, it is to also take into account, I suppose, in a sense, for young people, as we would understand and determine in regard to the ages going through the justice system as well. So we all agreed that it was the appropriate thing to raise that age of care, but also from 17-year-olds, in regard to the implications of that into the youth justice system as well. So I want to acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley and the work that she had completed as well.

The purpose of the changes made in 2017 was to ensure vulnerable children and young people have the best chance to have safe, stable, and loving homes, which will help them grow into successful independent adults as well. A majority of the reforms in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act come into force on 1 July, including the reforms relating to those 17-year-olds as well.

Can I just make some remarks to this, which are to the Minister to take notice of as we go through the submission process, because while this is important legislation that we will support, some of the implications that I believe will come through in a submission process from those inside of our communities will be in regard to the residential facilities for youth in our community, especially with youth justice as a concern. I’ve had people talk to me in regard to this piece of legislation as it’s about to come through the House and into select committee. For instance, I’ll give an example: in communities like in Manurewa for instance, where I know that Oranga Tamariki is looking at a re-designation of a care facility and in this regard to extend it to a care facility not only for those in protection but also for those within the youth justice jurisdiction, relating in particular to the scope of this bill. The concerns for them is that, (1) will their safety issues be addressed? Secondly, is it an issue that the fact is that those facilities in regard to the occupancy—do we have enough facilities to care and cater for the needs that will also arise after the 1 July from this piece of legislation, as well?

So I just want to put that on the table, in an open and transparent way, for the Minister to be able to take that into consideration. I know that it will be part of the submissions process heading through, when we discuss this bill in the select committee process as well.

So my remarks are that we, on this side, do support this legislation. We are concerned that, again, we are rushing through a process where there was no need, there was time, and we could have actually had a proper and full process. I do acknowledge that we’ve had a departmental statement that’s here as part of this. We would have felt, though, that with enough time we could have actually had a fuller process of submissions, hearings, and advice that would have come through and then gone through into the House. But it is such that the Government has determined it will come back at the end of May. We will support that because we believe it’s important—that legislation should be completed in the appropriate time. So we support and commend this bill to the House.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): This is a very significant piece of legislation. I’m cognisant of a scene I was part of at the downtown Auckland Central Police Station where there was a briefing and the incoming shift were being briefed and an announcement was made by the intelligence officer that a certain local offender was turning 17. All the officers in that room cheered because what that meant, in their mind, was all of a sudden they could deal effectively with this offender.

Now, that’s a very narrow end of the way we deal with our young people, but it is a quite an important end. When we look at any legislation, as the previous speaker has mentioned, it’s very important we get the balance right.

At the other end of the argument, and when the debate around the original legislation was being dealt with at select committee and in the lead-up to that, I know there were those who thought that this provision should actually go through to 21—that, when we were looking at the frontal cortex and the thinking abilities of our young people, in fact, they needed to be under this sort of a system, or some sort of a system, where they could be treated and be able to avail themselves of the necessary care and protection until they were 21. That was, of course, the extreme of the argument, and the legislation was around shifting from 17 to 18.

Looking at the legislation, provided we do have the backstop—again, referring to the previous speaker—ensuring that when people do come into the system, whether it be a care and protection issue or, ultimately, and what this legislation mostly deals with, a youth justice issue, we are actually ensuring the intention of the legislation, which is to make sure we prevent and make it less likely that these young people—and 17-year-olds now will be young people—carry on to offend as adults. The experience of all those involved is that if someone is still offending as a 21-year-old, it is likely they will continue to offend through their 20s, and by that stage, many would argue, they are lost to the system, certainly in the short term. So it is incredibly important we do get it right.

This legislation and, of course, the major legislation it relates to—the decision was made that 17-year-olds would be included in this system, and so, having made that decision, it is really important now that we are consistent. Much of this legislation is about that very thing—ensuring that we then line up that those who are caught within the change are actually fairly treated. For example, if you are standing trial as a 17-year-old for a qualifying offence and you were still 17 at the time of the offence—of course, having been dealt with as an adult—what then happens? Of course, this legislation deals with that situation. You will actually continue to be dealt with. However, where the line is, I suppose, is what happens when the offending happened before when you were 17, when the offending was happening before you were actually charged or came into the system? How are you dealt with then? Again, this legislation is meant to deal with that situation.

So what it really means is that it was quite clear that once the legislation was looked at, there were some drafting errors, and for all the criticism that has been around having to fix drafting errors, this is one: that it didn’t really take into account the fact that there were many other provisions that were going to be affected; it wasn’t simply a matter of moving people from one age group to another.

So when we look at the Acts that actually did need to be amended—Oranga Tamariki Act, obviously; the Bail Act; the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017; the Children’s Commissioner Act; the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act—that’s quite a good example, because under the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act, with a certain qualifying offence, the offender is required to give their DNA. The question now becomes: if the offending happened while you were still 17years old and you were arrested later, are you then required to still give your bodily sample? Where is that bodily sample stored? Are you then treated as a young person?

So these are all the provisions that are being dealt with in the Act. You might argue they are logical, but if we’re going to do it, we’ve got to do it properly. Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act, Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act—of course, that’s quite an important Act. Where our Australian colleagues are continuing to send people back across the Tasman, and where they come as 17-year-olds, how do we treat them, particularly under legislation? They have certain obligations, as we do as law enforcement and as a Government in New Zealand. The Sentencing Act, Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act, Victims’ Rights Act, and Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Regulations—so these are all issues that it’s important that we do deal with in this Act.

It’s, again, going back to the substantive provision, if you like, of moving 17-year-olds into—or retaining them as young people. Eighteen, again, is the age where the debate will now take place. It’s taking place because 18 is when young people vote, and that is where the drinking age is, so it does make sense in many ways that 18 is the place that we will actually treat young people as adults. So it does make sense.

Again, I do reiterate the importance of making sure, though, that this is not seen as an easy way out, that we’re making sure that—like in all these provisions, there’s always another lot of people that have to be dealt with. Many times, when we’re dealing with these young people, there are victims, and it is very important that we don’t only look at a system, that we don’t only look at the effect and those who have actually committed the offences; we actually also have to ensure that victims are included in this. That is where the family group conference and the systems that, actually, we employ do give a chance for that restitution, to make sure that the victims do get a say in the system. So it is important, again, that as we go through the system, all these factors that are relevant as we change from young people, as 17-year-olds, now remaining as young people until they’re 18—that all these impacts of the decision are considered.

For that reason, I’ll be on the select committee that will be considering this. I’ll be commending this to the select committee with the intention that we will make sure that this legislation is as good as it can be when it comes back to this House. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Well, that’s a very nice sentiment that Mr O’Connor has just talked about, about the fact that it’s being sent to a select committee to make sure that we get the legislation right. Well, newsflash, Mr O’Connor, if you weren’t listening: this is yet another piece of legislation introduced by this Government that abuses and does not allow a select committee process in its entirety to take place—yet another piece of legislation with a shortened report back: 27 May. The Minister doesn’t even have the courtesy, when there’s a piece of legislation that is supported across this Parliament, to even discuss it with the Opposition. It’s unbelievable that we’re seeing this yet again. So this is a shortened report back to 27 May. Yes, it’s a technical bill. That’s even more reason to ensure that the people who have an interest in this legislation have the ability to pick it apart and to ensure that as a Parliament, we get this legislation right.

So for those that have just tuned in to this, this is the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. This is a technical bill. This is legislation that, in terms of the significant overhaul of the work that the State does with children, my colleague the Hon Anne Tolley was significantly involved in, with very strong engagement from the public, iwi, from organisations, from the Parliament, and young people sharing their stories to ensure that we got the policy right. The very idea that this Government is then trampling on all of that critical engagement that took place in the earlier versions of the policy design to then jam it through—to jam it through—a select committee process to say 27 May is the report back for legislation that comes into effect on 1 July—what’s the Government been doing? What has the Government been doing? This is a technical omnibus bill—a technical omnibus bill—that covers off how many pieces of legislation? How many pieces of legislation? Twelve, one of my colleagues says. That deserves the full scrutiny of the select committee to ensure a complex bill is delivered properly.

But I want to talk very briefly about the people that are served by this particular bill, because it relates to the procedures and policies relating to 17-year-olds within the youth justice jurisdiction. I think this is a particularly vulnerable group of New Zealanders, and we do have the opportunity to put them on a different path. So it is critical, this legislation. It is critical we get it right. We owe it to them—we owe it to them. We owe it to their victims. But, actually, we owe it to them to ensure that they have a different future. So it is critical that we get this legislation right. Just last week, I met with a number of organisations who are providing services for these children, for these young people. Yes, we are lifting the age so that they can be dealt with in this system, not the adult system. They deserve for us to get it right, and it’s absolutely outrageous to have a shortened report back on yet another piece of Government legislation.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I actually want to begin by addressing a couple of comments made by the member the Hon Louise Upston, who just resumed her seat, who talks about the fact that this Government is “rushing” through this piece of legislation. However, part of what the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill does is make some technical amendments because of drafting errors made by the previous Government, given that this piece of legislation has had a lead-in period of two years. Which brings me to the point that the date of 1 July 2019 was actually set by the previous Government, yet again, and yet they adopt the moral high ground and tell us that we’re pushing this through and absolve themselves of any responsibility for where we are today, which is amending technical drafting errors. Also, this bill was introduced before 15 March, and we’ve actually lost two weeks as a result of the horrific attacks that we’ve seen in Christchurch. So if the members opposite are using that to score political points, that is incredibly disappointing.

Now, on to what the bill actually does. The purpose of the bill falls broadly into two categories. One of them is in relation to the policy to raise the upper age of the youth justice jurisdiction to include 17-year-olds and to ensure that that policy can actually be fully realised and to ensure that these 17-year-olds receive appropriate and consistent treatment, the benefits and the protections that they are entitled to, once that change comes into force on 1 July 2019.

So, once again, we don’t have a huge amount of time to ensure that these errors are corrected and to ensure that 17-year-olds who will be caught up in that piece of legislation when it comes into force are actually treated in a manner that is consistent. So these changes will also allow the police, the judiciary, and other key stakeholders in this space to exercise their functions consistently, and that’s where some of the changes to the Sentencing Act and the Bail Act 2000 will come into play. This is an omnibus bill that will make amendments to 11 Acts and one set of regulations.

The second part, which was the technical amendments that I alluded to, is amendments to those Acts and that set of regulations. They are significant amendments with regard to urgent interim orders, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

If I may, I wanted to just quote from a New Zealand Herald article that lays out quite succinctly and very clearly how the changes to this upper age and the changes to the separate pieces of legislation will actually impact people’s lives. So I quote: “Jamie is 16 and facing Youth Court charges of assault and taking cars. He is also before the Family Court to get help from Oranga Tamariki—the Ministry for Children because of physical and sexual abuse by his father. After pleading guilty, [he’s] assessed by the adolescent mental health team. He is found to be dyslexic with a communication disorder, meaning he needs constant help to understand what’s happening in court. The Youth Court education officer discloses [that] Jamie has not been in school for three years. His situation is discussed at a family group conference, and a plan is drawn up to provide help. During that conference, [he] takes part in restorative justice and apologises to his victims. Rehabilitation and counselling for drug and alcohol issues is organised. The court will monitor his progress for months, keeping in constant contact with Jamie and his guardians in a bid to get his life back on track.

“[Now,] Jamie’s not real—but that’s the way lots of young people are handled when they get in[to] trouble. Things change when they hit 17. Charges of assault and taking cars would land them before the District Court, an adult in the eyes of the law. Jamie would still have the same disabilities and [the same] family history. Without his own legal representation, he would be assigned a duty lawyer who might not spot his communication disorder, impeding his chance of a fair hearing. He could be bailed [at] his father’s address because the court wouldn’t know it’s unsuitable. And if he pleaded guilty, he might be sentenced to 200 hours of community work, spending months of Saturdays with other adult criminals. From July [this year], young people won’t go before the District Court until they’re 18 [years old], [except in some circumstances,] except in serious cases such as murder, manslaughter, sexual assaults, and aggravated robbery.”

So we have people who are experts telling us that this change will allow more interventions at a crucial point in young people’s lives: interventions that can actually help them to change track, I guess, and not go down the path of reoffending—if those interventions are actually successful—but actually make a difference to their lives. At its heart, at the substance of the changes that this bill makes, is really to ensure that 17-year-olds can be treated in a manner that’s consistent with those changes to help them get back on track. So that was a decision that was made, obviously, in the previous Parliament and supported by the majority, from the understanding that young people face complex problems and need interventions at those points to help them.

I just want to make a quick point because it’s been brought up time and again that this is about condoning offending. And I want to make the point that it’s absolutely not. Research suggests that many traits common among adolescents remain prevalent in young adults; so they need to be treated differently. Sending them either to jail or in circumstances where they’re in contact with hardened criminals only sends them down that path of reoffending and offending in more serious ways as well. So that’s what the crux of this bill that we’re debating here today does in terms of the changes.

The other part of it—the second broad category—was about the urgent interim orders. It clarifies the making of those orders that may be required in care or protection proceedings under the Oranga Tamariki Act, and that has to do with custody, restraining orders, and guardianship as well. So, again, some of those drafting areas that I mentioned at the start of my speech—it corrects those, and it corrects them in very important ways. I’m just going to point to two. The amendments will remove the courts’ ability to make interim orders in relation to children or young people on its own motion when there are no relevant care and protection proceedings under the Oranga Tamariki Act under way—and, secondly, the lawyer representing the child or young person’s ability to apply for an interim order outside of care and protection proceedings under the Oranga Tamariki Act in relation to a child or young person, unless they first seek leave of the court.

So while this is a bill that corrects some of the drafting errors made by the previous Government, it also makes some changes that ensure that our young people can be treated in a way that is actually beneficial to them, and so I commend this bill to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I join with my colleagues at this time, to lend my voice also and acknowledge the families and the friends of those who lost their lives on 15 March in Christchurch. I also acknowledge and thank the New Zealand Police, St John, and all the volunteers and, indeed, the community who rushed to the support of those victims’ families.

Back to the bill—the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. In 2017, as we’ve heard from previous speakers, the then National-led Government introduced and passed the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act. In terms of this bill, this is an omnibus bill and, simply by its very nature, it is because it impacts several other bills. As the Hon Louise Upston said earlier, it actually impacts on 12 other Acts.

So the purpose of this bill is to bring 17-year-olds—under-18s—into the youth justice system. This is something that’s very non-contentious. In fact, it was strongly recommended by Judge Andrew Becroft, the Children’s Commissioner, and it also aligns us very well with UNCROC—the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child—who referred, in our report back to them in 2016, that this would also be a suitable move. So it’s very good to see this piece of legislation being put into place to ensure that under-18s—our 17-year-olds—are no longer dealt with in the adult criminal justice system but now in the youth justice system. This enables them to also have the wraparound services that provide for their care in terms of, perhaps, changing their direction of travel. It’s very non-contentious, because the impacts on the rights of those under 18—the 17-year-olds—in this piece of legislation are all beneficial. I commend this bill to the House.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to be able to stand and support the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. This is a bill introduced under the Standing Orders so that it provides for an omnibus bill to amend more than one Act. What I’m going to use my contribution time for today is to pick up on the part of this bill which seeks to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised.

Many years ago, while I was working at the Human Rights Commission, I was fortunate to attend the opening of the marae Youth Court, which at that point was only the second Youth Court in the country; we’ve got a number of them now. One of the things, and why it was to be celebrated back in 2016—and, in fact, I acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley, who was bringing forward that change, a change that we had long been advocating for, advocacy groups like UNICEF, JustSpeak, the Human Rights Commission, and even the police and courts themselves, realising that a rehabilitative, restorative justice approach was certainly more effective, better for young people, for victims, for community building, and for whānau, and that extending that to 17-year-olds was something that had long been called for and something that actually put us out of kilter with many other countries around the world who had already gone ahead and made sure they had done that.

One of the major changes in this bill is to make sure that we are fully realising that policy announcement that was celebrated some years ago, and I actually did want to properly acknowledge those advocacy groups who had been calling for this change for quite some time. Now we’re at the point where we have to make sure we’ve got our i’s dotted and our t’s crossed and make sure that the law is also up to date, because it’s about to come in on 1 July, as is my understanding. When I was able to attend the opening of the marae Youth Court that day, picking up on what my colleague Ms Radhakrishnan also mentioned about the effectiveness and efficiency of a restorative justice approach and not just a punitive approach, particularly for young, still-developing minds—if I’m being aspirational here, that can actually continue well past 17, well past 18, and that can go right up to, and research is very clear, 23 or 25 years old. So this is a good, useful start.

