Tuesday, 7 May 2019

TUESDAY, 7 MAY 2019

TUESDAY, 7 MAY 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

Battle of Monte Cassino—75th Anniversary

Hon RON MARK (Minister for Veterans): I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Cassino.

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

Hon RON MARK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That this House recognise that 18 May 2019 is the 75th anniversary of the fall of Cassino, which brought to an end one of the most brutal and costly battles in which New Zealand forces fought during the Second World War.

Motion agreed to.

Points of Order

Motion Without Notice—Leave to Move

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to acknowledge the global assessment report of the Intergovernmental Science and Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystems Services.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is objection.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: How many of the 42 recommendations of the welfare working group report will the Government adopt?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will know that at the time the announcement was made, we immediately acted on the issue of case managers and the discriminatory sanction around the naming of both parents. We also moved on abatement. We are progressing as well and have already started work on 15 other recommendations, and have fully acknowledged that there is further work to do on the issue of income adequacy.

Hon Simon Bridges: What obligations will exist for parents to pay their fair share of child support now that her Government is scrapping the obligation to name both parents?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The obligation still exists; what we’ve removed is the sanction that then follows that obligation. Our view is that that is important because it is directly affecting children—on average, over $30 a week that families are missing out on—and those are families who are suffering from income-adequacy issues. It’s something that we have long flagged that we had an issue with and that we thought was negatively affecting children.

Hon Simon Bridges: Isn’t an obligation without a penalty entirely meaningless, and if, as she says, it’s discriminatory, shouldn’t she just say that rather than play around with words?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I’ve already said, it is impacting negatively on children, and so that’s why we have taken a child-centred approach. The member will well know that there has been some discussion over time on whether or not enough of a sense of obligation on paying child support exists, because it is the State that retains child support payments. So if the member wants to discuss the issue of child support pass-on, we can do that, but our view is that the penalty—the sanction that exists—is negatively affecting children and impacting on child poverty.

Hon Simon Bridges: What advice did her Government receive on how many more women won’t name the father, given the scrapping of the obligation to name both parents?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I couldn’t give him that level of specificity at this time, but, again, we have made a principled decision here that there will often be a range of reasons. As I say, the obligation to name still exists, but we do not think it’s right that as a consequence, that sanction then ultimately will impact on children. If the member wants to maintain that those families have that penalty, which can be significant for a family on a low income, then he is entitled to that opinion.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with the welfare working group’s recommendation that the Ministry of Social Development be statutorily accountable to iwi and Māori for achieving well-being outcomes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes. I mean, there’s, I believe, an obligation to make sure that we fulfil the expectations on all citizens as well, but of course there are specific expectations as well on the over-representation that we have of Māori within our welfare system and also within Oranga Tamariki, and we should not shy away from addressing those directly.

Hon Simon Bridges: When, then, will those statutory accountabilities to iwi and Māori for achieving well-being outcomes in welfare be enacted?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I’ve said, there’s a number of areas where we’re continuing to do ongoing work.

Hon Simon Bridges: Oh!

SPEAKER: Who made that noise?

Hon Simon Bridges: I did.

SPEAKER: Last week I remonstrated with a member for making a noise that is not really fit for Parliament, and I’d just like the Leader of the Opposition to show some leadership. I did think it was that member again.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister as to whether or not the subject raised by the Leader of the Opposition with respect to obligations to Māori was not identical in the last local government bill that they had prepared?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That is in fact true. I also recall this very specific obligation, again, in discussion around Oranga Tamariki, and the last Government didn’t have that hesitation then in acknowledging that there was work to do with that over-representation of Māori.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with the welfare working group’s recommendation to remove obligations on beneficiaries to be drug-free, to have any children they have enrolled with a GP, and to attend early childhood or primary education?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We haven’t made final decisions on some of the recommendations that have been made by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, and there’s additional work to be done.

Hon Simon Bridges: What does she say to former Green MP Sue Bradford, who said her Government’s response to the report is “virtually useless” and that “I strongly suspect it will take a way more progressive [Government] than this lot to enact serious welfare reform.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’d say she would still be vastly happier having this Government than that last one.

Hon Simon Bridges: What has her Government achieved in welfare in its year of delivery, other than 13,000 more beneficiaries on jobseeker support?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Thank you for the opportunity. We will be employing 170 extra case managers to make sure that those who are seeking work have the support to find work. From 1 May, the winter energy payment will be affecting up to a million New Zealanders. Families will receive $700 over those winter months, including those families on benefit and Government support and superannuitant couples, and $450 over the winter months for singles so they don’t decide between turning the heater on and putting food on a table. We also have the ongoing roll-out of the Best Start payment. For the first time, we have a near-universal payment for the first year of a child’s life, and that extends to years two and three for those on low incomes. It is the most significant change to our welfare system in over 10 years. The Families Package: on average, $75 a week is going to over 380,000 families. It will mean that between 40,000 and 70,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. It is a $5.4 billion package that was introduced by this Government and continues to be rolled out. Is there more work to do? Yes, but I am incredibly proud of what this Government has done already.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister, with respect to these policies that she’s unveiling, on the running poll of approve or disapprove, is it not a fact that the disapproval ratio is going down and the approval ratio is going up?

SPEAKER: Order! Resume your seat. That’s not a matter for which the Prime Minister has responsibility.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can I just suggest to you, without wishing to contest your ruling but hoping for maybe a more considered judgment, that the approval or disapproval of policies is seriously apposite to the Prime Minister and every one of her Cabinet Ministers and colleagues. So it’s not unusual for the Prime Minister to be aware of it, because any Prime Minister that wasn’t aware of it would go the way of the previous one.

Hon Chris Hipkins: On a near daily basis, the Minister of Finance is asked about the mood of the country when it comes to the economy. Therefore, surely, the Prime Minister can be asked about the mood of the country when it comes to support for the Government.

SPEAKER: Yes, I think if I’d really considered it carefully, I would have allowed the question. But, having ruled it out, I’m going to leave it out.

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Excuse me, sir, why did you give that look when I asked for a legitimate point of order, when you’ve just had three from the other side?

SPEAKER: Because I was just living in the vain hope that we might be getting on with question time.

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. How is it appropriate for you to entertain several pointless points of order from that side, and when I react to something the Prime Minister has said, I’m the naughty boy in this Parliament?

SPEAKER: Do I really need to explain?

Hon Members: Yes.

SPEAKER: Right. The points of order, as I ruled, were, in fact, legitimate. Both those of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House were legitimate: they drew to my attention an error in my ruling. The member, earlier, made a barnyard noise of the sort that would not be accepted in a junior classroom, and I remonstrated with him for it.

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I made no such noise, and it is entirely wrong and unfair for you as a Speaker to say that sort of unprofessional comment.

SPEAKER: The member will leave the House.

Hon Simon Bridges withdrew from the Chamber.

Question No. 2—Health

2. JAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany) to the Minister of Health: Does he agree with the calls made at the teen suicide awareness march at Parliament yesterday for more counsellors in schools as one measure to help reduce New Zealand’s youth suicide rates; if so, how many more counsellors will be funded over the next four years?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): School counsellors are just one of a range of supports available in schools to help students with their mental well-being. This Government is committed to helping our young people in distress. For example, yesterday, when the march arrived at Parliament about which the member speaks, I was at Victoria University announcing the further roll-out of the Piki pilot, which is delivering free mental health support to 18- to 25-year-olds in the Greater Wellington region. What we want young people to know is that there is no wrong door to accessing mental health support. In our first Budget, we extended the nurses in schools programme to cover decile 4 secondary schools, and we’ve also rolled out Mana Ake, which makes mental health support available in all primary and intermediate schools in Canterbury and Kaikōura.

Jami-Lee Ross: Will the Government adopt recommendation 30 of the mental health and addiction inquiry to “Urgently complete the national suicide prevention strategy and implementation plan and ensure the strategy is supported by significantly increased resources for suicide prevention and postvention”?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The report was a very considered report which got 5,200 submissions. We are responding as a Government before the Budget to that report, but I’m not able to announce our response today.

Jami-Lee Ross: Is he willing to meet with the organiser of yesterday’s march, Pania Te-Paiho Marsh, to discuss ways to reduce New Zealand’s alarming rates of teenage and youth suicide?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: My office will consider requests to meet.

Matt Doocey: What does the Minister say in response to the editorial in the Christchurch Press which states, “overall the mental health inquiry appears to fit a wider pattern of delays, obfuscation, and a lack of transparency that has started to afflict this Government … we see a widening gulf between promise and delivery.”?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I utterly reject that assertion. This Government has got on with investing in mental health even while the inquiry was under way. We put an additional $200 million into the ring-fence for district health boards for mental health and addiction issues. We’ve put nurses into schools. We have put the Mana Ake programme into place across the Greater Wellington region, which is serving young people, 18 to 25—sorry, that’s the Piki programme. We have the Mana Ake programme in Christchurch, Canterbury, and Kaikōura, which is serving primary and secondary students and making sure that they have mental health supports in schools that were not in place previously. We’ve also extended cheaper doctors visits to community service card holders, meaning over 500,000 more New Zealanders will have access to cheaper doctors visits—approximately $20 to $30 cheaper, on average—and that will mean people will be able to access mental health services in primary care. This is a Government committed to getting on with the job of addressing our mental health challenges. The need went up, I’m advised, over 10 years by about 60 percent, and resource only went up around half of that. So resource has been lacking in this area, as it has across the health system, and we as a Government are determined to address that. We will be responding soon to the mental health inquiry. It is a worthy inquiry and we will give it a worthy response.

Question No. 3—Education

3. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What announcements has the Government made to get more teachers in classrooms and support thousands more in training?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Last week, I announced a $95 million investment in teacher training and recruitment—the largest in a decade. This will fund almost 2,500 more teachers through more scholarships, more on-the-job training, and new iwi-based scholarships. We’re also supporting 800 beginning teachers into the workforce through the new National Beginning Teacher Induction Grants and the voluntary bonding scheme expansion.

Jan Tinetti: How does this additional new funding compare to previous investments made to address teacher supply?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The $95 million I announced last week builds on the $40 million investment the new Government made shortly after taking office. That’s about 12 times the mere $11 million of new money invested in the nine years before that.

Jan Tinetti: How does the $95 million for teacher supply build upon previous announcements over the past 18 months made by this Government to support our teachers?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Government has committed, among other things, $500 million to support children with additional learning needs. A significant portion of that money will fund 600 more teachers to fill the role of learning support coordinators in our schools. We’ve also been working to reduce compliance to make sure that teachers have the time to focus on teaching, and, of course, we’ve been investing in a large capital upgrade for our schools to ensure that the working conditions and learning conditions of our teachers and students are improved.

Question No. 4—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she stand by her statement earlier this year in the House when questioned about the referendum on recreational marijuana use: “it will be a binding referendum for the public.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she agree with her Minister of Justice, Andrew Little, who, in December, said, “we have a commitment that it is binding.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Hon Paula Bennett: In that case, why are you are not doing option four, that—as the Cabinet paper says—gives the most certainty, and is the closest to being actually binding?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because the outcome is ultimately the same. The only way to ensure that people’s decision in the referendum is upheld is if political parties commit to abiding by the outcome. All three parties that make up this Government have committed to abiding by the people’s decision. My question is: will the National Party?

Hon Paula Bennett: So, in light of that, has she seen advice from the Ministry of Justice provided to her Minister on 24 May 2018 that explicitly states, “binding referendums require referendum legislation. This legislation both enables the referendum and sets out the law that will be automatically enacted in the event of a majority Yes vote.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member well knows it is not possible for any Parliament to bind a future Parliament. The only way to ensure that the people’s decision is upheld is if a commitment is given by political parties to abide by the outcome of a referendum. All three parties in this Government are giving that commitment. My question is: will the National Party do the same?

Hon Paula Bennett: So does she agree with the advice provided by the Office of the Clerk that in order for a referendum to be actually binding, legislation needs to be passed through the House first, and then have a commencement section stating that the Act comes into force when it has met the referendum conditions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, it still requires all political parties to commit to abiding by the outcome and to not repealing the legislation. It is not possible for any Parliament to bind a future Parliament. It is, however, possible for political parties to give a commitment to abide by the decision of the public. The Green Party, the New Zealand First Party, and the Labour Party are giving that commitment. Will the National Party?

Hon Paula Bennett: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but last week, I think it was, the honourable Deputy Prime Minister was speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, and you said he could not ask the Opposition a question. I’ve now had one three times from the Prime Minister, and I’d like consistency.

SPEAKER: That was not helpful, but it was accurate.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: So could I just get this clear from the Prime Minister: there are three parties she expects—the Greens, Labour, and the New Zealand First Party—to keep their word with respect to a binding referendum, and not, as others would suggest, double-cross that bridge when they come to it?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! That’s not a matter for which the Prime Minister has responsibility.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Could the Prime Minister explain, and help the Opposition to understand, the difference between self-executing and binding?

SPEAKER: No, she can’t, because the question was out of order.

Chlöe Swarbrick: How many times, approximately, has she invited the deputy leader of the National Party to engage in our cross-party group to answer all of these so-called questions about the cannabis referendum?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: On many occasions, and I do so again. Ultimately, this is a process that we have decided to commit ourselves to but we leave the decision in the hands of the public. That is what we are committed to. We are making the offer for any member of Parliament to be involved in the drafting together of the draft legislation that the public will then vote on. They will have a draft bill on which to make their decision. If they decide that it should be enacted, then we will abide by that decision.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she stand by the statement in the Cabinet paper that an enacted piece of legislation would provide the electorate with the greatest certainty about the consequences of their vote?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, the greatest certainty will come when the National Party declares whether or not it will abide by the public’s decision. We are committed to giving the public their say, we are committed to them having a piece of draft legislation to vote on, and then we are committed to abiding by their decision.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she accept that having a select committee process—that has experts alongside of it and takes public submissions—and the committee of the whole House would actually mean that that piece of legislation is more robust and more suitable and would give more certainty to the public on what their vote means?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: A select committee process does two things. It allows all members of Parliament to come together; we are providing that opportunity. The second thing is it allows people to have their say. There is no greater say than a public referendum.

Question No. 5—Finance

5. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with Treasury that firms’ own trading activity indicator from the most recent Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion suggests annual GDP growth of around 2.0 percent, and when was the last time New Zealand’s annual GDP growth was at or below 2.0 percent?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: In answer to the first part of the question, no. In answer to the second part of the question, I’m advised that New Zealand’s GDP growth was at or below 2 percent numerous times under that member’s Government, most recently in quarter four 2013, when it was 1.8 percent. I know at that time, when the economy was growing at—

Hon Amy Adams: The GFC. That’s it—the GFC.

Hon DAVID PARKER: —2013 is considerably later than the global financial crisis—1.8 percent, the then Minister of Finance said that there was good economic growth in New Zealand and that business sentiment was strong. That was the Hon Bill English.

Hon Amy Adams: So is he, as Minister of Finance, satisfied with New Zealand growing at its lowest rate for six years, and, if not, what is the Government’s plan to grow the economy?

Hon DAVID PARKER: On behalf of the Minister, as he said last week, the IMF has downgraded global growth forecasts three times in the last year. New Zealand’s growth rate is higher than Australia, Canada, the euro area, Japan, and the UK, and higher than the OECD average.

Hon Amy Adams: What is the Government’s plan to grow the economy?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The transition from volume to value is already occurring. Exports have grown as a percentage of GDP under this Government, after having dropped from 30 percent to under, I think it was, 27 percent of GDP under the last Government, when they had the ambition of growing. One of the reasons why exports are growing is we’ve introduced an R & D tax credit. We’ve stimulated the economy through a tax package that the Prime Minister outlined earlier in the day, which benefits low to middle income people, who spend money into the economy, and we’ve introduced, amongst other things, the green growth fund to support new initiatives.

Hon Amy Adams: So should the public take from that that when this Government talks about transitioning the economy, they mean transitioning it from one growing at 3.7 percent to, now, growing at a meagre 2 percent?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No, and most New Zealanders are aware that since World War II, growth rates under Labour administrations have exceeded those under National administrations.

Hon Amy Adams: So who is correct: Treasury, who have used business confidence surveys to predict our current GDP track, or Associate Minister of Finance David Parker, who has said that business confidence surveys are just junk?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The Associate Minister of Finance’s spokesperson was correct, and his predictions were proven correct because history already shows that. But I note in respect of Treasury that Treasury were not adopting the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) view; they were reporting it, and it’s true that the NZIER view is a sentiment survey and so is subjective. It also has a hole in it. As the Opposition spokesperson on agriculture will be able to tell the member, the high performing and optimistic agriculture sector is excluded from that survey. We prefer to deal with real data.

Hon Amy Adams: When will we see this Government deliver the more productive economy that he has promised, when economic growth is now predicted by Treasury to be at its lowest rate for six years and per person growth is close to zero?

Hon DAVID PARKER: As I said earlier, IMF international growth forecasts have been downgraded three times over the last year. That does have an effect on the New Zealand economy, but it remains true that New Zealand’s growth is forecasted by both the New Zealand Treasury and the IMF to be higher than that in Australia, Canada, the euro area, Japan, and the UK, and higher than the OECD average.

Question No. 6—Social Development

6. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has she made about making the welfare system fairer and more accessible?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): On Friday, alongside the release of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s report, Whakamana Tāngata: Restoring dignity to social security in New Zealand, I made three pre-Budget announcements that will contribute to the fairer and more accessible welfare system that this Government is committed to. Firstly, there was the repeal of section 192—formerly, section 70A—which penalises parents and children by reducing a client’s benefit if they do not name the other parent of their child and apply for child support; secondly, there was an increase in the abatement threshold for main benefits over the next four years to reflect this Government’s commitment to increasing the minimum wage; and, finally, we announced 263 extra front-line staff at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) over four years to better support people into meaningful and sustainable employment.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What impact will these announcements have?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: These announcements show that this Government is taking immediate action to support people into work and improve income security for New Zealanders. By repealing section 192, around 24,000 children will be better off as a result of this change, with sole parents who are currently affected receiving, on average, an extra $34 a week. The changes to the abatement threshold will ensure that as this Government increases the minimum wage over the next four years and clients who are working and on minimum wage will receive the benefits of these increases, and our extra front-line staff will mean there is a more proactive employment service available to support people into the right work for them.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What are the next steps for overhauling our welfare system?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s report will contribute greatly to this Government’s welfare overhaul. The three pre-Budget announcements are important steps, and, in total, we have already started working on around 15 of the recommendations in the report. However, we know there is much more to do, which is why we will be taking action in our three priority areas: income support; supporting everyone who is able to to be earning, learning, caring, or volunteering; and improving access to affordable housing. At the same time, we will also be developing a three- to five-year plan that sensibly addresses recommendations in the report through a systematic overhaul of the welfare system that is effective and enduring and that ensures those who need access to MSD support are actually better off.

Question No. 7—Housing and Urban Development

7. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he stand by his answer to oral question No. 6 on 12 March that the additionality test for a KiwiBuild development can be met in four key ways, “by getting a development under way; by bringing forward a development, or the stage of a development that is scheduled for a later time period; or by redesigning part of a development to provide for additional affordable homes, rather than a smaller number of more expensive homes”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes, in its original context. But the fourth element not in the member’s question is to reduce the price of homes by reducing cost, risk, and margin.

Hon Judith Collins: Is he confident the Ōtāhuhu development met that test when officials advised the Minister before he bought them that all 19 houses were already under construction, including 10 that were already completed?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I am confident in that advice received, and I note that the Ōtāhuhu development done by NZ Living—Shane Brealey, the developer of that project, has stated that one other development would still be a figment of his imagination if not for the KiwiBuild deal. He said it’s the result both of the deal freeing up his investment for new developments and from it giving him the confidence to build affordable homes because of the backing he got from KiwiBuild.

Hon Judith Collins: How can houses be initiated, redesigned, or completed earlier after they’ve already been completed?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, the member seems to want the KiwiBuild unit to tell developers to stop building affordable houses while contracts are signed. The member can’t have it both ways. She wants us to do due diligence on contract negotiations but wants the contracts to be signed with the houses not even started or planned.

Hon Judith Collins: What price or design details have changed for the nine houses under construction as a result of the KiwiBuild purchase?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: If the member wants to put a written question down about that level of operational detail—[Interruption] Look, we are focused on getting affordable homes built, not on nit-picking and endless excuses for not building affordable houses.

Kieran McAnulty: How many homes are more affordable or are being built faster through this programme?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The members opposite don’t like to hear this, but Government agencies, including KiwiBuild, are building more homes right now than at any other time since the mid-1970s. Working with the private sector on KiwiBuild is a small part of that programme, but we make no apologies for backing builders to build more affordable homes.

SPEAKER: Order! I think that “many more” is not a suitable answer to that sort of supplementary. The member will repeat the question.

Kieran McAnulty: How many homes are more affordable or are being built faster through this programme?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: There are more than 1,300 homes that are either completed or under construction or contracted as a result of this part of the KiwiBuild programme.

Hon Judith Collins: How comfortable is he that of the 10 Ōtāhuhu KiwiBuild houses offered for sale six months ago, only one has sold?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I’m comfortable that we are supporting the building of more affordable homes in Ōtāhuhu and in a dozen other locations around the country. These are homes that would not have been built if it were not for the support they get through the KiwiBuild programme. We are committed to building more affordable homes for first-home buyers, in stark contrast to that party when it was in Government.

Kieran McAnulty: How does this programme fit within the Government’s broader housing supply programme?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: As I said before, Government agencies are building more homes than at any time in the last 40 years. As well as the KiwiBuild programme, in March, there were more than 2,300 new State houses under construction. We’re getting on with tackling the housing crisis. It takes a while to scale up and implement when you’re starting from zero, but we’re making good progress.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Have tenements and new house consents reached a record level in the last 12 months?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes. It’s not just the houses that are being built by Government agencies; the market itself is responding to our policies, and the private market is building more homes right now than at any time since the Helen Clark Labour Government in 2004.

Question No. 8—Health

8. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: What advice, if any, has he given to the Prime Minister about an early access scheme for patients seeking faster access to new medicines through Pharmac?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): The Prime Minister has asked me to accelerate work looking at options for early access to medicines. While I’ve had some initial advice, it is not yet sufficiently developed to provide to the Prime Minister or her office.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: When did that work first commence?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I have received reports around questions I’ve had around early-access schemes since I became the Minister. I couldn’t name them all.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he accept that many of the cancer sufferers who signed one of the six petitions tabled today will die waiting for that advice?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Obviously, this is a difficult and emotive issue, and I understand the anger and frustration directed at Pharmac over these matters. It is why I have instructed Pharmac to look at the openness and transparency of their decision-making process, and it’s also why we are looking at options for early access.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he agree with Pharmac CEO Sarah Fitt that taking more money from district health boards (DHBs) means less money for hospital services, and will he commit that any funding for an early-access scheme won’t be funded out of existing DHB budgets?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I would expect that the Pharmac CEO provided that comment in a wider context, because Pharmac is able, with its purchasing power, to gain more drugs for more people through using the budget that also sits in DHBs.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, isn’t it true that early access to at least some of the medicines that are the subject of those petitions could have been funded by the $200 million of Pharmac savings achieved in Budget 2018 had that money not been reprioritised to other parts of the health sector?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The Pharmac budget is at a record amount currently, and I’m not about to make the clinical decisions that Pharmac makes. They are difficult decisions to make—prioritising drugs—and they do it based on evidence.

Question No. 9—Finance

9. TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki) to the Associate Minister of Finance: What effect, if any, has the ban on foreign buyers of existing homes had on the number of foreign buyers of existing New Zealand homes?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): The ban on foreign buyers of existing New Zealand homes—a core policy of all three Government parties and strongly supported by the public—has caused a very significant drop in the number of foreign purchasers of New Zealand homes. In the March quarter last year, before the ban came into effect, there were 1,083 homes transferred to foreign purchasers. In the March quarter of this year, there were only 204. That’s a decrease of 81 percent. Even though these statistics paint only a partial picture of how well this is doing because the earlier data excluded foreign companies and trusts, the numbers show that the foreign-buyer ban is yet another example of this coalition Government delivering on its promises to New Zealanders.

Tamati Coffey: Where was the decline in foreign buyers most noticeable?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In the March 2019 quarter, the percentage of homes transferred to overseas persons dropped to just under 3.3 percent in central Auckland, down from 22.2 percent in June 2018, before the ban came into effect. In the Queenstown Lakes District a year ago, one in 10 homes were being transferred to overseas persons, and now it’s just one in 37. These, of course, have been two of the most overheated residential property markets in New Zealand, in part due to foreign speculators. This Government has ensured that we now have a New Zealand housing market that’s shaped by New Zealanders for New Zealanders. This is something that the vast majority of New Zealanders want.

Darroch Ball: What’s the principle underpinning the ban on foreign buyers of existing homes?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The basic principle is that if you have the right to live in New Zealand long term, then you have the right to buy a home here. But the Government believes that it’s the birthright of New Zealanders to buy homes in New Zealand, not the birthright for overseas people—for them, it’s a privilege. We don’t think it’s right for a very wealthy person from overseas to outbid our most successful people for the most beautiful bay in the Bay of Islands or a beautiful bit of land around Queenstown, but we also believe that principle extends across the socio-economic scale to the most modest house in South Auckland, which is none the less someone’s dream.

Darroch Ball: What would have happened if the ban on foreign buyers of existing New Zealand homes had not been passed before the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) came into effect?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, in effect, New Zealand would have lost for ever the right to control who buys our homes. It was critical—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Rubbish—absolute rubbish.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, Mr Brownlee still doesn’t understand that the terms of the agreement, and its precursor, the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, meant that new categories of investment could not have been introduced into the screening regime if they were not introduced before the CPTPP was passed. So, while others were happy to ignore that, we protected the sovereignty of New Zealand Governments, both current and future, by having this policy space preserved both for this Government and future Governments.

Question No. 10—Social Development

10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: How many of the 42 recommendations in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s report will be implemented by the end of this parliamentary term?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): We have already made three pre-Budget announcements to make our welfare system fairer and more accessible. Those announcements align with three of the recommendations in the report. Work was already under way to address around 15 of the report’s recommendations prior to receiving the report. After receiving it, I immediately commissioned further advice on another five. However, we know there is much more to do, and much of what needs to be done will be rolled out in a phase two plan that is yet to be developed. We want to make sure the changes we make to the welfare system are effective and enduring. As is noted by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group in their report, more work is needed to be done on the interactions with other government systems in wider areas, and this is important work that we will be doing before we commit to a long-term welfare overhaul work programme.

Hon Louise Upston: Will the Government remove the obligation to be drug-free and to have children registered with education providers, as listed in recommendation 11 of the report?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: This Government is committed to removing excessive sanctions. We take the advice that is in the report and we’ll be considering all the recommendations that embody that advice, but that member will need to wait until we roll out phase two of our overhaul programme.

Hon Louise Upston: What advice has she received on the additional number of mothers who won’t name the father when the Government removes the obligation to name both parents?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: With regards to repealing section 192—that was formerly section 70A—the advice that this side of the House received was that there was no evidence to support that that sanction actually did anything to get child support out of the absent parent. Instead, the evidence that we were presented with—which is the same evidence that the previous Government was presented with in 2016—was that the sanction was, in fact, throwing the sole mothers into further hardship and causing further poverty for the 24,000 children that live in those households. So we make no apologies for the announcement that we will be repealing that sanction.

Hon Louise Upston: What advice has she received on the additional number of fathers who will avoid being financially responsible for their children?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As has already been noted, there was no evidence to support that that sanction was actually doing anything to ensure that the absent parent was paying child support, so the premise on which that member asked the question is incredibly flawed. On this side of the House, our concern is for the 24,000 children that are living in those households, and we’re proud of the fact that they will not be punished because of the fact that they have an absent parent.

Hon Louise Upston: When the Labour Minister Steve Maharey introduced the sanction initially, it was about ensuring fathers are held financially responsible for their children. What will the Government do to ensure that fathers are held financially responsible for their children?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Given that the evidence that we have been presented with shows that there is no evidence to support that that sanction has in any way contributed to holding the absent parent to account, then we make no apologies for repealing that sanction.

Marama Davidson: Does she endorse the vision of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group that the social support system should move beyond a safety net to enabling whakamana tangata by restoring dignity to people so they can participate meaningfully with their families and communities?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Absolutely, and can I just say that on this side of the House, we are very interested in the international evidence that shows that excessive sanctions aren’t necessarily the way to move people forward. In fact, we’ve been presented with evidence and seen international evidence that shows things like excessive sanctions can actually dissuade people from getting into employment. So on this side of the House, we want to make sure that all of the over 1 million people that access the support of the Ministry of Social Development every year, which includes our superannuitants, disabled people, unemployed people—that all of them are treated with dignity and respect and that we have the resourcing and the mechanisms in place to support those that are able to get into employment, but not just any employment: employment that is sustainable and meaningful to them, so that we don’t experience the churn on and off benefit that that side of the House had when they were in Government.

Question No. 11—Police

11. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by all his statements, policies, and actions in relation to the New Zealand Police?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Minister of Police: Yes.

Chris Bishop: Can he confirm the total new number of front-line police added to the force since 1 November 2017, taking into account attrition, is only 496 full-time equivalents, and with just 18 months to go until the next election, how is he going to reach his target of 1,800 new police in three years?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Minister, what I can confirm is that the police have the lowest attrition, virtually, of any Civil Service—at, now, 5 percent—so keen are the men and women to stay on, now that they’ve got a supportive Government. What I can also say is that over 830 have already been trained, or are being trained, in just 12 months, and this week, on Thursday—good news—80 will graduate out at Porirua College and, just today, a further 80 have been taken on.

Chris Bishop: If the Government has only managed to recruit 496—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Questions start with a question word.

Chris Bishop: Sorry, Mr Speaker. How can he claim the Government will meet its target of 1,800 new police in three years, given the Government has only managed to recruit 496 net new police since November 2017?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Minister of Police, those graduating for the years 2019 and 2020 will be over 830, just in that period of time. That’s more than in any two-year combined period in any previous administration—in other words, we are delivering twice as many police.

