Wednesday, 26 June 2019

WEDNESDAY, 26 JUNE 2019

WEDNESDAY, 26 JUNE 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

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 she satisfied with annual GDP per capita growth at 0.7 percent in the last 12 months when it averaged 1.6 percent during the five years before she took office?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I pointed out yesterday, over the term of the last Government’s term in office they averaged at 0.9 percent, and that’s obviously the quarterly growth that we’ve experienced. I also think it’s worth pointing out again, as I said yesterday, that the 10-year, long-term average is 1 percent and is actually over the next 4 years forecast to be 1.2 percent. But, overall, even despite those figures, I acknowledged yesterday in the House, and continue to do so, that there are improvements to be made, particularly in the area of productivity.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that growth per person was stronger in the five years before she took office than under her Government; if not, is she not aware that growth per person has halved under her Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Indeed I have the figures in front of me. When it comes to the quarterly change in GDP per capita, we’ve consistently had rates of 0.1, 0.2. There are numbers that the member opposite will well know, given it generated under his office 0.9 percent on average, that have never been numbers particularly to crow about. Work needs to be done. Again, I’d also like to point out that the member mentioned yesterday New Zealand’s ranking in GDP per capita relative to the OECD in 2018—that we were seventh worst. I think it is worth pointing out that New Zealand was rated third worst GDP per capita in the OECD when he was in Government in 2017.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she concerned, given the services sector represents 70 percent of the New Zealand economy but it grew only 0.2 percent last quarter, which is a decline when you take out the population growth?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, if we take the current account deficit generally, then we see, actually, a quite different picture. If he only wants to focus in on what’s happening around net flows with services, tourist spending fell, yes, but at the same time we saw exports perform particularly well. It is about what’s happening with both our service sector and also our exports. Overall, relative to other OECD nations, we are performing relatively strongly.

Hon Simon Bridges: What’s the current account deficit got to do with the State services sector—70 percent of our economy that grew only 0.2 percent last quarter, a decline when you account for population growth?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, taking into account when we look at the weekly economic update that comes through from Treasury, they have made, in particular, references to services’ balance deterioration being related to tourists’ spending having fallen.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why is our GDP growth slowing when the terms of trade and exports are rising?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I have said in this House before, if the member wants to fixate solely on, for instance, the prices that our exporters are receiving, then that is perfectly his prerogative to do so. But, of course, it is also about the investment decisions that are being made, and, as every economist is pointing out and as the Reserve Bank themselves are pointing out, the international environment does have an impact on confidence and investment decisions. That is what’s causing other economies to slow, but, again, alongside those other economies, we are performing well.

Hon Simon Bridges: What does she say, then, to the Westpac economist this week who stated, “New Zealand’s economic growth has slowed in the last year, which we put down largely to domestic factors.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Even the Minister of Finance himself and, in fact, most members in this House bar him, I believe, have reflected on the fact that there is a slow-down. But what I continue to be frustrated by is the fact that the member seems to think the experience is unique to New Zealand, when we see that even, of course, the projections that are coming out of the IMF and the acknowledgment by the OECD are that we are in the middle of a global slow-down.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she think one of the reasons the services sector went backwards last quarter on a per capita basis was because of the decline in consumer confidence, and does she think that her Government’s higher petrol taxes are partly responsible for that weakening consumer confidence?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ve actually been interested in the trajectory of consumer confidence, and the Westpac McDermott Miller consumer confidence survey actually showed some really interesting numbers recently in the June quarter, demonstrating that, actually, confidence in the under-30-year-old age group reached a five-year high. I’d say that particularly may potentially be a reflection of what’s happening in the housing market—a softening in Auckland—and, of course, wages and wage growth are looking to outstrip now what we’ve seen in housing cost increases. So I think the member would do well to keep a fuller picture of what we’re seeing in some of those consumer confidence numbers.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she aware that the Westpac regional economic confidence survey last week showed that eight of New Zealand’s 11 regions had a deterioration in economic confidence last quarter, and why does she think that is?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I imagine: because they read the news in the same way we do and see the issues around potential oil price increases coming out of Iran, China’s economy softening, and issues in the UK affecting trade as well. We do not operate in isolation. We are an exporting, trading nation that of course looks to attract investment in New Zealand, and, of course, when we have a global slow-down, it affects us.

Hon Ron Mark: It’s pretty simple, Simon.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! No, the member will resume his seat. That’s not an appropriate interjection. The Deputy Prime Minister will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Members: No, it wasn’t—

SPEAKER: Oh sorry, was it Ron Mark?

Hon Ron Mark: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: That was a good imitation.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is the Prime Minister’s position that it’s uncertainty in Iran that’s led to eight of New Zealand’s 11 regions showing deteriorating economic confidence?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That is not what I said.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yesterday, the OECD released their 2019 survey for New Zealand. I’m sure that the House will be pleased to know that it said that economic growth in New Zealand is solid, and it commended the Government for its sound economic management. Equally pleasing is that the survey’s recommendations support the policy direction this Government is taking, including in the Wellbeing Budget. The 2019 survey looked at New Zealand through a wellbeing frame, with the OECD finding that “current wellbeing in New Zealand is generally high, [with our performance] very good for employment and unemployment,…health, social support, air quality, and life satisfaction.”

Tamati Coffey: Did the report highlight any risks to the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Yes, it did. The OECD said that the greatest risks facing the economy were a sharp economic contraction in China, and also natural disasters. That’s why the Government is managing the books responsibly, so that we can face global economic headwinds and make sure we are in a strong position to deal with any event such as a natural disaster. The OECD said the greatest domestic risk was a housing market contraction, not because it expects one but because of the high levels of indebtedness that have been built up in our housing market over previous decades. That’s why this Government has a comprehensive housing plan that includes reform of our urban planning systems, building affordable houses, changes to the rules around foreign buyers, and the extension of the brightline test.

Tamati Coffey: What other reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, today the International Monetary Fund released its concluding statement following its article IV mission. While they noted a slower rate of economic expansion, they did say that the near-term growth outlook is expected to improve on the back of Government investment and accommodative monetary policy. They went on to say that Budget 2019 strikes an appropriate balance between supporting policy priorities and maintaining prudent debt levels. They noted that New Zealand’s sound fiscal framework had been further strengthened by this Government’s approach. While these international organisations may have some different policy prescriptions from the Government, they agree that the fundamentals of the economy are strong and that the Government’s priorities are focused in the right areas.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Minister of Finance as to whether he will share that information on the OECD and the IMF with the Leader of the Opposition and yet another finance spokesperson?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I certainly intend to do that. I’ve been sharing it with the House today, and I shall make sure it’s done in very short sentences.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he agree with the Reserve Bank that there has been a “sharp decline in GDP growth” while he has been in office?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I take the opportunity to welcome the member to the portfolio. As I have previously acknowledged in this House, the rate of GDP growth in New Zealand has slowed. But I also note that Statistics New Zealand, who produce the GDP data, said, in last week’s release, “Annual growth in GDP has been slowing since the December 2016 quarter.”

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What effect does an economy that is losing momentum have on the day-to-day lives of Kiwis?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We all know that we need sustainable economic growth in New Zealand in order to support all of the things that we want for our country. The New Zealand economy continues to grow—as the OECD said—at sustainable and solid levels. We also continue to grow at a faster rate than most of the countries that we compare ourselves to. So, yes, sustainable economic growth is important. What’s also important is caring about who shares in that growth.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept analysis from the OECD that healthcare “is strongly dependent on the economy, and the GDP correlates with lower child mortality, higher life expectancy, higher literacy rates, and greater life satisfaction.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member may not have heard my answer to his last supplementary question. We need sustainable economic growth. That means building that growth on lifting levels of productivity, actually investing in innovation in our regions and in infrastructure—all of the things that the last Government failed to do. So while it’s all very well to be able to quote the OECD, it’s this Government that actually has a plan to address the issues that they’ve raised.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Did he note the comments today from the IMF saying, on the risks to the downside, “On the domestic side, the fiscal stimulus could be less expansionary if policy implementation were to be more gradual than expected”, and does that, in quotes, mean “if the Government stuffs up the implementation”, like it has with KiwiBuild?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would invite the member to read all of the IMF’s statement. I know just getting past the first few lines might be a struggle, but I’ll help him out here. The financial year 2019-20 Budget “strikes an appropriate balance between supporting policy priorities and maintaining prudent debt levels.” “New Zealand’s sound fiscal framework has been strengthened further.” I could go on, but what the IMF is saying is that this Government has got the balance of its priorities right.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he willing to contemplate a return to Budget deficits in 2020 or 2021 if the slowdown continues and his Government continues significantly increasing spending?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That is a hypothetical, and I have huge confidence in the businesses and the workers of New Zealand that are supported by a Government that’s investing in skills, in research and development, in infrastructure. We will be able to see a sustainably growing economy over that period. The member shouldn’t take on a pessimistic tone.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Well, regarding that pessimistic tone, isn’t the real threat to the economy coming not from anything I say but what he and his Government is doing with policy after policy driving down growth and a lack of delivery on infrastructure and housing?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is a little bit rich from a Government that failed to invest in infrastructure year after year to stand up in this House and say that this Government’s not doing enough in that area. I think the parents of children who are being taught in assembly halls because that Government failed to invest in schools will find that a bit rich. I think the people who are in hospitals where the lifts don’t work and the heating doesn’t work, because that Government failed to invest in the health infrastructure, know that it is this side of the House that has their best interests at heart.

Hon Simon Bridges: What role does he believe uncertainty in Iran has on eight of 11 regions in New Zealand suffering dramatically declining economic confidence this last quarter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would’ve thought the member, who’s come to the aid of his new spokesperson there, would know that businesses in our regions are incredibly connected to the world, and what they’re concerned about is making sure, as they turn into an export business, that there is a stable global economy. They know that New Zealand is an exporting nation that has to care about what happens in the rest of the world. But I understand that the member who asked that question’s more focused on internal matters.

Hon Simon Bridges: So, to be clear, is he seriously saying it is uncertainty in Iran that is causing eight of 11 regions in New Zealand to suffer sharply declining economic uncertainty?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m sure the member is aware that Iran is one example of global uncertainty. The Prime Minister, when she spoke before, gave a number of examples. She mentioned Brexit; she mentioned the trade war between China and the US. That member well knows that New Zealand, as a small nation, has to make sure that it’s aware of what happens in the rest of the world. We know that the greatest threat to that member is sitting very close to him.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: If the issue of business confidence is what’s important here, how come the New Zealand sharemarket is at new record levels?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Indeed, there are many examples in the New Zealand economy of where businesses and companies are doing well, where people want to invest in innovation, where the Government is alongside them making sure that we’re adjusting to the climate change challenge and making sure that we’re transforming the economy. It’s the difference between a Government that’s firmly focused on building an economy that’s appropriate for the 21st century and an Opposition that’s pessimistically looking in the rear-view mirror.

Question No. 4—Housing and Urban Development

4. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: How many of the 10,356 KiwiBuild houses contracted and committed to build are in either the Mount Roskill, Māngere, Northcote, or Porirua developments or at the old Wakatipu High School site in Queenstown?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): I’m advised that there are 3,879 KiwiBuild homes currently forecast across those five sites. This figure will change as build dates are confirmed and contracts finalised.

Hon Judith Collins: Does he stand by his answers to written questions that there was no specific date for when houses at Mount Roskill, Māngere, Northcote, and Porirua were committed to by this Government?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The answer was correct based on the advice I received. There were no specific dates, but there were time frames within which those houses are committed.

Hon Judith Collins: How can houses be contracted and committed to be built if there is no date on which the agreement was made?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: If I could just seek clarification in the member’s question—the member is saying that there was no date on which the contract or the commitment was made?

Hon Judith Collins: Shall I address that?

SPEAKER: Yes, say it again.

Hon Judith Collins: Yes. Yes, that’s what it says in written questions. How can houses be contracted and committed to be built if there is no date on which the agreement was made, as disclosed in written questions answered today?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The houses that are contracted and committed include homes that are committed in the large-scale developments within a certain time frame and homes that are based on finalised contracts. It’s based on completed and approved—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: It’s just being made up.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: —business cases.

Brett Hudson: The Minister needs to be reset.

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

Brett Hudson: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: No, I thought it was Mr Brownlee who made the—or was it Mr Hudson? All right. I’m missing them today!

Hon Judith Collins: Which of the—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I’ve been named!

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Yesterday, you took the blame for Amy. Well, I apologise to you, and I’m sure Ms Adams will shout you something later.

Hon Judith Collins: Which of the HLC developments—Mount Roskill, Māngere, Northcote, and Porirua—were not already planned before KiwiBuild came into existence and included in his various briefings as incoming Minister?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Of those developments that the member has listed, only the one in Northcote was started by the previous National Government, and in that development there was no guaranteed commitment to build a certain number of affordable homes. In all of the others, the business cases were completed and approved after the last election.

Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was: which of those four developments were not already planned before the Government came into existence and also included in his briefings as incoming Minister?

SPEAKER: I’ll get the Minister to repeat his reply or to answer the question again. I’m sorry; he might have got it in there, but I was momentarily distracted.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I guess it depends what the member means when she says “planned”. There was a press release by the former Government that announced the intention to build some developments in those places, but there were no approved business cases for any other developments, other than the Northcote one, and no commitment to a guaranteed number of new affordable homes.

Hon Judith Collins: Is his ministry being truthful when it says that KiwiBuild has contracted and committed to build 10,356 houses, when there are no dated contracts for those?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, the ministry is being absolutely truthful. There are 10,356 KiwiBuild houses either contracted through the Buying off the Plans scheme or committed in confirmed business cases over the next 10 years in a number of large-scale urban development projects.

Hon Judith Collins: Can he guarantee that, following the KiwiBuild reset, the homes to be built at Mount Roskill will be marketed as KiwiBuild?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as myself and the Prime Minister have been saying, all of the policy decisions involved in the reset will be announced when the reset is announced.

Question No. 5—State Services

5. GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour) to the Minister of State Services: What reports has he seen on New Zealanders’ trust and confidence in public services?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of State Services): Good news, Mr Speaker. On Monday, the State Services Commission published the 2018 Kiwis Count survey, which shows that trust in public services is at an all-time high. The Kiwis Count survey provides a voice for New Zealanders who use public services and gives us a clearer picture of what the Public Service is doing well, and it also gives us an indication of where we can focus our activities to do better. Achieving a record “service satisfaction high with the public” on 43 commonly used public services—such as applying for New Zealand superannuation, for example—speaks to a culture change that the coalition Government has been putting into place, ensuring that people’s wellbeing is at the centre of what we do.

Hon Phil Twyford: What does the survey show about the public’s satisfaction with Housing New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news. It shows that a significant improvement in the public’s satisfaction with Housing New Zealand has occurred, the largest increase since 2012. Of those who applied for, or are living in, a Housing New Zealand house or with a community housing provider, their satisfaction increased by 13 percent between 2017 and 2018. Of those who applied for or received a housing subsidy or accommodation supplement, their satisfaction increased by 11 percent between 2017 and 2018.