I just want to be very clear in this contribution that a restorative justice approach is absolutely centred on true accountability—on true accountability directly to victims, to account for and restore the harm and the imbalance that perpetrators have committed to that person, their family, and their own communities. So I’m pleased to see this Government taking some leadership and some moves to understand that the evidence has been very clear for a very long time that putting younger people into the adult court system is a path to reoffending and that the rehabilitative, restorative, counselling focus for the less serious crimes—because, let’s be clear, the young people in the age group up to 17 are included except for when those crimes are of a serious nature; then they still go through the ordinary adult justice system. But the evidence has been very clear that, when we can actually address the root causes—my colleague Ms Radhakrishnan highlighted the example of a young person with a learning disability. That was a made-up young person. I also want to caution against the stigma of young people with learning challenges being the same as criminals. But what we do know in prisons today is that, if we had provided enough proper support in the education system and around a whole host of challenges and social difficulties for that person, we would actually be avoiding terribly high incarceration rates.

And so I did want to say that, while this legislation picks up making sure that we are enabling the proper realisation of that policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction, I think my colleague Greg O’Connor also mentioned that we need to make sure the resourcing for that policy is put in place properly, and so we will need those monitoring services, drug and alcohol services, and counselling family group conferences. We will need to, as a Government, make sure that we are resourcing the impacts of this legislation and bringing that 17-year-old policy change into play.

I wanted to make a short contribution but I will also pick up the Minister’s initial address, put here in the House today, to flag some of the wider work that isn’t part of this particular bill. I did want to acknowledge the Minister herself making it clear that she is very cognisant and acutely aware of the need for iwi Māori communities and marae and hapū to be involved with custodial options. This is something that has long been called for, something the Greens have been strong advocates for as well. And the Minister mentioned that community-based custodial options with iwi are part of the plans going forward, which will also help with the capacity of Oranga Tamariki, but more importantly for myself is that this is also about putting over, understanding the value that iwi and Māori communities have to be able to take care, take that responsibility, and us as the Government being able to put over more trust and resourcing and support for them to step up and take that responsibility. They want to know where their mokopuna are, they want to know who’s having trouble and where those whānau need help, and they are willing to step up and help us to do that work.

Of course, others have mentioned that there are other technical legal changes and, in particular fixing up some flaws in previous legislation. So, of course, I’m very happy to support us getting that right, fixing that up, and am looking forward to continuing the discussion and making sure that we are properly resourcing a truly restorative justice approach that, first and foremost, is about proper accountability to victims, their families, and communities. Thank you.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on this first reading, acknowledging the Minister for bringing it to the House. Importantly, as other colleagues have noted, this was part of a National Party approach initially and with mostly support from across the House in passing the original legislation before the end of the last Parliament. It was known then—and, again, that’s why it’s good that the Minister has brought it to the House now—that there would have to be subsequent legislation to incorporate the initial changes around 17-year-olds and how they’ll be treated in the justice system.

I acknowledge too the then Minister, Anne Tolley, for the enormous amount of work that she led in this space to bring about what was one of the fundamental changes—again, that a 17-year-old should be treated in the youth justice sector rather than the adult justice sector. So this is a piece of legislation which, you’ve already anticipated, Mr Assistant Speaker, has our support—I would say from across the House, but certainly from the National Party—first and foremost because it’s a piece of legislation that we were adapting and were prepared to adopt.

Look, fundamentally, as has been mentioned, it’s an omnibus bill, simply because there are a number of pieces of legislation which need changes. The original Act a year ago did not, or could not, effect changes across at least 12 other pieces of legislation. So I think it’s a good bill. I am concerned and surprised that the Minister has indicated this is going to be a truncated process. I’m a little confused about why that has to be the case, and I do want to put on the record again, particularly in this social development space, that there is a continuing theme from this Government of rushing through legislation. We had it around the winter energy payment most recently, we’re having it again here tonight around Oranga Tamariki, and I would counsel, for want of a better word, the Government against that. They’ve often spoken about the need for voices to be heard and that of children’s voices. If they were true to that, they’d be enabling a full amount of time. With that, I commend the bill to the House.

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

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Kia ora, Te Mana Whakawā. Al salam alaikum. It is an absolute privilege to speak on the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. It would be remiss of me not to respond to the statement from the previous speaker, Simon O’Connor, talking about rushing this through—we’ve heard from previous speakers that, actually, this had been before the previous Government for two years. I want to respond to what the honourable member Alfred Ngaro has spoken about: that they were listening to children—they were listening to children. I want to talk about the fact that this is changing the definition of “young person” to include 17-year-olds, and that in his speech he said that they listened to children.

I’ve worked for Oranga Tamariki through these changes—when they were going through Child, Youth and Family, and then the Ministry for Vulnerable Children, and then we came in and changed it to Oranga Tamariki, because it is about children. The voices of young people were saying, “Treat us equally in both courts”.

Currently, if these changes don’t go through, you can be picked up for an alleged offence and charged in the Youth Court as an adult—and not in the District Court—as a 17-year-old, but if you’re in need of care and protection you are treated as a young person and you go through the Family Court. If this is not changed, come 1 July we’re actually talking about 23 percent of the population who, according to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, are people under 18. That’s over a million in 18 years’ time; we’re talking about those million children and young people turning 18. So, currently, according to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner 182,940 young people are between the age of 15 and 17. So we’re actually talking about those young people, and if they happen to be arrested on 1 July at 17 we want them to have fair and equal treatment by any court in this country.

So this omnibus bill is actually saying there are 12 Acts that will effect this change. There are 12 Acts. Let’s not wait any longer. Children who will turn seven and who will become a young person at 14 actually cannot wait any longer. In the history of the Oranga Tamariki, changing names, and in terms of the ministry, we started from a white paper, then went to a green paper, then went to the bill, and then we discussed it, and we’ve gone on, and now it’s becoming the Act. It has taken a long time. My point is that it has taken a long time to get to this space and, actually, young people are saying, “Treat us the same whichever court we’re in. Whether we’re in the Family Court, whether our care and protection is needed, or whether we are being held in the youth justice system, accountable for our offending”. Young people have been saying for years, “Treat us as one person, not two different people”.

So in terms of speaking from the voices of experience, if we’re looking at making lasting change for young people, then we really need to provide the full clout of the law in terms of supporting that change. The youth justice system is about accountability and it also is about making lasting change. I heard—I won’t go there, because I don’t have the facts. But I want to strongly urge the members in this House: this cannot wait. This cannot wait any longer. We need to treat our young people the same in the Family Court and the same in the Youth Court.

Members of this House have spoken about examples of what could happen with young people and what could happen in a journey through the court. But as someone who has worked as a Youth Court clerk, as a youth justice social worker, as a youth justice manager, and as—and it was an honour—the project manager for the first Pasifika Youth Court, I want to commend the Minister.

This cannot wait any longer. We need to look at our young people with the same caring lens in terms of supporting their care and protection, and, also, on the same side, holding them accountable and using the same lens as a young person, not an adult. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill, noting as others have, on this side of the House and indeed on the other side, the necessity of aligning various aspects of this legislation with other laws on our statute book. I think it was the previous speaker who noted that there are some 12 Acts of Parliament that need to be amended in a consequential way to ensure that the aims of the original legislation will be met.

Like others on this side of the House, I would like to, perhaps, just strike a note—without over-emphasising it—of caution, I suppose, in relation to the need to give due diligence and proper scrutiny to the legislation. Notwithstanding that it is described as being technical in nature, that’s not to say that it’s unimportant. So I think we need to be careful of not confusing that which is substantive and that which is substantial. It is pretty procedural, it is pretty technical, but that doesn’t mean that it’s unimportant. Its importance, of course, derives from the fact that the subject matter is so important—the way that we treat young people, the way that we deal with young people within the criminal justice system and the health system, and the way that we regard young people as members of our society more generally differs, currently, according to whether they’re 17 or 18 in some particular jurisdictions and not others. So that’s the degree of consistency that others have, rightly, acknowledged does need to be clarified somewhat, does need to be aligned, and does need to be streamlined. These are worthy objectives of the law, worthy objectives of the House’s time, and so I have no hesitation or make further ado in commending it to the House, accordingly.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. This omnibus bill gives full effect to aspects of the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017 by seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised and addressing drafting errors in the 2017 Act. Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to talk on this important bill, the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill in the name of the Minister for Children, the Hon Tracey Martin.

If I can, I would like to firstly and very quickly commend the work that Minister Martin is doing in this space for our tamariki and young people. As I’ve said before on many, many occasions, I’m really proud of the fact that we are placing children and young people at the heart of policy and decision making in this country. Again, this piece of legislation fine-tunes the definition, procedures, and processes surrounding interactions of young people and the justice system.

This policy aims to give effect to two aspects. The first is seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised, and it does this by amending legislation to ensure the expanded youth justice jurisdiction is applied consistently across the justice system. I think that alludes a little bit to what my colleague mentioned before around listening to the children wanting to be treated the same, as Anahila mentioned. The second is simply addressing some drafting errors in the 2017 Act, including unintentionally broad provisions relating to interim court orders, as well as correcting cross-referencing errors in the Children’s Commissioner Act 2003. It is really important that these drafting errors are fixed up, because often we see things happen within our legislation that have unintended consequences that we do need to look to amend from time to time.

I also want to touch on a couple of points that other people have made. With regard to Mr O’Connor, he talked about victims and that, with this piece of legislation, we’re not wanting to minimise them and their need for justice to be done. It’s quite the opposite, in fact. I think, as the Hon Louise Upston mentioned before, this gives us, also, the opportunity, for these younger people that are 17, to help put them on a different path than what they might otherwise end up on, should they end up in our adult courts.

It’s important that we look to be restorative and not punitive when we deal with our young people of this age group, and I’ll talk a little bit about that a bit further on. But in particular, in relation to youth justice jurisdiction, the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction was developed as a result of recommendations proposed by the modernising Child, Youth and Family expert panel to expand the youth justice jurisdiction. In their report the panel recommended moving the upper age setting for the youth justice system from age 16 to 17 so that only those of 18 years and above would be considered to be adults for justice purposes and become part of the adult justice system. As per the report, New Zealand is also out of step with the international community in excluding 17-year-olds from youth jurisdiction. It was actually really interesting to note that almost all Australian states—excluding Queensland—England, Wales, Canada, and many American states include 17-year-olds in their youth jurisdiction.

It’s also worth, I think, pointing out and acknowledging that there’s an evolving body of evidence about brain development and maturity and new brain science understanding of adolescent development, which actually also supports the notion that we should increase the age at which young people are treated as adults. If we look internationally, Massachusetts does not allow prosecution of children under 14 in adult court, even for murder. However, here in New Zealand we require that such charges proceed in adult court for children as young as 10, but whilst retaining the rebuttal presumption that the child could not form the intent to commit the crime.

One thing that I also want to point out that is highlighted in the report is that evidence suggests that dealing with young people in the youth jurisdiction, rather than dealing with them in the adult system, is likely to reduce reoffending and reduce the number of victims in crime. And again that goes to the point that the Hon Louise Upston made about putting children on a different path, which could potentially be a path to reoffending should they go through the adult court system.

What this legislation also takes into account is the long-term impact that having a criminal record has on our young people’s long-term prospects. So if we’re thinking about restorative justice, giving our youth the opportunity to make amends for the actions that they have undertaken, the crimes that they have undertaken, instead of putting them into the adult system whereby they could be led down a different path—one that enables them to commit further crimes going on into their adult life—and if we’re wanting to give these children, or young people, the opportunity to make amends, then we don’t really want them to be going out into the world after they’ve done this with these long criminal records, because that could potentially also hinder their opportunities for further employment, the ability to even fit into their local communities, and things like that. So we do need to think about those sorts of things, thinking about the long-term prospects for our young people by having them tried as youth as opposed to adults. While there are suggestions that the current system of dealing with 17-year-olds in the criminal justice system is likely doing more harm than good, what we know for sure is that a formal criminal record has long-term consequences, as I said, for employment and social engagement.

I also wanted to bring up a point that Anahila made before about “We can’t wait any longer to make these changes.” We’ve heard that it’s being rushed, but, as she said before, if we wait and extend this out longer and longer, what happens to those young people who are nearly at the age of 17 now, should they commit a crim? We don’t really want them to be doing that, obviously, but should they commit a crime and we wait and we extend this out longer and longer and longer, the chances of those young people, obviously, being tried through our adult court system, and the chances of them ending up in our prisons and our jails is going to be really high. And it could also end up, as we’ve said before, in leading these young people down a different path, one that could involve a lifetime of crime, as opposed to changing the legislation as soon as we can—I think it’s July, someone has mentioned before—so that we’re giving these young people the opportunity to be tried in youth courts, which could provide them an extremely different outcome than what they may otherwise have if they were tried in an adult court. We should be supporting our people on positive pathways so that they can contribute positively to our communities, society, and to the economy.

AGNES LOHENI (National): This is my first call after what has been a very difficult and harrowing time for our country, and so I’d first like to note my condolences to the families and the community affected by the terrible event on 15 March in Christchurch.

It is my pleasure to take this call on the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. It is good to see that this bill tightens up and strengthens the legislation, which is ultimately about ensuring that working families, whānau, and our young people have access to the care and support they need. The intent of this legislation is to put children and young people’s well-being and safety at the heart of the decisions that are made around them. It’s about acknowledging that young people can be the best ones to ask about what works for them, and hearing their voices throughout the support process. This legislation represented a pivotal transformation programme to build a more child-focused care and protection system which focuses on harm, trauma, and prevention and early intervention. As my colleague Louise Upston has earlier noted and strongly conveyed, let’s not rush this. We owe it to them, to our young people, to get it right.

I’d like to acknowledge the work that was done by the previous National-led Government. In particular I acknowledge the work of the Hon Anne Tolley and her significant contribution, which transformed the outlook for children. This bill is the continuation of that work to ensure that the amendments made by the 2017 Act will be in line with the intention of the policy. The majority of the reforms in the Children, Young Persons, and their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act come into force on 1 July, including reforms which will ensure that 17-year-olds within the youth justice jurisdiction are realised.

On that note, can I just highlight some of the key features of this bill: updates to the definition of “young person” to align with the definition in the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, to ensure consistent application of the extension of the youth justice jurisdiction across all relevant legislation; clarification of procedures and processes that will be applied to 17-year-olds with the extension of the youth justice jurisdiction, particularly in relation to bail and the taking and retention of bodily samples; and, finally, the transitional provisions to clarify which jurisdiction, adult or youth, should be applied to a 17-year-old, depending on the date that proceedings are commenced against a 17-year-old. I’ve heard comments about this being a very technical bill. The problem with it is that if technicalities aren’t treated right, we will be tripped up. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister for Youth): Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker, and thank you very much for this opportunity to speak on the first reading of the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill.

Much of the contribution across the House during the first reading of this bill seems to be in support of what’s being mooted in this particular bill, and while this might be an omnibus bill there are some very technical aspects that do need to be corrected that bring it in line with the focus of what this Government is trying to do in this space, in particular with those of our tamariki who find themselves in a bit of trouble, whether it be with Oranga Tamariki, and, of course, the Ministry of Justice or through the courts. As I travel up and down the country as the Minister for Youth, one of the biggest challenges that is always raised with me is about the transition of our young people, whether it be from school to opportunities, school to school, or school to university.

In this particular instance, what we’re trying to do is create some clarity—in particular, for the legislative side of this particular debate, to make sure that for those who turn 17 it actually does align; that it brings it into line with much of what we’re trying to do in this space for our young people to make sure that they have what seems to be at least a clearer transition, for the minds of the bureaucrats and the Public Service out there, for the legislators in this House, but also for our young people who find themselves caught in the system.

It seeks, as I mentioned around the transition, that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction are fully realised and fully realised in the truest sense. Most of us across the House will know that many of the issues that are raised in our communities are about the siloed approach to the way the Government operates, and to the way bills and legislation actually govern the way we live. What we’re saying here is, actually, that the justice jurisdiction is fully realised to make sure that those, dare I say it, rakiraki are in a row.

Also, I mentioned earlier some of the technical changes that need to occur, and addressing some of those drafting errors to the legislation. It includes unintentionally broad provisions relating to interim court orders, but also makes a consequential amendment to the Children’s Commissioner Act 2003 to correct a cross-referencing error. They seem minor technical amendments, but ones that I think fit more broadly in with where the Government’s going with our young people, and the well-being of our young people. So I think those are all steps in the right direction.

You’ll see by the number of bills that are amended following this particular piece of legislation just how out of sync a lot of our system is when we look at our young people and the way we look after them. Some of them here: the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act 1995, the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015—you’ll see, just by the timeline of those Acts that will be impacted upon once this particular bill is passed, that this has been going on for a long time now. Those piecemeal or bit-piece adjustments to, in particular, legislation that impacts upon our young people are no longer satisfactory.

But I’m confident that the Minister the Hon Tracey Martin and, indeed, this Government, have the longer vision for our young people in place. This is just one of those bills that will achieve that. I notice those Acts that will be changed do span from 1989 all the way to—yeah, to up until more recent times—2017. So they’re all important things. Some of those features will be, I guess, introspective—looking inwards towards Oranga Tamariki and the functions that they have. But just as important, as we share information and our young people pass through the systems of the State, when we look at the way it works with the youth justice jurisdiction, it’s important that those particular pieces line up.

