Wednesday, 8 May 2019

WEDNESDAY, 8 MAY 2019

WEDNESDAY, 8 MAY 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia.

Speaker’s Rulings

Written Questions—Unacceptable Answers

SPEAKER: Before we come to questions, I have received a letter from the Hon Michael Woodhouse raising with me the responses to written questions he has received from the Minister of Health. I note the Minister and his office have been under considerable pressure as a result of having up to 1,500 questions lodged on a single day. However—[Interruption] The member is running a risk of a multiplier effect here. However, Dr Clark’s response to some of the questions is not acceptable.

The replies refer the member to another reply, and that reply refers him on to another reply. In one instance, the member would have had to make his way through 22 separate replies which do not answer the question before finally reaching the answer. That approach falls far short of the standard of accountability required to the House of Ministers.

The matter was compounded by the answer that was ultimately provided, which stated that the matter was an operational one and that the member could use the Official Information Act 1982 to request the information sought. There is no convention that Ministers are not answerable for operational matters in the agencies falling within their portfolio areas—Speakers’ ruling 160/3. In fact, that’s a key part of the role of a Minister. The House’s own rules for seeking information and its entitlement to receive information exceeds that under the Official Information Act—Speaker’s ruling 177/6. Where a written question seeks an unreasonable level of detail, it is open to a Minister to reply that the cost entailed in answering the question is not consistent with the public interest—and, in fact, Ministers have on occasion done that, from both sides of the House.

Our question system is based on the assumption that Ministers will try and give informative replies—Speaker’s ruling 178/5—and to account to the House for the public offices they hold. In this instance, I expect the Minister to lodge fresh answers to the questions—14351 to 15621 and 15974 to 16132—and, if it is necessary to use a single answer to reply to multiple questions, then the replies should refer directly to the substantive answer.

The Opposition has been denied the opportunity to hold the Government to account through this series of written questions. Therefore, I’m awarding the Opposition an additional 12 supplementary questions to be used today or tomorrow.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t want to raise any issue with the substance of the ruling that you have just made, merely one of the process, as somebody who has lodged complaints along the nature of the one that Mr Woodhouse has made in the past. In the past, Speakers have adopted the practice that, before a Speaker would rule on a matter of written questions, the member would first have had to make a formal complaint to the Minister who lodged the answers in the first place. Then, second of all, the Speaker themselves would raise the matter with the Minister before issuing a ruling such as you have. My understanding is that you no longer follow that process. It would seem to me that if there is a sanction going to be applied, there does need to be some process of raising the matter with the Minister’s office before that sanction is applied so they have the opportunity to correct it where an error has been made.

SPEAKER: I’m happy to respond to that. In the vast majority of cases, that’s a process I’ve followed. If the member has a conversation with the Minister on his right, he will understand that it’s followed quite regularly. But, in this particular case, the breach was so blatant that—and I hesitate to use the word which I’ve gotten in trouble for using in this House before, but such a blatant breach, in two ways, of Speakers’ Rulings and the Standing Orders—I felt that having that conversation was unnecessary.

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: Is the Government still committed to building 100,000 KiwiBuild houses over 10 years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As the member well knows, we’re going through the process of a reset around the KiwiBuild programme [Interruption]. Are we committed to building affordable homes? Are we committed to trying to improve access for first-home buyers? Are we the Government that has built more houses than any other Government since the 1970s? The answer to that is yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is that a confirmation that the 100,000 houses in a decade commitment is now gone?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is it Phil Twyford who’s been reset?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: Then why did the housing Minister Phil Twyford say this morning, on that 100,000 commitment, “It’s like American nuclear ships in the 1980s. It’s a neither confirm nor deny situation.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve just said, we are in the process of working through a KiwiBuild reset, but whilst we do so we are continuing to build houses. Again, as I’ve said many a time in this House, we are a Government building more houses than any other since the 1970s.

Hon Simon Bridges: When is the climb-down on her flagship policy of 100,000 houses in a decade going to be confirmed?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I will never resile from the fact that this is a Government that has committed to changing the face of housing in this country. In fact, just look at the Auckland housing market—a significant change has happened there. We know that there has been a softening. We know, even though prices are high, that more first-home buyers are getting into that market. We are creating more transitional housing places, we have built more State houses, we put a stop to State house sales, and we have increased Housing First placements. I am proud of what we’ve done on housing but, I have to say, the last Government set the bar pretty damn low.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have just given the Opposition 12 more questions today. But the reality is that the Prime Minister has got a right to be able to give an answer to the question that is being put by the Leader of the Opposition, excepting his colleagues are all screaming out and Gerry Brownlee is the worst of them. They should be told to desist or action will be taken by you, with respect.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I never scream.

SPEAKER: I think most members are aware of the fact that the interjection during that question was excessive. I am generally reluctant to interrupt a Minister in full flight in those circumstances, unless it goes even further. I am watching it very carefully, I want to assure the Deputy Prime Minister, but I, on balance, decided it was better to let it run the way it was going.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can she have confidence in Phil Twyford when he’s seen only 80 KiwiBuild houses built so far and he won’t confirm her flagship policy of 100,000 houses?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because we’ve built more State houses, more transitional houses, and housed more who have been homeless. We have also stopped the sale of residential housing to foreign buyers. We have also closed tax loopholes. We have made a difference to the housing market, and that is ultimately making a difference for families. We inherited a dire situation with our housing market, and we are turning it around.

Hon Simon Bridges: How about a straight answer to a straight question—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. Now, he’ll stand up and he will ask a question properly.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the 100,000 houses in a decade target gone?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve already said to the member’s original question, we are working through our KiwiBuild reset. When we have completed that, we will be making announcements in due course.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will we learn about this on a Friday at 4 o’clock, say, in a week or two?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: In light of the failure of KiwiBuild, the decision not to introduce a capital gains tax and to adopt only three of the 42 welfare report recommendations, does she accept she has built up expectations in her year of delivery without a plan to deliver?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why then did her Minister for Regional Economic Development, Shane Jones, say on television this morning that she had definitely “built up expectations without a plan of delivery”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I never would follow that member’s attempt to paraphrase Minister Jones. I don’t actually accept even Minister Jones’ attempts to paraphrase himself.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with her senior ministerial colleague Shane Jones that she built up expectations without a plan of delivery?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the premise of the question.

Hon Simon Bridges: To be clear, has she had any input into the issue of removing the 100,000 KiwiBuild commitment in recent times?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member is asking whether or not I am concerned about the fact that we have inherited a housing crisis, absolutely—we, as a Government, have set a priority that all New Zealanders should be able to access a warm, dry home. That is why we put in the Healthy Homes guarantee. It’s why we stopped the sale of State houses. It’s why we’ve boosted Housing First placement for those who are homeless. It’s why we’ve increased transitional housing. In every test, we have done more than that last Government, and we ventured into a space that no Government has gone before, and that was the affordable housing market. We don’t resile away from our focus on housing, because it’s the right thing to do.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can the Prime Minister confirm that housing construction in New Zealand is at record levels over the last 44 years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, I can. Including private developments, there were 34,516 homes for New Zealand in the March 2019 year, and consents are reaching levels now that we haven’t seen since the mid-1970s—that’s exactly what we need.

Hon Simon Bridges: Wouldn’t it be more accurate to compare KiwiBuild to the Titanic than an American warship?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the National Party built the Titanic.

Hon Simon Bridges: With an official cash rate cut just confirmed, does she accept that the Reserve Bank is now doing her job, propping up an economy that’s significantly weakening?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the suggestion is that, somehow, I run every single global economy or that I’m somehow responsible for the headwinds we are facing as a result of issues like trade tensions between China and the USA, I’m sure the member would not want to imply that.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that her Treasury just last week revised GDP for the first half of this year down to just 2 percent on the back of continued weak domestic business confidence and deteriorating future intentions from firms here?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I have said many a time in this House, the member seems to think we operate in complete isolation. We do not. Of course, the average quarterly growth rate in GDP per hour worked under the coalition Government has been, if I were to pick a figure, 0.9 percent. In contrast, it has averaged 0.1 percent under the previous Government, and going forward we have to acknowledge that other developed OECD nations who we compare ourselves to are seeing downturns in their projected growth rates. Relative to them, we are in a strong position.

Hon David Parker: Is the Prime Minister aware that growth forecasts for New Zealand are higher than Australia, Japan, the OECD average, most of Europe, Canada, and the United Kingdom?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, that is indeed correct. Canada, the UK, the euro, Japan—we are showing much stronger growth rates than all of those comparable nations.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is her $1.5 billion mental health Budget package over four years—that is, is it a $6 billion package overall?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I heard the member throw around numbers in this House. We, of course, have made no announcements on mental health and the Budget.

Hon Simon Bridges: Well, is it also true that there is a $500 million Pharmac boost in the Budget as well, and is that enough over four years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member, I know, has a strategy here of just chucking out random numbers. We have not announced anything for the Budget in that regard.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Which policy has been more successful in helping New Zealanders get into homeownership: HomeStart, that has helped 60,000 New Zealanders—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Question.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: —into homeownership, or KiwiBuild, that has helped 60 into homeownership?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the premise of the question.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek leave to table the analysis from the Parliamentary Library showing that 60,000 New Zealanders have been helped into homeownership—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! That’s enough. An analysis on this matter from the Parliamentary Library—is there any objection to that? There is objection.

Question No. 2—Climate Change

2. MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for Climate Change: What recent announcements has he made regarding climate change?

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): This morning, the Prime Minister and I announced the introduction into Parliament of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, commonly known as the zero carbon bill. Now, in April of this year, tens of thousands of school students went on strike to protest the lack of decisive action on climate change. We are acting now. The zero carbon bill outlines our plan for the next 30 years to safeguard the future of those students and of their own children. This is not the end of the journey, but it is a good start.

Marama Davidson: How will the zero carbon bill contribute to the global effort to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Reducing emissions of our long-lived gases, including carbon dioxide, to net zero means that those emissions will no longer contribute to further global warming. The target range for biogenic methane is consistent with the central range of scenarios presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent report, which limit global warming to 1.5 degrees with limited or no overshoot.

Marama Davidson: Why does the zero carbon bill propose a split-target approach, with biological methane separated from all other gases?

Hon JAMES SHAW: A split-gas approach enables a target with a definite temperature outcome, which lets us aim it at the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Emissions of short-lived gases do not need to reduce to zero in order to limit their effect on global warming, whereas emissions of long-lived gases need to be reduced to net zero or below. The target in the bill is consistent with the latest science on what is required for the world to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

Marama Davidson: What steps will be taken to ensure the transition to a climate-safe future prioritises the needs of our most vulnerable and exposed communities, and the interests of tangata whenua?

Hon JAMES SHAW: The bill sets the framework for our transition, but as we decide what policies are needed to support us in reaching the budgets and the target, we’ll need to carefully consider their impact on communities and in the interests of tangata whenua. What the bill does do up front is require particular attention be given to seeking nominations from iwi and Māori representative organisations for the climate change commission. Under the bill, we must include an emissions reduction plan, a strategy to recognise and mitigate the impacts on iwi and Māori of reducing emissions, and we must ensure that iwi Māori have been adequately consulted on that plan. In preparing a plan, we have to take into account the economic, social, health, environmental, ecological, and cultural effects of climate change on iwi and Māori.

Marama Davidson: What impact will this bill have on New Zealand’s ability to meet the social and economic needs of all citizens through to 2050?

Hon JAMES SHAW: The economic analysis that we did when we did the consultation on the zero carbon bill last year showed that the difference in terms of long-term economic impact between the existing 2050 target that was gazetted by the Rt Hon John Key of a 50 percent reduction below 1990 levels and the new target that we are proposing in this legislation is approximately 0.2 percent—in other words, it’s marginal. Countries that have reduced their emissions over the course of the last 10 years have all seen their economies continue to grow and develop, and household incomes continue to grow also. For example, in the United Kingdom they’ve seen a 42 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and have had the fastest-growing economy in the European Union over the same period of time. So the idea that this is a sunk cost to the economy is not borne out by what’s actually happening on the ground around the world. The transition to a low-carbon economy is, as I’ve said, actually the single greatest economic opportunity in at least a generation.

Todd Muller: Will the Minister recommence good-faith negotiations with the National Party to find common ground on a methane target?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Obviously, the bill has now entered into the House, but I am always prepared, of course, to talk to my colleagues in the National Party about the shape of the bill, and I look forward to the select committee process and to seeing what that throws up.

Todd Muller: Does he classify good-faith negotiations as meeting in early March on targets, silence for eight weeks, and then being handed a bill on Monday afternoon?

Hon JAMES SHAW: I want to apologise to Mr Muller personally for some of the background process here, which has not gone as I would have liked—nor, in fact, was what I had intended. The bill is, obviously, very contentious, and you can see some of that in the reaction in the media today. So what we have done, I think, represents the best consensus that we can build at this point in time across New Zealand society. I think that the diversity of views that are represented here in this Parliament approximate that.

Todd Muller: Could you please elucidate for the House what you mean when you say “background process”?

SPEAKER: Substitute “he” for a “you” and go for it.

Hon JAMES SHAW: Quite simply, that over the course of the last 18 months, there have been a series of rounds of consultation, not just with the National Party but with other political parties and also with other organisations outside this House—in particular, agricultural sector organisations, iwi, environmental organisations, scientists, and others.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. 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 agree that a binding referendum is set in law, as opposed to a political party making an election promise that they will enact legislation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As the member will no doubt agree, binding, of course, is an obligation that cannot be broken. Obviously, we in this House all know and accept that no Parliament is able, really, to bind any future Parliament. Parliament is always sovereign. So any bill that may have—even if we were to put a full bill through this House, it would still have the ability to be fully repealed by the next Parliament. The best way to be able to bind a future Parliament is for the parties that make up that Parliament to give a commitment to abide by its outcome, and that is what the three parties of Government have done.

Hon Paula Bennett: Does she accept the Cabinet paper that the Cabinet saw that said, to give the greatest certainty, actually enacting legislation that the date would come in after a yes vote gives the most certainty and is the most like binding?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I would make the point that that is the difference between certainly whether or not you’re talking about simply debating principles or a bill. We have, as a Government, settled on a bill to give that degree of certainty. We’ve also, however, acknowledged that the only way you can really assure anyone that a bill will come into effect is if political parties give that commitment to abide by the outcome—that is what we have done. We can continue to debate the process. Ultimately, the question here is whether or not we, as political parties, commit to follow through on a referendum outcome. So we have agreed to do that; the question is whether or not the National Party will.

Hon Paula Bennett: What would happen if another political party came in in the next election and, as such, hadn’t been part of that legislative process?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, the legislation is going to be public. How else can we expect people to vote on it? No doubt, I imagine the public would ask that political party for their position on it also. We couldn’t guarantee that if a bill went all the way through a process, after an election this mythical new party would come into Parliament and repeal that bill too.

Hon Paula Bennett: So does she know the difference, then, between a binding referendum, an indicative referendum, and a legal or moral obligation and an election promise?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, but in every single case, Parliament is still sovereign.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: So can we take it that the Prime Minister’s position and explanation is that when you give your word in a circumstance like this, you should keep it?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Like 100—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Which member was that?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I started and I stopped before actually finishing. I didn’t actually get a full word out before I stopped.

SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Right, now we’ll start again. Start the supplementary again.

Hon Paula Bennett: Fantastic. So if the—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Just start the supplementary again.

Hon Paula Bennett: If the Prime Minister, then, is true to her word and she wants to guarantee the vote of the public will be listened to and acted on, given this is nothing more than an election promise, then how come so many other election promises have been broken—for example, the capital gains tax or a Chief Technology Officer role, which have not eventuated?

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That question infringed rulings and Standing Orders in about five different ways. It wasn’t a question; it was a speech.

SPEAKER: Yes, it did.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Just speaking to that point of order—

SPEAKER: No, no. I’ve ruled on it.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, in that case, a new point of order.

SPEAKER: That’s not going to attempt to relitigate the ruling I’ve just made?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, no, it doesn’t relitigate your ruling; it supports it, and suggests that the same logic might be applied to the Prime Minister’s answers.

SPEAKER: That’s an interesting matter, which I’ll contemplate later, but, frankly, I can’t connect it to the ruling that I’ve just made at the moment.

Hon Paula Bennett: How can she guarantee the vote of the public will be listened to and acted on, given this is nothing more than an election promise, and so many other election promises—for example, a capital gains tax, and Chief Technology Officer role—have not eventuated under her prime ministership?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I refute the premise of many elements of that question. However, again, what I would say is that we are acknowledging that we, as the three parties that make up this Government, will abide by the outcome. It is fair to say, though, that the public will be interested in the National Party’s position because that will also be contingent on whether or not their view is listened to.

Hon Paula Bennett: Isn’t this just similar to KiwiBuild, where you promised 100,000 houses that you won’t deliver?

SPEAKER: Order! No, try again.

Hon Paula Bennett: Isn’t this similar to KiwiBuild, where the Prime Minister has promised 100,000 houses that they are unable to deliver?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have to say that I am somewhat baffled by this. This is an issue that the public want to have a say on, and we are committed to giving them that say. If that side of the House struggles so much with the idea of the public having an opinion and is so reluctant to commit to listening to them, that is their issue, not mine.

Hon Paula Bennett: So why didn’t Cabinet agree to option four, given the Cabinet paper was weighted towards enacted legislation and this was the preferred option of their coalition partner, the Greens?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because the outcome is the same.

Hon Paula Bennett: If the aim of legalising marijuana is to displace the black market, as we’ve constantly heard, has she seen a recent report from Canada that, despite legalisation, 38 percent of users reported getting cannabis from illegal or black market sources?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It is not my role to defend what other jurisdictions have done or the make-up of their policy. We have, however—in constructing the principles of the legislation that will be drafted, the objectives include reducing the overall use of cannabis over time, harm reduction, disempowering the gangs and illegal trade, and ensuring product safety and control of THC levels. Again, the much better way for the member to engage, though, on issues that the party that she belongs to may have an interest in would be to engage in the drafting. It’s an offer I will continue to make.

Hon Paula Bennett: If part of the purpose of legalising marijuana, as said in the Cabinet paper, is harm minimisation and reducing the number of users, has she seen the National Cannabis Survey of the first quarter in Canada, of 18 percent reported using cannabis, and it’s 4 percent higher than the same period a year earlier, when cannabis was illegal?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I make the point that if the member chooses to advocate against the legalisation of cannabis, she is absolutely welcome to do that. That is what the referendum is about. If the member is interested in the drafting and the fulfilment of the objectives that will be put to the public of New Zealand, I welcome her engagement in the drafting of this bill. I am not going to debate the pros and cons of legislation; that will be decided by New Zealanders, not by this Government.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister whether she’s been advised by the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, that their legislation has been so recent that there is still not enough time to get any lessons from it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There are, of course, a number of jurisdictions that we can learn from—the Netherlands, Colorado, a number of states within the United States. I am sure that members involved in the drafting of this legislation will look to international evidence and advice and experts in the drafting, but, ultimately, what we want to do is provide as much advice and as much debate and discussion as possible for the public, who will ultimately determine the outcome.

Hon Paula Bennett: On the back of the previous question, why doesn’t the Government wait so that we can see the results from Canada, who only legalised in October and are probably the most similar jurisdiction to us, so that we can do something that truly is evidence based?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I think the point the Deputy Prime Minister was making was that that was what the member was referring to. There are a number of other States that we can draw evidence and advice from.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement that “we are building an economy that is more productive”; if so, why is annual GDP per capita growth at its lowest level since 2011?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: I stand by my—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Part of the problem with the byplay is that it fools me as well. David Parker will behave himself. Start again, David Clark.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: On behalf of the Minister, I stand by my full statement last year that, “New Zealanders will see a difference with next year’s Budget. It will show how we are building an economy that is more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive.” I stand by that statement given that GDP per hour worked has increased, on average, by 0.9 percent per quarter under the coalition Government compared to just 0.1 percent under the previous Government. In terms of the second part of the member’s question, that is correct on one definition and not on others.

Hon Amy Adams: Why does he continue to blame global headwinds for our economic performance when, according to Treasury, at the same time that our economy is weakening, US GDP growth has risen above 3 percent, growth in China has stabilised above 6 percent, and growth in Australia and the euro area has recently picked up?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: There are global headwinds; there’s no doubt about that. I would note that the IMF forecast advanced economies to grow by 1.8 percent in 2019 and 1.7 percent in 2020, but, within that, the IMF forecast New Zealand’s economy to grow 2.5 percent in 2019 and 2.9 percent in 2020. So, compared to our peers, we are set to grow solidly.

Hon Amy Adams: Given he’s so keen for global comparisons, is he aware that the average growth rate per person across the OECD is three times higher than it is in New Zealand?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I stand by the statement that was made earlier—that we’re building an economy that’s more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive, and I note that GDP per hour worked has increased by an average of 0.9 percent per quarter under the coalition Government compared to just 0.1 percent under the previous Government. GDP per hour worked is growing faster on a quarterly basis under this Government than under the previous Government, and that is a measure of labour productivity that looks at how much each labourer is producing in the economy.

Hon Amy Adams: What does it say about our economy that New Zealand is now one of the only countries in the developed world that is lowering interest rates because of its rapidly weakening domestic economy?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The Reserve Bank report came out at 2 o’clock and, on behalf of the Minister, of course I haven’t had a chance to read the whole report yet, but it noted concerns around the global economic outlook. The underlying fundamentals of the New Zealand economy, it said, are strong. It noted that central banks around the world are easing monetary policy. I thought the member would welcome lower interest rates for homeowners and businesses. It means that housing is more affordable and businesses will have more incentives to invest.

Hon Amy Adams: Well, what does he think it says about his handling of the economy when he inherited an economy growing at close to 4 percent a year but, 18 months in, the Reserve Bank has now had to be one of the first in the world to act to lower interest rates to stimulate the economy?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The fact remains that New Zealand is one of the best performing economies in the OECD. New Zealand GPD growth of 0.6 percent in the December 2018 quarter was higher than Australia, higher than Canada, higher than the euro area, higher than Japan, higher than the UK, and higher than the OECD average. The unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent in the March quarter—the second lowest since December 2008. Wages grew 3.4 percent over the year, and we have an economy that’s in good shape. The member should celebrate that.

Hon Amy Adams: Is he worried about the role of monetary policy in the event of a future economic crisis, considering the official cash rate (OCR) is now at its lowest-ever rate and there is very little room left to stimulate the economy if something were to go seriously wrong offshore?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I reject that assertion, and I would also note that our economy is in good shape. The Reserve Bank acts independently, it makes independent decisions, it has independent forecasts, and it paints a picture of an economy in good shape in New Zealand.

Hon Amy Adams: Does he reject the fact that the OCR, as of today, is now at its lowest ever rate; is that what he was rejecting in the question?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: No.

Question No. 5—Education

5. JO LUXTON (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What, if anything, is the Government doing to ensure that initial teacher education better prepares beginning teachers to meet the needs of students?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Last month the Teaching Council released new initial teacher education programme approval requirements to better prepare graduating teachers for the classroom, including a greater focus on practical experience in the classroom. In order to meet those new requirements, last week I announced that there’ll be an increase to the funding rates that support initial teacher education. The degree-level funding rate will increase by over $600 per student and the taught postgraduate rate will increase by almost $750 per student from the beginning of next year, with further increases from 2020. This recognises that the increased requirements by the Teaching Council will increase the cost of initial teacher education, but it is an investment well made.

Jo Luxton: Will the changes to initial teacher education provide for more teacher training enrolments?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. The Tertiary Education Commission and the Ministry of Education will be working with planning directors from the institutions to ensure that from 2020 onwards there is an increase in initial teacher education places. To support this, the Tertiary Education Commission will be making funding available to support extra levels of growth in initial teacher education, and funding for initial teacher education will be ring-fenced, meaning that it cannot be used to support growth in other fields of study when we so desperately need more teachers.

Jo Luxton: What response has he seen to this announcement?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The announcement’s been welcomed by Universities New Zealand and also by the Council of Deans of Education, who have said that it is a welcome acknowledgment of the complexity of both the teaching profession and the preparation of new teachers. Those teachers and principals who have figured out that addressing many of the concerns they’re raising will require recruiting more teachers have also welcomed it.

Question No. 6—Housing and Urban Development

6. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he stand by his statement last Thursday in regard to an additionality test on KiwiBuild developments, “The assessment is embodied in a whole lot of other communications” and “they’re going to get back to the National Party Research Unit this afternoon with that documentation”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes, I said in this House that the ministry would clarify its response to the National Party research unit. I understand that officials sat down with the member yesterday to explain the assessment process to her and her advisers, and the types of documentation they have. When answering questions on the bridge, it was that process of clarifying I was referring to when I said the ministry would get back to the National Party research unit. The public release of departmental information is, of course, a matter for the chief executive under the Official Information Act.

Hon Judith Collins: When he told Radio New Zealand last week that “they’re going to get back to the National Party Research Unit this afternoon with that documentation”, why is he now saying that he meant they were going to clarify something?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as I told the media at the time, I was aware that there were documents and that the ministry was going to clarify its response. I was not informed of the nature of the documents, and that is a matter for the chief executive to assess against the grounds in the Official Information Act.

Hon Judith Collins: Was he then simply not aware, having been in the role for 18 months, what the process is that his ministry has been working to around KiwiBuild?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, the answer is yes, I am aware, and I’m a little surprised that the member is requesting the release of documents that are commercially sensitive. I’m sure she understands that if documents that are generated in the course of commercial negotiations are released to the National Party research unit, they are released publicly, so all of the developer’s competitors would have access to those commercially sensitive documents. Surely, the member can see that’s completely untenable.

Paul Eagle: What reports has he seen on additional house construction as a result of Government action, including KiwiBuild?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I’ve seen consent data that shows that Government agencies are now building more homes than at any time since the 1970s, and as well as the approximately 2,300 State houses currently under construction, we are working with the private sector to build more affordable homes. Now, working with developers on programmes like KiwiBuild is a small part of what we’re doing, but we make no apology for working with the private sector to build the modest affordable homes that Kiwis desperately need and that that party made no effort to build through nine years in Government.

Hon Judith Collins: If that’s so—what the Minister has said today to Parliament—then why did he say to Radio New Zealand last Thursday that “they’re going to get back to the National Party Research Unit this afternoon with that documentation”, rather than saying, now, that it’s all commercially sensitive and couldn’t be released? Why has he changed his mind?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I haven’t changed my mind. I told Radio New Zealand and assembled media that there were other documents that were involved, that the matter that we were discussing of additionality was embodied in those documents, and that the ministry would get back to them and clarify the situation, and that’s exactly what has happened. I ask the member to lift her horizons and consider the importance of building affordable houses that Kiwis desperately need, instead of endlessly nit-picking in the trivia and the minor operational details.

Hon Judith Collins: Will the recalibration of KiwBuild drop the additionality tests as well as the 100,000 houses target?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I expect that in June we’ll be releasing the results of the reset of KiwiBuild, but I would say this to the member: this Government will not back away from building large numbers of affordable homes for Kiwis, building more State housing, reforming the rental market, housing homeless people, reforming the planning system and infrastructure financing—all of the things that are part of our housing programme that that party never did for nine years in office.

Question No. 7—Education

7. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: Is he confident that he can meet the expectations of the education sector and parents in Budget 2019 in light of his promises, and potential teacher strikes?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I’m very optimistic about the Budget, although indications around the overall level of education spending in this year’s Budget will, of course, have to wait until Budget day. What I can say with regard to the announcements that have been made already about education spending in this year’s Budget is that I am confident that the significant increase in funding for teacher training that we announced last week will address the teacher shortage that we inherited.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Hasn’t he failed to meet expectations with the pre-Budget announcement, in that it doesn’t even deliver half of the 8,000 additional secondary teachers needed over the coming years, and will he take responsibility for the increased class sizes and overcrowding that will occur?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member’s number of 8,000 is simply incorrect. The correct numbers, according to the ministry’s teacher supply projections for primary schools, are that in 2019, we needed 650 more teachers. That actually starts to decrease to the point where in 2023, we’re expecting a 90-teacher surplus. With regard to secondary school teachers, the extra number required this year was 170. That continues to increase, to the point where by 2025, that number gets up to an extra 2,210. The extra funding that I have announced this week delivers over 2,500 extra teacher trainees, in addition—in addition—to other teacher supply measures such as free refresher training for those who have already completed their training but who are not currently registered.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I seek leave to table those exact modelling documents, which demonstrate the cumulative impact is 8,000 additional teachers over the next five years.