Hon Peeni Henare: What does the survey show regarding public satisfaction with applying for a community services card?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It shows a record level of satisfaction from the public when they were asked about applying for or using a community services card—again, the largest increase in 2018 since 2012.

Hon Peeni Henare: What does the survey show about the public’s perception of Work and Income support?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news. It shows a significant change in the public’s satisfaction with Work and Income, with the largest increase since 2012. In those applying for or receiving a sole parent or jobseeker support payment: 6 percent up between 2017 and 2018.

Hon Willie Jackson: What does the survey show about the public’s satisfaction with using services for employment or retraining opportunities?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news. The survey shows the largest increase since 2012 in people’s perceptions of using public services for employment and retraining opportunities, with an 8 percent increase since 2017.

SPEAKER: Right, I was going to say, the next one can just be “ditto”.

Question No. 6—Health

6. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he agree the projected final district health board combined deficits for the 2018/19 financial year will be $389.5 million, as forecast by the Ministry of Health from the March 2019 figures; if not, what does he expect the deficit will be?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): That forecast was made based on the best available information at the time. I do, however, expect the combined deficit to be larger than that, in large part because of one-off costs related to legacy issues inherited by this Government. This includes historic Holidays Act pay issues that should have been resolved years ago, as I think the member knows, and writing down the value of assets related to the National Oracle Solution, which has cost more than $100 million over seven years, been much delayed, and failed to deliver the anticipated benefits. Work on these longstanding issues is ongoing, and it would not be appropriate to speculate about their final financial cost and the impact on district health board (DHB) deficits.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Are reports that the actual DHB combined deficits are now projected to be $460 million in the 2018-19 year accurate?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I have not heard that particular projection. What I will say about the figure that was covered in his primary question is that that Budget reflects the best available forecasts at the time.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: When he said that his Government is “investing in our health system, which was neglected for nine long years”, did he expect that his Government’s investment in health would result in DHB deficits going down or up?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I make no apologies for overseeing record investment in new mental health services. I make no apologies for investing in our ageing hospital facilities and funding DHBs more sustainably. The member might want to reflect on the legacy of under-investment, workforce issues, and deferred capital investment that his party left behind.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will now answer the question.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Can the member please repeat the question?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: When he said that his Government was “investing in our health system, which was neglected for nine long years”, did he expect that his Government’s investment would result in DHB deficits going down or up?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I understand from those years of under-investment that it will indeed take more than one or two Budgets to ensure sustainability in our health sector. By DHB the results do vary because some DHBs require more investment to get on to a sustainable footing. They have been running off their balance sheets. Deficits have been going up since 2013 because of the shameful under-funding of that Government. It is too soon to say what that will mean as an overall picture. DHB by DHB it will vary because of that under-investment and the effect and long-term impact it’s had on their balance sheets and on the sustainability of their services. That Government under-funded those services for nine long years, and there are consequences of that.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: When he said, through his Associate Minister on June 13, “it’s entirely possible there’ll be small surpluses, balanced budgets, or small deficits, all according to circumstances.”, which of those three scenarios will be most heavily represented in the final figures?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I think the legacy of under-funding means that probably more DHBs will be in deficit than posting surpluses at this stage. It is possible. This Government wants to see sustainable health services that provide the services that New Zealanders would expect and deserve. We’re not running them into the ground like that Government did.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he set to oversee the biggest combined DHB deficits in New Zealand history?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I go back to my original answer for the member, just to clarify what is driving the increases right now. These are historic issues—the historic Holidays Act pay issues that I believe that member himself sought to resolve but failed to resolve and got taken off him by Steven Joyce because he could not resolve it. Subsequently—that’s if memory serves me correctly—certainly, the previous Government did not solve that issue. On top of that, the National Oracle Solution—a computer system which has failed to deliver the promised benefits. Tens of millions of dollars, I suspect, will have to be written off because of the failed oversight of that member. Yes, that will mean that we will have deficits that we wouldn’t want to see. That member and his Government under-invested in health for nine long years, and we will be investing ourselves for quite a period to set that right.

Question No. 7—Education

7. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Associate Minister of Education: What recent announcements has she made regarding early intervention learning support?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): On Monday, I went to Toru Fetu Kindergarten in Porirua to announce another increase in early intervention funding from Budget 2019. This extra $24.8 million over the next four years will provide early intervention to preschool children who have communication, behaviour, development, and disability needs. This is additional to the $21.5 million over four years provided as part of Budget 2018. It will be used to recruit additional specialists to work with children across all regions in the country.

Mark Patterson: Will this new funding reduce waiting lists?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: No, not on its own. The last five years have seen demand increase by 21 percent for behavioural services, 15 percent for communication services, and 15 percent for early intervention services. We also saw a stagnation or slight decline in the specialist workforce over that same period. Rebuilding the specialist workforce and changing the way support is delivered is also required. The roll-out of the learning support delivery model and changes in practice, bringing the services to the children rather than referring the children out and waiting, is showing that we can address demand pressures. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The pair of you, just settle.

Mark Patterson: How will this new investment help grow the learning support specialist workforce?

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: An additional 19 front-line specialists will be recruited to work with children across all regions in the country. This adds to the additional 120 recruited between December 2017 and March 2018, but there will also be an increase of 35 early intervention study awards worth $20,000 each and 28 speech language therapist scholarships worth $5,000 each over the next four years.

Question No. 8—Education

8. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by his involvement in collective bargaining and the offer made to primary principals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Absolutely, and I do want to acknowledge and welcome the vote taken by primary school teachers, who have resoundingly voted in favour of their settlement. Primary school teachers and principals told us that to retain and attract people into the profession, to stabilise the workforce, they needed to restore pay parity for the teachers that was lost in recent years. We listened to them on that and we acted, and around 30,000 primary teachers will now benefit from significant pay increases, with maximum base salary increases rising to $90,000 by July 2021. I am disappointed that primary principals have rejected the substantial offer that was made to them, but the Ministry of Education remains available to meet with the New Zealand Educational Institute to discuss how the offer for primary principals could be repackaged to better meet their needs.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Does he take some responsibility for the rejected settlement by 1,900 primary principals, given he took the unusual step of directly negotiating with the unions?

Hon Grant Robertson: I’m pretty sure you called for that.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m pretty sure the member called for that, but I also do take responsibility—

Hon Simon Bridges: Now he’s giving you answers as well.

SPEAKER: Order! He’s not.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I do take responsibility for the settlement of the primary school collective agreement, and I do take responsibility for the fact that we have yet to reach a settlement with the primary school principals. As the Minister of Education, of course that is my job to take responsibility for those things. I would, however, note that the deal that the primary school principals rejected was recommended to them and endorsed by their union.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Given his comments around pay parity for teachers, does he commit to pay parity for principals?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I have no problem with the concept of pay parity. I do note that was not something that was claimed by primary school principals when these negotiations started, and the offer that they have rejected was recommended to them by their union.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is this the second time that pay parity has been given to the teachers in question in this country, and what happened in between times?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, for primary school teachers this restores the pay parity that they were first given in the early 2000s after a long campaign, and—

SPEAKER: No. Late 1990s, I think.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Sorry—the late 1990s. It restores the pay parity that was lost, and it was most notably lost nearly four years ago now under the last agreement reached under the National Government.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Is he absolutely ruling out an increase to the envelope for primary teachers and principals, and why should educators believe him when the last time he said there was no more money he magicked up $271 million?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We don’t need to increase the envelope for the primary school teachers, because that settlement has now been reached and it has been ratified and endorsed by their members. We won’t be putting more money into the primary principals’ agreement. We agreed to fund pay parity after extensive talks with the unions, both primary and secondary, on the basis that any extra money we were putting in was for a full and final settlement.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Does he agree with Ross Intermediate School principal, Wayne Jenkins, who said, “There’s little been presented to address the issues and concerns that face New Zealand principals every day. As an experienced principal in a large school, I feel let down by the offer.” and did he let down the primary principals of New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think that the principal concerned—his own union would disagree with him, because the union recommended and endorsed the offer when they presented it to their members.

Question No. 9—Economic Development

9. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Minister for Economic Development: What is the Government doing to boost innovation and support higher incomes and more jobs?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): The coalition Government has a comprehensive plan to boost innovation. As part of the Wellbeing Budget, we announced the venture capital fund to accelerate the development of high-growth New Zealand start-ups as they expand. The announcement of this fund has received overwhelming approval from all sectors of society as it will develop New Zealand’s points of comparative advantage, supporting higher incomes and growing jobs. I note this is something that the OECD has been urging New Zealand Governments to do for some time and this active Government’s getting on and doing it.

Marja Lubeck: What has the OECD said about New Zealand’s capital markets and innovation?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In successive reports, the OECD has noted New Zealand’s low productivity is caused in part by over-investment in the speculative sector rather than investment in the productive sector. The OECD has noted that Governments should support venture capital markets as these generate knowledge benefits across the economy. In 2013, the OECD specifically urged New Zealand to provide more support for the expansion of early-stage firms to help address our productivity problem. Follow-up reports from the OECD noted, perhaps with dismay, that no action had been taken. After years of inaction, this Government’s done it.

Marja Lubeck: What announcements will the Government be making about innovation in the near future?

Hon DAVID PARKER: As the OECD has said, New Zealand has for too long had a productivity problem. We believe that technology and innovation are important parts of the solution and, as part of the Government’s economic plan, next week we’ll be launching our industry strategy, From the Knowledge Wave to the Digital Age. This will be a call to arms for New Zealanders to work together to grow our points of comparative advantage so that we grow the jobs of the future as we lift exports, productivity, and the incomes of New Zealanders.

Hon Todd McClay: How can he claim his Government’s policies are working, when economic growth has more than halved, job creation is in decline, and Stats New Zealand has just today said life satisfaction has become worse over the last two years?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think it’s clear that the New Zealand economy is recalibrating away from an excessive reliance upon speculative investment. House price inflation, on average, in New Zealand has tailed off. We are seeing increased investment in the export sector. It’s reflecting in the increasingly sophisticated mix of our exports and by the booming increase in the number of technology exports earned by the TIN200.

Question No. 10—Transport

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): When will construction begin on the City Centre to Māngere light rail project, and how much is the project expected to cost?

SPEAKER: Does the member want to have another crack?

10. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: When will construction begin on the City Centre to Māngere light rail, and how much is the project expected to cost?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Firstly, congratulations to the member on his promotion to transport spokesperson. Light rail is able to carry 11,000 commuters per hour. That’s the equivalent of four lanes of motorway through one of the most built up parts of the city, connecting commuters to some of the biggest concentrations of jobs in the country. As I said yesterday in the House, the most recent cost estimate I’ve seen is around $4 billion. However, it is important to note that the business case and the final design will provide more certainty on the final cost and when construction will begin.

Chris Bishop: Does he stand by his statement “One of my first actions as Minister will be to have officials advise on how quickly we can start and how soon we can get it built. I would expect Queen Street to Mount Roskill within four years as a minimum.”, and, nearly two years into his term as transport Minister, how’s that going for him?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as the member knows, this is a major, at-scale infrastructure construction project that would run the equivalent of four lanes of motorway right through the middle of one of the most built up, intensely populated parts of our city. We are committed to taking the time to get it right, and we will be making announcements in due course.

Chris Bishop: Is it correct, as his colleague the Hon Shane Jones has said, that the cost of the city centre to Māngere light rail project could be $7.6 billion?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I almost always agree with my colleague the Hon Shane Jones, but, in this case, the answer is no.

Chris Bishop: Does he have any idea as to why the Hon Shane Jones would have said yesterday the cost of the city centre to Māngere light rail project could be $7.6 billion?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: It’s way above my pay grade to guess what’s going on in the mind of my colleague.

SPEAKER: I think that’s a no.

Chris Bishop: Apparently. Will the Government proceed with the city centre to Māngere light rail project if the business case is negative?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, a business case is not generally described as being positive or negative; a business case is what it is. A business case often includes a benefit-cost ratio, but those are two quite different things.

Question No. 11—Police

11. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by all his statements, policies, and actions in relation to the Government’s firearms buy-back scheme?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Yes, in the context in which they were given.

Brett Hudson: How can the price list for the firearms buy-back scheme be fair and reasonable compensation when the experts who designed it had only five hours to do so?

Hon STUART NASH: Well, that is absolutely untrue. As I have already stated publicly several times, KPMG consulted widely on behalf of police. KPMG consulted farmers, hunters, dealers, valuers, auctioneers, collectors, and gun clubs. So I would say to that member there were many, many five-hour meetings.

Brett Hudson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was specifically to the experts, which were referenced by the Minister yesterday, not to a wider group.

SPEAKER: Well, you can’t get a yes/no. If the member is not satisfied with the answer, he can keep asking supplementaries.

Brett Hudson: Supplementary—

SPEAKER: Order! If the member thinks it is inaccurate, then he’ll bring it up with the Minister, and the Minister will correct it. If he thinks it’s deliberately inaccurate, he will write me a letter, but I cannot get for him the answer that he wants.

Brett Hudson: I appreciate that, Mr Speaker. That’s why I’m moving on with another supplementary as you suggested.

SPEAKER: I’m pleased you’re moving on. I was getting some appeals from people in front of you.

Brett Hudson: How is it fair that there are not separate prices for E category and A category firearms, as recommended by the experts in the KPMG report?

Hon STUART NASH: We have not separated out E category and A category. What we want to do is take out any illegal firearm that we made illegal through legislation.

Brett Hudson: Why does he think that the firearms buy-back will work when thousands of people are already saying that they won’t hand their firearms back, because they feel ripped off by the Minister’s proposals?

Hon STUART NASH: There are two things I’d say to that. First of all, thousands of people are not saying they feel ripped off. Our feedback is that 80 percent of all phone calls are positive; only about 5 percent are negative. Secondly, we are not “ripping people off” at all. Thirdly, if people do not comply with the law, they face up to five years in jail, and I trust that the good, hard-working people of New Zealand are law abiding and will obey the law.

Question No. 12—Employment

12. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour) to the Minister of Employment: What reports, if any, has he seen on He Poutama Rangatahi?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): I’ve seen figures that show that there’s nearly $21 million in funding committed so far over the next four years to target just over 3,750 rangatahi. Currently, we have 1,700 young people participating in He Poutama Rangatahi programmes around the regions.

Willow-Jean Prime: Has the Minister seen any specific outcomes for He Poutama Rangatahi programmes?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’ve been really pleased with what I’m seeing out in the regions. Some of our young people have significant barriers to employment, and I’m pleased to share with the House that these programmes are making a real difference in the lives of rangatahi. For example, in the Northland College pine project, all 16 participants completed their training, obtaining the level 2 certificate in New Zealand forestry qualification. Twelve of these rangatahi are still in full-time employment, and three have been promoted to crew boss.