The majority of these amendments and their impacts on rights of interest are beneficial to 17-year-olds—17-year-olds. As I mentioned, as I travel up and down the country as the Minister for Youth, I see issues with transition. One of the other things that they always raise is this rite of passage: at what age do you qualify for something? At what age do you pass into the next system? So I think that’s another one of those good parts of this particular bill. The bill amends too the 2017 amendments that inserted three new sections in relation to interim court orders. These sections would, from 1 July 2019, allow the court to make interim orders on its own motion when there may be no relevant Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 proceedings under way. The amendments also allow a lawyer representing the child to apply for interim custody, restraining, or guardianship orders within the context of non - Oranga Tamariki Act 1989 proceedings.

Now, that’s important because, as our institutions care for our young people who find themselves in this particular position, or predicament, it’s important that they all understand exactly what legislation they operate under, where their powers extend to, and how far, where they cease, and where other organisations come in to play their part to care for our young people.

Look, much of what the House has already said today touches on the benefits of this particular bill, and, while I heard, while I was in my office, some of the dissension from the other side of the House about process and other matters, may I remind the House that this is about our young people. It is about their well-being. It’s about making sure that issues that we have been well aware of for a number of years now can actually be—dare I say it, as I did earlier, that we make sure the rakirakis are in a row, to make sure that we have a piece of legislation that serves our people as best as possible to make sure that, in particular, the 17-year-olds, which I’ve already mentioned, actually have a clearer vision of what the process is when they find themselves in this predicament.

I can’t wait to seize more of the debate that will, no doubt, transpire as the course of this bill goes through the House, to make sure that across the entire House, everybody’s on the same page here. There’s already been a bit of support, but I heard a few niggles, and we want to make sure that by the end of this we can iron out some of those creases, and make sure that our people can receive a bill that’s worthy of the New Zealand public. I want to once again thank the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, and commend it wholeheartedly.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister for Children): I move, That the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill be reported back to the House by 27 May 2019, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and, I have to say, when I came down to the House at 4.30 today to contribute to the first reading of the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill, I thought it was going to be quite straightforward. I thought it was going to be quite straightforward because this is a bill that is the third part of a suite of legislation that was ostensibly designed under the previous Government, and I thought this was a formality. That was, of course, until the Minister in charge of the bill Tracey Martin issued an instruction to the Social Services and Community Committee that meant the report back was the 27 May 2019, which is less than two months, and, for those that have just tuned in—

Hon Member: Really? How long?

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Less than two months. The normal time frame is four to six months. As I said, this is a piece of legislation that is the third in a suite of legislation. We’ve already done two pieces of legislation right through all stages—the second piece of legislation was passed in July 2017. So yes, there’s been a change of Government, and the Government knew that this legislation was required. Omnibus legislation was required, and they’ve known about that the whole time.

I want to, in this debate on the instruction to the select committee, just echo some of the words that Labour and MPs have used in this debate, and the Minister for Children, and the Minister for Youth, because it’s somewhat confusing. There is, first of all, no disagreement about the intent and purpose of this bill. There is no disagreement on the fact that it needs to be in place by 1 July. That’s been known for quite some time. The dispute is over why the Government is bringing it today and why the Government has issued an instruction to the select committee for a shortened report back—less than two months—when the normal process is four to six months.

I want to talk about why that is important. This is a bill about some of our most vulnerable children. It is the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill, and one of the things that was set up and supported by this Government—and I want to applaud them for that—is the inclusion of the young people’s voice. Members on that side said, absolutely, it affects young people, and their voices need to be heard.

So one of the submitters that I’m suggesting will want to have a decent amount of time to prepare a submission to come before the select committee and to ensure that this Parliament gets it right is VOYCE - Whakarongo Mai. They will want to ensure—on behalf of young people in State care; young people who might be before, or have experienced, the youth justice system—that this Parliament gets it right.

We’ve heard from the other side that it’s just a technical piece of legislation. Well, let me explain what that technical piece of legislation does. It amends twelve pieces of legislation—twelve pieces of legislation that are very important in respect of vulnerable young New Zealanders. This is a Government that puts children at the heart of everything they do, and yet this piece of legislation clearly wasn’t sufficient of a priority to make sure that the full process could take place for those young people directly affected by this legislation and the 12 pieces of legislation that it affects: the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, the Bail Act, the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act, the Children’s Commissioner Act, the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Act, the Criminal Procedure Act, the Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act, the Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act, the Sentencing Act, the Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act, the Victims’ Rights Act, and the Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Regulations 2004. Every single one of those pieces of legislation needs to be amended to ensure it lines up with the intention of this legislation.

But I want to come to that policy intention, because it was interesting—a number of members on that side of the House referred to the fact that a couple of changes were necessary, minor changes were necessary because of corrections needed to the urgent interim orders, and yet several members, including the Minister who took the final call, Peeni Henare, then said it was an opportunity to make sure the legislation fit with the current Government’s direction. So is he telling us that there’s also policy changes in this piece of legislation? Are there policy changes hidden in this legislation that we’re not sure about yet?

Hon Scott Simpson: Sounds like it.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: Well, it absolutely sounds like it. It sounds like the Government’s taking the opportunity to make policy changes, and that’s their right. That is absolutely their right as the Government, but what is not their right is to strip the ability of New Zealanders, including vulnerable, young New Zealanders, to have their say in the select committee. Those that provide services, provide residential care, provide rehabilitation, provide mental health counselling, and provide a whole range of services to these vulnerable young New Zealanders will have less of an opportunity to scrutinise this legislation and make sure that, collectively, as a Parliament, we get it right, which is our duty. It’s even more of a duty to allow that process to happen when there is unanimous support for the legislation. I’m absolutely staggered that it took until 4.30 today, when Minister Martin first started speaking in this first reading on the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill, for her to drop the minor bomb of yet another shortened report-back instruction to a select committee. It has happened more often than not.

So what’s the reason? Well, the only reason that I can envisage is that the Government hadn’t got organised early enough, hadn’t made Oranga Tamariki and this legislation and the 1 July implementation date sufficient of a priority to enable that to happen. So they clearly don’t care about those young people and their voices and their input or the services of the many thousands of New Zealanders that do incredibly hard work at the front line supporting these young people, assisting them to ensure they get on a different track for the rest of their lives. They’re clearly not interested in hearing what they have to say, and it’ll be particularly interesting if, as suspected, there are policy changes just kind of hidden in this omnibus bill that’s supposedly just technical and because it’s just technical, nobody cares about it, nobody needs to scrutinise it. Well, I have news for the Government: that’s not how Parliament works. Parliament works—

Hon Scott Simpson: Policy on the hoof.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON: “Policy on the hoof.”, my colleague says. Well, that’s what we’re about to find out. But, actually, in terms of the public and the scrutiny of the select committee process, that opportunity is cut right back.

I know it’s a sensitive thing to say, but I’m going to put it on the record, because one of the Labour members suggested the only reason that this is a shortened report back was because of the tragedy in Christchurch. That is not true. This change takes effect from 1 July. As I said, the second piece of legislation in this tranche of significant reforms for our young people has already occurred, and that occurred in July 2017. There has been ample time for the Government to deal with this, and I find it absolutely abhorrent that a Labour MP—and I won’t name her because I don’t think that needs to be said. I find it absolutely abhorrent that the suggestion was that the only reason for this delay and the shortened report back was because of Christchurch—I find that abhorrent.

The normal process is four to six weeks. Even with four to six weeks, depending on the number of submitters, that’s a tall order for the select committee to do their scrutiny well and to enable the opportunity for submitters to provide their views. Sometimes the select committee members need to go back to them to ask more questions. The officials have rounds and rounds and rounds of questions, because there is an absolute 110 percent commitment from this side of the House that we get this legislation right—1 July, and it is absolutely critical for those young New Zealanders. There are over 6,000 of them in State care. This particular one is focusing on the policies and procedures of those that are in the youth justice jurisdiction, and as a former Minister of Corrections, I know that is a particularly vulnerable and challenged group of young New Zealanders, and they deserve our support. They deserve that this Parliament takes the time and energy to get it right.

I don’t know if the Government’s made policy changes. Several of the speakers have said that, apparently, the two fixes from the previous legislation that they need to correct were wrong. Actually, then they’ve gone on to say that this is an opportunity in the legislation to ensure alignment with the current Government’s direction and priorities. So that very much sounds to me as if there is policy change in there that we think—and, you know, if we—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time’s expired.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Mr Assistant Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak. We on this side, as has already been reiterated—and I was the first to indicate the support that we have for this bill—do not have any opposition to this bill. Why? Because much of the work that was completed on this bill actually came in the time of a National-led Government. The concern that we have on this side of the House, again, is another rushed process. That is the issue. So we’re taking this moment to inform the Government that you can’t just keep rushing the process through.

I come from a trade background, and we have a saying which is called “R, S, and B”: I sort of hate to say it; it’s called “Rip, shite, and bust”, and that’s what happens when people rush things through without consideration, without thought. What happens? There are consequences to a rushed action. Here we are again in a process that did not need to be rushed. There was plenty of time; there was plenty of opportunity. We on this side of the House were not going to oppose this, but what we do oppose is, again, that we have an opportunity where it’s been rushed.

The speakers on the other side in the Government, especially on the backbench, have talked about the fact that we should consider the children here. But we are considering the children and the young people in particular in this regard for this bill. If the Government of the day is considering young children or young people in this regard, then why did it not give it consideration and priority? If it did, then we wouldn’t be here in this situation. We would’ve completed our speeches—first reading, straight into select committee. However, we are here today and we’re here now, before the dinner break, arguing and debating over the fact that you need to do due process. It’s not appropriate.

There are many examples where this current Government has continued to rush legislation through without giving due process. So that’s why we’re debating here, and I want to give some examples of that that we’ve seen over a period of time when this current Government has been in place where they have not done due process as well. This bill around Oranga Tamariki is a bill which we know needs to be given effect to on 1 July. If the two-month process had been considered, then why wasn’t it then given consideration at the beginning of the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member, but it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

Hon ALFRED NGARO: Just prior to going to the break, my comments were, in particular, again, around the concern that we have that we have another form of legislation by the current coalition Government that is being rushed through for no particular reason. We know that on the other side the speeches that were made in the first reading debate were particularly concerned about youth and young people—that there should be adequate time, that we should pursue this and support this piece of legislation into select committee and out, and also, too, with the closure date.

It’s the report-back date that has raised our concern—in particular, because it’s less than two months for what would normally be a four- to six-month process; hence the reason why we are debating this around the concern about that report-back date. There’s also the concern—and I have raised this in the House with the Minister for Children, when the Minister was here—in regards to the fact that she made the comment that the majority of the House voted for the first tranche of the bill, the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill. What she didn’t say, and what I have gone on record to say, is that New Zealand First actually opposed that bill, and they opposed it vociferously.

So the focus is on the fact of timing and on the narrow scope that we have in this particular area here, but it is that concern about the way that this bill has been rushed through the House. This is not uncommon. There are a number of bills, and I want to just highlight that, for instance. Let’s talk about the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Let’s not—let’s not.

Hon ALFRED NGARO: Well, we won’t mention it—you’re right, Madam Deputy Speaker. We won’t mention it because it was such a painful process. But I want to use that—and I won’t mention it again, Madam Deputy Speaker. As you say, we won’t talk about it, but just mentioning it that once was enough—it was enough. Even the Hon David Clark was choking away there because he realised how painful that process was. Why? Again, it was a rushed process, and there are actions to the consequences when you rush a process through, like it is doing at this point in time with this form of legislation.

Again, there is no opposition to the intent or this legislation. The opposition that we have in our debate at present is because of process. This bill is about procedure and process in particular, and we know that the actions and consequences have—and I won’t mention that bill. But we know that reports and the regulatory impact statements have talked about the impact of that to that community—in particular, $7.9 billion of impact to that community—and we know that this could have the same type of impact in there, in particular, as well.

There was the winter energy payments. I won’t mention that bill—sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker—but that’s another example of a rushed process. Again, the impacts of that are to the point where we will see, again, communities of concern, communities where they have roles and a responsibility to provide a service to those communities. In particular, this process has been rushed when we compare it to—and I want to acknowledge the Hon Anne Tolley, who was the Minister in charge at that point in time, who put this process through. In 2015, we see a process in which we had the expert advisory panel that was put in place to seek advice for the whole of the stakeholders involved in regards to the social sector. Then, in 2016, there was legislation that was put through—in fact, I was the chairperson of that select committee. Again, it was an appropriate process that allowed for submissions to be submitted, for submitters to come through—NGOs.

More importantly, this bill is about the voice of young people—whakarongo mai—where, again, debates on the other side, comments from the other side, were “Let the voices of the young people be heard.” Yet, because of this process being rushed through, the voices of those young people won’t be heard. We’re talking about a process that is something like six to seven weeks before it gets back into the House again for its second reading, the committee stage, and then the third reading, as well.

Again, what we contest is the impact of that. We talked about the fact that we know that the bill, in order to get to whakarongo mai, the voices of young people that have been significant to the Oranga Tamariki piece of legislation, the policy platform that’s been used by our Oranga Tamariki social workers that’s in place at the moment, has been because we had an appropriate process that had due diligence to it, that ensured that we engaged appropriately with those communities, those key stakeholders, so that we ensured that their voice, their concerns, but also, too, the comments that they could make, which was appropriate to this piece of legislation, was put in place. Again, we’re back at this place where it’s a rushed process, where we’re not going to be able to hear the voices of those people of concern that have been raised by the members of the Government side, and again we won’t have that being told to us.

This bill has 12 different areas. It’s an omnibus bill that has 12 specific areas where it talks about the changes that we made, again, for our young people in the Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act. The bill amends the following legislation: Criminal Investigations (Bodily Samples) Regulations 2004, Returning Offenders (Management and Information) Act 2015, Criminal Procedure Act 2011, Sentencing Act 2002, Bail Act 2000, Children, Young Persons, and Their Families (Oranga Tamariki) Legislation Act 2017, Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, Victims’ Rights Act 2002, Prisoners’ and Victims’ Claims Act 2005, Victims’ Orders Against Violent Offenders Act 2014, and Children’s Commissioner Act 2003.

The reason why I wanted to work through that list is so that not only members in this House but members of the public could hear. It is a substantive piece of legislation. It’s omnibus, it’s technical, but it requires that the due diligence of the House should proceed. So what I would like to hear from the other side is, again, why did they not—they had adequate time to introduce this into the House, where on this side you would have had the full support. You have the support for the intent of this bill. What you do not have the support for is this process that it, again, is being rushed through.

Our concern, as we’ve continually said, is that when we think of the 12 specific areas of the Acts that have to be changed and the amendments to them—some small, some technical, but all important to ensure that we have the intent of this bill, which is seeking to ensure that the benefits of the policy to include 17-year-olds in the youth justice jurisdiction is fully realised—we believe that that’s really important. Those are the points that we want to make on this side of the House.

We are concerned. Again, this is not just a one off. We’ve seen many examples, which I will not name in this House, but the winter energy payments bill was one of those. It’s coming to the House, and we know the concern—again, a rushed process. Why? When it was first introduced, what happened? A mistake was made—$3.4 million—in which payments were not made to those who were due those payments. Again, it’s a rushed process. We’re now having to fast-track that into the current select committee, which is the Social Services and Community Committee.

At the present, at this time, all we would ask is that this Government take consideration that if they have time to introduce legislation that’s important, they do that so that due diligence can take place inside the select committee and inside Parliament. We believe those aspects are really important. So while we commend this bill to the House and into select committee, we want to note our concerns in the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I think it was the Standing Orders Committee of the 50th Parliament—2011 to 2014—that introduced the Standing Order that provided for the referral motion debate that we’re having right now. My recollection of the advice of the Standing Orders Committee to Parliament is very clear: it was to dissuade the sorts of things that are happening far too often in this Parliament.

If there are two clear themes to emerge from the fact that we are debating the report-back date of 27 May on this bill, it is one of utter contempt for the public and the stakeholders who are going to submit on this bill, and, frankly, utter incompetence in the fact that one of the reasons that we are considering this shortened report-back date is that some of the amendments that are being made to this, to correct drafting errors, need to be made by 1 July 2019.

Now, I want to touch on the first one of those things. There’s contempt for the process, and I want to make two key comments about it. Firstly, one of the really important changes to this bill is in respect of the youth justice jurisdiction, and there’s no doubt that just about every member of the previous Parliament would have heard from the Children’s Commissioner about the importance of making that change. There’s no doubt, certainly in my mind, that that was contested and controversial. Therefore, as many reasons as there were for increasing the youth jurisdiction age, there were just as many arguments against doing so, and even though we have come to a point that I personally think is sensible, there are a number of people in the community who will want to be heard on this very important change to our judicial system. The fact that we are going to refer to the committee, open the batting for submissions in an obscenely short time frame, hear from those people, and then give some kind of impression that we are carefully considering what they have to say is an absolute nonsense.