Chris Bishop: Does he accept that official advice to him in 2018 was that he required funding of $515 million over four years to deliver the 1,800 new police and that Budget 2018 only appropriated $299 million, and can the police expect a further injection of the balance in Budget 2019—namely, $216 million?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Minister, I always get worried when I hear people quoting figures, particularly when they’re not qualified to. Can I say, in particular, here are the real facts: we have deployed more than 1,200 new constables since we’ve been in office. That’s 1,200, and if you look at the election cycle, we just might make the 1,800 before the three years is out.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With respect, my question was about funding and about various Budget documents that are in the public domain. That answer was about new police delivered, but the question was actually about the funding.

SPEAKER: Yes, and I think right at the beginning, although not in a very satisfactory way, that was addressed.

Chris Bishop: Does he stand by his statement of 12 June 2018 that in relation to the Minister of Finance, “He has also assured me if I go back next year, he will top me up,” and if he doesn’t get the required $219 million top-up, how will he explain to the Police Association that he hasn’t delivered on his commitments?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: On behalf of the Minister, it’s well-known—it’s in the Bible, in fact—that he who sets his hands to the plough and looks backwards is not fit for the kingdom of heaven. In short, he’s going to see the Minister of Finance, determined to succeed.

Question No. 12—Internal Affairs

12. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: What recent announcements has she made regarding the recovery from the devastating Tasman fire?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): It was a pleasure on Saturday last week to attend an event at the Richmond Fire Station to acknowledge International Firefighters’ Day, and can I thank all the members across the House that also did that to acknowledge their local firefighters. I particularly want to acknowledge Melissa Lee and how wonderful she looked in their level 2 gears. At that event, I had the opportunity to announce another $792,000 from the Lottery Grants Board for the restoration efforts via the Tasman Mayoral Disaster Relief Fund.

SPEAKER: I’ll call a supplementary question, but if I gave that answer I’d be in trouble!

Mark Patterson: Is this the only funding that the Lottery Grants Board has provided for the restoration efforts?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: No. Earlier this year, on 15 March, I travelled to Nelson to announce an initial payment of $1 million of Lottery Grants Board funding through my lottery ministerial discretionary fund. The subsequent amount is recognition that Fire and Emergency New Zealand and the Tasman District Council have since made a more accurate assessment of the extent and cost of damage.

Urgent Debates Declined

Referendum—Legalising the Recreational Use of Cannabis

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Paula Bennett seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the Government’s recent announcement regarding the proposed referendum on legalising the recreational use of cannabis. This is a particular case of recent occurrence, it involves ministerial responsibility. The test for whether a particular matter requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one—I am not convinced that the application meets the test for urgency. I must therefore decline the application.

Annual Review Debate

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Colleagues, can I ask your indulgence while you leave the House. This, that I’m going to read out, is quite a long piece for me to read, so I suggest that you bear with me and listen carefully.

The House is in Committee on the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. This is the debate on the financial position of the Government and the annual reviews of departments, offices of the Parliament, Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises as reported on by select committees.

The time allocated for this debate is 10 hours. The debate is divided into 10 separate debates covering the sectors set out in the Estimates of Appropriations 2017/18. Each debate will be led by a call from the chairperson of a select committee reporting on the sector in order to set out the major findings of that committee. Other speeches are allocated on a proportional basis based on membership of the House—and that means that executive members are included in that count. The parties therefore have the following number of calls to use as they choose, across the debates: National has 51, Labour has 42, New Zealand First has eight, Greens have seven, ACT has one, and Jami-Lee Ross has one call.

At the end of each debate, the question will be put that the committee reports relevant to the sector be noted. The time taken on each question is in the hands of members, depending on the party’s use of their allocated calls. However, the debate expires after 10 hours. A motion to report progress on a bill must be moved on a call, not a point of order—and that’s Speakers’ ruling 77/5. Because the annual review debate will run for a fixed period of time, and the calls have been allocated proportionally, it would harm the proportionality of the debate to treat a motion to report progress as a member’s entire call. Therefore, when a member moves to report progress in this annual review debate, the presiding officer will call on that member first when the debate resumes. This is a similar process to that followed in other debates when they are adjourned.

At the conclusion of the debate, a single question is put on the provisions of the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. There is no amendment or debate on this question.

We turn first to the select committee reports on the first sector of annual reviews and the question is that the report of committees relevant to the Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector be noted.

Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector

JONATHAN YOUNG (Chairperson of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a great delight as chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to start off this debate and to look at, essentially, what our committee did in its review of the Government departments and entities that came before us.

The process of annual reviews is an important one, where, in a public setting, before the elected representatives of the people of New Zealand, we require and receive validation and reporting on the taxpayer funding that different Government departments and entities have received. Can I say thank you to all of those entities for the supply of information as requested, for appearing before the committee, and responding to further questions sent to you.

For the financial year 1 July 2017 to 30 June 2018, the committee requested the following entities to appear before us, and it is quite an extensive list: AgResearch, Broadcasting Commission, Callaghan Innovation, the Commerce Commission, the Financial Markets Authority, Kordia, Landcare Research, MetService, NIWA, the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE), New Zealand Forest Research, New Zealand Post, New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research, New Zealand Productivity Commission, New Zealand Tourism Board, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, New Zealand Venture Investment Fund, Radio New Zealand, Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand, and TVNZ, plus we also joined with the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the Electricity Authority—so quite an extensive list of agencies, representing tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer funding.

Perhaps the largest entity was the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. They are a large agency with just over 4,870 employees and 47 offices, as of June 2018. Its responsibilities cover a wide range of areas, including immigration, science and innovation, communications, energy and resources, tourism, and Government procurement. The ministry aims to “grow New Zealand for all”, with a focus on economic performance through productive and sustainable use of resources. MBIE works to increase real household incomes, through more competitive businesses, increased job opportunities, and more affordable housing. Their departmental expenditure in 2017/18 was $750 million, an increase of about 8 percent from the previous year. Their total revenue was $756 million—just slightly above that. They had a net surplus of $6 million. In addition to its own spending, the ministry administers a large amount of non-departmental expenditure as well. This totalled $3.814 billion. So, indeed, quite a substantial amount of money. This money was administered on behalf of Ministers for services provided by Crown entities and research facilities.

In 2017/18, the ministry set up the Provincial Development Unit (PDU) to manage the design, administration, and monitoring of the Provincial Growth Fund. In 2018, they allocated $3 billion over three years to the Provincial Growth Fund. In the committee, when we questioned them, there was concern about the transparency and the operation of the PDU, and we were assured that information would be put up on the website, and that project is well under way.

One of their objectives is, of course, also housing affordability and quality. MBIE has a target to increase real household incomes by 40 percent by 2025. In support of this, one of the ministry’s objectives is to lower the ratio of housing cost to incomes. In 2017/18, the ministry supported a range of initiatives to improve the supply and affordability of homes, focusing on improving conditions for rental properties, etc. But we also noted that a new ministry, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, on 1 October 2018 superseded them, and so we were able to ask them, in terms of that point in time, what their goals and achievements were.

No doubt a number of members of the committee will report on different aspects of this work, but I’d like to say thank you very much to the staff and to those people who have come in and reported to our committee. Thank you.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise. I’d like to start off by complimenting the chair, who actually just sat down. Jonathan Young is a very able chair and he has actually given us a rundown on some of the issues that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has actually worked through in the last financial year. There were many. I think the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee probably does more annual reviews than any other select committee in this House, and I’d like to actually thank all of the members from right across the House who do great work together. We debate, but we actually work well together as a select committee.

I’d like to traverse, maybe, some of the issues related to the particular portfolio responsibilities that I have in broadcasting, communications, and digital media on this particular debate. Because of my responsibilities, one of the biggest, I guess, interests that I’ve had over the last couple of years of this Labour-led Government was the issue in relation to Radio New Zealand in terms of Labour’s desire to potentially turn Radio New Zealand into a television channel, calling it RNZ+, and their promise to actually deliver in excess of $38 million a year for the next four years. That was their election promise, but the delivery never actually happened.

Considering that this is actually a debate, I thought that 2019 was the year of delivery, and I have to sort of wonder where the delivery, the action, has actually gone. It is definitely not a year of delivery for this Government, and they haven’t actually so far delivered anything. But I have to actually compliment the Minister the Hon Kris Faafoi, who, I have to say, does a wonderful job for the portfolio that he was given. I say make him a Cabinet Minister—he’s so much better than the previous one.

I guess Radio New Zealand has had a challenging year.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but Radio New Zealand comes under a later debate.

MELISSA LEE: Economic development?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It comes under Māori, Other Populations and Cultural Sector according to this list. Radio New Zealand comes—

MELISSA LEE: Oh well. I will repeat that debate next time around. Do I get three minutes back?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Oh, I beg your pardon. It’s listed there—no, I’m sorry. It’s listed there, but it does actually refer it back to economic development. Continue on. I’m sorry—my mistake.

MELISSA LEE: So I can actually talk about it?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): You can—my mistake.

MELISSA LEE: Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess one of the difficult tasks that Radio New Zealand has had is that it’s been rather controversial, having had previous chairs and a very able CEO turn up to select committee having to explain the issues of non-transparency, and having a new Minister tasked with the job of cleaning up the process. I guess the controversy of losing their head of news as well has been rather difficult, but having said that, I think Radio New Zealand does a good job. Any criticism I have of Radio New Zealand is probably in terms of the issue that they had with the last Minister, and I think they do try and do their very best in producing quality programmes and the diversity that this nation actually requires. I commend them for the work that they do.

In terms of other entities that we have actually reviewed, I mean, most of them do a grand job. One of the concerns that I’ve actually just recently had was in relation to MetService, who have appeared before our select committee, where time and time again, under question, I tried to ask questions in relation to how MetService would react to the roll-out of 5G in this country, and they weren’t actually able to produce the answer. The CEO and the chairperson could not actually answer.

I am appalled to actually see an article in the newspaper where they have now commented saying that 5G may interfere in the prediction of the weather forecasts. I am surprised at this article because they must have had that information when they appeared before our select committee. I have today written to the select committee chair, hoping that we may be able to recall MetService to actually answer some of the questions that I have of them in regards to this particular article that I hold in my hand.

Overall, the entities that have actually appeared before select committee were asked very pertinent questions, and they were very able in their answers.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Chair. It gives me great pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First to talk in today’s debate on economic development, science and innovation—a very large portfolio, under which we had a lot of annual reviews. I’d like to take this opportunity to say what a wonderful job Jonathan Young does in chairing the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. Our committee works very, very collegially together. We have good, robust, solid discussions throughout. We don’t always agree—sometimes we leave with the agreeing to disagree ideology—but all in all, we do come to a good place most days.

I’d like to just go back to where this coalition Government started off from, which was the idea about giving this Government, and making sure that we gave capitalism, a human face. In order to do that, we had to look at the way that we were building our economy, which is to start building our economy from the bottom up. To build our economy from the bottom up requires making sure that our most vulnerable, most uneducated, most unskilled workforce are being looked after. So to that end, increasing the minimum wage, heading towards a living wage, was a very, very vital part of that drive and motivation for this Government.

Now, we have seen in real terms the largest increase in the minimum wage that this country has ever seen, taking the minimum wage to $17.70—up by $1.20—as of 1 April, which is a considerable lift for those most vulnerable workers. I think the previous Government—it speaks for itself where they missed out, with a trickle-down sort of economic policy that really didn’t look after those workers. We’ve certainly put this country, and this Government is putting our people, first to make sure that they are being looked after.

Also on 1 April, we took away secondary tax to assist with those workers earning very low or modest to low incomes, to assist with their needs. That was a vital part, again, to show that those people that are out there putting in a full day’s work deserve a fair day’s pay for their contribution to the community to look after their families. So those are two things that I look around and I’d like to raise everybody’s attention to.

But also we needed to raise productivity, and that becomes a bit more of a conundrum. Raising wages is a very important part. Wages are essential, but productivity to ensure that businesses’ profitability can grow and be maintained so they can employ people is a big part of it. With that came the billion-dollar R & D tax credits to actually increase R & D spending in New Zealand—up to 2 percent, I think, by 2028 is the goal. We’re well and truly on the right track for that. Just prior to the 1 April announcement of the R & D tax credits kicking in—the $1 billion over four years tax credits kicking in—actually we were at 1.37 percent. Even without the $1 billion R & D tax credits, which kicked in on 1 April, that 1.37 percent, as I said, is there, and we’re looking at growing that exponentially. Now, that’s going to open up new opportunities to grow and develop intellectual property rights, added value exports to the market place, and raise GDP per capita, individual persons’ per capita wealth in this country—another great way that we can actually assist in building our economy from the bottom up.

We’ve got the second lowest unemployment that this country has seen in the last 10 years, currently at 4.2 percent, but we still acknowledge the work that needs to be implemented to ensure that those workers can actually get back into the workplace—to use a coined term, “To get the nephs off the couch”. I was speaking, just yesterday, to the Hospitality Association of New Zealand and that group of people are struggling to find workers. I know we’ve got people that haven’t got work at the moment, and we need to get them fit and ready for work to give them gainful employment. There’s no more personal mana and respect that you can give yourself than to give yourself the opportunity to get out and work for yourself and for your family to get ahead. This Government is doing everything that it possibly can—

Hon Shane Jones: Mana in Mahi.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —the Mana in Mahi ideology—getting people that have served prison time, to get out, to actually learn the skills that they need so that they can actually contribute to society. So this Government—and New Zealand First being part of this Government—is very, very proud to see that we’re heading in the right direction and ensuring that our economy is building itself from the bottom up and giving capitalism a human face. Thank you Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Just before I call the next speaker, can I just refer—I know we only do this once a year—members to the Speakers’ Rulings 131/1 to 5, which is the conduct of debate. In particular 131/3, “At some point members must make reference to the period of expenditure under review or one of the select committee reports”. So it’s not just a general speech that you’re giving about how wonderful the Government is or the select committee is, etc. We do actually want some reference to that period of expenditure under review.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Thank you, Madam Chair, for the chance to make a contribution in this annual review debate. I want to thank the chair and the members of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee and make some comments about transport policy over the year in question.

The two big tasks of our transport policy and the various transport agencies that were subject to the annual review at committee: first, cleaning up the mess that was left to us by the transport policy of the last Government, and tackling some of the long-entrenched, difficult issues that this Government has inherited. I’ll give the members a case in point: the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), which is the largest of our transport agencies—its mandate was maintaining a land transport system that is effective, safe, and in the public interest. Well, in the year in question the board of the NZTA uncovered the fact that the agency had failed to carry out its regulatory responsibilities to the standard that New Zealanders expect. NZTA was failing in its duty to properly check the companies, and the individuals that certify vehicles as being safe for the road. When problems with these companies were identified there was often no follow up.

Now, public safety has to be paramount. The conduct of the agency, in this regard, was unacceptable and it’s clear from the work that’s been done by Meredith Connell—the law firm that was brought in by the board of NZTA to fix up this mess that we inherited—that the agency, for a number of years, has been treating the people and the companies that it is regulating as their customers. Well, they are not their customers. Their customers are the travelling public of New Zealand—they deserve to be able to use our roads, and our rail, and our public transport systems in the knowledge that the transport system is being kept safe by the regulator.

This systemic failure, in my view, was partly a result of a reduced focus on the agency’s regulatory role over the last decade. It’s clear that staff were redeployed away from regulation; that there was an emphasis on education and encouragement, instead of enforcement. The former Government was asleep at the wheel while this went on for years. Well, we have turned this around: 850 files of regulatory lapses that had been left unattended have now been dealt with. The agency put in place Kristy McDonald, a QC, to investigate the Dargaville Diesel case, which was one of the most egregious cases, and an independent review by the Ministry of Transport is due to hand down its report shortly.

I want to turn to the Ministry of Transport, who, over the last 12 months, have undergone an enormous organisational change as they gear up to deliver the new policy direction contained in this Government’s Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, in which we signalled a shift in focus towards three things: we made safety the number one priority for the Government, right across the entire transport system. Secondly, a shift towards prioritising public transport in our cities; we’ve moved away from a policy that saw the last Government invest 40 percent of the transport budget in a handful of urban motorway projects that carried 4 percent—4 percent—of the journeys. Well, we are investing right across the entire transport system in safety and, in our cities, the priority is to build modern public transport systems that reduce congestion and car dependency, and give people genuine choices about how they get around.

In terms of safety, the number of road deaths blew out between 2013 and 2017 by 55 percent, from 253 deaths to 378. That’s the equivalent of a Boeing 747 crashing every year. While that was going on, 40 percent of the transport budget was spent on a handful of urban motorway projects, while people died in huge numbers. Well, we’re committed to turning that around, and just today Associate Minister for Transport Julie Anne Genter has unveiled the first of $101 million of safety improvements on State Highway 2, north of Tauranga, as part of a $1.4 billion safety investment across 600 kilometres of our roading network.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. Just keen to debate the whole question of economic development and productivity and infrastructure in this country under this Government. At the start of the period that we’re talking about, 2017, the previous National Government had a very clear economic development strategy; it was outlined in the Business Growth Agenda, and that asked the basic question, “Well, what do New Zealand businesses need access to in order to grow, in order to hire New Zealanders, to pay them higher wages, in order to grow the productivity of this country, so that we could all enjoy a higher standard of living?”

We broke that challenge down into six areas: we need access to quality investment in order to, you know—you only get jobs if somebody invests some money and buys a plant and starts a business. So you need policies that attract investment. Then you need good quality skills so that people can make a contribution in the workplace. You need access to natural resources, you need access to quality infrastructure, export markets so that you’ve got somewhere to send your goods—that’s why we worked so hard to bring in the free trade agreements—and a good innovation framework.

Now, when this Government came in, they threw all that out—didn’t like it because we’d come up with it—and what did they replace it with? Well, that’s when we run into troubles, because there’s no clear replacement, clear economic development plan, or economic plan for this country under this Government. I’ve asked David Parker the Economic Development Minister and he said, “Well, three things. We’re going to do an R & D tax credit”—well, yeah, OK, that’s a policy. It’s replacing the growth grants that we put through Callaghan Innovation with a tax credit. OK, that’s one. The second one was that there’s going to be a massive shift in the way taxation was done to move away from speculation in housing. I think that was the capital gains tax, but they dropped that last month. So that second one’s gone. The third one was the Provincial Growth Fund under Shane Jones, where they’d spend $3 billion in order to create lots of jobs—tens of thousands of jobs, the Minister told us. Then, when we actually dug into it, we found 54, and 118 bureaucrats. So there’s been a lot of money spent there, and not many jobs created. The Minister comes up with all sorts of figures, and let’s see how they are demonstrated over the next little while.

But the point I’d make is that under National, the country was delivering 10,000 new jobs every month for the last two years—10,000 new jobs every month. So far, with the $3 billion spent, I think we’re around somewhere between 20 and 50 new jobs created in the last three months across the whole country. We lost 4,000 jobs; so we didn’t create 10,000 new jobs, we lost 4,000 jobs. So the jobs boom that we had under the previous Government has gone. Part of that is the confusion about what the economic policy is. So remember last August, the Prime Minister got up in front of a business audience and gave a big speech to announce the Government’s policy framework on economic development, and she announced it: it was the Business Partnership Agenda. Then, we never heard anything about it since—never once, never mentioned once more. It was a big announcement, announced with fanfare, trumpets, and totally ignored ever since. So that’s why people are confused.

When we come to infrastructure, we’ve heard from the Minister of Transport about trying to—most people think the purpose of infrastructure and transport policy should be to enable New Zealanders to get where they need to go quickly, efficiently, and safely. But that’s not what this Government is about, as he quite clearly articulated. There is absolutely no focus on reducing congestion across the transport network in New Zealand. The Minister has been brilliant at stopping things. So he stopped the East West Link, he stopped all the State highway projects that we were doing, you know, the four-lane highway north of Tauranga going up to Northland, out of Christchurch, extending up past Kāpiti. All sorts of projects he stopped, and what’s he replaced them with? Well, nothing yet—nothing. There’ve been plans about the slow tram going down the Dominion Road to the airport, but that still hasn’t emerged. We don’t know where it is. So he’s stopped a whole lot of projects, hasn’t started any new projects, and, in the meantime, if you’re stuck in the traffic on the Southern Motorway in Auckland, or trying to get out of Christchurch, well, help is not on the way, because they’re not putting any extra resources into building the roads that most people use, because they hate cars under the Greens.

So their focus is getting people out of their cars on to public transport. Well, public transport, of course, is an important part of the package; yes, you invest in it. That’s why we invested in the City Rail Link, it’s why we invested in the electrification of the rail units, and, yes, you have to have that as part of any transport policy. But if it’s completely unbalanced, such as it is under this Government, that will not enable New Zealanders to get where they want to go. In fact, their focus in transport is to make life as frustrating as possible for the motorists, and that is not going to help either New Zealanders’ quality of life, or the economic development of this country.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s my pleasure to take a call in this economic development and infrastructure section, specifically to talk about two reports that are occurring here: the annual review of AgResearch Ltd., and the annual review of Callaghan Innovation. I think both these reports, in many ways, speak to some of the points that the previous speaker has just raised.

This Government has a very clear economic strategy, and that is about us partnering with business to encourage innovation, productivity, and to build a skilled workforce. It is about the development of an economy that is sustainable, that is productive, and that is inclusive. These are things that we have a range of policies that we are working towards, and some of them are covered off in the reports that I’m speaking to today. Specifically, one of the key planks of what we’re trying to do, of course has been mentioned, is that, actually, we’re not just seeing economic development and productivity as something that happens in our cities; that this is a Government that for the first time in a generation is substantially investing in economic development in our regions with the Provincial Growth Fund.

We are also looking at how it is that we need to transition our economy. We know change is coming. We’ve set up the New Zealand Green Investment Fund Ltd in order to ease that transition. We’re a Government that is investing in infrastructure: $42 billion over five years—investment in core infrastructure from this Government.

But one of the other key planks of what we’re doing is an investment in research and development. Now, one of the previous speakers, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, said that the R & D tax credits were replacing the growth grants of the previous Government. That is something that is covered off in Callaghan Innovation’s report. I think this could go down as one of the understatements of the year, that growth grants were a scheme that helped around 300 businesses with their R & D needs each year.

What we as a Government, in the period that’s covered off in these reports, have done is put in the policy work, and indeed now the legislation is passed to have an R & D tax credit that will benefit 10 times that number of businesses in working alongside them to reach this Government’s aim of finally getting serious about lifting our percentage of GDP spent on R & D. At the moment, we languish way down in the OECD tables. We only spend around 1.38 percent; there’s been a slight lift, but we are way below where we need to be if we are going to be the productive, sustainable, inclusive economy that we want to produce. Well, we have an ambition to lift our expenditure on R & D to 2 percent over the two-year period.

When Callaghan Innovation came before the select committee, this is something they talked about in terms of the work they were doing in order to transition to this, and they emphasised a number of points when they appeared before the committee in terms of the work that they were doing, both with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and with organisations in terms of facilitating this switch. This is the kind of transformative measure that we need in order to realise the kind of economy and the kind of country that we want to be. We as a Government, when we talk about raising our expenditure to 2 percent of GDP, know that we won’t be doing that through public expenditure alone. What we want to do is have the right support mechanisms in place so that the private sector also increase their expenditure. One of the key indicators that we are looking to lift through this measure, the R & D tax incentive, is to raise business expenditure on R & D, because we know that this will lead to higher-paying and skilled jobs and is something that we have to make sure that we are putting in the work to do.

Likewise, we saw when AgResearch appeared before the committee that they were talking about some of the fundamental work they’re doing around the decarbonisation from biological emissions work and some of the pieces they are doing there.

So, thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to conclude by thanking the chair for this opportunity to address the House on these reports.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity. It’s interesting the previous speaker, Megan Woods, didn’t talk about the banning of gas exploration as part of the infrastructure debate that we’re having this afternoon, because we had a number of electricity sector players come into the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. One of them was Genesis. Genesis burns coal. Coal—dirtier than the gas that the Minister has banned, but she hasn’t banned coal or the use of coal. And I’m not advocating for that. It’s a very good reason that she hasn’t banned it: because coal is very useful. It’s very cheap. It actually plays a very important role in our electricity system. It keeps the lights on, though it only produces about 2 percent of the electricity across the country. But, unfortunately, the facts are that in the next 30 years, demand for electricity will double, and now we’ve had a lot of investment in Transpower—that’s the business that we reviewed that transports, essentially, the electricity from the South Island to the North Island. We’ve had a large investment over a number of years under the previous Government, which enables that electricity to flow.

But the Minister did not address the fact that demand will double, and although we can talk about wind farms, they’re not as reliable as hydro and they’re not as reliable as gas. By banning the gas, we’re only moving the burden of emissions away from the sector as a whole, and we’ll be forced to burn more coal, because the lights have to stay on somewhere. Of course, the gas that would’ve been exported to replace someone else’s coal is no longer able to be exported. So, unfortunately, an ideological view, a stand made by the Government, which is going to end up creating more emissions across the planet and not less.

Then, of course, as I say, the demand will double in the next few years. Again, there needs to be some stronger thinking, some more forward thinking, about where that supply of electricity is going to come from. We know it’s very difficult to get new consents for hydro, for example. We know it’s difficult to use those lakes to a greater degree. We could have, for example, much lower minimum levels to make greater utilisation of the water available, but we know that’s going to be difficult. We heard in the committee that is going to be difficult to achieve as well. We also know that wind farms, though sustainable and renewable, are not the favourite form of visual pollution that some communities will put up with.

So there are issues around the long-term supply, but I must say, over the last 20 years, since I have been involved in the electricity sector, from when the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand split up—I was an employee of the first Meridian Energy—the marketplace has developed hugely. The products have become much more sophisticated. The retail market is very efficient and effective and competitive, and the customer, the consumer, is getting good value for money because of that. Of course, we’ve got all sorts of technologies on the demand side of electricity that we’ve seen as well. So as the spot price rises, people can automatically turn themselves off and enable them to save money and reduce costs because of the high electricity price. So, inevitably, we will see higher prices, and the challenge for the Government is to think more about that.

I just wanted to touch briefly about the safety point of view on the roads that the Minister mentioned. Well, he talks about road safety but he doesn’t advocate or support a drug-driving regime. Despite the increased number of deaths on our roads relating to drugs—and it’s topical at the moment—road safety has been ignored by that Minister because he doesn’t want to make sure that drug-drivers are off the roads.

I’ve only got a few seconds to talk about the criteria for the Provincial Growth Fund. Well, who the hell knows what it is? How do we get funds from the Provincial Growth Fund? Everyone with their hand out seems to think they’re going to get it and it’s some sort of unlimited amount of money. There’s no accountability. I mean, how do you determine if a roundabout should be built in Northland or Masterton? Do we have to go to the Minister? No accountability—a waste of taxpayers’ money.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this debate of the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. Now, this part of the debate is focusing on the economic development and infrastructure sector, and I would like to take the opportunity here to acknowledge Jonathan Young for his chairing of this committee. I’m what’s called a floater on Thursdays, and that means that you get to see different select committees and you get to see different ways of how they are chaired, and it’s fair to say that Jonathan Young, in the way that he chairs that committee, definitely has deserved his nickname, Jonathan “Gold Star” Young—a pleasure to sit in on his committees.

Now, on a not-so-good note, one of the previous speakers, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, posed some questions with regards to economic development. He asked us “What is needed for higher productivity?” and “Under National, we created all these jobs.” Now, on this side of the House, we are a little bit more aspirational.

This part of the debate focuses on economic development and infrastructure, which includes the workplace relations and safety sector, and I’d like to talk about the safety reviews that I have been part of in the Education and Workforce Committee, in particular the safety of workers and, if time permits, the safety of the roads. In the 2017 and 2018 annual review of WorkSafe the select committee learnt that there has been progress with regard to the health and safety system in New Zealand, especially when looking back at the dark days since the Pike River tragedy, but New Zealand is still one of the worst performers. In fact, it’s in the bottom quartile of performance in the OECD when it comes to health and safety, and that is rather shameful.

So while we have made progress, areas that continue to cause concern are in, particularly, forestry and agriculture. Rates of death and injury are still high in these industries, and in the review we heard that in the agriculture sector there are at any time 600 workers off with an accident injury.

We also heard that good work is being done through harm reduction programmes and through tripartite forums, where, again, unions play a crucial role. In fact, it was the board chair of WorkSafe who was very clear that international evidence shows us that unionised workplaces are safer. The reason for that is that when you have a unionised workplace, there is support and representation to raise issues without jeopardising the particular person’s security of employment. And it’s no coincidence that in the particular health and safety priority areas such as agriculture and forestry there is the biggest challenge when it comes to worker representation and participation. So in these last sectors that I mentioned, we still see people dying and being seriously injured in the workplace.

We heard, at the particular annual review, of mixed ownership and leadership of the sectors poor health and safety performance and, as a result, also mixed accountability around the need to change. In the annual review, we were provided with evidence highlighting the importance of giving workers a voice that bypasses the unequal worker-employer power relation, thereby removing workers fear of retaliation if they speak up and are potentially in jeopardy of losing their job. Now, poor working conditions injure and kill people, and that’s why it is so very important we do everything possible to ensure that those who are simply going about their business, going to work to earn a living, return home safely to their families. So a really important and valuable review we did with WorkSafe.

To touch very briefly on transport, in the 2017-2018 annual review of the Ministry of Transport—and we heard it from the Hon Phil Twyford, as well—one of the major priorities here for the ministry has been road safety, with a commitment to putting safety at the centre of land transport decision-making. This Government has invested $1.4 billion over three years to upgrade some of our most dangerous roads. Too many people are killed or being seriously injured on our roads. We need to continue to invest in safer roads, in particular in the regions, and move away from big gold-plated projects in the cities.

Now, the Prime Minister yesterday, after Cabinet, made the comment, “Have we done everything that we wanted?” Now, of course we haven’t, but it’s clear we’ve made significant improvements and we are committed to addressing long-term challenges this country faces.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very pleased to take the opportunity to speak this afternoon on the confirmation of validation of the 2017-18 estimates for economic development and infrastructure.