Willow-Jean Prime: What is the impact He Poutama Rangatahi is having in our communities?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I want to share with the House the success that a programme like the Development Hub with its Initiate Programme has had in the Hawke’s Bay community—a community-based social enterprise that matches training for local rangatahi wāhine with skills and job shortages in the area. Thirty-six women started the programme, and 33 completed it. Currently, 27 have remained in continuous education or employment since then. That’s 27 whānau that are seeing positive impacts in their lives, and He Poutama Rangatahi has played a significant part in that and in our communities.

Speaker’s Rulings

End of Life Choice Bill—Speeches

SPEAKER: A number of members have contacted me in my office with regard to the End of Life Choice Bill, and I thought while all members are here it would be appropriate to indicate to them the basis on which I will be granting calls.

I’m going to start off by saying that, in the end, the discretion is mine and will be applied strictly and without argument. Factors which I will take into account are whether or not members have had previous calls on the debate—and this is in no particular order—seniority of members, the time they spent on the Justice Committee, their willingness to sit through the debate and to listen to other members, and the number of times they have attempted to take the call. I will attempt to get some balance—although I don’t know the views of all members—around sides of the debate, for and against. I will attempt to get some balance around the House, as far as parties are concerned. I will also attempt to give people of a variety of religious beliefs and from different ethnic backgrounds the opportunity to state cases on behalf of their religious or ethnic communities. There will be eight 10-minute speeches and 12 five-minute speeches—not necessarily in that order, but it is my intention to start with the 10-minute speeches. If people who would like to have a call early in the debate but only want five minutes indicate that to me by way of a note, that might give them a slightly better chance than they would have on all of the other criteria to get a call. Would some honourable member care to move that the House—

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I was waiting for you to sit down before I leapt to my feet. Look, thank you for your indication of how you intend to make sure the House gets through what is a very contentious and quite difficult bill for many people, but I’m just wondering: have you had any indication as to whether there might be any amendments to the second reading motion at this early stage?

SPEAKER: I am not aware of anything being tabled; no one has given one to me.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Again, thank you for the clarification. I just wanted to check, on your point about trying to get a balance between people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, if you would include people who do not hold a religious belief as one of the religious beliefs that would be represented in that category?

SPEAKER: Absolutely.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (Leader of the Opposition): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

I want to start this contribution by thanking two tremendous individuals, the Hon Amy Adams and Alastair Scott. They have been fantastic members of Parliament, and will continue to be, in Selwyn and Wairarapa. In relation to Amy Adams, it has been an absolute pleasure to work alongside her, and the significant contribution she has made to New Zealand.

Of course, it’s what flows from that that’s also interesting, and that’s a tale of two reshuffles this week. On this side, what we see is a party that is brimming with talent, with substance, and with depth. I look no further than right here next to me, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, who’s already taking it to the Minister of Finance, and, in due course, will make a tremendous Minister of Finance for New Zealand. Then, of course, there’s Chris Bishop who has done a great job on Stuart Nash over the recent past—whether it’s their failure to deliver on their promises of 800 police officers, which haven’t materialised, or whether it’s the shambles of a buyback scheme from the Government. This side of the House is the natural home for talent, in this party, and doesn’t it show?

And then contrast, on the other side of the House, the Labour Party. We’re told there’s a reshuffle coming tomorrow. It’s going to be—David Parker’s looking at me nervously. Don’t worry, that hasn’t been leaked to me; I’ve had other ones, but not that one. As the Prime Minister tells us, it’s going to be “very minor”, David Parker—“very minor”. Well, I ask the member this: is that because no changes are required?

Hon Kris Faafoi: I know a change that’s required.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: I don’t think that’s the reason. I don’t think it’s all going so well. Faafoi—see, he’s a little bit cocky because the minor changes may well include him. He’s a little bit cocky, is our Kris Faafoi. Phil Twyford hasn’t stayed for it. Well, I just ask Kris Faafoi to answer a few of these questions. Is it working in housing? Will any of their speakers mention KiwiBuild today? I don’t think so. Is it working in transport? What we’ve seen in transport is all the roads cancelled, none started, and a slowing down of New Zealand by that Government over there.

Is it working in health?

Hon Members: No.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: No, no it’s not. What we’ve seen is deficits balloon in this country, surgeries go backward, and New Zealanders moving to Australia and, actually, other countries for their cancer drugs.

So why then is it a “very minor reshuffle” that the Prime Minister is having? Well, maybe it’s because Labour isn’t brimming with talent, substance, and depth, David Parker. Maybe that’s the case. Well, there is Angie Warren-Clark. There’s Willie Jackson. He’s ready to take on more. He’s been so good in his portfolios. But here is the tragedy of all of this, which David Parker is getting ready, I hope, to answer. It’s this: without changes tomorrow from the Labour Party and the Prime Minister, Labour will continue to fail to deliver its promises to New Zealand, through bungling incompetence, through lack of a team underneath Jacinda Ardern that can deliver for this country.

There’s one further point that I want to make in this contribution, and that’s that it’s failing to deliver in its promises in houses, in its promises in transport, in its promises in health, for another reason—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: You can tell by the body language, eh?

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —and that’s “Old Naughty”—because the economy is getting weaker and weaker and weaker. “Old Naughty”—the champion of the provinces doesn’t like to talk about the fact that eight out of 11 regions in New Zealand right now are going backwards in terms of confidence.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t think that a member like that should resort to that sort of ageist language, otherwise I might start talking about “Young Stupid”.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: Well, hang on. Is it a new point of order or is it the same point of order?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it’s relevant to here, though.

SPEAKER: Speaking to the point of order, the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes, Mr Speaker, that’s what I asked to do. It simply comes down to the question of how is it that the member taking the point of order is able to identify who was being spoken of?

SPEAKER: Well, you didn’t have to be a clairvoyant to follow the line of sight of the Leader of the Opposition at the time. And the fact that he was directing that to an individual member of the House was pretty much obvious. I’d say that I would have had a little bit more sympathy with the Deputy Prime Minister with his point of order if he hadn’t made the out of order criticism of the Leader of the Opposition. So I think what we’ll say is it’s one all, and rather than have both of them withdraw and apologise, we’ll just leave it there.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: The economy is getting weaker under this Government—weaker and weaker—and the Prime Minister thinks it’s because of what’s happening in Iran. They should look at the mirrors. It means that everything costs more in this country. It means that the Government is borrowing more. It means that they’re taxing us more. New Zealanders can’t afford—

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

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): The Leader of the Opposition started with his weak attempt to justify the latest evacuation from the National Party. I heard my colleague the Hon Kris Faafoi say “Women and children first.”

Can I pass my congratulations on to all of those in the Opposition who got new jobs yesterday. Of course, some didn’t get the job they wanted, but that’s because Simon’s not ready to give it up yet. This is a trend that we’re seeing in right wing parties all around the world. I think one of the best satirical political writers at the moment, around the world, is a lady, Marina Hyde, from The Guardian. Her articles are very entertaining reading. One of her recent columns was headed: “Heavyweight Tory fantasists up the pace on the road to nowhere”, and that’s what’s happening in the National Party at the moment.

They’ve got more aspiring leadership candidates than they’ve got backbenchers. Who have we had in recent times? We’ve had Steven Joyce. He wanted the top job, didn’t get it—

Mark Patterson: Remember him—packed a sad.

Hon DAVID PARKER: —packed a sad, and left. Jonathan Coleman—he got out early. Amy Adams—well, she hung around. She didn’t get the top job, but, you know, she’s throwing in the towel because she’s seen the writing’s on the wall—a decade in Opposition, a fruitless waste of a talented life—and so she said “I’m out of here. I’m gone. I’m gone.” Who are we left with? We’ve still quite a few. We’ve got Todd Muller—Todd Muller. We’ve got Mark Mitchell, sitting there in the front.

Hon Peeni Henare: Dark horse.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Dark horse. You know, I heard he was coming in from the airport recently, and inquired of the person who he was in the cab with, “Do you think Simon Bridges is up to it?” He knows this is true.

Who else? Who else? Well, what did Chris Finlayson think? Remember that speech a little while ago? He was giving his valedictory. He didn’t make mention of Simon Bridges or Paula Bennett once—not once. He gave the ups to Nikki Kaye—that was his candidate. She’s playing a slow game.

So, really, what’s happening here? It’s the old ABC of politics, and we’ve been through it before on this side of the House—the ABC of politics. So who’s gone? Who’s gone? Well, we’ve had the As: Alastair Scott, Amy Adams. What’s going to happen with the Bs? Who—

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yeah, Bridges.

Barbara Kuriger: I’m still here.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Bridges, possibly. Is he going to be in there?

Hon Members: Barb—Barb.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh, I don’t know. Normally, you sacrifice a pawn first before the king is sacrificed on the chessboard, so it’ll probably be Paula Bennett that goes after A—B for Bennett—before you get—

Hon Members: David Bennett.

Hon DAVID PARKER: No, I don’t think it’d be David Bennett—no.

Now, the C—well, maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe it’s not an alphabet. Maybe it’s a mathematical equation, because you’ve got to be good at maths in politics. So you’ve got A for Adams minus B for Bridges equals C, which is?

Hon Members: Collins.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Oh, maybe that is the answer: A minus B equals C. Maybe it’s algebraic, or maybe it’s the old one. The old one is ABC: “Anyone but”—yeah, that seems to be the prevailing view. They even took a portfolio off her and didn’t tell her until she’d lost it. That was in the media yesterday.

So the only thing I have heard suggested is that the ABC of politics is a bit jaded and they’re trying to get a bit more sophisticated in the Opposition now, and they’ve gone through D. But the problem is that they can’t get past desperate, divided, and distracted, as well as departing. They’re desperate—obviously, they’re desperate because Simon Bridges just fails to impress. Even other contenders within the frame of ABC are rating better amongst the New Zealand public than the Leader of the Opposition. They’re certainly divided—they’re divided over whether Judith Collins would be worse than Simon Bridges—and they’re distracted. They’re so focused on their internal ructions that they haven’t even asked us a question about the Budget. Yet another pratfall in the debate that we’ve just had was that 800 police was said to be our ambition. It’s 1,800 police, and we’re just about there. They’re desperate, they’re divided, they’re distracted, and they’re departing.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. That’s five minutes that we will never get back in our lives—the unedifying prospect of David Parker having a whole five minutes to waste in this House. Well, there are a number of issues that this Government should be giving their attention to and that David Parker maybe should be giving his attention to as well, and the issue that I want to raise today is around maternity services in the lower part of the South Island.

By the way, the Hon David Parker, back between 2002 and 2005, was the MP for Otago, so this is his patch. David Parker was the MP in the last Labour Government for Otago, until I took over from him in 2005. He challenged again and I beat him again in 2008, and he has not been seen since down in the South Island, around Dunedin and the Upper Clutha and Wānaka. What a shame that is, because now he is a Minister in the Labour-led coalition Government and he should be talking to his friend and colleague the Minister of Health about the appalling lack of progress his Government is making to health services, midwifery services, and the safety of mothers and babies in the lower half of the South Island, in Southland, in Lumsden, in the Upper Clutha, and in Wānaka. Those are the most remote parts—believe it or not—in New Zealand from primary healthcare services.

When David Clark was campaigning back in 2017, as the lion of a health spokesman in Opposition, he campaigned and campaigned on better funding for health. He campaigned on better services for the mothers and babies of the Upper Clutha, and what has he done? He has done nothing. The situation in the Upper Clutha, in particular, and in Wānaka has gone from worse to worse. In fact, in October last year, the Minister of Health admitted to me in a letter that there was a gap in the maternity facilities in Wānaka and the Upper Clutha. Well, that’s a good start—admitting there is a gap—but what has he done about it in this year’s Budget? Nothing—no further funding for maternity services across New Zealand in this Budget.

So, David Parker, we’ll address issues in the Budget. How about more support for health? How about more support for the mothers in the Upper Clutha?

Can the Minister please explain to this House why there is an increasing number of mothers in the lower part of the South Island having their babies in unsafe situations? We’ve had a baby born in an ambulance on its way to hospital. We’ve had a baby born on an office floor in Wānaka, in the office of the midwife, because there were no health services available to the mother. It was an unplanned birth—well, guess what? A lot of them are. So the advice from Chris Fleming of Southern District Health Board, to plan your delivery well—I’m sorry, but babies come when babies are ready to come. There should be facilities for those mothers and babies in Wānaka.

There was another case where a baby was born in a driving car. A mum and her partner were driving to Charlotte Jean in Alexandra from Wānaka, going through the Cromwell Gorge. David Parker will know what the Cromwell Gorge is like. There’s nowhere to stop. The baby started arriving, so the mum had the baby, and dad couldn’t even stop the car. That is appalling. What if something had gone wrong?

Why isn’t there a maternal and child hub in Wānaka 10 months after it was promised by this Government? Why will there be another hundred babies born in the Upper Clutha—because we know the numbers—before this nine to five drop-in centre in Wānaka is established? It’s not good enough, Minister. It’s not good enough, David Parker, former MP of Otago and former resident of Otago, who should know better. This Government has failed. It has failed to deliver on its promises to—

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

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): I’m very grateful for our Deputy Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who has got such a lengthy knowledge of what’s going on in New Zealand politics, that he’s able to drop in little facts, such as who closed Clutha hospital. Who closed Clutha hospital? Now, I don’t know, but I’ve been told, on very good information, by our Deputy Prime Minister that, actually, it was the Nats—it was the National Party that closed Clutha hospital. So the faux outrage that came from that last speaker, Jacqui Dean, is completely unwarranted. The member is suffering from a bit of political amnesia when it comes to that. It would do her well to have a conversation with the Deputy Prime Minister just to get some of those facts on the table, some of those “facty” things that so often get in the way of a really good speech.

But over on this side, we’ve got our chin up. We’re positive about everything that the Budget has gone and delivered. I came into Parliament saying that we were going to be doing some stuff in the housing area—not just one part of the housing area though; the whole spectrum. Remember, the Rotorua area was actually pinned with the tag of having the second-worst homeless rate in New Zealand, and so I came into Parliament saying that we’re going to fix that. So we’ve got Housing First—that’s been extended to Rotorua, so we’re proud of that. It’s one of the first iwi partnership Housing First projects in the whole of the country. So thank you to Lifewise, who were at the forefront of that, and LinkPeople and Te Taumata o Ngati Whakaue, who have partnered up to try and solve our homeless crisis in Rotorua.

Let’s talk about social housing, because over 2,500 houses are going to be built under this Government when it comes to social housing all across New Zealand. It was just the other day that I was in Whakatāne, talking to some of the officials that are at the front line doing the tenancy managing stuff and seeing some State houses appear in their fair town, and they’re saying “We haven’t seen this in such a long time. We are crying out. We’ve been desperate for some action on this front. We know that we’ve had people that have been needing houses but they haven’t had them. So thank you so much to this Government for delivering social houses for our people.” I want to take this opportunity to also thank all of those tenancy managers and those workers that are out on the front line all around the country on behalf of Housing New Zealand. They need to be well looked after because they’re actually the ones that are going into the homes of these people that need so much help and so much support.