That is the second part of the sheer contempt that this Parliament shows for those submitters. It is the inconsistency amongst some of the parties that support the Government in respect of motions like this, and I had the rallying cries of members of the Green Party ringing in my ears on the one or two occasions in my five years as a Minister when it was necessary and appropriate to do that. A rare and reasonable approach was, nevertheless, absolutely panned by the Green Party members, and yet what have we seen in the 52nd Parliament? Time and time and time again, the contempt for the public submission process by the use of the early report-back motion, and I’d like to hear why the Green Party think that’s a good idea.

We are standing up and talking about why we think this is a very bad idea—a very bad step in the lawmaking process. The thing that we are here to do is to legislate and, hopefully, legislate for the public good and not make a mistake. I understand that one of the things that this bill is going to do is to correct an error. Errors are made, and they’re made despite the best efforts of officials, of lawyers, and of politicians to get it right. Sometimes we don’t, and it’s necessary to go back and correct and improve bills. I have no issue with that—nobody’s perfect. But the fact that much of this legislation had its genesis years and years ago is the second part of my submission, and that’s the incompetency around the current Government in not bringing this to the House before today, forcing the House to consider whether or not the select committee should report back to the House on 27 May. It simply should not have been here now; it should have been here weeks or months ago.

The policy effort was done mostly under the previous Government in the 51st Parliament, and, actually, in the one before that. This was a long time being carefully considered and, having carefully considered it, we should have acted decisively, and yet we are now, what, April—18 months. We are in the 18th month of this Government with barely eight weeks to go before some of the provisions in this bill need to be enacted, and somehow that’s a reason to curtail the public submissions and to pay lip-service to the very important contributions that they will want to make to some significant policy changes, not the least of which are changes to youth justice jurisdictions and age. They deserve better.

They actually deserve a longer period of time in order to be able to be heard and to at least enable the select committee to carefully consider the aspects of the bill, because, as a couple of the Labour members said in the first reading, this is a technical bill—as if that somehow lets the Government off the hook. By saying “Well, it’s only a technical bill, so we can just rush it through.”—actually, that is the very reason to slow it down and to at least take, if not the six months that’s provided for in the Standing Orders as the default position for legislation being considered, the four months and two days. That would be the bare minimum that this House should consider without an unlimited-time debate on that issue.

At least give them that much time to be able to tell us what they think about this and not have members of the select committee pretend that that’s going to make a blind bit of difference, because they want to know that the committee is listening to them and that Cabinet, if they come up with some material changes that will improve the bill, will have an opportunity to consider those. Although the objective process, as we know, is that it’s Parliament that passes laws, there’s no doubt that the Government of the day has a considerable influence over whether or not changes being recommended by the select committee actually get through, and that takes time as well. I know that from experience.

So the idea that all of that can be done in the time that we are setting ourselves—what, something like 6½ weeks it’s going to take for the Clerk’s Office to firstly advertise, set a closing date, receive submissions, arrange for oral submissions for those who want to come and hear it, get officials convened, provide initial advice, do all of the things that are necessary in order to give good support to the select committee in the consideration of this bill, and then enable the select committee to report back to this House a meaningful report—and all of that’s going to take place in 6½ weeks. That, frankly, is not only contempt for the public but it’s contempt for this House, because this process started about six or seven years ago.

The Government gives itself—both Governments—six to seven years to think about what this bill should say, but it gives the select committee six to seven weeks. So for every year that they have had to think about this, the select committee and the public get one week. I think that metric says it all about the contempt that this Government has for a process of passing legislation that I, for one, think is very sound, has stood the test of time, and is robust enough that while there are occasions where we do need to hasten the passage of legislation, it behoves us not to do that.

The default position has to be that the length of time required to give best consideration to a piece of legislation is at least six months, and it’s not unusual for the Business Committee to hear from a select committee that says “We didn’t have enough time.”, even then, and for it to request an extension because they take that process seriously. Unfortunately, this will not be a serious process. This will be a rushed process, it will be a flawed process, it’s a contemptable process when it comes to the treatment of the public and this House, and it is wrong. It should not be happening, and I very strongly oppose it.

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m not going to accept a closure motion at this stage, partly because the Minister who moved the motion for a shortened period has not given the House a reason. She merely moved it and sat down. There might be another Minister in the House who might like to give the House a reason for the motion, but I’m going to call Simon O’Connor.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Madam Deputy Speaker, it may be some consolation to Kieran McAnulty, the member who has just resumed his seat from that closure motion, which is more appropriate for a committee stage, that you may have used one of the first arguments I was going to put forward—and I hope it’s not presuming to bring you into the debate, which it’s not. Unfortunately, the Minister has not given this House—I was going to say “adequate reason”, but that, in fact, would be misleading. No reason was given to us, and I’m disappointed in two ways.

First and foremost, there is comity in this House around this bill. No member during the first reading indicated any opposition to the bill whatsoever. There were some questions on technical issues that were being raised, but all of us, I would say, were looking forward to engaging in a select committee process to discuss and robustly draw those out, and then, effectively, a bombshell was dropped where all of a sudden we found that the process was to be expurgated or truncated down, as my colleague Michael Woodhouse has said, to two months.

It’s confusing in the first instance and I think it is contemptible in the second. And the second reason I am very concerned and very happy to take this call is, as has been noted, the Minister has given no particular reason. I think that would help this side of the House at least process and understand why this has happened. The silence, unfortunately, is—well, for me personally—somewhat galling because we’ve gone through a series of speeches indicating that we need to hear people’s voices; in fact, a number of the first reading speeches, when addressing the bill, spoke about the voices of people to be heard. And yet we have a contradiction, and I think it needs to be drawn out here and now, that those voices maybe—maybe—will get to be heard but I think it’ll be very, very difficult.

The first reason for that is we are dealing with an omnibus bill here. I have no intention of going through all 12 bills. I think that would be a waste of this House’s time and a waste of this speech. But there are 12 bills which are to be affected here. That is almost, if you will, 12 very distinct groups who will be affected. And so it doesn’t matter if it’s from the Department of Corrections through to police, to those who work in the probationary space through to—because of course we’re primarily talking here about 17-year-olds who are going to be dealt with now in a very different way within our justice system. Those groups, even in the first instance within Government ministries, will want to speak; in fact, I suspect many of them will want to have advisory roles and, as other speakers have just touched on but not really in much depth, that takes time. For those advisers to be brought together to discuss, to engage with any feedback that’s been produced, they need time.

We’ve seen a process now that is truncated, and if we are to take the sitting calendar between now and the end of May we find we don’t have an enormous amount of sitting. We’re about to move into Easter soon. That actually takes out a number of weeks. The House is, I think, rightly distracted—rightly distracted—by the arms legislation going through. That’s going to take an enormous amount of time. It won’t immediately affect the Social Services and Community Committee but it is occupying a lot of the MPs’ time. And it’s illustrative of a process that’s been started that in and of itself it is not a long period to the end of May, but, again, when we look at how many days the House is sitting, how many hours the select committee will be sitting during that time, it’s incredibly, incredibly short. I think the other factor we need to bring in, of course, is we’re approaching the Budget. As we move into May, that’s going to be a much further distraction putting a lot of MPs’ time away. So I’m very concerned—very concerned—about how much time MPs will have to engage with those who are fortunate enough to get in front of the committee. As I say, 12 pieces of legislation are going to be affected.

We heard, in the first reading speeches, a number of people saying the voice of children is incredibly important. And, as I say, there was comity and agreement in this House that that’s true. There’s a funny symbolism, a contradiction if you will, that we are now actively, as a House, discussing how we can silence or reduce the amount of noise, if you will, that young people can make around us. I suspect they would come to this House, or rather to the select committee, and by and large agree with what’s happening. But you cannot propose—or the Government cannot propose—a bill which purports to support and empower young people to have a voice and then set about a parliamentary process which reduces that. That is an inherent contradiction and one of the reasons why I’m standing to take a call here in the House.

We had some suggest this bill is simply changing drafting errors. That is not the case. In fact, we’ve had a hint from a speaker on the other side who’s indicated there are policy changes. That’s setting off a red light, if you will, in my mind and with others. If there are policy changes here that we have not seen or understood, it’s in a select committee process that we’ll be able to draw them out and understand them much, much better. But if we pick up on that drafting errors question—drafting errors come in because processes are rushed, and you can, I suppose, mount the argument that even if a full process was used last time and errors have occurred, one is not going to actually reduce the number of errors by making that even smaller. So I think that’s incredibly worrying.

Look, of the last couple of points I’d like to make, first and foremost is perhaps one around motive. There is concern from my side that the Government is very, very keen to get legislation out of select committee as fast as possible because there isn’t sufficient work for them on the Order Paper. Hard to prove this, but it is a real concern in the dynamic of this House that the Government does appear to be struggling to get its legislation or get enough legislation on the Order Paper to keep the House busy. And we’re seeing a slightly growing trend of moving things into select committee and then wanting them out of select committee as quickly as possible in order to continue the functions of the House, and I think that’s very, very concerning.

What adds to my suspicions there is that most of the legislation on the Order Paper is actually legislation proposed by the National Party—by the previous Government. There are some minor tweaks and changes but by and large they are bills which the Government knows will be well supported by both sides of the House, and so rushing them through select committee means that they can come back to a committee stage, which, of course, will take up a lot more time in the House backwards and forwards. But what I think it’s important to note too—because it’s been brought up often and, unfortunately, not in this case because no Minister has found it fit to take a call in the House—is, “Well, we’ll just use a committee stage to debate the issues.”

There are two problems with that: one, committee of the whole House stage is not the appropriate time to do that; it is select committee. Secondly, the committee of the whole House is a whole lot of MPs talking to one another. And while I rate all members in this House, what we are asking for is the appropriate time to allow the public of New Zealand to have their say. I’d put it particularly to those members opposite that have made a big, big call about young people’s voices that those members cannot make that statement—cannot make that statement—if young people do not get the opportunity.

The last two points—first and foremost, there is no need to rush this bill. I know that there is a starting date. I’m sure if a Minister takes a call they will do so. But fundamentally—fundamentally—they had an opportunity right from when they became Government to put this much, much higher up the Order Paper. In other words, if there is any blame or cause or reason why this has to be rushed, it sits at the Government’s feet. There was no need for us to be having to debate this today. I’d love to hear from the Minister, if the Minister chooses to take a call—any of the Ministers to take a call—why this bill was not introduced months ago. It would have saved us having to rush up against the start date. It’s possible that the Government didn’t realise that the changes proposed were going to start midway through the year and they’ve been caught a bit short, but I don’t think that’s the case. But I’d welcome the Minister, if they have a chance, to speak to address that.

The final thing I’d like to add fits within this social development space. I think this is at least the third time in almost as many months that I’ve had to stand in this House and ask why we are truncating social development bills. We had it a few weeks ago around the winter energy payment, and we had it a few weeks before that around a social rewrite bill. But I don’t intend to relitigate those.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Good.

SIMON O’CONNOR: They are two further examples and, unfortunately, in the social services space where we are truncating processes, and I said then and I’ll say it again now, that is what leads to errors and that is what leads us to have to return to this House and do more and more amendment bills. So I’ll put on the table now that I think that if we as a House agree—or rather this House agrees by majority—to truncate this process to force it through, we will end up having to come back in one way, shape, or form to amend Oranga Tamariki, to amend this Act, to amend these changes. It is too broad a bill. It’s an omnibus bill affecting 12 pieces of legislation. Errors will occur, but it is, unfortunately, a trend which is developing here. So I cannot speak in support of this motion. I would ask the Minister to reconsider and to allow a full time so that particularly the young people in New Zealand can have their say.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also rise to oppose this motion of a shortened report-back date for this bill, and I wish to canvass this in terms of the significance, the importance, of the select committee process, not only to the legislative process in New Zealand, but, fundamentally, to our democracy. I’ll seek to do that in part, by contrasting with our parent system, where our own parliamentary system derives. I’ll talk a little bit about what the implications are in New Zealand when we shorten our select committee process and also touch upon the conditions where Parliament and the people of New Zealand, in the context of supporting our democracy, might hold that it is applicable to shorten a select committee process in New Zealand.

Now, as all parliamentarians will know, but perhaps people watching or listening might wish to be refreshed, our system does derive from the Westminster parliamentary system. And while we see so much of that—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: It’s very interesting but—

BRETT HUDSON: The select committee process, Madam Deputy Speaker, is key to this. So while we see many similarities, there are key differences of which the select committee process in New Zealand is a bulwark against a lack of scrutiny of bills.

In the Westminster system they have an Upper House. The House of Lords scrutinises legislation, sends suggestions back to the House of Commons, and they can go backwards and forwards several times. The Westminster system does have select committees and bills select committees but it is more the exception than the rule that a piece of legislation will have a select committee formed for it to scrutinise it in select committee the way we do in New Zealand. Rather instead, in the Westminster system, they tend to spend a great deal more time in the committee of the whole House going through that legislation clause by clause, and then it will still go back between its upper and lower chambers.

We are unicameral, and so the select committee process in New Zealand has been developed specifically to ensure that legislation here can get the sort of democratic scrutiny that multi-cameral parliaments in other jurisdictions get from the nature of their structural differences. So to change the select committee process here—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I just want to say to the member, I understand the argument you’re putting but you do have to relate it to the motion. So you need to tie it in to the motion because it’s quite a tight debate. It’s not a history lesson or a parliamentary lesson. Tie it in to the motion.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The point on the motion is that shortening the select committee process shortens the scrutiny of a piece of legislation. It fundamentally reshapes the application of our democracy to the specific piece of legislation. By default, under Standing Orders, with no motion, a bill introduced and passed first reading will have a report-back date of six months following its first reading. That is designed to allow ample time for not only a notice and advertising of the bill to be sent out but for interested parties, many of who tend to be organisations but also any member of the public who has some level of interest in the piece of legislation, it allows them ample time to consider the legislation, to construct an articulate position, and to position that into the select committee to put across whatever considerations they have, including, quite possibly, objections or proposed amendments. It then gives, of course, the committee sufficient time to hear from those submitters in person, if that’s what they wish to consider, and reflect on what they have heard, along with officials, and to potentially make amendments. It is a deeply considered process that gives ample opportunity for a bill to be properly scrutinised.

When Parliament passes a motion to shorten that report-back date, we give New Zealanders less time to respond to the legislation we are seeking to pass, less time to construct their arguments. And while they might still get an opportunity of some minutes in front of the committee, they will be submitting on ideas or arguments that they’ve had to form in less allowable time. That risks the possibility that a piece of legislation simply won’t get the scrutiny that it deserves.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: But we’re talking about this piece of legislation. This piece.

BRETT HUDSON: And in this particular legislation we’re talking about two months, six weeks—six weeks instead of six months. The difference between the two is almost extreme. It is certainly enormous in terms of the opportunity for New Zealanders to adequately consider a bill, which means 12 Acts, and to construct their arguments or the considerations they may have around that, including amendments, or opposition, or support that they may wish to put forward.

The implications of that are that we risk passing legislation through successive stages, certainly through select committee, that is not as properly formed or articulated as it should be. The consequence which we have already seen in this term of Parliament, as admittedly we’ve also seen in the past, is legislation that comes back to the House during the term to be amended because errors were omitted or overlooked or consequences were not uncovered through that scrutiny, and so the legislation went through and was enacted with either issues with fully enacting their political intent behind it or, in fact, just simply with drafting errors. And we’ve seen this recently. I’m not going to—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, you’re not.

BRETT HUDSON: We’ve seen it and members have canvassed instances—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You’ve had six minutes of a parliamentary lesson. I need you to talk about this particular bill. All those things you’ve talked about, you must relate to this motion in front of the House, not the general principle but this particular motion.

BRETT HUDSON: What the governing parties are seeking to have this Parliament agree to is a motion that simply risks a poorly drafted bill being returned to second reading, one that could well lead to further legislation coming back to this House before the end of this term. The bill does not require an early report back, apart from, perhaps, a desire from the Government, because of a lack of management on their part, to undertake this bill, these amendments, earlier in this term. They’ve had 18 months, or the best part of it. This bill could have been introduced pretty much any time after they formed a Government. They have chosen to delay it until now. They may have a desire, they may even think there’s some level of justification because of certain start dates, that it might pass a little earlier than the default would otherwise be. But that lack of planning doesn’t constitute a crisis for this Parliament to respond to. It’s simply bad management on their part. I would contend that if we are going to, therefore, shorten the select committee process because of their poor management, we just risk a poor outcome. And that’s not good for Parliament. It’s certainly not good for the people of New Zealand.