If anyone’s watching at home, those dates might confuse a few people—2017-18—because it’s a strange quirk, I guess, of Parliament that we’re 20 months into this new Government, still talking about what was essentially the last Budget period of the last National Government. But isn’t it a good thing that we are? Because we’re talking about infrastructure this afternoon, and, if you look across at the other side, that’s a party that’s absolutely failed when it comes to construction of new infrastructure. Not a single new road has been started under the current Government—not even Shane Jones’ much fated roundabout near his house.

But I’m not going to talk about a road, just for a start; I’m going to talk about rail, and I am going to talk about some of the expenditure that was appropriated in 2017-18 by the last National Government and, in particular, $50,000 that was set aside for a feasibility study into bringing back the Christchurch to Dunedin rail line.

Look, I’m a big fan of rail, actually. I’ve spent a lot of time on the Northern Explorer between Wellington and Auckland, stopping from time to time at National Park. It’s a fantastic journey. I really recommend it to anyone. I’d love nothing more than to see something like that started between Christchurch and Dunedin, where particularly tourists can get off the road and get into a nice carriage, enjoy a lovely glass of Marlborough sauvignon blanc or perhaps a Central Otago pinot as they look out the window and look at some pretty stunning scenery, particularly in mid and South Canterbury.

I’ve been pretty disappointed actually by what the current Government has done, because we haven’t heard anything more about that feasibility study since that Government have come into office. Phil Twyford has been asked about it, and, whenever he’s up being asked about it, all he’s talked about is commuter rail in major centres—commuter rail in major centres. Well, that does nothing, actually, for people in the area that I represent—people in Ashburton and people in Timaru. They won’t benefit at all from commuter rail between places like Rolleston and Christchurch or, you know, that CBD rail loop or even rail from Auckland Airport to Auckland Central, if it ever transpires. They won’t benefit from that; they would benefit, however, from a passenger rail network between Christchurch and Dunedin, and it’s gone absolutely quiet under this Government.

I do want to come back to roading though, because it is, I guess, a passion of mine. Despite my love for rail, I do feel like we do need to do more in terms of road and construction, particularly in mid and South Canterbury.

Greg O’Connor: Train spotter!

ANDREW FALLOON: I’d like to explain to Mr O’Connor why. I mean, I know he’s a former cop and he understands the need for good and safe roads. So I do want to talk about particularly the road between Christchurch and Ashburton—Christchurch-Ashburton—where traffic volumes have doubled since 1998. There’s a couple of reasons for that—in fact, three major reasons for that.

The first one is the increase in tourism in the South Island. As I mentioned before, the South Island is an absolutely beautiful spot, particularly mid and South Canterbury. A lot of tourists are now coming to our part of the world to enjoy it, and so tourism numbers have increased substantially. The second reason is the economic growth in mid-Canterbury and South Canterbury, particularly on the back of the strong primary sector over the last decade or so. It’s been tremendous, and we’ve now seen a lot of growth, particularly with more trucks on the road servicing that primary sector. And the third reason is the success of PrimePort in Timaru. We have had a lot more ships now coming into PrimePort, moving through to the inland port at Rolleston, and that’s led to more and more trucks on the road, to the extent that, unfortunately, that road has now become far more dangerous.

In my offices both in Timaru but particularly in Ashburton, I get people coming into my office every single week, talking about how they no longer feel safe travelling on that road between Ashburton and Christchurch. And it has become more dangerous. It’s now the second most dangerous stretch of highway in the country for fatalities and serious crashes, and, unfortunately, this Government’s response to that has been to take $5 billion out of the State highway network and put it into Auckland rail—$5 billion out of our petrol taxes, out of our road user charges, ripped out of regional New Zealand and put into central Auckland.

In my last few seconds, I do just want to address the comments by Marja Lubeck. She talked about the fact that National was talking about creating 10,000 jobs in the last four or five years that we were in Government—10,000 jobs per month. And she said, well, that’s not ambitious enough—that’s not ambitious—10,000 jobs is nowhere near ambitious enough. Well, actually, Marja Lubeck, that Government is now creating far, far less. In fact, it’s down to about 5,000. The number of jobs that have been created every month has halved under that current Government, and she has the temerity to say that we weren’t ambitious enough.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Infrastructure): I take a short call and correct some of the misapprehensions that have been flung around the House. Of course, I am referring to the annual review period, and your admonition to speakers in this debate has been taken on board, although I would remind you there is some latitude if issues related to the current time scream out for attention. But I want to talk about KiwiRail, which has been a recipient of some of the funding from the Provincial Growth Fund, and just outline and respond to some of the rather apocryphal things that are being said about our transport approach.

We do not agree with a lot of the sentiments and a lot of the philosophies that were espoused during this period of time by the other side of the House that has fed a cult-like philosophy. Indeed, today I had to caution and tell off yet again a man who lives in the North by the name of Mr Bayly. Stop being a mouthpiece and channelling historic, discredited views of a transport nature from the National Party. I have advised him that his time to have made professional contributions has come and gone. That is why we are backing substantially the growth of KiwiRail as a credible alternative to a road-centric approach. That doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in improving the safety of roads or that we’re not going to continue to invest in the egregious cases where roading failure is leading to fatality.

But KiwiRail has, at long last, as is reflected in this report in the annual statements, received the overdue attention. Now, I won’t steal the thunder of the current Treasurer or anyone else further up the tree than my good self and talk about upcoming announcements—that lies for the future—but remind the House and remind our friends on the other side of the House that they have had an enormous amount of opportunity to grow KiwiRail, to move heavy freight off the roads on to rail. They chose not to do it. They made a strategic decision that the golden triangle would occupy enormous amounts of energy, capital, and time, and the North, where we hail from, has been starved. The roads of the North have not been remedied. They have not been supported. Consequently, we’re seeing an ongoing degradation of the roads, and that’s why KiwiRail is going to continue to enjoy support.

This particular coverage does specifically isolate the wisdom of putting the spur off the main trunk out to Marsden Point. It’s actually here, page 79. That will be happening, and, of course, they are taking a very judicious approach, and the engineers are doing drilling and costing and various other things. But it’s good to see that KiwiRail—of course, they have a new CEO now, and they have Brian Corbin, a redoubtable identity from west Auckland, extremely experienced in matters of governance, grossly overlooked by the last regime. We don’t have that petty approach, just because people aren’t necessarily fellow travellers of an ideological nature. We see virtue in retaining—mercifully low numbers—some of the people that were appointed by the last regime.

So not only are we going to see tracks upgraded, do we have a new level of leadership at an executive level, and we also have a higher quality of personnel at the governance level, but the most important thing: all of these rhetorical statements that were heard from the other side of the House—we’re actually funding what we’re talking about, and therein lies a tremendous level of difference.

Now, there’s been some rather scathing remarks directed in my direction at the criteria that’s employed to allocate the funds out of the Provincial Growth Fund to such areas as this—that it’s something akin to having a cup of tea or a beer with Shane Jones at the Māngere fish shop and you get a cheque. No, no—were it so true. It’s quite the opposite. There is a rigorous process. The fact that the Waipapa roundabout in this period of time enjoyed some of the fiscal love of the Provincial Growth Fund was interesting, because it was actually brought forward to the Government by New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), and we expect great changes from NZTA, given that we’re going to improve its governance. Thank you very much.

MATT KING (National—Northland): It’s a pleasure to speak on the transport Estimates debate. I just want to talk just briefly about the road versus rail, and I want to relate it to Northland. We’ve had rail lines up there for decades going into the North, and it’s never made money the whole time we’ve had a rail line in Northland. So I’m talking about specifically rail to Northland, OK? For rail to pay its way or to compete with trucks it has to have bulk and it has to have distance, and in Northland, we don’t have either. The only thing we’ve got is bulk—that’s the logging. The distance from the scattered forests we’ve got in Northland to Northport, which is where all the logs leave, is just not long enough to have them ever compete with trucks. The logs have to get loaded on to trucks in the forests, and it will never be economic to transfer that to rail to make rail pay its way in Northland.

So this debate that we keep having about rail in Northland is flogging a dead horse. They have never made money. I believe back in the day there was a time when the trucks were legislated against, and so, basically, trains had the monopoly—they had it over trucks. But since that’s been removed, trucks hands down beat rail, especially in Northland. Now, I’m not against rail in any way, shape, or form, but in Northland it just doesn’t work. I used to run a business and I needed parts overnight, and I had to have them—that’s the way we operated; that’s the way most businesses operate. There’s no way that trains can compete with trucks in that area. So this truck versus train debate, in my experience, is a dead duck.

But I want to talk about the Hon Phil Twyford. He says—and his Government—that they support economic growth, safety, and resilience when it comes to roading, and they start by canning the safest, most resilient economic driver of growth in Northland: the roads of national significance. Because you know why? It’s a National Party initiative. It’s as simple as that. It comes down to pure economics. They wished they had got it. Whey wished they had got it, but National grabbed it. It works all over the world—everywhere. If you talk about four-laning in Queensland and in Sydney, wherever they build a four-lane highway out of the city, it’s boom times everywhere. So it’s happening all over the world.

But let’s talk about the road toll. We’ve experienced the worst road toll in close to a decade, so the roads are dangerous—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: In 20 years.

MATT KING: In 20 years, is it? Yep. Well, in the Dome Valley we’ve got a stretch of road called “The Killing Fields”, where dozens have died. It’s not fit for purpose. They’re proposing a landfill for the area, which will mean 200 to 300 extra trucks a day. The roads of national significance that we were building were going to bypass that stretch of road—but no. Phil Twyford calls it gold-plating, but then he’s going to spend money on a tram from the city down Dominion Road—not even to the airport, just to Onehunga. That’s all. He’s going to spend a fortune on that, and that’s last century’s technology, and I imagine by the time they get to build it, if they do, costs will blow out, just like the City Rail Link.

Now, let’s talk about the billions—this Government has diverted billions of dollars out of the roading budget from the New Zealand Transport Agency into the Shane Jones slush fund so they can spend millions, not billions, on projects all over Northland, and you know what that’s for. So my argument is that State Highway 1 in Northland is not fit for purpose. It’s outgrown. There’s no point in fixing up an existing road. It won’t cut it.

Dr Shane Reti: Sticks.

MATT KING: We have to—and this Government’s answer is reflectorised sticks going down the middle of the road, and those rumble strips. I’m rolling over those rumble strips all over Northland at the moment. That is their answer to road safety in Northland, but they can the safest, most resilient roads that there are in exchange for plastic strips. So in Northland, we, the four councils, identified that the highway, the four-laning, was a driver of economic growth, but this Government decides that they’re going to concentrate on Auckland-centric things. So Northland is going to miss out with this Government. Phil Twyford likes to use the words “re-evaluate”, “review”, and, his favourite, “recalibrate”, and that basically means slash and burn—cut it, slashing and burning. So they’re cancelling our roads. They’re going to spend it all in Auckland. Northland’s going to be in a losing situation. It’s not going to win.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to focus this afternoon on the annual review of the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). Now, this is an area that’s seen a lot of focus over the last wee while, and justifiably so. We’ve heard already a bit about how we’ve seen $5 billion stripped out of the regional roading networks and rediverted to rail in Auckland. That is a big issue, in particular for me in the Waikato. We were looking at another couple of pieces of extension to the Waikato Expressway project—the roads of national significance. We’re very lucky to have seen work under way now from Auckland right down past Hamilton to near Cambridge, and they were going to continue to the intersection of State Highway 1 and 29, where traffic diverts and splits two ways. We were then looking at additional stages. Those projects have been taken off the table.

This is a major issue in our area, given the high volume of traffic and the safety risk. We heard from NZTA during the annual review that under the 2018 Government policy statement, they’ve revised and reprioritised some of their focus. The number one focus, and we heard it from the Minister just earlier, is on safety, and yet this very project was going to significantly improve the safety in the Waikato, and it’s been canned. It’s outrageous to see that taken off the table. They are very dangerous intersections, and now they’re not getting the support they need, although part of that—and we heard about the additional funding into the Safe Network Programme—was going to focus on rural roads. Again, there are plenty of those in the Waikato.

A couple of key intersections I’d like to focus on with this and, in particular, the rural intersection activated warning signs: now, NZTA said those signs—these are the flashing electronic signs you see as you approach intersections; they warn you if there’s a car looking to come out and you have to slow down to 60—were going to be installed at the intersection of State Highways 1 and 29, and also State Highway 29 and Hopkins Road, near Hobbiton. It’s a very busy intersection and often plenty of tourists are going through there. We’ve seen all sorts of interesting turning manoeuvres in that space. This was going to help improve safety at those intersections—not a fix but one step. I wrote to NZTA about this, and they confirmed that they would be installed by the end of January. I visited on 1 February, and they weren’t there. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote to NZTA because they’re still not installed and it’s putting our communities at risk. I raised this during the annual review process as well, and NZTA said, well, they didn’t know about specific projects, so they couldn’t comment on that, but absolutely they expected to be able to deliver on their time frames. They’ve failed miserably in this regard and in so many others as well.

Another example is Morrinsville—another great town in my electorate—at the intersection of State Highway 26 and Avenue Road: inside the town limits and a dangerous, busy intersection with high volumes of heavy-vehicle movements through there as well. There were going to be safety improvements done to that late last year and resealing done as well. It still hasn’t happened, and here we are now in May the following year, more than six months after they were meant to have implemented these safety upgrades. NZTA are not taking their responsibilities seriously. They’ve said, under the Government policy statement (GPS) that they put out, which they mentioned in this annual review, that safety was their number one priority, and yet they’re not demonstrating that. They’re letting down rural communities like Matamata, like Morrinsville in the Waikato—communities that rely on economic growth in the area, that rely on those transport connections, and yet they’ve been marginalised by this Government through a failure to act and to meet the promises that NZTA has made.

We heard also from NZTA around a shift—that this shift of focus in the GPS would result in increased congestion and traffic delays. NZTA stated that. They believe this will change the focus and that traffic congestion and times will increase in cases—they’ve stated it right here—but, in other areas, such as the Hamilton to Auckland rail link, it will reduce traffic on the roads. What they don’t seem to realise is that Te Kauwhata, at the north end of my electorate, is a growing town that, actually, under the previous Government, received $37 of investment for their infrastructure, which this new Government has reinforced. They’re looking to grow—there’s KiwiBuild there apparently, too—and yet there’s no rail link; the train is going right through that town on its way from Hamilton to Auckland and not stopping. They stand and wave at it as it goes past.

So what we’re hearing is a lot of rhetoric from this Government, NZTA, and KiwiRail standing up and saying they’re doing these wonderful things and yet their words do not align with their actions. Communities like the Waikato are being sorely let down, and the Government needs to do better.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the reports of committees relevant to the Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector be noted.

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.

Reports of committees relevant to the Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector noted.

Education Sector

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): Thank you, Mr Chair. As the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, it’s a pleasure to initiate this debate on the education sector’s annual review. In the education sector, we reviewed Education New Zealand, Education Payroll Ltd, the Education Review Office, the Ministry of Education, Network for Learning Ltd, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and the Tertiary Education Commission.

As we know, during the annual reviews there are broadly—if I can try to put them into three categories—three things that we want to probe into. One is the finance side, the second is the human resources side, and the third is the policy side, and that was the intention when the select committee decided to invite these entities for their annual reviews. I want to thank all these entities for appearing before the select committee and answering all the questions that were asked by various members on the select committee. To give some examples, I would like to start with Education New Zealand.

For Education New Zealand’s annual review, of course with a financial overview we wanted to get some more insight into a policy that was put in place by the Government in August 2018. We wanted to know about the policy that is about taking the employer assistance away from the post-study work visa—whether that policy had any impact in terms of attracting international students—and, second, as the policy was intended to reduce exploitation, which happens in that sector, we all agreed that, yes, those workers do get exploited and there is more and more work that needs to be done. So we wanted to know from Education New Zealand whether there had been any obvious impact that they could tell us about. What we heard from Education New Zealand was that there hadn’t been any kind of quantitative work around that, because they haven’t had enough time since the policy came into effect—as the policy came into effect in August 2018—but these are the things which will be of ongoing interest to the select committee.

On the same topic, we also talked about the reduction in the number of international students. As before the election, the parties currently now in Government campaigned on reducing international students in some courses, but there hasn’t been any policy put in place by the Government. So we wanted to know about the numbers that are reducing, in terms of the students who are coming from overseas to study here as foreign students. We were told, yes, there is a reduction, and we were told there has been about a 21 percent reduction in the number of students coming from China. We also heard that it is important that we spread our risk, because we don’t want to be relying just on the two big markets that we have at the moment—that is, India and China. So that is a big focus for Education New Zealand, and that has been a focus for some time now. We definitely want to go out to bigger markets to attract more international students to come to New Zealand to do valuable courses.

We also talked about sustainability of growth in these sectors, which I have just described, and then, if I move to the Ministry of Education, again, the questions were around all the areas that the Ministry of Education nearly is responsible for—for example, we talked about school property management and development. In that, we talked about rebuilding Christchurch schools, which is of interest, and of course the national education growth plan review of Tomorrow’s Schools. We also talked about teacher supply pressures and young people not in education, employment, or training. In these topics, there were, of course, several questions which related to these topics—like, in teacher supply pressures, we wanted to know about the current demand and how newly qualified teachers were coming along, and also about their retention issues.

We also talked about Māori and Pasifika educational attainment because that has been a big focus for the education sector. We want to make sure that Māori and Pasifika students are able to attain educational levels like other students. One thing that we found was that the Ministry of Education has not been able to achieve its goal of 70 percent for regular school attendance, which was of concern to the select committee. What we heard in the select committee was that Māori and Pasifika students had the lowest regular attendance rates, at 50 percent and 51.7 percent respectively, compared with 63 percent in the general population. We were told by the Ministry of Education that they will definitely be reassessing the situation about not achieving their goal of 70 percent of regular school attendance. So we were told that that will be their focus in the next 12 months, and we look forward to seeing some improvement in that space.

A final point I would like to touch on is fees-free tertiary education. Again, this is about the Government’s policy, and we wanted to see if Government policy since it has been implemented has been able to improve access, because one of the things that came with this policy was improving access to tertiary education and making it affordable. So the Ministry of Education told us that, yes, as students don’t have to take debts and loans, affordability has been seen to be good for students, but on the other hand we did not get full data on enrolment as there was no full-year data available at that point, but we talked about withdrawals—the number of students who take advantage of the scheme and later on withdraw from their courses. We were told that up to September 2018, 2,618 fees-free students—[Time expired]

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Associate Minister of Education (Māori Education)): Thank you, Mr Chair. The previous speaker, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, has just finished speaking about Māori achievement in education, and I’d like to pick up from where she’s left off. On page 203 of the annual review, it talks about “The ministry has a number of initiatives that support Māori and Pasifika students to progress and achieve in culturally responsive environments.” I’d just like to talk about what we are doing to create those culturally responsive environments.

What better cultural response is there than a young person being able to learn in their own language and hear their own language being spoken and being taught? I’d like to describe a bit about the initiative called Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori, which is an initiative that fulfils and delivers on our promise to integrate Te Reo Māori throughout the curriculum by 2025. What we’re doing is we’re supporting teachers to grow their level of competence and confidence in Te Reo Māori. We’re working to normalise Te Reo Māori in classrooms up to year 10. I think it’s really important. If we’re looking to engage children—not just Māori but children across all New Zealand schools—and trying to get them to engage in education, helping them to engage and identify their learning in Te Reo Māori is really important.

We’re developing resources to support teachers. That’s online resources, that’s person to person resources, online support groups, and other things. Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori is being rolled out in four takiwā—four regions—across the country initially. That’s in the Waikato area, the Taranaki-Whanganui area, Horowhenua-Kāpiti area, and also Te Wai Pounamu. We’re rolling it out in those areas first and foremost because we know that there’s going to be a 20 percent increase in the number of Māori students enrolled in those areas and it’s important that they are able to engage in Te Reo. We launched this initiative just some three weeks ago and we’re hoping to have 700 teachers engage in Te Ahu o Te Reo. Already, we’ve had over 400 enrol in Te Ahu o Te Reo.

Each area is free to develop Te Ahu o Te Reo as they see fit. So in Taranaki, for example, Dr Ruakere Hond is leading the charge there. They’re using the Te Ātaarangi method to help teachers, in a non-threatening way, to pick up Te Reo Māori. Dr Hond said, “it was a concerted effort to focus on language use, which was something that has never been done before.”—and that’s in a Taranaki newspaper.

The other initiative that we are launching is Te Kawa Matakura. Mai rānō—since time immemorial—the Crown has suppressed mātauranga Māori, Māori knowledge. In other words, if you go into any school in the country you’d be hard-pressed to find true mātauranga Māori being taught. That’s despite the best efforts of kura kaupapa, wharekura, kōhanga reo. They’re doing great work, but what we don’t actually really teach, and certainly don’t assess, is as mātauranga Māori. So a child can achieve NCEA, and that’s very good. That shows that they can achieve NCEA; it doesn’t actually show that they can achieve in mātauranga Māori.

I remember attending in 2004 a hui mātauranga Māori in Taupō hosted by Tūwharetoa, where one of the goals was that Māori children should be able to achieve as Māori. Now, getting NCEA shows that they’re achieving, but it doesn’t show that they’re achieving as Māori. So what we’re doing is launching Te Kawa Matakura. It’ll be established from the beginning of next year. It is being established in Tai Tokerau in the first instance, not because I’m the MP for Te Tai Tokerau, but that was just how the tohunga, the Māori educational experts who were engaged and involved in the design and development of Te Kawa Matakura and Te Ahu o Te Reo—it was their decision that it should start up there. Basically, it will allow young people to learn that deep, meaningful mātauranga Māori.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, I’m very pleased to speak in this review debate. Firstly, though, can I just acknowledge what is very clearly articulated in the report. No better statement, in my view, sums up the state of where this Government is at in terms of education, and it was really the Prime Minister’s statement to thousands of teachers in New Zealand that there is no more money. Well, Prime Minister, when you look at the report to this House around where there has been some more money, there’s been an increase for more education officials. What we know is that we’ve gone from 2,600 staff—that’s right—to 2,900 staff. There are several hundred more education officials under the watch of this Government, a Government that is focused more on bureaucracy and administration than on core, front-line services.

If we think about the areas that are covered in the annual review of Estimates, core areas that the Government has failed to deliver on and where they have really shown themselves as incompetent—take the issue of teacher supply. Yes, it is true that it is cyclic, and if you look at it, under our watch, when we came in in 2009, we saw a huge, acute teacher shortage. It happened again, but what we’ve seen from this Government is complacency, and you saw this in the annual review of Estimates. We saw $9.5 million—$9.5 million—in the scheme of the Ministry of Education’s own modelling, which is covered in this annual review. The annual review clearly indicates just the annual figure of the number of teachers that need to be funded on the Ministry of Education’s own modelling, which they trumpeted throughout this hearing. We need 8,000 secondary teachers in the next five years. Whether it’s through the annual review of Estimates or the announcement the Minister made the other day, National will be very firm. The facts are that when it comes to front-line education services and getting teachers in classrooms, the numbers don’t add up and the Government is not doing enough to ensure that that occurs.

The second core area is school property. Again, the Labour Party campaigned on modernising every single school building in New Zealand. Well, that wasn’t costed—about $10 billion—so what was actually delivered then? What was delivered was actually a similar amount to some previous years. There were a couple of hundred million dollars more, but if you look, compared to what’s needed in areas of growth, National had an Auckland growth plan, for instance, that looked at futureproofing a place like Auckland for the next 30 years, and the Government turn up with not only not enough money for growth but also the Government—I know, because I’ve got the schools that are talking to me about individual projects that have been delayed. Some of that is absolutely going to be talked about over the coming months: projects that we started and funded and they’re not delivered by this Government, and it’s very relevant to the review of Estimates that we’ve got.

The other area which we just heard from Kelvin Davis was around Māori and Pasifika students. Well, the facts are that when it comes to attendance, we do have a huge difference in attendance by Māori and Pasifika students. You’re looking at about 50 percent. We have tried to be constructive in Opposition. We put up a bill, for instance. I put up a bill which was around those education officers in Youth Courts. Radio silence—yes, that is you, Minister Su’a William Sio. Radio silence about how we might actually support some of our most vulnerable youth to have access to the education that they need so that they’re not in our criminal justice system.

In a number of other areas we see incompetence, and I want to give you another example. National funded the Ministry of Education via the education payroll to look at what is the underpaid issue around the Holidays Act. Not only did they get the cash to go and work out who was owed what, but we’re a year and a half later and nothing has occurred.

This, from my perspective, sums up this Government. They talk a good game. They always deliver whatever they tell you—you pretty much cut it in half, you add a group of bureaucrats, and then there’s incompetency and failure right across the portfolio, particularly in those core areas. The reality is they are not providing or funding enough teachers for the workforce needs. They are not funding the infrastructure that is required in terms of the front line. They are investing in—as Shane Reti is about to talk about—free fees for students to buy votes, rather than dealing with front-line education services. They are stuffing up teachers’ pay when it comes to the Holidays Act, and, actually, I’m getting a lot more situations through my email around Novopay. This is an incompetent Government that can’t deliver the basics in education.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m delighted to take—

Greg O’Connor: A real teacher.

JAN TINETTI: —a call in the appropriation debate on education, and I do, Mr O’Connor, consider it a great privilege to have been an educator for as long as I was, which was close to 30 years. However, I find it interesting, following Nikki Kaye, the previous speaker, who was talking about the lack of workforce planning of this particular Government, because it was in 2016 when I appeared before the select committee that talked about education at that time, where I begged the then Government to put in a workforce plan around teacher supply. I said that we were heading for a major shortage, and we were right at the beginning of it. It’s amazing how we have a lack of memory about that at this particular time. This Government has inherited huge issues around workforce planning, but, hey, we’re not going to let that get us down because we’re doing something about it.

It’s interesting that in the Ministry of Education review, they actually even said, when they appeared before us—and I quote them from their 2017-18 annual review—“The shortage is partly a result of unusually high roll growth that wasn’t planned for.” and a lack of clear guidelines about how many teachers needed to be trained each year from the previous Government. But we will do something, and we are doing something about it, and the previous speaker did talk about the announcements last week that will fund additional teacher-training places. That is really important, but not only that: we’re also looking at the supply of beginning teachers and are supporting them into their first jobs.

That is critically important, and the one area that I want to talk about particularly is the voluntary bonding scheme expansion. That is a critical area that is vital to getting teachers into hard-to-staff schools. Also, a number of teachers have actually come through my school, which was a decile 1 school and was eligible for the voluntary bonding scheme as it currently exists, to get that particular grant that was afforded to them. Over five years, that is a total of $17,500 per teacher. That is a significant amount of remuneration for working in those hard-to-staff schools. That is something that we are expanding, along with those additional teacher-training places.

I just want to go back to that. Under that previous Government, initial teacher education enrolments plummeted—not only dropped but plummeted—by 40 percent. That is why we must now address that and do something to actually bring that right, and that is exactly what that—

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave for the member to table the workforce development strategy that’s been in train for 18 months under that Government.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Two things. It’s a really serious matter to interrupt a member. Every member has a right to be heard. If that seeking of leave was actually in order in the first place, which it isn’t—and then to interrupt someone during a speech is not correct, and I would expect the member to know that.

JAN TINETTI: Thank you, Mr Chair. Moving on from there, another issue that we have heard here this afternoon was about the removal of national standards. One reason why this Government has actually taken that step is to start to remove the administrative burden and compliance that has been placed upon our teaching workforce, which has led towards the complete burnout of our teaching workforce. The first thing that we could do was to actually remove those national standards overnight. It was something really embraced by our sector—absolutely loved by our sector—

Hon Tim Macindoe: Not by the parents.

JAN TINETTI: —and something that I am absolutely pleased about, as an ex-principal, to actually say that that made a real difference to our teachers in the classrooms. It’s something I’m still getting thanked about, and I did hear from the other side someone saying that it wasn’t welcomed by our parents. Well, I’d have to say that that is something that I would beg to differ with, because I’ve heard parents say that they’re actually getting a clearer view of where their children are at now and a better understanding of what their children are actually learning. They’re actually having real conversations with the teachers of their children, which is something pretty exciting to be happening when you’re seeing the parents engaging so much in those classrooms.

The other, last, area that I briefly wanted to talk about—and we’ve heard it from two previous speakers there—is our fees-free announcement. The ministry said in their annual review that they consider the policy to be successful in terms of improving affordability and decreasing student debt. There is clear information showing that students are taking out less debt, which has got to be good for our economy. But what I did ask during that review was that I hoped that we would be looking at qualitative data as well, because I personally know young people that have considered university and who are attending university for the first time—first-time students in their families. I think that’s great for this country, and I think it’s particularly good for those young people that they are able to go there now because they’ve got those fees free.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to speak to the annual review of the tertiary sector and tertiary education, and the documents that I will refer to in this address include the select committee report, the select committee transcript, and briefings to the Education and Workforce Committee in 2017-18. In these documents, the substantive topics, or even section headings, include fees free, funding spending, Māori and Pasifika, revenue and expenditure, and the ITP Roadmap, so I’m just hitting the scope to what I’ll talk through here and anchoring it back to the annual review.

I want to speak primarily around the failed fees-free policy—the flagship policy from this Government—and I want to start off as we talk to revenue and expenditure by being absolutely clear about the size of the fees-free policy. It is $2.8 billion. A substantial part of that goes to the fees-free policy; the second part is you have more students and, therefore, you have more student allowances; and the third part in the books is the capital expenditure, at around $700 million.

It is a big number—$2.8 billion over four years—and so we were asking what sort of outcomes can we see from that policy, and we heard the previous speaker cherry-pick some outcomes, but wouldn’t it be good if there were new learners and if there were more learners? Wouldn’t this be a good policy if it was introduced at huge expense and we actually got new learners, and so we were asking how do you know that. Well, the ministry actually reports that in April and November each year, and in April what they reported was that under the fees-free policy there were negative 2,297 learners. Now, I was thinking how can that be? We’ve put $2.8 billion into this. Does negative mean there’s less learners now than there were before the policy?