You see, because the last Government thought it would be a really good idea to swab the walls and kick them out—and so that’s what they did. Actually, all across the country they were kicking people out because of some dodgy P formula. Under our Government, we’ve had to swing in and clean up that mess.

So I’m proud of the work that we’re doing in social housing. I’m proud of the work that we’re doing with our homeless people as well. Also, let me drop this in here too, because I’ve only got a short amount of time: but, actually, on 1 July, our renters are going to be warmer over this winter, not just because of the winter energy payment that came in under this Government just last year, but all renters across New Zealand are going to have a much warmer winter, because it’s this Government that has stumped up with the policy saying that all rentals need to make sure that they have got ceiling and underfloor heating. We’ve had a long run in under this, and it comes into force on 1 July. So I’m looking forward to that, because we know that when people have bad insulation, when they have bad housing situations—damp, cold houses—that’s where the health problems kick in. So we’ve got respiratory diseases that we haven’t seen in a long time. We’re taking steps to make sure that the whole area along the housing spectrum is going to be taken care of, because that’s what we’ve done for a long time.

Remember, it was a Labour Government that first came up with State houses—saw a housing crisis, and decided that we weren’t going to step back from the problem, that we were going to swing in and make sure that we did something. Some of those State houses are still standing, and we’ve got a bit of work to do to fix those up too. But, actually, we’ve been sorting housing out for a long time. New Zealanders trust us to be able to look after the housing fortunes.

I want to mihi to our Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Phil Twyford. He is swinging in there and helping to solve a problem that the last Government couldn’t. They sat on their hands for nine years, they passed the buck, they shuffled the chairs, they had Ministers moving in between the housing portfolio—but they did nothing. So that’s why he’s got such a monumental problem on his hands, but, actually, he’s swinging in there and he’s trying his hardest to make sure that New Zealanders have got absolute access to their own houses. I’m proud to be part of a Government that’s taking housing seriously. I know it, our Government knows it, and also New Zealanders know it as well. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Over the last week, New Zealand has seen an extraordinary event. From the corporate cockpit of Air New Zealand, we have a skydiver. Now, of course, skydivers don’t ordinarily use Air New Zealand aircraft, but where this aircraft flies, the seats are all first class, the caviar’s rich, and the air’s very thin—so thin that the occupants believe they can levitate, they can defeat gravity. As a consequence of pecuniary power, they don’t need to obey the ordinary laws of political gravity. Skydiving means you dive low, low, and just as you arrive at your destination, you open a golden parachute, and that golden parachute puts you right in the middle of a reshuffle.

But we also need to bear in mind that the term “reshuffle” can be just focused on as “shuffle”. Now, a number of us know the meaning of that word—it’s almost Shakespearean. You know that great line from Hamlet: “in the sleep of death what dreams may come as we shuffle off the mortal coil.” That is the meaning of Luxon’s arrival: a total absence of confidence in anyone sitting over there, a denunciation by Mr Goodfellow, aided by Mr Key. In fact, I have sought advice today as to whether or not the Ombudsman can assist me to provide access to John Key’s emails with Christopher Luxon in Air New Zealand, which we largely own, about Mr Simon Bridges. I believe we’ll link the three of them together.

But, of course, there are deeper problems other than the facts. No one over there enjoys the confidence of the National Party board, which is why they’ve gone for the owner of a golden parachute plonking in the middle. Now, what else has happened this week? There’s now a lot of animus towards Mr Christopher Bishop. He has snaked over 19 other people to go to his current position. I feel very sad for the person who’s going to be facing me to do with forestry, Mr Muller. He tried very hard to get them to agree to our way of thinking about climate change, and what’s been done to him? Cast aside. No greater enemy has been made in this reshuffle by Simon Bridges than that person, who also has aspirations in that regard.

But, of course, let’s come back to the real problem that we’re seeing on the other side of the House. They are defending the board of ANZ. That’s right. They will not speak one word about those gross conflicts of interest. Now, I won’t talk about the chairman, because my leader has said everything that can be said about that individual, but what about Mr Carter? What about the self-promoting other directors? They know. More is going to leak. Time to open—I say to the board members, Joan Withers and others—the corporate kimono and tell the truth, because what actually gets you in corporate and political worlds is not so much the wrongdoing but the cover-up. They will not put one torchlight of honesty on what’s been happening there—not one.

Now, of course, we will uncover what has been happening at the largest bank. It will either happen because Mr Orr, with his independent powers, will open up the crevices, shine a light on all those murky dealings, or we will get the commission of inquiry that our banking sector obviously deserves given the gross conflicts that have been opened up. I know there’s a lot of fear in that sector, but I don’t want the ordinary workers in the ANZ bank to be fearful—the people in the Wairarapa, the people in Te Wai Pounamu, the people in Northland. Although your banks are still being closed down in regional New Zealand, you don’t deserve opprobrium. You don’t deserve criticism. It’s the corporate culture that starts in Australia, imported here, as they have treated our banks as udders.

So, very shortly, although that side of the House is predictably quiet, we’re going to get the answers that we want. So watch this space—time for honesty across the House and in the corporate world.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave for leave for a 10-second extension to the previous speaker, Shane Jones, so he could talk about progress in regional development.

SPEAKER: Order! No, the member was deliberately disorderly—deliberately disorderly. He knows—he’s been round this place for a long time—that he cannot seek leave on behalf of any other person. He knows he cannot make facetious comments by way of point of order. I would’ve thought, given the fact that he’s gone just about to the top of the class, he would try behaving himself for a day or two. He will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I withdraw and apologise.

JAN LOGIE (Green): From a Shakespearean speech pulling out the points of corporate greed, I’m going to transition into a speech that’s maybe more Dickensian in tone but has a similar theme, in fact—that a wellbeing survey from Statistics New Zealand today found that a third of New Zealanders identified that they have not enough or only just enough income to meet everyday needs. That is the other side of the corporate greed that the previous speaker, Shane Jones, was talking about, and that is why I am pleased to be on this side of the House, where we are committed to raising the minimum wage and we have started work on the fair pay agreements that will enable workers across this country to be able to stand together to bargain collectively to get fair wages and decent working conditions.

The reality is in this country that productivity is up and wages aren’t, and if individual bargaining and dismantling of unions and the gig economy worked the way that we’ve always been told by that side of the House that it does work, then that just wouldn’t be the case. We’re always told that that’s the model that’s going to deliver for our people, and we find ourselves in a place where a third of the country is struggling to just get by. That’s a third of the working people in this country are struggling to get by because of the model created and supported by previous Governments, that we are committed to fixing.

The evidence has come in that fair pay agreements and that collective bargaining across sectors supports productivity growth. It benefits working people in enabling them to get more money and their fair share of the productivity gains, but it also supports employers to keep good staff, enabling them to invest in training and equipment to then increase productivity so that everyone benefits from that.

The evidence is really clear: when you give front-line working people more share of that profit, they spend that money in their communities, which delivers an economic benefit on top of the productivity gains for those businesses. When those people are paid fairly, they’re able to just work one job, instead of the two or three that many of them are having to work just to be able to put food on the table. That means that their kids get the benefit of having them at home, of having the resources to be able to go on that school trip, to be able to attend a friend’s birthday party.

When as a country we know that roughly two out of five kids who are living in poverty have parents who are in employment, the real heart of this problem and the way things are set up is exposed. That calls on us to act, and act to support those families to be able to get a fair share, to have the value of their work properly recognised, and to be able to flourish and contribute to their communities.

Even the OECD has acknowledged now, as quoted in the recent Business and Economic Research report, which was released yesterday—and I’ll quote them—“There are better labour market outcomes from a system of organised decentralisation comprising sector wage agreements, providing a broad framework for firm-level bargaining of detail provisions.”—basically, fair pay agreements. They’re telling us that that model delivers for people, for communities, for families, and for business.

I am so looking forward to the next stage in this work and for us to be able to really challenge that unfair inequality that’s been created not from any failure of people in our communities but through Government policy privileging the corporate interests, as so beautifully articulated by the previous speaker, the Hon Shane Jones.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to rise. Do you know what? I am absolutely shocked at the contribution of the Government members and the coalition partners. When they actually get up on their pins and start talking, I wonder who’s actually in Government, because they keep talking about how terrible the situation is. Well, the Government is actually the Labour-led Government. They have been in Government for nearly two years, and what have they actually delivered for New Zealand?

Dan Bidois: Nothing.

MELISSA LEE: Nothing—who said that? Nothing. They’ve actually delivered nothing.

In my particular portfolio for example, in communications, there is no Chief Technology Officer that they promised. There is nothing. There are actually three digital advisory groups—the Digital Economy and Digital Inclusion Ministerial Advisory Group, the stakeholders in that work—and even the Prime Minister’s informal group that advises her on the digital needs of our nation. What have they actually done? Nothing—zero. There are actually 5G auctions. When are they going to happen? The Minister cannot actually tell us when they’re going to happen. Apparently they’re going to happen sometime next year. There’s no public media funding commission that the Government promised. They promised a public media funding commission. Where is it? It hasn’t actually happened.

So this Government has a terrible record for delivering. They are absolutely not delivering, and they claim to care. I am shocked at the—I think it was question time last week when Mr Phil Twyford actually mentioned that the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development spent $21 million on KiwiBuild policy and the work that they’re doing. I said, “Work that they’re doing?” How many KiwiBuild homes have they built? They’ve delivered less than 150 homes—less than 150 homes—and I have to actually say that when the Prime Minister talks about this Government building more houses than any other time since the 1970s, she is actually talking about the private sector. Yes, the private sector is actually delivering for New Zealand, as always, but this Government is certainly not doing that.

When we’re talking about houses the Government’s actually responsible for in social housing, I think what this Government has actually built—they’re actually talking about the houses that the National Government put in place. What this Government has actually done—they promised 1,000 KiwiBuild homes in the first year, 5,000 KiwiBuild homes in the second year, and 10,000 KiwiBuild homes in the third year. So far we’ve literally only got less than 150 homes, and they’ve spent more than $21 million on administration. That is so typical of a Labour-led Government, and when Ministers get up and say, “Oh, it’s a terrible thing; the world’s in a terrible place.”—the National Government came in after a global financial crisis, a world economic failure, and we managed to put our books into the positive. We returned our books into the black, not red. But this Government is set on destroying this country’s economy.

You know, whenever I actually go out and go to the local restaurant, the takeaway bars, the coffee shops, the local employers actually say, “When are you going to change this Government?”, because they’re in a worse off situation. More people are homeless; businesses are suffering. Not long ago, I had a phone call from a desperate constituent who was actually trying to help someone who was homeless for more than 80 days—87 days, to be exact—and this Government was doing nothing. This Government was absolutely doing nothing. There are more people living in their cars, more people living in caravan parks, and this Government claims that they are doing something. I’d like to know when they are actually going to start measuring their performance as a Government, as leaders of the nation.

The Prime Minister and the Ministers talk about this Government being kind. All they have been doing is finding excuses and blaming the previous National Government, and that’s all they are doing. I would like to start from the top, actually. I would like the Prime Minister, and all of the Ministers—actually, maybe tomorrow. There’s a big reshuffle, so I don’t know. Maybe some of them are actually going to say, “Well, it’s not my responsibility any more.”, and I wish good luck to Kris Faafoi. Hopefully he will actually get a Cabinet post. But this Government is failing New Zealanders.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. For a while there, I fell asleep listening. But I came to when I heard, “What is this Government doing, and what have they built?” Well, I can tell you: 2,700 social houses under build currently. What did your side do? What did the Opposition do when they were in power? Well, I’ll tell you what they did: they sold them off. They stopped building. In fact, we have had the strongest build since the 1970s, and it is incredible to me that the Opposition constantly bang on about us not doing anything and not delivering, and yet this morning when we heard from Housing New Zealand, who came to talk to us about what they’re doing, they talked to us about the transformation that they have under way internally and what they are managing to create, and the trust. Didn’t we hear 6 percent trust up since 2017? This is a Government that is leading with compassion, but we are also a Government who is leading change across our country.

Now, I came to Parliament for one particular reason. I came to Parliament because, at a time in my life, as a manager of Tauranga Women’s Refuge, I kept hearing from that Government at the time, from the National Government, that there was no housing crisis—that there was no housing crisis, and I heard it day upon day. Yet the experience that the families that I was working with—those most disenfranchised, those least able to help themselves, those most vulnerable—I heard that they constantly could not get a house. They looked everywhere. In the nine years under National, we had five social houses built in our community.

Hon Willie Jackson: How many?

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Five—and the sad reality is that we still currently only have 2.5 percent of stock when we know that we need, for social housing, at least 4 percent, and that’s just to keep up. So there is a massive, massive build that has to occur. But we also know, when the massive sell-off occurred under that Government, the organisation that purchased those houses was not able to inspect them. Well, let me tell you: when I was campaigning, and also as manager of Tauranga Women’s—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don’t tell me—don’t tell me. Tell the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Sorry, ma’am—let me tell the House. When I was campaigning, and as manager of Tauranga Women’s Refuge, going into State houses in our city was shocking—it was shocking, and I cannot understand how the members who represent our community could’ve allowed those conditions to continue. Housing New Zealand was decimated with staff. They were told that they should have their relationships only over the phone, and an 0800 number would be the number that they should call.

So these people were looking for repairs. They were looking for maintenance. We didn’t have enough houses, and that Government told us there was no housing crisis. The women and children I worked with, in order to support them, my job was to look them in the eye and make them homeless so they could get far enough up the list in the Work and Income needs assessment to get them a motel for a week—a motel for a week. I had to throw those people out on the street to work with the bureaucracy in order to get them homes.

That was the reason I came to Parliament, because the party that I belong to and this Government have said “Enough.” We have put in place and are building 2,700 homes currently. We have said “Enough.”, and we will not allow our people in our community to continue to live in this way. Now, it’s going to take a while, but we are up for it. We have the plan. We have the leadership. We have everything we need to get going and to get this right. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Well, I would love to see that party across the other side actually do something about what those values were. We have an issue right in front of this country at the moment where that party is not acting, and that is the Westland Co-operative Dairy Company will be sold to overseas interests. Those parties in Government have the ability to do something about it now and are not acting. They need to actually get out there and do something. Where’s New Zealand First at this time, the party that rallied for New Zealand ownership? Selling our second-biggest dairy company overseas. Where is the Labour Party, talking about trying to save New Zealanders and their assets? Selling New Zealand’s second-biggest dairy company overseas. Where is the Green Party that is about to sell New Zealand’s second-biggest dairy company overseas?