SPEAKER: The source?

Hon Nikki Kaye: It’s the Ministry of Education documents.

SPEAKER: From a website?

Hon Nikki Kaye: Well, again, I don’t think it is. I’ve seen it via email, but I can check that post - question time.

SPEAKER: I’ll put it anyway. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

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

Hon Nikki Kaye: How will he meet the expectations of parents who believe the Government promised to scrap school donations, when he is a year late on the $150 payment that was promised, and figures that I have seen project that at least half of schools would not scrap donations as a result?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: With regard to the school donations policy, we were always very clear that it was going to be a voluntary uptake amongst schools and that they would have the choice whether to take it up or not. The financial modelling that the Labour Party did prior to the election did not assume that every school would take up that policy. We recognised that, in fact, some schools, particularly higher-decile schools, get significantly more than $150 per student in donations. With regard to the commitments around timing, the Government made a commitment to deliver that policy within the first term.

Hon Nikki Kaye: How will he deliver on his promise to modernise all of the more than 20,000 school buildings in New Zealand, given that the potential true cost of that is $10 billion?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The member will have to wait until the Budget.

Hon Nikki Kaye: When the Prime Minister said, in the Speech from the Throne, that the Government will spend one point—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! I don’t think she did.

Hon Amy Adams: The Governor-General reads it out.

Hon Nikki Kaye: When the Governor-General read out, from the Speech from the Throne, the Prime Minister’s commitment to spend $1.8 billion on teacher resources, was it just another case of the Government overpromising and under-delivering?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No. In fact, we’ve already delivered more than that. The teacher salaries alone amount to $1.2 billion in extra funding, and that’s on top of the extra money that we’ve put into recruiting more teachers to meet population growth, which we funded in last year’s Budget. The member will just have to wait and see what’s in this year’s Budget.

Jan Tinetti: What is the Government doing to address the expectations of the education sector?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I will highlight just three things very briefly. First of all, as I indicated, we’ve already committed $1.2 billion to pay rises for the teaching profession—the largest pay increases in a decade. We’ve committed half a billion dollars extra to support those children with additional learning needs, including by employing 600 more teachers as dedicated learning support coordinators, and we’ve spent $135 million to address short- and medium-term teacher supply challenges.

Question No. 8—Revenue

8. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Revenue: What reports, if any, has he seen about the implementation of the Business Transformation programme?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Revenue): I’m happy to inform the House that one of the largest IT projects ever undertaken in the State sector, the IRD Business Transformation project, has successfully passed its largest and most difficult phase. Over the Easter and Anzac period, over 300 Inland Revenue staff successfully transitioned income tax and Working for Families into the new computer system—that’s more than 19.7 million taxpayer accounts, 100 million records transactions, 8.3 million web account log-ins updated, over 92,000 tests, and 2 million customer contacts. I congratulate the Commissioner of Inland Revenue Department, Naomi Ferguson, and her team for their hard work on achieving this significant milestone.

Dr Deborah Russell: What do these reports say about the improvements to service that taxpayers will see as a result of the successful implementation of this phase of Business Transformation?

Hon STUART NASH: Good news: officials advise me that in 12 days’ time—a mere three weeks since the system went online—the first tax refunds will start automatically flowing into the bank accounts of hard-working Kiwis. If this year is anything like 2018, an estimated $860 million will be refunded straight into people’s bank accounts this year. I can also advise that up to 330,000 families that have almost 600,000 children will now receive more accurate Working for Families payments during the year, reducing the risk of finding themselves in debt at the end of the year. These refunds and more accurate payments are only possible because of Government legislation, so I would like to thank New Zealand First and the Greens for their support. I am disappointed that the National Party stood in the way and opposed this legislation.

Dr Deborah Russell: What assurances has the Minister received about the levels of customer service to taxpayers during this transition period?

Hon STUART NASH: March to July is peak season for Inland Revenue, so there is always a higher level of calls and interactions with the tax department. To deal with the anticipated 25 percent increase in calls, Inland Revenue has taken on an additional 325 staff to help and can deploy up to 900 existing staff as needed. I encourage taxpayers to go online and see what new services are available, such as filing for donations tax credits and setting up debt instalment arrangements. It’s encouraging to see that many people are going online. For example, on Monday there were 324,000 logins to online services. It is still early days and there are likely to be bumps along the way. However, Inland Revenue assures me it has plans in place and will be ready to respond.

Question No. 9—Health

9. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: What is his best estimate of the cost of increasing access to mental health and addiction services from the current target of 3 percent to 20 percent of the population, which was identified as an indicative target in the executive summary on page 12 of the Report of the Government Inquiry into Mental Health and Addiction?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): As I said in answer to question No. 7 last Thursday, none of the recommendations of the inquiry referred to a 20 percent access target. The report does refer to a possible indicative target that “may be 20% within the next 5 years.”, but it then goes on to say, on page 12, “An explicit new access target must be set, supported by funding for a wider range of therapies, especially talk therapies, alcohol and other drug services, and culturally aligned services.” The Government has worked on costings for specific proposals related to Budget 2019, not costings for possible indicative targets that require further work and were not recommendations of the inquiry.

Matt Doocey: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With your permission, in my next supplementary I’d like to use a quote that might make my supplementary just a small bit longer.

SPEAKER: Well, have a go.

Matt Doocey: Thank you. Why is the Minister refuting the access target when under “Main points” of chapter 4—“Access and choice”—of the mental health inquiry recommendations, it clearly states “Access to (and funding for) mental health and addiction services needs to be significantly increased, from the 3.7% of the population who currently access specialist services to the 20% who experience mental health and addiction issues each year. An explicit decision must be made to do this,”?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: As I said previously, none of the recommendations of the inquiry referred to a 20 percent access target. It does refer to possible indicative targets, that the member quotes, but it says “An explicit new access target must be set, supported by funding for a wider range of therapies,”. It also talks about who might give advice on setting that target. By no means does it suggest that that should be the target, per se. It is an indicative target that’s discussed in the report. It’s not one of the recommendations of the report. That is left open.

Matt Doocey: So why is the Minister, after launching an inquiry in April last year, reported back in December—

SPEAKER: Order! Ask the question.

Matt Doocey: —twice delayed, quietly backing away from increasing access to mental health and addiction services, as identified—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. That’s one supplementary gone. The member can try again if he wants. If the member has a question, he should ask it.

Matt Doocey: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think that question was very detailed and it needed to be—

SPEAKER: It included a whole pile of unnecessary words. Does the member have a further supplementary?

Matt Doocey: Does he agree the estimated cost to increase access to mental health and addiction services to 20 percent of the population would be approximately an additional $1.5 billion a year; if not, why not?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I’m not about to make Budget commitments today. I do think, with that figure, the member is being a bit cute because, by implication, he is suggesting that the current mix of forensic, out-patient, and intensive services might be extended to all of those experiencing mental distress, when those services are targeted, traditionally, towards those with the highest mental health needs. What we’re talking about is building new services for those with mild to moderate needs. That is something that comes through very clearly in the mental health and addiction inquiry. The cost of those services will be very different, and the member knows that.

Question No. 10—Social Development

10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: What are the 15 recommendations from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group’s report that the Government are progressing, and the five recommendations she has commissioned extra advice on as stated in her answers to oral questions Nos. 6 and 10 yesterday?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister for Social Development): on behalf of the Minister for Social Development: She stated yesterday that work was already under way to address around 15 of the report’s recommendations. Based on our initial analysis, these are Nos 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 27, 32, 35, 39, and 42. Examples of this include expanded reporting on outcomes, establishing a Pacific steering group and a Pacific reference group, developing a kaupapa Māori strategy at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), rolling out Mana in Mahi, and the three pre-Budget announcements we made on Friday. The additional five areas where further work is under way are recommendations number 15, 16, 23, 36, and 38. I encourage the member to look at the Cabinet paper titled Welfare Overhaul – Advice from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and Next Steps, which is available online, for more information. However, work hasn’t stopped there—this is an ongoing and active work programme. We are continuing to commission work and consider all of the other recommendations as we develop our three- to five-year plan, that will sensibly address recommendations in the report through a systematic overhaul of the welfare system that is effective and enduring, and that ensures those who need to access MSD support are actually better off.

Hon Louise Upston: Of the $5 billion to $6 billion cost stated in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report, which of the recommendations she is progressing carries the greatest cost?

Hon PEENI HENARE: The work is currently being done on those recommendations. That level of detail—can I ask the member to put that down in writing and we’ll get her the answer.

Hon Louise Upston: What is the time frame for implementing recommendation No. 14, on sustainable repayments?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Work as recommended in recommendation No. 14 is already under way at MSD, and we will continue this. MSD is focused on using the approach to prevent clients incurring debt in the first place, and supporting clients to make sustainable payments when a debt has occurred.

Hon Louise Upston: What does the Minister say to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group member Ganesh Nana, who said this morning, “My response back to the Minister is we’ve done a fair amount of the work … we’ve done the business plan. We’ve got to tackle this. The quicker we tackle this the quicker it will be.”?

Hon PEENI HENARE: We have a significant challenge in front of us—we make no apologies about that. We have a work plan to address the many issues that were raised by the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and many others who have presented themselves to this Parliament. I encourage that member, and that side of the House, to support the great work we’re doing in the space to make sure that those who do access support through MSD get full and correct entitlement.

Marama Davidson: Does the Minister agree that successive Governments have focused too much on reducing the costs of our welfare system, rather than increasing the value provided by our welfare system, and that this approach has failed?

Hon PEENI HENARE: There are significant challenges, and the overhaul of the system, once again, can’t be considered in isolation through the work of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. There is a host of work that’s being done across Ministers and administrations to make sure that we do address the inequities and that we are able to provide the public with a system that is strong and gives them the full and correct entitlement that they’re entitled to.

Question No. 11—Immigration

11. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Immigration: What announcements has he made today about immigration settings for the regions?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister of Immigration): Today I have announced updates to the Essential Skills in Demand Lists. This includes replacing the Immediate Skills Shortage List with 15 Regional Skills Shortage Lists. This will allow us to target the lists more precisely, make them more responsive to the needs of regional New Zealand, and show New Zealanders and migrants where the work opportunities exist throughout the country.

Dr Liz Craig: So why make these changes?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: This Government recognises that what is good for Auckland is not necessarily the same as what is good for Ashburton, and that a one-size-fits-all system is not delivering the more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive economy that we need. This Government has committed to working with the regions to build thriving regional economies.

Dr Liz Craig: So what are the next steps for regional immigration settings?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I’m currently considering the results of consultation on extensive changes to the temporary work settings and working with my colleagues the Minister for Social Development, the Minister of Education, the Minister for Regional Economic Development, and the Minister of Employment to create a much more robust system to meet regional labour needs and support the transformation of our economy to one that is more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive.

Question No. 12—Police

12. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by all his statements, policies, and actions?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Yes.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he stand by his statement to TVNZ on roadside drug-testing last December, in response to the Matthew Dow tragedy in Nelson, in which he said—and I quote—“There’s a discussion document that has been approved by Cabinet that’s going to go out to the public early next year”?

Hon STUART NASH: First of all, let me say that if a person is impaired by drugs or alcohol, they should not be driving. It is against the law. We are looking at a new strategy to improve road safety during 2019. An immediate $100 million increase of funding was made to improve road safety when we took office. However, more announcements will be made shortly.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was whether he stood by an important statement.

SPEAKER: The member very clearly got a “no” out of that. Carry on.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I certainly didn’t hear a “no”. I heard a comment on the issue. I heard nothing about—look, he said Cabinet had approved something.

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Did Cabinet, last year, approve a discussion paper on enabling police to do roadside drug-testing; if not, why did he tell TVNZ and the people of New Zealand that it had approved such a discussion paper?

Hon STUART NASH: That member’s been around long enough to know that we don’t discuss what goes on in Cabinet in the House.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, no. I don’t need it. The member had a straight question, and it was a very clear question. It related to a direct quote from him. We had already commented that a paper had been approved by Cabinet. I’m sort of taking Dr Nick Smith’s word that the quote is accurate, and it’d be pretty serious if it’s not, but, taking that at face value, he cannot say on television that Cabinet approved something and then say that it’s not his role to say so in this House.

Hon STUART NASH: What I can say is I do not recall saying that, but what I will say is work is undergoing in this area.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the Minister apologise to the mother of Matthew Dow, who would’ve turned 25 today if not killed by a reckless drug-driver, given that he misled her in saying that Cabinet had approved a discussion document and that it was to be released earlier this year?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the greatest respect, this is certainly no way to treat human tragedy in the way it’s being played out politically in this House, and we on this side of this House seriously object. We don’t diminish, in any way—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is the question out of order or not?

Rt Hon Winston Peters: —the harm or the hurt that the family might have felt, but this is not the way for this Parliament to behave, surely.

SPEAKER: First of all, I want to deal with the person who interjected during that point of order. Who was that?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: That would probably have been me, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member will leave the Chamber.

Hon Michael Woodhouse withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No. I’m contemplating dealing with this point of order. This is a very serious matter. It involves the death of a loved one. I think many of us are concerned at the approach that is being taken in the House now, but in my opinion it is a matter of, at the moment, judgment of good taste and good taste rather than a matter, at the moment, of order. So if Dr Smith wants to restate his question with that proviso—the clear indication from me that there’s a question of taste and appropriateness involved here—but he is a very senior member, and, obviously, the public will make their judgment on it.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have rightly noted this is a serious matter. A key part of that is the accuracy of the quote, and I accept that—

SPEAKER: Order! The member has been invited to ask his supplementary question again, as he did previously before he was interrupted by the Deputy Prime Minister. No one has doubted his word as far as the accuracy of that quote is concerned. All we’ve had is the Minister saying that he can’t recall saying it.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the Minister apologise to the Dow family and to the people of New Zealand for his false statement, and I quote, “There’s a discussion document that’s been approved by Cabinet that’s going to go out to the public early next year” when that was untrue?

Hon STUART NASH: I have absolute sympathy for the Dow family, and your loss—I cannot imagine it. I will not apologise for something I have absolutely no responsibility for. For every family that has lost someone on our roads because there is a drink- or drug-driver, I have absolute sympathy. What I can say is work is going on in this area, though. Another thing I would say is Mr Scott brought a member’s bill to the House last year. I sat down with him and I tried to work with him on this, because we felt that the scope of his bill was too narrow. We asked to work with him. He refused to do that, so this Government undertook to address this in a way that actually addressed the issue.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No. The member’s run out of supplementaries.

Points of Order

Land Transport (Roadside Drug Testing) Amendment Bill—Leave to Introduce

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I seek leave of the House for the Land Transport (Roadside Drug Testing) Amendment Bill to be set down as the first members’ order of the day on the next members’ day on 22 May.

SPEAKER: Leave is not going to be granted for that.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You need to put the leave.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ve made it absolutely clear that I won’t grant leave for it.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Oh, you’re opposed to helping getting drug-drivers off the road as well?

SPEAKER: I have made it absolutely clear that I am very unhappy with the member and his approach—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: For standing up for my constituents?

SPEAKER: The member will leave the House.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Soft on drugs, like the Government.

SPEAKER: Order! Right, no—come back, please. The member will resume his seat.

Naming and Suspension of Member

Naming and Suspension of Member

SPEAKER: I’m invoking Standing Order 90. I name Nick Smith for grossly disorderly conduct.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No. There is no point of order at this point. The question now is, That the House name the Hon Dr Nick Smith, whose conduct is grossly disorderly, and suspend the member from the service of the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the House name the Hon Dr Nick Smith, whose conduct is grossly disorderly, and suspend the member from the service of the House.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Question agreed to.

Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder in what close proximity to today’s most recent events we might see the release of the Debbie Francis report into parliamentary bullying.

SPEAKER: If the member would care to come either to the Business Committee or the Parliamentary Service Commission, as he is entitled to, he will find out.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Would the Speaker be prepared to take a late submission to that report?

SPEAKER: No.

General Debate

General Debate

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Deputy Prime Minister): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

I have never seen such a leaderless rabble in this House in a long, long, long time—in fact, I never have. Can I say that I recently got information about the approval/disapproval rating for the Leader of the Opposition, one Simon Bridges, and I can tell you that last year he got in a limo, he spent $113,000 of the taxpayers’ money, and the further he drove and the more people he saw, the more his disapproval rating went that way and his approval rating went that way. Now, there has never been—and this is what I’m reading out as well—a former leader of any political party whose disparity between the disapproval rating and the approval rating has been as high as Simon Bridges. That’s what we saw yesterday, and we saw today a leaderless rabble.

And here comes the point: we’ve had a Serious Fraud Office investigation into what? National Party funding and how they’d hide their contributions. We’ve had then, of course, the blame game about an emotional junior staffer who took down a petition on the National Party’s site because that person knew how inappropriate it was. When Mr Bridges had to explain it, he denied the truth of the matter, he claimed that it had already been taken down, but on the chronology of events people knew that what he was saying wasn’t correct. But here’s the real rub: he described that as being the work of an emotional junior staffer. It wasn’t; it was an experienced senior staffer, and that person has gone on to resign.

Then, of course, yesterday we saw the performing seal—unbelievable. But here was the real rub—because body language, as every psychologist will tell you, is important—he got ejected from the House. Last year when that happened, his colleagues got up and resigned with him en masse. Yesterday, I have never seen such a lonely, pathetic sight as a leader leaving and there wasn’t so much as a murmur or a mutter or even a protest from all of his colleagues. So the Ides of March—or, dare I say it, May—are here. They’re here.

You know, the biggest thing he could find in the last year was a thing called “slushies”. Amidst all this maelstrom of incompetence and corruption that he claimed to be happening in the country, the biggest thing he found was that the people out there in our prisons, working in tremendous heat, laden up with security equipment of 6 kilograms or more in full uniform, shouldn’t be able to cool down with some help from the taxpayer. He thought this was a massive political scandal, and it went and had all the levitation of a lead balloon.

Now, then you have this real important matter, which I want to stress: all of National’s options aren’t good. What was given to me the other day was the approval/disapproval profiles of four politicians, two on this side and two on that side, and the two on that side are equally as bad. Guess who the two good ones were? Well, modesty, and the defence of the Prime Minister’s modesty, doesn’t enable either of us to talk about it, but it’s all good news. Judith Collins, therefore, is not an alternative leader, but she’s lining up, and they’re desperate, and she’s going to be supported by all those top-of-the-town financiers who have tried to contaminate, for the exclusive interests of themselves against the interests of the many, politics in this country. So that’s where they’re going to.

Now, if anybody doubts that, just the other day Mr Bridges, who is planned and appointed to go to Washington, which is the annualised tour for the Leader of the Opposition to go to Washington, decided to cancel. Why? Well, he’s too scared that if he’s away—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh, he’s too worried that if he’s away—I can’t challenge his fortitude, but he’s so worried that if he is away, the mice will play. Can I just say this: you know, he should go, because even an inmate deserves a last meal—a last meal. He should go. National is a party of four d’s: distracted, divided, desperate, and divisive. The Government’s a party of four d’s: driven, determined, dynamic, and delightful.

Now, my last comment is: Mr Bridges has brought to politics all the excitement of a confabulation of undertakers.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Well, at the best, that was boring—absolutely, blatantly, the usual that we hear from a man who is absolutely boring. I would have expected a little more pizazz, a little bit more of the—but the jokes, quite frankly, now, ladies and gentlemen, have got to be about 26-27 years old. They get recycled slightly, with a different name, with a different version of it.

Quite frankly, what we’re seeing at the moment is a whole lot of horse trading going on between the Government and the various three parties, and it’s quite interesting to see how that’s going. I say to the Greens: you’re swallowing a lot of dead rats, whether it’s waka jumping, a capital gains tax, and now a binding cannabis referendum. I was with you on option four. I just felt that if we’re going there, the public deserve the most certainty they can have. They deserve to have as much say as they can. They deserve to actually go into a select committee process where we have the experts alongside of it, where, actually, it can be refined a bit and improved. We see that in bills all the time in this House, which is why we have that process, committee stage. I think we would have seen a better piece of legislation if it had been given that kind of process, and the public deserve that. My own personal views—and I know that everyone tries to say that I’m a bit here and a bit there. My job, actually, is to raise concerns, and my job is actually to test us all a bit more in this area on what I think is one of the most important decisions that we’re going to make in a while, because it really could change the fabric of society.

So in the year of no delivery that we’re seeing from the Government, it is interesting that the only thing we’re actually getting delivered is a referendum that is by no means, in any way, shape, or form, binding. If we had the interests of the public at the heart of what we were doing, then I think that we would have gone back to that and actually given them something where they knew what they were voting for, and I think it’s really important. There are a whole lot of questions.

So what we constantly hear from the Greens—and I’m hoping that the Green member’s going to take a call, and that would be really good—is that we want to get rid of that black market, that we want to see fewer gangs. Who wouldn’t agree? You know, there’s no one that wants to see the gangs thriving, pushing more drugs to, particularly, our youth. What, unfortunately, we are seeing, and it’s not just in Canada—and, granted, it’s only one quarter—but in Canada, where it is legal, for the first quarter of 2019, actually, still 38 percent of those that used marijuana bought it from the black market. I would have thought that they would have gone and got it legally, because that would have made sense—it’s legal now, you can go to a local shop, you can get it. I expected it to be less than 10 percent, I’ve got to be honest, that would still be going to a black market. So that sort of proves it.

In California, where, of course, it’s been legal for more than a year, there are reports in the New York Times where they are saying, and the local mayor and that are saying, that, actually, they think that the black market is thriving and doing better, and actually they are seeing more of it and not less. It kind of fits logically. I personally think if it gets legalised—and I’ve got to say that at the moment, I would say I hope it doesn’t—I believe that we should be testing the potency and putting a regulation on the potency of THC. Canada and Colorado don’t do that, but that means we’re making sure it’s not too strong, yeah, particularly in edibles. To do that you need to test around 10 percent of the product—

Kieran McAnulty: No one’s listening.

Hon PAULA BENNETT: —right, to make sure that that THC—well, they should be listening, actually, Jamie Strange, because this is really important.

Kieran McAnulty: Jamie Strange! Ha, ha!

Hon PAULA BENNETT: This is about—oh, well, I do get them all a bit mixed up, I’ve got to say, because there’s a lot of those guys that all look the same. Actually, I’ve got to be honest—I don’t even remember your name. I’m not sure if you’ve ever spoken.

SPEAKER: Order! Me?

Hon PAULA BENNETT: I’m not being rude—it’s not at you, sir. I do remember yours, but I’m really struggling to remember the member’s name, which must be proof of his contribution to this Parliament so far. I really have no idea, so I’m not even going to try and go there.

But what is important is actually this debate and the fact that New Zealanders are going to be debating it. I believe that, actually, testing 10 percent of the product is going to be about a 40 percent tax, which means that gangs and things won’t be paying it, which means the black market keeps thriving, which means that they also get a higher-potency product, which means that there’s a market for it, it gets into our young people, and I think there’s huge risks in it, and I’m pleased we’re debating it.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): The National Party is not fond of workers going on strike. I heard Scott Simpson, their representative on industrial relations, say that in the 21st century, there’s better ways of responding to an industrial dispute than going on strike. But what do we see today? Once again, something goes on in the House that they don’t quite like and off they all walk—off the job with the National Party again. They’re all on strike again. What’s good for them, what they say, is not what they want other people to do—same old National all the time. The Deputy Prime Minister was absolutely right when he said the National Party are the party of the 4 Ds: desperate, divided, distracted, and divisive.

Desperate—Simon Bridges, poor old Simon Bridges. He’s had a go on everything from slushies to gangs selling gummy bears. These are the issues that he has prioritised, and we all know how well it’s doing for Simon, “Mr 5 Percent”. Even his own team can’t express confidence and trust in him. Simon is getting desperate.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: But of course the—Simon Bridges, the Hon Simon Bridges, is getting desperate, but the caucus is divided as well. They’ve been told off by Simon for leaking to Newshub. How do we know?

SPEAKER: Order! Last warning.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Simon Bridges, the Hon Simon Bridges, told his caucus off for leaking to Newshub. How do we know this? Someone leaked it to Newshub. They are distracted, and if we want any more evidence on the fact that the National Party is completely distracted, it was the contribution from the Hon Paula Bennett in this debate. She gave an impassioned argument why she thinks New Zealanders that should vote “no” in the referendum on cannabis legalisation, but didn’t tell us whether or not the National Party will implement the will of the people. If people vote “yes”, will the National Party follow that? If the people vote “no”, will the National Party follow that? They can’t tell us either way, because they are completely distracted from the issues. It sounds like, from what Paula Bennett just told us, she is going to focus her attention on debating the referendum and has checked out from the campaign for the general election. That’s fine by us. If National want to focus on the referendum and which side they’re going to take on the referendum, that’s fine, because over here we will focus on the issues that matter to New Zealanders and focus on campaigning for this Government to be returned after the next general election.

And, of course, we know they are divisive, because they have Judith Collins—the Hon Judith Collins. Here’s the division: Judith Collins thinks she’s great; everyone else in her caucus does not.

Over this side of the House, we are focused on the matters that are important to New Zealanders. We have been addressing the plethora of failures that were left to us by the previous Government. We are dealing with the shortfall of over 70,000 houses. The New Zealand economy, Government, and private sector, in the year to March, built 34,000 new homes. That is more house building going on today than there has been since the 1970s.

In health, we have increased the funding for our hospitals—now over $14 billion for capital projects needed over the next 10 years because of the gap that was left in health by the previous Government. We’re dealing with education; we’re dealing with wages. We have lifted the minimum wage to $17.70 an hour, because working people in New Zealand deserve to get a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. The average wage is up by over $65 a week during our time in office, and we’ve created 70,000 new jobs and unemployment is down to 4.2 percent. GDP growth is up 2.8 percent per annum. When, around the world, we are seeing economies slow down and a growth slow-down, the fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are still strong, and this Government is focused on transforming our economy into one that is more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive, so that everybody in New Zealand can benefit from a growing economy.

We are backing our regions. We’ve invested in 195 projects over 14 regions. We’re changing our immigration settings to support growth in the regions, and to indicate to that migrant workforce that there are opportunities beyond Auckland; that they do need to go and look at Ashburton and Otago and Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay, because the opportunities are there, and we want those regions to thrive as well.

On this side of the House, we are united, and we are focused on delivering for New Zealanders. And we are proud of the work we have done through the last 18 months of this term.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Mr Speaker, thank you. Just over a year ago, in the Fieldays, Simon Bridges stood up and outlined the National Party’s principles that we intend to take to the conversation around climate change that unfolded over the subsequent year. He knew at his core that New Zealand thrives when we get the judgments right between what the science is telling us, the available innovation and technology to adopt across sectors, what the rest of the world are doing—being acutely conscious of the economic costs—and the value to this country of a commission that can stand above the day-to-day politics and provide that prudent, considered advice on how we manage our emissions down.

So we are pleased to see significant elements of what we have taken to those negotiations appear in the bill that has been announced by the Government today. We were supportive of a split gas approach, and it is in there. We’re supportive of the commission being advisory, and it is in there. We are supportive of the principles that underpin the National Party’s approach to climate change being in that bill. We’re supportive of the focus on adaptation, because, along with the journey to mitigate our impact, we must always be conscious of the fact that despite our efforts, the global effort may not be enough, and we must learn to adapt to climate change as it changes. And so we support that being in there.