Simeon Brown: No—really?

Dr SHANE RETI: That’s right—2,000 less learners now, under this policy, than there were before.

But maybe it was early in fees free, so let’s give it through the November report. So we waited for the November report, and what we heard was there were actually negative 2,402. It had got worse. So, nearly a year into fees free, there are, in fact, less learners now than there were one year previously. There is the outcome of a failed fees-free policy.

So remember I said that April and November are the reporting dates? Well, we’re into May now. What about the April reporting date? Well, that’s where all the Official Information Act (OIA) requests can’t find it. If it was going to be any good, I’m darned sure the Minister would have reported it, so I can’t wait for that OIA request to come back, because I’ll predict it’s even worse.

We were interested in the impact of the fees-free policy. In fact, one of the subject headings was “What is the completion rate?”, and that was one of the things we discussed for fees free. Well, tragically, the message came back to us from the Tertiary Education Commission that “We’re unable to report that because we don’t collect information on it.” Really? A $2.8 billion policy that’s clearly going down the toilet, and we don’t even report to know how bad it’s getting? A terrible situation.

So what happened? Canterbury University stepped in and said, “Well, we’ll do a study and tell you how it’s going, and what we’ll find is that, actually, only 5.8 percent of people who took up fees free said it was critical to them. Oh, by the way, those are the ones who don’t stick it out—those are the ones who don’t complete their course.” There’s the first evidence of completion rates under fees free.

But maybe there was something in this for Māori and Pasifika, and we asked that. We were wanting to increase the enrolments and the eventual graduation of Māori and Pasifika. How was fees free faring, and how was the whole portfolio faring for Māori and Pasifika? What we were astonished to learn—absolutely astonished—was that the Budget that we’re talking about budgeted $17 million for Māori and Pasifika, but only allocated $12 million—$12.8 million, actually—for an underspend of $4 million. I need to understand this: we’re wanting to advance Māori and Pasifika in the trades through tools like the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative, and we underspent $4 million. In fact, that’s the biggest underspend in Māori and Pasifika in the past three years.

That lends itself to the wider discussion of revenue and expenditure across the whole portfolio, because, tragically, the whole tertiary portfolio was underspent by $270 million last year. We have polytechs who, for whatever reason, have needed top-up funding of $100 million and we underspent $270 million in this portfolio. We kept $88 million for Vote Tertiary Education, we gave $8 million to Vote Education for NCEA, and $170 million left the Vote Tertiary Education portfolio and went into the general fund—which is where I’m guessing it went. It went to fund slushy machines, it went to fund failed KiwiBuild, and it left its purpose—it left tertiary education—and went elsewhere: $170 million. There’s a lot of polytechnics who could’ve survived and be doing very well today with that $170 million, as could the $4 million underspent in Māori and Pasifika. Thank you, Mr Chair.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call in this annual review debate this afternoon.

I’d like to focus my contribution on international education. This was covered in two annual reviews: the annual review of Education New Zealand and the annual review of the Tertiary Education Commission. The international education market for New Zealand is our fourth-biggest export earner, earning approximately $5.1 billion in the 2017 year, with approximately 125,000 international students based here in New Zealand. As one of our largest export earners, it is an industry that I believe needs to be respected and needs to be given certainty in the way that we operate as a country, in the rules, the regulations, and the policies that we have to govern it.

But, unfortunately, this Government has been introducing uncertainty into the sector—uncertainty which is having an impact on our international reputation and on the number of students who are coming here. When this Government came into office, the Labour Party pledged that they would reduce international student numbers by 15,000 to 20,000 international students per year. Since then, since they were elected, no official target has been set. However, they have undertaken a number of policies which have continued to bring uncertainty into this industry and which are causing uncertainty for our sector and to our international brand.

When Education New Zealand came to the Education and Workforce Committee, we heard that competition in the international education market is growing, with English-based courses opening up in non-traditional countries like Japan and Germany. In Education New Zealand’s view, New Zealand’s competitiveness lies in its reputation. So, as we discuss this topic, my question to the Government is why the continued uncertainty, the continued change in rules, and the changing of the game plan for our international sector, because it is jobs on the line, it is people’s incomes on the line, and it is our reputation on the line which is having an impact.

So let’s get to some of those changes which this Government has made: firstly, changes to post-study work rights for international students. This has had a significant impact on our reputation as a country because when students make a choice as to where they are going to study, one of the biggest choices they make is based on: “What opportunities am I going to have to be able to work while I’m studying? What opportunities am I going to have to be able to continue to engage, to be able to pay the fees that I have to pay in terms of my international education? What employment opportunities will I be able to take up while I’m there so that I can gain new experiences and also upskill at the same time?”

This Government has decided to play with these rules. Firstly, they came out with radical plans—radical plans which were going to scale back the amount of post-study work rights—and then they softened that somewhat in the final rules which they put in place. But the impact was already had. Our reputation was damaged because they went out and made us far less competitive than other countries like Canada, like Australia—other countries which international students can easily decide to switch between.

The second change that they put in place last year was an increase in the export education levy. This was only several million dollars, but, again, it was an increase in the cost that it would be for international students to come here to international export earners such as institutes of technology and polytechnics and our universities had their fees increased for every international student which they had. But the shame in this was, actually, that the fee was increased higher for private training establishments than for other establishments. Private training establishments’ fees went up higher.

Now we’re also seeing a slow-down in the processing times for international students coming to New Zealand. This is something which is becoming increasingly worrying as the amount of days that it takes for international student visas to be processed—particularly through the Mumbai office—is becoming something which is of a huge concern to me and others on this side of the House, because, again, if an international student has to take twice as long to get their visa processed to come to New Zealand than Australia, then why wouldn’t they go somewhere else which is far more welcoming?

So we have significant concerns over the fourth-biggest export earner for New Zealand. We will continue to watch this Government as they continue to make changes, because they must be taken to task on this.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a privilege to take this call in this annual review debate.

We focused on a topic on the Education and Workforce Committee, on the school property portfolio, so we had the Ministry of Education before us and we particularly wanted to hear about their response to the growth in Auckland—certainly I did, as an Auckland MP. So, many would know that the growth pressure in Auckland around the student roll is immense. In the Auckland region, over 278,000 students were enrolled in 2018. It’s an increase of 3,000 students from the year prior, and if you go back to 2010, 18,000 more students have enrolled in Auckland. So it’s a hugely important issue: school growth and overcrowding. Students and their families need assurances around the Ministry of Education’s capability and capacity to respond to pressures.

So when we were in that annual review of the Ministry of Education, they, in simple terms, said that they didn’t think funding was the issue; they thought that it was the capacity of the construction sector to respond to this growth. Well, back in my electorate of Maungakiekie, Te Papapa School and Oranga School, who have had a lot to deal with, are having huge housing growth pressure, which means that they are staring down the barrel of student growth pressure. Both those schools have had one heck of a job getting the Ministry of Education and the property team to be responsive. We’ve gone back and forth with several letters to the Minister of Education, to HLC, which is an offshoot of Housing New Zealand—both ministries not talking to each other. It’s been a really harrowing experience for these schools, who genuinely need support and care given to their families who face very uncertain times.

There are similar pressures all over Auckland. My colleague Chris Penk has talked in the House about the pressures faced for overcapacity in schools, many of them in west Auckland—

Chris Penk: That’s right.

DENISE LEE: —and he’s agreeing with me to my right.

Unfortunately, what we’re hearing from schools all over Auckland and, indeed, the country is that the ministry has not been working as well with them as they should. The capacity is just not there within the property team, and so we needed to figure out what some of the causes were as we talked to them in their annual review. I even went so far as to ask them whether their staff turnover was an issue for why they do not seem to be responding to local communities and to MPs such as ourselves.

This is supposed to be the year of delivery, is it not? There are schools and there are communities all throughout Auckland who are left in a state of limbo with no action or leadership being taken on this particular topic. The ministry is clearly under pressure and the annual review that we sat through did not give me confidence that that was going to be met.

Now, if you take that in context and then look at what is happening, at the time when we reviewed them, the terms of reference were out for the Tomorrow’s Schools task force review. As we’ve gone through that particular task force review, we know that we are now looking at a supersized, on-steroids Ministry of Education centralisation, hub, property network—whatever you want to call it. So, right now we face all these pressures, but what’s the answer? A supersized, fictional, on-steroids, superhero response? Well, I’m not sure that that is going to be something that can come into reality, because as we saw in those annual reviews, the response currently isn’t there. How are we supposed to have assurance that this Government, this Minister, and this Ministry of Education property team are going to have communities’ best interests at heart? I’m struggling in my community. Chris Penk is struggling in his community. What’s the answer? It’s a shortcoming, as we see it. Thank you.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on the annual review documents, particularly as they relate to the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office (ERO), and in particular as those relate to the early childhood education sector. What these reviews laid bare was that the early childhood education sector is one that is under pressure and one where the Government has some significant promises to deliver on, and it has failed to deliver on it to date—in particular, as they relate to increasing funding to allow for 100 percent qualified teachers and increasing funding to reduce group sizes and ratios. Those promises were not delivered at all in these documents.

When we dig into the detail of these documents we also see that there are going to be big expectations for the coming Budget if we’re just to keep up with where we are now. When we look at the Ministry of Education for 2017-18, the first thing we can ask is how many children actually attended early childhood education. The Ministry of Education told us they had a target that 98 percent of children would attend early childhood education. By its own admission, the ministry failed to reach that target. Only 96.9 percent of children did participate. This is a small drop, but it is significant because it is a trend that we would expect to be arrested in future years, because we are talking about children who are sometimes the hardest to reach and who may have the most to gain from early childhood education, and it would be expected that that gap would be covered in the next Budget.

We also looked at the proportion of qualified early childhood educators. Despite the rhetoric of members opposite, and the Labour Party, who in its campaign talked a lot about qualified educators, the ministry was clear with us in this annual review process that the number of early childhood educators who are qualified has not increased. It’s roughly constant at about 70 percent. We asked at the Education and Workforce Committee what was being done to address the shortage of early childhood teachers. I’ve visited dozens of early childhood centres across the country and they consistently tell me it is very difficult to find qualified early childhood teachers. We were told that there wasn’t anything underway but that the early childhood advisory committee was working on ideas. So there is another area where we would expect delivery in the upcoming Budget, because the pressure to find qualified teachers is there, and there’s currently not enough happening to arrest that.

We then looked at the Education Review Office. Of course, the Education Review Office plays a very significant role for the early childhood sector because it really is the independent arbiter of the quality of services that parents receive. When mums and dads leave their children in an early childhood centre—when they close that door and wave goodbye—what they expect is that a Government-funded, licensed centre will provide quality care, and ERO is the check on that. So it was disturbing to hear in this annual review process that the total number of staff at ERO has not increased in line with the increasing number of children in early childhood education; in fact, quite the reverse. The number of staff at the Education Review Office has dropped significantly. It’s down to 196, down from 200 the previous year, and down from 209 in 2013.

More significantly, as a proportion of that, the number of actual reviewers—that is, the people who go into the early childhood service and check whether it’s delivering high-quality services—has dropped back, too. It’s down to 132, having been 137 the year before, and having been 149 in 2013. Now, that is a degree of detail, but it’s important, because what we saw in our committee as we examined these numbers was that we have a sector that’s under pressure.

In fact, our view was backed up by the Office of the Auditor-General, who suggested—and I quote—“ERO would probably need more resources if it is to maintain current review schedules and focus more closely on struggling early learning centres. ERO admitted that while their target to return to a learning service is currently three years, they’re only making it back every 3.6 years.” What that tells us is that ERO is struggling to keep up with its obligation to review early learning centres. That matters to every mother and father in this country who expect quality for their child. We would expect that that pressure would be addressed in the upcoming Budget, along with delivering on the Government’s large promises around qualified teachers and around group and ratio sizes for early learning services. Thank you, Mr Chair.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the reports of committees relevant to the Education Sector be noted.

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.

Reports of committees relevant to the Education Sector noted.

Environment Sector

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Chairperson of the Environment Committee): As I rise to begin the debate on the reports from the environment sector, I do so in the shadow of a very recent report from the UN that tells us that a million species are facing extinction, but over 4,000 of those species are in New Zealand, including our beloved kererū, our kiwi, our fish, so many of our birds, and that the key drivers of this extinction that is facing our taonga is land-use change, exploitation and overfishing, climate change, pollution, and invasive species crowding out native species. All these issues are covered by the agencies within the environment sector. Our committee reviewed the work of the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for the Environment, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, the Environmental Protection Authority, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and Predator Free 2050, and all of these entities are critical to saving our taonga and to saving our world, and to addressing some of the issues that we face.

The Ministry for the Environment is deeply involved in work on climate change. In particular, it is focusing on water quality: water quality in the agricultural sector, water quality in the urban environment, and trying to ensure that when we use water, we use it responsibly, that the water that we use is not polluted, and that we do not pollute our waterways. Currently, 71 percent of our lakes and rivers are swimmable; we want to get that up to 80 percent, and that is some of the work that the Ministry for the Environment is doing.

The Ministry for the Environment is also working on waste minimisation and resource efficiency, and there is a significant move in New Zealand to move away from plastics and from single-use products. That is all to the good, and it is work that the Ministry for the Environment is engaged in as well.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is also involved in work on climate change. Their previous focus had been on energy efficiency, but their focus is now changing to work on promoting decarbonisation, to ensuring that we actually have methods and ways of reducing our carbon footprint. It’s critical for us, and they’ve chosen to go down that route because it will have a greater impact on our environment.

Turning to the Department of Conservation, which, of course, is working so hard to preserve our taonga—they are deeply engaged in a battle to save our birds. That is particularly so this year when we are facing a mega mast—not just a mast year but a mega mast—when our native trees will have so much fruit that it will not only support birds but support predators as well. So they are working on ways to ensure that our native birds survive, and 1080 is a critical part of that fight. They’re also working on something dear to my heart: kauri dieback, ensuring that we protect our beautiful trees.

It is in the context of our fight to save our birds that Predator Free 2050 becomes very, very important. It is said that conservation in New Zealand mostly involves the hunting and killing of small furry animals. Predator Free 2050 is deeply engaged in that task. They have an objective of developing a science solution that will enable one small mammalian predator to be eliminated from the mainland by 2025. It’s a difficult task, and they may not get there, but they are engaged on working with partners in developing the science to ensure that we can do that. Again, this is particularly dear to me, because one of the areas which is a focus for the predator-free work is Taranaki maunga, the mountain of my heart. So that is important work that is being done by Predator Free 2050.

I end with a call from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, our independent expert, who wants to advise us on what we can do to promote a better environment. When he came to talk to us, he invited MPs to make contact with him, that members of Parliament make use of his expertise and call on him for advice and information. Through this report, I invite members of this House to take up that invitation.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s sort of a pleasure to take a call on this discussion of annual reviews in the environment space, but before I get into the material that I want to talk about, I just want to acknowledge the chair of the Environment Committee, who I think chairs that committee in a diligent and professional manner, and I’m sorry that she will not be chair of that committee for much longer. It seems inevitable that she will, after the Budget Cabinet reshuffle, be promoted to the inner Cabinet, and we’re going to miss working with her—we’re going to miss working with her. She’s one of the few new MPs that have come into this Parliament that will, I think, rise to the challenge of an otherwise lacklustre Cabinet, and, as I say, we on the committee are going to miss working with her.

As we went through the various reviews of the organisations and the agencies in the environment sector, it became immediately apparent as we had chief executive after chief executive coming before the committee and, essentially, apologising for a lack of performance, or lack of progress, or lack of speed, or lack of haste in this area. If there’s one area where the Government has failed utterly to achieve its high expectations, it’s been in the environment space. We have a Minister for the Environment who is largely focused on things not environmental, we have an Associate Minister who is ideologically driven and who is biased to the point of concern in terms of her ministerial responsibilities across her portfolio areas, and that’s deeply challenging for those of us who want to see a better environmental outcome for New Zealand and our natural resources and species.

So we’ve seen no progress on the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. We’ve seen no progress on waste minimisation, apart from airy-fairy, fluffy talk, which is helpful to a degree but doesn’t actually do anything tangible about a circular economy. Actually, apart from an expensive discussion in Rotorua a few weeks ago, there hasn’t really been any action in that space. We’ve seen no cameras on commercial fishing vessels put in place. We’ve seen, perversely, a reduction in the number of electric vehicles that are being registered in the country. We’ve seen a very good member’s bill that would have increased the fines for litter that councils could impose voted down—voted down—by this Government. It’s bizarre.

We’ve seen in the water space, water quality, which is a hugely important area, no positive action at all other than the creation of a few more working groups, and working groups that iwi are not participating with. We’ve seen noises about punishing farmers, and we’ve seen our urban waterways degrade even further—no progress on marine reserves, a ruling out of a discussion on the introduction of biotechnology to assist in things such as Predator Free 2050, and a ruling out of a very good suggestion to introduce a container deposit scheme. Now, one would have thought that these were matters that a Green Party Minister and a Labour - New Zealand First Government would want to advance.

But the frustration in the sector is probably no better summed up than it was by one Kevin Hague, who happens to be a former member of this Parliament. He was on the television only a couple of weeks ago, and he said New Zealand is far from transformative in their approach to the environment, says Forest & Bird chief executive Kevin Hague. Hague said he thinks Kiwis will be a bit surprised by “how poorly this Government is doing.” He went on to say, and I quote, “I would say we’re a one or a two, and that’s probably shocking for New Zealand.” He said the Government’s response to the current environmental crisis is far from adequate or what was promised.

He went on to say “In freshwater, in climate change, we’ve heard good rhetoric from the Government so far, but actually in this year of delivery”, he said, “we need to see [transformation] action from them.” He said marine areas were actually doing worse under this Government, and he pointed to stalled plans to put cameras on fishing boats and reduce irresponsible fishing. Then he said that the environment was going to be a major focus, but he said we haven’t seen much evidence of this from this Government.

That’s an appalling indictment on a Government that came into power, that is halfway through its term in office and has done so little—so little—in the environmental space that now their supporters are their greatest critics. It’s the Green environmental supporters who are most frustrated, most concerned, and most disappointed with the lack of action, the lack of delivery, in the environmental space.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise and talk about our annual reviews. It’s a real pleasure because our Prime Minister has said that the environment is our nuclear-free moment for this generation. In fact, if I reflect on that, I think that climate change and the environment is a much more serious issue than what we faced when we stood on the right side of eliminating nuclear weapons and allowing them to come here.

I am really excited to be here today, because I note that today we had the biodiversity report. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has just come in today and reported that there are 1 million species threatened or at risk of extinction globally, and 4,000 of those species are in New Zealand—4,000, people. That’s why I’m really delighted that our Government has turned around the $200 million in cumulative cuts under National around conservation. That’s why I’m really delighted that we’ve invested $186 million to enhance biodiversity and to control and eradicate predators. I’m really pleased about that, because when we think about what has happened and that we are so very rare in where we sit in this world—we have so many rare species, or so many species that only exist here.

So I’m really, really happy that we’re actually doing something significant. I’m really, also, excited that we’ve allocated $19 million from the Provincial Growth Fund to develop innovative approaches to expand predator control. While that may sound, from the Opposition, like we’ve said that we’re not looking at options, we actually are looking at options. We have no mandate from the community around genetic modification—we have no mandate. If that’s the mandate that the Opposition thinks they have, then maybe they should write a paper on it and suggest it. I’m absolutely delighted that across the plethora of work that we are doing we have absolutely managed to systematically work in a way that ensures that we’re going to try and get swimmable rivers—not wadeable rivers, swimmable rivers. We’re going to be looking across the environment about ways to protect and ensure, under the Resource Management Act (RMA), that our people have the opportunity to have their say, which, of course, was rolled back previously.

So here’s a little bit of progress to date: we have no new offshore oil and gas permits. Now, you will all remember—sorry, Madam Chairperson, everyone will recall—

Tim van de Molen: How many species does that save from endangerment?

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: You will recall—how many species does that save? You’re asking, across the floor, how many species does the change of—

Tim van de Molen: The ban of oil of gas.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Banning oil and gas—absolutely. What happens is that when we have global warming—which is a result of oil and gas—we, therefore, have species extinction. It’s the science and it is well understood.

So we have no new offshore oil and gas permits; we have a zero carbon bill under consultation and we look forward to that coming to this House; we have the $100 million Green Investment Fund; we’re countering myrtle rust and kauri dieback disease—all of us here appreciate that if our taonga species such as kauri go extinct, then we have a catastrophic disaster occurring in our native forests. So it is with great pleasure that I sit now—

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Well, look, as the Opposition spokesperson for conservation it is a pleasure to take a call on these reviews of the 2017/2018 year. In particular, I’m going to focus my contribution on two entities: the Department of Conservation (DOC) which is, of course, charged with the mandate of protecting, conserving the kaitiaki of our natural and historic heritage in New Zealand; and Predator Free New Zealand, which is an independent and separate entity that was put in place to look after the initiative that was, of course, the New Zealand National Party’s initiative, of Predator Free 2050—to eradicate rats, possums, and stoats from New Zealand.

Hon Member: That’s transformational.

SARAH DOWIE: Absolutely transformational. In this, “the year of delivery”, all I can say is that these Government departments—notwithstanding, I agree, with the chair, Dr Deborah Russell’s statement that the rangers at DOC work very, very hard—unfortunately have had a mixed bag under this Government.

There are a couple of things that I want to focus on. The first is, definitely, what we’ve seen come out, under the guise of direction of this Minister to the Department of Conservation, is a return to the bad old days of the 1980s where “Minister knows best”, and consultation, simply, does not occur. Now, in the past the Department of Conservation have been very good at engagement with stakeholders. They’ve been very good in the education space, working with people at the coalface to get them involved in conservation, to get them to buy into initiatives and help out on the ground. But, unfortunately, as was raised in the reviews, even the Director-General of Conservation had to admit that in recent times consultation has been less than adequate. I’m referring, specifically, to, first of all, the tahr cull. The tahr cull that was launched into—spearheaded by the Minister, ignoring the wishes and will and thoughts of recreational hunters, to simply go in and cull to extreme levels, without engaging with that sector group. We saw a huge mobilisation and, simply, what that suggests is that the Minister has no respect for recreationists, no respect for their contribution to the conservation estate, and had no faith in them as to what they could achieve with, and in partnership with, the Department of Conservation.

Subsequent to that, we had the rushed introduction of the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill which, again, was introduced to this House with a lack of consultation. Practically no stakeholders were engaged and, again, it mobilised recreational fishers to such an extreme that we saw a backlash as to that bill, which was introduced under the guise of technical but it was anything but technical—again, a tried implementation of a bill which ran roughshod over recreationists’ viewpoints, their activity, and, again, their contribution to tourism and investment in the conservationist state.

So one of the things that I’ll be looking for into the future from the Department of Conservation is for them to pull their socks up and to again engage with the community, because if we do not have buy-in from the community then we simply lose, with respect to environmental initiatives moving forward.

With respect to Predator Free—and my colleague Mr Scott Simpson touched on this—again, an independent entity charged with eradicating predator species. But the Minister has come in over the top—she knows best—and made a direction that there should be no investment or looking into biotechnologies. It’s Predator Free themselves that have come out and said that, without biotechnologies, there can be no achievement of Predator Free 2050. It’s certainly not a silver bullet but without looking at it, without having that conversation, simply, the goal will not be achieved. This is unfortunate. The National Party still believes in that vision, and we believe that an honest and transparent conversation needs to happen with the public about this initiative.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a great privilege to rise and speak for a few minutes on the annual reviews on the Ministry for the Environment. What a tremendous contribution from both my colleagues. Can I particularly reference Scott Simpson’s—it was very funny watching from this side of the House as he, quite appropriately, talked up the potential of our chair, Deborah Russell.

Hon Scott Simpson: She’s the new LINZ Minister.

TODD MULLER: It’s extraordinary—and is likely to be a new Minister, post-Budget. Just watching the blood drain from the face of Kieran McAnulty, it was quite extraordinary. Then also from Willie Jackson—with the mere mention of a Cabinet reshuffle the blood drained from his face as well. It was very awkward; it was extraordinary.

But we’ve had some very interesting reflections on the conversation that we had at the Environment Committee about the annual reviews. In particular, I’d like to draw attention to the conversation that we had around climate change. We started, first, with a reflection and a series of questions relating specifically to the Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working Group that had reported back around the importance of a national adaptation plan with a whole series of recommendations. It, essentially, landed on the table with a thud. There was no commitment to operationalise those. We’ve heard nothing since; it’s just silence from the Government in terms of what they’re actually going to do, which reinforces this view that they are good at rhetoric but very, very poor at follow through.

There’s been reference, as we had at the Environment Committee, about the zero carbon bill, and I suspect that’s getting close, and I watch with interest the shaking hands of New Zealand First as they have to sign it off as it goes through Cabinet, trying to marry the commitments they’ve made to their rural sector versus what they’re prepared to support in terms of commitments for the future of this country. I wait with interest to see how that unfolds.

But, specifically in the select committee, we were discussing the interim climate change reports, both of which were signalled by the chief executive to be made public by the end of April. One of them related to the move to 100 percent renewable energy generation, and the second, of course: whether or how agriculture gets included in an emissions trading scheme. Of course, silence. We know those reports have been landed. We know those reports have been finalised. But unlike the commitment made by Vicky Robertson at that select committee, there is still no public disclosure of what is in that report.

Hon Scott Simpson: Why?

TODD MULLER: Exactly, Mr Simpson—why? So here we have a scenario where, only a few weeks ago, we’re told explicitly at the select committee to expect those critical pieces of thinking to be made public and discussed and reflected on, and instead they sit behind a wall of silence of the Government who, yet again, is trying to find out how on earth three hands hold the pen at the same time—with great difficulty; with great difficulty.

It’s interesting, when we reflect on some of the conversations that we had in a climate change context—and I build on the very good contribution from Sarah Dowie, my colleague just before—that whenever we have a conversation, as we did with the conservation area representatives, there is a complete aversion to the opportunity of using biotech and gene editing for the future challenges that sit in front of this country. We posed the questions. We’ve posed them at the select committee, and we pose them here in this House. Despite the fact that Professor Gluckman has made it very clear that any attempt or ambition that we might have in the climate change space to reduce our emissions over the next 10, 20, 30 years is utterly dependent on using world’s best technology wherever it comes from, being open to all ideas, all innovation—because that is the secret of enabling New Zealand agriculture to thrive and feed the world—that side says no; they’re not interested. They’re only interested in science that supports their political narrative. They’re not interested in the interests of people of rural New Zealand, which takes me to the last issue that we traversed at the select committee that is covered in our report: urban-rural divide.

If there is a singular issue that we can see coming forward in this House that talks to this Government’s inability to deeply understand provincial New Zealand, it’s the response to the questions that we put on that issue. We were given fudge answers, that “We try to connect our Ministers with rural New Zealand”—that was the answer—“We try to connect our Ministers with rural New Zealand”. They only had Damien O’Connor, and he’s been on the job for 30 years. That’s it; the singular voice. Provincial New Zealand, the underpinning economic engine of this country, and they have to say that they try hard to connect their Ministers with rural New Zealand because they’re not naturally understanding their interests.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to rise above the negativity of the National Party and celebrate some of the things that the Department of Conservation (DOC) has done in the 2017-18 year. Today, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services came out with their global assessment of biodiversity, yet the National Party objected to a motion in the House to recognise the seriousness of our biodiversity crisis. Yet, in—

Hon Scott Simpson: That’s because the Minister didn’t follow process.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: We did consult, Mr Simpson. So in that report it highlighted that a million species are threatened with extinction; 4,000 of those are in Aotearoa. It is pressures on habitat, it is pests and weeds that are a major threat to them, and we know from the work that the department presented to the Environment Committee that where the department invests in predator control, it significantly improves the prospects for threatened species.

So two of the things to celebrate in the 2017-18 year are the world’s first successful eradication of a problem butterfly—the great white butterfly, which DOC and a multi-agency team, over three years, succeeded in eradicating in the Nelson-Tasman area. That butterfly was a major threat to our native cress species—we’ve got 79 species of native cress, and 57 of those are amongst those million species at risk of extinction. The eradication also helped the horticultural industry, because the great white butterfly is a major threat to brassicas.

Another area where the department was really successful in 2017-18 was the Million Dollar Mouse programme, eradicating mice from the Antipodes Islands in the subantarctic. I was fortunate enough to go down there last February to see Reischek’s parakeet, to see the Antipodes parakeet, and to see them flourishing in the absence of mice. That was a major investment in partnership with a number of organisations from the World Wildlife Fund, to the Morgan Foundation, the Jasmine foundation, and others. It was a dedicated and committed team of DOC staff, helicopter pilots, and others that succeeded in what was a very complex island eradication project in a very challenging landscape.

DOC is investing in conservation, and this Government is investing in conservation. Unlike the National Party, objecting to motions on biodiversity, this Government, in Budget 2018, gave the biggest increase in conservation funding in 16 years, which is allowing the department to rebuild its capability and capacity. It’s allowing the department to develop ever more partnership initiatives—totally disagree with the comments of Ms Dowie—and it was recently in the Mackenzie Basin. Te Manahuna Aoraki is a major partnership between 18 leaseholders, DOC, Land Information New Zealand, Ngāi Tahu, local councils, and the New Zealand Defence Force. That ambitious project: over 300,000 hectares, investing in predator control, broom control, rowan control, rabbit control, research on how we better address threats in those high country environments, because the department and I recognise that we need to mainstream conservation. The department cannot do it on its own. It has to work with other players, it has to work with the community. Te Manahuna Aoraki and that vision for the Mackenzie Basin of reducing predators, controlling them so that we can have species like kakī, the black stilt, and so that species like the robust grasshopper thrive, is all about a partnership approach, and it’s all about a Government which recognises the seriousness of our biodiversity crisis and is investing in conservation.