What has happened in that case? An international buyer has come in, seen a company that has got low capitalisation, and offered them a much higher share value. That could easily happen to Fonterra. That could easily happen to our biggest company, our co-operative Fonterra, and—

Michael Wood: Not without shareholder approval.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Oh, it just needs shareholders’ approval. There’s nothing to stop it actually happening. That Government over there has always said, “We’re going to stop these things happening.” That’s what New Zealand First has always argued upon. If we lose Fonterra, we lose the New Zealand ownership of the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of our biggest export product. That is what can happen when this Government sits idly by and lets things go, as they are now. There is an opportunity there for that party and those coalition parties to do something now, and they’re sitting down and letting that asset go. Once we lose our dairy industry overseas, it will be like the beef industry and other industries for export that have been lost overseas to overseas ownership. New Zealanders will not have the control and the operation over that and the opportunity going forward in the future. That is a big loss for New Zealand, and they are putting our country at risk at this time.

It’s time to relook at the Dairy Industry Restructuring Act. It’s time to relook at our rules, and I want that Government to actually start doing something instead of all that rhetoric, and then, when they get in office, they’ve got the power to do something—they do nothing.

Dan Bidois: All hui, no doey.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Exactly. But what have they done in the overseas investment in the last two years? Guess what the number that they’ve sold of New Zealand assets overseas is? It’s $9.61983456 billion. It’s $9 billion of assets they have sold in two years overseas—$9.6 billion New Zealand First, Labour, and the Greens have sold overseas. In fact, it would probably be over $10 billion dollars now, because that figure was a couple of weeks ago.

But guess what the approval rate on forestry applications is? There’s a 100 percent approval rate on all forestry applications from overseas. They have denied not one forestry application that has been made to New Zealand to purchase land for forestry from an overseas buyer. Not one has been denied. They have 100 percent. They have sold 210,000 hectares of land into forestry to overseas interests. That’s the equivalent of selling the whole Waipā district and Hamilton City Council put together. That whole zone of land they’ve sold in the mere two years that they’ve been here to forestry. So go have a look at a map and put it in the middle of a map, and that’s the region that they have sold overseas. Not one of those applications have been denied.

New Zealand needs to look strategically forward, and the Westland sale, I believe, is not in the best interests of New Zealand. We’ve had Ministers say that on the other side of the House. Why don’t they act on it? Why don’t they do something about it? It is up to the shareholders to determine in the end, but the Government has the option of doing something about it. Why don’t we have New Zealand cornerstone investors in there? We’ve got large iwi that could invest. We’ve got New Zealand corporates that could invest in that. Why don’t we have rules that safeguard the ownership of one of our flagship industries, and not sell it overseas, as we know is going to happen under this Government? They have proven themselves to have gone to the public and said they were going to stop these sales, and when they got into Government, they have done exactly the opposite.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): This is a fascinating place to work, and it is of great surprise to me—and, I suspect, the member in front of me, David Seymour—to learn that it is now the policy of the National Party to have more restrictive rules on the sale of New Zealand property and businesses to offshore interests. I was fascinated to see the reaction of the honourable member for Hamilton East’s colleagues sitting around him who were not moving a muscle during those weighty proclamations that he made and the commitments that he made on behalf of his party to introduce a more restrictive scheme in respect of overseas investments in New Zealand. I’m sure that members on this side will be very pleased to inform the Hon Nathan Guy and Milton Friedman’s lovechild, the new National Party finance spokesperson, the Hon Paul Goldsmith, that this is, in fact, now the new policy of the National Party. I think it really does speak so much to the chaos and confusion that is reigning on the benches of the National Party of the Opposition at the moment that we had a major speech from a former Minister of the previous National Government taking that position at the same time that a person of such absolute free market pedigree as the Hon Paul Goldsmith has become the finance spokesperson of that party.

I want to, at this point, just acknowledge in all seriousness the contribution of the Hon Amy Adams, whose pending retirement from this House was announced earlier this week. She’s a person who on this side of the House we have a range of policy disagreements with, but she is a person who has respect and is taken seriously and has a degree of economic competency about her that was not evident in the previous speech. So we wish Amy Adams well in the next steps that she takes in her life and her career. The National Party could seriously do with someone of Amy Adams’ calibre in that respect, and, really, I think it speaks volumes about the state of the Opposition at this point that a person of that competence sees the best move is to move away.

I’ve had the privilege of speaking a couple of times this week in the Budget debate, where I’ve focused on many of the significant wellbeing initiatives that this Government has been very, very proud to stand behind in the Budget last month. Finally taking mental health seriously—a $1.9 billion investment to ensure that Kiwis get access to community-level primary mental health care when they need it. Serious action to lift our children out of poverty—and these are major wellbeing initiatives, but I want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the fact that sitting alongside those, this is a Budget that seriously delivers in terms of a balanced approach, in terms of running the books well and having an economic plan and vision for New Zealand. I think one of the things that the Opposition has really struggled with over the course of this Budget debate is that here is a Government, a cross-party Government, that is committed to the wellbeing of New Zealanders and making those investments in our public sphere, but that is also doing an excellent job of managing the books.

Because let’s be clear: this is a Budget which continues to see sustainable surpluses into the coming years so that New Zealanders can have security that the Government has money for a rainy day. This is a Budget which sees sustained economic growth above the level of most of our trading partners. This is a Budget which sees net Crown debt reducing to 19.9 percent, lower than that previous Government ever got it, and meeting the Government’s Budget responsibility rules. This is a Budget which sees unemployment down at 4 percent—again, lower than that previous Government ever got it—giving Kiwis an opportunity to get into meaningful work. Here’s the really good news for those Kiwis who are in work: the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update tells us that average wage growth over the coming years is going to be over 3 percent, well above inflation, meaning that we are making a real difference to the living standards of New Zealanders.

That is the economic track of this country under the coalition Government, and I acknowledge our partners in Government, the New Zealand First Party and the Green Party, for their contribution in helping us to reach that sweet spot where we are meeting the wellbeing needs of New Zealanders while managing the books and the economy well—something that the OECD acknowledged in its report this week, and New Zealanders can take a lot of confidence from that.

What the OECD also acknowledged is that as well as managing the purse, managing the books, well at the moment, there’s a long-term economic plan here to deal with productivity. This is a Government which is investing in the research and development tax credit to drive productivity and to drive the high-value businesses and jobs that will give New Zealanders prosperity in the long run. This is a Government which is investing in vocational education to give Kiwis a chance, and it’s put up the Venture Investment Fund to help our businesses get off the ground and grow and export. I am so proud of the Wellbeing Budget. It invests in the wellbeing of New Zealanders and it has a serious economic plan and good fiscal management.

JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth): Well, is it going to be Milton or Michael? It’s going to be Milton, I think, and I’m talking about not Michael Wood but Michael Cullen—you know, the author of the most extractive capital gains regime in the world. Thank goodness they came to their senses and dropped that one. This Government has got it wrong, but why are we surprised? A 100 percent renewable electricity policy, though technically feasible, is economically untenable. But don’t worry, because molten salt is on its way, just like lava lamp storage, and what about flux capacitors? We should hear that coming from the Government as well.

This week we learnt that New Zealand will have to pay dearly for the 100 percent renewable electricity goal that this Government has been talking about. Residential power prices—up 14 percent. Commercial power prices—up 29 percent. Industrial power prices—up 39 percent. For residences, every household, what that means is a $300 increase per year, an increase which disproportionately impacts low-income households.

You know, the editorial in the Taranaki Daily News and, in fact, the Manawatu Standard, the Marlborough Express, The Press, Nelson Mail, Waikato Times, Dominion Post, Timaru Herald, and Southland Times said the Interim Climate Change Committee (ICCC) has advised that 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 in a normal hydrological year could be technically feasible, but getting there will be incredibly expensive and likely counterproductive to our aim to reduce carbon emissions. They went on to say in this editorial, “The ICCC report should be applauded for restoring sanity to the discussion”. Isn’t that amazing, that an editorial right through most papers in the country said that this report is restoring sanity to the discussion? Yes, the goal may have been aspirational, may have been ambitious, but it’s untenable. In fact, it’s going to hurt New Zealand. It’s going to slow us down from achieving the goals that this Government thinks that they want to achieve. In fact, the goal has shifted from being an absolute goal to an aspirational goal. Hamish Rutherford from the Dominion Post said, “Back in April, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern began referring to the 100 percent renewable target as ‘aspirational’ ”, which some in the industry are saying looks like she’s clearing the ground to soften their position.

Dan Bidois: Cop-out.

JONATHAN YOUNG: Yeah, it’s a cop-out. I spent two weeks over the Easter recess visiting countries which are facing energy transition. I included a meeting with the UK climate change commission. I included a meeting with Ofgem, which is the Government regulator for gas and electricity markets in Britain, and I met with their counterparts in Japan and Norway. I came away highly impressed with one thing: their sanity—their sanity, their pragmatic approach. It was science over religion. It was. It was rationality over ideology. They were facing the challenge of transition and they were understanding that it’s going to be small interim incremental steps that need to be made rather than single leaps into the future to successfully achieve a low-emission future.

I just want to read out some comments. Back in 2007, under Helen Clark’s Government—and Megan Woods, the Minister of energy, has received this advice. This is the advice of Government agencies back in that time. The key finding of this work was that cumulative generation and transmission costs increased significantly with higher levels of renewables. For example, they increase by $1.5 billion at a 95 percent target, compared to the $7 billion currently spent on electricity. It’s a 21 percent increase.

This sounds so familiar to what the Interim Climate Change Committee has presented to the Government today: 14 percent up for residential power, 29 percent for commercial power, 39 percent for industrial power. What it means for those industries—the impacts on the viability of their businesses, their ability to grow, to compete, to employ, and to pay the Government taxes on their profits—is that all the numbers are going the wrong way. We need to be smarter. We need to think incrementally. We need to think about steps that will enable this economy to succeed to reach those goals. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): I’d like to conclude this debate by just slowing down the tone a little bit and making my point with a brief story. My parents, John and Patricia Andersen, were school teachers in primary school for their entire working lives. They taught predominantly in poorer areas in New Zealand and predominantly in rural parts of New Zealand. They finished their over 90 years’ teaching experience combined in a small part of Northland, a place called Ngātaki, which is 60 kilometres north of Kaitāia.

When they arrived there, the first thing my father noticed was that the sandpit was in disarray. It was not in a good shape for kids to be playing in. It was overgrown. So, quick as a flash, he ordered a trailer, a high-sided trailer, with some fresh sand to be dumped and put into the sandpit. He went online. He hadn’t looked for sandpit toys for quite a while, but he was stunned to find the array of amazing sandpit toys now available to modern New Zealand children. There were wheels that spun. There were different types of physics arrangements you could do to these amazing different sandpit toys. He spent quite a significant amount of money to have a really good range of sandpit toys.

When the bell rang for the first interval and the kids were released, they ran to the sandpit and they loved the toys. They played with them like never before. And when the bell rang again and they went back inside, my father went over to inspect the sandpit and was astonished to find that every single toy was gone. The whole lot had vanished. So he called a special assembly to find out where the sandpit toys had gone, and he called a couple of the main kids over to ask where they had gone. They dug down. They dug down about half a foot, because they’d buried them. They’d buried them because they never thought they would get those toys again, and they wanted to play with them.

That story has always stuck with me, because I’ve always wanted New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child, and I am absolutely determined in the fact that I do not want to see a culture of poverty evolve in New Zealand. What has worried me over the past nine years before I came into this House was that that is exactly what we began to see happening in New Zealand: a divided society where children don’t have the basics they need.

That’s why having things like child poverty targets is so important. And I would like to remind this House that time and time again under the previous Government it was put in the too-hard basket to measure child poverty. There was a refusal to meet international covenants to try and measure child poverty. The Prime Minister of this Government has taken a lead in that area. We have legislated targets and we have put into it, as our annual reporting as part of the Wellbeing Budget, that we will be measuring child poverty as to how that’s tracking, and we will show our success in that area and we’ll be held to that by showing our account in that space.

Number two—the Best Start payment. Let’s look at that. It is $60 a week for the first year of a child’s life, and that will continue into the third year for those on lower and middle incomes. After that third year, we’re going to tack into a part that was a legacy from the previous Labour Government: 20 hours’ free early childhood education—so important for mums and dads who want to get back to work but can’t afford to pay for full childcare. It is so important.

Paid parental leave is yet another one: 22 out weeks delivered by this Government, with a promise to take it to 26 weeks by 1 July 2020. Can I remind members that that was vetoed. The financial veto was used under the previous National Government to stop that coming through. The Families Package—the Families Package delivers to 385,000 New Zealand families with children another $75 in their pocket every single week to put food on the table, to buy important things like nappies, like shoes, like schoolbooks. Those are the things that are announced—right down to the announcement today by the Hon Tracey Martin that has put money into intervening early into childhood and making sure that if there are learning disabilities, if there are issues with our children’s learning, we are identifying those before they even get to school, because we know we can change a child’s life by making sure they can hear, they can listen, and they can learn.

We are investing in our children’s future. I’m proud to be a country that makes New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child, and I’m proud of the fact that we have turned the ship around, away from a culture of poverty.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): I move, That the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I’m delighted to see that this bill has made its way through the House to the third reading. It has been quite the journey. It started out under the name of Darien Fenton, and I wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge her in the work that she has done not only in the labour movement but in supporting me personally in seeing the passage of this bill through the House.

It has changed somewhat, because when it went to the Education and Workforce Committee it had two parts, because the select committee was done, particularly from the Government’s side, in a manner which respected the views of those that submitted. It took on board those views and made some amendments, and now we have a very simple bill to achieve a very simple objective. The Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill amends the Employment Relations Act 2000 to strengthen the personal grievance provisions of the Act. It will allow workers employed by one employer but working under the control and direction of another business or organisation to apply to the Employment Relations Authority to have their host employer or controlling third party joined to a personal grievance.

It is very simple but it is also very powerful, because this Parliament has an opportunity today to send a message to all workers that the basic provision and right of a personal grievance should be applied to all workers in this country, regardless of whether the circumstances under which they find themselves employed were not envisaged when the law was originally drafted. The point is that a triangular employment arrangement was not foreseen and it is essentially a loophole.

There is no argument that I have seen from that side of the House, despite their making the same points at every single stage of this debate. They have failed to outline to this country why workers that are employed under a triangular employment arrangement should not have provision to the basic right of a personal grievance that the rest of us take for granted. Why is it acceptable in this country where a worker, who was employed by a labour hire company under the direct control of a controlling third party, found out she was pregnant and was dismissed the next day with no recourse whatsoever? It is unbelievable and unacceptable, and under any other circumstance in 2019 in this country, that would not have been accepted. But because they were under a triangular employment arrangement, that was OK under the law. That needs to change, and today it will change.

My challenge to the National Party is this: take the opportunity to stand up and justify to this country why they are not supporting it, because they have failed to do so at every opportunity under the sun. I was a bookmaker at the TAB for a long time and I know how to read a game. I know how to read a game and that is exactly what that side of the House are doing. I can predict what they will do. The Hon Scott Simpson will stand up with utter distain in his eyes and talk of his hatred for unions, which by extension means his hatred for workers, because if you have a hatred for unions, you have a hatred and an incapacity to understand the imbalance of the relationship between a worker and an employer.