So I just simply call on the Government to reconsider their motion, to realise that the public deserve the full, at least, four months, as one of my colleagues has suggested. But I would argue and contend the standard six months to adequately make their submissions on this, to be heard, and to have proper consideration of what they want to submit to Parliament on this particular bill.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Look, it’s a pleasure to get up in the House and, I guess, as one of the, perhaps, longest serving MPs in the House to offer some views on the situation we have before us.

The usual reference by an Opposition in such a situation would be constitutional outrage. The Opposition hasn’t even got to that point, because, indeed, it is not. This is a piece of legislation that was passed by the previous Government that put in place some deadlines that this Government now is moving to, firstly, fix to, that is to adhere to, the deadlines laid in the previous legislation to fix up some drafting errors from the previous Government’s mistakes.

Now, the arguments put to this House are that we need a long period of time to ensure that we don’t make mistakes. Well the previous Government had a long period of time, and they made mistakes. What we are saying, and the Minister’s putting before the House, is a move and a proposition to address these mistakes in the wisdom that we’ve gained from the mistakes from the previous Government and say “We’ll rectify these.”, move on, offer protection for those people under 17, which I believe the current piece of legislation doesn’t properly cover.

Hon Tracey Martin: Under 18.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Under 18, sorry. Those are 17-year-olds. So we’re just moving to put in place what we kindly would say is the intent of the previous Government. Although, in my view that would be too kind because I haven’t seen much wisdom and never did for nine years. But understanding that perhaps they had good intent with the legislation but, in fact, got it wrong in a number of areas, then we, as a responsible Government, have come in and are saying we will make the changes needed.

Now, the 1 July deadline means that we have to have this passed by the 27 May and so—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Why’s it only come into the House today?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: They’re very wise in Opposition. It’s a shame they didn’t have that wisdom in Government when they were managing the legislation because we wouldn’t have had to come and fix it up.

The reality is now that we are responsibly changing the legislation to, what I say kindly, is put in place the intent. If they didn’t intend to do this, maybe they should own up to it. It seems like they might have intended to do the things that we’re intending to do, they just mucked it up—they mucked it up. So we are making the changes necessary and the fast-track requirement is, in fact, to meet the 27 May deadline that enables us to put in place the legislative requirements of it by 1 July. It’s quite simple really. And the difference between their Opposition, which is leaderless, and us, who are showing leadership, is that we will get on and do what is necessary in the timelines required.

We’ve shown that earlier on today, that we’re prepared to do that, where, clearly, the collective wisdom of most of New Zealand and most of Parliament—except for the Opposition, of course—is that these are changes that are necessary. So the filibustering that we see—not a constitutional outrage at all; just the filibustering—which is the Opposition’s jumping up and down on the same spot, saying that we should take longer to do this—well, the previous Government, the National Government, had all the time in the world to do this and get it right, and they didn’t. They stuffed it up. So we are now working through—and I acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Tracey Martin, who’s working through all these areas of her responsibility to tidy up things that the previous Government had ignored.

So the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill is something that we believe is absolutely essential to protect, I guess, the rights of those under 18 to ensure they have a fair go at justice in particular. We’re going to do what we’ve got to do, because the previous Government mucked it up. So I suggest that they sit down, stop filibustering, stop wasting the time of Parliament, and allow us to get on and put in place the changes to legislation that are required. That’s what we’re here for, and that’s what we will do, and as soon as the Opposition sits down and shuts up, then we’ll get on and do it more quickly.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Oranga Tamariki Legislation Bill be reported back to the House by 27 May 2019, and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 191, 193 and 194(1)(b) and (c).

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill

First Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of Health: I move, That the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.

The bill amends the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016 and the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. The bill encourages and supports live organ donation. In the future, we will also want to make it easy for New Zealanders to make their deceased organ donation wishes known to family and whānau, and to help those involved in those decisions with the best possible support and confidence.

There are a number of parts to the bill. Part 1 of the bill amends the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016 in relation to earnings compensation to be paid to live organ donors while they recuperate from surgery. The bill provides for those who are currently not eligible for compensation under the Act but who clearly fall within its purposes. Currently, organ donors are eligible for earnings compensation for up to 12 weeks while they recuperate from donor surgery. Once the donor returns to work, they’re no longer eligible to receive compensation. Donors also stop being eligible for compensation if they return to work on reduced hours—being less than their usual hours of work. The bill amends the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016 to allow compensation to be paid to donors who choose to return to work for reduced hours during the recuperation period or return to work and subsequently reduce their hours due to the effect of surgery.

Currently, for a donor to be eligible for compensation while they recuperate from donor surgery, both the donor surgery and the transplant surgery must take place in New Zealand. Further, the organ recipient must be eligible to receive services funded under the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000. This means that a donor who donates, for example, as part of a proposed trans-Tasman kidney exchange programme, and where the transplant surgery then takes place in Australia, that New Zealand donor is not eligible for compensation. The bill then amends and futureproofs the compensation for live organ donors by amending the principal Act to provide for compensation to be paid to donors of organs if the donor surgery is undertaken as part of any future approved overseas organ exchange programme.

Part 2 of the bill amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 to enable the establishment of a national organ donation agency, which in future will provide oversight and clinical governance of the organ donation and transplantation system. The national strategy for increasing deceased organ donation and transplantation sets out a number of initiatives to help New Zealand increase our organ donation and transplantation rates from deceased organ donors. The national agency could play a role in raising the profile of organ donation and by providing expert advice and information to the sector, to the Government, to the media, and to the public. It will also support effective clinical governance and work in the health sector to coordinate donation and transplantation processes. To enable this, the bill amends the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 to provide for a broadening of the functions of the New Zealand Blood Service, which will then allow it to serve in this national leadership role. On behalf of the Minister of Health, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to advise the House that the National Party will be supporting this bill at its first reading, and I see no impediments to that support being right through the passage of the legislation. We do so because, while the Minister who moved the motion didn’t have anything to say about the genesis of the reasons for this bill, both of the main changes being made had their genesis in the previous Government, firstly, as a member’s bill drafted by me many years ago, but then made good by my colleague and friend Chris Bishop. It was the Financial Assistance for Live Organ Donors Bill—it’s got another name now—and Mr Bishop made it so much better and passed it into law. Encouragingly, it has been very successful in increasing the volume of live organ donation, not that that was its purpose; it was more about removing barriers rather than providing financial incentives. But it is clear that there have been some issues that were raised in the practical determination of the financial support, and I commend the Government for making these changes to make sure that the policy intent and the breadth and scope of support for live organ donors are as practicably wide as possible.

Of course, the report, the strategy that has given effect to the establishment of the New Zealand Blood Service as the agency vehicle for delivering the national strategy, was the previous National Government’s. A previous Minister of Health the Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman commissioned the ministry to go and highlight strategies that could increase cadaver donation—deceased organ donation and transplantation—and that was reported back to the previous Government in June 2017.

One of the recommendations, strategy priority five, was to establish the national agency, and one of the things that the Ministry of Health was advised by stakeholders was that it shouldn’t be a continuation of the status quo or an enhanced status quo where a district health board (DHB)—in that case, the Auckland District Health Board—was the agency. They were very clear that the public consultation identified that the governance of this new agency should be a stand-alone entity rather than within a DHB. So we have kind of a hybrid here: we are annexing the organ donation agency into an existing stand-alone entity, the New Zealand Blood Service, which the National Party has no problem with, necessarily, but I would add the corollary that the current appropriation being proposed to manage the transition is a relatively small sum of money at just $100,000 in this financial year and $225,000 in the next.

Now, that is a very small amount of money to do a very significant piece of work and to establish the agency as the voice and the adviser for the increase of both live and deceased organ donation. It would be a shame if chump change—well, the absence of it—was used to prevent the really good goals that the strategic document has highlighted from coming to fruition.

It would be remiss of me as the shadow Minister of Health, and one who has, I guess, a quantitative lens but a firm belief in the value of targets—a belief that this Government apparently doesn’t have, having removed all health targets, having committed to replacing them but not doing so—not to say that strategic priority six in the strategic document highlights the importance of measuring progress, and in order to measure progress, we need to set some kind of target. Now, we’re not going to see that, I have no doubt, but I think it’s a really, really good idea and I encourage the Government to be aspirational and set stretch targets for both live and deceased organ donation.

The last thing I want to mention about the establishment of this agency is that one of the other strategic priorities—number two—was “Improving New Zealand’s system of registering and sharing donation intent for individuals, families and clinicians.” This will be really, really important—almost a raison d’être—for the agency, along with an information campaign.

Now, we are having a conversation at the moment about the autonomy of the individual, and it’s being discussed in the context of the End of Life Choice Bill. One of the things that has become very clear about that is that the sponsor of the bill and the supporters of that legislation value autonomy over everything else. I mention that because one of the barriers to deceased organ donation is the so-called family veto—that my autonomous right to choose what happens to me in the event of my death can be usurped by a family member. It’s questionable. While we have a noble goal in the second strategic priority for this agency, we actually, I think, have a task to review whether or not a person’s wishes, which could be articulated—they are currently articulated in the driver’s licence system but are not presently being used by clinicians necessarily, except to simply start a conversation. Actually the goal of strategic priority two is to increase the register and improve the quality of the information, but it does not stop the possibility of that autonomy, that preference that I might have, to donate organs in the event of my demise from being respected. It’s questionable whether the Human Tissue Act already enables this to happen. I draw members’ attention to section 31 of the Human Tissue Act, which actually describes who can give consent for tissue or organs to be used for any purpose. The first person—and it’s in a ranking order—in my view is actually the individual.

So in supporting this piece of legislation, what I’d also like to encourage this new agency to do is to be a bit braver about having a conversation about whether a register could include something like an advance directive, something that I as a former hospital manager had to deal with from time to time for elderly patients going through serious surgery, a do-not-resuscitate order, or for religious reasons where the patients may not be willing to accept a blood or blood product transfusion. That is something that we would absolutely respect. I think an advance directive, in a register that this agency could manage, could also include an advance directive that says, “In the event of my demise, I have chosen”—I have chosen—“to donate my organs to enable somebody else to live.” Actually, that could be a strength for clinicians at a time when they’re having to deal with the trauma of the loss of a loved one, to actually give some comfort to the family that my wishes will be obeyed.

That said, while the establishment of this is going to be a very good milestone, I think it’s also fair to say there are a number of other conversations that we can have to increase both live organ donation and deceased organ donation. I look forward to a time when New Zealand actually has a much higher rate of donation than it presently has. We support this bill.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. As the chair of the Health Committee, it’s my pleasure to rise in support of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill at this, the first reading. Actually, I want to start in 2006, when Dr Jackie Blue had the Human Tissue (Organ Donation) Amendment Bill before the House. It made it through to the select committee stage but then was defeated at the second reading.

I find it incredibly not ironic but the right thing to have happened that, 13 years later, Dr Jackie Blue is the deputy chair of the New Zealand Blood Service. So the fact is that she now has an opportunity to germinate, so to speak, the ideas that she had in the bill from 2006, which was about public information campaigns, about creating donor information, and about working with the Land Transport Safety Authority to make sure that donors’ wishes were not overridden by their family members.

So it’s a pleasure, actually, that this piece of legislation has come to the House and is expanding the compensation regime that Chris Bishop initiated in his bill, because, essentially, they are the two expansions of this bill to the current regime: more people being eligible and the national organ donation agency being formed.

I guess my only other contribution was to say that this is relevant to 550 New Zealanders. That’s the number of people on the waiting list now for transplants. It’s been interesting, if you look at, I guess, this whole area since 2013, when there were only 36 donors: in 2014, there were 46 donors, in 2015, there were 53 donors, in 2016, there were 61 donors, and in 2017, which is the last stats, there were 73 donors, but those 73 donors helped 215 individuals.

So, essentially, what we really need to do is look beyond deceased organ donors, which have classically been the ones who have provided organs for New Zealanders who need them. There were a couple of cases. The most recent one I could find was on 28 February this year: a 16-year-old boy at a motocross event in Auckland. He died from injuries he sustained at the motocross event, and he donated because “he wanted to get to live on”—which was a quote in the paper—but his organs helped seven other people.

So I think that for people who are engaged specifically in this area, it is based on their experiences of having family members either who have died and contributed organs or who have been the recipients of organs. So I think this bill is incredibly important. I think it’s beyond time that we focused on it. If we can have a waiting list that is every year cleared because we have enough organs to meet the needs of our fellow New Zealanders, then I think that this piece of legislation and the history of it will actually fulfil the legacy of people like Dr Jackie Blue who bring these issues to our Parliament. Kia ora.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill, a bill that of course we support, because on this side of the House we did a lot of work on it, and the Hon Michael Woodhouse and Chris Bishop—I nearly called you “Hon”; not quite there yet, Chris, but, you know, keep going with these good bills and you never know what might happen.

Hon Member: That’s right.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Indeed. I think that this is a bill—and we’ve talked about it and had a conversation around New Zealand for many years about the need for more organ donations. But what do we do? What do we do about that? We need more organs, and others—in fact, the member who just sat down, Louisa Wall, talked about the ability of one person’s death to provide life for others. A young Canadian man who died in Wellington at the end of last month—his family were pleased that he had donated his organs, because he died in New Zealand and his father, Darryl Bates, told the news that his thrill-seeking teen had been on a vacation, coming here for one month. He died, but with the donation of his organs he has saved five lives today, and the family of that visitor to New Zealand took great comfort from it.

It has been an ongoing challenge. I was just googling before about what happens in different parts of the world. This is really carrying on the narrative from the Hon Michael Woodhouse as to how we can engage people more and make it easier for them to register and for that knowledge of their wishes to be carried out after their death. In Canada, they’ve gone a few steps further around this, and they want to be able to register their intent to become a donor by visiting a site. I was somewhat surprised, although perhaps I should not have been, that they have a National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week. It’s not very catchy, is it? The acronym is not great! But apparently it really works and people have that focus and they write it down, and so they have harvested a remarkable number of organs.

On a sadder note, with the euthanasia debate yesterday, it became apparent that patients who went through euthanasia could be kept alive but their organs harvested over a period of weeks and months, which, personally, I found a bit creepy, but that’s what they’re doing and, of course, a live donor is a very important part of a life continuing. So the idea of a national organ donation agency that’s needed to oversee and to lead the implementation makes perfect sense.

We need to raise the profile and the need to have organ donation. Effective clinical governance is very important. Some years ago, around the Christmas period, a neighbour of mine needed a liver transplant. A young man had had a car accident and so my neighbour was shaved and sedated and wheeled in but, by the time the family had discussed whether the organ should in fact be donated—because that’s what the young man had written on his driver’s licence—the organs had passed their ability to be useful. So it was wasted, and I’ll never forget having a conversation with my neighbour, who was very upset indeed. He went through that process three times.

I think working with the health sector to coordinate donation and transplantation processes is also a very important part of this on a practical level, and providing expert advice and information to the sector also seems to me to be very sensible, because we do need to achieve the aim of having more organ donors both alive and dead. We’re doing well, but we could do a lot better, and we need to ensure those rates keep on rising. I wasn’t aware that Dr Jackie Blue had sort of invented her own job well in advance and was now at the New Zealand Blood Service. Perfect symmetry, really, isn’t it? And I’m sure she’ll guide it very wisely, because she would understand, with her medical background as well as her political one, how important these things are and how it needs to be very well governed to be able to work.

I think, having done the report that was commissioned under the Hon Jonathan Coleman—it was delivered in the middle of 2017—it really made perfect sense. On this side of the House, we support it because it has had the kind of lead-in time and rigorous evaluation process that we have brought to our legislation and which is now being picked up by the Government, which is good, and filling the Order Paper, which is also good. So I won’t delay the time of the House any further, but I do certainly commend this bill to the House.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. We’re pleased to be able to support this bill, noting that it contains a number of improvements to our organ donation programme. That really is long overdue. We like it because it helps to meet the needs of living people who donate an organ and also the families of deceased people who donate. We also like the fact that it will fold neatly and very cost effectively into the New Zealand Blood Service, which has the experience and the ability. They’ll be able not only to manage the programme very well but also to promote the service to get the numbers up, because that’s what this bill is all about; it’s about increasing the number of donors for all of those who require an organ donation.

It’s also a very sensible and not unnecessarily coercive type of bill. It comes from the strategy to increase New Zealand’s organ donation and transplantation rates, and we believe that the resulting bill actually covers a number of areas that will actually help to achieve that goal. It’s an omnibus bill, and we will see that it will amend the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016 as well as the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000.

It’s really, when you think about organ donation, an unconditional gift of life. The very word “donation” implies that there’s no direct compulsion. So we strongly believe in this particular ethos. In New Zealand, we don’t have very high organ donation rates. Some countries like Singapore and Israel lead the world in organ donation transplant rates, but they’re also known for the fair amount of pressure that they put on grief-stricken families, when we’re talking about deceased organ donation. That could actually border on coercion. So that’s not an area where we want to go, but we would like to see that there is greater ability to have families understand their young people, perhaps—like the Canadian young man who’s been mentioned—how they can feel that they can make those decisions, particularly if they didn’t know that that person wanted to be an organ donor. So this will create a great pathway for that.