But targets matter. The 2050 targets matter. Holding a view of where, ultimately, you need to go matters. Whilst we have signalled that we support the landing of the long-lived gases being reduced to net zero, the idea that we need to drive our methane emissions to somewhere between 24 and 47 percent less than what they are today—emissions that come from cows and sheep and other ruminant animals’ natural diet. This is not a function of a farmer building a fence to stop runoff meeting the river. These are animals. Our cows are no different to everybody else’s, yet this is a task that this Government thinks should be put in front of our agricultural sector when there is no technology available at this time to do it. What makes it worse is that it is our view that it is unnecessarily onerous, and there are many other scientists within the New Zealand context that suggest a much lesser target than what has been promulgated.

But I guess the issue which irritates me in particular—and we heard it traversed this afternoon in the House—is that this has been a good-faith negotiation. For the last eight of the 10 months it has been a good faith negotiation—and then there was silence. Then there was no opportunity to progress this critical issue of where we could meet common ground. And whilst I acknowledge the apology this afternoon from my counterpart James Shaw, it is the putting right that counts. There sits in front of us an opportunity, through the select committee process, to look at this point and find a solution, so that this House has the opportunity to stand in unison and support an institution. It should not be beyond us, and I am looking directly to those in the Government whose influence in this conversation does not go unnoticed.

There is an opportunity here to land, because we have to do it. As the Minister himself said, emissions continue to rise. It is all very well to create an institution to guide and advise our trajectory over the next 20, 30 years, but emissions continue to rise. And he has acknowledged that they will continue to do so to the mid-2020s.

Eventually, a tough transition awaits this country. It will be far better for the policy conversations that will need to be had in this House if there is an institution that sits above it that is filled with people who have the respect of both sides of the House; who are not there because of a political axe to grind but because of their deep understanding of the science on the available innovation, on the economic and distributional impacts, on what the rest of the world is doing to ensure that, ultimately, as we make this transition as New Zealand, we do it at a pace that means our communities can thrive. The people that send us here deserve that and I very much hope the Government takes up that opportunity and we find a solution. Thank you.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Ko ngā maharatanga me ngā whakaaro nui ka tau ki runga i te marae o Mātaatua ki roto o Rotorua, i te matenga o tētahi o ngā pou o Te Reo Māori, tētahi tohunga o Te Reo Māori, tētahi o ngā tino kaumātua o te motu whānui, arā ko Te Wharehuia Milroy, tēnā kua ngaro atu i te tirohanga kanohi. Ka takoto ia ki runga ki tōna marae, ki runga o Mātaatua. Ko ngā whakaaro nui ki a ia me tana whānau, ki roto i te wā pōuri.

[Firstly, I shall be continuing in the Māori language. Our thoughts and condolences go out to Mātaatua Marae in Rotorua, at the passing of one of the stalwarts of the Māori language, one of the notable experts of the Māori language, one of the nation’s most distinguished elders. Te Wharehuia Milroy is now lost to the land of the living. He lies in state on his marae, at Mātaatua. We extend our condolences to his family, at this very sad time.]

I wanted to pay acknowledgment to a great man—a man by the name of Te Wharehuia Milroy, who, as a staunch advocate for Te Reo Māori, is going to be sorely missed by the Māori people and, indeed, I believe, by the entire nation.

Te Wharehuia Milroy was one of those eloquent speakers in both Māori and English. He also had the kind of will for Te Reo Māori and aspiration for Te Reo Māori that would see more people come to Te Reo Māori. Whether you were Māori or Pākehā, he was so inviting with Te Reo, and his voice in the battle for Te Reo Māori will be sorely missed. We extend our condolences to his family and to the people of Tūhoe, and to the people of Ngāti Koura in particular. I, along with others, hope to make it to farewell him properly on his marae of Mātaatua in Rotorua. So I say to Te Wharehuia, farewell.

Te Wharehuia is a classic example of the intention of the good work being done by the Hon Kelvin Davis in the space of education. The Hon Kelvin Davis has a programme called Te Kawa Matakura that he recently announced. Te Kawa Matakura is an extension of the education sector to identify leaders, to identify what we would call tohunga and strong practitioners of tikanga and Te Reo Māori. We identify them young; we develop them in the hope that we can create more people like Te Wharehuia Milroy. And so I want to commend the good work by the Hon Kelvin Davis in this space, because it’s those kinds of positive initiatives that I actually believe will make a significant difference into the future. More Wharehuia Milroys will make this country a far better place. So I want to acknowledge the Hon Kelvin Davis and the work he’s doing there to increase Māori education.

On this side of the House, we’ve always had a goal for Te Reo Māori. We want over a million speakers by 2020—over a million speakers by 2020. Now, that sounds difficult, but we rise to those difficult challenges. We know that Te Reo Māori is being spoken now more than ever. We also know that what Te Reo Māori is doing is it’s being encouraged, garnered, and grown by a younger generation. It’s now not uncommon to see non-Māori children use the word “whānau”, use the word “aroha”, use the word “mahi”, use the word “kaupapa”. It is starting to permeate through our entire society, and I believe that is something that we should all be proud of in this country.

In my final minute and a half, I want to congratulate all of the Ministers in this Government for the hard work that they do. We do know that there are significant challenges. We commented today on the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and the work that they did to make sure that we have a welfare system that is fair and that allows our people to make sure they are able to access the system when they need to the most, and it’s important that we get the work right. It’s going to take some time, but I’m proud that, on this side of the House, we’ve set the direction. We’ve set the waka, if you like, in the right direction and we are going to get there, and we’re going to get there with all of our people on board.

The member Todd Muller, whose contribution I quite enjoyed, did speak about targets, and targets are important. Funnily enough, on this side of the House, the only target that matters at the moment, and that we’re all curious about, is the one on Simon Bridges’ back. There are a number of members on that side of the House who—just whispers, just whispers—are positioning themselves for promotion, perhaps even for the big job of Leader of the Opposition, and I say to the Hon Simon Bridges, kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui [stay strong, stay committed, stand your ground] and I’m sure that somewhere on this precinct there might be a flak jacket for him.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thanks for the opportunity to have a chat and a debate this afternoon in the general debate. I just want to reflect on the last couple of weeks because it was about that time frame when the Prime Minister announced there was going to be no capital gains tax, and those horrible environmental taxes that were proposed in the Tax Working Group report have now been kicked for touch. I thought to myself, “But wait, there’s always more. There’s always another issue around the corner.”, and what was telling in that debate that played out in the Cabinet room—and preceding that—was the influence that New Zealand First have over the coalition Government. It wasn’t so long ago that Winston Peters said no to “Labour-led Government”. That phrase is now banned. It has to be a “coalition Government”. So what happened at that point in the Cabinet room we will never quite know when they were debating the Tax Working Group’s findings and recommendations.

What I can presume occurred was that New Zealand First, because of the leverage that the National Party and the public of New Zealand had put on the coalition Government, said, “No, we are not prepared to entertain a capital gains tax.” Well, straight away at that point, I reckon what James Shaw did was reach down into his Cabinet folder and say, “Here we have a climate change bill, Mr Peters. New Zealand First needs to back this bill.” So a deal was done at that point in time. Now we see that play out today. We see that play out. New Zealand First have signed up to the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, and you should watch them squirm over the next few weeks and months to come. They have signed up to a methane reduction target of 27 to 47 percent by 2050. This is going to be incredibly damaging for rural communities.

Just have a look at the economic analysis that has backed and that is attached to this bill. They are eye-watering numbers—billions and billions of dollars. Yes, it will be fine for people to say, “It’s out to 2050.”, but think about it—think about what this message sends to our hard-working farmers and rural communities. What it says is that you’re not prepared to look at decent science, because I can’t see the robust scientific reports and analysis that back this methane reduction up.

Industry and farmers were prepared to get on board with the Government. We were prepared to work with the Government. Todd Muller did a huge amount of negotiating in good faith with James Shaw. For the last eight weeks, we have found out that that was a terrible black hole. Never have I seen, in my 14 years, a Minister of the Crown stand up and openly apologise to one of our members because consultation went down the toilet for eight weeks. I’ll tell you why: that was because of New Zealand First’s influence. That’s why it was. They locked out the National Party—locked us away—and said, “No, we’re going to get on with this and we don’t care about all of the dealings that Todd Muller and Simon Bridges have had with the Prime Minister at that level.” That went down the toilet for two months.

So now we are left in a position where we are trying to decide whether we want to support this bill and take the politics out of it, or whether we’re going to be signing up to a methane target that is going to help to bankrupt the economy in the future. Others on that side of the House will say, “Oh, that won’t happen.” Well, it’s typical of a Labour Government to treat rural communities just like a cash cow. If it had been backed by decent scientific evidence and the decent consultation in good faith that we signed up to, it might have been a different story. We will hold our counsel, we will debate this further in our caucus room, but I’m so disappointed in the process by this Government in the last eight weeks.

I get back to where I started: I reckon New Zealand First will cave in. It’s only a matter of time.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Anyone with a sense of history could go and have a look through the Hansard and they will find that the same sorts of terrible doom and gloom speeches were made by the Opposition when the nuclear ships decision was made, and so often throughout history. Here’s an absolutely classic speech of someone who is absolutely locked into the status quo because that member represents people who are absolutely advantaged by the status quo. Well, transformation means, actually, that we’ve got to start thinking about what our future world will look like, and, yes, it means that there will be a bit of discomfort, but only with an understanding of where we’re going will we come up with the necessary science and necessary changes. I actually have confidence that we will get there.

I go back to growing up on a farm. I remember growing up when we used to have all of our effluent going straight into the local stream and that was as a right—of course we could do that! Then those damned commies from the local council came along and made us dig a cesspit, an effluent pond—a settling pond! How dare they! It was our inalienable right to actually put our effluent where we wanted! Then they made us dig a double one so that not only did it settle once, it settled twice. Then we could actually whitebait in the same creek it was going into because, actually, we suddenly realised the whitebait came up because the cow manure wasn’t going in. That is actually an example that, in those cases, unless we’re actually forced to open up and say, “There is another way—a better way to do it.”—we won’t do it. So just have faith and remember those who think that doom and gloom will happen: go back and have a look at the Hansard—see the doom and gloom that was going to happen from those same speakers, from exactly the same place, when the decision was made, among others, around nuclear, because I can just imagine that speaker being exactly the sort of person who would have said that.

I’d just like to take the couple of minutes left to me to just change the subject slightly. We’re still in a place in the House, where we are still reeling slightly from what happened in Christchurch on 15 March, but I don’t want to dwell on that. I mean, that’s often been spoken about, but what I want to dwell on for a second is that what we have really learnt now—there will be an inquiry; we will learn much more—and the public learned and was absolutely astounded by, was the ease of access to semi-automatic weapons. OK, we’ll fix it. Again, I won’t dwell on that, but that was no surprise to anybody who understood how that industry worked. Certainly, where I come from, I’ve stood in front of a select committee and predicted all those things would happen, but until we had a tragedy, nothing was done about it, and that caused me to reflect on what it is about New Zealand society.

I mean, again, we look at what happened with methamphetamine. When that arrived, there were all sorts of warnings. There were those who were close and saw what was happening, but it wasn’t until we had the tragedies, it wasn’t until the tragedies—quite well documented; the William Duane Bells, the Antonie Dixons, and Millie Elder, daughter of Paul Holmes—it wasn’t till those things happened and we saw it in public that the public of New Zealand dropped their jaws and some political action was taken. That political action, we saw, eventually became the Methamphetamine Action Plan. I actually reflect now on one of the other problems that we have inherited as a Government—how badly that failed—because, actually, we saw just recently the water tests that have come out that show the extent of the problem we have with methamphetamine in this country. OK, it’s been accepted; we now know we’ve got to do something about it, but I’ll actually put it down to nothing being done in the previous Government. All the talk about “hard on crime, hard on drugs” that we hear—we hear it often—but it actually got extremely worse under them. It got much worse during that time.

The other thing that happened as a result of that—and, again, I look at another emerging problem—that actually boiled over into the public was organised crime. Again, all these things are very heavily related, and I have to say we talk about some of the problems we’ve inherited from the last Government. There was a police Minister in 2009 who stood here when the Rebels Motorcycle Club was coming to New Zealand and stood and said, “They will be crushed.”—they would crush that gang; they would never be allowed to become established in New Zealand. What is the huge problem we have in New Zealand? The rise of Australian organised crime, which is changing the crime scene in New Zealand. The 501s—so known—are Australian criminals exported to New Zealand, and when did it all start? The previous Prime Minister but two actually had the best relationship, had little sleepovers at the Lodge, and what happened? At the same time as this wonderful relationship and sleepovers, it was the time when the problem we have now got—the rise of criminals coming here—was sown. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. That was a very interesting contribution where the member just wanted us to have faith in them. How can we have faith in them? This year, 2019, is going to be the most important year in this election cycle. Yes, I know some would be thinking that it’s next year, 2020, when we are going to have the general election and that should actually be the most important year. Of course, that’s going to be a very crucial year, because we are going to have the general election, and people are eagerly waiting for National to be back in Government. I’m calling on the Government, saying that this is your year to show up, because if the Government will continue to talk around their promises people are going to get more and more frustrated. That is what we are hearing from people.

How can I forget that the Prime Minister has said that this is going to be the year of delivery—the year of delivery? So far we have had, in these 18 months, just talk, talk, and talk, and we know that talk is cheap. The issue that is in front of them—the big issue that they are tackling at the moment—is legalising cannabis. Yes, that is the big issue in front of the Government at the moment—to legalise cannabis. They haven’t put enough information out, and that is what they are busy doing. On this side, we want to base our judgment on evidence.

When they talk about evidence, I don’t know what kind of evidence they are looking at. We look at proper scientific evidence. There is clear evidence that, with cannabis, it has adverse impacts on the developing brain. I’m not just talking about people who can make choices in their lives—I’m not talking about teenagers, I’m not talking about people in their early 20s; I’m also talking about unborn babies. We know—there is enough evidence—that if pregnant women use cannabis, there will be adverse effects on the brains of those unborn babies. Yep, we know alcohol is bad during pregnancy. We know smoking cigarettes is bad during pregnancy but still there are some women who continue to drink, they continue to smoke. With easy access to cannabis there will be more women accessing cannabis during pregnancy. That is going to have a huge number of social implications. This Government is making this move at the cost of our future generations, and our future generations are not going to forget this Government for this step that they are taking.

There are so many things that are still unclear about what this Government wants to do in this space, but then we also heard about their move to tackle climate change through their legislation—the approach that they have taken.

We know there is clear evidence what should be done. There is technology that is available, but the Government doesn’t want to adopt the technology. They don’t want to look at the proper scientific evidence for tackling climate change. They don’t want to utilise technology to find novel solutions. Instead, they want to impose costs on people and have negative impacts on our economy.

I challenge the Minister for Economic Development and the Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, on his statement that their approach is not hurting our economy or the environment. It’s definitely hurting our environment and economy, and I’m here specifically talking about biotechnology, genetic modification, and gene editing, because—

Kieran McAnulty: Ah, there it is.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —yes, yes—because that side is still stuck in that 2001 mentality. Yes, they’re still stuck in the late 1990s and 2001 understanding of what genetic modification or gene editing is. This field has advanced really fast in the last 10 to 15 years, and I ask the Minister to go out and connect with some people to understand how this technology can help us tackle climate change and other environmental issues, and benefit our economy too.

I would ask the Minister to make his first stop at AgResearch. AgResearch high metabolisable energy ryegrass—funded by New Zealand’s taxpayers—is being trialled in the US, and we don’t know when we’re going to see the benefits of that grass. It could be 10 years, it could be 15 years. We know that that’s looking really promising to reduce methane emissions, but the Government doesn’t want to know that. AgResearch says that it’s estimated that with that grass we can raise GDP by up to $5 billion. How can the Minister say that that’s not hurting our economy or hurting our environment?

We are a small country, we are a small economy, and other countries, including Australia, have changed their stance towards gene editing. That is what we need to think about, because we’re competing with all these nations and we need to have this new approach, a rethink, towards this technology, but this Government wants to remain anti-science.

JO LUXTON (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am absolutely delighted to take a call in this, the general debate. I was actually quite surprised to find out that I’ve only been able to speak in three general debates since we’ve been here in the House, so over the last 18 months I’ve had three contributions and now today I’m delighted to take the fourth. I am going to take the time in my contribution—it will be short, unfortunately—to highlight all the good things that this Government is doing. I would need far more than five minutes to be able to highlight everything that we have been doing.

I also wanted to celebrate the fact that I am standing here on this side of the House as, in what Minister Iain Lees-Galloway said, united and focused and delivering for New Zealand. Alongside with my colleague the Minister Henare, I also want to congratulate our Ministers for the superb work that they are doing in Government. Far too often people complain, particularly the Opposition, about things that aren’t going well. So I actually want to take the time to acknowledge our Ministers and congratulate them for everything that they are achieving. I’m really proud that we’ve actually got a progressive, aspirational Government, and I think that is something that all New Zealanders are excited about.

We’ve been investing in so much, in this Government, and I was trying to think about what investment we saw from the previous Government, and I thought “Hmm”. I sat and thought long and hard. So the flag referendum, investing in a sheep farm somewhere—I don’t know. Can any of my colleagues help me out here and think of anything that was invested in in the previous Government? No. OK. Oh well, never mind, let’s move on. Let’s move on to something a little more positive, things that this Government is investing in: things like health, things like education, and things, most importantly, like families, and actually, really, really importantly, we’re investing in regional economies. Absolutely essential.

I just want to talk a bit about education, first. You know, I was absolutely alarmed to find out that the previous Government had not allowed or accounted or planned for roll growth in our schools. So what we ended up with was overcrowding in our schools. We had children having lessons in school gymnasiums, staff rooms, libraries, cloakrooms, if you please, surrounded by school bags, even the dental clinic. Remember the old dental clinics that we had onsite? How on earth is that a conducive environment for children to learn in? And then, you know, we need more teachers to come in and work in this sector. How on earth are we supposed to attract teachers into teaching in a dental clinic, teaching in a cloakroom, or teaching in a library?

But that’s OK. This Government has funded over 200 new or rebuilt classrooms and school facilities and, in fact, announced a new school rebuild for Ashburton College. And guess what? It takes account of future roll growth. Now, that is something to be celebrated.

I also want to talk about—because I’m running out of time and I’ve hardly covered anything. But anyway—

Kieran McAnulty: Just like them.

JO LUXTON: Ha, ha! I’m going to move on to the Provincial Growth Fund. That’s right, Mr McNulty, and the fact that this Government is investing in regional economies.

I think that under the previous Government, in the electorate where I live, we might have got toilets. So, you know, we got some toilets. But under this Government we’ve had an announcement, particularly thinking about the area where I live: the Opuke Thermal Pools and Spa in Methven, and they’re hoping to open in 2020. That’s going to create 120 new jobs, inject approximately $162 million into the local economy, and could see 150,000 visitors within five years. So we are investing in health, education, families, regional economies, and we are on track to deliver better outcomes for all New Zealanders. In the words of the Hon Nathan Guy, “But wait, there’s more.” There’s always more.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): It’s interesting to listen to the previous speaker, Jo Luxton, “There is more—there is more.” There is more. There are more disasters. Now, this Government is abandoning its flagship, its KiwiBuild. Now forget about KiwiBuild. This is supposed to be the year of delivery, but it is quickly turning into a year of non-delivery.

Look at the census, Census 2018. It’s a disaster, an absolute disaster, the worst-ever census in New Zealand’s history. I’m pleased that Minister Shaw is here. I’m not sure whether you have read my report, but it doesn’t matter. I’m going to give you a very brief summary of my report. Now, the importance of a census is obvious. Everyone knows that the census is particularly important to us. Billions of dollars are at stake. Many Government departments rely on census data to make their Budget decisions. It’s very important. Now we know that the response rate of Census 2018 was 90 percent—90 percent. It dropped 4.5 percent from census 2013. People have been alarmed by the drop, but the reality is even worse, actually much worse. Why? Because Statistics New Zealand changed the definition of “response” for Census 2018. Now the definition includes those who are listed on census dwelling forms but did not submit census individual forms. In the past, these people were counted as non-responses, but this census, Census 2018, counted those who were listed on dwelling forms but did not submit individual forms. If we used the past definition, the response rate of Census 2018 would drop to 85 percent—not 90 percent; 85 percent. That means that over 700,000 New Zealanders did not participate at all or only are listed on the census dwelling form.

Kieran McAnulty: Whose idea was that?

Dr JIAN YANG: Exactly, a good question: who should be responsible for that? The current Government failed at the very final stage of the census. OK. In the crucial stages surrounding census day, this Government failed to lead, in that sense. Now, we’ll come to this later—we’ll come to this later.

Now, I asked Statistics New Zealand about the change of definition: when did they change the definition? They declined to answer my question. I repeated it four times at the hearing. They declined to answer my question. Similarly, I asked about the partial response rate—I asked about the partial response rate. I asked what was the partial response rate, and they declined to answer my question and then said, “Oh I can’t remember.” OK. Then I followed up with a routine question in the name of the committee, the Governance and Administration Committee—right? Still they declined to answer the question. They finally released the partial response rate after facing a potential parliamentary contempt complaint from Dr Nick Smith. They did so only after that potential complaint. So this is the Government which has done this absolutely miserable job but attempted to hide the fact. How can we trust the accuracy of census data when 15 percent of New Zealanders either did not answer at all the questions or gave very, very little information in the census? So this is a particular concern to us.

Also timeliness is a big concern, because by the time the full census data is released, it would be by mid-year next year—almost one year after the first deadline. So by then the data would be outdated. Now, this is an organisational debacle, right? The census access codes were sent out very late. People had to request paper forms and when they requested the forms, actually the 0800 number did not work properly. So it was an absolute shambles, and the Minister did not really take leadership. He was out of the country on census day. There was only one single press release about the census—no encouragement for people to take part in the census.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Although it’s very tempting to spend the next five minutes responding to the various fallacies in Mr Yang’s speech, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to talk about some other news that we’ve had today, of course, which is that the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill is finally in the House. What it does is it outlines our plans over the next 30 years to safeguard the future of New Zealand and the futures of those kids who were taking part in school strikes back on 15 March to protest the lack of action by adults who have had the duty of care over their futures. So we are acting now to preserve their futures and the futures of their own children.

Last year, the United Nations published an incredibly sobering report into what the consequences would be if we allow global temperatures to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The results would be absolutely catastrophic. The critical thing—the critical thing—and the most important thing in this legislation is that we have to do everything we can to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that is the purpose of this bill. It’s written into the very first paragraph of the purpose section that that is our intention. It makes it the law that that is what we are trying to do in New Zealand. As far as we’re aware, we are one of the first countries in the world to make that commitment to living within that envelope.

Now that the bill is finally in the House, it will be the subject of a great deal of debate, and you can already see this afternoon it already has been debated a great deal and we can anticipate more of that, and I welcome that and that is good. But I do want to make sure that that debate has been had with some daylight on it, and already there’s been some misinformation that’s been spread around. So I want to address some of the things that have been said in the House and, in fact, some of the things that have been said in the media—in particular, as it relates to the component of the target around methane.

I just want to start by addressing the science of the methane target, because we’ve been accused of not listening to the science, and that is incorrect. There have been some reports that have been quoted—in particular, the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who put out a report last year, saying that methane needs to reduce at roughly 0.3 percent a year in order to stabilise. A similar report came from David Frame, who’s a very well-respected, leading climate scientist in New Zealand, and Dr Myles Allen, an Oxford University scientist—similar—and, in fact, that view is correct unless you are trying to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which in their models, they’re not. They’re actually operating off a different set of starting assumptions which is what they call no further warming beyond the current pathway, and, of course, the current pathway is not towards 1.5 degrees Celsius.

So this has caused some confusion—in particular, in the agricultural sector—and that is completely understandable. I can completely understand why that confusion is out there, because that is complex. The truth is that as long as we emit any long-lived gases like carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide into the atmosphere, you also need to reduce methane in order to create an effect that gets collectively that whole basket of gases—the short-lived and the long-lived—to within 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming.

So the reason why we’re having an argument about this is because, actually, there’s different sets of assumptions that have been informing the science, and we do need to clear that up. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on 1.5 degrees Celsius is actually the only scientific report that we have seen that models scenarios in which the world stays within 1.5 degrees Celsius, and that is why, provisionally, we’ve set the range that they suggested to say that that’s what the world needs to do. But because it’s not settled about what New Zealand needs to do in order to do that, that is exactly why we have asked the Climate Change Commission to go away and do that work. In fact, that’s the point of the bill. It’s to set up the institution to provide us with that kind of independent expert advice.

So while I can understand the concerns that people have got, I have to say that we have looked at the science. It is informed by the science. It’s not perfectly settled, and that is why we have set up a process to do that. So I hope that with that caveat, the Opposition members can find it in themselves to continue to work through with us to get this bill through the House. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): This Government will go down in the history books. It will go down in the history books as the “Spray and Walk Away” Government of all time.

During the election campaign, we saw many well-intentioned promises—spray statements. “We’re going to fix New Zealand”—it was spray mode. Then they found themselves in Government, in the reality of the Treasury benches, and then they said, “How do we meet our campaign promises without walking away?” Well, now it’s time to walk away, and I just want to talk—I’ve only got four minutes to go—about just a few of the walk-away moments in the electorate of Clutha-Southland and around Southland and Otago.

Let’s talk about those walk-away moments. Spray: “We will ensure we have effective and efficient emergency services across New Zealand”. Walk away: Te Ānau rescue chopper is now on call. If Queenstown’s is not about, it’s put on call, which has resulted in longer waiting times for some residents across Southland.

Spray: “We will look after the most vulnerable children in New Zealand.” Walk away: in mid-2018, they closed down Roxburgh children’s camp, which looks after the most vulnerable kids across Otago and Southland.

Spray: “We will provide better policing across New Zealand.” Walk away: reversed the previous National Government’s decision to staff the Balclutha and the rural Southland police station 24/7. Spray: “We will be the most open and transparent Government of all time.” Walk away: a question to the Minister of Police, Stuart Nash, through a written question on how many call outs there have been since 1 January 2018 for after-hours call outs in Clutha. Walk-away moment: “We don’t keep that data.” The following week, through an Official Information Act request, the police responded to the same question. There have been 312 after-hours call outs in Clutha, so the person is put on hold until the following morning.

This is the “Spray and Walk Away” Government of all time, and the biggest spray and walk-away moment of all has to be the Lumsden Maternity Centre: “We will take care of mothers and babies across New Zealand.” Walk-away moment: “At the start of 2018, we’ve decided to downgrade the Lumsden Maternity Centre.”, which puts the safety of rural mothers and babies at risk. Mothers in Te Ānau will be forced to travel for up to two hours to Invercargill to give birth. Meanwhile, the Associate Minister of Health Julie Anne Genter can ride her pushbike to Auckland Hospital, and mothers in Southland will be forced to give birth on the side of the road.

I just want to acknowledge four brave Southlanders that came up this morning. The Minister of Health hasn’t listened, and I just wish he’d listen to the community over the downgrade of the Lumsden Maternity Centre. We heard from these four brave mothers this morning. They told us that babies will be born on the side of the road. Nearly half of all births at Lumsden are delivered within 30 minutes of arriving at Lumsden.

In the local catchment area, the service coverage schedule was supposed to be around pregnancies, but this Government’s refused to listen to that, and they’ve taken just births. This is disgraceful. This is about equality for rural people across New Zealand.

In summary, blood will be on this Government’s hands when babies are born on the side of the road, as warned time and time again from the communities across Southland, and my one suggestion to the Minister is to please reconsider—blood will be on your hands. As we’ve heard time and time again, this closure will result in babies being born on the side of the road.

National backs rural New Zealand. That’s why, if we’re re-elected next year, we’re going to reinstate full services at the Lumsden Maternity Centre.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

Instruction to Committee

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That it be an instruction to the committee of the whole House on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) that it have the power to consider and, if it thinks fit, adopt the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 224 in my name.

Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 224 proposes the insertion into the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) of a clause amending section 162 of the Education Act 1989 to set out a procedure by which universities may change their name. It is necessary that the House instruct the committee of the whole House to consider this amendment as it is beyond the scope of the bill. However, the House may issue such an instruction as the amendment is not foreign to the bill—in other words, it would have been within the Standing Orders to have it included in the bill, had it been in the bill as it was introduced. The change that is proposed by the SOP has been the subject of consultation and has been supported across the House.