This May, the department is implementing the biggest ever pest control initiative undertaken in mainland New Zealand in response to the mega mast year; $38 million being spent to control rats and stoats, in response to the mast year. I do thank and congratulate the select committee for its unanimous support of 1080 as a tool to control predators. This is what was going to be totally necessary if we are to protect our bird species from going extinct regionally, to protect insects like the giant land snail. The department, over a million hectares, 12 percent of the conservation estate—this Government has secured the funding for Tiakina Ngā Manu, or Battle for our Birds; under the last National Government, that was insecure year by year. So we recognise the seriousness of the biodiversity crisis, and we’re investing in a range of initiatives to tackle that. Thank you.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. There we had it—right at the end of the Minister of Conservation’s contribution, her acknowledgement that 1080, in her opinion, is the answer to all of our problems. The reason that we get this from the Minister is because she has put the handbrake, effectively, on Predator Free 2050. Can I just acknowledge the previous National Government for that initiative—that incredible initiative, that big, hairy audacious goal that we put out there that we are striving to achieve that this Minister has, effectively, put the handbrake on.

I’m so pleased that she took a call before me, because it leads me so nicely into my contribution today, because I want to turn to the review that I found the most interesting, and that is from Predator Free 2050. The discussion that we had, in particular, was around the use of biotechnology by Predator Free 2050 in reaching their goals, and in that we took the officials back to some comments that they made a year ago, specifically around the use of biotechnology in ridding our country of these pests, these stoats, rats, and possums, to stop them killing our forests, and killing our birds.

The question was around the support from this Minister in the use of technological solutions in the area of biotechnology, and the answer that was given a year ago was “She’s given us support in regards to the strategy that we’re undertaking”, and we went on to ask “So she hasn’t issued any instructions that you’re not to proceed with the advancement of technological solutions?”, and the official replied, “No”. Two weeks after we asked that question, a mere two weeks, the Minister did a complete flip—a complete 180—and sent a letter, a directive, to Predator Free 2050, and she said to them, “Cease and desist. We don’t want you even looking at it.”

Now, fast-forward to just recently, when we had Predator Free 2050 back in front of our select committee, and we said to those officials, “What changed?”, and they mentioned specifically that directive—they mentioned specifically that directive. They brought up the letter of direction, and they admitted to the committee, they said to us, that it came completely out of the blue. They were blindsided. And no wonder. Two weeks earlier—imagine this—they had the full support and commitment of the Minister for the programme that they were working to in terms of technology, and then two weeks later a cease and desist letter, a complete flip.

We on this side of the House acknowledge that we have a massive problem, and it’s not the million mice, it’s not the butterflies; it’s the stoats, it’s the weasels, it’s the possums, and it’s the rats, and if we are to even start to think about Predator Free 2050, we have to have more tools in our toolbox than just simply dropping 1080 on our land, which is what this Minister wants to do. The only thing in her little tool box is these traps and 1080, and we know very well from the officials and from Predator Free 2050 themselves that this is only going to keep a lid on things at best. They admitted in our select committee, when we had them there in front of us—they admitted to us that they will need more tools in their tool box to achieve this very big goal, and just dropping more poison is not going to be the answer.

For the Minister to get up today and talk about the loss of biodiversity and about the pests being this major threat and how terrible it all is and how 1080 is the answer is absolutely appalling, because we heard from Predator Free 2050, we’ve heard from the experts. I don’t think there’s anyone out there who thinks that these tools on their own are going to get us to Predator Free 2050. This Minister has put an absolute handbrake on these poor officials and, you could say, tried to dance around the issue, but it was clear from their answers that they were going down a specific track, they knew the tools that they needed—

Hon Scott Simpson: Ideological handbrake.

ERICA STANFORD: —it was an ideological handbrake; thank you, Mr Simpson—and yet, two weeks later from that original answer a year ago, this Minister drops a bombshell on them: cease and desist that one thing that you know is going to get there.

And they’re not saying, “Let’s do it.” This Minister isn’t saying, “Don’t do it at all.” She’s telling them, “Don’t even look at it, don’t even research it, don’t put a cent into even thinking about it. Just keep dropping poison on our forests.” That’s what this Minister is saying: “Let’s not look at new technologies.” Despite what other members of her Green Party say, that technology is going to be the future—not in this Minister’s mind.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the reports of committees relevant to the Environment Sector be noted.

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.

Reports of committees relevant to the Environment Sector noted.

External Sector

SIMON O’CONNOR (Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee): Thank you very much, Madam Chair—

Hon Member: Oh, this’ll be great.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Well, no, it probably won’t be great, actually, because as the chair of the committee, I have to be relatively neutral, so I’ve got to actually behave myself for the next five minutes, which is rather disappointing, but anyway, we’ll give it a crack. Look, in all seriousness, can I start by thanking all the members of the select committee from across the House who have worked through these reports. I think it’s fair to say that the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee works robustly but collegially. But can I also record at the start my thanks to all of those who work within the various sectors, be it defence, Antarctica New Zealand, customs, foreign affairs, overseas development—they are the ones who make a difference day by day.

I thought I’d just go through several of the reports noting various elements which I thought were important, and I’ll leave the politicking to others who will follow in my wake. Look, importantly—and I’m sure others in this debate have noted—we’ve been dealing with the 2017-2018 Budget. So, actually, some elements of what we’re discussing were coming through the then National Government and then moving into the Labour Government side of things.

When we start with—if I was just going through the order in the book—defence, we know that a substantial spend there of something like $20 million or so into defence—actually not a large spend when one considers other countries. I’m not trying to compare New Zealand to the likes of America, but not a substantial spend. But what’s really important is just what our defence forces are able to achieve with those moneys. Look, obviously, the committee took a lot of time talking with both NZDF, the New Zealand Defence Force, and the Ministry of Defence. They are two actual separate groups that come together when presenting to us. Great interest in the various deployments that New Zealand has—and I suppose it’s important at this time to, quite rightly, acknowledge our men and women serving overseas. A particular focus in the select committee around how the defence forces are working not only around climate change—working there on some really interesting insights, I would suggest—but also some discussion around how defence is working around drug trafficking. We did talk a little bit around the location of bases. In fact, there was a bit of discussion too around why Singapore has not continued an idea to bring down some of its fighter jets. It’s perhaps timely to note that we had some discussion of banning foreigners and those from overseas purchasing land. It’s my understanding that that’s something which has contributed to Singapore’s decision not to come here and to set up a base at Ōhākea.

Customs—I’ll get to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) at the end; they’re the big one—quite a substantial spend of about $204 million, but I thought quite interesting, perhaps, for the House to note that they intercepted over $345 million of illicit drugs, and if I was to be somewhat tongue in cheek, the current Government wanting to basically decriminalise the lot of it—are we going to lose $345 million of illicit drug interception moneys? We’ll soon find out.

There were a number of questions around the Joint Border Management System in the committee. We’re just interested in how that has integrated in, and, by and large, it sounds positive but some work still to be done. It was quite interesting as well to hear from customs of the work they’re trying to do in anticipation of Brexit.

The New Zealand Antarctic Institute, obviously, has Antarctica New Zealand. They do a remarkable job. I’m somewhat biased in saying that, in that a few days after I’d actually returned from Antarctica itself, we had the team come in front of us. Look, they are looking to do a base upgrade—it’ll be interesting to see what comes up in the Budget this year—and what they saw as relatively positive is a new science platform, some funding now ring-fenced quite particularly to be able to give to scientists to do this science. Antarctica New Zealand provides the support to scientists at the moment; now they get to actually provide some funding.

Look, with MFAT, a substantial spend—look, we were really interested, obviously, in the relationship with China. We’re noting, obviously, the words that were in the defence statement which have upset China. We were very conscious at the time—very few ministerial visits, concerns around the free-trade agreement, and concerns around the Middle East certainly came up in the committee; concerns that New Zealand was not playing a solid role speaking out against terrorist groups such as Hamas but readily quick to slam the likes of Israel, and we think that’s all a bit mixed up.

But I want to conclude by acknowledging Brook Barrington—he was the chief executive of MFAT; he stood down—and to use this opportunity in the final seconds to acknowledge his service to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to welcome Chris Seed as the new chief executive, and, if I might, an encouragement to members to read Brook Barrington’s two-page contribution.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Just before I called the honourable member, I just want to remind members that these are five-minute calls. If you go over the five minutes, I could regard them as a second call, and I don’t think your whips will be entirely happy about that. So you must sit down as soon as the bell is rung.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Chair, thank you very much. I’m very pleased to speak on this part of the debate on the foreign affairs and trade annual review that came before our committee. I want to start where my colleague left off in recognising the work of Brook Barrington, who, since 2015, was the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Brook, who is a very able diplomat, led the ministry through a number of changes and challenges and, most interestingly, led it in a direction where it was more engaged both within New Zealand and in other parts around the world.

At the back of at least the document I’ve got, we’ve attached the reflections or the speech or the talk that Brook Barrington gave in the committee, and it was one of the better speeches I have heard that sums up exactly our position and where we sit. If I may, I want to quote a piece of this because I think it’s very important that the Government takes note of the expert advice from the expert in foreign affairs when it considers what it should be doing currently in the days and years ahead.

Mr Barrington said—and I quote—“Mr Chair, the ministry acts in the world to make New Zealanders [safe] and more prosperous. And that world has become more complicated. It is possible to find [cause] for optimism and opportunity, of course. But the daily reality is that [the] global power is being contested and significant pressure is being placed on the existing international system and on many of the principles and rules that underpin it, to which could be added pervasive challenges like climate change, unregulated migration, and uneven access to … benefits of globalisation, which are fuelling uncertainty and nationalistic responses. As a result, predictability, one of the rivets of international affairs, is sprung. This is playing out most [dramatically] in our own hemisphere.” And I end the quote there.

The reason I wanted to read that is it actually talks to or speaks to New Zealand’s place in the world, how we see ourselves, and how, as a small nation, successive Governments and successive Ministers of Foreign Affairs have been out talking about the values that New Zealand has, promoting them on the world stage, and actually using our voice with influence greater than our size and location would suggest. If there was anything I would implore the current Government to do, it would be to spend more time with our friends and partners and those that we are yet to agree as much as we want to with internationally overseas.

They often say that foreign affairs and trade is about not what you do within your own country but the things you do externally, and it is very important for a country like New Zealand—a small country—that we are overseas as much as we practicably can be, reminding people of who we are and fighting for a better deal for Kiwis. And I do want to recognise that the Government has of late been out to different parts of the world, but I would suggest—and say I would criticise—that they have been far too slow to do so. It seems that in the foreign policy area most of the Government’s interest has been domestically—what New Zealanders think only.

It is important we take New Zealanders with us, but the challenge or concern that we have is that if we’re only here talking about foreign policy in New Zealand and not overseas persuading others as much as we need to be, then New Zealanders will miss out, New Zealand will miss out, and we will be left behind.

There is an example in this document, and we questioned quite widely in detail about this: the wording of the defence policy statement regarding China. I don’t want to rehash this and go over it, but, as we questioned and looked at that, it is clear to us that there was a difference of view of the type of wording between defence and the foreign ministry. That’s not unusual. Those sorts of things happen. Our experts will work this through.

But what is most concerning is the suggestion that at a political level, at a ministerial level, the different ministries were led in directions that those experts perhaps did not feel comfortable with. I see the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark, has an opportunity to clarify that: whether or not the Government, through the Ministers, were pushing their officials in a direction when it comes to the language of how we treated China in that defence policy document in such a way that those officials were concerned or actually were not able to give the advice that they thought that they should. If that was the case, it would be a travesty for foreign policy.

Finally, when it comes to another area, was the advice the ministry had to give over the World Trade Organization (WTO) compatibility of the Provincial Growth Fund. I think what happened here is Mr Jones had to be worked over by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, because he did say at the time he didn’t care about the WTO. Actually, a country like New Zealand must care about those rules-based approaches to things, and Mr Jones himself, as a Minister with a very large amount of money to try and spend, must adhere to international rules and law and shouldn’t be saying as a Minister he doesn’t care about our international obligations.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the problems with this debate, of course, is that five minutes goes all too quickly and we have a number of different entities that we had the privilege of hearing from during the course of our estimates considerations.

I’d like to start at the end just so that I can give a bit of an acknowledgement to the New Zealand Antarctic Institute because they do fine work and quite often they get overlooked in this particular debate. They’re a Crown entity established under the Act of 1996 to ensure that Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are protected, valued, and understood. I do want to acknowledge, while the Minister of Defence is in the chair, that they couldn’t do their work without the huge support that they get from the New Zealand Defence Force. They are two entities that work very well together and do an extraordinarily good job.

Antarctica New Zealand receives 97 percent of its funding from the Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade budget, hence the fact that it’s a very important entity for us to consider. And they are doing great work, particularly with the modernisation of Scott Base, which is vital to ensure that we have the very best facilities and equipment and accommodation down there. It’s a pretty unforgiving climate, particularly in the middle of winter, and I am delighted that great work is being done there.

Can I jump back, while the Minister of Defence is in the chair, to just say how much I appreciated the privilege of joining him earlier this year in going on a trip with himself; Commander, Joint Forces New Zealand from New Zealand Defence Force; and some other personnel to visit New Zealanders who are deployed in the Middle East and South Sudan. And, of course, in South Sudan we were meeting with the United Nations mission there, which was headed by the former Labour leader David Shearer. What a superb job he is doing, and what a pleasure it was to hear how highly regarded David Shearer and his team are.

Again, it’s just not possible to do justice to everything in this short call, but I was really struck on that trip by how proud we may all be of the fine service of the New Zealand men and women in the New Zealand Defence Force. Their contribution punches well above the weight that you might expect of a small country, and in every respect they are extraordinarily highly regarded. I know the Minister is very proud of them, and with very good reason. I was too, and I think that New Zealand is doing a tremendous job in international peacekeeping missions in the Sinai and so many other theatres of huge conflict over the years.

Let me now jump, in the remaining time, to talk about the New Zealand Customs Service, because I had the privilege of being the Minister of Customs back in the dying days of the previous National Government and I am a huge supporter of New Zealand customs. They are doing tremendous work.

Let me put on the record, for those who may be listening. They have three core functions: protecting New Zealand by reducing the risks associated with international trade and travel—and most of us have the opportunity to interact with customs as we go through customs at airports in particular—they promote and facilitate trade and travel by efficiently processing imports and travellers arriving into New Zealand—not so many people are aware of those, but certainly those who are in business as importers and exporters are, and I know that they are vitally dependent on the efficiency which is at a very high standard in the New Zealand Customs Service—and also the collection of revenue including duties, excise levies, GST on imports, and fees. Most recently, the Government has moved to, I think, balance the ledger by bringing tax on to low level goods from offshore, because I know that many retailers in New Zealand had felt that they were at a competitive disadvantage, and this was an issue that was certainly on my table when I was Minister, and I acknowledge the fact that that has made some progress.

I do want to acknowledge the leadership that was provided by the Acting Comptroller of Customs Christine Stevenson, who took over in my time and was a very fine chief executive of customs. Particularly, I want to acknowledge the work that customs does in a collaborative way with other agencies such as the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). They have the Joint Border Management System, which is a joint initiative of customs and MPI focused on modernising and aligning their computerised border systems and producing data to identify risks and future trends. This is just so important because the threats to New Zealand’s borders are becoming more and more sophisticated, and it’s so vital that those agencies are working together. Several work streams have come out of that initiative, including the establishment of a joint border analytics team and the vitally important Trade Single Window system. And I had the opportunity to celebrate that advance during my time as the Minister.

Two years ago, a joint border analytics team was set up between customs, MPI, and Immigration New Zealand with the purpose to collect joint intelligence to support the work of the various agencies. I particularly want to acknowledge a great passion of mine: the tremendous work they do in intercepting drugs. There is a huge volume of drugs that are coming to our shores all the time. Customs does a fine job in intercepting much of it. Of course, they can never stop all of it.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to be able to contribute to the external affairs annual review. Let me start by acknowledging the Minister in the chair, Ron Mark. He’s been generous with invitations that he’s issued on behalf of the Defence Force to members of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. I, for one, welcome and acknowledge that, and, in fact, I know other members do as well.

I’d like to touch briefly on the work of the Ministry of Defence and the New Zealand Defence Force, mostly just to pass through the subject matters they’ve covered, really by way of acknowledging them and thanking them for the work they do on behalf of our country throughout this world of woe, at times. They do a difficult and dangerous job with professionalism, and I join, I’m sure, all members of the House in thanking them at this time, now that we have an opportunity to do so.

Briefly on defence matters that relate to my electorate somewhat—excuse the gratuitous mention of the electorate of Helensville, Madam Chair, but I’ll just touch briefly on a couple of issues. One is in relation to the Whenuapai Air Base. We asked the various officials who came before us about the prospects of Whenuapai Air Base and also Devonport Naval Base in relation to whether those defence establishments were secure in their current location. The indication was that there was no information to the contrary, albeit that issues relating to housing intensity—excuse me, density; and intensity, for that matter—in the area do complicate their operations somewhat, for example, in relation to the noise of aircrafts and the operation of ships, too, in relation to Devonport. Similarly, the firefighting foam contamination issue that has been noted throughout New Zealand is something that I’m watching carefully as a local MP in relation to Whenuapai Air Base.

For the remainder of my short time, I’d like to touch on a couple of matters in relation to the foreign affairs portfolio more so, taking my lead from colleagues senior to me on our side of the aisle and our side of the select committee, if I can put it like that. A couple of these issues were raised by the chair of the select committee, Simon O’Connor. In that role he wasn’t able to be particularly political, so I’ll take the liberty of doing that somewhat, not really so much from a party perspective, given that a bipartisan approach to foreign affairs tends to characterise all parties’ approach—traditionally, at least.

So, really, on the themes of consistency, clarity, and cooperation, I’d like to note a couple of issues, including as they’ve been handled in less than ideal fashion in a couple of instances by the Government of the day, of course, within the period of this annual review.

In relation to consistency, I’d like to note that it is important that the New Zealand Government act in a consistent manner when it comes to condemning acts of violence and, indeed, terror throughout the world. Sometimes it’s a length of time that a response takes to have a condemnation of a violent and perhaps a disproportionate response. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. Simon O’Connor mentioned in relation to the resolution on Hamas behaviour that a procedural resolution was voted against by New Zealand at the United Nations to condemn them. Ultimately, the substantive motion was voted upon by New Zealand the correct way, in my view, but that was a rather sad episode.

Second, on the nature of clarity, our ideals aren’t always reflected in the way that we accept at United Nations the presence of some nations on bodies that would lecture nations about human rights, some of which have a far from perfect record on human rights themselves. So that’s unfortunate to the extent that we accept that as a sovereign nation with a seat at the United Nations General Assembly.

Third, on the subject of cooperation, I note that it’s important we continue to work with other nations who are like-minded in terms of ideals and interests—for example, when some months ago now the behaviour of Russia and “attitudes towards the rules-based international system”—and I read from the annual review report—was such that there were some eyebrows raised, if I can use that metaphor, internationally. It’s important that New Zealand has a robust attitude towards such incidents or possible incidents and acts with our friends quickly, in a manner that is appropriate to such situations.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. Can I begin by, actually, commending Simon O’Connor, the chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, for the collegial nature in which members work across that select committee. I had joined the select committee only, sort of, halfway through last year, so this is the first opportunity that I get to speak to some of the work that we learnt through the annual review process. I want to also begin by noting that the select committee thanked Dr Brook Barrington, who was the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the chief executive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) who was appointed to the role in 2015. When he presented to the select committee, he was leaving very soon after his presentation to us.

I do, however, want to begin by addressing a point that was raised by the Hon Todd McClay, who talked about some of the concerns that some members—namely, Opposition members—on the select committee raised with regard to perceived concern, from their point of view, regarding the difference in language that was used with regards specifically to China by the different departments that were involved in it. Well, actually, what came out through the annual review process was that there was no concern on Dr Barrington’s part at all, and although members opposite were trying to rather pointedly lead discussion and conversation to get to a point where perhaps they thought some concern would be expressed, none was expressed whatsoever.

That was the same outcome, I guess, when members opposite tried to talk about—oh, I’ve just found the bit that I was looking for: the wording of the defence policy statement regarding China. I quote, “The Secretary said he did not believe there was any tension between [the] departments regarding their view[s] on China.”, and he in fact went on to outline quite a robust process that happens between departments, and there was no need for concern that officials were being pushed in a certain direction, as the Hon Todd McClay alleges.

That also goes into some of the ministerial visits that were brought up as areas of concern by members opposite on the select committee with regard to China, and again I quote from the select committee report: “The Secretary added that the Chinese would make it clear if they did not want a meeting. He indicated that there have been no ‘alarming signals’ about the state of the relationship with China.” So I believe that was put to rest very effectively by the Secretary during the annual review process.

I do also want to go on to some of the fine work that Dr Barrington talked about in terms of the Government’s focus on the Pacific, for example, with the Pacific reset. There was a reset in terms of regional relationships that has been characterised, really, by greater engagement with countries in the South Pacific, the focus of which, of course, is to do our bit to ensure that we build prosperity, stability, and resilience amongst some of our closest neighbours, our Pacific nations that we work very closely with; also to grow and magnify our influence and impact in the region that, of course, we are also part of; and to conduct relations in a manner that is more respectful and in partnership and actually led by the Pacific nations that we work with. That came out quite strongly during the annual review process as well.

The Secretary, Dr Barrington, highlighted the existential threats that are posed by climate change to our closest neighbours in the Pacific as well and talked about some of the work-related schemes that MFAT has launched in terms of a land reclamation project; legal work to determine which State owns the continental shelf, for example, in international law; and research work with local NGOs in the Pacific to determine how women and disabled people will be affected by climate change.

Also, just very quickly in the time that I have remaining, I want to touch on the Trade for All project as well, because, again, the Hon Todd McClay talked about the fact that we shouldn’t just focus on ensuring that we talk to New Zealanders, but, actually, that’s really important when we negotiate trade agreements and trade rules. So in addition to the external work that MFAT is doing, there is a focus on ensuring there’s buy-in from New Zealanders as well, and that was brought up as something that was important. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Madam Chair. Please excuse me if you can’t understand me; my voice is gone. I want to thank the select committee, and particularly the chair and deputy chair, for the work they have done and particularly for accompanying me on a couple of operational visits, which proved to be very valuable—in the sense that they gave us not just the opportunity to meet with our own personnel in the field and to get a first-hand glimpse of the challenges they face in performing the work they have to do in the completion of those missions but also the opportunity to engage with our strategic partners and those of the coalition force allies we’re working alongside of and the host nations in particular.

It’s been a very, very good year for the Defence Force and veterans portfolios. I’m very proud of the progress we have made. We started out very strongly by focusing on a reset of our strategic defence policy and making sure that it’s aligned with this coalition Government’s views; that we’re aligned with the Pacific Reset, as announced by the Minister of Foreign Affairs; and that we provided from that a good basis for conducting a review of the capability plan of the former Government, in accordance with the coalition agreement. I’ve got to say that the new strategic defence policy statement is something I’m very proud of. I’m very proud of my team for the hard work that they have put in there and for the quite visionary document that we’ve finally produced, which is framed in the context of community, nation, and world. The SDPS, as it’s come to be known, has put some very strong focus on some key and crucial issues, being space and cyber—very much deserved and very sensitive areas for New Zealand going forward.

I think also the other area of focus that I steered the team into was to take a good, long, hard look at what climate change was bringing us with respect to the impact on our security and the consequences of climate change in the Pacific. That has been a very, very valuable document. It was released recently, and it has been very well received, clearly within the Pacific and in Europe as well. I was a bit disappointed that I had to turn down an opportunity to speak at a Noumea conference recently, but tomorrow I will be leading the discussion on climate change and the security implications of it—I head away to Fiji tomorrow—at that conference.

Defence capability: of course, we made the big announcement that this Government has signed off on the purchase of the replacements for the P-3 Orion fleet, with the announcement of the decision to buy four P-8 Poseidon aircraft. That is—

Andrew Bayly: Have you booked it in the accounts?

Hon RON MARK: They are in the books—have a look—as you know when you make an announcement. That member should realise that his Government had nine long years to make a very sensitive and very important decision that affected one of our high-end capabilities and failed at every turn. So that member who wants to chip in and make a little name from himself should remind himself—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order!

Hon RON MARK: —that his Government didn’t have the ability to actually make that decision.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Minister, return to your discussion.

Hon RON MARK: The other great decision we made—and it will come to fruition on 13 May—is that if one looks out one’s office window, one will see Manawanui moored up outside there. It arrives—the new dive hydro vessel; another proud purchase. Of course, at the same time, we kicked off the frigate systems upgrade, which hadn’t been kicked off, which had blown out by $148 million, but we sorted that problem, and both Te Mana and Te Kaha are now in dock in Canada having that refit done—long overdue given that it was signed off in 2007 by a Labour - New Zealand First Government. But, hey, we’re always cleaning up messes left behind, aren’t we?

The other great things very quickly: we got the four new King Air 350-Bs; we have signed off on the NH90 simulator—it’s being built now; and we’ve completed the defence capability plan, which we’re just working on for a final release. So all I’d say, for the Opposition, is that it’s been good news—nothing but good news—in the defence space, and I’m very much looking forward to announcing and presenting the new defence capability plan, which I’m sure everyone will be very pleased and proud of.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the reports of committees relevant to the External Sector be noted.

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.

Reports of committees relevant to the External Sector noted.

Annual financial statements of the Government and Finance and Government Administration Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): There are two questions in this next debate. The first is that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the previous financial year be noted. The second is that the reports of committees relevant to the finance and Government administration sector be noted.

BRETT HUDSON (Chairperson of the Governance and Administration Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to rise and speak to, principally, the second of those questions: those annual reviews related to the Governance and Administration Committee, a very hard-working committee—very capable members—and one which I feel absolutely privileged to chair.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: And well chaired.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you very much, Mr Bakshi—very kind of you to say that; I was going to say it myself and, in fact, did. So, in keeping with the spirit, and more importantly the Standing Orders, this will be a very non-controversial contribution from me. I do know that members from this side of the Chamber will have some comments to make on some of the reviews that we undertook, but there are some factual elements which can and will be raised in this contribution.

I’d like to begin with the State Services Commission. The State Services Commission is one of the best reviews to conduct, principally because sometimes members have commented that officials—chief executives, presenters—will take up quite a bit of time summarising the year before the committee. I wouldn’t call them cynical, but some people feel that that is sometimes to chew up time. The State Services Commissioner has a unique approach to dealing with these annual reviews. We say, “By all means, give us a summary of last year’s performance and then we’ll have some questions.” and he just says, “Thank you; I’ll take your questions.” So the summary is as short as it can possibly be, and we get plenty of time to quiz the commissioner about the things they’ve been doing.

One element which members on this side might choose to raise, and I’d welcome Government members also raising, is that we did notice in the expenditure that, in communications—and we think about the entity in State services and their core role—communications expense for them rose over $400,000 in the annual year in question, and so members probed the commissioner as to why that was. The response we received, of course, was that as they are trying to take more of a leadership role in developing the State sector, they believe that it is appropriate and necessary for them to spend more money on communications and on communications specialists—what, in the private sector, might be called “public relations”. Some members questioned the true justification for that, but that was certainly the view of the commissioner and something that I think we’ll likely keep a very watching brief on as we move through into the next financial year for review.

I’d like to talk briefly about the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA). We acknowledged some of the longstanding challenges, from a review perspective, of this particular department. It is, effectively, from an accounting or an accounts perspective, siloed into several areas, and those areas cannot be cross-subsidised. A surplus in one area—particularly in an area such as passports—cannot be used to address one-off cost challenges elsewhere. That tends to make for a challenging entity to review, because the obvious performance of the entity is just not that obvious, but we were reminded again by DIA that they have a future issue in passports where, at the moment, there is a surplus in that account, but with the legislative—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member, but the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break.

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

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Tēnā rā tātau katoa. Prior to the dinner break, the committee was debating the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill. We had reached the Finance and Government Administration sector. Brett Hudson has the call and has one minute 20 seconds remaining.

BRETT HUDSON: Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m looking forward to this last little while. I finished, as we rose for the dinner break, talking about passports within the Department of Internal Affairs and how there’s a surplus on that account but there’s a forward looking expense as we transition more people from five-year passports to 10, given the legislative change in the last Parliament.

I just want to round out my contribution talking about statistics. I do know that some members on this side are going to have quite a bit to say, I think, about this particular annual review, particularly census 2018, for which there was a large sum of money in the annual year appropriated to complete the census. The first point I would make is that despite all of the public talk about the census and the responses, the department of statistics confirmed to us that they did not spend all of the money appropriated to the census, which is a really interesting position. But, more importantly, the committee found it very difficult to get questions answered by the chief statistician. It’s worth reflecting for us all at this time that when Parliament convenes in select committees, we have an absolute expectation in annual reviews that questions will be answered, and it was a stain upon this year’s annual reviews that it was so hard for the committee to get an answer to its question.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Mr Chair. During this stage of the debate, obviously we are addressing not only the annual reviews from the finance and Government administration sector but also the financial statements of the New Zealand Government. That’s where I want to start, probably not surprisingly, and that of course is annexed, I guess you would say, to the annual review of Treasury, which I’m going to come back to. But if we start with those financial statements of Government, I think it’s actually quite a telling snapshot of where the finances of this Government have come from, where they were, obviously, at 30 June last year, and actually, pretty tellingly, where they’re going.

What we see in the statements is the story of a Government that inherited actually very good healthy surpluses based on a good, well-performing economy, and in fact the statements themselves show that. So for the guffaws on the other side, this is exactly what the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee has recorded, that the Government had very good surpluses that it was working with. But what we’ve unfortunately seen is a legacy of those surpluses being frittered away on poorly targeted, poorly thought-through—I won’t even say investments because they’re certainly not—spending that has delivered almost nothing in real benefits for New Zealand.