I would like to point the House’s attention to this particular quote: “I can fully understand the feeling of power imbalance between employers and employees that comes through quite a lot.” Thank you, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, for pointing that one out. I would also like to show this quote: “I think there are some important things that this Parliament can do to safeguard the rights of workers, and I think this is an important part of any Parliament.” Thank you, the Hon David Bennett. I would also like to point out this: “Employment standards are not optional and National is committed to stamping out dodgy and deliberate employment breaches.”—the current leader of the National Party, Simon Bridges. If it’s OK for that side of the House to support basic provisions like personal grievance, which this bill delivers, if it’s OK for them to support it when it’s their idea, it should be OK for them to support it now.

What they have to do is stand up and explain to this country why they are failing to stand up for the most vulnerable in our society when, when they come up with it, they are shouting it from the rooftops. And now they’re back to their traditional anti-worker, anti-union, pro-business rhetoric that we’re all sick of and which is the reason they got voted out of Parliament last election.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): The member who has been promoting this bill spent five minutes pretty much talking about anything and everything except his bill, and there’s a reason for that. The reason for that is because it’s a nothing bill—it’s a nothing bill.

It was a bill that he signed up to when he came into the House. It was a bill that was put into the ballot about 10 years ago by a former member Darien Fenton, and I think that in the previous speech I referred to her as Darien “Fentonne”, and apparently it’s “Fenton” and she took some offence at the pronunciation of her name. So it’s Darien Fenton, I think. She came from the trade union movement, has done her time in the House, her compulsory Labour Party service in the House, and has now gone back to the trade union movement. This fellow picked up the bill—didn’t realise how out of place it was or how hopeless it was. It went to select committee and was completely rewritten—completely rewritten. Never before have I seen in my time in this House a bill so woefully inadequate, passed at first reading, gone to select committee, and then being completely rewritten. The bill was gutted in every possible respect.

The primary purpose of the bill was originally to provide for increased trade union membership through ensuring that people who were employed under triangular contracts would eventually become members of various collective union agreements. That was utterly unworkable. Fortunately, the member sponsoring the bill had the good sense to delete it and take it out before it got to this stage.

So what are we left with in this bill? Well, we’re left with a bill that purports to provide for people who are employed by labour hire companies, maybe temp agencies—those sorts of things—where they may be employed by the agency but actually do work for a third party. Those sorts of people are, under this bill, on the face of it, given an ability to take a personal grievance, should the need arise.

So here is the nub of the nothingness of this bill: they already have that ability. They already have in statute that ability, and I refer to the departmental report from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment on this bill, which points out, at paragraph 2.4 of their report, “The personal grievance provisions in the Act already apply to the relationship between the worker and the on-hire firm, if the worker is an employee.” They already find that the primary purpose of this bill exists. It’s a nothing bill, so the Parliament has gone through a charade really, where time has been spent on a bill, submitters have presented on the bill, changes have been made on the bill, the bill has been gutted, reformatted, and sent back to us.

It will pass, because the dynamics of the coalition Government are such that it will pass, but on this side of the House we oppose it. And we oppose it quite simply because it does nothing—it does nothing but confirm what is already available and in existing statute. So, on the basis that the bill is a nothing bill, that the member took up from a long since gone, former member without really understanding it, on the basis that it’s been gutted and rewritten, on this side of the House, we oppose it and we do not commend it for further advancement.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. I would just like to correct the previous speaker, Scott Simpson, on his incorrect assertions. He is picking and choosing from a paragraph that, actually, clearly outlines that the departmental report recommended to our select committee that we extend the provision of personal grievance by way of this bill. This actually goes to the core of how the Opposition does not understand how this works in real life, for real people.

I’d like to outline it with an example: there’s an owner of a building who gets his building cleaned. He complains about the cleaner. There’s no particular reason given for this complaint; however, the owner of the building says, “Look, I just don’t want this cleaner around.” The cleaner may have raised a concern about health or safety practices. The cleaner may have flagged an issue around bullying or harassment or sexual harassment—whatever it is, the cleaner is told that they’ve lost their job, because the employment contract states that they need to be given access to the building. So, under the current law, that worker has no right to a grievance, Mr Simpson—that’s the second part of that paragraph you left out. Under the current law, the worker has no right to raise a personal grievance. So at least this particular bill will provide some protection to those workers. Now that cleaner can sue the owner of that building and get his justice.

There was a submission put to us that I’d like to read because it goes to the core of what our workers are facing: “Labour hire workers never know whether they have a job tomorrow or if they’ll be able to make the rent next week, have enough petrol in their car to get to work, or afford lunch for the kids. They are employed on zero-hour contracts that allow the host company to determine their ongoing employment. If they get sick, suffer bereavement, or take leave, they can find their hours cut or their assignment ended without notice or reason.” These people are in precarious employment, and the other side of this House has denied them their human right to even bring up a personal grievance, in case they get dismissed without notice.

This bill contains a fundamental right. I’d like to congratulate the member Kieran McAnulty for bringing it to this House. Thank you very much.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill, and I’m speaking to this House today not only as a National MP opposing this bill but also as National’s spokesperson for the future of work. I must say that the future of work looks bright and, while that side of the House may look at workers and think that they are all victims, with things like technology and the likes of AI and the automation that’s going on, we’ve got a lot of opportunities in New Zealand to raise productivity, to raise incomes, if we get our legislative framework right.

On this side of the House, it’s very clear that productivity is our No. 1 goal for employment relations in a flexible and fair working place. And, unfortunately, this bill takes us backwards. It does not contribute to productivity, and that’s why we are opposing this bill. This bill, as the Hon Scott Simpson said, is not necessary; it is going to reduce flexibility in the workplace. It’s watered down, because—remember—this bill came to the House 10 years ago under the name of Darien Fenton, and that bill was gutted in the select committee.

Simeon Brown: How much is left?

DAN BIDOIS: Virtually nothing—all there is is a statement about personal grievance, and it’s not very clear to us how that helps workplace productivity. It’s also sending the wrong message to our community, to our workers engaged in labour hire, and also to our business community about how we see productivity in the future and how we see the important role that these people play in national productivity.

The effects of this bill are going to be very clear, from where we stand: it’s going to raise the cost of engaging labour hire companies, which will reduce the job opportunities for people that, in fact, do that—

Marja Lubeck: How?

Kieran McAnulty: How?

DAN BIDOIS: Because it raises the potential, or perceived, costs of engaging labour hire companies. And it’s very telling that that side of the House asks the question about how, because probably none of them have worked in the business world and understand the likes of the negative effects of this.

So that side of the House clearly sees labour hire companies as evil and as companies that they don’t want to have proliferated or increased in New Zealand, but we heard very much in the select committee that a lot of these labour hire companies are not, in fact, evil but are providing opportunities for workers, that they treat their workers and those that use labour hire with respect, and that they hold the third party companies accountable if they are not playing host to their workers very clearly. So most are, in fact, good employers, and the question is: well, if they are not good employers, what do we do about those? And National would encourage this industry—let me make this very clear—in a flexible workplace with growing opportunities and a growing gig economy and flexible contracting expected to be the case in the future—we want to see more of these types of companies in the future, where people choose this type of work because it’s flexible, because they’ve got families, and because they don’t want to work the nine-to-five day that that side of the House expects everybody to work: a nine-to-five, robots-coming-to-work - type arrangement.

So National would encourage this type. Maybe we would consider—and this is not party policy but it’s something that we ought to consider—better regulations around this sector. We heard, in a select committee process, about what’s going on in Queensland and the labour hire licensing laws that they, in fact, instituted just last year. It’s been hugely successful, and I would certainly encourage my colleagues, and also that side of the House, to look at implementing something like that in the future as well.

Now, we’ve heard a lot about wellbeing and about how this Government is focused on wellbeing. Well, it’s not clear about how this contributes to wellbeing. How does this weak bill that is really a nothing bill actually contribute to productivity or wellbeing? It’s driven by ideology. That’s very, very clear. They just don’t like these innovations and these sectors sprouting up, and therefore they want to stamp that out very, very clearly.

So, in summary, I do not support this bill. National will vote against this bill because it’s not helping our productivity; it’s making our workforces far more inflexible in the workplace. I do not support this bill in the House. Thank you.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great pleasure for me to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to confirm our support for the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill. In doing so, I’d like to just start off by commending the member bringing the bill to the House, Mr McAnulty. I do so for two reasons: firstly, to curry some favour. I note that he, along with Mr Bishop, has announced himself co-captain of the Parliamentary Cricket Team travelling to the World Cup. I do prefer to bat at three and open the bowling downwind. So, hopefully, this will be remembered during those discussions with your co-captain. The other point, actually, in a more serious note: I do know that Mr McAnulty, having witnessed him speaking both out in front of groups and in select committees, is always someone who has the interests of workers at the core of the questions and the viewpoints that he brings forward. I know that this is one of many bills that you will bring forward in your parliamentary career, but I think it’s fitting that it’s one that benefits workers.

When it came forward, there were two intents for the bill. One was the one that has, ultimately, come through, which is the personal grievance provisions and strengthening those around controlling third parties. The other part, which got culled out through the select committee process, in the bill that you inherited, Mr McAnulty, was around the collective agreements, and we did hear a lot of feedback from the sector that that was unworkable, and to the credit of the committee, I think, we worked through that pretty quickly—that that wasn’t something that was going to take away flexibility. This is a very important sector—an employment group. It does allow flexibility for our employers, and we didn’t want to nullify that. In fact, just going back to the notes I’ve got here, there was one Mark Patterson in the select committee, who made the following quote—

Kieran McAnulty: Top bloke.

MARK PATTERSON: Well, this is a slippery slope, maybe, to starting to refer to myself as the “second citizen of the regions”. But I did say there that we don’t want to be stymying those employers—people who are risking their own capital. So we’ve got to make sure that we get the balance for employers as well as employees. We have to ensure that there is flexibility so that the unintended consequences of these good intentions are not that people actually don’t get employment or miss out on opportunities in the first place.

So we worked through that pretty quickly for those reasons, I think, but the personal grievance situation is a real one. They are increasingly used—these types of contracts. There is a plethora of companies out there providing these labour hire companies, and it’s just clarifying that and giving the workers some certainty that they can bring a personal grievance forward and that the responsibility for that lies where it should, with the actual company that they are working for, as opposed to who they might be being employed through. So we absolutely support that in New Zealand First.

I will actually say, in regard to the previous speech, made by Mr Bidois, that New Zealand First also sees some merit in the Queensland regulations—the licensing. I think, when the companies came forward to present to the bill, they did reference that. They did suggest that they were willing to go into some form of licensing scheme. They did admit that there were some cowboys in the industry, but the vast majority were responsible and would be prepared to come into such a scheme, and also there are provisions for casual loading, I understand, in that legislation, which is something that we may have to look at also in the future. New Zealand First would be supportive of that.

This is a very good first start. I commend the member on bringing the bill forward, and New Zealand First has pleasure in supporting it to the House. Thank you.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to take this call. I would like to start by actually congratulating the member in charge of this bill, the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill. While I congratulate the member Kieran McAnulty, I also want to say that the member is in a very unfortunate situation. We can visualise what actually happened. As the members came in after the last general election, there was this big pressure on them to put their members’ bills in the ballot, because they could clearly see that the Opposition side was winning when it came to members’ bills. So the member had no choice; there was this bill sitting from 2007—Darien Fenton’s bill. So he decided to quickly put his name on that bill and put it in the ballot. And it got drawn. So I don’t know if it is a fortunate situation or an unfortunate situation for the member.

We are opposing this bill. We are opposing this bill because we know that this bill is not good for the labour market. We know that submitters clearly said that this bill is not a good bill, because this bill is not providing any flexibility or fairness that we stand for. So we don’t see any reason why we need this legislation. As this bill was introduced, there were two main provisions. During the select committee process, we got rid of one provision completely because it was that bad—and I’ll talk about that in a minute—but the second provision, which remains in this bill, I have to say, is a redundant provision because any employee can take up a personal grievance case. What this bill does is just set up a framework, set up a process, for how they can join in the third controlling party. It’s not like the third controlling party, as defined in the legislation, cannot be joined in in any personal grievance case; they can be. But setting up a process for how they can be—that’s all this bill does. So it’s not like there are employees that do not have access to this kind of provision to raise a personal grievance; that is not the case. Anybody can take up a personal grievance case against their employer, and then, later on, the third controlling party can be joined in.

In this legislation—let me just clarify that “Employer” is the hire agency, for example, “Employee” is the person that is sent by the hire agency to different businesses to work, and the “Business” where the employee works is the third controlling party.

From the start, we saw that this bill was all about unions—all about the unions. The collective agreement provision that we got rid of was about unions. This one is also about unions, because I have heard unions repeatedly going out and saying that they have a better ability to take personal grievance cases. So this is to say that if an employee has a personal grievance case, they should become a member of a union so that the union can go out and represent them. That is all this bill is about. We know that a big proportion of people in the private sector, around 90 percent of people, are not union members. That is what is hurting that Government—90 percent of private sector workers are not union members. So they know that, yes, they want to support unions, they want unions to do well because in return they’re going to get favours from unions. That’s all this bill is about.

Now, as this is a third reading—

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. We all encourage robust debate, but it is highly inappropriate, and against the Standing Orders, for a member to suggest that this Government is putting forward legislation and then, in turn, to get kickbacks from another organisation on the back—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, you’re correct, but I was listening and I didn’t think that the member actually said that. I thought that she was making a link between this piece of legislation and what the unions were actually saying. The member can continue.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Madam Speaker. During the select committee process, while chairing the Education and Workforce Committee, what I noticed, along with the other members on the select committee, is that the bill was totally rewritten. When I say “rewritten”, it was really hard to find what is there from the original version of the bill. Then, during that process, I asked the officials if there was any influence from the Minister’s office or from the Minister in the way the bill has been put forward in the revised form to the committee. Then what happened? I received a letter from the Government side; the letter was signed by Jan Tinetti, the deputy chair on the committee, saying that that was really, actually, wrong—I should not have done that; I should not have asked that question to officials. How could I even think that there was a link between the officials and the Minister’s office? So what I have done is I have requested, under the Official Information Act (OIA), some documents—and I’m very happy to table these documents—to make it very clear to Government members that there was direct communication between the Minister’s office and officials.

This is not a new process, so I hope that members on that side will understand how the process works. To my good friend, Jan Tinetti, I would say: please be careful next time before you put your name or signature on other people’s words, because it will be your name and your signature on that document. Here, through this OIA document, I can clearly prove the kind of communication that happened between the Minister’s office and officials. That is the reason why the collective agreement provision has been removed from that legislation. It wasn’t about submitters; it is about the direct communication between the Minister’s office and the officials.