Motion agreed to.

Annual Review Debate

In Committee

Debate resumed from 7 May on the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill.

Annual financial statements of the Government and Finance and Government Administration Sector (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The time remaining in this debate is six hours and 25 minutes. When we were last considering this bill, we were debating the questions that the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the annual financial statements of the Government for the previous financial year be noted, and that the reports of the committee relevant to the Finance and Government Administration Sector be noted. Kieran McAnulty moved that progress be reported, and the call is now available to him.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I’m keen, if nothing else, and as I should be because it’s been an outstanding year on the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I must say, as the Reserve Bank comes in and answers questions, it always surprises me how well our economy is doing under the fine leadership of Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance.

However, we must recognise that there are clouds on the horizon. We hear of the headwinds that are ahead of us from time to time, and the Reserve Bank Governor warns us about that and about the fact that steps need to be taken. When we asked questions of him, it was important and interesting to hear from him that the Reserve Bank is considering increasing capital requirements for our trading banks because, whilst the banks are resilient and are able to weather any particular storm that is likely to hit in the near future, we must be prepared for serious financial conditions. So that’s going to be an important step. We were assured that the banking sector would be able to manage that kind of impact, but there’s much, much more to it than that.

We heard time and again that the fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are strong, that there is strong employment and great employment growth. In fact, the Reserve Bank Governor would repeatedly tell us that one of the pressures on the economy is that we are near maximum sustainable employment—that, in fact, there are labour shortages. Indeed, we’ve seen that labour demand has seen the average wage grow up by $65, and approximately 70,000 new jobs have been created. So we’ve got a very sound economy, and, of course, the minimum wage increasing.

It’s great to see that we’ve got such a solid economy but, having said that, there are pressures. We know that the health sector and the education sector have real demands on the Minister of Finance because there is a lot of ground to make up. We’re trying to plug the gap in our teacher shortage that hasn’t been looked after for nine years—and we heard about that. The Budget responsibility rules are giving us some very firm, very clear, and very reasonable parameters sending very stable signals to the market so that, despite the naysayers out there, business confidence is stable, consumer confidence is up, and we’re doing a great, great job.

One of the things that I found that I was most excited to hear about was the green fund—a great initiative. We’ve heard today about the zero carbon bill, a fantastic piece of legislation introduced into this House—and this is part of that programme of getting New Zealand to a zero carbon framework. A fund managed by Treasury—and, you know, quite reasonably, Treasury officials were questioned about how this fund would be administered, and it’s not some slushy fund; it’s, in fact, a very carefully targeted fund to ensure that any project will be innovative and will drive New Zealand to a green and zero carbon economy. So a business case will be required and it won’t be a case of corporate welfare for your mates and it won’t be looking after the usual businesses; it will be looking at people like local bodies who might come to Government and say, “I’ve got something I want to do. I want to explore how to transfer out our buses to a zero carbon fleet.”—whether that be through, perhaps, a biodiesel supply chain or electrification or any other number of things. What we’re looking for here is innovation, and more than just a good idea but something that will go on and on and on—so that’s really what it is about.

But you know what? This Government has turned around the ship of State, and, what’s more, it’s cleaned all the barnacles and weeds that have grown on it over the past nine years; the barnacle of inequality, the weeds of homelessness, and the housing crisis—we have addressed those matters. I’m very proud to sit on that committee. We have seen a huge improvement, and we will continue to do so. Grant Robertson, Minister of Finance will take that to the next step this month. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you very much. It was interesting to hear from the previous speaker, Duncan Webb, that this Government had turned the ship of State around; unfortunately, it’s turned it in the wrong direction—very much in the wrong direction. We’ve seen the transition that this Government talks about—the great transition that we’re going through. Unfortunately, it’s turning into being a transition from a wealthy prosperous and dynamic economy to one that has fallen off the pace from rich to poor.

So the story that we’ve seen in the last year—when we came into Government, Treasury was predicting just before the election, in its pre-election special, that we’d be growing at nearly 4 percent in 2018; and what did it turn out? It was closer to 2 percent, a very substantial drop in the growth of our economy. How does that translate to people’s lives? Well, it creates fewer opportunities for New Zealanders to get ahead, to be able to look after themselves and their family, to be able to engage in productive and satisfying work and have a range of opportunities, and it weakens our ability to provide world-class public services as well if our economy continues to slow down. So that’s the result of the economic policies that this Government has carried out.

Now, we’ve also seen today that our interest rate level has been cut to 1.5 percent—the lowest in a very long time, and at extremely low levels that you would normally associate with a serious recession; and how do we explain that? Well, the Reserve Bank Governor has talked about ongoing low business sentiment, tight profit margins, and competition for resources—those have been some of the reasons. So the Government will spend all of their time saying: “Oh, oh, it’s not our fault; it’s the rest of the world—that’s the reason why New Zealand’s growth has dropped and why we have to have these really low interest rates.” Well, that’s only very much part of the story. They don’t take any responsibility for their own actions and the actions of this Government in slowing down the economy. Yes, there is some slow-down internationally, but not universally so. Certainly the United States is going gangbusters, it’s grown over 3 percent and it’s rising; the Australians haven’t reduced their interest rates, because they see their economy stabilising; China, of course, is still growing at over 6 percent.

The other thing that’s not mentioned quite so often is that New Zealand’s terms of trade, the prices that we’re getting for our exports, are at incredibly high levels in terms of the history of this country. So this is a time when the New Zealand economy should be booming and going gangbusters, but instead we’re slowing, and that is because of all the additional costs that this Government has added and because of the gross uncertainty that it has brought into the economy over the past 18 months—the most dramatic, of course, has been 18 months of indecision around the capital gains tax. So why on earth would anybody in the last 18 months have made a major investment in their business? Remember that it’s investment that leads to jobs and growth and opportunity—why would anybody make a major investment if they didn’t know whether they’d have to pay a capital gains tax of 33 percent on that investment? That uncertainty kept hands in pockets for a long period of time, and I’m just very grateful that the Government decided to backtrack on that original policy; and so at least we have removed that one element of uncertainty.

But there is so much more: when you look at industrial relations, when you look at overseas investment, and when you look at all the additional costs that they’ve added into the housing sector. The gross manner in which they made the decision for the oil and gas, which has left so many other industries wondering whether they’ll be next to be sacrificed for preparations for the Prime Minister’s next major global international conference where she wants to virtue signal around the world without doing any analysis about the cost of those decisions.

Treasury, of course, which we’re talking about here in the financial review, is responsible for our economic policy. As I said earlier in this debate, there is no discernible clear economic policy that’s been outlined by the Government. We remember, in August last year, the Prime Minister stood up in front of a business crowd and announced her business partnership agenda, which was going to be a clear articulation of the economic policy of this Government. She listed a whole bunch of things. There were three main things, one of which was the capital gains tax, which has subsequently been abandoned, and the Provincial Growth Fund, which has now lost a lot of credibility given the way that it’s been handled by its Minister, Shane Jones. She announced all that stuff and then we never heard of it again—never heard of it again. So it’s been announced, it was the Prime Minister’s major announcement in August last year—never referred to again. So it’s little wonder there’s so much confusion.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Associate Minister of Finance): Thank you, Mr Chair. I will begin by just acknowledging the previous speaker, Paul Goldsmith, who was, when I was in Opposition, the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and collegial in that role, but I must correct a few errors in his speech.

At the beginning of his speech, he talked about the Reserve Bank reducing the rate. That decision was taken today. He tried to paint a picture that would have the world believe that that was not about global headwinds, when, in fact, the Reserve Bank itself noted concerns around the global economic outlook. It acknowledged that the underlying fundamentals of the New Zealand economy are strong, and we see, of course, central banks around the world easing monetary policy. I would have thought that member would have welcomed lower interest rates for homeowners and businesses, so I’m a little surprised at his misery around this. This is, obviously, an independent decision by the Reserve Bank. They rely on their own decisions and forecasts.

This is a Government that is focused on making sure we have an inclusive, productive economy that’s sustainable over the longer term. We’re fixing the problems that accumulated under nine long years of neglect by the previous Government—problems that were ignored, like kids growing up in cars, hospitals with rot and mould in the walls, and rivers so dirty that they can no longer be swum in. Of course, we know that not everything can be fixed overnight. We’re a prudent Government. We are interested in running surpluses, and I have this graph here with me, which I grabbed, which was part of the original Budget slide pack when the Budget was presented, which highlights in blue the deficits that were run under the previous Government’s watch and the surpluses—in red, conveniently—that are predicted under this Government’s watch. This is a prudent Government.

The reason, of course, that we’re interested in running surpluses is because there are global headwinds out there. There could be natural disasters. There are a number of things that can happen, and in those circumstances we want to be well prepared should there be any unforeseen circumstances around the economy, but in the meantime we’re getting on and investing in our economy, because we are a Government that believes in investing.

Two thousand businesses are expected to benefit from the 15 percent R & D tax incentive. We’re saving businesses and customers $100 million over the next two years by dropping ACC levies—$100 million on average—from 72c to 67c per $100 of liable earnings. We’re investing in regional economies through the Provincial Growth Fund. We’ve established the Business Advisory Council vehicle to harness expertise from the private sector. We’re doubling down on trade and broadening our trade base. We’re reforming skills and trade training to address long-term labour shortages and productivity gaps and to make sure we’re preparing for the future of work, and we’ve made a $100 million capital injection into the New Zealand Green Investment Fund to stimulate new private sector investment in low-emissions industries.

We’ve got a plan, of course, that has so many more attributes to it. I’ll mention one more: investing $10 billion more capital than the previous Government—and in health, I know that to be true. We are investing heavily in capital in the health sector because our buildings were so run down under the last Government’s watch. But what do the international observers say? What do they say? The IMF forecasts advanced economies to grow by 1.8 percent in 2019 and 1.7 percent in 2020. Within that, the IMF forecasts New Zealand’s economy to grow by 2.5 percent in 2019 and 2.9 percent in 2020. So, compared to our peers, we are set to grow solidly.

New Zealand’s GDP growth remains one of the best in the OECD. New Zealand’s GDP growth of 0.6 percent in the December 2018 quarter was higher than in Australia, Canada, the euro area, Japan, and the UK, and higher than the OECD average. That’s forecast to continue, as I have just outlined. Our unemployment rate: down to 4.2 percent in the March quarter, the second-lowest since December 2008. Wages grew 3.4 percent over the year. This is an economy in good shape.

We’re looking to make sure that it’s an inclusive economy, and it’s a real inspiration to work with Jacinda Ardern, our leader, bringing this coalition Government together to make sure that we share the gains from a productive economy with the whole country, not just with the wealthiest 1 percent. This is a Government committed to sharing the gains with everyone, and I salute also the finance Minister, Grant Robertson, for the good job that he is doing.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Chair, and a pleasure to get up and to speak on behalf of New Zealand First in this appropriations debate and to follow Dr Clark, who has given us some much-needed balance after what have been some attempts by the National Party within this debate to talk the New Zealand economy down when, of course, all the news is good, and certainly in comparison to international economies that we would normally compare ourselves to.

The National Party’s false premise, of course, is that there were some forecasts a few years ago that would’ve said growth was at a certain rate that’s higher than where it is now, but that doesn’t rely on the reality that things happen. There are international headwinds, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank clearly outlined to the select committee, and we’re seeing that. Who would’ve predicted back then that Trump and the Americans and the Chinese would be going hammer and tongs in a trade war, and just about $200 billion of tariffs are being mooted to be put on to the Chinese imports into America just this very week. Those are the dynamics of the international economy that could not be predicted two years ago.

Our performance as an economy—and as Dr Clark has just laid out, nearly at 3 percent, or just under 3 percent, looking at 2.9 percent, the IMF predicting this year, against the OECD average of about 1.8 percent—is a stellar performance indeed and off the back of some great exporting performances, particularly out of our primary sector, I might say, with record exports. Actually, if you look at some of those forward indicators, the dairy payout—they’re just about to come up. Fonterra are about to announce their payout for next year. All the commentators are saying it could have seven—in fact, mid-seven—dollars per kilo of milk solids in front of it. The meat industry, which has ticked over $10 billion worth of income for this country, are going gangbusters. In fact, unfortunately for the farmers of China, there’s been a major outbreak of African swine flu; so it looks like the tailwinds for the next two years for the red meat sector are very strong indeed. We’ve got the kiwifruit industry ticking over—$3 billion—and with the gold kiwifruit in particular now outstripping in volume the green kiwifruit, and the innovation that we’re seeing in our primary sector.

Of course, when you look at innovation in a sustainable economy going forward, in the most successful economies, it’s R & D. It’s R & D as a percentage of GDP, and this Government has committed to getting our percentage up to 2 percent, but that would still leave us behind the OECD average. There’s almost a direct correlation between the wealthiest economies and the percentage of R & D, and this Government just the other day passed a bill for R & D tax credits for our businesses. Nothing—nothing—signifies the disarray in the National Party than the fact that they voted against that bill. It’s, essentially, a tax cut, a tax incentive for our businesses to invest in R & D for long-term sustainable growth, and the National Party voted against that—virtually their only principle, they voted against.

This Government has been incredibly prudent and, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank noted today, we have had a Government responsibility around that. We’ve set a target of 20 percent of our debt to GDP, which we have almost achieved—I think it’s sitting at 20.6 percent at the moment. So we’ve been incredibly prudent in the way that we have invested and kept that within balance towards the overall scope of our economy. Not only have we been doing the R & D tax credits—that’s a big-picture policy that we’ve highlighted—but the Provincial Growth Fund. Aren’t we proud of that on this side of the House and, particularly, within New Zealand First—195 projects across 14 regions. I highlighted in the House the other day that I had the pleasure of actually announcing one of those in Nelson at the Cawthron Institute—

Jamie Strange: Yeah, I enjoyed that.

MARK PATTERSON: $6 million—Jamie Strange was there representing the Government as well—into that to grow the Algae business, which is a fast-growing area of development. This stuff sells for eye-watering amounts per gram. That’s the sort of thing we are doing to transform our economy. We’re not sitting here talking things down; we’re getting on and delivering real, sustainable gains for New Zealand. Thank you.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): Mr Chair, thank you very much. Now, I talked about Census 2018 in the general debate but now I want to focus on the costs, the funding, and the budget for Census 2018. Look at this committee report about Statistics New Zealand—two and a half pages, but one and a half pages are about Census 2018. Why? Because the census has always been the most important job for Statistics New Zealand, and Census 2018—last financial year it was the census year. So that’s why the census should be the key job for Statistics New Zealand, and they botched Census 2018; it became a disaster for the Government.

Now, how did Statistics New Zealand perform in terms of conducting Census 2018? As I said, it was a complete failure, a shambles, a disaster. The response rate—as I repeatedly argued—officially was 90 percent, but it includes the 5 percent partial response rate. In the past, in previous censuses, this 5 percent would be considered non-responses, but they changed the definition this time to make the response look better. So the reality is 85 percent responded; 15 percent of New Zealanders did not submit their individual forms—10 percent of them did not do any census form at all. So this is what we had for Census 2018.

Then the Government has not accepted any responsibility. They blamed the previous National Government, first of all, saying, “This decision was made by the previous National Government.”, implying that the decision might have been the wrong decision. But the decision was made after a thorough study, and, internationally, countries are moving towards online censuses—we call it modernised census—and these countries are doing very well. In 2016, Australia did a census mainly online—94.8 percent response rate. Canada—same year, 2016—98.4 percent response rate. New Zealand: 85 percent, actually, if we look at this.

So the decision was made, in the broad context—and it was the right decision—but then the Government is arguing, “Census 2018 was underfunded because, on the one hand, the Government wanted to move the census online and, on the other hand, it tried to cut the spending by 5 percent over two census cycles.” That is not true—that is not true. The previous National Government was anticipating the modernised census would be cost-effective and, therefore, generate savings. The 2014 Cabinet paper says, “The modernised census model is estimated to produce savings (compared to 2013 costs) of at least five percent over the 2018 and 2023 census cycles”. Its cost is the savings; they are not saying cut the costs. So this is why we say that to accuse the previous Government of underfunding is absolutely wrong. The fact is that the 2018 Census had a budget of $113 million—and it increased to $117 million. Compared with the 2013 census, $72 million—that’s a 63 percent increase. At the end of the day, Stats New Zealand did not spend all the money. They underspent the census budget by $758,000 in a census year

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: How much?

Dr JIAN YANG: —$758,000 they didn’t spend—they could not spend. So there’s no reason to believe, or to argue, that Census 2018 was underfunded. The Government should face up to the challenge, face up to the failure, and try to acknowledge their responsibility.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Statistics): There are times, as Gwendolen remarked in The Importance of Being Earnest, when “it becomes more than a [mere] duty to speak one’s mind, it becomes a pleasure”. It’s a great pleasure to follow on from Mr Jian Yang’s speech, then, about the 2018 census, which, of course, in the appropriation period was a very significant spend and a very significant event.

Now, I have, actually, read Mr Yang’s report that he wrote criticising the effectiveness of the delivery of the census as well as criticising the Government’s performance in the remaining months that it had before the census was carried out. One of the things in that report which I thought was brilliant was he was repeating something that Dr Nick Smith had said in the House once, which was that it was a sign of failure that we’d only put out so-many press releases. I have to say that if Dr Smith thinks that the frequency of ministerial press releases is a mark of success in the world, that might explain why there was a housing crisis on his watch. Now, having said that, the report that Mr Yang wrote was very interesting; so I have passed it on to the independent review that’s being conducted into the 2018 census, which is being conducted by management consultant Dr Murray Jack and Connie Graziadei, who was the deputy chief statistician for Canada, who, of course, ran a very successful online census in Canada. It’ll be interesting to see what they make of Dr Yang’s report.

Now, I just wanted to start by talking—because one of the myths that are going around, of course, is that people don’t trust the use of administrative data as part of the census output. What’s interesting is that if people don’t trust that, or if—what Mr Gerry Brownlee’s been repeating in the House—people don’t trust the use of admin data, then Mr Brownlee and the National Party really should look at their own role in spreading misinformation and concern about that, because it was their Government that set in path this strategy of using administrative data.

Let me just talk you through the long-term census transformation strategy that they signed off in 2014 and 2018. So, as Mr Yang said, traditionally, historically, we’ve conducted censuses using paper forms, going door to door, collecting that information. That was the way that censuses were conducted up until, well, mostly—there’s been a bit of a transition but really the big shift started with the 2013 census, where there was a greater use of digital, of online form-gathering. In that census, roughly 70 percent of forms were gathered on paper and about 30 percent were online. That formula was switched for the 2018 census, where the target was to get 70 percent online completion rate—and we got about 85 percent; so well above the target that was set by the previous Government on that—and the remainder forms on paper.

Now, the idea was that then, from about 2023, the next census would be called, you know, “digital plus admin”—so online forms plus the use of admin data. For censuses after that, the rough intention was that it would be primarily admin data supplemented by online forms, and then the 2033 census might not even happen, because we would have such good administrative data, you wouldn’t actually need to carry out a survey in the historical term. So that was the long-term intention that was set up.

That raises the question: what is administrative data, and why is it any good, and what is it that Mr Brownlee is so worried about? Well, administrative data is data that’s gathered about real people; it’s real data that is gathered by Government agencies like the Accident Compensation Corporation, in education, health records, births, and deaths, and marriages, immigration records—those kinds of things. What the previous Government did was to set in train a long-term project to be able to use anonymised data to gather much more accurate information than we have ever been able to do as a result of the census process. Now, it turns out that was the right call, because the result of this census is that we have got a more accurate population record than we have ever had before. We’ve got a population file with 4.7 million records about real people—the kind of information that can be used for the formation of district health board budgets, of electorate boundaries—and I think Mr Yang should congratulate the Government that he supported that made that decision to use administrative data, because it is working.

Rt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): What a pleasure to follow on from the Hon James Shaw, and, I must say, after listening to his explanation, that’s the best explanation I’ve had on the current situation around the statistics. Why he didn’t try that approach initially, instead of standing in this Parliament day after day and blaming the previous Government for the mess the statistics got into, I will never know. That was a credible explanation, but, unfortunately, his reputation as Minister of Statistics has already gone down the drain because he stood in this Parliament and said, “Not my problem; all the problem of the previous Government.”

My concern today that I want to address as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is, of course, the declining economy. The Governor of the Reserve Bank will appear before that select committee again tomorrow at 8 o’clock and explain the reason why he’s now dropped the OCR—the official cash rate—to the lowest level, at 1.5 percent, that it’s ever been at. We’ve had Government Ministers, including the Minister in the chair now, the Hon Dr David Clark, arguing the economy is not in decline. It’s time for reality rather than rhetoric. The economy is in decline; it has dropped from 4 percent GDP now to 2 percent, and even the Hon Dr David Clark has got to see that as a decline. That will be one of the questions that is put to the Governor of the Reserve Bank tomorrow as to why he has dropped the OCR. I accept there are some world headwinds, but the New Zealand economy is declining far more than it should, and the reason for that is because businesses lack confidence in this Government.

We have record employment; I agree with that. We had Dr Duncan Webb saying earlier that his Government was proud to have turned the ship of State around—it’s turned around in completely the wrong direction, and what happens when you turn a big ship around is it takes time for the effects to happen. I don’t think it’ll be too long before we see businesses, because they don’t have confidence, lowering the opportunities to employ people. My prediction is unemployment will not go any lower. It will now start to increase. Why is business so pessimistic? It’s issues like a capital gains tax that was out there for months following the report of the Tax Working Group before the Government ultimately pulled the plug on it. But, in the meantime, businesses switched off investment decisions because they were worried about the impact of a dirty capital gains tax.

It’s issues like the reforms of the labour market that we’ve just had—the 90-day trial period, which worked so well for so many disadvantaged, difficult-to-employ, young New Zealanders, has now been taken away from most employers; 19-year-old employees and above, you cannot now use the 90-day trial period, and that will make it more difficult for young New Zealanders to get jobs.

It’s issues like climate change, and I want to take this opportunity of acknowledging the announcement today by the Hon James Shaw around the zero carbon bill. What he has done is recognise the importance of giving some certainty to business, and that requires bipartisan support. We will not make progress on the issue of climate change unless business has some security around the settings. But I do take this opportunity of saying to James Shaw that his targets must be reasonable, and my first look at those targets—particularly around methane levels—is they are not reasonable. They’re in fact not achievable, unless an economy that is so dependent on primary production is prepared to cut cow numbers, cut sheep numbers, and dramatically; so it will not happen.

The final point I want to make around a lack of confidence in this economy and in the Government is around the so-called well-being Budget. There has not been a Budget presented in this House that I’ve been part of, either by a Labour Government when I’m in Opposition, or by a National-led Government when I’m in Government, that doesn’t take into account the well-being of New Zealanders. So what we’ve got to watch is we don’t get more rhetoric coming from the Prime Minister which is meaningless, and a Budget that doesn’t deliver real growth.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Today is a wonderful day to be in Government; it is a fantastic day to be in Government, because today the Government has introduced a zero carbon bill, and it’s a great day to be in Government, because, on this side of the House, we are a Government that governs for all New Zealanders. We don’t govern just for business people, though we govern for them too. We don’t govern just for farmers, though we govern for them too. We govern for all New Zealanders. We govern for the children who will grow up in a world dominated by climate change, and, instead of sitting on the sidelines, taking cheap international credit, doing nothing and letting the situation get worse and worse, this Government is taking action to ensure that we will address climate change and address it seriously. No more papering over the cracks. We are getting on with dealing with climate change.

That is why I’m delighted to see that Treasury has investors, that we have invested in the Green Investment Fund, that Treasury has support of that, that we are taking real action with respect to climate change. When it comes to decisions like the oil and gas decision, it’s not just a matter of saying to one industry that they must start to engage in a just transition; we are in there, providing the support to ensure that they can engage in a just transition, and that is the difference between this side of the House and that side of the House. We are about enabling people to succeed; not just business, not just farmers, but all New Zealanders.

It is great being in Government, because, on the Treasury benches we can ensure that our Budget is focused not just on the numbers but on the well-being of all New Zealanders. Instead of having it with just words saying that we do engage in the well-being of all New Zealanders, we are actually going to try to measure well-being, because what you measure is what you govern towards. So we will be measuring not just the number of New Zealanders in jobs but the quality of that employment. We will be measuring not just the number of people who go to school but the quality of the education we get. We will be measuring not just how many hospitals we have but the quality of the healthcare that people get. Why is that important? Because, in governing for all New Zealanders, we need to ensure that New Zealanders can realise their capabilities, can realise their potential. It’s not good enough to have a job which, perhaps, pays a wage but doesn’t allow someone to engage all their abilities. A job at McDonald’s flipping burgers is a fantastic job to have while you’re a student. It can be a great job for many people, but for some people it is a dead-end job. We want to ensure they are able to get out of those jobs and into jobs that matter, and that’s part of what the well-being Budget is about.

For too long—for too long—we have regarded GDP as the only number that matters, the only number that counts. That’s ignoring the extraordinarily contested history of GDP, gross domestic product, as a number—that it’s always been a disputed number, that what gets counted in GDP is disputed, what goes in and what goes out. It was an extraordinary session with Professor Marilyn Waring in the Finance and Expenditure Committee talking about the well-being Budget, when she talked about how what gets counted really, really matters. GDP was contested all along.

Our well-being Budget is being contested. Of course it’s being contested, and of course our measures of well-being will develop over time and will get better, but we are making a start on actually measuring what matters to New Zealanders—to all New Zealanders—and that includes New Zealanders who are not active in the paid economy, because the work that is done in the unpaid economy matters too. That’s why this Budget is critical for women, because so often women’s work has been undervalued. In this Budget, we are going to start to try to make attempts to measure it.

So today is a wonderful day to be in Government, because in Government we can actually make the changes that matter to New Zealand, and those changes are starting to happen in this year in which we are delivering for New Zealanders. I challenge the Opposition—I challenge them—to name one positive thing that they have done in the last year. I cannot find it. The positivity is on this side of the House. It’s a great day to be in Government.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Senior Whip—Labour): I move, That the committee report progress on this bill and move on to consider the Education Amendment Bill (No 2).

Motion agreed to.

Progress to be reported presently.

Bills

Education Amendment Bill (No 2)

In Committee

Part 1 Amendments to Education Act 1989

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I just want to speak briefly to two Supplementary Order Papers in my name that have been put forward for this bill. Supplementary Order Papers, of course, add additional amendments to those considered by the select committee. The first Supplementary Order Paper, Supplementary Order Paper 220, changes the planning and reporting requirements introduced by the education update legislation passed by the previous Government, and it moves the implementation date for those new provisions out by a further year. The new Government, or, certainly, the Labour Party component of the new Government, is quite supportive of the new planning and reporting requirements introduced by the previous Government. The reason for pushing out the implementation by a further year is that schools are currently quite engaged in the review of Tomorrow’s Schools and want to see how that’s all going to play out before they have to engage in further work around the new planning and reporting requirements, and that’s quite a reasonable thing. So, as I’ve indicated already, we support the new planning and reporting requirements. We’re just giving schools more time in the context of the Tomorrow’s Schools review and the other things that they’re dealing with at the moment. So that’s what one of the Supplementary Order Papers does.

The other Supplementary Order Paper, Supplementary Order Paper 224, which I expect there’ll be a little bit more discussion outside of the House on, is one that clarifies the rules around a university changing its name. I want to open by acknowledging the decision made by the Victoria University Council this week to move on from their debate around a name change, and I welcome that, but it has highlighted an area of the law where there is some ambiguity. The reason for the ambiguity is that the Education Act of 1989 does give a Minister the power to approve the name change of a university, but some of the legal scholars who were contesting that were arguing that because some of the universities were established by Acts of Parliament, in fact it would certainly be inconsistent for a Minister to make a decision to make that name change without reference back to Parliament, particularly as, ultimately, the Act that established the university would subsequently need to eventually be changed to reflect the new name of the university. It therefore is more consistent with other legislation and other parts of the Education Act to have the name change decided after an endorsement by the Parliament. That brings it into line with the process for disestablishing a university, for example, where a Minister cannot make the decision to disestablish a university without the endorsement of the Parliament. A similar provision will now apply to a university seeking a name change. So it creates more consistency, and it removes what was clearly going to be, had that debate continued, a point that was going to be contested by some of those involved in the debate.