So whether you want to talk about $2.8 billion on that failed first-year-free policy, whether it’s the KiwiBuild monstrosity that my colleague Judith Collins will talk about, we have a legacy of those big surpluses that these financial statements record as being frittered away. What makes that even worse is that the Government hasn’t put the attention into the growth machine that generates those surpluses. You only have surpluses if you have a Government that focuses on and understands the importance of the private sector and business in the economy. And when business is telling the Government, as they were all through this period and are continuing to, that they’re not confident, they don’t want to invest, they don’t want to grow, and they’re not feeling good about employing people—instead of listening and thinking “Actually, that’s something as a Government we should care about.”, you’ve got the Hon David Parker saying “Well, it’s all junk. Why would we care about any of that?” So the tale that the accounts tell is a very sad one of wasted opportunities, of a Government that has spent the hard work of New Zealanders over the previous decade to get into a good position, and, in fact, of an economy that is slowing down very quickly.

In these statements, we have some rather sad statements, in hindsight, from the Minister where he stated, for example, that he thought New Zealand’s economic growth was becoming more sustainable. Well, what a tragedy that is when we now have Treasury saying that our growth in the first part of this year is down to 2.0 percent. So while the Minister is sitting there singing his little Pollyanna tune about everything was sustainable and coming up roses, the economy was going backwards and he was too deluded to notice, to pay attention, or to do anything about it.

We also noted in these reviews that both Treasury and the Reserve Bank were telling the Government that the only thing that was holding up the books was population growth and spending. You cannot build a sustainable economy on the Government spending other people’s money. Labour Governments have tried to do it time and time again, and it doesn’t work. What we’ve seen is exactly what we’re seeing now, which is an economy in a sharp decline, the private sector retrenching, putting away the cheque book, and jobs growing far more slowly than population growth, and yet we have a Government that refuses to accept any of that.

The Minister told us back in those hearings—and, again, it’s almost laughable to look at it now—that he was confident that the Government’s programme would lead to strong per capita growth. Well, I’m sorry, Mr Robertson. Per capita growth has been zero over the past six months. An economy in absolute stasis, going absolutely nowhere under this Government—on a per person basis, totally stagnant.

Now, a similar thing is happening in the cash side of things. Again, this is a Government that is spending like a drunken sailor, as most left-wing Governments do. And yet these financial statements record that those big surpluses I talked about have now gone back $4 billion. So when you look at the residual cash deficit of this Government—and that, for members on the other side who don’t know their way around financial accounts that well, clearly, is the actual cash flow—from the numbers here to where we are, just in what Treasury put out last week: a $4 billion decline in just the last nine months.

That is the sort of negligent handling of the economy that we’re seeing from this Government. They have wasted the hard work of New Zealanders. They have thrown money away on coalition fripperies for their partners-to-be in Government. They have done nothing while the economy is in free fall, and as a result the numbers are going back, and going back sharply.

The other thing that these financial statements showed us was a Government that is so desperate to try and paint within the lines that it set for itself around Budget rules. They’ve hidden $6 billion in off - balance sheet debt that costs taxpayers considerably more to finance than it would have done if they’d borrowed it through normal channels. Now, Treasury told them not to do it, and it’s costing taxpayers more to do it, but, because Grant Robertson wants to measure himself by his own stick, he’s moved that debt somewhere else. Never mind that it’s more taxpayers’ dollars incurred. If it works for Grant, he doesn’t much care about how it affects taxpayers.

Now, I wanted to mention some of the other comments that came up in our review of Treasury, because there were some quite concerning comments out of the—well, I was going to call him the recently departed secretary, but that makes him sound somewhat like he’s dead, and I certainly don’t want to imply that. The Secretary to the Treasury made us some reasonably concerning comments—that actually this is a Treasury department that is significantly under-resourced, and they acknowledged that they were under a lot of pressure, thanks to the new Government, and would have to be discussing priorities with Ministers.

Now, anyone who’s been a Minister knows that’s code for “We’re spread too thin. We can’t do our job well.”, and I’m sorry but the performance out of Treasury in recent times, when we’ve seen them playing with sun and moon cards instead of focusing on the health of the economy, it just shows the sort of attention that this Government is putting on to things like managing something as unimportant to this Government as the economy.

I will just say, in passing, one thing that I was particularly disturbed by, which was to see Treasury tell us that a quarter of their own bills are not getting paid on time. When the financial managers of this Government can’t pay their own bills on time and leave generally private sector suppliers out of pocket, because they can’t get themselves organised, I blame that on the Government and their failure to properly oversee the pretty simple core business of Government.

Now, in the time left in this contribution, I want to also focus on the annual review of the Reserve Bank, because, again, there is a story here of significant and serious under-resourcing of one of our core financial agencies. I hate to say it, but there is a very clear theme developing of this Government being so uninterested in the economy and the private sector and the thing that actually pays the bills that they are under-resourcing Treasury, they are not getting Treasury to focus on their core work, and we’re seeing the Reserve Bank telling us that they are significantly short in their prudential supervision staff, and, in fact, they told us they were at least 15 key people short of being able to do their job well.

Now, the Reserve Bank is an agency that has paid a dividend to the Crown last year of $456 million—$456 million. So the Crown is using them as a cash cow, but are they properly resourcing them to do their job of looking after our banks, looking after our insurance sector, and managing our currency risks? No, they’re not. So you’ve got the Reserve Bank having to go cap in hand and, apparently, being turned away by the Government, and telling the select committee—which is pretty serious; in fact, I haven’t seen it—that they were significantly under-resourced and, therefore, not able to fulfil their full regulatory responsibilities. That is a serious issue, and I would suggest to this Government that they should at the very least have due regard to these important institutions of Government so that they do ensure that they are in a position to be able to properly do their job.

Just one final comment on the Reserve Bank while I’m here, and that is around the stress testing of New Zealand banks, given the issues that are currently being discussed with capital adequacy. I would point out to the bank that they told us that their stress tests have found the banking system is resilient and the banks hold enough capital and liquidity buffers. So, given those comments, I think it is important—and I certainly hope the Government is having these conversations—that there is serious reflection going on as to whether the significant constraints on capital, the significant extra costs that will fall on borrowers from these massive jumps that the bank are now proposing in capital adequacy, if they’re to proceed—given that the bank told the Finance and Expenditure Committee that our banks are resilient and will withstand.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I call the Hon Judith Collins.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Oh, thank you, Mr Chair, and good choice, might I say. Look, I agree with everything—

Dr Duncan Webb: What have you cooked up?

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —that my colleagues have said, and I would say to Dr Duncan Webb that if he wants to have some nice, home-made Louise cake tomorrow, he’ll just behave himself. I’m not going to turn up with some silly, scungy-looking Madeira cake.

Anyway, so let’s get back to business. Let’s talk about manure of the horse variety, otherwise known as KiwiBuild. I think it’s really important that we talk about a subject where the Government has promised big on KiwiBuild, and then they put the Hon Phil Twyford in charge. What they have been able to do is—we asked them in our select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee, about the KiwiBuild Buying off the Plans initiative. We got some explanation about how “the Government”—in other words, read “the taxpayers”—will underwrite or purchase new homes off the plans as a way of underwriting private developers in case the houses do not sell. Note that phrase “in case the houses do not sell”, and what we have found is they hardly ever do sell.

So whether it’s 11 apartments in Ōtāhuhu in Auckland, where you’d think surely, surely, the public would think these would sell—anyone would think they would sell—but, six months later, they are still not sold. Ten of them are not sold. But that, apparently, enables the developer to go and build other places that people don’t want to buy. So, amazingly, that is, apparently, adding to the housing stock, but, unfortunately, they’ve got no one in them, and that’s because they have not sold.

Then, I give you Wānaka—please, Wānaka—where we’ve got houses built—

Hon Amy Adams: Oh, they must sell.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: No—unfortunately not, Mrs Adams. They have not sold. No, no, no, they have not sold. But then, why would they sell? They have no storage other than outside storage things so people can put skis in. There’s no cellar inside and no garaging, because, apparently, it doesn’t snow in Wānaka, and nothing else that people might want for $650,000, for a little two-bedroom home. And that’s what Phil Twyford’s KiwiBuild Buying off the Plans initiative is assisting.

Unfortunately, the problem doesn’t stop there, because, of course, most of those haven’t sold either. The problem doesn’t stop there, because he’s contracted for close to 200 new homes extra in—guess what? Wānaka.

Hon Amy Adams: No.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Yes, that place where first-home buyers are rushing to buy a home

Hon Amy Adams: But not from Phil.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Possibly not, unless they want a ski chalet or something, but that’s the sort of nonsense we’re seeing: a waste of money. What is driving this waste of money—and it wouldn’t be a waste of money if there was this enormous need in Wānaka for first-home buyers to buy a KiwiBuild home for $650,000, a little two-bedroom place with one bathroom. There would be no problem, but there is not that need.

Te Kauwhata is another example, where every house that the developer seems to build sells unless it has a KiwiBuild sticker on it. The same house—exactly the same house—in the same street with no KiwiBuild sticker sells, but one with a KiwiBuild sticker doesn’t. Now, why would that be? You’d have to say that the whole scheme and project is rubbish.

Hon Amy Adams: The stench of Twyford.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS: I would not blame Mr Twyford myself, personally, as the stench, but I do think that the whole policy is a dog. It’s a dog that has well lived past its use-by date, and it actually never really had any use at all.

Then we have things like this: the Reserve Bank. I’m going to finish on this issue. The Reserve Bank is a bastion of independence, or it certainly was under a John Key and Bill English - led Government. It was a bastion of independence under a Helen Clark - led Government. It is no longer a bastion of independence. It has now been subverted by having Treasury have its say over who’s on that board. It just happens to be the Secretary to the Treasury at the moment. Well, fancy that.

We have now got a Treasury that’s more involved with people’s feelings than they are with their finances. Tell anybody this: sort out the finances for people, you’ll take a lot of stress off them and we’ll take a lot of the problems away from them, but this Government seems absolutely dedicated to talking sun and moon and caring and kindness. But, unfortunately, someone else has to pay the bills, and that’s the New Zealand taxpayer.

We deserve better for the Reserve Bank. We are lucky to have the Reserve Bank, and this Government is allowing the Reserve Bank to get watered down by Government influence.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): Thank you, Mr Chair. I want to just start my contribution by referring to some points made by Amy Adams, the honourable member two speakers prior, where she talked about the economy and the Government books that we inherited and said that we are somehow benefiting from that rock star economy and the healthy books that were left to us by the National Party and the previous Government. However, what she failed to mention and what we also inherited was a huge under-investment in infrastructure in our roads, in our schools, and in our hospitals. That wasn’t a healthy inheritance that we inherited on this side of the House.

So you will see in the financial statements that we have been rebuilding essential public services like our transport infrastructure, schools, and hospitals while also growing the economy and through providing—[Interruption]—wait for it—record investment in our regions through the Provincial Growth Fund. We have been able to do all of that in terms of the economy as well as also demonstrating a new kind of leadership—one with empathy, one with compassion, one that’s focusing on the well-being of our people—and I am proud to sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and receive the reports on how well we are managing that very challenging job.

Now, I want to go to the reviews of a couple of organisations, in particular, where I sat in on the hearings, with the first being the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation. I really enjoyed their review and their presentation, and one area I wanted to mention particularly in this committee because it is a new initiative. It is a new achievement by the guardians, and that was the signing of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Te Puia Tāpapa fund. It is a new way for iwi and Māori organisations to work collectively and efficiently to invest together. The significant achievement that they’ve made at this stage is the signing of a memorandum of understanding. No investments had been made at the time that they presented to us, but they did note that just getting to the point of an MOU was a significant achievement. It had taken years to get there, to achieve this type of working collectively across iwi organisations, Māori organisations, and some organisations, for example, like the Māori Trustee. So far $115 million has been committed, and I look forward to future reviews to see how that is progressing.

If I can go to the second review—that’s for the Inland Revenue Department—in particular, the area that I was quite interested in hearing about—because there is a bit of nervousness when you are undertaking such a huge transformation project—was the Business Transformation project. It is a huge project. It is a multi-year programme, and it’s over $1.3 billion being spent to upgrade technology and improve IRD policy and processes. It was really pleasing to hear from the IRD that it is on track to meet its 2021 deadline for completion. They also said that they have been reviewing steps that they have been taking and other past experiences along the way and adjusting their decisions and making more sensible decisions and phasing in this project—learning lessons from past experiences.

Finally, with the last 30 seconds that I have available to me, I just wanted to mention the review of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. I don’t agree with the comments made by the honourable member on the other side of the House, in terms of its independence and impartiality. I was particularly interested in our line of questioning that we had around diversity. Female employees make up 36 percent of the Reserve Bank—and I see the member over there throwing his head back: “Here we go again, trying to get some gender equity in the financial sector.” So 36 percent of the Reserve Bank are made up of females, which is typical of that sector, but they are making moves within the organisation to increase that as well as ethnic diversity—so I mihi to them.

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. Just a moment to comment on the Opposition, who will have you believe that the country’s going to hell in a handcart; but actually the country’s doing really, really well. For all those people that are listening right now and that are watching their televisions, that are thinking that the Opposition are crying foul with good reason, they’re not. They’re the Opposition—that’s what they do, and we’ve heard it through all of the reviews that we’ve been doing on the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

We sat through quite a few of the reviews—the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, the Inland Revenue Department, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, and Treasury—and it was a pleasant experience, because this Government is changing the way that we do things. The way that we’ve always done things isn’t necessarily the way that is best for New Zealanders. So what we’re doing is some groundbreaking stuff. So it was my pleasure to sit there and listen to the annual review, to listen to Treasury talk about things like the Living Standards Framework. They were talking about the well-being Budget, which is coming up. The comment that kept coming through was about how we measure things, as we have done for so many years now, in terms of GDP, but that’s not necessarily the thing that matters the most. Whilst the member for Papakura can sit there and mock it wholeheartedly, actually, bringing a bit of kindness and looking after people’s well-being is something that was tragically missing from the previous Governments, in fact. They sat there for nine long years—we all sat there for nine long years—and oversaw some of the worst homelessness that our country’s ever seen. So, actually, taking a step back and doing things differently to ensure the well-being of New Zealanders, as I say, was a pleasure to listen to.

Talking about living standards and the Living Standards Framework—again, innovative stuff for the Treasury to be dealing with—they talked about some of the challenges which are involved. We’ve got to understand that there will be challenges when it comes to new innovative things like this. They talked about making sure that the Living Standards Framework reflected our very important Māori cultural identity in there, and that we weren’t just running a very broad brush over it, making sure that the people of this land are being looked after as we move forward as well, because we know that Māori are overrepresented in all of the terrible statistics. When we’re talking about corrections and when we’re talking about poor outcomes in health and education, Māori are heavily overrepresented in those areas.

So to actually have a Living Standards Framework that they’re developing and taking time with is a great thing. They have taken it out there and they’ve listened to the people. They actually referenced it, and it says so in the report, that actually 500 responses were received between July and August of last year, and most of them were positive. So there’s a sign out there that New Zealanders know that, actually, this is a really good thing that we’re getting into. They know that this Government is transformative in its approach, and that’s a great thing. The Opposition can laugh but, actually, I’ll just say it again: they oversaw homelessness like you wouldn’t believe. I represent Rotorua, and, actually, we became superstars when it came to the homelessness population of New Zealand. So they can laugh, but, actually, they shouldn’t be laughing; they should be ashamed—they should be ashamed that they oversaw that in their time.

Let’s talk about the well-being Budget, because that’s where this all comes back to. I’m proud that we’re going to be overseeing something as revolutionary as a well-being Budget, looking outside of just GDP measures, and that was what we heard from Treasury. They talked about—well, the Minister made sure that he pointed out some of the key focuses of the well-being Budget: talking about creating opportunities for our productive businesses and making sure that iwi are actually at the centre of that too because we have a lot of iwi that have come into quite a bit of money and they need to be given these opportunities to be able to advance. In the well-being Budget, we’re also going to, he mentioned, lift opportunities for Māori and for Pasifika as well—again, turning around those negative statistics that we’ve become so OK with in a really terrible way. Again, the Opposition will laugh, but this Government’s going to do something about it.

We’re looking after our nation in terms of the digital age, through innovation. I’ve just come from a function next door, where the people of Wairoa have been connected with internet. They have fast fibre there. So they can sit there in their house in Nūhaka in Wairoa, and they can make sure that they’re participating as global citizens of our digital world.

Lifting our outcomes when it comes to child poverty and mental health and well-being is also really high in the well-being Budget’s focus. For that reason, the Treasury are doing a great job, the Minister is doing a great job, and this Government’s doing a great job too.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, I think this is the year of delivery, is it not? I thought this was going to be the year of delivery. Well, I’m struggling when I stand up here and we’re talking about what the Government has delivered. What I do know is that this Government has overseen a decline in this economy, and that those last two speakers need to avail themselves of the facts.

So let’s just go back in time. In the last three years that the National Government was in power, we averaged 3.3 percent average GDP growth—3.3 percent, and where are we now? Where are we now? We are at about 2 percent—we are at about 2 percent. Now, that’s a drop of more than a third—more than a third. I’ll tell you why that’s so bad. Not only are the cafe shop owners that you go and get coffee from in the morning feeling the effects of it, but what it means for a $300 billion economy such as New Zealand’s is that there’s a loss of economic activity by about $3 billion—a loss of $3 billion worth of activity. That’s in the coffee shops. It’s in the production of New Zealand steel doing new types of steel products through to the agriculture sector. Across the economy, that’s what we’ve seen a decline in. Over the last 18 months, we have seen that decline. What that means is that this Government has now missed out on over $1 billion worth of tax revenue. And so—

Hon Member: How much?

ANDREW BAYLY: A billion dollars—a billion bucks. That’s why this Budget’s going to be a problem for this Government, because they’re already down a billion bucks. No doubt, when they came in, as we all saw in the Treasury projections, the economy was steaming along. I heard Mr Parker today talking about some of the reasons why it’s gone backwards. Well, actually, the fascinating thing is exports have actually gone up. Exports have actually gone up.

Internationally, and this is the other thing that I find an absolute contradiction, is that—yes, you’re right—the World Bank has downgraded the world economic forecasts, but with this so-called third downgrade, they currently sit at a figure of 3.3 percent for the world economy—3.3 percent. We’re at 2 percent. We’re at 2 percent, and we’ve got growing exports. So how do you account for that? How do you account for that?

What this Government has done is ruin the confidence of New Zealanders who own a business, who employ people, and who get out there and make it happen. Why have they done that? Well, it’s interesting. I just heard about infrastructure. I just note the speaker before last said that we have had years of neglect in infrastructure, so what’s the first thing that the Minister of Transport does? What Mr Twyford does is he cancels all those roads of national significance, 6 billion bucks’ worth—6 billion bucks’ worth. All these roads that we were actually getting to the stage where we were moving past the point where we hit a deficit and we were actually starting to create new roads, such as Mill Road in Auckland, which goes north from my electorate and the Papakura electorate. All canned—canned so we can take 6 billion bucks and put it into light rail.

Now if you were doing the light rail on top of the $6 billion worth of roads of national significance, then that would have been fine, but you haven’t. They’ve nicked the money. They’ve nicked the money for these significant projects and put it into the trams, they’ve given Winston Peters $1 billion for his foreign affairs things, they’ve given Shane Jones 3 billion bucks, and they’ve given the Minister of Education $2.6 billion, but in the first few years there’s only nearly $1 billion, but not quite—right? It’s all gone.

What’s more, you’ve got a declining Budget, and you won’t have the surplus that you’re budgeting. That’s why you’re going to have trouble in this Budget coming up. You’re going to have significant problems about it. It’s of your own making, because you have imposed things on business owners, on those people that employ New Zealanders—unreasonably so—and that’s why we’ve arrived at this situation.

But what have you delivered on? Well, it’s interesting. You have delivered on a tax increase. You said you wouldn’t impose taxes in this first term. You have imposed $2.3 billion of additional taxes, which you said you wouldn’t do in the 2017 election. I don’t think it’s right.

KIERAN McANULTY (Junior Whip—Labour): I move, That the committee report progress.

Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

Bills

Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

Second Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Education Act of 1989, the Education Act of 1964, and the Education (Update) Amendment Act of 2017. It builds upon the Government’s work programme for a quality education system that puts all of the learners at the centre.

To recap briefly what the bill does: the bill ensures that school boards cannot adopt a cohort entry policy that enables children to begin school as part of a cohort before they turn five; it requires private schools to be safe places for students; it ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy; and it removes provisions due to come into force on 31 December this year that would enable communities of online learning to be established in order to protect New Zealand’s quality public education system.

I’d like to thank the chair and the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their consideration of the bill. I would like to thank the 18 people who took the time to make a submission on it.

I want to talk through in more detail the provisions of the bill and the changes that this effects. Firstly, turning to cohort entry, the bill changes the settings for cohort entry so that only children who have turned five can attend school. It is Government policy that children under five should not attend school, and that was the view of the 2015 Advisory Group on Early Learning, that this is too young an age to start. The Government has listened to them. We already have one of the youngest school starting ages around the globe. Many other countries are starting at six or seven. Our starting age of five already puts us amongst the youngest for those who are starting school. Moving into four-year-olds starting school is a step too far for this Government.

The bill also increases the number of entry points for schools that have adopted cohort entry from four times a year to eight times a year. So under the existing cohort entry policy the child would start school at the beginning of the term nearest to their fifth birthday, even if they were four years old. As we’ve indicated, if a school is adopting cohort entry the child can only start at the next cohort entry point after their fifth birthday. If we left that until the next term a child turning five, say, on the second day of term would have had to wait an entire term before they can start. So having a mid-term entry point, and eight cohort entry points through the year, means that they will not have to wait as long. So it gives parents more flexibility around when their child will start school. Schools with high enrolment numbers will have more manageable cohort sizes, and that is important for the individual teacher-to-student attention, which we know is vitally important in those early first years. It does reduce the costs for parents around early childhood education.

The Education and Workforce Committee has recommended two technical changes to the bill in relation to cohort entry. The first is to replace reference to students attending school with a reference to students being enrolled in school. The other change removes the reference to four-year-olds attending school. The Government certainly supports those changes.

The next major set of changes is around private schools’ registration criteria. This provision brings the safety requirements for private schools into line with what is already required for State and State integrated schools. I welcome the support of the private schools for these changes.

Currently the Secretary for Education cannot consider student safety when registering a private school. The bill adds an additional registration criteria for private schools that requires them to be physically and emotionally safe places for students. This will help to ensure that all of our students, regardless of the type of school they attend, are able to learn in a safe environment. Adding a new registration criteria will allow the Secretary for Education to consider the physical and emotional safety of the students when assessing a private school’s application for registration. Importantly it will also allow the secretary to intervene in a private school if he or she has concerns about the safety of students. Those interventions can include issuing the school with a notice to comply with safety requirements, requiring the school to inform parents that there is a safety concern, and in some cases cancelling the school’s registration if the secretary and the school cannot agree on how to resolve those concerns. The Education Review Office will also be able to review the private school’s safety policies and procedures. As I indicated, this simply brings private schools into line with the requirements on the majority of schools which are public or State integrated.

The bill ensures that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions on matters relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy. The Government, in keeping with the promise made to New Zealanders prior to the last election, has restored the right for teachers to elect the majority of representatives to their professional body. The council’s got many important functions including setting the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for qualification that lead to teacher registration. We need to make sure that the public interest in those processes is protected.

The bill requires the council to consult with the Minister of Education before making changes to the criteria for teacher registration and the standards for the qualifications that lead to teacher registration. It still leaves those decisions with the council. It gives the Minister the ability to issue a Government policy statement regarding one or more of the council’s functions, which the council must have regard to when performing its functions. The Government is responsible for supporting an adequate supply of teachers for the policy that puts children’s learning at the centre and for maintaining the quality of our public education system. There must be a mechanism for the Government to ensure that its direction is being followed.

The committee has made five changes relating to these provisions, and I’ll talk through them briefly. The first of these changes amends clause 12 of the bill, requiring the council to consult with the Minister when reviewing and then subsequently changing the criteria for teacher registration or the standards for qualifications. In the original drafting, the council’s ability to maintain the criteria and standards without consulting the Minister was removed. That was a mistake, and the committee has corrected that so that if the council is keeping the standards as they are, they do not have to consult with the Minister.

The committee has also made two changes relating to the power in the bill for the Minister to issue a Government policy direction. First, they’ve recommended that any Government policy direction be presented to the House of Representatives and published in the Gazette. The Government supports this change. Secondly, the committee has recommended changing the name of the Government policy direction to a “statement of Government policy”. This is an important change because it follows concerns that a direction implies the council would be required to follow it. That’s never been the case and was never the Government’s intention. The Government supports this recommendation so that it’s clear that while the council must have regard to the statement of Government policy, it remains an independent entity.

The committee also recommended two other technical changes: changing all references to the Education Council to the Teaching Council—which, of course, has been Government policy for some time—and amending the commencement date for the Teaching Council provisions so that they come into force the day after the bill receives Royal assent, and I support those.

Finally, the major section that I want to talk about is the repeal of the provisions around communities of online learning. The bill repeals the provisions in the Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017 that would have enabled communities of online learning—or COOL—to be established. These provisions were due to come into force at the end of this year.

Under the legislation enacted by the previous Government, had it been implemented—which was, of course, implemented with very little consultation—it would have opened the door for children with additional learning needs to be shuffled away from schools to private providers. It would have allowed private sector bodies who are not education bodies to become accredited as COOLs. Tertiary and other private sector bodies would not be required to teach to the national curriculum or employ registered teachers. Online learning could become an option for any student that chose it, even if it was not the best option for them. In this form, COOLs were not innovative or collaborative and they could potentially become a way for schools to off-ramp students with additional learning needs, and that is something that this Government is not willing to tolerate. Existing online providers such as Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu will not be affected by this change, and they’ll be able to continue to offer online learning on the same basis that they do now. The committee has by majority not recommended any changes to these provisions of the bill.

In summary, this bill strengthens New Zealand’s quality public education system. It gives parents confidence that when they enrol their children, they’ll be starting school after the age of five, and it ensures that if they’re enrolling in a private school, their parents can have confidence that their children will be learning in a safe environment.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, I’m actually not pleased to have to rise and oppose this legislation in the House. I’m just on the back of, actually, about 70 meetings across New Zealand, and the message from New Zealanders is “Let’s hear a Parliament that puts children at the centre of decisions that are made.” Tonight, this evening, we have a bill that is incredibly ideological. The reality is, we know, that for the first year-and-a-half of this Government a large part of the agenda has been dismantling everything that National did rather than putting children at the heart of it. Let’s look at each aspect of this bill and ask that fundamental question.

Let’s start with cohort entry. The reality is it is the parent that comes up to me that wants flexible work, that was looking at—potentially days or weeks before their child’s fifth birthday—enabling their child to be able to have the benefit of forming greater relationships with other children in cohort entry, literally at a maximum of eight weeks. When you did the modelling, for many children maybe a week or two. That is the reality. And why are we here? We’re here because of ideology.

Now we have a fundamental shift. It is a principled shift in New Zealand, a country that enabled children to start their children at the age of five. That no longer exists for those schools in the future that adopt cohort entry, because under this legislation—and I do take the point in terms of mid-point, and we have more cohort entry now that is available—there will be some children that will not have that right under the bill that this Minister has put through the House. That is the reality.

The other point that I want to make is, again, the reality is there are a lot of working parents for which what they’ve argued for is a recognition that for some children—not for every child; it might be a small number of children—it makes sense for them to start a few days or a few weeks before their fifth birthday, and National supported them. It’s sad that we’re in a situation and we’re literally having to pass legislation because the Minister doesn’t want those parents to be able to have their fundamental rights upheld in this House.

The other core ideological aspect of this bill is around the Education Council. I’ll tell you what, doing 70 meetings across New Zealand, I heard the passionate pleas by principals, by teachers, who said “Nikki, please do not let us be overtaken by these hubs. We don’t want our independence as professionals to be dictated by officials.” So we had the Minister, who stood up and made passionate speeches in Opposition about how he was going to deliver independence for the profession, and then we had this proposal creeping along outside of this Government that is arguing to take over the profession. Then he has the gall to pass some legislation before this that goes on about how much we’re going to give the profession all of this independence, and then whammy: he puts this bill in the House that says “We’re going to tell you what to do.” That’s the reality—that’s the reality.

They can talk all they want about the composition of the profession and the council; this little clause that slipped into this bill, and I know because I’ve spoken to the teachers, I’ve spoken to the unions—they were not expecting that and what occurred in this bill. The reality is this is a Government that talks a big talk around the autonomy of principals and teachers, but it walks a completely opposite line. We see that in this bill around the provisions in terms of the Education Council, and we see it in the Tomorrow’s Schools proposals that are currently on the table with the independent task force.

There have been some improvements in the Education and Workforce Committee. I want to acknowledge that, and I want to thank all of the members of the select committee who contributed to that. One of the core aspects of the improvements in the bill is actually to say to the Government “There has to be transparency.” It is correct that some of the members of the select committee said “We don’t agree with the level of State control that this Government is trying to put on teachers, but if you’re going to do it, then, actually, you need to be transparent and put it through the House of Representatives.”

Another aspect of this bill, again, where we see the Government is not focused on not only the future of our education system but actually what’s right for a group of young people that have been disadvantaged for a long period of time—and I can see Minister Martin looking at me. I want to pay tribute to an extraordinary New Zealander. I want to pay tribute to Rachel Whalley. I want to pay tribute to her from the Virtual Learning Network. For years she’s fought with a group of other principals and teachers, and I want to acknowledge—and the Minister Tracey Martin is doing a hand signal to me which is about money. But you know what? In a scheme of $100,000 or $300,000, that is not the future of the Virtual Learning Network.

The reality is, if this bill, which gets rid of and scraps communities of online learning, had a replacement system in place for the thousands of kids—whether I am visiting rural communities, whether I’m visiting isolated islands that don’t have access to certain subject areas—then maybe this Government would be able to take a decent moral stand on the future of learning for kids in isolated areas. But the reality is because it is so intensely ideological it chose not to put up an alternative regime. I understand the concerns that have been raised about ensuring that we have quality providers, ensuring that we get that balance right in terms of flexibility and whether it’s accredited providers in the tertiary area, whether it’s other subject specialists—we understand that balance. But why didn’t we have a replacement system?