We have a number of kidney transplants. I’d like to speak to those briefly in New Zealand. In 2017, there were 187 recipients of kidney transplants in New Zealand: 69 were living donor and 118 were deceased donor kidney transplants. The year before, in 2016, there were only 172 donor transplants. Three district health boards around New Zealand conduct these. They provide kidney transplant procedures. They’re in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. Auckland has the most. In 2017, there were 126 in Auckland, 37 in Wellington, and 24 in Christchurch, giving that overall total of 187.

To give the gift of life is the most selfless gift you can possibly give, and organ donations are actually a very sensitive issue, a very emotive issue, and in New Zealand we have around 200 or so ethnicities. Each ethnicity has its own cultural practice that must be respected and understood. This is a new area, and I’d like to speak to this briefly in terms of Māori and looking at this gift of an organ as being a taonga—as a gift. So that is an area that I’d like to note that Dr Lance O’Sullivan has made discussion about, and the question being, in his mind, “What if an organ donation actually didn’t diminish tapu? What if it actually enhanced it?” So that’s a conversation within Māoridom that is ongoing, and this bill will certainly link to the donation in terms of how it can work through into various communities of New Zealand.

I’d just like to make mention of the Māori man who made a live kidney donation. He made a request that, when that recipient eventually dies, a long time into the future, he would actually like to have kidney returned back to him after he’s passed on and to go into the grave with him. So there are all sorts of ways that society and community are looking at what it means to be an organ donor and giving that gift of life. New Zealand First absolutely believes this bill is a very important bill to make that process and increase those donation rates. And so we’d like to see it speed its way through the House as it works to give more people the gift of life. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak to this, the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. I, too, would like to acknowledge Mike Woodhouse as the genesis of the bill, and then Chris Bishop, through the members’ ballot, who successfully negotiated it through to where we have it today.

I recall that coming to the Health Committee, and it seemed an interminable amount of time to get that bill through the committee. The challenging part was actually the IT software interface with the Ministry of Social Development. That was the part that took a lot of time. These were quite a complex set of changes. And I would note that since that bill has passed—almost two years ago now—almost 100 people have obtained full compensation for donating live organs. This is a 500 percent increase in organ donors receiving compensation than the year previously.

Now, this bill here does several things. First of all, it seeks to implement recommendations from the 2017 strategy, Increasing Deceased Organ Donation and Transplantation. This particular document had six priority areas, which I’ll very briefly touch on. The very first priority area was improving public awareness, in the understanding that public awareness campaigns overseas have shown that educating the public about organ donation and busting common myths clearly increases organ donation. I think what’s also interesting here is the number of high profile public people who are very willing to lend their names to organ donation. Maybe our most famous is Jonah Lomu, but I would submit that maybe Billy T before that with his heart transplant was, also, very famous in the organ recipient space. In fact, in my final med school exams I was set up to examine Billy T at Middlemore in the late 2000s. I only knew that about three hours afterwards when Professor John Collins, who was organising the exams, told me he was too sick that day to bring him down from the ward, and they were very intrigued to see how I would cope in the stress of your final exam interviewing Billy T, and examining Billy T. But it didn’t actually eventuate: he was too ill that day.

The second priority in the strategy document of 2017, is improving New Zealand’s system of registering and sharing donation. This talks about exploring the option of recording individuals’ donor information, not just on the driver’s licence, but also in developing electronic health records. I’ll be interested to see how that goes hand in hand with the Government’s intentions. The third priority: enhancing capability and consistency through improved training. It is kind of interesting that only 30 to 50 percent of intensive care physicians have done organ donation training; that would seem to be a relatively simple area to have some impact on, as compared to moving organ donation to the blood transfusion service or the Blood Service. So that’s another piece of work that could maybe be picked up and looked at.

The fourth priority: increasing hospital-based capacity for deceased organ donation. This is talking about having specialist donation teams that work within the hospital. The second to last: establishing a national agency to lead the Increasing Deceased Organ Donation and Transplantation. Of course, this is the transfer that this bill does of these responsibilities to the Blood Service. I’ll echo what my colleague Michael Woodhouse was saying, that the resources need to be commensurate with that responsibility, and need to follow.

The sixth and final strategy which this bill looks to enable is to measure progress. That is our ability to critique how well we do with organ donation against a number of measures, and, particularly, to benchmark how well we do that against international measures.

There are other things this bill does. It addresses compensation, particularly those who come and go from work, and our international collaborative responsibilities. This is a bill that we’ve had a large part in and that we will support, and I certainly commend it to the House. Thank you.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Well, it’s a real pleasure to be speaking on the first reading of this bill. Just reading through the Organ Donation New Zealand website, it’s a really good reminder of the transformational impact that an organ donation can have on somebody’s life. There’s a whole range of stories; it’s worth going and reading some of them. I think the one that stood out to me was baby Ruby who was born with biliary atresia and ended up spending a huge amount of time in hospital before she received a lifesaving liver transplant. What the reality is, though, is in New Zealand there’s a large number of people waiting for organ transplants, many more than the number of organs available. Organ Donation New Zealand estimates there are about 550 people currently waiting for a transplant here in New Zealand, so what this bill does is it aims to make it easier for people to become organ donors.

There’s two parts to this bill. The first part is for live donors, and at the moment somebody who’s made an organ donation can receive up to 12 weeks earning compensation for that, but the understanding is that you then take that time off work and you don’t return to work. But what this bill does is it allows for people to come back to work at less than their usual hours and still receive compensation. So either you’re working reduced hours when you come back, or if you do come back to work at your normal hours and then you find that you are unable to continue at those hours because of the effects of surgery, this allows that compensation to be paid.

The other aspect in terms of live donors is that it allows regulations to be made which can approve overseas organ exchange programmes. What it specifies is a few criteria that those overseas countries have to meet, but it makes that possible under the New Zealand regulations and legislation.

The second part to the bill looks to expand the functions of the New Zealand Blood Service—they’re already outlined in the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act. But what it does is allows oversight and clinical governance for organ donation and transplant system, because there’s a recent strategy that many other speakers have alluded to—the national strategy for Increasing Deceased Organ Donation and Transplantation—and what this really does is create that dialogue and encourages people to share their wishes about organ donation with their families. Also, the strategy aims to provide that support to the families that are having to make those donation decisions. What the strategy talked about, though, was the need for an organisation to oversee the implementation of that strategy.

So what this bill does is it identifies the New Zealand Blood Service, which was felt to be the most appropriate Crown entity to host such a national agency, and it expands the functions of the Blood Service to provide oversight and clinical governance of organ donation and transplantation. So those two key elements—the aim is to increase the amount of organ donation that is happening in New Zealand. So, as a result, I’m very pleased to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. National is very pleased to be supporting this bill because organ donations can save lives, and give sick people another chance to live a good quality of life. National has been working to lift the rate of organ donation in New Zealand for many years, and this is the next step in the programme.

As early as 2006, National MP Dr Jackie Blue introduced a member’s bill to increase organ donation. Unfortunately, at the time, it was voted down by Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens but, fortunately, they have changed their minds about that. However, National has always been committed to increasing donation numbers and has employed a number of strategies to improve transplantation rates. In 2012, we started with a $4 million budget to raise awareness and to encourage more people to donate organs. That was followed, in 2014, with the establishment of the National Renal Transplant Service to increase the number of live kidney donor transplants. At that time, we also provided funding to establish donor liaison coordinators, and these people have done an enormous amount of work to raise the rate of donations. Following that, National MP Chris Bishop introduced a member’s bill in 2016 which introduced the payment for compensation for live organ donors. That was important because it was a barrier for people to make donations. Since then, there’s been a huge lift in the number of donations. I think the new system is much better, it’s fairer, and it has made a big difference to people waiting for organs and for transplants.

In 2017, the National Government announced a national strategy to increase deceased organ donation and transplants, and this bill implements recommendations from that strategy. So I’m very pleased to support the bill. It builds on the work that National has done for over a decade, and it will make a real difference to people who require transplant, and their families. So I commend this bill to the House.

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

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m very pleased to be participating in this Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. I’d like to thank the Minister of Health for bringing this forward, and I would like to encourage everyone in the community, if they have an interest, to submit on this bill. We look very much forward to hearing from people.

As we have heard from all the members tonight, the bill does two things. One, it implements—by creating—a national organ donation agency to increase the Increasing Deceased Organ Donation and Transplantation strategy. The second part is the compensation part for people who are live donors returning to work partially.

I am going to make a very brief call tonight. However, what I would like to talk about is the importance of the conversation that we must all have with our family members in regards to organ donation. I’m a donor myself and I’ve had that conversation with my family as to what my wishes are. People are probably not aware when they put “donor” down on their driver’s licence that that is only their wishes and the family itself gets to make the final decision. So it is very important that this conversation, as awkward as it may be, is had if a person ends up in the state where they are donating organs.

I would also very much like to talk very briefly about Wairangi Te Rupe. Now, Wairangi is watching this tonight from Australia. Wairangi Te Rupe is the sister of my daughter Danah, and Wairangi had at eight weeks biliary atresia. Now that is a life-threatening illness. It is a fatal illness without treatment. Wairangi had various treatments but they all failed and she needed to have a liver transplant. She was in liver failure and her family knew that they would lose her if they weren’t able to have that organ donated. Essentially, what happened was that she was given the gift of life from an unknown person in Australia who had passed away under the circumstances that donation can occur under. That was a tremendous gift to the family. So, personally, you know, this is a little girl who is now 10 years old, who loves life and unicorns and all the things that you would expect a small child to like and enjoy, and she was given that gift because someone gave that gift of life to her. So what I would like to do is encourage people to have this conversation and to think that it is really important that we increase the numbers.

I would just like to finish with a quote from Sam, her mother: “If Wairangi didn’t get her liver in time she would have passed away. People die on waiting lists all the time. That’s why we give thanks for her liver every single day. A very special person passed away. A brave family carried out their loved one’s wishes and said yes to giving Wairangi their liver and they let their special person pass away so that Wairangi could live.” Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Chris Bishop—five minutes.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This bill amends what started life as my legislation, and I think I haven’t been in the situation before where a Government bill has amended an Act that started life as a member’s bill in my name. It actually started life, as Michael Woodhouse my colleague pointed out earlier, as Michael Woodhouse’s member’s bill. It lay dormant in the ballot, as so many member’s bills do, before it magically got pulled, I think, probably two months after it got lodged in my name. But it’s something that I care very deeply about.

Look, as the original sponsor of the original piece of legislation, I support the amendments to the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016. We were very well served, may I say, on the Health Committee that I subbed on to when we considered that legislation. We were very well served by the Ministry of Health advisers. They had to do quite a lot of work, actually, to include in the bill a series of, kind of, operative clauses that would allow the bill to work. In particular, we had to deal with the quite tricky issue about how you calculate income and how you calculate when people are working part time and what it means to actually receive 100 percent compensation. And, you know, we didn’t get everything right, obviously, and Parliament’s now doing what it absolutely should do, which is to come back and just make a couple of clarificatory amendments.

Clause 6 of the bill deals with what happens when people return to work on reduced hours. That’s very sensible. And then it also deals with what happens when an organ donor returns to work on their usual hours but then happens to work reduced hours because of the effects of the surgery. It also allows for organ donations that are done with an approved international agency.

Now, it’s also an omnibus bill and it’s slightly strange in some ways. I suppose it is an omnibus bill because Part 2 of the bill deals with the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act and it makes it easier on the Blood Service—basically, the approved agency for organ donation in New Zealand. I do have to throw a bouquet to the Government for advancing the legislation but also a brickbat, which is to say that it is far too late for the Government to be doing this. They should have done it far earlier. Those in the organ transplant community, organ donation community, have been crying out for the announcement of the New Zealand Blood Service as that agency for months, if not years. It should have happened very soon after the Government took office, but David Clark was too busy scaremongering about mould and things like that.

Anyway, it’s good that they’re doing it now, and we’re looking forward—well, I’m not going to be on the Health Committee that considers it, but I’m sure my colleagues on the Health Committee, led by Matt Doocey, and the rest of the team will be considering that, and I look forward to it passing into law.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Can I begin my contribution in this debate by commending the Minister for the continuation of the vision that has been demonstrated by other members in this House who have a passion for ensuring that New Zealand’s organ donation numbers increase. And I want to commend the member who just resumed his seat, Chris Bishop. He ended on a sour note, but that’s OK. I don’t blame him. He probably still feels a bit resentful, being in the position he is. But I want to commend him for the work that he did on improving organ donations, and I think it made a difference. He raised the issue in this House. He inherited the bill—he didn’t actually write it himself; Michael Woodhouse actually wrote it. But in any event, the bill got through to this Parliament and enjoyed a lot of good debate and it raised the awareness outside, and that’s part of increasing the donations, and it’s great to see cross-party support on this issue.

I think that the legislation’s proposal to have the strategy run from within the New Zealand Blood Service is correct. I also think that the staging of various bits of progress in the implementation of the organ donor strategy is a good one. In 2017 we had the highest number of organs donated in New Zealand. That’s something we should all be very proud of, and I hope that continues to increase. We know why we want organ donations to increase, because it transforms or saves lives. So, clearly, people who have died are not using their organs any more, but somebody who needs them can receive them and it can literally save their life. That is a huge and generous gift that that person who’s just lost their own life is able to give to someone else. But the opportunity for a donation comes at the worst possible time for a family to make a big decision such as agreeing to have their dying family member’s organs donated.

That’s why it’s so important that everyone in this House and everyone who’s listening and everyone who’s interested in this topic talk to their family about their desire to have their organs donated when they’ve died. You can do as I’ve done, have a living will, have a will that then formally lays out that you’ll donate whatever part of your body can make a difference to someone else. It could be an organ. It could be your brain for research. It could be your eyes for giving someone else the gift of vision. So talk to your family about the fact that we were debating this bill in the House and that it’s really important that they know of each of our intentions to donate organs upon death.

I want to conclude by just taking a moment to reflect on the generosity of those people and their families who have donated their organs as they have passed away and have made such a huge difference to the lives of so many others. It’s the ultimate gift and it’s one that we should be very thankful for. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. What a loss to the House it will be when the Hon Ruth Dyson does retire. How she can get across such negative comments with a smile on her face, I think, is a real skill, and it will be a loss to the House. But I do want to pick up on her final point of generosity, and that is what this bill is, well, hopefully, going to support: more generosity of people and their families.

We know in New Zealand, there’s a lot more people waiting for organ transplants than ones who are actually going to receive one. There was a tragic case of a 19-year-old recently who fell off a building in Wellington and his family donated his organs, and he saved five people’s lives. What was an increasing generosity in that story was that young person was actually a visiting Canadian tourist. I think this bill goes some way in supporting the strategy of implementing their recommendations. But when I listened to a range of speakers over the course of the last 30 or 40 minutes—I would hate for us to fall into a mindset that everyone is supportive, it’s all good here, nothing to see, let’s move on. I hope we do have a very productive and robust select committee stage where we do hear a full range of submissions, because I think, potentially, there is a lot more that we can do around this issue.

My caution is that legislation will only go some way in addressing this issue. It’s probably a cultural shift that we need to see across New Zealand’s population. We do know that national and international research in this area clearly shows that people favour the donation of organs, but, when it comes to their own organs, there seems to be a disconnect between their sharing of that information between either a national register, or with their friends and families. What also we get caught up in is when a person like myself has ticked the box to donate, but then you get, potentially, pushback from the family, which puts medical professionals in the middle of that as well. So what I would be looking for in this new agency is that it be resourced effectively to ensure that we have the educational programme to ensure that more people are choosing to donate their organs, but also that that choice is respected and that happens as well.

What we’re also seeing from international research around organ donation is, in fact, that the biggest initiative for increasing organ donation is ensuring you have the specialist medical and nursing profession in place and the right clinical pathways. A barrier we have to overcome in New Zealand is the barrier of geography. Now, I was with the National Party health caucus yesterday; we’re visiting medical services in the West Coast—Hokitika and Greymouth. Now, that is one of the most rural healthcare systems practically in the world. So if we are going to ensure this clinical process is in rural areas, we need to make sure that we have the professionals in place, the protocols in place, but also the resourcing as well. As discussed tonight, the initial figures of up to $10 million do seem a bit light, and I do hope that we are able to get down into this detail with the financials in the select committee process to ultimately ensure that we do go through and come out at the other end with legislation that will provide more organ donations, and ultimately more lives saved. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this legislation on behalf of the Green Party. Look, when you look at last year, we saw 62 organ donations in New Zealand. Now, that’s an incredibly small number vis-à-vis the rest of our population, but when you think each of those are 62 unique people with lives, with history, with loved ones, and with whānau—62 families, wider communities impacted—you see what a blessing, what a gift, organ donation can be: as has been canvassed in this debate tonight, it is literally the gift of life.