I’m happy to answer questions on the remainder of the bill as drafted and as reported back from select committee as the debate progresses.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Oh, look, I’m pleased to take a call in this committee stage of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). Firstly, can I just acknowledge that there are going to be a range of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in this debate, and I think it’s really fitting that that occurs. At the outset, though, can I acknowledge that there is one Supplementary Order Paper which, particularly, my colleague Nicola Willis will address and that National is supporting. Can I at this point recognise that there have been literally hundreds and thousands of people across New Zealand who opposed the name change for Victoria University and that the Minister’s worked very hard with my colleague Nicola Willis and Dr Shane Reti to, I think, get to a reasonable place on that. You know, it does have a huge impact to people in terms of their academic history but also this question of the impact economically, socially, and culturally as to what a name change can do for an institution. So I’ll let my colleague Nicola Willis particularly address that.

In terms of the committee stage of this bill, though, National has made it very clear we are deeply concerned about the ideological nature of a number of these changes. I’m going to address some of them and, in particular, a couple of amendments that I have up. One of them cuts to the heart of cohort entry, and let’s just remember and reflect on the history of this. What we know is that there is some research that shows the benefit of children starting with a cohort of other children in terms of their ability to form social relationships, but also the disruption that can occur for new-entrant teachers. That was sort of part of the theory about the original cohort entry policy that was progressed by the last National Government; I acknowledge the Hon Hekia Parata. National fought very strongly for that. We obviously had designed it in a way that we thought was reasonable. Again, it sort of played out quite throughout the select committee but also in the public that the maximum amount of time that a child could—and it would be a small group of kids, on the numbers—would be eight weeks, but, potentially, this is a few weeks or a couple of days.

We think—and, again, my colleagues have, I think, put this in a very eloquent way—it’s a fundamental right of parents to be able to not only ensure that their child starts school, potentially, on their fifth birthday if they want to, which is what the history of New Zealand has been, but also that we’re talking about their choice and we’re also talking about what may be days, in many situations, of difference. Instead, what happened was the Minister came out there with some pretty strong statements, I think. He hadn’t got Cabinet agreement at the time. It obviously had a cost to it, this policy, because, effectively, to go out there and say, well, we’re going to make these changes in terms of cohort entry does bring additional costs to the Crown because you’ve got a group of kids that are more likely to be in early learning. So the process was pretty shabby.

Then what we’ve ended up with, in my view, is intensely ideological. Now, I do argue that maybe, if you are going to get to the point where you say OK, you can’t be under five years old, it does make sense to have more cohort entries, but, regardless, National stands firm on the principle that it’s not going to work for every child but, actually, it is the fundamental right of parents to enable their child, if they want to, to start a little bit earlier, and that might make sense for that particular child.

This bill removes that ability for a group of parents who have always known that in New Zealand they’re able to have their child start at the age of five—that will be taken away from them. Again, I don’t have time to go through all of the other areas, but we’ve got a lot of time in this committee of the whole House stage of the debate because I know that the member in the chair is very generous in terms of calls, particularly when we’ve got so many Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) and so much ground to cover.

You know, I’ll just briefly touch on communities of online learning. I’ve got an amendment in the mix here. Again, this is a Government that talks about the next generation, but a core area that would provide distance learning for a group of young people in isolated communities, who are disadvantaged, are having something ripped away from them on the grounds of pure ideology, and National thinks that’s wrong.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to address some remarks to clause 13 in Part 1 of the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), which go to where the bill ensures—and to clarify and to, I suppose, try and move away from the highly emotive and inflammatory language that is being used by the Opposition; to try and inject some sensibleness into the debate—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. As the bill went to the Education and Workforce Committee, the phraseology was where the Minister was able to issue a Government policy direction to the Education Council, as it was then known, regarding one or more of its functions as set out in section 382(1) of the Education Act 1989. So, essentially, that means that the Minister may develop and publish a statement at any time, including when responding to a particular—now known as the—Teaching Council decision.

I note that in the second reading speeches last night, the Hon Nikki Kaye referred to—I think she used the phrase “State control” with regard to this part of the bill, and I just wanted to clarify this and talk about the actual discussion in select committee on this and what the officials said to us about this. What we were told was that in relation to concern that Government policy direction would undermine the then Education—now Teaching—Council’s independence, officials considered that the council’s independence is safeguarded by the requirement that it, quote, “ ‘must have regard to’ a Government policy direction, as opposed to being required to give effect to it.”

This is one of those times in the House and for the people listening at home when words really do matter, and they are technical phrases but they really do matter in the way that legislation is written. We’ve got expert advice from the ministry, but also from the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who are independent, who pay particular regard to the phraseology. What this means is that this allows the Teaching Council to continue to make its own considered, independent decisions. Now, I’ve said those words slowly for the benefit of the Opposition, who used the phrase “State control” last night, which I thought, you know—it’s important to have considered debate, to call things out when they need to be called out, but if you’re just making it up then let’s have a debate about it. That’s what the committee of the whole House stage is about. So the officials went on to say to us that the distinction between—

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Madam Chair. I just want to seek a bit of clarity. I heard the words referred to me that I was making something up. Well, I don’t believe that a member should be able to say that, and I would have thought the appropriate thing to do is withdraw and apologise.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member—I didn’t actually hear that.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Chair, I think I used the phrase “if” the member was making it up, and that this is the time to have a debate about it.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Let’s carry on, shall we? The Hon Clare Curran.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Thank you, Madam Chair. So the distinction—I think it’s important. For members that are new in the House, it’s important to pay attention to this, and for those that aren’t, then I’m sure they’ve had these debates many, many times in the House, but there is a real distinction between the phrases “having regard to” and “giving effect to”, which is a well-established set of phrases in law. The statutory requirement “to give effect to” means that the decision maker must give consideration to the requirement but determine the weight that it will give to their requirement, whereas “having regard to” requires the decision maker to give genuine consideration to the matter, but the decision maker is also free to come to the conclusion that other factors outweigh the thing that he or she must have regard to. I think this is a very important distinction, and while this particular measure, the statement of Government policy, is a way for the Government to influence the work of the Teaching Council in order to protect the public interest in the council’s work—and the Minister said this in the second reading speech yesterday—by ensuring that Teaching Council decisions are made within the context of Government policy. Which is what the public would expect us to do, for goodness’ sake—that is, without requiring that the council’s decisions support or give effect to Government policy—a really important distinction. I hope that’s cleared that up for the Opposition on the other side of the House, and let’s hope we hear no more phraseology such as “State control” tonight.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to use my call today to speak to an amendment in the name of Nikki Kaye which we are about to table—just to let you know that it’s not on there now but we are about to table it, if that’s OK? It’s on its way down—or, if not, I can just talk generally. I’m going to carry on.

The amendment that I’m tabling is in the name of Nikki Kaye, and it prevents the amendment to section 5 to 5B of the Education Act 1989, which would change the requirements of cohort entry so that children can only start after they’ve turned five. The upshot of this change is that, potentially, thousands of children would start school after their fifth birthday, and we on this side of the House are of the opinion that this is changing—well, it is—the starting age of New Zealand children by stealth, from five to, potentially, older than five.

As we spoke of yesterday, it is our opinion that this limits the choice that parents have. The choice that they make to send their child to school in a cohort entry when they are younger than five could be for many reasons. That could be because the early childhood education (ECE) fees are crippling on them, that they need to return to work. The mother or father might need to return to work; perhaps they have other children in school or perhaps this child is just ready to start school, as they are in so many cases, and as, in fact, my child was when he was four. It could be a combination of many issues.

But when we made the changes to introducing cohort entry, we actually backed parents and families to make the choice for their children as to when they were ready to start school. Could I just make the point, and this is the point that I want to make to the Minister, that we already trust parents and families to make a decision around the starting age of their child up to the age of six. So we put that decision in the hands of parents because we trust them and we back them to make the right decision.

The changes that the Government are making would restrict, obviously, any child starting a few weeks earlier than their fifth birthday. So, effectively, what we’re saying to parents is “Hey, as soon as your child hits five, we trust you. We back you to make that decision, but a few weeks prior to five, well, actually, we know best. We don’t trust you. All of those reasons you might have, whether it be financial or that you believe your child is ready—we don’t trust you.” We’re talking about a number of weeks. We’re talking here about a number of weeks, and we’re not trusting parents to make that choice in this current bill in its current form. Yet as soon as they turn 5, no problem at all. There seems to be a real disconnect there. Suddenly, at five, we’re trusting parents where prior to that we’re not. I would like the Minister to speak to that.

I went back to the Minister’s contribution last night to find out what his reasons were for this. I looked at his speech, and he talked about the 2015 Advisory Group on Early Learning; where they said that anything younger than five is too early to start. That was the main reasoning that he gave in his speech last night—it wasn’t anything else. So I went and I read the report—the whole report—and I found the part that the Minister was referring to when he talks about the advisory group not wanting that. They do say in here that they’re adamant that any downward push on the school starting age is undesirable. However, that is actually in quite a broader context, because, if you read the report, it says that they are wholly in favour of cohort entry. Then they make the interesting point that, actually, schools already have the choice, should they want to, to use Te Whāriki as a tool, rather than the New Zealand Curriculum. So what they’re basically saying here is, actually, there’s room to mitigate any risk that a school thinks they might have of kids starting younger than five by using a different curriculum—a curriculum that we use in ECE.

So there is that ability to mitigate any issues that the Minister might have by allowing schools to go “Hey look, we’ve got this reception class of new entrant kids. We’re going to use Te Whāriki rather than the New Zealand Curriculum.” And I want to put that to the Minister. I want to say to the Minister that we’re trusting parents from the age of five to make their own decision, and yet slightly younger than five, we’re saying to them “Actually, the Government knows best.” But I would argue with the Minister—and I’d like him to respond to this—that actually there is the room in the curriculum to use a different curriculum for schools to mitigate any potential issues that the Minister or even the school might have. I just want to say to the Minister: why can’t we have a compromise here where we allow parents to make that choice? We let schools use that different curriculum to mitigate any potential risks that they feel they might have, and put the decision back with parents.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you very much, Madam Chair, for a chance to speak in this committee of the whole House stage on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2). I’m going to be referring to the enabling part of the bill, where the Minister can issue a direction relating to the Teaching Council and requiring the council to consult the Minister prior to making changes to teacher qualification requirements or registration criteria, otherwise known as, on one hand or the other, the ironic part of the bill; we debated a bill prior to this which enabled so-called greater independence and on this hand, we’re taking it away.

What happened in the impact statement for this bill was a defining of the Teaching Council role. It said that the council has significant influence over the quality of teaching and the safety of children and young people in schools and early childhood centres, and the supply and diversity of the teaching workforce. So that’s quite a gamut of responsibility—very strong territory, indeed, for a body to have oversight in the education system. But the impact statement went on to state that there is no evidence about the extent of any issues that this bill seeks to fix—namely, giving some of that ministerial direction and power.

If you think that that’s something that we here on this side of the House are using for our own purposes, let’s have a look at what two prominent unions said about this part of the bill. NZEI, in their submission, said “In our view, the new powers given to the Minister in new section 382A undermine the independence of the Council.”—can’t get any more clear than that. How about the Post Primary Teachers’ Association? The bill “actually undermines the Teaching Council’s independent status.” So under that auspice, we went on to debate the bill in committee and look at the context for which the Minister was doing what he clearly wanted to do.

Here’s where we’ve landed: the bill doesn’t protect the Teaching Council; it patronises it. That’s how we feel on this side of the House. So, Mr Minister, where’s the trust in the Teaching Council to do what they need to do, especially given that so many of your colleagues spoke vigorously in the prior education bill around needing to protect that independence of the Teaching Council? Mr Minister, why didn’t you include this flagrant use of your powers in the original Education (Teaching Council of Aotearoa New Zealand) Amendment Bill? I think that’s a very valid question to ask. Why did you have to throw it in a hodgepodge bill such as this, covering so many different topics in a very dismantled and disjointed way?

I want to speak to an amendment in my name, which inserts a new clause 13A, amending section 385 of the principal Act, and, after section 385(2), inserts the words “(3) In the event the Minister has issued a statement of Government policy”—and this is what I was referring to earlier—“relating to 1 or more of the Teaching Council’s functions, the annual report, as outlined in the above subsection (2), must include”—and here’s where the rubber hits the road—“a summary of how this statement has impacted on the independence of the Teaching Council, its operations, and its ability to fulfil its core functions.”

Now, the reason why I think that this is a very valid amendment, and something that—if you look at the core of what both sides of the House have been arguing in terms of protecting the Teaching Council and independence and the like—ensures that the Teaching Council will have the ability to report on any Government policy statement (GPS) issued by the Minister and how it’s impacted on the organisation’s independence and ability to fulfil its core functions. Why? Because it’s important that the council be transparent about how these GPS statements impact on them as the Teaching Council, especially given that the proposal conflicts with the previous Government legislation that sought to strengthen the organisation’s independence. As I said before, giving independence on the one hand and, in this bill, taking it away—a real dichotomy.

So if the House is able to accept this amendment, what it will essentially be doing is improving the Teaching Council’s ability—and this is backed up by two prominent unions—to demonstrate their ongoing independence. That’s what they want; that’s what’s been argued for in this House. So give them the capacity to produce a report where they can prove that despite the capacity for a ministerial statement, they still have that independence. Whenever a Minister issues a GPS, this would be triggered. This amendment would trigger a report, and that independence can be plain and clear and simple for all to see.

When we look at who would be most interested in the Teaching Council’s work and body of issues, you’re looking at MPs, at the Government as a whole, teachers, and families. They need to understand what the impact of a GPS is on the Teaching Council. This is what this particular amendment would trigger. In regard to MPs and their interest in the Teaching Council through the annual review process, we could examine this report on the independence of the Teaching Council.

I’m just going to finish on one note, which I have alluded to before but I want to put it just a different way. It is really interesting for us as legislators to look at one bill and then this—one which increases independence on one hand and one which takes it away on the other.

It is ironic and a dichotomy, and I’d like to argue that this particular amendment would go a small way towards demonstrating and proving that the Teaching Council can have and demonstrate and report its ongoing independence.

So, with that, I commend to the House the amendment in my name, inserting a new clause 13A, and I do hope that that will be met with support. It’s the least we can do after having to handle an ironic situation. Thank you.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I’ll just respond to three groups of issues that have been raised so far. The first is around cohort entry and some concerns that have been raised around, first of all, the removal of the right for a child to start school on their fifth birthday. In fact, that right was removed with the introduction of cohort entry, because any school that adopted a cohort entry would, effectively, force a parent to enrol their child either before their fifth birthday or after their fifth birthday. It would remove the right of that child under the existing law, for schools that have adopted the cohort—that right to enrol on or the day after their fifth birthday has already been removed. That was a decision made by the previous Government.

I’d point out that cohort entry is voluntary for schools; so far, fewer than 100 schools have taken up the opportunity to do that. Most countries, of course, have got a school-starting age of six. Actually, for New Zealand schools, the starting age of five—of course, our compulsory starting age is six, but our optional starting age, which is the starting age that most kids in New Zealand start school, is actually among the lower of the countries that we would compare ourselves to. If there was huge resistance to this, I think it would have been evident in the submissions; in fact, the analysis that I have seen from the select committee’s deliberations is that there were four submitters on this particular clause, and three of them submitted the changes that were being put forward by the Government. So we are actually going back and implementing the advice that was presented to the last Government. There’s nothing particularly ideological about that. The advice and the evidence were presented to the last Government and we are implementing it as it was presented to the last Government.

Personally, I’m relatively ambivalent about the issue around cohorts; I think that is a decision that schools can make. I think that most of the arguments put forward by the then Government and now Opposition have been around the convenience to parents and concerns around parents, rather than what is best for the child, and so my simple request to schools when they’re considering whether to introduce a cohort entry policy is to consider what is best for the children in their area.

The repeal of communities of online learning: the Hon Nikki Kaye said that the Government is ripping something away from students in rural areas and from home-schooled students. We can’t rip something away if it was never introduced. Communities of online learning (COOLs) have never been introduced. They were not coming into effect until the end of this year, so you cannot actually take something away that hasn’t ever actually arrived. What we are doing is preventing something from being introduced that has not been introduced already.

In terms of the substance of the charge, though—that we’re taking something away from kids who are going to small schools in rural areas—there is nothing in removing COOLs provisions that stops them from accessing online learning. What this does do is stop them from enrolling directly with an online learning provider instead of going to their small local school. Their small local school can access a range of online learning opportunities, and nothing in this bill that we are introducing limits that in any way. The same thing applies to those who are home schooled. Those who are home schooled cannot access online learning at the moment. Nothing in this bill limits that.

What it does do, though, is stop a group of online schools from being established that could be used to off-ramp the most vulnerable kids in our school communities, and that is the overwhelming feedback that the last Government got when they introduced these clauses, and they completely ignored it. We have listened to that feedback, and, frankly, I am not going to put up with a system where kids with additional learning needs or who are a little bit difficult to educate are simply offloaded by schools and told to go and enrol with an online learning provider. That is the risk of allowing these provisions to go forward, and we’re not going to allow that to happen.

The final group of issues that have been raised, around the independence of the Teaching Council—now, there’s a huge irony in the Opposition now being staunch defenders of the independence of the Teaching Council, given that, under the law they passed, every member—every member—of that council was appointed by the Minister. Every single one of them was appointed by the Minister. So we have a choice here between saying that the council should actually be reflective of the profession and elected by the profession but have to have regard to Government policy when it makes significant decisions about the statutory functions it’s exercising, and leaving with them the ultimate judgment about that. So they have to have regard to it; they don’t have to follow the directions of Government but they have to have regard to Government policy—or the previous Government’s regime, which said that the Government would control the council completely by appointing every single member of it. I think our position significantly enhances the independence of the council.

With regard to the Supplementary Order Papers being proposed by the Opposition, supposedly to enhance the independence of the council by, for example, allowing them to criticise Government policy—the law is very clear now; they can do that now. In fact, that was one of the amendments that the then Labour - New Zealand First - Green Opposition argued for when this law change was first introduced by the Hon Hekia Parata. It was not in the law originally; it was something we argued for and, with full credit to Hekia Parata, she inserted that into the law and that was a good development. It gives them the guarantee now that they can speak out and criticise Government policy, and that’s a very good thing. Why was this not in the original Teaching Council legislation that the Government passed? That was simply because the Teaching Council legislation that we passed was already introduced prior to the election. It was introduced as a member’s bill and adopted by the Government when the Government changed. So we’ve now had the opportunity to do further work on that. This is a relatively sensible provision and one that, actually, I think a future National Government, if we ever have one—it’s not looking very likely at the moment, but if we ever did, I’m sure that they would want to make use of those provisions as well.

Just with regard to the Supplementary Order Papers being put forward on cohort entry, the Government will not support those Supplementary Order Papers put forward by the Opposition because they largely contradict the intention of the bill, and it’s clear that we wouldn’t support that, because it undoes what the purpose of the bill actually is.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Firstly, can I just start, for those New Zealanders who are watching question time, with the quite extraordinary statement that we just had by the Minister: “if we ever have one”—in terms of a National Government. In terms of a Government that has been in power for 18 months—a year and a half—we already have a Minister saying there may never be another National Government. That is extraordinary arrogance, and it represents, in my view, how far existing Ministers have got in terms of their egos, and I would encourage all New Zealanders to replay that clip to understand the extraordinary arrogance.

Now, just in terms of the substance of what the Minister was actually talking about, let’s go to the issue of independence of the teaching profession. I’m not going to quote myself or my colleagues on this issue; I’m going to quote back to the Minister people who have hardly necessarily been seen as bastions of the centre-right. I’m going to quote for you the submissions by the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) and NZEI. Here we go: “There’s a dangerous lack of specificity.”, “We’ve got low trust by this Government.”, “We’ve got the Government putting training wheels on the profession.” So for the Minister to stand there and somehow assume that there’s nothing going on here in terms of independence, but have the PPTA and NZEI expressing extreme concern about the fact that he’s put this other bill through that indicates there’s going to be some high trust and independence, and then to throw in something like this whereby there is excessive State control—and while I’m there, can I just deal with the previous speech by Clare Curran, where she indicated that I was somehow making stuff up when it comes to this bill.

Well, I’ll tell you what I’m not making up. Here’s what I’m not making up: I’m getting emails and texts from people at paid union meetings, and the Minister’s getting the same messages that I’m getting, whereby they’re saying, “We’re really disappointed with the many promises that Labour gave us, not the least of which was around pay and workload but a whole lot of other broken promises.” Then, also, the nerve of the party that said they were going to stand up for the profession and give independence, and then they put through a bill that says, “By the way, we want to completely control you.” So I’ll tell you what: we’re quite happy to stand in this House and repeat back to members the submissions by the PPTA, of which they represent thousands and thousands of teachers, whereby the PPTA said, “Furthermore, we believe that changing the Act undermines the Teaching Council’s independent status.” So those are the words of the PPTA, not the National Party, and so we won’t take any lectures on this side of the House about what this bill is actually doing for the profession.

The other issue that I do want to cover is this issue of cohort entry. I want to make it absolutely and very clear, the reality is that it has been the case in New Zealand that many parents have wanted their children to start on their fifth birthday. The whole reason that we previously designed the cohort entry in the way that we did was to preserve that ability for those schools—and, of course, it is those schools that adopt cohort entry—to enable those parents to have the ability for their child to sit on that side of the ledger. We stand by that, and we think that it is intense ideology in terms of what we’ve seen in this bill. I’ve acknowledged previously that there are some aspects that make sense, but we do think that what this cuts to the heart of—and we see it in many other areas of Government policy at the moment—is backing working parents and enabling those parents to be able to do what’s right for their families and trusting parents to make that decision.

Just to make a brief comment in the last 37 seconds of my contribution, although I think I might stand again, we do certainly and we are putting up provisions around the independence of the council, and I want to give you a bit of broader public policy on this. It is correct that National previously stood for a competency-based body for the Teaching Council. The Government, obviously, put through legislation that moved towards a model that was more about elected representatives. Again, our major concern with this is that there are situations where the profession does want to stand up and have a different view from the Government. So the question that I have for the Minister is: what does it actually mean when we talk about “must have regard to”? We know that the bill has been improved in terms of having a statement to the House which gives greater transparency about that Government policy and exactly what this council must now do as a result of it, but we do think it is reasonable—and that’s why we’ve got a Supplementary Order Paper tabled here in the House today—to actually be very specific about where there may be a disagreement.

That’s important, actually, because the reality is, whether it’s in our Education Committee, whether we’re out in public meetings, that we are having some pretty significant debates, actually, at the moment about the employment of teachers and principals, and National’s concern is not just about this bill; we’re concerned about this bill combined with, potentially, some of the proposals that are up in terms of Tomorrow’s Schools around the employment of the profession, where you may have officials who, in the future, are able to tell teachers where to go, where they’re able to put principals on five-year contracts. What exactly does this legislation mean in the context of what could be very significant changes in the employment relationships of principals and teachers? I would love the Minister to give us a view on that, because I think it does matter. It does matter in the broader picture if I’m a person who’s about to turn up for teacher training and I want to know who my employer will be in the future, and I’ll also want to know whether I am going to be subject to a National or Labour Minister in the future, around policy, because that matters in terms of my autonomy. It matters in terms of, potentially, my integrity if I completely disagree with the policy of a future Government. So I think the Minister does need to explain how he would see, potentially, proposals that are on the table—you know, it is an independent task force—around something like Tomorrow’s Schools. What does this mean in the context of that?

The other thing that I do want to acknowledge as well in committee is that there is a fear—and I think it was expressed pretty eloquently by NZEI and the PPTA. I think it was Paul Goulter who said “Look, the concern is that this really does undermine the independence of the profession.” So I guess this question is actually what does this mean, if a Government comes out with policy—they have regard to it, they disagree; you know, they say “Actually, look, we don’t agree with you that we now need to have all teachers having a postgraduate qualification.” What actually will occur as a result of that? What we know as a result of this bill is there’s going to be a report in Parliament.

I think that there is real concern about this soft hand of the Government coming down on the profession. Look, people are raising the irony of this, Minister. Surely the Minister can understand this. I mean, this was a Minister that spent many, many speeches in Parliament rallying against my colleague the Hon Hekia Parata on issues of the independence of the profession. So I do have a legitimate question for the Minister: where did this come from—where did this come from? It wasn’t in the Labour Party manifesto. He says “Look, it wasn’t in Jan Tinetti’s bill because her bill came through prior to the election.” Was this something that the Minister dreamed up or are there some reports that we’re going to find at a later stage that indicate there was some big driver within the Public Service, in the Ministry of Education—they’re very, very concerned about, you know, the Education Council, now the Teaching Council, going off and doing things that are contrary to Government policy. I think we do deserve to know that, because this is a bill that is affecting tens of thousands of people.

You know, the final thing that I just want to end with is this stuff is real. At the moment you’ve got a situation, and I know the Minister just stands up and tries to blame the previous National Government, but what I can say to you is the emails that are coming into my in-box—we’ve got strikes coming down the line, we’ve got people saying to me that they expected a lot more on pay and workload, and now we have things like excessive control, potentially, of the profession. People are saying that they don’t believe this is what they voted for with the phrase “Let’s do this.” They believe that actually it’s time to potentially “Let’s change this.”

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I just restate, for the member, that the bill does nothing around teacher pay, so that’s an irrelevant part of the debate.

Hon Nikki Kaye: But it is relevant because these conversations are going on at paid union meetings.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, I don’t think anyone’s talking about the Teaching Council at the paid union meetings; I think they’re largely talking about their pay. But they are talking about workload, and the activities of the Teaching Council do have an impact on teacher workload. So if the Government wanted to issue a policy statement, for example, that said that we want to reduce unnecessary compliance burden on teachers, including around things like teacher appraisal, for example, then I would expect that that is the sort of thing that the Teaching Council should have regard to. Now, they don’t have to follow the direction of the Government, but they do actually have to consider it. That’s all this does. It requires them to consider it. They don’t have to follow it but they have to consider it.

It’s really quite common sense. Why would they not consider it, in fact? You know, a future National Government comes in and says “This is our overall policy with regard to the teaching profession.”, why would they not want the Teaching Council to be considering that? It doesn’t give them any more power than us to direct the council. There is no power there to direct the council. It simply says that the council has to give regard to that when making its decision. So it’s not a hugely controversial thing, and particularly it gives the Government an ability—given that many of the issues around workload, for example, that are being raised through the current negotiating round, they’re actually outside of the Government’s control. They relate to decisions made by the Teaching Council or decisions made by school senior management. So the ability of the Government to say “Yeah, we hear you, and actually the Government’s policy is that schools and so on should be doing these things.”, that’s a perfectly sensible, normal thing for the Government to be able to say, and, like I said, it doesn’t bind the hands of the council in any way.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 224, and in doing so I think I’m going to change the tone of the debate in this House for a few minutes, because this is an SOP that National agrees with the Government on. This is an SOP that represents a step forward for New Zealand, and it reflects some recent events in our history, particularly here in Wellington, that I want to reflect on, because this SOP seeks to change the process by which a university can change its name. It ensures that in future if any university is to change its name, it will require a resolution in support from this Parliament. What’s in a name? Why do names matter? Why does this SOP matter? Well, we’ve come to reflect on that here in Wellington in recent months as Victoria University of Wellington has sought to change its name.

The identity and brand of Victoria University of Wellington has been 120 years in the making. It is contained in the name printed on tens of thousands of degree certificates and on CVs of graduates around the world and around this city. People have a relationship with their former university and that relationship is held in its name, and in the case of Victoria University of Wellington, the idea of changing that name to something else entirely represented for many, many people a step backwards, and a dangerous step. However, the university council proposed to change the name regardless of the views of its community.