I tell you what people are saying to me: they’re saying “This Government doesn’t have any ideas. They’re a year and a half in. They can’t put forward a decent policy to enable disadvantaged communities, particularly in some rural communities, to have access to the learning that they deserve”. When National put in a $200 million investment to connect every school in New Zealand to ultrafast uncapped data—the reality is you have to have some models that enable the spreading of that learning. This Government has ripped it up with nothing to replace it with, and I’ll tell you what the sector is saying to me: “That’s a mistake. They might not have agreed with this regime but that is a fundamental mistake.” I want to acknowledge, as I said before, the Virtual Learning Network.

The final other provision in this bill does relate to private schools. Now, I do want to acknowledge—could anyone in this House agree with the fact that we need to, as fundamental parliamentarians or people in society, ensure that where there is a risk to the emotional, physical, mental well-being of students we can close down the school? Of course, but what does the regulatory impact statement say? It doesn’t say there’s any evidence that we need to change the law in fact, there’s costs as a result of that. But let’s put that aside and let’s actually just agree that while there might be no evidence of this actually occurring, at a principled level we are supportive of having a change that says, potentially, if there needs to be greater mechanisms to deal with a situation where you have real risk to physical, emotional, and mental well-being of students—that’s fine.

But the lack of detail—and my colleague Simeon Brown will talk about that tomorrow in the committee stage of the House—is important, because when you look at the backdrop of this bill, when you look at the fact that I’ve got integrated schools who I’ve been meeting with across New Zealand who are freaked out with what is happening in terms of Tomorrow’s Schools, they think that actually there is a real threat to those schools, whether they’re partnership schools—which, obviously, the Government has gotten rid of—whether they’re integrated schools, or private schools, that this is a Government that does not believe in choice. That comes to the heart of it.

I tell you what Minister Tracey Martin: when I sit down with the many parents, and the kids who have additional learning needs, they do want some choice actually. So the reality is, on this side of the House, we are a party that thinks about what is best for children rather than ideology. On the other side of the House, we have a range of areas that are going through this legislation, not because they are the best thing for children but because this is a Government that is more focused on dismantling the previous National Government’s policies—rather than ensuring that the child who was in a rural area gets access to distant distance learning, that the child whose parents want to take up a job—that child who is emotionally ready for school can start a couple of weeks or a couple of days before their fifth birthday. We actually know that there is a huge value in having independence of the profession, but this is a Government that is ideological and won’t do the best for children.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. It’s a pleasure for me to rise and fully support the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I’d like to begin by thanking the Minister of Education for all of his work in ensuring that this work is done. The Ministry of Education, as well, has done quite a lot of work behind the scenes, and I’d like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee who have sat through and have had a considered approach to looking at our education system.

The bill before us, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), deals, in part, with the health and well-being of our students. On that note, I’d like to acknowledge that today is World Asthma Day, the first Tuesday in May. Also that a lot of our schools, many of our schools play a role in supporting and ensuring that our students are safe and that those who need asthma medication, those who need Ventolin inhalers, that their inhalers are up to date. So I commend and I thank all of those schools.

The Minister of Education, in his speech, covered in detail—outlined the importance of the measures that the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) proposes to do and how it will strengthen our education system. Just in response to the former Minister of Education, the Hon Nikki Kaye, one of the things that she stated was that in the previous Government there was a focus on learners. We in this Government are also focused on ensuring that the learners are at the centre. She also discussed how she’s been out there, talked with lots of people, had very many, many consultations across the country. The education conversation, Kōrero Mātauranga, was also a process where the Ministry of Education and us on this side of the House connected with everyday folks. We connected with young people, as young as five some of them. I myself actually hosted 34 fono with Pacific folks, as well as ethnic communities. I went right across the country, traversing to ensure that we get their views.

One of the things that we’re proposing is that we ensure that the key Education Council—the decisions that they are making are made in the context of Government policy. So as we finalise Government policy, we do ensure that we also hear from the public. One of the things that came through loud and clear from these consultations—and I’ve got to say, with the online survey that the Ministry of Education also had, this is probably one of the largest collaboration of people’s input into the education system, over 50,000. I can say from the conversations that I heard directly from our people right across Aotearoa that they were saying things like, “We need to address and ensure that our students, when they go to school, that they are safe, that they are safe culturally”. They were saying things to us along the lines of that they feel they are addressed in a racially biased way; that our schooling system should also address, and have a focus on, ensuring that racism at all levels is addressed. Just earlier on tonight, across the hall, there was a multicultural event for New Zealand. We had three students—they all presented on their experience of racism in schools. These are our own high school students.

This Education Amendment Bill (No 2) says that we need to ensure that our students are safe in school. Yes, we need to ensure that the private schools provide a safe place for our students. What is currently proposed means that private schools are indeed safe and that if our students are experiencing emotional harm, if our students are experiencing physical harm—currently the legislation right now does not allow or give the power to the Secretary for Education to be able to ensure that that it is actually enforced. As the select committee heard, the presentations from folks that came through to the select committee—of the seven oral submissions that were received on this bill, five were in favour of ensuring that the new registration criterion for private schools actually addressed this, moving forward. Only two were in opposition to this, so not everyone agreed on how we move forward in this area. But I think we all agree, in this House, that our students when they attend school—be they private schools, or State sector schools, or State integrated schools—they need to be safe.

The current provisions of the Education Act 1989 do not allow the Secretary for Education to consider student safety when considering private school registration applications, so the proposals in this amendment bill will ensure that this is addressed moving forward.

If I could just go back to the discussion in terms of ensuring that our students feel safe emotionally as well, we know that in Aotearoa New Zealand we have one of the highest rates of suicide, which is not something that any of us are proud of. There are many initiatives that are in schools; many of our schools have school nurses, many have counsellors, but some of our students don’t even seek out that assistance. Ensuring that our students feel emotionally safe is definitely something we should address.

Repealing the provisions for communities of online learning: one of the things that came through in the select committee process is the fact that when this particular legislation and policy from the previous Government came through, a lot of our folks actually did not have much of a say on communities of online learning before it was brought in as a policy. The Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017—it created this regime of online learning, which includes distance learning, and, yes, in the future we will need a whole lot more provision of online learning and distance learning, but this legislation will ensure that the kind of learning that our students actually have in schools is something that all learners can actually access. I’ll give you an example: over in South Auckland, online learning is something that is encouraged, yes. But so many of our students in South Auckland, they don’t even have access to the internet at home, let alone have a tablet that they can actually work from. So online learning, for some of our students, is but a distant dream.

So as we look through and ensure that the system of education that we have is for the future, I also just want to remind us all that the education system we have right now was brought in under a Labour Government; 30 years ago, under a Labour Government, we brought in Tomorrow’s Schools. The question is, is it still fit for purpose? The answer to that is yes, for some of our students, because we do have an education system that is one of the best in the world, which is fantastic, but for some of our learners, Māori and Pacific students in particular, the educational outcomes for Māori and Pacific students are ones that we—especially when we look forward into who will make up the majority of our learners in schools, it will be Māori young students, it’ll be Pacific, as well as ethnic communities; they will make up about 50 percent of all of our learners. So it is important that we ensure the education system is one that is fit for purpose for everyone, not just for some of our learners, and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’m taking this call to oppose this bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), in its second reading. But before I go into the detail of this bill, I want to, as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, thank all the submitters. We received 18 submissions. There were 16 unique submissions, because two submitters submitted twice, so in total there were 18 submissions. So I want to thank them for their contribution and the time that they put into this legislation.

As we know, there are four main objectives in this legislation, and the name of this bill is the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), because there was another education bill before this. One of the provisions, one of the objectives in this legislation is related to that previous education amendment bill, and that has to do with the changes to the Education Council. So we were given the impression by the Government that the Government wants to change the structure of the Education Council because they want to make the Education Council independent of Government. But then, in this legislation, what we saw is that the Education Council is required to work within the context of the Government policy. There was a big discussion in the select committee process on the words “regard to Government policy”, that the Education Council will be required to give regard to the Government policy. This point, actually, was picked up by one of the submitters, and I want to thank them for picking that up, and then we got to elaborate on this to understand what this actually means.

So this term has already caused confusion to people, especially in the education sector. We received submissions on both sides, but a couple of submissions that were against this provision made their view very, very clear, and one of them was from the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers Association. They were really clear, and said that this will mean that the Minister will be able to intervene in the Education Council’s work and operation. That was the impression that was given to everybody, and that is one of the reasons why I oppose this legislation, because we don’t want Government to have the ability to intervene in the Education Council’s work.

The second submitter, the New Zealand Institute of Education, said that this provision will undermine the Education Council’s independence—exactly the point that we are making, and we don’t want this Government to have the ability to undermine the Education Council’s ability to perform independently, because that is the impression we were given in the first round when the structure of the Education Council will change, that it’s going to be completely independent. So these points were made very, very clear in the select committee process and they should be taken into consideration.

The second objective of this bill is to repeal provisions for communities of online learning. So the provisions for communities of online learning were put in place by the previous National Government, because we are futuristic, we can see what is needed, and we want to provide choice. So what we have seen is that this Government actually doesn’t believe in providing choice to people. They just want everybody to turn up to classrooms and have, you know, physically, teachers teaching them. Why do they want that? Yes, of course we want to know why they want that, and one of the reasons we know is that if there are more teachers, then they can have more union members. If there is more virtual learning, they won’t have that many union members, and that is the only reason they want to repeal this provision.

One of the submitters very clearly said that this was about providing access to rural communities to education—

Hon Members: Delivering for the unions.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Delivering for unions, yes, and this is about providing opportunity to all that cannot come to a classroom to learn. Even in classrooms, teachers let students go online and do their learning depending on the kind of project that they’re doing. Yep—universities, they put their lectures online so that students, if they want to go back and see those lectures again, they can do that. But this Government is saying, “No, online learning is not a good thing”. We just heard from the Minister the Hon Jenny Salesa. She said some students may not have iPads, but this is about providing that choice. So that doesn’t mean that you take away this choice, and we haven’t heard from this Government what is going to be put in place instead of this provision that was put in place by the previous National Government. So everybody wants to go online, we want to see more people being able to work online, more people able to study online, but this Government actually believes that no study should be done online and everybody should be coming to a classroom.

Third, a provision in this bill is about cohort entry. Yes, we know that before, children could start school as they turned five, and we changed this to say that if children are to reach their fifth birthday and there are only eight weeks left and it’s the start of the school term, they should be able to start school. But this Government is so adamant, saying that children should not be able to start school before they are five, and we’re just talking about eight weeks before their fifth birthday. We heard from a submitter, who said that this is going to put children behind, and children, actually, at that age are so eager to start school, but this Government doesn’t want them to start school at that age. They want them to wait, and it could be up to six weeks after their fifth birthday, which could create some financial implications for some parents, as one of the submitters said, because then they will have to make these additional day-care arrangements for these children. But does the Government care? They don’t.

The final point that I want to make—

Andrew Bayly: Uncaring Government, eh?

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —uncaring Government, exactly—is about private schools’ registration criteria, and, of course, nobody wants to see any kind of harm happening to any student in any kind of school, but here we haven’t seen the basis of this, and the approach that has been taken by this Government; we do not understand why this approach has been taken. So we are quite disappointed to see that this Government is not moving forward, not making the education sector move forward, but is actually bringing the education sector backwards. So we oppose this bill.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t sure what I was going to contribute until I came down to this House, and now I have so much material I’m not quite sure whether I’m going to get to do it in 10 minutes.

Let’s just start with the Hon Nikki Kaye and the conversation about cohort entry—let’s just start there. The Hon Nikki Kaye, quite rightly, identified that this Government is rolling back some of the changes that the previous Government did, but not all of them—just the stupid ones. What I found really interesting was the juxtaposition between the start of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech and the end of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech. At the end of the Hon Nikki Kaye’s speech, she said that this Government just doesn’t put children first, but at the start she said that it was really unfortunate that parents who wanted to go to work couldn’t put their kids into school earlier to save themselves some money. That was the start of her contribution.

Now, let’s get this clear. This bill has had 18 submissions, 16 unique submissions—two that were, apparently, submitted twice—the bill that introduced this had hundreds of submissions against it, masses of submissions against it, yet only 18 when we’re trying to unravel the dumb ideas. What this was about was that the reality was boards of trustees can still, and always have been since the introduction of Tomorrow’s Schools, bring in cohort entry. All they had to do was consult with their communities. That’s all they had to do. The previous Government did not create cohort entry—no, it didn’t. It dictated when you could do it, so it limited the choice for boards of trustees by when you could do cohort entry, and this Government has expanded on that choice for boards of trustees now.

But what the previous Government did do was it decided to save itself money, and that is what the regulatory impact statement in the previous legislation clearly identified. This was about saving the State early childhood education (ECE) dollars, because the faster they could get kids out of ECE and into school, they could save the supplementary cash that they had been paying into ECE.

Mark Patterson: So it wasn’t about the kids?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: It wasn’t about the kids; it’s never been about the kids. So it was either about—let’s just take what the Hon Nikki Kaye said—people going to work faster, it was about parents saving money, and it was about the State saving money, because that’s what the previous regulatory impact statement said. So this Government is going to undo that capacity. Children need to be children for as long as possible.

The other thing that I found fascinating was the change of statement. The other reason why the Hon Nikki Kaye said that this was about students—she said “students that were capable”. Now, let’s suggest that they’re gifted students, shall we? Let’s suggest that the Hon Nikki Kaye is saying that the previous Government put in “four years and eight-month-old’s ability to start school” just in case your child was gifted. The same Government that removed “well above” from national standards? The same Government that removed all funding from gifted students? Do we really, really think that was the reason why this Government decided that four-year-olds and four years and eight-month-olds could go to school? I don’t think so. We are undoing that. It was submitted on by many, many people when it was introduced; only 16 unique submissions when we’re removing it—we’re removing it.

Then we have the Teaching Council—a fascinating contribution by the last speaker, Parmjeet Parmar, around the Teaching Council and how the previous Government supposedly wanted it to be independent. It took away all democracy—took away all democracy—from the Teaching Council; no ability for teachers or the profession to actually elect their own members. Apparently, that’s really independent, where you are beholden upon the Minister for your very job. But no, apparently that’s how the National Party sees an independent body. So what has this Government done? We have put back in the ability for at least the majority of the Teaching Council to be elected by the profession.

But here’s the trick: it is compulsory for students to go to school. Every single New Zealander is invested in the education system. So, therefore, the Teaching Council, which has the ability to create the criteria for teacher registration—there is a responsibility on the Government to make sure that initial teacher training is appropriate, and it is initial teacher training that is required, the criteria that is required, to make sure that teachers meet teacher registration. It is absolutely appropriate for the State to say that the Teaching Council must work with the Government when making sure that they set that criteria. Why the Post Primary Teachers Association would be surprised by it, I have no idea. I’d be interested to have a look at their actual submission and the conversation they’ve had. But I find it very interesting that suddenly the party that decided to do away with all independence around the appointment of those on the Teaching Council now is very worried that there is going to be no independence.

Let’s get to the new registration criteria for private schools. The current provisions of the Education Act 1989 do not enable the Secretary for Education to consider student safety when considering private school registration applications. Oh my goodness! The Hon Nikki Kaye, in a strange way, even almost argued against that—even almost argued against that—by saying that integrated schools and private schools were freaking out because they might now actually have to be safe places for kids. Right? All they have to do is meet the same criteria as every other school.

Simeon Brown: They already are—they already are.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: And who’s checking on them, Mr Brown? Because there’s no criteria right now by which to check on them. So Mr Brown, apparently, is quite happy for students to wander off, and we’ll just trust some people.

Now, let’s talk about communities of online learning (COOL) and the Virtual Learning Network, raised by the Hon Nikki Kaye. Anybody would think that the Virtual Learning Network did not exist before the National Government created a piece of legislation and put COOLs into it. The Virtual Learning Network has been around for years. NorthNet has been around for years. HarbourNet has been around for years. For goodness’ sake! They didn’t invent it. What the COOLs that that party put in place did was allow five-year-olds to stay at home all day, every day and learn online. That is what that piece of legislation that they put through this House did. This Government happens to want to listen to the mental health experts, happens to want to talk to the science advisers that say that belonging—a sense of community, being able to interact, making sure that young children are not isolated—is an important part of growing up in a community and being able to interact, for your long-term well-being. Communities of online learning already existed before the last lot decided they would open it up to privatisation, ultimately.

The previous contributor said, “We’ve removed it but there’s nothing to replace it.” Actually, they hadn’t even started yet. That’s the first thing. Secondly, they’d already existed, they’re already in place, and they’re already in schools. Students who have the capacity now go into and start to do, either with Te Kura or any of those other networks—they still are able to do it. This does not remove the capacity that they already have to deliver online learning to students, and so therefore there is no need for the drama that is coming from the other side.

What there is, however, is a need to plan the appropriate way to expand online learning for the future. We will be able to maintain a level of quality, and we will be able to deliver it across different communities in New Zealand. The conversation from the other side around rural communities who are able to access online learning makes it sound like we don’t need any teachers in rural classrooms. That sounds incredibly dangerous, that the other side has this image of “If you’re in a rural area, we’re not going to actually even put any teachers in there; we’re just going to leave you with some computers.” That is not what this side of the House is prepared to accept.

Communities of online learning already existed before they were placed into the legislation; we are removing the privatisation of them. We are removing the capacity of five-year-olds to be able to stay at home—from five-year-olds through to 16-year-olds to be able to stay at home. Some of the most moving submissions I had on making sure that this criteria inside the legislation was removed were actually from the health schools and clients of theirs who said “My parents would have done anything to make me happy, to stop me feeling anxious. They would’ve let me stay at home, because they would’ve allowed anything to happen to try and keep me safe, but I needed to go to school, I needed to participate, and I needed to get better.”, and that is why this was inappropriate. We need a safe way to do online learning. We are and we will expand it, but we will not privatise it. Kia ora.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. OMG! That was an interesting speech, wasn’t it? Well, I found that contribution by the Hon Tracey Martin to be quite interesting—

Hon Member: Insufferable.

SIMEON BROWN: Yeah, potentially a bit insufferable, but I would never say anything like that to the Hon Tracey Martin, because I do quite like her for the chocolate fish she gave me last year, and I still do remember that. But let me just rebut a couple of the points that she mentioned there. She talked about the Teaching Council—

Dr Duncan Webb: It’s like giving candy to a baby.

SIMEON BROWN: Yes, I’ve got a baby, thank you so much, Duncan. That’s very much appreciated, Duncan Webb. Thank you very much. That’s very kind of you.

She mentioned the fact that she was very interested in what the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) said, because apparently they opposed the Government’s bill. Yes, they do oppose it, and I’ve got a copy of the submission here. I’m happy to table it. Actually, it should be available to the Minister to read. It says that in the build-up to the introduction of the Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa) Amendment Bill the Government went to great lengths to point out that it wanted to retain the Teaching Council as an independent body. And guess what? The unions bought that message. And now the PPTA has turned up and said the PPTA believes that the changing of the Act, thus requiring the council to have regard to Government policy, actually undermines the Teaching Council’s independent status.

So I would encourage the member to actually go and read the PPTA’s submission, because what this bill does is it does undermine the status of the Teaching Council, the status which they as a Government said they wanted to make sure was independent. And this bill undermines that.

Look, I’d like to also just quickly touch on the new criterion for private schools to include physical and emotional well-being in their criteria for registration. And we heard again Tracey Martin talk about the fact that, you know, this is about ensuring that our private schools are kept safe. Well, I’d encourage the Minister to go in and visit some of the private schools and ask the question: are they actually not safe already?

Hon Tracey Martin: You don’t know, because there’s no criteria.

SIMEON BROWN: I go and visit Saint Kentigern College, in my electorate, which is just right beside my electorate office—so I do know. It is a very safe school, and there is no evidence—there is no evidence—to show that this will have any impact at all to improve the emotional and physical well-being of our students at our private schools.

Yes, of course we want our schools to be emotionally and physically safe, but including this as a registration criterion will have no impact. I challenge the member over there to actually look at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research survey, which showed that there is significant bullying in our schools up and down New Zealand and, actually, to look inside our State schools and not to say this is the only solution to improving emotional and physical well-being in our schools.

The National Party does oppose this piece of legislation. It’s ideologically driven by this Government. We oppose it. Thank you.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), so aptly named. There’s been a lot of quite fascinating and rather controversial and rather polarised points raised throughout this debate, but I guess it’s all the more worthwhile to kind of bring attention to a few of them, given that I’ve jotted down a few notes, particularly from the speaker who has just taken his seat, Simeon Brown, who I’d like to congratulate on the new arrival to his family and also for his use of the terminology “OMG”, which I think does perhaps demonstrate the importance of the work that we have been doing in the Education Conversation to bring it into the 21st century and to make sure that it is fit for purpose and indeed culturally appropriate.

But what this piece of legislation does—it’s multifaceted. The first point is around ensuring that the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’s decisions on matters relating to the teaching profession are made within the context of Government policy. This, of course, numerous National Party members have spoken in opposition to, because they believe that there is the importance of maintaining the independence of the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.

They say this despite having removed, arguably, the independence of the Teaching Council by removing elected members and only placing on the Teaching Council ministerial appointments. Those appointments could come from wherever the Minister in charge of education would like them to come from. So it was indeed actually the National Party who took away democracy and autonomy and independence originally from the Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand.

What we are doing—and actually with the previous piece of legislation restoring that democracy and autonomy by ensuring that there will be at least a majority of elected members to it—is also ensuring that those decisions that they are making comply with Government policy. It is simply a matter of ensuring that really important decisions that are being made around teacher training are appropriate and fit for purpose, because there is currently no form of public accountability to the Teaching Council beyond the election of those to the Teaching Council from the teaching profession. So it is an insight for the general public into that work programme and what they can expect.

The second point was around requiring private schools to be safe places for students. The speaker before me, Simeon Brown, said that these places are safe already and asked about the risk. The fact of the matter is that we simply just think that there should be a common-sense baseline that all schools, whether they are public or private or otherwise, should be held to. I think that’s pretty straightforward and common sense because whilst that standard doesn’t apply across the spectrum, there is that risk that a school that is private dips below it. And you’d think that the National Party would be in favour of common sense.

So too, there is the removal of provision for communities of online learning. At the time that the former National Government decided to rush these changes across the line, they were noted by a number of different stakeholders as hastily developed, which is why it’s crucially important that we have had the Government-led Education Conversation under way, which I’d note we’re trying to make as sustainable as possible, because the National Party MPs who hold education portfolios have been invited to engage in it, and I think it’s really crucial that they do engage in that conversation ongoing. As was said by the Associate Minister of Education, Tracey Martin, communities of online learning and online learning itself existed well before the National Party decided to implement this rushed change to the legislation.

And, finally, we ensure that school boards cannot adopt a cohort entry policy that enables children to begin school as part of a cohort before five years of age. This is something which all three parties in Government are on the record for, time and again backing up as our position, as has been the call from those who are actually engaged in the teaching profession, those people who Dr Parmjeet Parmar, the chair of my Education and Workforce Committee, calls “The unions!”—yes, those unions that represent our teaching profession by and large. I’m not sure who the National Party intends to be getting onside, especially when they’re asking for a decrease in the ratio in our classrooms and they’re seeking to get alongside teachers despite underpaying them for the past 10 years, when they are positioning them as an other—“The unions!”

So too, Dr Parmjeet Parmar said that this Government doesn’t believe that people want or deserve choice. I just find that to be quite a bizarre statement, given that what we have done through the process initiated under the Education Conversation is ensure that there is a huge amount of input from the public, from every sector of society that is impacted by education, and, again, by the National Party as well to feed into that process to ensure that we have a sustainable pathway forward that is depoliticised for education in this country.

Coming to the heart of it, those on this side of this House fundamentally believe that the purpose of education is about creating citizens—those who are creatively thinking, those who critically analyse, and, instead of just those who are educated to compete and to solely be workers, those who are able to come together and develop a new pathway forward. The Green Party is incredibly proud to be commending this bill to the House.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for a chance to speak on what is, basically, a crude dismantling of previous National Party reforms. The Government didn’t even try to mask the raw ideological grab at important educational institutions and systems. The messy hodgepodge includes, ironically, considering the previous bill—I guess you could call it the No. 1 bill, this being the No. 2 bill—reducing independence of the Education Council, deliberately burdening private schools, annoying and confusing parents as to when their kids can start school, and, finally, scrapping communities of online learning. On that last note, as a demonstration of how ill-disciplined, ill-advised, and ill-inducing this bill is, they’re scrapping communities of online learning without a replacement. Go figure.

The Virtual Learning Network, which the Minister previously referred to—that group of educators told us at the Education and Workforce Committee that online learning, if done right, is perfect for students who are not engaging or have diverse needs. Very fascinating to hear a Cabinet Minister just earlier refer to what sounded to me like implied lazy five-year-olds with lots of screen time—extraordinary comments. The good folks from the Virtual Learning Network told us—and this is a real kicker, here—that no one had talked to them. Again, I repeat: no one had talked to them. That’s what they said when they turned up for their submission, and I and many members here in the Chamber were there in person. Very reasonably, the Virtual Learning Network simply want the following: a regulatory framework to be clarified. That’s not asking for much. It’s not rocket science. That does sound reasonable. But, folks, don’t hold your breath.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So this is a split call. I call Jan Tinetti.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you. I’m delighted to be here speaking on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Something that I’m quite passionate about is what I’m going to discuss in my time here this evening, which is cohort entry. Now, we heard from the previous speaker, Denise Lee, that this would give parents confusion about when they start school. Actually, this tidies up that confusion. If you want confusion, I suggest that the previous speaker goes and looks at the current website now that explains how the current cohort entry works. That actually takes quite a bit of time to get one’s mind around.

Now, the reason that I’m quite passionate about this is because, actually, it was under the previous Government’s policies that they had the advisory group for early learning. They talked about cohort entry in that particular group. The then Minister, Hekia Parata, brought together a fantastic group of early childhood educators, academics, and schooling representatives. At the time, in December 2014, it was stated in their press release that Minister Parata “has appointed an advisory group to help children get the best possible start to their early learning and schooling.” Academics were appointed to that group, such incredible, amazing, gifted, and talented people such as Dr Joce Nuttall, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi, Dr Jeanette Clarkin-Phillips, Dr Lesley Rameka, Ali Glasgow, Carol Hartley, Brenda Soutar, Jan Taouma, and the two schooling reps, Adelle Broadmore and one Jan Tinetti.

In that group there was actually a willingness to look at cohort entry. We absolutely talked about how that could be beneficial to children and to schools. But that group, who the Minister at the time said were some of the cleverest people involved in the early childhood sector, said under no circumstance should children ever start school before the age of five years old. So why was it that the then Government could listen to some of the recommendations from that advisory group but not a critical and key recommendation that said that those children shouldn’t start school?

Now, where did that come from, that recommendation? Evidence—strong evidence that I sat and had to read through as part of that group. Evidence, worldwide evidence and New Zealand evidence, that said that, actually, at that time, a few weeks could mean a lot to those particular children because, as we all know, child development changes a lot at that particular age, and it was most important that we kept our children in the early childhood settings. So those academics were absolutely adamant, and when this was changed and the cohort entry allowed for sometimes up to eight weeks before the age of the fifth birthday, this particular advisory group, led by Dr Joce Nuttall, wrote to the then Government suggesting that they’d made a mistake in allowing early cohort entry to happen.

This is why I’m so passionate, because in this bill we are able to put this right. We are putting our children at the centre. We’re not using some ideological basis to do that; we are using evidence. We’re not putting other people at the centre. We are putting those children right at the centre of our policies and our legislation, and that is the most important and strongest thing that we can be doing for these children. That’s why I am so proud of this bill and proud to be putting a very big wrong right.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to take a short call on this bill tonight. I’d like to acknowledge my colleagues who’ve made extraordinarily good contributions and have covered much of the material, and who were indeed in the select committee, as I was not. What I would like to talk about, briefly, is cohort entry, and just really take a look at what we’ve heard so far from the other side of the House and deal with some rebuttal, you could say.

Firstly, just briefly dealing with Jan Tinetti—I’m not sure that we actually should be changing legislation because of something Jan Tinetti didn’t understand on the internet. If that was the case, we would potentially be here a long time and be rather busy.

But what I want to do is actually base my contribution tonight on what Tracey Martin said, because, actually, there are a few of us mothers on this side of the House tonight who were listening to her contribution and our blood was boiling. Tracey Martin has henceforth come to this House tonight and decreed that if you send your kid to school before they’re five years old, you are a terrible mother. That is classic left-wing politics: we know best. We will dictate to you what is best for your family and for your child, because we know best. You can’t possibly know what’s best for your child and your family. We know what’s best. I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It’s so wrong on so many levels, because parental choice is about the ability to know what is best for the individual child. Some families hold their child back until they’re six to send them to school. Others want to start them slightly earlier. It’s for a variety of reasons: maybe the child is ready, maybe they’ve got an older sibling at the school, and maybe—yes, maybe that mother wants to go back to work, and that is not the bad, negative, terrible thing that Tracey Martin seems to think it is. Actually, mothers make choices to go back to work most often in the best interests of their family and of their child, because it takes some of the pressure off the family. Maybe it’s a financial pressure; maybe it’s an emotional pressure of the mother. There are many reasons—maybe they want all of their children going to the same place at the same time. There are a number of reasons, but Tracey Martin is going to dictate to you that you are a terrible mother and it’s bad for your child because she knows best.