There are several documents which I have stapled in this; the recommendation under the impact of bill proposals reads, “We note there may be possible benefits in addressing some of the inequities between permanent and temporary workers, especially where those workers may be in artificial triangular relationships. It’s unclear to us, at this stage, that the potential benefits of the proposal outweigh the possible harms”. So this has come from them. Another document here says, “The purpose of this is to provide you”—this is to the Minister—“with a copy of the initial briefing we will present to the Education and Workforce Committee on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill and to invite any comments you have on the initial briefing. Then we will brief you on policy options regarding the bill and whether a Government position would be helpful”.

Yes, there is more. Then there is another document, different date—2 August 2018, to help members to dig out this document from the Minister’s office or the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It’s action sought from the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway, Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. Actions sought: “Agree to develop a Government position on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill so that changes can be sought through the select committee process”—a recommendation, clearly, of what we saw in that rewritten bill. It states here, “The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment recommends that you agree to develop a Government position on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill so that changes to the bill can be sought to: a.”—it says—“extend the personal grievance provisions so that the Employment Relations Authority or court can independently join a host organisation to a personal grievance. B.”—very clearly—“remove the collective agreements”—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Point of order, Kieran McAnulty. I can anticipate your point of order, but she is actually talking about—the third reading is quite an open debate—the processes through the select committee process of the passage of this bill. It is perfectly in order.

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. That is, Madam Speaker; that’s not my point of order. My question is: is it OK to use a third reading speech in the House to subvert the leave process of tabling a document? The member indicated that she wished to table the document, then started reading from it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, she’s perfectly entitled in the debate to read from a document. If she desires to table it at the end of that, or in the middle of that, or at the beginning of that, that’s entirely up to the member—

Kieran McAnulty: Thank you for answering my question.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: All members have the responsibility to work that through.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Madam Speaker. This “b.” part in this says, “Remove the collective agreements”. I repeat: “Remove the collective agreement provisions”—that is what the recommendation says—“due to the complexity and potential unintended consequences that the provision would introduce”. I can see it’s hurting those members. I can see it’s really hurting those members, so I suggest that next time, my friend, Jan Tinetti, be extra careful before she puts her name and signature on someone else’s words, because it’s not a good look. It’s not a good look because it reflects on her.

Yes, the whole document continues like this. Clearly, we know that there was a clear communication and the officials didn’t like this provision, and that is why the collective agreement provision has been removed from the legislation. So the one provision which remains in the legislation is, again, to discourage the triangular employment relationships that exist that are working really well for our labour market. They provide the flexibility; there are several kinds of circumstances in workplaces where people have to go out and seek somebody who is there to fill in just for two or three months. They don’t have enough time to go out and recruit from the start and then train them. By that time, the time they wanted that person for could be finished. So we do not support this bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Jan Logie.

Hon Member: This will be much better.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m not sure, to be honest, how great it’s going to be. I want to congratulate the member, Kieran McAnulty, for shepherding this bill through Parliament. I, too, would like to acknowledge the original member, Darien Fenton, for initiating this piece of legislation around 11 years ago. There’s been a long gestation to get to this point of bringing this law change to life.

Where it came from was her being on a parliamentary visit to the UK and seeing similar legislation being introduced there, in acknowledgement of the increased casualisation of the workforce in the UK. The former member, Darien Fenton, was looking at the change in employment relationships in New Zealand and seeing the similar levels of casualisation and a concern that with that casualisation, and what’s sometimes described as “flexibility”, there was some collateral damage for people around being able to take personal grievances, and a loss of conditions for people in pay and ability to control their conditions. So this bill was an attempt to rebalance that to ensure that, while the benefits of labour hire employment practices were able to continue, there was a guarantee that there wasn’t a loss in conditions and employment rights that went along with that.

The legislation, as it was initially introduced, addressed the personal grievance aspect, as well as making an attempt to extend collective conditions across to those employed by labour hire organisations. Through the select committee process, it was found that that aspect didn’t really work in this context. So the member accepted that and that aspect of the bill has been removed. We’re now left with quite a simple piece of legislation to ensure that people are able to easily—where appropriate—take the personal grievance.

And those third party employers—those people who, in effect, manage the staff on a day-to-day basis—we encourage them and have this legislative framework to ensure that they are good employers. We’re not removing that responsibility, as that’s kind of, effectively, been removed up to this point, because there hasn’t been that guarantee that grievances could be taken against bad behaviour. So we’re now ensuring that that pathway is clear.

So the Green Party is very pleased to be able to support this as part of a package of reforms that this side of the House is supporting around rebalancing employment relations to make sure that people who are doing all of the work are being fairly compensated and protected in their workplaces.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I think it’s very telling that the sponsor of this bill could barely make it to five minutes when he came to have the opportunity to address the benefits that this bill will create. And that’s because, as others have mentioned during the course of this debate, the bill we see in front of us is a mere shadow of what was originally brought to this House. That’s because the bill that was originally brought to this House had a very clear purpose and intent and that was to demonise labour hire companies. That was the purpose of the bill. It was to make out that somehow labour hire companies are exploitative agencies that abused workers and don’t provide good employment conditions.

In fact, what we heard at the select committee was that labour hire companies in fact perform an incredible role in our communities of providing flexible work to a range of employees, who might not otherwise find employment, of providing flexible contracts to people who have changing work requirements, and, in fact, they are a very important part of the modern working relationships in New Zealand. We heard that message loud and clear. So Mr McAnulty’s attempt to demonise labour hire companies failed at select committee, and his bill had to be gutted.

I want to clear up some assertions that have been made on the other side of the House during this debate, because it is absolutely National’s position that we support worker rights. That is very important to us. We also support people having access to the jobs that labour hire companies create. What we are also clear on is that the current law should not and does not allow for exploitation against workers. The current law allows people hired by labour hire firms to raise personal grievances. That was made clear to us by officials, by submitters, again and again throughout the process. So what this bill actually does is something very technical. It’s the sort of amendment that lawyers will really enjoy, that they will make much hay out of, because what it does is it sets up a rather elaborate process in which a controlling third party can be joined to a personal grievance and then the authority or the court can give rise to a great debate about how liability should be divided—who’s more liable and who’s less liable—and I would suggest that that is not what New Zealanders think courts should be spending their time on. In fact, I don’t think that necessarily serves the needs of workers, because, actually, what workers want is clear decisions made in quick time. What they don’t want is endless legal debates about apportioning liability, and that’s what this bill does.

This bill creates more legal ambiguity. It is actually a bill that was intended to demonise labour hire companies, who perform a very important role in our economy. It is simply a bill that will make hay for lawyers; it is not a bill about worker rights. If there is any clearer endorsement of that, it’s the fact that the sponsor of the bill could barely make it to five minutes of arguments in support of it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Actually, I’m very proud to stand in support of this wonderful bill, the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill. I would like, as is the custom but certainly is very heartfelt today, to commend my good friend and a thoroughly, thoroughly good bloke, Kieran McAnulty, for shepherding this wonderful bill through the House.

This bill is very simple. I’ve heard today that we don’t know anything about being an employer. Well, I’m currently an employer in a private business, a construction business. So we have at times had to use, in emergency situations or situations where we’ve been caught short, labour hire firms, who we like. And most of us in the Labour Party are quite happy to do so, and I don’t think that there is any reason that the last member should say that we are hating on that industry. We’re certainly not. But what myself as an employer and our party and, in fact, this Government says is that every worker deserves the right to be able to take a personal grievance. As an employer, I stand here and say very clearly that absolutely we have, as an employer, no issue—no issue—with this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on this third reading. I was part of the committee that heard this particular bill when it was introduced. I spoke on the first reading. It started off with a bang, a bang of embarrassment, and that was because it was a reheated bill from 2007 from Labour Party MP and union boss, Darien Fenton, and we could see all over the face of the MP that sponsored this bill—it’s in his name—that this was going to be problematic as it made its way through the course of this House and the committee. It was not hard to see that there was not a lot in the bill that was going to be tenable and palatable for us here in the House.

We heard from submitters like Auckland Council. Auckland Council was a late submitter but they were very, very clear—crystal clear, in fact. They were so crystal clear because they had had the opportunity, I think unintentionally, to read prior submissions. They gave a response to the committee based on their reading of submissions that had already been put in, and this is what they said: “If the purpose of the bill is to afford greater protection/additional benefits, our observation is that these may be better delivered in alternative ways. We noted that within the submissions made in support of the Bill”—submissions already put in—“the types of concerns raised did not appear to be well connected to the solutions/changes proposed within the purpose of the Bill.” They’d surveyed what was already put in and they had said, “Well, whoever submitted on this, the disconnect between what the bill actually does is very clear and apparent for all to see.”—highly embarrassing, as I just said earlier. They finished by saying, “We do anticipate significant adverse, unintended consequences which means that we do not support the proposed legislation.” So that’s the context as we heard from many submitters.

So what happened next: the bill got gutted. The sponsor of the bill used staff to their fullest potential, I’d say, and changed it in all but two places—a completely different bill, gutted, and that’s what we had to work with. No wonder it’s been very difficult for submitters or anyone to keep track of what the full intention of this bill was. I wonder what Darien Fenton would be thinking.

So we had to go through the process. There had to be something salvaged and brought out from the bones that we were given, and the staff were scratching around to try and make it worthwhile. So what we’ve got now are changes, as they are, to some collective agreements and personal grievances, and the result is, quite frankly, a continued barrage on business and a handbrake to our economy. If you want our economy to get ahead, you need to create jobs, you need higher wages, you need people to be able to support their families. That’s the basics; that’s what we know. And, yes, that even applies to labour hire companies. They are part of a flexible workplace environment. We heard from many submitters who are helping out people in low-income families with just that: a flexible work environment and consistent and steady work, especially from those submitters that we heard from from South Auckland.

So what we have got here, though, is a Government slowing growth down and taking away opportunities, and putting yet another set of handbrakes on business. The Labour Party are reviewing fundamental parts of our economy, including tax, ports, and electricity, and all of this is adding to knocking business confidence. We need to be really mindful when we pass any legislation in this House about what does grow the economy, what does get people jobs, and what does allow businesses to have the flexibility and the space to prosper our economy. Is this going to fundamentally help? We answer no. That’s why we’re opposing this bill here this afternoon.

We want to stand for, and we do stand for, a flexible industrial relations framework and a flexible labour market. This bill does not assist in that. It’s another set of regulations that someone in business has to look out for.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve heard a very confused argument from the Opposition here this afternoon. According to them, either this bill is a nothing bill that does nothing, or it’s a bill that demonises labour hire companies and the sky is falling in. I don’t know that those members opposite over there can actually work out their own argument. Instead of being either of those things, this bill is a great bill about protecting workers’ rights. It is very good.

I have to do two shout-outs: first, to Darien Fenton, who first introduced this bill to the ballot many, many years ago, and to the member who has picked it up and worked with it, Kieran McAnulty. I too sat on the Education and Workforce Committee, and I am proud to have sat beside the member who has shepherded this bill through the House. He has done an absolutely fantastic job. He listened to those submitters. The submitters that we heard who were labour hire companies that came in all acknowledged that there were issues in the sector. He worked with those companies. He contacted those companies and worked with them to get a bill that would protect the workers’ rights and that was also something that those labour hire companies could work with. This might be a start—who knows? But it is a very, very good bill, and I am proud of the work that has been done to bring it to this point.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Unfortunately for my colleague Kieran McAnulty, a fellow Wairarapa MP, he got given the hospital pass. He didn’t want this bill. I know that because we speak to the same sorts of employers around the same electorate, and I know that I got a lot of people, a lot of employers, telling me that the original bill was a terrible, terrible bill. I know that Mr McAnulty would have received exactly the same messages from exactly the same people. Unfortunately, he caught the hospital pass given to him by his senior colleagues and he has found himself in an embarrassing situation where the bill as originally brought to the House has been stripped—has been stripped.

Following select committee discussions and agreement to changes, all sections relating to collective agreement coverage have been removed. Now, that was the whole purpose of the bill. That was the whole meat behind the bill. This bill has been stripped, and we’ve found a shallow framework of the original intentions of the bill, because, as previous speakers have said, this is a beat-up on the contractors that provide a fantastic service. We’ve had a member opposite absolutely telling us about the use of the contractors and how important they are to her business, and I would agree.

We’ve also heard from this side to say that there is already protection for employees to take personal grievances and employment grievances to the court. There’s absolutely adequately protection for employees already. So this has created another layer of bureaucracy, another layer of compliance—a feast for the lawyers to get themselves gorged on.

This is an opportunity not to protect employees, and it’s certainly not a bill that is going to increase productivity. It’s not going to help businesses thrive. It’s not going to reduce compliance. It’s not going to reduce bureaucracy. In fact, it’s going to do exactly the opposite of those things. Overall, it’s going to take away opportunity and it’s going to reduce GDP, if you like—if you want to call it that. It’s going to reduce wellbeing—if you want to use the term that the opposite side use frequently—from the communities that we all live in.

I know Mr McAnulty will be pleased to see it passed, but it has been quite clear to me what a tough road and probably quite a disappointing road it has been to track. With that, I am very pleased to oppose this bill.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do want to acknowledge you for always making an effort to pronounce my name correctly. Along with Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, people also get Kieran McAnulty’s name incorrectly pronounced—so it’s the Irish and the Tongan here.

Anyway, it’s a pleasure to stand here to be the last speaker on the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill. This bill is in the spirit of getting a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work, and when one feels a grievance about unfair treatment, one should be given the opportunity to air that unfair treatment through this process, which is what we are talking about here. All the members on the other side have forgotten that this is about the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill.

I want to commend Kieran McAnulty. This is historic for the class of 2017, and Kieran McAnulty, for his leadership and for the passionate delivery of the passage of this bill in the House, has been excellent.

I want to finish off by saying that every worker in New Zealand deserves to have their grievance aired, regardless of who the employer is—regardless of who the employer is. I commend this bill to the House. Malo ‘aupito.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Employment Relations (Triangular Employment) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a third time.

Bills

KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in Their Care) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 22 May.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m going to be very quick. It is a great pleasure to stand and talk about the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill.

When I last stood to speak, I was very pleased to thank the foster parents out there for the things that they’re doing for the children in their care. I also want to congratulate the member Hamish Walker for his intent for the bill, for enabling children to have the opportunity to get access to KiwiSaver funds. With that, I take my seat. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too would like to rise and offer the Green Party’s support for the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill. I would really like to acknowledge the member Hamish Walker for bringing this piece of legislation to the House. I think it’s a huge privilege for those of us in the House to be able to hear concerns from the community and to seek to address them through legislation, which is what this is. It’s always luck of the draw—and to have got a piece of legislation drawn so quickly, I have a degree of envy. But regardless of that, I think it’s a really important reflection of values, and I want to acknowledge the member for that.