It became clear that community members did not support that change. Students, graduates, staff took the opportunity to have their voices heard. More than 10,000 people signed a petition opposing it, 92 percent of student submitters opposed it, 81 percent of alumni submitters opposed it, staff members were divided on it, and online polls showed opposition running nine to one. And we in this House, many of us asked how could the council possibly proceed with a name change that so clearly lacked the backing of its community? Yet that proposal came forward to the Minister. I have previously commended the Minister for his decision to reject that name change and I commend him again in this House this afternoon.

But what it showed us was that the process is potentially flawed if a university can potentially threaten to take a Minister to court in these circumstances, can potentially threaten to judicially review a decision because of a lack of clarity in the law. What this SOP does, then, is make it abundantly clear that the process requires the support of Parliament. The history here, I think, will remember the petition of Hugh Rennie QC, who detailed the challenges in the current law, and we as a select committee heard that petition. We will remember the submissions of Sir Kenneth Keith, of Sir Geoffrey Palmer, and I also want to pay tribute to Gwynn Compton, who put together the petition on this matter.

So what this SOP does, I think, is it says that actually names do matter, because we as representatives in this House—in future, if a university wishes to change its name—will have to satisfy ourselves that we think that’s the right thing to happen. And I would venture that members of this House will feel similarly to how I did when my university sought to change its name, that that was something I felt should not proceed unless it had the support of the community, unless it could be demonstrated that it would bring significant benefit to that community. And I believe that members of this House are well placed to make those judgments in the future and therefore I think that the Supplementary Order Paper is a good step forward for this Parliament.

We have had, over the course of the debate about the name of Victoria University of Wellington, debate about all sorts of things, but I want to finally, in closing this contribution, say that, yes, names matter, but what also matters is the community of a university. Victoria University of Wellington is a great institution and I commend all of those who’ve been involved in this debate to come together in support of that institution so we can move forward. I call all of us to come together so that we can support that university and its future and that we can be clear that in future no other university will be able to change its name in this way. We have all learnt from this debate and good things have come of it. Thank you, Madam Chair.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to return back to my previous contribution about cohort entry, because I do feel that I raised some questions that the Minister didn’t address and I want to hear further from him. But I want to pick up one thing in particular that the Minister said in his contribution directly after mine, when he attempted to respond to some of the points that I brought up. One of the things that he mentioned that struck a chord with me was that he said that the cohort entry changes—our argument—are best for parents but not best for children.

We heard this argued last night in the House by Tracey Martin, where she argued that parents, basically, aren’t making the choices that are good for their children; they’re essentially making choices that are good for them and potentially their finances but not in the interests of the child. And I think that the Minister in the chair made a very similar point. He said that arguments are all based around what parents want and not what is best for the child. We put up a really strong argument last night and I’m doing that again today. We back parents to make the best decision for their child. And that might be a financial decision, but this Government making that argument like they did last night and again today in the chair is putting a horrific amount of guilt back on parents, who make decisions. They might be financial decisions, but we back parents to make those decisions, and they might be financial, because they are making those decisions in the best interests of their family and their child. It might be that they need to go back to work. It might be that they need to avoid those early childhood education school fees, but it actually might be that they know that their child is also ready to start school, and we back them to make that choice.

What the Minister in the chair said is very similar to what the Hon Tracey Martin said last night, that basically for that period before a child is five and, in their opinion, not ready to go to school, they don’t back parents to make that choice. Yet they’re quite happy for the parents to make a choice any time from five to six based on anything, because they’re quite happy for that; those two things don’t marry up. I want the Minister to get up and actually answer the question: why doesn’t he back parents to make the choice for a few weeks prior to a child turning five to start school? Why does he back parents to make the decision from five to six but not for just a mere few weeks before they turn six?

Also, furthermore, I want the Minister to specifically answer the question: why doesn’t he look at the wider report that’s in recommendation 14 that he’s based his argument on and back schools to use not the New Zealand Curriculum but Te Whāriki to mitigate any potential problem that he might have? Schools have that ability. We want to hear from the Minister why he doesn’t back parents and why he said earlier that, you know, he believes that they might be making financial decisions and decisions that aren’t in the interests of their child. Why is it necessary for this Government to step in and tell parents what’s best for their children? Furthermore, why doesn’t he, as outlined in this report, back schools in that case to make that decision to use a different curriculum in a class—it might be a reception class for those new entrants? We’ve always said, on this side of the House, that we fully back parents to make that decision as to when to start their kid at school.

One of the other points that the Minister raised was that, you know, for schools that have picked up the cohort entry option, he basically said that now parents have got the choice either to start before five or after five but not on their fifth birthday. What I would argue is that now the only option that parents have got is after five. So they are furthermore limiting the choice. We’ve said over and over again that we back parents to make the right decision and we’ve always backed choice. We trust parents to know when their child should start school and we back schools to make the decision as to how to deal with those children who are starting before five, because they have the tools to do so. Thank you.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): I just want to respond a wee bit around the work on cohort entry in a very, very short contribution. I spoke in my second reading speech about the work of the Advisory Group on Early Learning that was informing the previous Government, led by esteemed people such as Dr Joce Nuttall, Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi—the most amazing people that I had the pleasure of being on that group with. In that group it was so evident from the peer-reviewed research evidence that came forward that starting school before five can be damaging to children. That is why we have made this decision.

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

JAN TINETTI: Just before the adjournment, I was talking about the Advisory Group on Early Learning (AGEL) and the evidence that they presented to the then Government in 2015 where they suggested—or not just suggested but firmly suggested—from the evidence that they had brought forward that having children start school before the age of five could be quite detrimental to those children’s learning. They were quite in support of having a cohort entry and, as I’ve said, I know this because I was part of that group and was totally impressed with those wonderful women—and they were all women—who were a mixture of incredible academics but were also professionals from the sector. They very strongly asserted that it was not a good idea to have children starting before the age of five.

Now, I also happen to know that when the then Government introduced cohort entry and suggested that children could start in those few weeks before they turned five, the AGEL group actually sent a letter to the then Government strongly opposing such a move, and actually included their research, etc.—their evidence-based research. So to say that it is an ideological approach that this Government is taking is quite wrong, because this is based on evidence—the evidence and the research that was there.

We’ve heard here this evening our New Zealand First colleague, the Hon Tracey Martin, being quoted, so I thought that I too would quote her from her speech last night, where she said that we’re not trying to undo everything from the previous Government. In fact, cohort entry is something that we continue to agree with, like many of our schools. She said that we’re not trying to undo everything; just the stupid things, and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here. This policy is not based on evidence, and therefore we’re actually trying to put the evidence into place.

We’ve also heard here this evening that we’re getting lots of emails and texts from different teachers, but I get lots of principals—lots of principals—who contact me and they’re—

Dr Duncan Webb: You’ve got great principles.

JAN TINETTI: That’s right. I happen to know quite a few, and I happen to know one—who does happen to be a National voter, but never mind—who texted me very recently, saying, “When is this cohort entry policy changing? Because my community have said to me they want cohort entry, but they don’t want children starting before the age of five.”

So it is something that is not being asked for widely from the sector. It is something that the sector understands that the evidence around that is that it is detrimental to children’s learning and children’s development. Therefore, I’m delighted that this bill and what we’re discussing here tonight is about putting that wrong right again. Thank you, Madam Chair.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Look, thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), the second of the Minister of Education’s ideological bills being pushed through the Parliament in regards to making changes and really just repealing progress which was made under the previous National Government. I think the size of this bill really speaks to the size of the ideas which seem to have come out of this Government, because, really, there isn’t much progress happening. There’s lots of conversations, there’s lots of debates, and we’ve got the Tomorrow’s Schools debate taking place, but in terms of progress, there isn’t much.

So, anyway, I’d like to touch in my contribution in regards to the area around clause 9, which inserts after section 35C(g), a new paragraph (h), which provides that a private school, as part of the criteria for registration, must be “a physically and emotionally safe place for students.” Now, as we would all agree in this committee, that is something which we wish all schools to be—safe places for students—and it is something which is to be desired in our education system. However, there’s no definition in the Act as to what “a physically and emotionally safe place for students.” actually constitutes. There’s no guidance given to private schools as to what that might mean. What does physically safe and what does emotionally safe actually mean? I’d ask the Minister if he could take a call and actually explain what that means through a policy perspective from the Ministry of Education, so that private schools are able to actually understand what that will mean.

We all know that private schools have to comply with the health and safety legislation and they have to comply with a whole range of other policies and procedures prior to being able to be registered and to be able to maintain their registration. Safety is an important part of that.

I know that private schools have very extensive health and safety policies. I’m very close to Saint Kentigern College, which is just next door to my electorate office in the fantastic electorate of Pakuranga, and I know that they take the health and safety and the well-being of their students very, very seriously, not only because it’s the right thing to do but because as a private school, they know that if they don’t do that, the parents who send their children there can choose to send their children somewhere else. So if they were not to take it seriously, the parents who send their children there would very quickly be able to choose to send their children somewhere else. There’s King’s College and there’s other private schools across Auckland, and many of these parents actually drive miles to bring their children to Saint Kentigern College, or the children go on bus rides which go for miles to get there.

So we know that those students and those families are very mobile as to the choices that they could make, and so will make those decisions. So, yes, they already have a huge amount of compliance that they have to meet, but, secondly, the parents will make a choice and vote with their feet.

So I’ve got an amendment which proposes that after this new insertion is placed into the Education Amendment Bill (No 2), we include another section which says that the Ministry of Education must publish detailed definitions of physical and emotional safety by which the school will be deemed physically and emotionally safe. I think that amendment is a very sensible one. It actually adds something of quite solid value to what the Government is proposing here, and it gives some certainty and actual policy and procedure which can then be worked with from the schools’ perspective. So they’ll understand what is required, because I think the significant point here is that if a school does not comply, their registration is put at risk. That’s a pretty significant power, which is being taken under this legislation—that if they don’t put in place this policy to ensure that there’s the physical and emotional safety of the students, their registration can be put at risk.

Under the provisions here, they would be put on a one-year provisional registration, and they will have that one year in which they must update their policies. Now, we understand that one year is an opportunity for them to be able to do that, but what I’m asking the Minister to do is actually give these schools the ability to know and understand what the ministry and what this legislation is actually expecting of them—[Bell rung] Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Simeon Brown.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, Madam Chair, because I’ve got a second amendment that I’d like to speak to as well on this same topic. This—

Dan Bidois: You’ve thought about it.

SIMEON BROWN: I have thought through seriously about this issue, and thank you, Mr Bidois. It’s a very—

Marja Lubeck: Well, it would be helpful if you’d read the departmental report, as well.

SIMEON BROWN: Sorry, what was that?

Marja Lubeck: Well, it would be helpful if you’d read the departmental report, as well—it saves a lot of questions.

SIMEON BROWN: Well, Marja Lubeck, you’re more than welcome to take a call and rebut the points that I’m making, but what I’m trying to do here is to actually provide, I think, quite a helpful suggestion. You know, people would like a bit of bipartisanship sometimes—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Can I—

SIMEON BROWN: —and you’re more than welcome—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order!

SIMEON BROWN: Marja Lubeck’s more than welcome—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Can I just check with the member, the amendment you’re now referring to is for Part 1 or Part 2?

SIMEON BROWN: Part 1.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): And it is the one—

SIMEON BROWN: Clause 9.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): OK, thank you.

SIMEON BROWN: That’s correct. And so that’s about making the Ministry of Education actually have to publish what is “physically and emotionally safe”—and I think that’s a very important part of it.

The other part is in regards to what we see around the transitional provisions which come under clause 14 which, again, is in Part 1, and these are in relation to the transitional provisions. My second tabled amendment, that I’d like to speak briefly to here, is about ensuring that a school is not placed on a provisional registration. I’d ask the Minister why he feels the need to put all of the private schools in New Zealand on to provisional registration for a year. Why does—

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! It’s actually clause 24.

SIMEON BROWN: It’s under clause 14, new clause 24 of Schedule 1, Provisions relating to Education Amendment Act (No 2) 2018, transitional provisions.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): No, you’re fine. Yeah, thank you.

SIMEON BROWN: Am I correct?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yeah, you are.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, thank you. So, as I was saying, these provisions relate to the transitional provisions. My question to the Minister is around why he feels the need to place every single private school, up and down the country, on to provisional status for six months in order for them to be able to put these policies in place; why does the Minister feel that that is the appropriate way to ensure that they update their policies? I have struggled to find the evidence that seems to have been the reason for this, to say that our private schools are unsafe. Yes, there’s been a couple of complaints; there’s been, I think, two which were referred to in the departmental report—two complaints. We’ve seen a couple of complaints and we know that there are many, many, many more complaints in our State schools. So I’d like to ask the question, why he feels the need to put all our private schools, which do an excellent job educating tens of thousands of students up and down our country every single day—and the Minister raises his eyebrows; do they not do an excellent job? Maybe he can answer that question. Maybe he doesn’t like private schools, maybe that’s part of the reason—I’m more than happy for the Minister to answer that question as well.

Why should Saint Kentigern College in my electorate, which does a fantastic job educating thousands of students, be placed on a provisional registration to ensure that they have policies around the physical and emotional safety of the students? Why does the Minister feel that that is required to ensure that the schools actually implement this new policy? In my view, that is, basically, using a very harsh mechanism for something which—yes, it’s important, but a very, very harsh mechanism to get the schools to update their policies. Is there, surely, not another way in which the Minister would be able to encourage the schools to update and actually just comply with the legislation? They comply with all manner of other legislation without needing their registration put at risk. Why doesn’t he trust the private schools to simply update their policies in line with the changes that are being made here?

So I’m very keen for the Minister to take a call and explain this, because our private schools in New Zealand do do a fantastic job educating many thousands of young people. They are an important part of our education system. On this side of the House, we stand up on behalf of the private schools and we thank them for the work that they do in New Zealand as an important sector in our society. I ask the Minister to get up and explain his position on this very important matter. Thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Well, just before I call the Hon Minister, for clarity’s sake within the House, the tabled amendment in the name of Simeon Brown that says “clause 24” should read “clause 14”.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make a few quick comments at this point. I’ll run through the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) and the Government’s position on those, just for the avoidance of doubt.

With regard to the comments that have just been raised, I think it’s important to note that these provisions around private schools simply bring them into line with State and the State integrated schools, and it goes no further than doing that. With regard to the definition of safety, for example, it is not defined for State and State integrated schools, but it has operated very successfully over a long period of time. Actually, the definition of students’ physical and emotional safety and so on needs to be considered in the context of which an issue may arise. This simply brings private schools into line with every other school in the country—State and State integrated schools, and the private schools support it. So I don’t think that there is a particularly big issue here.

I do want to correct a claim that’s just been made, suggesting that the bill puts existing private schools on to a provisional registration: it does not—and I think even an elementary reading of the bill makes that fundamentally quite clear.

With regard to the Supplementary Order Papers that have been tabled by the Opposition, in my earlier contributions I outlined the SOPs tabled by the Government and explained the rationale for those and what they do. Although, I should be clear that, actually, in speaking to them, I gave the impression that the extension of time for planning and reporting was only one year; that was inadvertent on my part. The extension of time is actually three years, and that’s clear for those who look at the Supplementary Order Paper.

But just to run through the Opposition Supplementary Order Papers: Supplementary Order Paper 231, in the name of Nicola Willis, to delete clause 13—the Government will not support that, because it, clearly, undermines the intent of the bill.

Supplementary Order Paper 232, put forward by Nicola Willis, suggesting that if the Teaching Council disagree with a Government policy statement that it should have to be tabled in the House. The threshold for those types of provisions—there are some provisions in law around tabling things in the House—it’s a very, very high one, and that would put this part of law well out of kilter with others. So the Government does not support that.

Denise Lee’s tabled amendment, which deals with stating: “In the event [that] the Minister has issued a statement of Government policy”, the report “must include a summary of how this statement has impacted on the independence of the Teaching Council, its operations, and its ability to fulfil its core functions”—that’s unnecessary because it can’t, by definition. It’s only a statement that the council has to have regard to, so therefore it does not infringe on its independence because it doesn’t, ultimately, have to follow it; it’s not a direction.

Nikki Kaye’s tabled amendment regarding the review by the Minister of Education around online learning—this is actually a legitimate point. I think Nikki Kaye is saying that we do need to do a lot more work around online learning; no question about that, I don’t think we need to put that in law in order to do that but I’m certainly happy to give the former Minister and the National Party spokesperson my undertaking that we will do that work. I know that she’s passionate about this, and if she wants to be involved in that I would certainly welcome her involvement in that. There is a lot more work to be done around online learning. Even if the communities of online learning provisions were not deleted, it’s clear that the work still needs to be done because it was not done in the way that last law was imposed. The last law, basically, set up a framework with a whole lot of blank space, so that work still needs to be done.

With regard to Simeon Brown’s provisions around clause 14—I think is the correct number of the clause—it’s unnecessary because, as I’ve indicated, I think he was working on the misunderstanding that the bill puts private schools on to provisional registration, when it does not do so.

With regard to his other tabled amendment, around clause 9 requiring the ministry to publish a detailed definition of physical and emotional safety, as I indicated, the ministry have been required to consider those issues with regard to State and State integrated schools for a very long time without the need for a very rigid definition of that. There’s no good reason why we would need to define that for private schools when we don’t define it in a prescriptive way for State and State integrated schools.

The final contribution: I do want to welcome the Opposition’s support and thank Nicola Willis for her contribution with regard to the proposed change of rules around the way a university name change will be considered in the future. As I indicated before, there is some ambiguity in the law around this and, therefore, while there is now no longer any current case because no university is asking for this at the moment—which is a very welcome development I have to say—it is important, I think, that for the future we clarify that law so that any applications in the future can be dealt with, and I’m pleased we’re able to do that on a bipartisan basis across the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I rise to speak on two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name—No. 231 and No. 232—that relate to the functions of the Teaching Council. It’s a shame that the Minister has already dismissed these SOPs having not yet heard my arguments for them. I am an optimistic person by nature and it’s my hope that, on listening to my arguments, the Minister of Education may reconsider his view.

Let’s first consider new section 382A, inserted by clause 13, in this amendment bill, and what it proposes to do for the Teaching Council, in order to understand why these SOPs might be necessary. We need to go back to remember how the Teaching Council came to be created in its current form, and that relates to a piece of legislation that the Minister brought into this House just a few months ago. It was a classic case of giving with one hand and taking with the other, because in introducing new rules for the way that the Teaching Council would be formed, the Minister said that this would be a great thing for autonomy, for the ability of the profession to have professional autonomy, and so, therefore, he said that those changes were necessary.

Now, what new section 382A does is directly take away that autonomy by, very clearly, stating that the Minister gets to issue a statement of Government policy as to how the Teaching Council performs its functions. The relevance of this was laid bare by the original wording in this bill, which was that it was a directive. Now, the semantics may have changed but the intent of this section is very clear: that this is—

Hon Clare Curran: She clearly wasn’t listening to my earlier speech.

NICOLA WILLIS: —the Minister’s lever for asserting control over the Teaching Council. Now, members opposite are interjecting and are questioning whether this is the case. I want to direct them to the departmental report, which is very clear. It says that of the “… two levers, the Minister’s ability to appoint [the] members of the board” was the stronger. It allowed “…the Minister to assess the collective skills [and] mix … to ensure that the Board [was] a cohesive body…”. Essentially, the departmental report there, Clare Curran, is saying that the old way the Teaching Council was formed was superior, but what it says also is that in making changes to the process for appointing the board, they had reduced the Government’s ability to—and I’m quoting—“protect the public interest in the work of the Council” through membership of the board.

So what you had here was officials saying to the Minister, “Look, your election-year policy in which you said to the teachers ‘I’m going to give you control by taking away all Government appointments. I’m going to allow these all to be directly elected positions.’ actually undermines the public interest, Minister, because what it does is it reduces your ability to protect the public interest by ensuring that this council actually operates in accordance with Government policy and in accordance with the wider functions of the education system.” So the poor officials clearly found themselves in a corner, saying “How are we going to save this body from actually getting in the way of what we’re trying to achieve elsewhere in the education system?”, and so they came up with this little halfway house called the Government policy statement. So what these SOPs that I’ve introduced do is challenge the Minister to put his actions where his mouth was before the election. He said he believed in teachers’ ability to control their own professional body and to be autonomous. Well, if that’s the case, he doesn’t need new section 382A to allow him to issue a statement of what the Government policy expects.

Then what I’ve done with SOP 232 is I’ve given the Minister a little “get out of jail free” clause. I accept that this bill has been through a select committee process and that it’s unlikely that at this stage the Minister will want to remove all of new section 382A, so what I’ve said instead is: if you’re really keen on the autonomy of teachers in these elected roles in this Teaching Council, then what you should be prepared to do is table in this House when they disagree with what’s in your Government policy directive. So this is a very simple amendment that would simply allow the Teaching Council to table in the House that it disagrees with the statement of Government policy. It is necessary because this is not a Government that has had, so far, a track record of openness or transparency, and this would ensure that where the Teaching Council feels it is being directed by the Minister in a way that does undermine his pre-election, high-handed statements, that would be made clear to all members of this House and, indeed, would be made clear to the public.

So I think that these two SOPs should be recommended. They’re consistent with what the Government says is its intention, and should be passed.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I couldn’t resist that challenge from Simeon Brown—it was just too good to resist. All through this debate, we’ve had a lot of very passionate wording, and there’s nothing wrong with that, because that is great. We have to have a passionate debate at this stage of this bill, but it does also have to make sense, and what we heard from the Hon Nikki Kaye is that this side of the House is accused of acting in some kind of ideology. She uses the word “ideology”, and it has been used by other members of the Opposition, but at the same time, in the next sentence, she makes the statement that “National stands firm on these principles.” Now, if that doesn’t sound like some kind of ideology, then I don’t know how you describe ideology—“We stand firm on these principles.”

Another comment that struck me as rather inconsistent was the mention by a couple of the Opposition members now of “these two prominent unions”. Now, of course, they are absolutely correct, but it’s very rare that you hear them talking about unions in such a positive way. I hope it will continue, perhaps into the next piece of employment legislation we’re getting through. But I have to point out the inconsistency, because last night the chair of our Education and Workforce Committee, Parmjeet Parmar, stated that the communities of online learning were brought in—and I quote—“to reduce the numbers of teachers in an attempt to bring down the number of union members.” So which one is it: are they too prominent, the unions, and you admire them and you want to listen to their wording, or are you out to actually try and just get rid of them?

Most disappointing, however, is the fact that, very clearly, at least four or maybe five members of our Education and Workforce Committee, permanent and also floating, have not read the departmental report—either that, or they are completely disregarding the very eloquent advice that we’ve been given. Nicola Willis was the last person to mention it, so I would like to restate some of the very eloquent explanations already given by both my colleague the Hon Clare Curran and the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins. This was with regard to the requirement for the Teaching Council having to have regard to Government policy. Yes, both the Post Primary Teachers’ Association and NZEI—“these two prominent unions”—did point out that they had some views that this could perhaps undermine the Teaching Council’s status. So, as we should do, we sought advice on this. Clearly, the committee needed to consider that, and it was very eloquently explained to us that these two phrases, “giving effect to” and “having regard to”, have different meanings in law.

So what the bill states is it’s “having regard to”. To quote the departmental report, “Having regard to is different from giving effect to, and therefore the council remains an independent entity, free to make decisions based on its assessment of the issues.” Now, this is the third time, I believe, that we’ve read this sentence, but with their heads down they can pretend they didn’t read it, they didn’t hear it now, so they can start this debate all over again. Quite frankly, it’s like a washing machine; we seem to be going around and around. We’re hearing the same arguments; we’re giving the same explanations. Words matter. So if words matter, as per your own expressions, these words matter.

Lastly, a very quick mention on the cohort entry. We received 18 submissions in total on this bill. Five were on the specific point of the cohort entry, but none—none—of them were from parents stating to us that their choices were ripped away from them, that they wanted at all costs for their child to start on their fifth birthday. We didn’t hear any of them. In fact, I think that those parents were a lot smarter than the Opposition members have proven to be. They worked out for themselves that, actually, mostly the children might be missing out by a week after their fifth birthday to start school—at the most, it would be five or maybe six weeks—and, actually, that it was not such a big deal. I am very sure that the teachers listening to this debate are glad that this side of the House does not agree with the Opposition’s view that teachers and schools should be providing baby-sitting services. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Amendment inserting new clause 11A set out on Supplementary Order Paper 224 in the name of the Hon Chris Hipkins agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to clause 5 be agreed to:

delete clause 5.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Simeon Brown to clause 9 be agreed to:

after new section 35C(h), insert:

The Ministry of Education must publish detailed definitions of physical and emotional safety by which the school will be deemed physically and emotionally safe.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 231 in the name of Nicola Willis to delete clause 13 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 232 in the name of Nicola Willis to clause 13 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Denise Lee be agreed to:

after clause 13, insert:

13A Section 385 amended (Reports)

After section 385(2), insert:

(3) In the event the Minister has issued a statement of Government policy relating to 1 or more of the Teaching Council’s functions, the annual report, as outlined in the above subsection (2), must include a summary of how this statement has impacted on the independence of the Teaching Council, its operations, and its ability to fulfil its core functions.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Simeon Brown to clause 14 be agreed to:

delete clause 24 of new Part 8 of Schedule 1.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments to other enactments

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, I specifically want to focus, in this call, on the discussion about communities of online learning. Firstly, to just give you a bit of a backdrop of what we’re dealing with, right across the world, globally, progressive—yes, progressive—Governments acknowledge the convergence that is occurring around what’s called face-to-face learning and digital technologies. National put in a large investment, $200 million, to ensure that every school was connected to ultrafast broadband with uncapped data. We also mandated the digital technologies curriculum, and the Minister isn’t here to actually answer hard questions about this investment and what is going on.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! We don’t refer to members’ presence [Interruption] in the Chamber.

Hon NIKKI KAYE: Sorry, Madam Chairperson. But, actually, the $40 million that National put in to upskill teachers—which is very relevant to this bill, in terms of communities of online learning—was to ensure that all young people could actually direct technology in the future in the area of computational thinking. So what we recognised when we put in the regime of communities of online learning was not what the Minister has described. This, somehow, ability to have a whole lot of virtual schools—yes, that is part of the provision of communities of online learning, but to recognise that for the many children that grow up in communities that are rural, that don’t have access to specialist teachers—the ability in the world that we live in now to provide those opportunities of supplementary learning, which was included in the original communities of online learning regime. What has happened? The Minister has come along and he’s snuffed out the future of a whole lot of learning opportunities by just deleting the provisions from law. We think that’s wrong.

We understand the issues that have been raised about ensuring that there are quality learning opportunities. But the concept that the previous National Government somehow put forward only virtual schools is wrong. What we recognised was the need for contestability in education. The concept that, actually, for a group of kids in New Zealand, Te Kura may have failed them. I want to tell the members a story, because I represent Great Barrier Island, and on Great Barrier Island there aren’t a whole lot of spare mathematics teachers. There isn’t a whole lot of science teachers sitting in either Medlands or in Tryphena. The reality is they haven’t waited for the Government; they set up their own Aotea learning hub.

But what they need is, they do need additional support. They’ve fought very hard through Government to get it, and what they were expecting that was coming down the line was some contestability around distance learning, and I say shame on this Government—shame on this Government for killing a regime that would provide the children of Barrier, the children of Stewart Island, the children of other rural parts of New Zealand, some contestability in distance learning.

We know that people had some issues with it. Actually, it is possible, and it would have been possible for the Minister of Education to have provided an alternative regime that might’ve dealt with some of the issues. If he didn’t believe in the concept that there could be whole virtual providers around tertiary education—we could’ve had more trade apprenticeship modules offered in school—then put up something as an alternative. I do want to acknowledge the Minister’s comments that he said in his last call when he stood up. He did say, with regard to my Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which I want to talk about in detail, that, actually, he did recognise the need for more policies in this area. I have put up this SOP which says that the New Zealand Government must conduct a review of the current provision and funding of online learning. He knows, because he’s been copied in to the emails that people like Rachel Whalley from the Virtual Learning Network have sent to Tracey Martin, have sent to him, that it needs to happen, and I have argued in this amendment to the House that there is a report and there are policy recommendations that are provided. That is a reasonable thing to ask, and the Minister said, basically, he’s not supporting it.