How would she feel, I wonder, if I told her that I sent my son to day care when he was 10 months old? She’s probably reeling over there. What an awful parent I am. I know. The guilt of the mothers out there listening to her dictate what’s best for their child—how absolutely appalling. It is such a destructive attitude. We are standing for choice and backing parents and mothers to know what is best for their family and for their kid and not making them feel guilty for making that decision. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thanks, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to take a call and talk from the position of an evidence base, which, actually, is a place of strength. This bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) probably isn’t going to make the front page of the paper. You never know—it might get Judith Collins baking. Judith Collins and I used to have baking competitions when we sat on the former Commerce Committee. But I tell you what it is about: it is about protecting the integrity of our education system—I mean, clearly, something that the Opposition doesn’t get and certainly doesn’t care about.

There’s a lot of important policy work being done on this side of the House in education, and what this bill is doing is attempting to right some wrongs. It’s actually about protecting the integrity of this thing we call the “education system”, which, I would hope, all New Zealanders really give a stuff about, because it’s actually something that we can feel really proud of. But, oh no, apparently the ability for parents to send their children to school before they’re five years old is more important, and dismantling our education system systematically, which is what they did over the nine years that they were in Government, is actually more important—certainly not listening to evidence: the evidence of experts, as my colleague Jan Tinetti has just spelled out. I’m proud, actually, to associate myself with a colleague who sat on the 2015 advisory group on early learning, which found, and had an evidence base to say, that going to school before you are five is too young.

At the same time they were dismantling that, they were also undermining and eroding our early childhood education sector and, again, were turning that into—I note they’ve all gone very quiet—a glorified babysitting service while they were introducing national standards in charter schools, which was, essentially, a privatisation by stealth of our world-class education system. What this bill does is dismantle some of those things. What Nikki Kaye described as “ideology” and “State control” is actually ensuring that Government policy and Government intent is taken some note of in our education system and the way that it’s being run, and that our children should not be attending school before they’re five years old. I described it as “protecting the integrity of our education system” but I think it also shows some real philosophical differences between that side of the House and this side of the House when it comes to the way that education is delivered.

I was reading the National Party’s minority view, and the thing that really stood out for me—because, I mean, other people have spelt out the key parts of this bill—is where they talk about student safety and the new criteria for registration of private schools: that a school “is a physically and emotionally safe place for students”. Well, gee, it’s actually a bit hard to argue against that, don’t you think? And they didn’t do a very good job in their minority report of arguing against it, even though they did argue against it. They said, “While we support any reasonable and logical legislation that improves student safety, there is a lack of detail around this aspect of the bill,”—so therefore it’s OK not to have a requirement for registration of private schools to be physically and emotionally safe places for students, because, apparently, there’s some detail that’s missing around what that actually means! I found that to be extraordinary.

Then there were the communities of online learning, which I think Nikki Kaye, in her contribution, revealed as being, essentially, an alternative means of providing schooling to children who didn’t fit in and which submitters—and I note that there weren’t that many submitters on this bill. There seemed to be pretty strong—not unanimous; I agree with that—objection to the communities of online learning being set up as an alternative, essentially, without the work that should have been done. I’ll just refer to NZEI Te Riu Roa’s submission, which said that the Government should definitely consider any online learning as part of a broader discussion about a longer-term vision for education. Then they gave a whole lot of detail around what that should look like and that there had not been anywhere near the amount of work that needed to be done to establish what the previous Government set up as the communities of online learning—and thank goodness this side of the House has made the decision to say, “No, we don’t want to do that, because it’s ill-thought-out, it’s an alternative to the education system that we should feel proud of, and it’s actually not going to deliver the outcomes that we need in our education system, which is world class and which we should feel proud of.” This side of the House is standing up for that.

Ultimately, unfortunately, the ideology that has been claimed by the Opposition is actually just exactly what they had proposed and they put in place, and what this bill does is undo that. I commend it to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I was going to use this contribution on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) to talk about communities of online learning and the opportunity they provided for choice. I was going to talk about the Teachers Council and a Minister who is introducing directives barely a few weeks after he said he wanted a more independent council, but instead I listened to the contribution of Tracey Martin and I felt absolutely compelled this evening to speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of parents up and down this country who struggle with making the choices about how they will balance their paid work with their children, about how they will balance their desire to give their children the very best in life—to give them their care, to give them their love, to provide them with opportunities and choices for the future—and about how they will balance that with the very real need they have to go to work each day and earn a crust.

I raise this tonight because what we have had in this debate is the spectre of Nikki Kaye suggesting, very fairly, that up till this point New Zealanders have expected that every five-year-old would have the right, on their fifth birthday, to attend school, and, yes, what that meant when cohort entry was introduced was that some children would start school a few weeks before they turned five—just a few weeks before they turned five—in order to hit the cohort entry. What Nikki Kaye suggested was that, actually, some parents might make that choice because they believe it best suits their child and their family circumstances—that it would best allow them to manage their family’s life—and what a very good point that is. But what did the “Minister for Telling Parents what is Best for their Children”—Minister Tracey Martin—say? She said that parents who made that choice—the parents who chose to let their children start school just a few weeks before their fifth birthday—weren’t putting their children’s needs first. Oh no, they weren’t; what they were doing was putting their desire to return to work first.

Well, Minister Tracey Martin, on behalf of New Zealand parents, I say: how dare you bring that attitude into this House? And to the parents of New Zealand who struggle with these choices, who try to do what’s best for their kids, I say to you, well, actually, I understand that you are doing what is best for your children, and I reject the notion that you get from Ministers like Minister Tracey Martin that somehow you are not putting your children’s needs first, because those parents are, and the last thing they need is another person laying another layer of guilt on them, telling them that the Government knows best what’s best for their children and their family. This Government doesn’t know what’s best for individual parents and their circumstances, and it smacks of the ideology of Labour and New Zealand First that they think they can tell parents what is best for them. Well, Tracey Martin may not trust you to make the choices that are best for your children, but I do and National does. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I hope it was not me that the member was talking about.

NICOLA WILLIS: No, I apologise.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for an opportunity to respond to some of those comments from the other side, in particular. I think it is quite rich to talk about parents and their blood boiling when, really, I’m very sure that the teachers watching this debate tonight will have their blood boiling, knowing that the National Party believes that schools, basically, should be babysitting services for children and that against all advice and all scientific evidence—as we have heard very eloquently explained by my colleague Jan Tinetti—they should not be starting school before their fifth birthday. But disregard all that, and I’m sure that all the professors and esteemed academics will equally feel rather offended that you called them rubbish.

Now, it’s actually a pleasure to be taking a call on the second reading of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). When this bill came through the House in its first reading, this subject matter was quite new to me, but it has been an absolute joy working with my colleagues on this committee, and especially Jan Tinetti. So it is a real privilege, after working on this bill for several months, to share a few thoughts.

I’d like to thank all the submitters who submitted on this bill, who took time to share their views. There were 18 in total who came to talk on a few specific aspects of this bill, which mostly we have heard about tonight.

I’d like to make a couple of mentions of the main ones. I’d like to start with the cohort entry provisions. As I said, the history to all this has been eloquently explained by Jan Tinetti, but, basically, the change that this bill makes is it goes back to the situation prior to the change made by the National Government in 2017. So, really, all it does is it reinforces the idea that is underpinned by evidence that children should not be starting school until they actually have had their fifth birthday. So, under new section 5 in clause 5 of the bill, a five-year-old will have to wait to enrol, and, at most, that will be six weeks.

So it is not even earth-shattering—it’s six weeks—and, in fact, I think some of the members on our Education and Workforce Committee may have missed it, but we were given facts and data and numbers and figures that showed exactly how much it would cost the parents and how many children would be affected. If you look at the figures, or, well, if the members of our committee or if the Opposition members had bothered opening the report rather than just looking at their lines, they would have seen in the report that more than half of the children are not affected or are not starting school later by—goodness me!—a whole week. It might be a whole week after their fifth birthday that they’re going to have to wait, and do you know how many of the kids may have to wait five weeks? Five percent of all the children may have to wait up to five weeks. I’m sure their parents’ blood will be boiling in that regard!

We’ve heard about children being at the centre of learning, and I thought that was a rather hypocritical comment, considering the fact that my colleague Jan Tinetti had an excellent bill earlier—no, actually, it was late last year, I believe—that put children at the centre of learning. Something that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner agreed with was the National Education and Learning Priorities (NELP) bill, which required the Minister to consult widely on the statement of NELP with children, and guess what? Since the Opposition put children at the centre of the learning, as they’ve just told us, you’d think they would support that legislation. But, no, they voted against it.

So the other thing I’d like to mention that has already been well traversed is that private schools should be safer places. A comment was made by the Waitakere Area Principals’ Association. They said that the physical and emotional safety of all students, irrespective of the nature of the school they attend, should be paramount. The same arguments were used by New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI), Save the Children, and the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA). So, really, private schools are having the same standards as the State schools and State integrated schools. I am at a loss to understand the objections are to it, and it has not been made very clear by the other side.

The other thing that I have been confused about by comments from the other side is in regards to changes to the Teaching Council. Now, both our chair—and this is quite disappointing—Parmjeet Parmar and also the member Simeon Brown must have completely missed the advice that we asked for, which was to have it explained to us what “having regard to” would actually mean in law. Some submitters—notably the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and NZEI, as has been mentioned—did make comments with regard to the importance of retaining the Teaching Council as an independent statutory body. We asked for some advice and the advice was—and the committee considered this—that the council’s independence is safeguarded by the requirement that it must “have regard to”, as opposed to being required to “giving effect to”.

So it has been explained to us—and it is even in all of our papers—that there is a very important distinction between “having regard to” and “giving effect to”, because they have different meanings in law, and what that means is that it’s well-established in case law that it’s completely two different things. So, once again, it is disappointing to hear that members of our committee and also the chair of our committee have completely missed or are disregarding that advice. Once again, “having regard to” means genuine consideration, but it means other factors can be considered to outweigh the thing that people are making a decision on.

Lastly, the repeal of the provisions for the community of online learning. Now, Denise Lee mentioned the comment about “Nobody spoke to us.” Well, when it comes to a lack of consultation, we heard it when it came to the community of online learning. NZEI, NZSTA, and PPTA all submitted that the communities of online learning legislation was developed hastily, with a notable lack of consultation with the education sector. I’ll read that NZEI mentioned “corporates driving what’s best for children”. NZEI called the legislation brought in by the previous Government “a flawed piece of legislation, ill-thought-out, and rushed”, and the PPTA elaborated on that same theme. They said the legislation was “rushed, un-consulted, and poorly conceived with little awareness shown of the impact on the wider school sector or the students involved”. They called it a “corporate entry point with New Zealand learners as guinea pigs” and “a lolly scramble, hoping different providers may come up with something good”. Now, if you’ve ever wanted to hear from experts in our education sector that the communities of online learning were not a good thing, then there it is.

Lastly, I would just like to say that it’s really important to add that the repeal of this doesn’t take anything away from the existing providers. The status quo will remain for online learning. The status quo will remain and will continue to operate—business-as-usual. The sky isn’t falling in. This is making things better. It’s putting children at the centre of learning. I support this bill and commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the amendments recommended by the Education and Workforce Committee by majority be agreed to.

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.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) 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

Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 2 May.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity tonight to speak on the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill in its third reading. It is a third reading, and it is my first opportunity to speak on this bill. I do understand it went to the Governance and Administration Committee, where it would have been shepherded through under my good friend Mr Brett Hudson, who’s a very good and able chairman.

I do want to turn to a couple of the provisions of the bill, but the first one is the primary focus, I guess, which is “to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities”, and the concern that we have on this side of the House is what does that mean in terms of cost and in terms of increased rates. I would like to turn initially just to the very, very good submission that was put in by Federated Farmers, who are one of the few organisations who do work across New Zealand, across every territorial authority, and across every regional council, certainly in terms of the organisations who submitted. So I do think they have a very important perspective, and this is what they had to say. Their recommendation, which is in paragraph 3.8, says, “Federated Farmers recommends that the Bill should not proceed and it should be reconsidered after the Productivity Commission’s upcoming inquiry into local government funding has been completed and its findings and recommendations considered by the government.”

I think that’s actually a very worthy thing that the select committee and, certainly, this Parliament should consider, because, as I understand it, the Productivity Commission’s submissions closed back in February—so, quite recently—and, in fact, they’ll be reporting back in about November. So it’s not very far away at all for Government and, indeed, this Parliament to wait and look at their findings and say, “Right, we need to take those on board and actually incorporate those into this legislation or, indeed, scrap this legislation and come up with something quite new.”

I did suggest this was going to be a brief call, but before I finish, I do just want to cover off a couple of comments that were raised previously when this bill was debated last week. The first one of those is that I enjoyed the contribution by Ms Chlöe Swarbrick, as I often do, but in her contribution, she said that what National was saying was that it is untrue that there would be increases in rates as a result of this bill. Well, Ms Swarbrick, I just want to point you to the contribution of your colleague Mr Paul Eagle, who, a couple of speeches before you, actually said that when this bill passes, “I know that councils will unleash a range of things”. So—to end—my question to Ms Swarbrick is: how does she think those things will be paid for? Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. There’s a wonderful project in my community. It’s a project run by an organisation called Te Whāngai Trust. They are an organisation who, some 20 years ago, identified the problem of young people who had fallen out of education, work, and training and who had got into a cycle, potentially, of drug or alcohol offending, had entered into criminal activity, and were falling out of the system. So what the good people at Te Whāngai Trust decided to do was to establish a native nursery to bring in these young people, to nurture them, to support them, to teach them, to mentor them, and to not stop doing that until they had helped to transition these young people into sustainable employment to get them on to their feet as young people who can be proud of themselves and make a contribution and sustain themselves and do something good for their community.

This trust has a native nursery that they have set up in my electorate, in the community of Wesley, in partnership with the Puketāpapa Local Board—the local governance unit in my community—and in partnership facilitated by the board with a range of other community organisations. Te Whāngai Trust at that site now brings in young people from our community who need this support. They provide that support and they also provide, now, native trees for local environmental projects, and that cycle of work is exactly what this bill is about. It’s about recognising that local government at its best, when it really understands local communities, is the best-placed layer of government to work with them and deliver the outcomes that our communities need.

There you have a project that delivers social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being outcomes. It is exactly the kind of thing that is good for our communities, that our communities want to be delivered, and that local government is better equipped to deliver, I would argue, than central government. This bill, in restoring the core competencies of local government to deliver those well-beings, is actually, I think, just confirming what most people in New Zealand believe the job of their local government is to deliver.

What is the institution of a library in a local community if it is not about the social and the cultural well-being of our communities? What is a local business association supported by local government if it is not about the economic well-being of our communities? What is a tree-planting project or an environmental stream restoration run by local government if it is not about the environmental well-being of our communities? Yet we have members on the other side of this Chamber seriously attempting to contend that those activities should somehow be beyond the stated remit of local government. That’s what they’re contending when they say that those well-being outcomes shouldn’t be identified as the core competencies—

Maureen Pugh: No, we’re not.

MICHAEL WOOD: —of local government. Well, if those members are not imputing that, as the member says, then it’s difficult to see what sustains the arguments that they are putting forward when they’re saying that these well-being outcomes should not be defined in the legislation that sets out the remit of local government in this country.

The reality is that local government in New Zealand is, in fact, more constrained even under this legislation than local government in virtually any other country that we compare ourselves to. That’s the reality on any measure, and, in fact, some of the submitters whom members on the other side of the House have quoted are submitters who, in fact, in other forums argue that local government should have more powers delegated to it.

Now, that’s not what we’re arguing here, but we are arguing that the core competencies that most New Zealanders expect to be delivered by local government should actually be reflected in the legislation, and let’s address head-on this argument which keeps coming up about rates. This was disabused in the second reading, when, with about five seconds of a Google search, the Taxpayers’ Union very helpfully informed me that under the previous legislative regime set in place in 2012 by those members currently in Opposition, rates increased at four times the rate of inflation. So the legs that the Opposition has to argue on this point are very stumpy indeed.

The reality is that local government is always under enormous pressure in the space of rates. The pressure comes because of years of underfunding because of its significant infrastructure needs, and I think it behoves those of us in central government—who should think of our local government colleagues as colleagues and not just whipping boys—to address those issues instead of making spurious arguments around the well-beings that have always been a part of local government in New Zealand, and will continue to be. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s my pleasure, tonight, to stand up and speak against the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill in its third reading.

I think Mr Wood has just given us a perfectly good example of why we don’t need this legislation. The reality is that he’s talked about all of the social projects, he’s talked about the trusts that were set up in his patch, and he’s talked about libraries. Well, actually, libraries have been around for a terribly long time, and they didn’t need four well-beings in the Local Government Act to put them there, because local government can simply do whatever its community asks it to do and is prepared to pay for. So, putting them in legislation simply adds a huge bureaucratic level—

Michael Wood: How?

MAUREEN PUGH: —into the reporting and assessment of local government. I can speak from experience, Mr Wood, because I was involved when the four well-beings were actually put into the Local Government Act. The reality is that every single activity of council has to be assessed against every one of those well-beings, and in order to do that—in order to have that assessment—you’ve got to consult with your community to see how they feel that you have performed against those assessments in the four well-beings.

So we have this huge compliance layer that is added to local government, and the reporting that needs to be done gets added into the audit process. Now, we all know what happens when you have Audit New Zealand come in to order your local government accounts and your activities—what happens is that Audit New Zealand comes along and then assesses again how well you’ve performed against those well-beings. There, Mr Wood, comes the cost. And where does that cost lay? Of course it lays with the ratepayers; there is no other way it can be paid for. So why would we want to layer yet another level of cost onto the ratepayers for absolutely no benefit? The things that happen in local government can happen with or without this legislation.

The only reason that I can think of that this Government would want to add these well-beings in is because it is divesting responsibility for those social outcomes back to local government, when it is the domain of central government to take care of. For that reason, I oppose this bill.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): E Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā koe. Ngā mema o Te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me. It’s been a busy day for all of us. During the dinner break, I was fortunate enough to host the Wairoa District Council in the Grand Hall. So I think there’s some relevance around empowering local councils, and we had one in our midst today. So I’m really fortunate to take a call in support of the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, and to remind us all that there are three main goals of this particular bill.

The first one talks about restoring the purpose of local government “to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities.” The second part is “to restore the territorial authorities’ power to collect development contributions for any public amenities needed as a consequence of development” and from the reserves from non-residential development. Thirdly, to get the technical clarification around development contribution powers in so far as the New Zealand Transport Agency is in mind. So those are the goals.

One thing that I do want to talk about, and that makes us distinctly different on this side of the House to that side of the House, is our desire to return democracy—return democracy back to our locally affected officials. It’s to empower and give them the tools that they require, through legislation, to make local decisions where they are best made. Like I say, having Wairoa District Council here in this House to celebrate the exponential, I guess, commitment and innovation that comes out of Te Wairoa with iwi leaders and with local businesses is testimony to a piece of legislation that allows that to happen for the people of Te Wairoa. It is around empowering our locally elected officials to ensure that they have the tools to make the decision.

I want to reference the speech, just briefly, of the Minister in the third reading, where she said, quote: “This bill is a key part of an all-of-Government shift towards taking a more inclusive, holistic approach to measuring our success as a country. It is no longer enough that we define and measure the health and progress of our communities in a narrow fiscal sense.” When you trip around the various local authorities, you can tell without having to sit around their board tables—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I don’t, I don’t.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: —that their passion for the environment, for the culture, and for the social outcomes for that community is absolutely apparent. So it’s no longer the narrow fiscal sense of measurement that having these four well-beings, under the last Government, enabled or hamstrung a lot of the local authorities.

Now, from that side of the House, I heard the allegations around overspend and the extra compliance costs, but I didn’t hear much proof. In fact, what I am led to believe is that evidence shows that council spend prior to 2012 and 2014 amendments was a lot less—i.e., before we removed these four well-beings from the Local Government Act, our councils were actually fiscally well managed. So the allegation that reintroducing them is going to lead to more spending—I have yet to hear from that side of the House any proof of that matter.

As we know, the local government sector in this country is the second, to the central government, largest asset holder throughout this country. It’s important to us as legislators that we enable them to make those decisions closer to home that meet those well-beings around social, economic, environmental, and culture—and this bill attempts to do that.

I do want to commend the Minister for bringing this bill to the House. I want to commend the submitters, and I understand that there were 129 written submitters; 28 from the local authorities, 74 from various interest groups, and 27 from individuals. It is a really important piece of legislation that, clearly, both councils and individuals and groups have submitted on. Out of those numbers of submitters I see 45 supported the bill and 10 opposed, and the balance of them were obviously keen to ensure that the legislation as we are reading it, as a third and final one, is robust and fit for purpose. I want to thank the submitters. I want to thank the Minister for bringing the bill in, and for the officials that have worked on it.

It is about returning the democracy to local authorities. It is to make sure that they are meeting the needs of the community as and when they wish to do that, and, like I say, this is a piece of legislation that distinguishes this side of the House from that side of the House. I recall coming into Parliament six years ago, when the promise of the Government of the day was to introduce online voting. That was a way of ensuring that people participated in the democratic decision-making of local government. It didn’t happen.

Shortly after that we had the amalgamation, which in Hawke’s Bay went down like a dead balloon. It was actually Te Wairoa, the Wairoa people, that actually stopped amalgamation in the greater Hawke’s Bay region.

It is important that we listen to local government. As I’ve travelled they’ve asked for these four well-beings to be returned. They see opportunities beyond just meeting the enabling four well-beings that we’re putting back into this bill. But it’s actually jumping ahead into the real business of creating relationships with iwi and with businesses to bring greater gains to their region and to their areas. I want to commend those very progressive councils that are doing that as we speak.

I’ve yet to hear any dissention to the movements of this coalition Government to reintroduce those four well-beings. It’s really a positive reception that this is happening, as we read this bill for a third and final time. But I’m thinking beyond the passage of this particular legislation and look towards those opportunities, particularly in our rural and provincial towns, which often get left out of the mix.

So as we commend the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill, the amendments, to the House, it is with a, I guess, sense of positivity and excitement that this bill does put back the authority at the local level, with communities, with the businesses, with iwi who just want to get on with doing the right things for those communities, create those opportunities. They want to work in partnership with this coalition Government. I think that’s a good thing for New Zealand, and I think it’s good for all local body authorities across the country that now we have the legislative framework to enable them to do the things that they want to do in their community and bring those gains.

I commend this bill to the House.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. There’s obviously been some scheduling problems here that’ve allowed us to actually speak on the same bill on the same side of the House to reinforce a very strong message.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: People take a call or they don’t.

GREG O’CONNOR: One thing I’ve really enjoyed about coming here is meeting my fellow politicians on both sides of the House. There are some very able people here, very bright people, very successful. Most only come here because they’ve been successful at what they did before they came to the House. They’ve been successful at organising their electoral campaigns. So the people don’t do that, shall I say, by counting paper clips. You do that by making sure you know what success looks like. If anyone ever goes into a business, anyone ever goes into some sort of a strategy, or even to stand for Parliament, some think if you tick every box along the way then success will just happen. Well, it just doesn’t happen like that; you’ve actually got to have vision.

You’ve actually got to understand what success looks like, because otherwise you will end up in the situation where—and I have to say a lot of people I know have worked for big corporates in New Zealand that’ve been led out of Detroit, led out of cities in the States, who do impose on all their companies around the world a very strict reporting regime where you must do this, you must count that, and they demand this quarterly reporting back every quarter. Lo and behold those who don’t do it. Those who are on the ground doing that job very quickly understand it’s to the detriment, often, of the local business. It’s to the detriment of the local operation. It’s to the detriment of the local country.

So the way around that is to make sure you have some sort of understanding of what it is you’re trying to achieve. I used to coach young men playing rugby, and at a coaching session, before you actually went into the drills, it was so important that you got those young men to understand why you had them running around doing the same thing time after time. It’s so that they got that muscle memory so that they understood they actually had to win. The whole idea of the game was to win, and everything we were doing was to make sure that they didn’t have to think about all those little things they were doing because they understood the vision was to win.

That brings me back to this bill—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That would be good. That would be very good.

GREG O’CONNOR: —which I could see you were probably impatiently waiting for me to do. I had to do a little bit of contextualisation, because what this bill does is ensures that local councils understand. Many of us as politicians, we sit in our offices or we’re out there at markets and we’re approached by our local constituents, and what they say is “Why aren’t you doing this? What aren’t you doing that?”—a plethora of things. Often these things are local body issues. So what becomes more and more apparent is the absolute necessity to understand what it is we’re trying to achieve, and those four success factors—social, economic, environmental, and cultural—just ensure we have a context, ensure we have a marker, ensure we have a template against which to succeed how we are actually succeeding. Again, if we go down to counting the paperclips, we might know exactly where the paperclips are, we might know every machine, we might have ticked off every box necessary, but it doesn’t actually mean we’re doing the job that people want us to do.

One of the previous speakers mentioned Federated Farmers being directly opposed to that. Well, Federated Farmers. I’d invite them that—so often when we’re talking farmers, particularly when, as I say, those shiny backsides from the city come and talk to them, the answer when we’re talking about why they perhaps might need a subsidy when the weather goes, about why farming is an intricate part of New Zealand, and, coming from a farming background, I certainly understand that, but it’s bigger than that. Farmers will talk about being the custodians of the land. Farmers will talk about “Someone’s got to be out there. We love the land. We’re third generation.”—these things. It’s much bigger than just how much milk fat they produce, how many lambs, how many kilos of wool. It’s actually much bigger than that.

They’re the very people that now are using this argument about why we shouldn’t impose the same broad understanding of what success looks like on our local bodies—those very local bodies they’re likely to be highly critical of, because they will make them dig the latest cess ponds; they’ll make them divert their waste in certain directions. Well, the reason those things are done, the reason we need to understand that—and some of those things, the individual may not realise why we do those things, why it is that those particular things are done, because they may not be understandable because they’re done against a bigger picture of what that success looks like.

I go back to those four successes: social, economic, environmental, and cultural. Aren’t they a good mix, those four things? Any one of those things taken in isolation will do some of the things that the Opposition are worried about. If we only look at the social side, but without looking at the economic side of it, yes, of course it will put us in danger. Of course there will be a danger that we’ll become less efficient, but look at them in their entirety. That’s what, again, I think the mistake that those on the opposite look like. They break it down into counting the paperclips. Success does not come from knowing how many paperclips there are, so look at those things in their entirety.

I mean, someone talked about libraries before. OK, libraries now, as we will all know, are struggling for relevance. The smart ones have moved. They have gone to electronic books; they’ve gone to all sorts of other things that attract people in there, because economically they will never be—tell me any library anywhere in the world that has actually paid its way. Swimming pools: swimming pools do not actually pay their way. So if we only look at it from an economic point of view, none of those things would ever be built. They certainly wouldn’t be built today.

In my own Ōhāriu electorate, we’re having a very nice new library built. It’s going to be highly relevant. There’s other things that are going to be going in there that are going to attract people there to make sure it becomes relevant. It won’t be just the good old library, but it still will not pay its way. I’m hoping we’ll have a very nice cafe in there, being very near to my own electorate office, and those other things that will make it relevant.

So, again, in those things—just look at libraries, just look at those things that council do. Council grounds sit around. How often are our council grounds sitting there empty? Luckily, we’ve now got those council grounds that have got artificial turfs, and the smart clubs have actually started to adapt. So they do use those things 24 hours—with, actually, some chance of paying. They still will never pay their way, it still requires—because they’re part of our whole environment; they’re part of our culture.

Culture, that whole thing that the country—whatever you think of rugby, we’ll stop while we’re watching, hopefully, the All Blacks in the World Cup final in Japan. That is the thing—they’re bigger than any breakdown because, again, if you were sitting, designing something, breaking it down into only its economic components, only those little bits that we tick, the boxes that we can tick—would we actually be supporting sport on a Saturday? No, we wouldn’t. Someone’s actually got to have a look at making sure that all those things balance up. This is, again, why I would invite the Opposition—who, naturally enough, will oppose this; it’s their job—but, actually, sit back and have a look at this. Imagine if we didn’t have these there. Imagine if we took them away and we didn’t have—the reason why it’s survived, now: it’s been residual. These things were in place, removed—so, often it takes five to 10 years before the residual, before the effects of these things—we change a law, we change a thing; it doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s a slow residual.

I have my own theory about why our road accident rate is so high at the moment, back to decisions that were made five or six years ago. So it takes a long time for these things to come through. So it is that so often we’re getting now, it would seem, the breakdown in some of our councils, some of our local services. There are problems there, because without an understanding, without our councillors—very good people who get out there, work hard. We see them out in the weekends doing a great job. Without them sitting around the table and having a measure—we’re going to pass this, but what is it, how will this help us to be successful socially? Will it help us to be more successful socially? Will it help our economy?

I think the Opposition should be, actually, very satisfied, be very happy, that the economic well-being is in there, because against all these strategies, against all these decisions we’ll make, there will be an economic box to be ticked as well. Does it make sense economically? But not just economically—socially, environmentally, and culturally?

Again, the environment, and—I’m pleased to see; hopefully, we will see—I’m looking forward to the consensus we will get on the environmental changes we’re obviously going to have to make, but if we break it down, no one will ever make those changes. I remember, again, being outraged, growing up on a farm, when all of a sudden we were forced to build a cesspit outside the cow sheds when we’d been putting it straight into the creek. Absolutely—this was a terrible thing, these “commies” from the local council making us dig a cesspit. Luckily for us, there were people that had a bigger vision, a bigger understanding that us piling—continuing to do what we’d done, farm the way we had done for many years, wasn’t going to work. So it is that we ask of our councils this very thing, so the councils right around the country, now, will be having council meetings this week once this bill goes through, understanding that, actually, is this going to improve things socially? Is this going to improve things economically? Is this thing going to improve things environmentally and, importantly, is this going to assist things culturally?

So Madam Deputy Speaker, as the last speaker on the bill, I have no hesitation commending this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Local Government (Community Well-being) Amendment Bill be now read a third 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 third time.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon RUTH DYSON (Senior Whip—Labour): Madam Deputy Speaker, it’s always good for the House to conclude on a high note, and you couldn’t get much higher than the contribution from Greg O’Connor. It would be a shame to have just a few seconds on an important first reading speech, so I seek leave of the House for the House to rise now.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

The House adjourned at 9:59 p.m.