Now, while it’s a small number, when you look at the other side of the ledger, there are 550 New Zealanders, according to Organ Donation New Zealand, that are awaiting donations. It’s heartbreaking when you look at the front page of their website, where they quite frankly say that people will die in New Zealand waiting for an organ. It’s a tragic set of affairs, a tragic case for those individuals, those whānaus, and those communities. That’s why it’s so important that Parliament is coming together unanimously tonight to support organ donation, to make it easier to see organs donated, and to put in place a more effective regime that’s literally going to save lives.

So this comes out of the expert advisory group that the previous Government worked on. I know Chris Bishop talked before, and I acknowledge the work that he’s done through his member’s bill, but this legislation tonight is truly a cross-party effort involving experts, involving those with lived experiences on the ground, to develop the national organ donation strategy. A key centrepiece of this will be the establishment of a national organ donation agency, most likely the New Zealand Blood Service. Now, this is common overseas. I understand, doing a little bit of research, this is what has driven the increase in organ donation, both in the UK and Canada, which have a regime.

If you look at the New Zealand stats, we’ve got about 13 out of a million deceased organ donations in New Zealand per annum. When you look at Australia, it’s more than that; it’s 20. If you look at the United Kingdom, it’s 21.4, so substantially more—again, more stories, more real people, and more families and communities impacted. So we think the establishment of a central body to raise the profile, to support effective clinical governance, to work with the health sector to coordinate donation transplantation, and to provide expert advice will make a difference.

Now, the second big part of this legislation that will make a difference for Kiwis awaiting organ donation is changing some of the compensation rules to donors. There is a situation under the previous, older regime where, when people return to work part-time, they aren’t eligible. This is cleaning that up to make sure those people will be eligible. The second area is around where compensation is to be paid to donors, even if the doctor’s surgery is undertaken overseas. Now, there’s an important caveat to this: that this is only in approved organ donation examples. But for Kiwis that have to go overseas, this is going to make a huge difference. So the Green Party is very proud to be working in this space. I know associate health Minister Julie Anne Genter is doing a great deal of work, in association with the Hon Dr David Clark, improving the health situation for New Zealanders. So this is a positive step forward that’s going to make a real difference, so it is great to be joining with other parties, making a difference for Kiwis. Kia ora koutou.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Health Committee.

Bills

Local Electoral Matters Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 14 March.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Continuing this third reading debate on the Local Electoral Matters Bill, on this side of the House—just to reiterate for those who might value the reminder of where we had got to previously when the House was sitting—on the National Party side of the House, we do support the bill. We note that the Justice Committee has examined it and made some recommendations, and its recommendation that the bill be passed is subject, I suppose, to those being taken into account and finding their way into the proposed legislation. Those changes are, indeed, in front of us, so I will look at those briefly, but also I’d like to make note of the fact, for the record, that National has reserved its position to the extent of highlighting some reservations about the possibility that the legislation might be employed, and just to sound a note of caution about some of the innovations that are inherent in the processes that are being brought forward, so as better to protect the security and integrity of the voting process.

First, though, I’d like to focus on what seems to me a very positive aspect of the bill, which is the allowing of partial trials of new voting methods, and, alongside that, the innovation to allow local authorities, which almost inevitably would be councils, but I suppose, too, potentially, without having sat on the select committee at this point—

Chlöe Swarbrick: DHBs.

CHRIS PENK: —district health boards and other local bodies—and I’m being given some assistance across the House, for which I’m grateful, as always—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Local government’s awesome!

CHRIS PENK: —but not that grateful, so I’ll continue on.

The ability for date of birth information to be provided from the database of electors by such local authorities as defined in such collaborative fashion a moment ago, and also just to clarify what use that can be put to—so to allow, in other words, researchers to be supplied with that date of birth information and age group information. You might well ask what the point of that is, what the problem is that would be solved by doing so. Well, the problem would be that of under-participation in our democracy by voters in local government elections in general, but in particular those of particular voting groups by age and, more specifically still, those in the younger age brackets. So whereas there’s a general principle of information privacy and security, that information should be used or provided on a need-to-know basis, I think we can safely say that there is a need to know in the wider context not just of voting in a particular election but to understand the extent to which young people are engaged in our democracy. That is an important thing in itself if we are to take seriously the idea that democracy is the rule of the people, and “people” includes those who are old enough to vote but young enough that, historically and traditionally, they have not done so in great numbers.

To touch on the National Party view, as promised, in relation to some of the additional tools, which we’ve called useful, in the select committee report, in that section where we’ve expressed that view, we’ve highlighted the evidence that has been provided around the desirability of having paper ballots that are filled out on paper, notwithstanding that they can be transmitted by electronic means, for example—I suppose by email, but certainly over the internet—the key point being that to ensure maximum protection, essentially, of the citizens’ right to be able to vote in a way that will be recorded accurately, the vote should be cast on paper and to avoid the possibility of problems, whether innocent, but nonetheless significant, or, of course, in a way that might reflect a practice that we could refer to as hacking or similar. Of course, we note the recent experience of the census, which in fact is still ongoing. We’ve referred to it sort of almost in the past tense in that section of the report, but it remains a problem for us. While that’s a slightly different matter from electronic voting, nevertheless there are, potentially, parallels which we are anxious to avoid.

On that note, I’ll bring to a close my contribution in this, the third reading, and look forward to hearing the other contributions and, no doubt, the passage of the bill very shortly.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. It is my duty this evening to rise and support, and to continue the support that New Zealand First has lent towards, the passage of the Local Electoral Matters Bill. I want to compliment the Justice Committee for the work that it’s done on the bill and in particular the chairman, Raymond Huo, and Ginny Anderson, the Hon Maggie Barry, Chris Bishop, Mark Mitchell, Greg O’Connor, the Hon Nick Smith, and Dr Duncan Webb all participated.

I’ve got to say that the previous speaker who just sat down before me, Chris Penk, whilst not being on the committee, clearly understands the bill very well, so I have to congratulate him for the content of his speech. It actually does beg the question as to how much repetition we want to endure this evening, because the bill is quite a simple bill. It has clearly got unanimous support of the House, as I see it today. The statement, the intent, of the bill has been very clearly defined by previous speakers; I’m not going to rotary hoe that same paddock again.

What I would do is point out—and I think, sometimes, some recognition needs to be given to the Opposition when they raise their concerns. I note with interest, having read the select committee report and read the National Party’s minority view—I think, actually, they raised some valid points in their minority view. I note that the bill provides a mechanism by which local government, territorial authorities, might experiment or trial other voting methods, and the bill specifically allows those councils, should they decide to do so, to select a subset of a council, maybe a ward, to trial it. The observation made by the select committee that the consultation process prior to going ahead needs to be complete, I think is a valid observation.

The observations made that we should not necessarily believe or accept that online voting in itself will increase voter turnout—I look at this bill, and if you look at the intent of the bill, what it does, to me and New Zealand First, it strives its best to enhance democracy and to enhance the level of voter participation. We all know from having listened to the second reading speeches and the third reading speeches that preceded mine that there has been a lot of discussion around how we get New Zealand citizens to participate in local body elections. One of the things that’s pointed out in the select committee report is that very often, in council elections—and I think the example the select committee chose to highlight was Wellington itself—what we are seeing increasingly is local government elections being cluttered by other elections of other bodies, be it health boards or liquor licensing bodies as well, which in itself creates a bit of a mammoth task for electors to wade their way through these booklets. I’ve never seen the Auckland one, but I shudder to think what it might look like. It’s like a volume. The Hon Maggie Barry’s just indicating to me that it looks like I could use it to reach the high shelves in the gallery, being as vertically challenged as I am—it might be helpful.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: I’m with you, brother.

Hon RON MARK: Thank you, the Hon Michael Woodhouse. We share a common affliction. But when one listens to voters, the most often heard comment is “How do I decide amongst all of these candidates, across the range of local bodies that we’re required to vote in? How do I pick these people? I don’t even know them.” That probably explains why, if you’re a very high-profile New Zealand sportsperson or, you know, a former politician from central government, one has a very high chance of being elected, because name recognition is high. It does not necessarily mean to say that one is the best qualified for the appointment or best suited. I have a high degree of empathy with voters who say to me that local government elections are just too cluttered.

Now, there has been the discussion around going to online voting, but I think the Opposition in its minority view is quite correct to point out that that may not necessarily generate the results or fulfil the expectations that we have. It also does, rightfully, raise the question about the integrity of online voting, and one only has to watch the international news and see some of the discussion that’s going on in other jurisdictions as to the fears that people have about their elections being interdicted by outside elements through the internet and through digital means. So I think when the Opposition raise those questions, they’re quite right to do so.

I myself have never been a great believer that online voting’s going to generate the massive change that people would like to see. Maybe I would like to see that one small council might choose to actually return to the polling booth and create a day of significance like the general election, where everybody gets up, gets out, and goes and casts their vote physically and makes a meaningful decision. I guess making the day a day of significance actually does encourage people. I’ve looked at, as a mayor and a person who’s been elected mayor twice and fought how many campaigns, I can’t remember, for central government and for Parliament—[Interruption]—quite a few.

I do know that people who cast their vote at local government elections through the post office box get that book. They put it off to one side. It presents them with such a daunting task that they say, “Well, I’ll do that later.”, and they put it aside. They put it aside, and then the day has come and it’s gone, and it’s too late and they haven’t cast their vote. Then we sit there and ask ourselves why it is we only get a 48 percent turnout in some territorial authorities.

One of the things I’m quite proud of, being a person from the provinces myself, is that generally—and I’m looking at the former president of Local Government New Zealand, Mr Lawrence Yule—in the provinces, turnouts in local government elections are very high in comparison to metropolitan New Zealand. Some might unkindly suggest that we do give a damn more than others, and we do value our right to exercise our vote in local government. So I’m hopeful that this new mechanism that gives councils the opportunity to experiment, to trial different voting mechanisms, might well mean they choose to go back to that strange old thing called a polling booth, on a particular day where everybody understands the significance and gets themselves up and goes and casts their vote physically—but I might be asking too much.

I think the bill is a useful addition. It addresses a number of issues that the select committee has debated well and recorded their view on. Whether it’s the context for changes to enabling local authorities to access the age cohort and the Māori descent information, whether it’s the methodology around trialling different election systems, it all adds and enhances democracy as I see it, and let’s just see how it rolls out on the next day. I’m actually waiting to hear which is the first territorial authority that’s going to give it a crack, so to speak, and trial a different mechanism. New Zealand First supports this bill and recommends it to the House.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): On the scale of small and minor amendment bills, this one really does take the cake. I think the House needs to be aware of exactly what this bill does. The current law provides for local authorities to be able to trial novel voting methods, including internet or online voting. All this bill does is say that rather than a council being able to trial it over all of their community, they’ll be able to trial it in a single ward—that’s it. That’s about as much as this bill does. Yes, it does make some very minor changes to the Electoral Act and to the Local Electoral Act to allow the sharing of data about participation rates.

Now, if anybody in this Parliament really believes that this very minor tinkering with the Local Electoral Act is somehow going to deliver on a big change in voter participation, they really are off in dreamland. In fact, this bill is so symptomatic of the gulf between this Government’s promise and what it’s actually done in practice. If you look up the Labour local government policy at the last election, they said that introducing electronic voting was a piece of cake and they were going to be doing it for the 2019 local body elections. I would love Labour members to say whether that’s still their policy. Are we going to be having online voting at the local body elections later this year? No. All we’ve got is this very, very minor bill.

Now, National, in its report, has pointed out—and I actually think, as is so often the case around issues of competency, when National raised at the select committee the international evidence around the issues of online voting and the importance of the integrity of the vote, Labour members got cold feet. I think they actually recognised, once again, that National was right: in terms of online voting, the risks of being able to hack the system or pervert our democratic system are such that it needs a significant amount of caution. The National minority view makes reference to the National Academy of Sciences’ very comprehensive international report on the risks of online voting. I would just draw those to the attention of the House because they, effectively, contradict what Labour promised at the last election, and this bill is a minnow of what Labour promised in this area of policy.

National members are very relaxed about passing this super-minor bill, but I emphasise again that anybody who thinks this bill is going to result in a turn-around in the participation of local government elections, which once was about 80 percent—at the last local body elections, in 2016, it was down at about 45 percent. The idea that that negative trend is going to be reversed by this bill is truly in dreamland. You’re going to need something far more substantial and some of the far more innovative policies that National’s working on to address these issues. This bill is fundamentally an embarrassment for the Government in the area of local government policy.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It’s a pleasure to rise after one Hon Nick Smith—perhaps the longest speech that I’ve ever heard on a relatively minor bill. This Act—sorry, this piece of legislation, this proposed bill—is relatively straightforward, as has been stated by Nick Smith and a number of other speakers. It amends two pieces of legislation: the Local Electoral Act 2001 and the Electoral Act 1993. I also just want to echo the sentiments that were raised by Ron Mark around the fact that province turnout on local body elections is typically higher than it is in metropolitan or urban areas, and that definitely is the case.

The figure just raised by the Hon Nick Smith of around 45 percent in the local body elections in 2016, that being the average across the entirety of New Zealand—I myself was a candidate in the 2016 local body elections in Auckland, where we only managed just shy of a 40 percent turnout. I would, however—

Hon Maggie Barry: One four?

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: —say that—it was just shy of 40 percent. But I would, however, say that we did manage to reverse a trend of decline. In the 2013 local body election, the voter turnout was 34.7 percent, and, if I may say, that is one of the many reasons that I decided to throw my hat into the ring.

What I have discovered, in talking about how this piece of legislation is definitely not going to solve all of the problems when it comes to people being engaged in local government, is it’s the case that people have to be engaged in their local communities. I think that that goes to the heart of what was being put forward by Ron Mark around the fact that in provinces, we typically have more tighter-knit communities—people are less likely to move around as much as they do in urban or city areas. It’s also the case that in urban areas, we typically have greater transience, so it’s the case that people don’t have the same postbox on a three-yearly cycle. When I was a candidate, I found myself having to help a number of people trying to enrol and trying to cast a vote.

I would also state that what the stats show, and the evidence from overseas, is that whilst introducing online voting does actually provide a bump in voter participation in the year that it is introduced, that actually goes back down to normal levels subsequent to that, meaning that that increase can be associated to, perhaps, something akin to novelty, but you actually don’t solve the fundamental problems of local democracy or people’s enfranchisement in local democracy, which I believe was the point that Nick Smith was attempting to get at.

So the Green Party is quite happy to be supporting this piece of legislation because, at the end of the day, voting should never be a difficult thing, but what we currently have through the postal voting period for local body elections is, indeed, a little bit of an arduous process, particularly for my generation, many of whom I’ve had conversations with throughout their experiences in local body elections and they haven’t known where to locate a postbox, but also to the point around those young people’s transience, in particular. But notably, of course, this is not going to solve those fundamental issues, and those fundamental issues will only be resolved when people start to feel a sense of connection to that local democracy and start to feel as though their vote matters or can have an impact.

So on that point, for anybody listening, whether they happen to be in this House or at home, please do enrol in your local body elections and make sure that you’re out there not just voting but also ensuring that you’re campaigning for something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be for a candidate, but it can be for a cause. With all of that said, the Green Party is incredibly proud to be supporting this piece of legislation.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to speak with pleasure at the third reading of the Local Electoral Matters Bill, or, as it has been rechristened, the “Super Minor Bill”—oh, what might have been. It is an omnibus bill, and it covers a bit of ground and makes a few tweaks here and there in some of the electoral Acts.

We support the bill, of course, but we remain very sceptical about the points that, particularly, Chlöe Swarbrick, the speaker who has just resumed her seat, made about the ability to encourage young people or, just generally, anybody to vote, really. I mean, the numbers of people voting in local government elections is truly tanking, and we do need to do something about that because grassroots democracy is important. If you have an 80 percent turnout for local body elections and then, I think Dr Smith said, about 15 years later it was down to less than half of that—you know, we have to do something to interest them. Rarely—very rarely—I find myself in agreement with the Hon Ron Mark, but I would have to say that the bewildering array of names of unknown people to vote for in the Auckland area has been daunting, and people have said to me, “Who are these people? Why should we care?” You’ve got electricity boards and a plethora of unknowns who seem to be pulling quite good—

Chris Bishop: They may be saying, “Who is Ron Mark?”

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Ah, no—only in Carterton, they would not have to ask that question. In Auckland, they might have to ask the question, but maybe people are daunted by that. You have to do a certain amount, though—a little bit of effort at least, I think—in the interests of democracy.

I do find myself astonished that—what are we—one year and one week out from the census that wasn’t, we are looking at an online experiment that failed woefully. I think that for electoral boundary issues and for giving us peace of mind, really, around electoral reform, we need to understand that the system online is not the silver bullet that people think it will be, and if it fails, it’s the putting right that counts—to get Alan Martin into the picture here. L V Martin and Son, your Fisher & Paykel dealer—

Lawrence Yule: L V Martin and Son—beautiful. I remember it.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: We’re of an age, Lawrence Yule, where we know that sort of thing.