Well, what I’d say to the Minister is, in terms of the future and progress of education—and access to opportunities—not only in New Zealand but globally, the best thing that he could’ve done to show some cross-party agreement in terms of access to opportunities for distance learning would’ve been to support this amendment. I plead with members opposite—I plead with them. I say, even if you’re not in rural communities, if you support greater access to Te Reo, then why wouldn’t you support an amendment like mine? Even if you can’t come up with the policy yourselves in terms of the legislation, support this review to be able to provide an opportunity and a pathway for those many that—whether it’s tertiary providers, whether it’s those families that are fighting in areas like Te Reo or subjects that they can’t get specialist teachers, to have these opportunities, or just have a pathway for these opportunities. Please, support my SOP that gives them hope that, actually, this Government might be progressive in an area like this.

Now, I want to talk about what we’re actually talking about in terms of the future of New Zealand. The reality is, on the figures alone—and Labour talked a massive game in Opposition about how they believed in the future of work; you know, they were going to do a whole lot of things in terms of the future of work. They talked about the statistics, of more than 50 percent of the jobs being automated in the future. They go off and tell the Productivity Commission, “Well, actually, you guys can go and do some work”, while the most significant things that could happen, in terms of the future of work, would be to acknowledge that we live in a world where we shouldn’t—

Hon Clare Curran: Your party laughed at the concept—belittled the concept for years.

Hon NIKKI KAYE: —be barred by the typical geographical distances. Look, I’m getting heckled by a former Minister of Communications, who, of all people in this House, should be supporting our amendment to the bill, and I would say to Clare Curran: cross the floor—cross the floor. If you’re really serious about digital technologies, and you want to walk the talk on some of the speeches that I’ve heard you give in the past, you’ll cross the floor and recognise that it’s so important for the future of New Zealand.

Now, getting back to what I said before: in terms of the future of work, Labour have talked a big game, but the reality is we live in a world where young people more and more—and if we get the pedagogy right in terms of the delivery of teaching online, we have an opportunity like no other to provide learning opportunities for some of our most disadvantaged New Zealanders. And I want to talk about that for a moment, because this Government—again, it gives lectures everywhere it goes about disadvantage. But the reality is, when it comes to the crunch, there are a group of children for which they don’t have access to the same quality learning as other children in New Zealand. We have seen extraordinary projects like Manaiakalani—can I pay tribute to Pat Snedden—that have delivered huge opportunity to children that have been disadvantaged in the past.

The reality is that there are many other community leaders that would love to provide contestability of distance learning in certain subjects—mathematics, science, Te Reo—where we have teacher shortages. But you know what, they’re not going to get the opportunity, and I really object to getting a lecture from the Minister that says, “Oh, well, the reality is we’re not snuffing anything out, because it didn’t happen”. Well, the reason it didn’t happen is because this Minister put legislation for the House to snuff it out. That’s the reality.

So when we are campaigning in 2020, members from across the House are going to have to front up to public meetings and explain why they snuffed out a whole lot of future opportunities for disadvantaged kids, for kids in rural areas that would have had opportunities and subject areas, to lift the quality of our education system. It’s absolutely aligned with the future of work, and the reality is this is a Government that talks a big game on the next generation of New Zealanders but, when it comes to the crunch, a lot of it is fluff. A lot of it, there isn’t substance. National has some very strong policies of depth in this area that actually will do some things around lifting kids out of disadvantage, and do some things for those kids in rural areas. In my view, if the members opposite cared one bit, they would support my SOP to the committee and stand up or cross the floor. Thank you.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Chair. That was a very fantastic, passionate speech by the Hon Nikki Kaye, and I too stand in support of her Supplementary Order Paper. Communities of online learning (COOLs), which, here in Part 2 tonight, face the axe, are a topic and an industry, a sector, that deserve support, and, at the moment, they feel and experience none of that support whatsoever.

The National Party established communities of online learning to harness what is rapidly evolving digital technologies. We know we live in the digital era, and we want to provide more learning options for young people, emphasis on options. We want choices and options for young people, and so do, of course, these communities of online learning, and the different providers that have arisen from this need that we have amongst our students, our communities, and society. So, given that reality, at the very least—the very least—the Minister of Education could have provided some certainty for these COOLs, or, as we know them, communities of online learning, because COOLs are, simply, another option for parents. No one’s saying they are the option; they’re just another option for parents. We stand for, on this side of the House, choice and options for parents and for families, because they don’t come in a one-size-fits-all arrangement, and they never have, and they never will.

So what are we doing, and what are we facing here with the axe on COOLs as we know it? We’re waiting for an alternative arrangement; well, there aren’t any. A total lack of an alternative model is absolutely unbelievable when we’re going through so much of a seismic shift in education in this country. This just seems to be one area that’s just left off to the side, and they’re going to have to flail and find their own way, it appears, as the passage of this bill will likely take place tonight.

So what we know and understand from the repeal of the COOLs legislation is that it was done—well, this is the explanation from the Government—to allow time for proper consultation. The other reason that we’re told, it was done to develop policy in light of education reviews. Well, allowing time for proper consultation—where is it? Can someone answer for us? Where is the proper consultation and the certainty and the next step for COOLs? There’s nothing. If anyone on the other side of the Chamber would like to speak up now or forever hold their peace, let us know. What is the option for the online learning community as we know it tonight? Silence—right.

So then if you look at developing policy in light of education reviews, don’t hold your breath—don’t hold your breath. What do we know that’s going on in the education sector for reviews at the moment? Well, how about the Tomorrow’s Schools review, scrapping national standards, cancelling charter schools, rushing into the questioning of the entire NCEA system, failing to attempt banning music and dance teachers from calling themselves teachers. All of this stuff—a heavy-handed, ideology-driven, obsessive approach by this Government, and meanwhile you’ve got communities of online learning trying to find their way.

They had a pathway, it was under our Government, and this legislation here tonight is going to stop them short once again. They are existing for students who are, quite frankly, not engaging and have diverse learning needs. They have a reasonable request, and the request is that someone talk to them, because they didn’t for this legislation; that they just want a regulatory framework to be clarified for them. Does that not sound reasonable? It should. It should for them, and it should for New Zealanders, because it sure sounds reasonable to us on this side of the House. Unfortunately, we can’t hold our breath for that, because we can’t see—and even the Minister tonight admitted that work needs to be done in this space. Where is the work? We’d like to know.

I do hope that you’ll support the Hon Nikki Kaye’s amendment, which will give just a little bit of clarity that’s so sorely lacking.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 220 in the name of the Hon Chris Hipkins to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Nikki Kaye to clause 28 be agreed to:

replace this clause with the following new clause:

28 Review by Minister of Education

in section 38; insert:

35ZO Review by Minister of Education

The Minister of Education must conduct a review of the current provision and funding of online learning in schools by 2020 and present this report to the House with policy recommendations for a new regime for online learning in schools and potential providers.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 and 2

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Purpose, preliminary provisions, eligibility, bringing claims, and case management

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, it is a pleasure to stand and speak on the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill. We have supported this bill through its stages to this point, and I will be introducing four Supplementary Order Papers, which our continued support very much depends on. While we all have great sympathy and empathy for those people who are still struggling to settle their insurance claims and recover from the Canterbury earthquake sequence, there are principles of natural justice and also principles in law that we support and hold very dear, and I think we take those principles for granted at our peril.

My first Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), SOP 230, which seeks to prevent a one-way access to the justice system, illustrates that point very well. As things stand, the only entity that can bring a claim to the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal is an insured person, and that’s an important point. My SOP seeks to amend clause 5, making some changes, but the main part is in clause 10, inserting new subclause (2A), which is “An insurer may bring a claim to the tribunal against at least 1 person who is a policyholder or an insured person (or both), an insurer, or the EQC by making an application under section 12 that is accepted by the chairperson under section 13.” Now, it might seem strange, and I understand, in principle, why the Government elected and the Minister elected to do this, but, in fact, there are legitimate reasons why the Earthquake Commission (EQC) or an insurance company may wish to introduce a claim into the tribunal. Sometimes, claimants are reluctant to enter into a settlement process for their own reasons, whatever they are—we shouldn’t be judging that—but we must preserve the principles of justice. It is unprecedented in this context to have a one-way access to that—

Dr Duncan Webb: The insurer can’t sue a homeowner.

STUART SMITH: —and I’m sure Dr Webb actually knows that very well. The actual, legitimate reasons, Dr Webb, are there. We know they’re there, and I’m sure that that member knows they’re there. In fact, it’s quite interesting, and I’m really looking forward to the Minister in the chair, Stuart Nash, explaining why Cabinet agreed to this provision when, in fact, the Minister’s own officials recommended that that not be the case. In fact, they said quite clearly that there is a principle of natural justice and a legal principle by limiting an insurer’s access to the tribunal. So I’d like to hear from the Minister why they arrived at that decision, because it’s an important principle, and it’s one that we stand on. As I said, in part, our support will be dependent on this SOP going through.

We’ve got to also remember that insurance companies have contributed billions of dollars towards the repair of homes in Christchurch, and those insurers rely on underwriters from offshore. Those underwriters put their capital at risk to underwrite insurance policies on the basis of the risk, and those risks are not just limited to the natural risks that can cause damage to homes; it’s also around the legal and the justice principles in the country in which they are investing their capital. We have just seen recently with what’s been occurring here in Wellington with the change in insurance costs what could happen if the insurance industry loses confidence in this market. It’s a very important point. I think it’s been lightly treated by the Government, and I’d like to know why. I’d like to know have they thought about that? Have they assessed that risk?

All of the SOPs I’m going to introduce tonight have a similar process and principles in behind them. So it is a very important principle, as I mentioned, and I think that’s very important.

But I’m going to move now to my second SOP on Part 1, which is SOP 227, which allows insurance and the EQC to continue claims in the tribunal against third parties. Now, this is quite an important principle in itself, and it’ll probably warrant some explanation. As the bill stands at the moment, a claim is deemed to be finished in the tribunal when the insurer and the insured reach a resolution. Now, there may well be third parties such as builders or engineers that could be third parties to that claim, and they are disincentivised from actually reaching a resolution because they know the moment that the insurer and the insured reach an agreement and that’s settled in the tribunal, the whole claim falls away from them. They are no longer required to continue in the tribunal, and that would require the insurer or EQC to pursue that claim through the High Court.

Now, we have a tribunal that is either there for justice and natural justice, or it’s not. It currently isn’t, without this SOP. If the tribunal is capable of reaching a resolution between the insured and the insurer, it surely is capable of reaching a resolution with the third parties as well. All of the evidence will have been presented, all of the cases will have been put, all of the expert witnesses will have been called, and the tribunal is then going to back away and say, “No. Go and sort the rest of it out for yourself.”

The problem is that the people that will get hurt the most out of this are the very people that this bill is seeking to protect—that is, the insured. Those insured persons will be sitting there trying to reach a resolution, and it may well be in the insurance company’s and the EQC’s and, indeed, the third party’s interests to delay that as much as possible, and, in fact, they may be reluctant to even reach a resolution. The whole point of this is to move on from this, to get people’s claims settled. These claims are the most difficult claims. That’s why they haven’t been settled. We all wish they were, but wishing isn’t going to help. We actually need to put in the legislative framework that is fit for purpose, and without this SOP 227, that will not happen.

So I would also like to hear from the Minister in the chair. This is actually, I think, an extremely reasonable SOP. Both of the SOPs are extremely reasonable. They’re not political. This has got nothing to do with politics. It’s about a resolution for the people that matter, and the people that matter are the insured people that have waited for quite some time for a resolution. It is beyond me why the officials missed this one, and we certainly did point it out through the select committee process, where we had some fantastic presentations from those giving evidence to the Governance and Administration Committee. The committee was engaged on this whole issue right across the tables, so I just don’t know why that hasn’t happened.

As I said, our support is very much dependent on these SOPs going through, and we want a good result out of this, but we don’t believe fixing one wrong with another wrong is the way to go. This is about justice, and it’s in the name, so we want justice. We don’t want an unjust process. We don’t want the principles of natural justice nor the principles of a one-way justice system trampled on by this bill, which is supposed to be in the best interests of the insured persons, and it’s my proposition that at the moment, this bill is not. These two SOPs are the first two that I’ll speak to on this, and we must have these passed for our support. Thank you.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much. Look, I think it’s important that we deal with the honourable member Stuart Smith’s Supplementary Order Papers first and foremost just to clear up a few things. First of all, we do not support the recommendations of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 226, and let me explain why. We don’t agree that procedural fairness, or natural justice, more broadly, means that the use of experts or cross-examination should be permitted in every case as a right. Clause 37 requires the tribunal to comply with the principles of natural justice when managing claims. However, this does not require the tribunal to permit the use of experts if the tribunal considers this is unnecessary, or to permit cross-examination of a party or a person. The default assumption is that parties can use experts and have them provide evidence. The tribunal can already limit the use of experts, including their number, if it considers they are unnecessary—for example, when a party has multiple experts of the same discipline. That’s in clauses 20 and 27. Clause 23 of the bill also allows the tribunal to limit the number of experts at the first case management conference.

Under cross-examination, natural justice does not always require a right to cross-examination in tribunals. For example, the Law Commission’s 2008 report Tribunals in New Zealand noted that the requirement for tribunals to comply with natural justice normally requires a right to call witnesses and present evidence in support of their case, but does not always require a right to cross-examination. The tribunal is not as formal as the courts and does not apply the formal rules of evidence—

Stuart Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. Clause 37 is in Part 2.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yes, we agree. However, the Minister did start to refer to—

Hon STUART NASH: To your SOP 226.

Stuart Smith: Speaking to the point of order, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Just a moment. There are elements of the Minister’s explanation that relate to clauses 20 and 21, I believe, but there are some elements that refer to Part 2.

Stuart Smith: I didn’t speak to SOP 226.

Hon STUART NASH: What did you speak to?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): SOP 227.

Hon STUART NASH: OK. Let me continue. Supplementary Order Paper 227—we do not support this either. Let me outline the reasons why. The intent of the tribunal is to primarily resolve disputes between insurers and policyholders, not third parties. If the main—

Stuart Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. SOP 227 is on clause 11, and that’s in Part 1.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): That’s right. That’s correct. We are debating Part 1.

Hon STUART NASH: This is SOP 227. It’s clause 11, to allow an insurer and a third party to remain in the tribunal once the policyholder is removed. As mentioned, we do not support this, and let me just outline why. The intent of the tribunal is to primarily resolve disputes between insurers and policyholders, not third parties. If the main dispute involves a third party, and does not involve a policyholder or an insurer or EQC, this dispute should be dealt with in another forum.

Clause 11 provides that if the insurer, EQC, or the policyholder are removed as a respondent or a claimant from the claim so that only a respondent or a claimant and a third party remain, the claim cannot continue in the tribunal. This is not the same as settling a claim.

The claimant can pursue a claim against the third party in another forum within six months from when a respondent was removed. If the claim reaches a tribunal decision stage with a third party joined to that claim and the tribunal finds there is no liability between the insurer or EQC and the policyholder, or vice versa, the tribunal can still decide the liability of a third party. This means that the claimant does not necessarily need to start over again in another forum to claim against a third party. If a third party’s claim remained in the tribunal, this would stretch the tribunal’s resources and negatively impact the process of other claims. That is the reason why we can’t support SOP 227.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to congratulate Stuart Smith for crafting four Supplementary Order Papers, two of which I believe pertain to Part 1, so I’d like to address my comments around Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 229, around the appointment of tribunal members, but before I do that, I’d just recall that around 2 percent of all dwelling claims relating to residential homes have yet to be resolved.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Order! Order! What part is the member speaking to?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Part 1, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Clause 55?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Speaking to SOP 229, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Clause 55.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: No. No?

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yeah, I have it as clause 55. The SOPs aren’t in numerical order depending on Part 1 and Part 2.

Stuart Smith: It’s very confusing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Yeah, they are. So the member is speaking to which SOP in particular?

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Thank you. I will revise my contribution. Thank you for the advice.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): Thank you—no worries.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Indeed, it is a little confusing.

CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): It’s OK. I think clarity will reign shortly. I think we’re all a little confused at the moment.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: Just noting—and I think this is a salient point, notwithstanding the confusion around the numbering around the SOPs—that there are around 2 percent of insurance claims which are relating to residential homes from the earthquakes that remain unresolved. We might stand here in the Parliament getting a little confused about which SOPs relate to which parts of the bill, but, actually, this does matter to those 2 percent of homeowners who have their claims unresolved some eight and nine years later. I think if we can focus on that, then maybe we will set the right tone for the debate this evening.

These remaining claims—this 2 percent—are often those that are technically the most difficult and legally complex. There can be a number of factors that come into the lack of resolution of these claims over all of these years, and they can be financial or health-related, or are other people, the claimants—are they ready? Are they wanting to pursue that claim at the time? There might be financial difficulties involved, and this is where we really must remind ourselves that this bill around an earthquakes insurance tribunal is not so much around the process of appointing the people to the tribunal board and the other matters, which we will explore.

At its heart, it is around those homeowners and families and individuals who have gone through a significance shock to their lives, and that shock is not yet resolved. I think if we can in this debate really keep that at the forefront of our minds as we are stumbling our way, sometimes, through the detail of this bill, then that can only be for the better.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’d just like to take a short call to talk about the purpose of the bill in Part 1. National supported this bill through the first and second readings and, of course, through select committee because we did believe that a tribunal could provide an alternative mechanism to manage outstanding earthquake claims.

I think everybody would like to see a speedier, more flexible, and cost-effective service to solve claims, but all the way through this process we have had serious reservations and concerns about whether the tribunal will actually do that. As you’re seeing today, we are presenting a series of Supplementary Order Papers that we think improve the bill and would make it possible for us to vote for it in the committee stage and the third reading.

We’re particularly concerned about the bill in that it can only deal with simple cases—cases that are not already in court—because we know that the vast majority of the 2,233 outstanding claims that have been identified are complex and technical, and of course that makes sense because they are still outstanding after seven or eight years. So we do feel that the progress of this tribunal will be limited.

We’re also really concerned that the Ministry of Justice felt that a mediation process very like National’s—the Residential Advisory Service, which was particularly successful in this area of solving difficult claims, or solving claims full stop—would have been very useful, and we would have liked to have seen that in preference to a tribunal. The thing that really disturbed us was that in the regulatory impact statement they were very doubtful about the tribunal and how effective it would be. The problem with that was it felt that the tribunal might make claims take longer than they already would for the process, rather than the status quo, and I don’t think that would be getting anyone anywhere. That would be a tragedy.

I’d just like to talk about two Supplementary Order Papers that are in the first part of this bill. The first is Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 230. This goes back to clause 5 and the definition of a “claimant”. In the bill now, the definition of a “claimant” is “a policyholder or an insured person (or both)”, and what we want to do is insert “or an insurer”, because there are circumstances where an insurer may like to use this process to solve some of the claims. We feel that a balance to have that insurer, to have that opportunity, would make a difference. On top of that, in clause 10, we also want to include that the insurer may bring a claim to the tribunal. In clause 12, again, we want to insert after “policyholder or an insured person (or both)”, “or an insurer”—furthermore, also in clause 16 and later in other parts of the bill.

Basically, this is all about providing for insurers to bring a claim, just as a policyholder or insured person could do that. We believe it’s important that the procedure under the tribunal is equally available to both insured and insurers. To be able to examine a contract between two parties when only one party has access to the tribunal process is, we believe, a miscarriage of justice. Both parties should be able to access the process equally.

The other SOP that I’d like to look at is SOP 227. This is an amendment concerning the bringing of a claim to the tribunal with additional parties. In this amendment, we’d like to simplify the process if an insurer or the Earthquake Commission wishes to continue claims against a third party through the tribunal. Now, this is a logical extension of what should happen. If we are using a tribunal and there is a third party that needs to be involved in this case, it should be able to be continued through the tribunal, rather than have to go back to the slow, costly process of going through the High Court.

So we are concerned about this bill. We have supported it to this stage simply because we think something could provide a mechanism to manage earthquake claims, but we have reservations, and the SOPs address some of those reservations. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 1 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 230 in the name of Stuart Smith to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 227 in the name of Stuart Smith to clause 11 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Mediation and adjudication of claims

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That brings us to Part 2, which is debate on clauses 29 to 52, and Schedule 2.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to stand and speak in the debate on Part 2 of this bill. Basically, the purpose of the bill is to provide a fair, speedy, flexible, and cost-effective service to resolve disputes about insurance claims, and Part 2, basically, clarifies the definition of mediation and other procedures which are in this Part 2.

The application clause in Subpart 1 applies where the tribunal directs the parties to mediation. Mediation is an easy way of resolving a dispute, where experts can sit down with both parties and talk about how to resolve the issues which are outstanding. The chief executive must employ or engage a person to provide mediation services that are fair, speedy, flexible, and cost-effective to assist parties to resolve the claims quickly. That’s the main purpose of the bill, and that continues over here, where the mediation service is provided and the chief executive has got that authority to appoint a person who can be a mediator. The bill doesn’t prevent any person from seeking and using a mediation service other than that provided by the chief executive under this subpart to settle a dispute to which this bill could apply.

The independence of the mediators is a very important part because they are the people who will decide if this can resolve the dispute between both the parties. The mediator must be a person of independence, who independently can decide how to deal with the particular claim or aspects of it. They must be independent of any other parties to whom the mediator provides the mediation, so he or she should not be related to any of the parties which are subject to this mediation. That is important because the independence will provide justice to both the parties, without any dispute.

It clarifies in this bill that a mediator who has got a conflict of interest has to disclose to both the parties that he or she has got this conflict and must—unless the other party agrees otherwise—refuse to act or withdraw from acting in relation to the claim. That person has to withdraw himself or herself if he or she is related to any of the parties and one of the other parties objects to it. A party who agrees to the mediator’s acting forfeits any right to object to the mediator acting on the basis of the conflict of interest that was disclosed by the mediator. If both the parties have already agreed that this person can be a mediator, then, later on, it can’t be claimed that this person had a conflict of interest.

So the procedure in relation to this mediation is also specified over here, and I understand that Stuart Smith has got a few more Supplementary Order Papers related to this part, which he will be debating. I hope that the Minister will consider that this bill should provide a mediation service where both the parties can be able to resolve their disputes, which have been outstanding for a long time.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. I know that we’re on to Part 2 now and that the numbering of these Supplementary Order Papers has been quite confusing, but we’re right now.

I’m going to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 226 in my name, which is ensuring that the bill doesn’t interfere with the right to restrict the ability to call and cross-examine expert witnesses, which the Minister in the chair has already had a bit of a speech on. Nevertheless, I’ll call on him to come back and have another go as well, because I think this is a really important issue because it goes to natural justice, and actually, I can’t understand at all how the officials let this one through either.

I think all this goes back to the confusion around the Weathertight Homes Tribunal, which was a cut-and-paste for this bill, essentially. That’s where all of the structure of this bill came from, and the issue is, of course, that the Weathertight Homes Tribunal operates under tort law. This is contract law—quite different—and I’m sure the officials are well aware of that and I know that the Cabinet papers are well aware of it. In fact, the advice to the Minister was quite critical. I’ve never seen that before in my relatively short—I admit—parliamentary career, but it’s quite damning to see a Cabinet paper telling a Minister that they’ve got it completely wrong with their bill.

It is such an important issue. It seems a minor one, and I understand the intent—it doesn’t want to delay things—but, under the weathertight homes legislation, it was all about malpractice and people not living up to what they were paid to do, essentially, and this one is completely different. It’s about the details of the contract and whether the damage constitutes what’s in the contract or not, and that is where there’s always going to be an issue, obviously, because the claimant wants as much as possible and the insurance company wants to pay as little as possible. Everyone who’s got a policy doesn’t want them to pay more than they have to, because, in fact, it impacts on their policy, but justice has to be done and there has to be a fair line found there.

Of course, in insurance contracts, it’s not the insurance company broker who makes a decision on whether they’re going to make a payout or not; it’s all based on expert witnesses. It’s expert evidence. They get people who are, most often, contracted to insurance companies to actually assess the damages. If an insured person doesn’t agree with that, they have the right to hire their own expert and say, “Well, actually, it’s not going to cost $50,000 to fix. It’s going to cost $100,000 to fix.”, or whatever the numbers are. That’s where expert evidence is really important, and under the way this bill is structured, the tribunal can limit that.

Not only is it important to have expert witnesses; it’s important to test their evidence, and that’s what cross-examination is all about. We’re in New Zealand, not in Iran, not in some Third World country. We deserve justice in this country, and natural justice is an important part of it.

I’m absolutely appalled that this is in the bill. I can’t understand how anyone with a law degree could allow that to be in the bill—it’s 101 stuff. It’s not complex law. They are quite different—tort law and contract law are completely different—and everyone with a law degree would know that. So I can’t see why that’s in the bill, and I’m really going to listen with great interest to the Minister’s explanation on this.

In fact, I think the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act says it quite well here, in section 27(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: “Every person has the right to the observance of the principles of natural justice by any tribunal or other public authority which has the power to make a determination in respect of that person’s rights, obligations, or interests protected or recognised by law.” Natural justice demands that there be an ability to test the evidence of a witness—particularly an expert—and that requires cross-examination, and it also requires that people have the right to call for an expert witness. Thank you.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Now that I’m talking on the right part of this bill, I will outline the Government’s opposition to Supplementary Order Paper 226, put up by the honourable member Stuart Smith, with regard to clause 37 and the use of experts in cross-examination. We don’t agree that pursuing procedural fairness, or natural justice, more broadly, means that the use of experts in cross-examination should be permitted in every case as of right. Clause 37 requires the tribunal to comply with the principles of natural justice when managing claims. However, this does not require the tribunal to permit the use of experts if the tribunal considers this unnecessary, or permit cross-examination of a party or person. In terms of the use of experts, the default assumption is that parties can use experts and have them provide evidence. The tribunal can already limit the use of experts, including their number, if it considers they are unnecessary—for example, when a party has multiple experts of the same discipline. That’s in clauses 20 and 27, and I know that is Part 1 of the bill, though.

In terms of cross-examination, natural justice does not always require a right to cross-examination in tribunals. For example, the Law Commission’s 2008 report titled Tribunals in New Zealand noted that this requirement for tribunals to comply with natural justice normally requires a right to call witnesses and present evidence in support of their case, but does not always require a right to cross-examination. The tribunal is not as formal as the courts and does not apply the formal rules of evidence. Information is accepted on the basis of relevance rather than technical admissibility. Therefore, cross-examination does not need to play as significant a role in proceedings. It is likely that cross-examination will be allowed rather than not. However, allowing the tribunal discretion may be appropriate to address an imbalance between the parties in certain cases—for example, when only one party has a lawyer.

Cross-examination is not the only way to test evidence in the tribunal. The tribunal has powers to manage the use of experts, hold expert conferences, and use independent expert advisers that can help assess expert evidence. Cross-examination should be determined on a case by case basis with regard to the purpose of the tribunal to be fair, speedy, flexible, and cost-effective.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to just talk a little bit about my colleague Stuart Smith’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 226 on this. The matter of permitting expert witnesses was something that we grilled officials on quite extensively in the select committee stage of this bill, and Mr Smith’s SOP, I’d argue, is incredibly constructive because it doesn’t seek to simply relitigate the matter that we raised in select committee, which was that the ability to exclude expert witnesses and cross-examination could hinder a fair and reasonable process in the tribunal.

Mr Smith actually wants to ensure that those that want to have expert witnesses can have them, but he’s absolutely shifting some management of that back to the tribunal to enable the tribunal to limit the number of expert witnesses. Obviously, the idea is there that, particularly from the insurance side, they’re not loading up the process with hordes or multiple expert witnesses either to slow the process down or to use the weight of expert opinion to somehow sway the tribunal. So that sort of reinforces the point that Mr Smith was trying to make, which is that in fairness for both or all parties within the proceedings, it is absolutely appropriate that any party should be able to call at least one expert witness, but to allow the tribunal to have the ability to limit that ensures that that doesn’t get out of hand.

That is a point of difference from the argument or the discussion that was had in select committee, but I think it is a very fair way of addressing a balance. Maybe it is not a perfect balance, but I’m not certain that that’s exactly what we’re looking, necessarily, to achieve here. It is a recognition that in the interests of justice and natural justice, or just in fairness in a tribunal process, everyone should be able to rely on experts to argue or to help to substantiate their particular arguments in the matter before the tribunal but also to make sure that that doesn’t go overboard.

I listened to the Minister. I will admit I wasn’t here for all of his call, but I listened to probably half of that, and I take his point. But I would argue that this is not simply a case of Mr Smith seeking to say “I tried this argument in select committee and was unsuccessful, so I’m going to use the committee of the whole House stage to simply try to relitigate it.” He’s actually shifted the position, which says that this is important from our perspective. We think it’s important certainly for insurers but, in the overall fairness of the tribunal proceedings, arguably, it’s a fairness thing for all parties concerned.

But he has moderated the position to say that if the argument from officials at least in part was “Well, we don’t want the tribunal to be weighed under by too many expert witnesses.”, then explicitly putting that provision in there allows the tribunal to effectively cap that and to manage that, and it’s not a set number, by the way. It is at the discretion or the consideration of the tribunal members. But that way would allow satisfying both considerations or both arguments: the idea of ensuring that justice can be seen to be done and ensuring that fairness can be argued for all parties concerned, but, equally, ensuring that the tribunal proceedings don’t get smothered or overburdened with too many expert witnesses being able to be called.

So I’d ask the Minister just to briefly reflect on that. The officials are, obviously, behind him at the moment and might consider the specifics, not just to the fact that Mr Smith has called for an assurance that an expert witness can be called no matter who the party is but that by placing that locus of control back on to the tribunal members, it will ensure that it doesn’t and can’t get out of hand and we have, therefore, fair access to expert opinion for every party in the proceedings, but it’s done in a way that means that no one party—and I’d admit that’s probably more likely to be the insurers than any other party—can completely start to take over or overburden the proceedings with a raft of expert opinions which might just either slow it down or simply seek to use the idea of having the weight of expert opinion to try and sway a decision and an outcome.

So I’d focus the Minister on that particular part of the SOP: the idea that within that, the tribunal would still have the control to limit it. I would ask him to briefly reconsider it again and perhaps change the position, because I think it is actually a good point. It was a good point made in the Governance and Administration Committee, but this is a better way of moderating that position. It is different to what we discussed in select committee.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not claim to be an expert in legal issues. Actually, I have no background in legal issues. However, because this is a very important point and because the tribunal will have wide-ranging powers, which we support because we do want to have a very speedy process to resolve the backlog, particularly for those 2,233 outstanding claims—we want these claims to be resolved as soon as possible—I want to bring the Minister back to the purpose of this particular bill. It says it is “to provide fair, speedy, flexible, and cost-effective services” to help resolve claims between policyholders, insurers, and the Earthquake Commission. So they are fair, speedy, flexible, and cost-effective services. The first word is “fair”, so fairness is key to this particular process. I find it hard to see fairness if we are not able to really cross-examine expert evidence.

I bring this to the committee’s attention because this reminds me of my past experience as an academic at the University of Auckland. I was the director of the postgraduate programme at the department of political studies and then became associate dean in charge of postgraduates. In in those years, it was my responsibility to make sure that the work of each student was examined fairly. So, initially, we had one examiner that was, basically, the supervisor, but the supervisor could be biased either towards or against the particular student, and then, in the end, we actually had two examiners and we removed the supervisor from the examination process. We had two examiners: one from the University of Auckland—internal—and one from another university so they could be external. So, in the process, if there was a disagreement between the two examiners, we would call upon a third examiner to make a final assessment. So it was, basically, trying to examine everyone’s assessment to see whether it’s really a fair assessment. That is natural justice for students.

So, in this case, I find it hard to believe that we should restrict the ability of parties to call or cross-examine expert evidence. It is only when you are able to really challenge other people’s views or assessments will we be able to really make sure this is a fair process, so I would really like the Minister to further explain why cross-examination should be restricted. Why shouldn’t any claimants be able to have a chance to challenge other people’s views to make sure that we have a fair understanding of a particular case? Thank you, Madam Chair.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Stuart Smith’s amendments to Part 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 229 are out of order as being contingent on an amendment that has been negatived.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 226 in the name of Stuart Smith to clause 37 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Part 3 Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That brings us to Part 3, which is debate on clauses 53 to 67 and parts of Schedule 2 and Schedule 3.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Madam Chair, thank you. I would like to speak to clauses 59 and 60, and then track back a little into clause 55. Clause 59 in Part 3 relates to the chairperson’s responsibilities in the tribunal. It’s interesting because in reading clauses 58 and 59 and moving on to clause 60, it really makes clause 55 a little more comprehensible, even though I’m not sure that we would agree with the decisions therein. So clause 58: “The chairperson must assign 1 member”—and it could be the chairperson themselves—“to act—(1) as the tribunal for each claim:”, and that happens “as the tribunal [is] to perform the functions required to be performed under section 64(4)” of the Act, and it will be that relating to access to tribunal records. That’s pretty straightforward, but it does give a clue to why there is clause 55, which precedes it—but I’ll go over that—which is around the appointments of the members of the tribunal.

I had started to speak to Stuart Smith’s Supplementary Order Paper 229, which has been ruled out, so I probably won’t refer to that too much except to say that under the bill as amended, in clause 55(1AA)(2), “The Minister must recommend for appointment—(a) only people who, in the Minister’s opinion, are suitable to be appointed as members, taking into account their knowledge, skills, and experience;”, and of course then we can agree with this next part, that “(b) at least 1 person who has the experience required to be the chairperson under subsection (4).” So the question is why should only one of the appointees to the tribunal have a practising certificate, as laid out in clause 55(1AA)(4): “The chairperson must have held a New Zealand practising certificate as a barrister or as a barrister and solicitor for at least 7 years.” The question still remains, I believe, why isn’t every member of the tribunal, which has significant powers, required to have a practising certificate of seven years as a barrister and or as a barrister and solicitor?

Dr Duncan Webb: Because there’s other experts.

Hon JACQUI DEAN: The member across the Chamber does say “Because there are other experts.” Yes, there are, but there just does seem to be a little looseness, and also, really, I think it discounts or discards the fact that barristers and solicitors also can have other areas of expertise that they can bring to bear into this tribunal work.

Then, perhaps a less contentious clause is clause 60, “Delegation by chairperson”, who may delegate any functions. Of course, the function in this instance is this function to delegate to a member whom the chairperson is satisfied has the necessary capability, skills, and experience to perform that function, which puts an awful lot of responsibility and weight on the chairperson. So it brings me back, again, to my colleague’s Supplementary Order Paper 229, which would require each of the members of the tribunal to have a legal qualification, because while a number of people—yes—can have expertise, it’s that legal expertise which I would have thought would be a critical part for members who serve on the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I am just trying to sort out Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 229 in the name of Stuart Smith that I said in Part 2 had been negatived, but it actually refers to clause 55 in Part 3, and I can’t—I’m just seeking some advice on how it’s been negatived. So the member might like to take a call because he is, at this stage, entitled to speak to his SOP until it’s ruled out of Part 3.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s been an interesting night so far, I have to say. Yes, well, Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 229 in my name—

Matt Doocey: Great SOP.

STUART SMITH: It is a great SOP. The SOP guarantees only suitably qualified professionals with legal or arbitration experience can be appointed as members of the tribunal. My colleague Jacqui Dean has just spoken and referred to that, and I think that she made some very good points. I don’t want to take up too much time on it, but I’ve got a few points here, including, in fact, a quote from the first reading speech from the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission, the Hon Megan Woods, which cuts completely across what’s in this bill.

You know, it really is quite amazing, and there’s a theme running through here, as I’m sure my colleague Jacqui Dean behind me will have noted—and I’m sure the officials have as well—which is that all of these things are linked. None of them are political. They are all about making this bill fit for purpose and actually fitting with our legal principles in New Zealand, and it’s playing fast and loose with those principles, as this bill is. It doesn’t achieve anything other than getting sloppy laws in New Zealand. We in New Zealand are at some risk, I believe, of losing our faith in the insurance industry, and this is going a long way to making that worse. I think it’s far more serious than the officials and the Government realise.

We’re in a reasonably tenuous position here. It’s not just about the risk that insurance companies weigh up when they’re going to risk their capital or not; it is the legislative framework that they have to operate under, and that’s very important. That’s where this SOP—

Brett Hudson: Mr Hipkins is sympathetic to your position.

STUART SMITH: —speaks to that, and, yes, I can see Mr Hipkins is quite uncomfortable there as the Minister in the chair, but never mind. So the bill is actually silent on what constitutes a suitable knowledge and what skills and experience are required. As we’ve talked to on the other parts in this bill, these claims that are unresolved are all technical. They are all complex. They are all difficult, or they would have been settled by now. So this whole tribunal will fail miserably if it doesn’t have the suitably qualified people to run the tribunal. You’ll end up—well, not you, Madam Chair. But what we will end up with is creating one injustice to try and fix another. I think that the justice department in New Zealand should be about justice—that’s what it should be about—not about injustice, and this is getting pretty damned close to it, if you’ll excuse my French, Madam Chair.

I did promise a quote—and I’ll come to that in a minute—but the bill doesn’t require anyone to have a law degree to sit on this tribunal. As I’ve already said, these are complex issues and they will come down to technicalities in the contract in the end, and how can someone off the street without suitable qualifications be in a position to adjudicate on that? That’s a question that perhaps the honourable member in the chair might like to enlighten us on. It would be quite a difficult one to answer, I suspect.

But I did promise a quote from the Hon Megan Woods, the Minister responsible for the Earthquake Commission, who said in her first reading speech on this very bill that “we have publicly said that we see people of the calibre of retired High Court judges, senior members of the legal profession, being the right people to sit” on the tribunal. So why would that not be in the bill?

Hon Jacqui Dean: “Uh, oh!”

STUART SMITH: That’s a big “Uh, oh!” It really is an own goal as far as that goes, and I think the Government members just seem to have lost the importance of justice in this bill.

This is access to natural justice, a one-way justice system, and there is the potential to have unqualified people sitting in judgment on these highly technical, highly complex issues. They’ll likely end up creating an injustice in order to try and fix another injustice. That is one wrong building up on another, and we will end up with a disaster further down the track.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I apologise to the member. His Supplementary Order Paper 229 is in order for Part 3, so therefore my ruling in Part 2 that it was negatived was an error.

Stuart Smith: Apology accepted, Madam Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): OK.

Amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 3 agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 229 in the name of Stuart Smith to clause 55 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 55

New Zealand National 54; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 3 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Part 3 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3

Amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 3 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

Amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 225 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to clause 2 agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Appropriation (2017/18 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) with amendment, and the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill with amendment.

Report adopted.

Bills

Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: Tēnā koe, Madam Deputy Speaker. I move, That the Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

The purpose of this bill is to uphold public confidence in the role of the parliamentary Ombudsmen. The Ombudsmen hold a unique constitutional role in Aotearoa New Zealand. As Officers of Parliament, they are statutorily independent and provide accessible and impartial review of complaints. They uphold the rights of individuals to have grievances against the executive, both local and national, independently examined and concluded.

I believe it is important to ensure that this significant role is not undermined by confusion over which entities are using the name “ombudsman” in New Zealand. The use of the name “ombudsman” is currently protected under the Ombudsmen Act 1975 but not absolutely prohibited. Entities wishing to use the name “ombudsman” can seek the permission of the Chief Ombudsman. Currently, it also includes a savings provision in respect of the private sector entity Financial Services Complaints Ltd. If the application that Financial Services Complaints Ltd has made under the current Act is approved by the Chief Ombudsman, it will also be able to use the name “ombudsman” in accordance with that permission. There is precedent elsewhere for protecting the use of certain words and names, such as “Anzac”, in order to maintain public confidence and trust in what the word attaches to.

The amendments we are proposing in this bill will help signify the uniqueness of the Office of the parliamentary Ombudsmen. In turn, this will uphold public confidence in an understanding of their role. Prohibition of use of the name “ombudsman” is necessary to prevent the risk of proliferation of the name by other disputes resolution bodies, while preserving clarity and protecting the integrity and value of the parliamentary Ombudsmen.

Public inquiries to the Office of the Ombudsmen indicate that the current use of the name by both the parliamentary Ombudsmen and private sector bodies has already led to confusion about the status and role of an ombudsman. This bill will protect the use of the name “ombudsman” by restricting its use to a parliamentary Ombudsman appointed under the Ombudsmen Act 1975, or a person appointed to a position established by the Chief Ombudsman, such as that of Assistant Ombudsman or Deputy Ombudsman or any public sector department or organisation approved by the Minister of Justice.

The bill includes a savings provision, which I have already mentioned, which currently has permission from the Chief Ombudsman to use the name “ombudsman.”

At the appropriate time, I will move that the bill be referred to the Governance and Administration Committee. The select committee process is very important. I encourage members of the public to have their say on the bill when the committee calls for submissions. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider this bill. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Chris Penk.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, I beg your pardon. The question is, That the motion be agreed to.

CHRIS PENK: Thank you again, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s one of those situations that if you hear a word repeated enough times, it just sounds ridiculous. I wasn’t counting the number of times that the Minister Peeni Henare said the word “ombudsman”, but he said the word “ombudsman” a large number of times, to the point where the word “ombudsman” sounded ridiculous. Then I realised that, actually, it was the whole concept of this being an amendment bill brought in front of the Parliament in its own right that was ridiculous. It’s not the kind of bill that you would clear a jam in the photocopier in the office for, get it out the other side and understand what its effect would be on the New Zealand Parliament and this wonderful nation of ours, and, indeed, wonder how on earth we could have survived without it.

There’s not much to this bill. We’ve heard a pretty valiant effort by the Minister to explain its meaning and effect, and he did well, I think, to squeeze out a few minutes on that. But, actually, in my contribution I would like to highlight that while it doesn’t do much, what little it does is not particularly helpful.

The Minister started by talking about the role of the parliamentary Ombudsman, and I think he used the phrase “Officer of Parliament”. He might equally have used “creature of Parliament”—meaning, of course, that the role of Ombudsman is created by Parliament. That’s all perfectly accurate and fine as far as it goes, but the effect of this bill, if anything, is to give a power to the Minister to safeguard the name “Ombudsman”. Now, the Minister is by definition a member of the executive branch, so he or she is actually not the appropriate guardian to hold the reputation and the import of this name safe for the New Zealand people. So, really, it sort of seems to me “quite bizarre, ridiculous, and redundant” is about the best thing that we can say for it.

It’s difficult for us on this side of the House to support a bill that is pretty well devoid of meaning, but that meaning which it has is hard to support. I think, particularly, we might ask ourselves what problem it’s intended to solve, and what we are left with is an analysis where we’ve got a low risk of something that would have very low effects even if it were to occur. I don’t know what kind of analysis the Government parties have received to convince themselves that this is worth concerning themselves with, or whether there’s been a recent outbreak of people calling themselves Ombudsmen—

Dr Duncan Webb: There has.

CHRIS PENK: —for example, and in a way that actually causes genuine confusion. I note that Dr Duncan “Ombudsman” Webb over there is chiming in.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Proper names, please.

CHRIS PENK: I beg your pardon. I’m sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I’ve proved his point, if anything: it’s just so easy to have the word or the name “Ombudsman” slip out and to cause real confusion and heartache accordingly.

For these reasons, I think that we can all very much look forward to the remaining stages of this bill, if it should pass through, and some pretty meaty submissions to the select committee. I just hope that it doesn’t, in fact—no doubt it will go to the Justice Committee, as is being proposed. That’s a committee on which I often—

Hon Maggie Barry: Government and admin.

CHRIS PENK: —substitute, but hopefully not—oh, Government and administration. Thank you. The Hon Maggie Barry points out that it will be the Governance and Administration Committee, which is one that I don’t often substitute on, thank goodness, and neither does she, so that’s possibly the motivation for her looking into that aspect. Anyway, with no further ado, I think we’ve probably said enough about this for ever, but certainly for my contribution. I’ll probably stretch the truth, at the risk of misleading Parliament, and say I look forward to further contributions on this bill. Thank you.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Very briefly, thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Mr Penk should know that the word “ombudsman” comes from the Swedish constitution of 1899, and there it roughly translates as “the guardian of the citizens”. It’s a very important word, and it comes from Government. I was reading a good article, in fact, in the Penn State Law Review only yesterday on this matter—I recommend it to Mr Penk.

It is a very important word. It speaks of an officer of State, of Parliament—a guardian of the citizens. There has been creep. We’ve got an Insurance Ombudsman and a Banking Ombudsman—they’re private. We’ve got to be very careful we don’t get any more. That’s why this is here. It’s a very important bill. It’s protecting a parliamentary office, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): May I commend the previous speaker, Duncan Webb, on the brevity of his contribution. The Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill is a ghastly piece of work, I’d have to say. It is a problem that doesn’t need to be solved. It is an extraordinary waste of Parliament’s time. I don’t really want to talk about it for any length of time. We oppose the bill. I did note that the member had googled or Wikipedia’d “ombudsman”. It is indeed Swedish, but my Google search had it defined as “a grievance person” to investigate complaints against Government agencies.

I can’t recall a time when the popular talkback and social media was flooded with horror stories of the word “ombudsman” being misapplied to inappropriate people all the time. Perhaps I’m not listening to the right talkback shows. At a time when we have some hugely challenging issues in New Zealand around mental health—we have the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary. There are any number of important pieces of legislation that we could be spending House time on, and yet we have this piece of work.

We know that there is no real problem. We know that the penalty for the improper use of the name “ombudsman” doesn’t even change through this bill; it’s just kind of raising a flag. I think it is, in fact, in my eight years in this place, the most useless piece of legislation that I’ve come across.

I note, with some interest—

Hon Member: Year of delivery.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: —the year of non-delivery—that this is only the fourth all-new bill to be introduced to this House in the justice space, following on from the waka-jumping bill, the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill. When we look across the House we see a Government that is not doing very much at all. They’re still building on our legislation, the select committee workload has ground to a halt, there’s very little that we can do or need to do because this Government has just not generated any legislation. Working groups—now, that’s another story. Naturally, there has been a proliferation of those, none of them called “ombudsman”. Anyway, the select committee work that we will have to put into this on the Governance and Administration Committee which, thankfully, I don’t sit on—sorry about that Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi; I’m sure it’s chaired well and deals with a number of fantastic issues that are important but—

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: We have to suffer for it.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: —actually—they have to what?

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: We have to suffer for it.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: You have to suffer for it; the member will have to suffer for this. No doubt the member will take a call on this not-at-all-important issue a little bit later on.

Rushing it through, why would you do this? I would urge the Government to spend its time developing legislation that will improve the lot of the vulnerable, that will make New Zealand a better place to live in, will grow the economy, grow the jobs, do the things that matter to New Zealand. This piece of work will not matter a jot to anyone in New Zealand, except, perhaps, a couple of Ombudsmen and they have full protection anyway. So I do not commend this bill to the House nor do I support it in any way, and I hope that the Government get on with doing some substantial work one of these days. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just felt a wave of depression come off my shoulders as the last member sat down; we’ve just had a little bit of elevation of positivity. Look, “ombudsman” is one of those words. I think I’ll start by saying it sort of captivates your imagination. It’s like “bibliography” and “ointment” and “tenacity”. But I have to say “discombobulated” is the word that reminds me of the last summary of what was just put through from the member across the House.

Look, it may not seem very important to some of those members on that side, but wasted money is being put in from the hard-working taxpayers of New Zealand to try and stop the legal approach from many people that want to use the name “ombudsman” in their approach for their businesses or their course of action. We are finding ourselves, on a semi-regular basis, defending the term “ombudsman” from being overused and misappropriately used. Then, when they have been given notice that they can’t use the word, they take the Ombudsmen to court to try and get them to make a precedent so that they can use it.

Hon Maggie Barry: Who does that? Elucidate please.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: If you’re aware of what’s going on in Australia—Ms Maggie Barry you’ve had your turn, you might just want to try and listen—you have seen that the word “ombudsman” has been completely used out of context. They’ve got a beekeepers ombudsman, for goodness sake. We don’t want to see this very strong, independent office to be downplayed or downsized in the hearts and the minds of New Zealanders. It needs to be held in high esteem and, therefore, protecting that, giving them the power to do that, it’s—

Hon Peeni Henare: Protect the integrity of it.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: It’s all about integrity, you’re dead right there Mr Peeni Henare. So we’d like to see this bill go through. We’re not going to take a huge amount of time taking calls this evening, but we see it as something that’s very, very important.

There are already a number of good examples where—for example, banking has an ombudsman, the insurance brokers have an ombudsman, and the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman exists. If the courts decide that there is an axe to grind with a company which is looking for the Financial Services Complaints Ltd, they will also have the ability to apply for this title, and it is the place where people can go to where they get an unsatisfactory outcome, where they can get a completely autonomous independent review of what has been done. So it’s very, very important.

The Officers of Parliament are completely independent—three separate entities work within that scope which are outside of any controls of this House and that is the Ombudsman, that is the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, and that’s the Auditor-General. Those three officers need to be protected—their brand, their name, what they stand for—because that’s what this Government is all about. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand in opposition to this very important bill—as the members from the Government said—the Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill. I did not hear any logical point from any of the speakers, and this bill, as it was portrayed, will be the fourth bill in the justice sector after the Electoral (Integrity) Amendment Bill, the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal Bill—which we were debating before this bill—and the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. This bill, which is supposed to be a bill of the justice sector, is being given to the Governance and Administration Committee, not even to the Justice Committee. That shows the importance and seriousness of this Government passing this bill on to us. It is a total waste of time of the House—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, sit down then.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: —there are—yes, it is. You—not you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Leader of the House—should consider what is important for New Zealanders.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Well, sit down and stop wasting time.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: You are wasting time, because you are wasting time in the House by bringing the bill. [Interruption] Stop laughing about it—think about the Kiwis. There are more important things which are required to be done in this House, rather than protecting the name of the Ombudsmen. This bill is total wastage, and I stand in opposition to this. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Ombudsmen (Protection of Name) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 54; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Bills

Trusts Bill

Second Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: I move, That the Trusts Bill be now read a second time.

I want to thank the Justice Committee for its work in considering the bill, which is a highly complex and technical bill. I therefore apologise to the House for all that’s about to follow. I do want to thank the independent adviser to the committee, David Goddard QC. The committee received written submissions from 34 submitters, of whom 14 presented an oral submission. The submissions included the judiciary, professional organisations, and interested groups and individuals, and I thank those who took the time to submit to the committee.

Trusts are a key part of our legal infrastructure. They provide a mechanism for New Zealanders to manage their family home and protect assets for future generations, and they’re also a part of the economic backbone of our commercial, financial, and social sectors. Given the importance and prevalence of trusts in New Zealand, the law of trusts must be fit for purpose. However, the current law of trusts is convoluted, and it’s out of date. The bill will replace current trust legislation to ensure that trust law is accessible. It’ll allow people to better understand their rights and obligations, and it will support them to resolve their disputes, both inside and outside of the courts system. The bill achieves these goals in two main ways. First, it makes the core trust law principles much clearer. This is achieved by providing a plainly worded, modern statute that incorporates core principles currently only found in common law. An important aspect of this is the clear statement of the duties of trustees. This is both mandatory duties that apply to all trustees and the default duties that can be excluded by the terms of the trust.

Secondly, the bill is about making day-to-day trust administration easier. It entirely replaces outdated and convoluted provisions of the Trustee Act 1956. The archaic and complex rules against perpetuities are replaced with a clear-cut rule. The bill also facilitates the resolution of trust disputes outside of the courts.

The bill represents the culmination of many years of extensive work on the law of trusts and largely reflects the recommendations of the Law Commission from its comprehensive review of general trust law conducted from 2009 to 2013. It’s also been informed by public consultation on an exposure draft of the bill, which was released in 2016.

Following the select committee process, the committee has recommended further refinements, and I’ll highlight some of the key changes to the bill that the committee has recommended and outline the key issues considered by the committee where it has ultimately decided not to change the bill. The committee recommended changes to assist the bill to achieve its aims of enhancing the accessibility of trust law principles and improving the day-to-day administration of trusts. In addition to the highlighted changes, the bill as reported back also incorporates many minor and technical changes that will further clarify its application.

The revised bill has some clarifications about how the new Trusts Act would work as a whole. These are designed to clarify the flexibility of the legislation and, in particular, the flexibility of the duties of trustees set out in the legislation to apply, effectively, to different trust arrangements. The bill now clarifies the meaning of the terms of the trust. This is so that the trust users understand this concept covers terms implied in the trust rather than only express terms. The bill also now includes a guiding principle for performing trustee duties. This provides that the duties are to be read in light of the context and objectives of the individual trust.

The revised bill will also apply to trusts already in existence on its enactment. The committee considered whether this should be the case. A key aim of the bill is to ensure that trustees and beneficiaries can easily understand the law that applies to them. Having one law that applies to all trusts is important to achieve this. As the Trusts Bill largely restates existing law, many trusts will be able to operate without modification. However, as the bill does make some changes to the default positions in the Trustee Act of 1956, trusts may therefore wish to seek legal advice to ensure that they are meeting the requirements of the new Act, and there is a period of 18 months before the Act would apply to give those trustees time to do so.

The bill provides that a trustee cannot be indemnified for dishonesty, wilful misconduct, or gross negligence. This provision was designed to address an unclear area of the common law with a statement of when trustees should be able to exclude liability. The bill captures trustee conduct that is intentionally in breach of the trust. The inclusion of gross negligence is intended to also capture trustees who, according to their own abilities and knowledge, have not attempted to fulfil the role that they had agreed to. It’s important that this is assessed in light of the trustees’ actual knowledge and skills and the purpose for which they were appointed.

Submissions to the committee made it clear that many submitters were uncertain about the meaning of gross negligence and were concerned that it did not factor in the trustees’ actual skills and knowledge. The revised bill now provides a non-exhaustive list of what a court must consider when a trustee has been grossly negligent. It emphasises that the particular circumstances of the trustee in the trust must be considered, and this will provide greater certainty about what is gross negligence while still providing flexibility for the courts to assess the particular circumstances of each case.

An important aspect of the bill is describing when and what information a trustee is required to provide to beneficiaries. The committee considered whether these rules should be changed in light of submissions which, for example, suggested narrowing of the clauses of beneficiaries who could access trust information. However, it was determined that the provisions in the bill strike an appropriate balance. Providing some information to beneficiaries is vital because beneficiaries must be informed about the trust to be able to hold the trustees to account.

One way that the Trusts Bill improves the day-to-day administration of trusts is by replacing complex rules against perpetuities and the related Perpetuities Act of 1964. Perpetuities rules limit the life of a trust. Instead, the bill replaces perpetuities with the term “maximum duration” so that people understand what is meant. The bill introduces a specific maximum duration period of 125 years for most trusts. The committee considered whether this period should be increased to 150 years, but decided that 125 years is the appropriate period and the period strikes the right balance between flexibility for settlors and the need to have some limit on trusts durations.

The Trusts Bill will be a significant benefit by supporting a wide and varied use of trusts. The bill is a modern statute that is fit for purpose in the 21st century. It’s also an ambitious bill because it seeks to keep alive much of the common law on trusts developed over many centuries. The approach will allow the courts to interpret the provisions of the bill in light of the common law, giving a rich in-principle basis on which to continue to evolve our trust law. I commend the bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I didn’t interrupt the member for reading the speech because it would not have been fair, because he is not the Minister in charge of the bill and therefore could not have been expected to deliver the second reading verbatim.

Hon Maggie Barry: Madam Chair.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to do this—the debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.