Chris Bishop: I remember—that’s right.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Even Chris Bishop, probably through some new nostalgia movement, has heard about it.

Chris Bishop: Ron remembers him.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Yeah, yeah—I think there’s a few of us in this House who will remember that one. But, I mean, if something does go wrong, you need to really be able to address it pretty swiftly, and I think that failing to count one in 10 New Zealanders—Statistics New Zealand to this day remains a bit tight-lipped about why these results have been so long delayed, so it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? That was touted as being the big proof and something that would be easily achievable, and it was not.

So at a local government level, I wonder what the fallout would be if you had local body elections online and something went wrong. How much of a setback would that be to the online—

Chris Bishop: Imagine if Ron Mark got elected.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Well, if there are old ballot papers in the Carterton area, for example, and Ron Mark’s name was there, or if people thought it was—if there was a man in a big, tall hat standing in the area—perhaps he might find himself with greatness thrust upon him, and the mayoralty of Carterton would await him again.

Chris Bishop: Back again.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Back again—the third time lucky. But, putting aside the levity of this, I think that fundamental public confidence is what we need in our electoral system, and inertia, the name recognition factor—all of these things don’t work terrifically well when you’re trying to encourage people to see the relevance and the point of costing your vote for one person over another.

Of course, it’s very easy once you get to Government elections because we’re all so colourful and interesting and we’re personalities who are well-known, etc. So the voter turnout does tend to be a bit higher, but we can’t take anything for granted, and I think that one of these days, online voting will be something that we can have trust and confidence in, but I’m not sure that I have trust and confidence in what this minor “Super Minor Bill” is doing to encourage people and to reform local electoral matters. But, having said that, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, I’m really not quite sure where the National Party are on this one, because on the one hand they say “We’re not going far enough. It’s too small.”, and on the other hand they’re saying, “Don’t do it at all because we don’t have confidence in the system.” It does seem to me that the National Party wouldn’t try anything with that kind of attitude, because we know—and we’ve heard the Hon Maggie Barry just say that she sees in the future that online voting will be a thing.

Well, I’ve got an idea: let’s adopt this bill because we can test it. We can find a test group, we can find a test location, and we can run it, and that’s exactly what this bill allows us to do. It allows us to actually find a cohort of people and see what two things are—the best way to run online or electronic voting—and also to look at the statistics of those people and see where the greatest uptake of online voting is so that we’ve got some better design principles going forward.

So this is the kind of legislation that we absolutely need to increase participation in a very, very important area of local body politics. At the moment, we have a participation issue. People are disengaged, and this is one way in which to say, “Here it is. It’s right in front of you. You don’t need to leave your home. You don’t have to go through what”—frankly, for some people—“is an unfamiliar process of going through lots of paper forms.” It’s time for voting—and for the National Party—to move into the 21st century, where online voting and online behaviour is the norm.

Now, we know what the statistics are. We know that there’s work to be done in this area, but we are not shying away from it. So that’s why this is a good piece of legislation and a well-designed piece of legislation with appropriate safeguards there and an ability to run an appropriate test. We can learn from it, and then let’s roll it out. Let’s get wider participation in our local body elections so that we can have better democracy everywhere for everyone. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Chris Bishop—five minutes.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Well, that was a passionate speech by Dr Webb for what’s fundamentally quite a boring bill. I’ve got to say—I want to go on the record and say I am a deep online voting sceptic and I have to say I find the passion with which people who express support for online voting slightly strange.

Firstly, I think this idea that online voting will be the cure-all for our democratic defects in local democracy misunderstands the problem entirely. The reason people do not vote is not that it’s particularly difficult—it’s very easy to vote in local body elections; you simply fill out a piece of paper and chuck it in the mail—the reason they don’t vote is local body politicians don’t do enough to encourage them to get out to vote. They’ve got a three-week period—or 2½ weeks, three weeks—in which they can vote. Lots of people don’t vote, and, frankly, people who stand for local bodies need to do a better job of encouraging people to actually vote.

Secondly, I have to say anyone who has studied the issue of online voting is extremely worried about the safety and the security of online voting. Dr Webb didn’t have the advantage of being on the Justice Committee in the last Parliament—Justice and Electoral Committee as it then was—but I did and we conducted an inquiry into the 2014 general election and we had a number of submissions in relation to online voting. And I’ve got to say it is frightening—frightening—how easy it is to hack some of the systems that are used. I’m not saying that nefarious people out there are going to hack, you know, the Onslow-Western ward of the Wellington City Council if they decide to go forward with this online voting trial like the bill provides—although you know, given the quality of the candidates in their ward, maybe they will. But I’m not saying people will be doing that, but, you know, it is actually incredibly easy to hack online voting systems and I think that is a danger to our democracy.

And the third thing is online voting, I believe, trivialises democracy. Once it is as easy to vote in a local body election or, God forbid, a general election, when it is as easy as, you know, liking something on Facebook or participating in an online Facebook poll or a Twitter poll or all of the silly things that people who spend too much time on social media get up to, I think that will trivialise what actually is a fundamentally important part of the type of society we live in. And I think there will be a trivialisation of local democracy with online voting. I understand the desire to make it as easy as possible but I think there are serious safety concerns. I think it will trivialise the process and I think it misdiagnoses the problem.

With all that being said, the National Party is supportive of this legislation. We are deeply sceptical. I’m not the only one deeply sceptical about it. I know many of my colleagues on this side of the House are deeply sceptical about online voting. But let’s have a trial. You know, if it works in, you know, the Onehunga ward of the Auckland Council, well, maybe we’ll have a go later on, but I doubt it. Thank you.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, and look, it’s a pleasure to speak on anything to do with local government and I want to just support the Minister of Local Government here for this fantastic bit of work. There have been a lot of negative nasty words said about this but I know in reality it’s just a whole lot of flip-flopping. One minute, “Let’s do it. Let’s do it, literally.”, and then in 2016 the online trial was pulled. Then there’s some debate on that side of the Houses as to “Is this good? I think it is. I don’t know.”—a lot of blah and suddenly they’re all in support again. So there’s no intention in this bill to flip-flop; it’s pretty clear.

And I just want to correct something too because it talks about—and if you look at the bill, in two parts, thanks to the hard-working Justice Committee for their fast-moving work on this—it talks about giving explicit provisions for local authorities, councils to conduct trials of new voting methods, so it doesn’t actually just say “online”. And I think we’ve been obsessed with that and there is some obsession with this online stuff when really, if you look at the intention of the bill, it wants improved participation.

We know it’s not the silver bullet. We know that in the urban centres getting anything more than around 40 percent is difficult—it’s been acknowledged; the history shows us that. But I think it’s more about saying that we know postal voting—for those that understand that and you know with only 40 percent, that’s four out of 10 people in this room voted—meant filling out a form that arrived in your letterbox, finding a letterbox or a post office, one that was open, to actually post it back, and then wait for the result. And what this really says is “Look, let’s try something different. Let’s try new things.” and that’s really the intention and I think anyone who criticises that is really undermining democracy here because—

Chris Bishop: Oh!

PAUL EAGLE: Thank you, “Mr Hutt South”. But what we’re really looking at here is permission, is giving those local authorities that represent local views a localised way of implementing an improved democracy for their local area. Look how many times I said “local” then; so many times I’ve lost count. And that’s the essence of this bill.

I also think that local authorities have asked for better information and in Part 2 it certainly talks about that in terms of those local authorities who want to make or produce a better effort at promoting their elections because it will sit with the councils now to do that task. They will now be able to get their information to do that.

I think this is a lot more far reaching. It may not be as super-duper as what some want, but I know that in terms of legislation every little bit counts and this is going to ensure improved civic participation. I want to thank the Minister for that. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on this, the third reading, of the Local Electoral Matters Bill. Let me start by saying that local elections do matter. If we needed any better evidence of that then we would look to Wellington and the debacle we are currently experiencing with our buses; where every day dozens of buses are cancelled, or late, or overcrowded because of the poor governance provided by our regional council. So that’s why it’s very important that people vote at local elections—isn’t it, Paul? I’m sure you would agree, Mr Eagle, the member for Rongotai, that people should look very carefully at who they vote for at local election time.

So National rises to support this bill because, essentially, we’re a constructive party, and we want to see good things happening. But let’s be careful about the claims that are made for this bill because the previous speaker claimed that to have any queries about this bill was to stand against democracy itself. I think that that’s a rather large claim, because the concerns that we have with online voting are valid. You only need look at the census debacle we’ve all witnessed recently to know that going online doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. In fact, there is the potential to disenfranchise large numbers of people. So it’s appropriate that this bill includes consultation mechanisms to make sure that anyone wanting to move to an online voting scheme has to consult appropriately. And also I would argue it’s a good step that the change can be trialled in a smaller way so that if there is any debacle it’s less widespread than it might have been across a city.

But I think, really, other speakers have done a good job of talking about what this bill does, but I just also want to talk about what this bill doesn’t do. I think it is very instructive about this Government and its agenda that we are here tonight debating the Local Electoral Matters Bill, which allows us to trial online voting in a ward rather than across a district, a very minor change to electoral law, when, in fact, this country faces major challenges and major opportunities and this legislation goes nowhere near any of those. This is a very minor bill and speaks to that Government’s lack of agenda. National is constructive. We support it, but, my goodness me, we hope to see some more interesting legislation in the future and more constructive legislation in the future. Thank you.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me pleasure to draw a close to this long debate. It seems to be a matter that’s been round some time.

Chris Bishop: This’ll be pretty terrible.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! The member Chris Bishop, go back to your seat. The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise. He knows very well members do not walk around the Chamber interjecting.

Chris Bishop: I withdraw and apologise, Mr Assistant Speaker.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

As this debate draws to a close I can’t help but draw a cynical smile at the efforts of the previous speaker who, of course, is following along the steps of the perennially outraged Dr Smith in being outraged by the local transport system, which seems to be giving her something of a pedestal, so, as a result, should be, in fact, very much in favour of local bodies. When, in fact, it was the peak-top model introduced by the previous Government that must—

Chris Bishop: What are you doing? Being a lazy member.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! Order! Chris Bishop, do not bring me into the debate. When you use the personal pronoun “you” you are bringing the Speaker into the debate.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker, on the third attempt to get some common sense into this debate.

I think we all, as MPs, have quite a bit of contact in our electorates with member-based organisations, most of which have democratic processes to elect. It would be a rare organisation in our electorates that doesn’t lament the apathy of the members when it comes to electoral time. And, of course, that apathy tends to extend to the local body elections. We’ve had many speakers talking here tonight on apathy that 2016 resulted in a 42 per cent turnout in local body elections, the highest actually 52 percent, and again in the perennially outraged Dr Nick Smith’s Nelson.

But I actually have another interpretation of that. What I’ve found, as someone who was in charge of a member-based organisation, is that actually apathy is not necessarily a bad thing. It means that—we’ve only got to see what happens when members are outraged. We’ve had some discussion earlier on about Wellington with the local transport. I think we’ll probably find this year that there will be a somewhat higher turnout in this election in Wellington, simply because of the matters that have been raised previously.

So I think introducing another method—and often when we as elected members go back, we’re told that, “Well, you haven’t really got a mandate because so many people turned out; it’s such a small turnout.” whatever place we are. Actually, what it does do, by ensuring we do introduce another electoral method, albeit in local bodies this year—what we’re actually doing is testing that method. So, again, we’re ensuring that those who may be apathetic—may be, actually, quite happy with the system that they are operating in—can actually, when they do complain, when they come forward and say, “Look, we couldn’t. We wanted to participate.”—actually, you did have another chance. You had the opportunity to take part in the postal ballot. You had the opportunity to take part in electronic voting.

So, actually, this is another opportunity to test the, I suppose, apathy, or test, actually, the willingness to participate, which is a slightly different thing, in the democratic process. It is a relatively minor change, but what it does is, again, allow us to just ensure that those who will later on object, those later on who’ll test and challenge the democratic process—they have now another method by which they can vote.

So going back to my premise, I believe that, actually, as long as we provide the systems to vote, if people choose not to take them, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What is more important is they have the opportunities. I don’t think this will necessarily result in a huge voter turnout, but what it does do is just provide that further opportunity, and, if you like, refuse an excuse for people not to vote. So I commend this bill to this House.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I move, That the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Can I begin by thanking all of those groups who have contributed to this piece of legislation getting to a third reading—first and foremost, those who work in the financial sector who have worked alongside officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in a very consultative way and will continue to work in a consultative way as we work through the code working group process to ensure that we land with a code of conduct for the sector that works both for the sectors and in the best interests of consumers. I do know that some people who have contributed are still watching because they want to make sure that this piece of legislation does finish its third reading at some stage.

I would just like to reiterate some of the comments that I’ve made at recent financial sector forums. We do want to make sure that we get the balance around the final code right. There is a process that we have to go through first to get some feedback from the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) before we finalise the code for the financial services sector, and we want to make sure that that process is done swiftly in order to give the sector the time it needs to transition to the new regulations within this Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill.

We want to make sure as a Government that New Zealanders are making wise, informed, and motivated financial decisions. It helps set themselves and their families up for the present and for the future—whether it be decisions around savings, around KiwiSaver, or around taking insurance. But very key to that is advice that consumers get from people working in the finance sector that they rely on. The Retirement Commissioner’s office recently came out with a statistic that said nearly 70 percent of New Zealanders have money worries. A lot of that, I think, comes from a lack of confidence from a lot more New Zealanders than we think. The advice that they get or the information that they make on some pretty crucial and large financial decisions for themselves and their families isn’t necessarily as well informed as it could be.

Certainly, with the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill that is starting its third reading today, we want to make sure that the financial advice that is being offered is of a higher standard, and that will come about from the legislation and the code itself, but also, inherently, that consumers feel that they can trust the advice that is being given by those in the financial sector. This is an important piece of legislation to ensure that that trust is there, given the context of what has happened across the Tasman, with the royal commission in Australia, but also the two reviews that were carried out by the Financial Markets Authority into the banking sector, and the Reserve Bank and the FMA around the life insurance markets, which did show that while they had concerns, they weren’t as marked as the serious concerns that we have across the Tasman.

This piece of legislation and the work that we will do off the back of those two FMA and Reserve Bank reports, we think, from the Government’s perspective, will certainly put in train measures to give consumers more confidence in the finance sector and in the advice that they will depend on and want to trust if they’re making those wise, informed, motivated decisions that we want them to make.

This piece of legislation also introduces a licensing regime for those who want to offer advice in the finance sector. That will be undertaken by the Financial Markets Authority—that is a good thing. There are also some measures around the Financial Service Providers Register, which will toughen and make things have more stringent measures, again, for those who want to offer financial advice. But, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that New Zealanders have confidence both in the finance sector and in the advice that they will be getting from those around those important financial decisions that I talked about: setting themselves up for retirement, taking out a mortgage, and getting themselves insurance for a rainy day and for peace of mind. It certainly has been highlighted by the two reviews by the FMA and the Reserve Bank that work needs to be done. This piece of legislation will go part of the way. The consultation that we’ll do off the back of the two reviews that I’ve mentioned already will go a long way to addressing some trust issues, certainly that consumers will have and, I think, to be fair, a lot of those in the sector have had for some time. They know that if their industry is to flourish, then consumer trust is a big issue that they need to address.

I’m very happy that we’ve got to the stage where we’ve got to a third reading of this escalated bill. Again, my thanks to the officials, to the code working group who have worked in a difficult and challenging environment at times but have got to the point where they have delivered a draft code, and again also to those practitioners in the sector who have been part of consultation, and especially also to those small financial advice firms who we have met in the likes of the Hawke’s Bay recently to make sure that we are meeting their needs, because I think there was certainly a rich vein of concern at the outset of this process that small advice firms may be inadvertently predominantly affected, as opposed to some of the bigger advice firms in the likes of the bigger centres. Hopefully, we can reach a point of consensus where big firms and large firms are dealt with in an even manner, because we want to make sure that the amount and quality of financial advice for New Zealanders is of good quality and that consumers can trust. So, with those comments, I would like to commend this bill to the House.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise in support of the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill in this, its third reading—a bill that is coming, I hope, with unanimous support to a conclusion. The thing that impresses me most, in the way that we can summarise the heart of this bill, is that the fundamental objective is that it is all about ensuring that advice ensures a good customer outcome as its chief priority. That means we’re putting the customer—or the consumer, in this case—at the heart of our legislation and of the code, as well, that will be governing the behaviour of providers of advice and that, at the heart of all of this, we’re putting the consumer first not for—well, actually for a number of reasons, but perhaps the most important of those is the information, the symmetry, that exists in the purchase particularly of financial advice.

It is well understood that most purchasers—not all but most consumers of financial advice—know far less about the advice they’re receiving than the professionals that are giving it. That does place them at some degree of risk of receiving advice or taking advice that is actually not necessarily in their very—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry to interrupt the member, but it’s come time for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.