The initial legislation, which we supported at first reading, we did have reservations about in terms of the breadth of coverage of all foster parents. What it’s basically about, for those people who may be listening and not knowing the context of it, was initially seeking for any foster parent or kin carer to be able to open an account with a KiwiSaver provider, for a child within their care. Our concern at first reading was that any foster parent, when we know that children move between foster-care parents all too often—really, that kind of responsibility in removing the say for guardians in that context may be inappropriate and create confusion and actually extend the parenting role beyond what is appropriate in what can be quite a short-term relationship, even though the focus of this Government is for children who are going to be able to get them back to their primary parents earlier and as quickly as possible, because we’re going to be putting more effort into supporting those families to be able to address the issues that they may have that have led to that child being taken into care. So we want to be able to maintain as many connections to the birth family as possible, to help them have that motivation to be able to address their issues, to be able to restore their child to their care safely as quickly as possible.

So we’re pleased to see that the changes through the select committee process addressed that concern, and that now it’s been brought in a bit further to cover those, with a new definition of “Oranga Tamariki guardians”. So that’s—and this is a bit technical for people who may be listening at home—“Any person appointed under section 110 of the Oranga Tamariki Act as sole guardian or additional guardian of a child.”, and any person appointed as a special guardian under section 113A of the Oranga Tamariki Act, and any person whose sole guardianship of a person is the result of section 119 of the Oranga Tamariki Act. So this is a useful contribution for those who, in effect, have guardian responsibilities but weren’t able to set up a KiwiSaver account for the children in their care, and who would be in their care in the long term.

The Greens have been long supportive of getting, particularly, children and families without much resource into KiwiSaver. We had the policy of the State setting up accounts for the children and putting in $1,000 to begin with, and for those under the poverty line where the State would contribute $200 a week so that by the time they turned 18, all of those children would have $12,000. That was an attempt to, actually, recognise that there is a significant problem around wealth inequality in this country, and that some young people who come from privilege get the benefit of their parents’ wealth through contributions to KiwiSaver, and that other kids miss out on. At some stage in the future, we would like to see more initiatives to address that wealth inequality. I hope, maybe, the member wants to look at this provision for a next member’s bill, and we would certainly be supportive of that.

Again, congratulations to the member for picking this up and forcing this conversation in the House. It’s appreciated.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call the Hon Alfred Ngaro—five minutes.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s an honour to be able to speak in the second reading of the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill with my parliamentary colleague, and caucus colleague also, Hamish Walker. He brings in this bill because he was approached by constituents in the local community who were pleading with them a case in which, over a number of years, not only have they been battling with Oranga Tamariki but also, too, the effort and the intent is to provide the best possible future for the children that are in their care. So that’s been the intent of this bill as well. Though we may think that KiwiSaver is a small part, in a sense, of the care process, the intent is that—and we would all agree, in this House—even foster children or children in care should have the same rights as all children. On many occasions and in many situations, many of the children that have come in there have often been through tragic and, almost always, traumatic situations and incidents. So the intent of a foster carer and kin carer is to provide, first of all, some normality, a caring place of wellbeing, and at the same time, too, if it is a long-term guardianship situation, it is to provide some normality in regards to progressing in the ways that most young people would as well. So that’s the whole intent of this bill as it has come.

We have around about 6,000 foster children that are currently in care, either in foster care or in kin care as well. So there is quite a significant number. When this bill was introduced, the whole intent of it was to, again, ensure the opportunities where, over a longer period of time, by amending section 35 of the KiwiSaver Act of 2006, this would enable those foster carers and kin carers, at the same time, the ability to be able to enrol these children into KiwiSaver. That was the whole intent. That’s what the effort was.

Over that period of time, I was in the Social Services and Community Committee, in which we heard 19 submissions, and, in fact, one even from the Inland Revenue Department themselves, to talk about the whole process in regards to the benefits and the pros and the cons to this. The majority were in support of the intent, but it was trying to fine-line, I suppose, the details of what was there.

I know that as the bill is reported back into the House, in this second reading, there are some changes. I want to commend the member for consistently advocating for the true intent of what this bill was. I know that the previous speaker, Jan Logie, spoke about ensuring that there was still provision for connectivity between biological parents and ensuring that their rights weren’t removed—that wasn’t the intent of this bill. This bill was—and particularly where there were long-term care arrangements, where there were quite clear situations in which they wanted to provide better provisions for the child; that was the intent of the bill. So as the bill comes back, by way of supporting the bill, National Party members of the select committee have put in our own minority view, but we’re supporting this. We know that currently, as it is formed, it will support up to 500 children and foster carers as well. We’re hoping that through the committee stage—I know the member himself will be putting some Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) to try and see if we can continue to improve the bill so that the rest of the 5,500 others that are there may be impacted, may be benefited, by this bill as it progresses through the House as well.

I think there are just a couple of things that I want to highlight that I believe are important in this bill in what it’s seeking to do. In particular, what I think is important is the eligibility to allow—and we heard from officials that, actually, currently, at the moment, under the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, there was still an ability and a provision to allow them to enrol, but that wasn’t always the case, hence the reasons why the advocacy from the member to give provision for the ability for those guardians to be able to make that call. This wasn’t, I believe, an onerous task. I don’t believe this was taking away the intent so that the connectivity between a biological parent would be removed. What this was, in the whole care plan and the pathway for the future for these young people, who often have difficult situations and circumstances—the intent of the member and those caregivers who came to him as constituents was to ensure that they too had the ability to make provision for them with this.

So, yes, while we do support this bill to the House, we look forward to the committee stage. The hope is that Government members will be able to have the opportunity to deliberate. Some of the SOPs that will be put forward by the member—I think that these changes will still have the intent of the bill but will improve it. We commend this bill to the House.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I too am delighted to stand and take a call in this, the second reading of the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill, and I too would like to congratulate the member Hamish Walker on getting this bill drawn from the ballot, but, I think more importantly, actually, taking a concern from a constituent and developing that into a member’s bill is a perfect example of the work that we actually do here in Parliament.

I have worked with many young foster children in foster care over the years, and I think it’s really, really important that we afford the same rights to those children as we do to other children. While it might seem a simple bill, it actually sends a good signal of how important (a) that we believe KiwiSaver is, but (b) that we do appreciate those particular children and their carers and, as I said, that we’re giving them the same rights and opportunities as any other child in this country.

We are committed to making sure that KiwiSaver remains strong for all New Zealanders. We think that this bill goes a long way with that. As I said, it might seem a small bill, but, actually, it adds to a whole package of bills that are going through the House around KiwiSaver.

I’d like to congratulate the Social Services and Community Committee for the work that they’ve done. We heard from the member Jan Logie here just two speakers previous that there were quite a number of amendments that went through that we do believe will strengthen this bill, and we look forward to it progressing through the House. With that, I commend it to the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on this piece of legislation, a member’s bill in the name of my colleague Hamish Walker. I think one of the important roles that we have as parliamentarians is to make sure those New Zealanders that perhaps don’t have a voice have a voice in this place, and so I’m particularly proud of my colleague for raising an issue that affects some of the most precious children in this country, who are under our foster care programme. We know from a lot of the work that the Hon Anne Tolley did when she was Minister for Children the sorts of long-term life outcomes that children in foster care often have compared to other New Zealand children. So this is one issue that, very practically, Hamish Walker has brought to the House with an intention of addressing and redressing the challenges of children in foster care.

I do have to say that while I accept, on behalf of my colleague, it was a challenging process and, in terms of a policy perspective, the committee didn’t land where we wanted it to, there are still opportunities as the bill progresses through the House to close some of that gap. I do want to put on record my thanks to other members of the select committee, the Social Services and Community Committee, for working very constructively with Hamish Walker, who’s the member in charge of this bill. The issues were particularly complex, and the officials, I thought, given we had officials from a number of departments—from the Inland Revenue Department and Oranga Tamariki—really took this in their grasp with the intention of forwarding it. But I do want to put on record that it didn’t go as far as National members wanted it to go. It hasn’t delivered the full policy intent, but it is definitely a step further than if there’d been no bill in the first place.

So the problem it was trying to solve is that when there are foster parents who are looking after foster children, they want to give those children every opportunity, and one of the opportunities is to open a KiwiSaver account and secure their financial future. It was somewhat frustrating that, actually, for those who are not legal guardians—they are foster parents; they don’t have the same level of rights and responsibilities over those children in their care. I think one of the advantages in bringing this issue to the House is the recognition that passing legislation is one way of solving a problem. The other way is actually looking at the processes and policies that exist within Government departments and, in this case, inside Oranga Tamariki. I don’t think, to be fair, they had realised the size of the problem or, actually, the level of angst that it created for foster parents and the children in their care.

That’s why I do want to acknowledge that the officials working with the select committee gave an undertaking to improve some of the existing processes within Oranga Tamariki to make it easier for those who were applying when the CEO—the alternative is the CEO of Oranga Tamariki can apply to open a KiwiSaver account for a foster child. I am convinced that one of the immediate results of Hamish Walker drafting this member’s bill, getting it pulled from the ballot, and having it successfully pass the first reading and going through the committee stage means that there will be more foster children, through the authority of the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki—when the requests are made through the social workers, it will be a greater priority than it had been before. It’s not a criticism of the work Oranga Tamariki do—I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m just saying this is a great opportunity now that a very real issue has been raised by a member of Parliament—in this case, Hamish Walker—who, by bringing a bill to this House, means we get to fix the problem for some of the children in foster care in New Zealand.

As I said, there’s more work to be done, and that was clearly indicated in the National members’ minority view, because the original intent of the legislation won’t be achieved with the changes that were made. The intention was to look at the 6,000 foster children that are not formally under legal guardianship arrangements. This forwards it for 500 children. I think there will be more that don’t fit inside the rules that the chief executive has the authority over, so I do think the number will increase. But the bill was always intended, from a policy perspective, to provide a pathway for those foster parents to enrol a child in their care, and it’s fair, as a committee, we didn’t progress far enough down that track. I do hope that the foster parents who were the constituents that Hamish Walker was representing when this bill was drafted—I do hope that they personally can see that bringing this issue to their local MP means that a large number of foster children will be better off and will be able to be enrolled in a KiwiSaver plan that they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to.

So we do see that there are opportunities for change. We were pleased that Oranga Tamariki, as I said before, planned to improve their internal systems and communications to make it easier for a caregiver to go through the process of the chief executive getting that approval and, therefore, getting a KiwiSaver account. We know that there are providers—for example, Simplicity, who have said that they would waive all their fees for the first five years for a child in foster care, which is incredibly generous and a very practical way that an organisation can support some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable children.

So I’m thrilled to support this in the second reading, and I want to really acknowledge Hamish Walker for bringing forward a very real issue. I think, sometimes, there’s a view that unless the issue, you know, affects tens of thousands of New Zealanders, it shouldn’t be afforded the time of the House. I totally disagree—I totally disagree. There are vulnerable New Zealanders who deserve a voice in this place, and it is totally and absolutely the job of the local MP to bring that voice to Parliament. To have a member’s bill drafted and pulled from the ballot is an incredible responsibility and a privilege, and I know that foster children up and down New Zealand will benefit from this work. Thank you.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I really just want to make a couple of comments about this excellent bill, the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill, the name of which is likely to change at committee.

Firstly, the two things that I think are really valuable about this bill are its emphasis on the importance of long-term financial planning and the fact that parents and carers have an important role to play there, because KiwiSaver is an absolute cornerstone of New Zealand’s essentially long-term financial framework. That’s the first thing I want to say—that the prudence in financial planning that this encourages is really good, and also linking it in with the importance of foster care, the many people in our community who care for children who aren’t their own children and may not, in fact, be part of their own whānau.

What is important is the great work the select committee has done here. It is to really take an excellent idea and refine and review it—in particular, recognising the perhaps a little loose definition of “foster carer” and recognising the fact that foster carers come in many different shapes and sizes. In particular, there are some carers who may only care for those children for months, or perhaps even weeks. These financial decisions, these decisions about long-term financial planning, should be made by people who have the long view of the child’s welfare.

Now, we may think that KiwiSaver is a great idea, but the fact of the matter is that in some instances, it may not be the right decision. We’ve heard the member talk about some providers providing fees waivers. Not all do, and so we want to avoid those possibilities—that someone puts the child into a KiwiSaver and they end up with a negative balance; they’re worse off than when they started. So we need to make sure that the appropriate carer is the person who makes that decision. That’s essentially what this bill does.

So congratulations to the member for taking a great idea and taking it through that select committee process, seeing it through to a situation where we’ve got the ability for foster children to get exactly the same benefits, through the appropriate legal guardian—whether that be Oranga Tamariki or another appointed guardian—not simply by someone who happens to have their day-to-day care on an interim basis. That’s a great step. It’s good to see that there’s support across the House for this. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this very fine piece of legislation, the KiwiSaver (Foster Parents Opting in for Children in their Care) Amendment Bill, in its second reading, in the name of my very good friend and colleague Hamish Walker, the excellent MP for Clutha-Southland. I just want to acknowledge Hamish Walker here for a minute because of the hard work—

Hon Member: Only a minute?

SIMEON BROWN: —that he is doing—actually, for 10 minutes. No, I’ll talk about the bill, but I want to talk about the work that he’s doing and the fact that he is listening to his constituents and trying to make sure that their views, their concerns, and the issues which matter to them are being brought to this House. I know how hard he is working in doing that, particularly with the work he’s doing around the Lumsden Maternity Centre as well.

I also want to just put on the record my appreciation for the hard work that our foster carers do in New Zealand. I have met with a number of foster carers in my own electorate of Pakuranga and want to acknowledge them for the hard work that they do in making sure that the most vulnerable children in our community have a safe home, a loving home, and somewhere where they can be cared for. But I also want to just say that, from the experiences that they’ve shared with me, it’s a challenging relationship with foster children, because often those foster children will only be with them for a short period of time, sometimes for longer, and being able to be considered their legal guardian can be a process which takes some time.

That brings me to the importance of this piece of legislation, which has a very worthy goal of ensuring that foster children are able to open their own KiwiSaver accounts. That’s an important goal because being able to secure one’s own financial future—their own financial independence, their own ability to make their own decisions in their lives into their future—is an important one that we believe all New Zealanders should be able to have. We know how important it is for young people to be able to start saving early so that they are able to purchase their first home, and the fact that their KiwiSaver funds can be used for that.

I’d like to acknowledge all of the submitters who submitted on this bill. I wasn’t part of the select committee, but I’ve spoken to Hamish Walker throughout this process, and he’s kept me well informed, because it’s an issue that I hold very dear to my heart as well. He has explained some of the process and some of the submitters and some of the stories that have been heard through this process.

In particular, there were two stories which stood out to me, which I think are worthy of being repeated here in the House because of what this bill is trying to do. One of them was a story of a young child who was very committed to saving every penny and every dime and managed to save $2,000. But that money was then stolen by his foster parents. I think that was an incredibly sad story to hear, and it’s something which highlights the importance of a KiwiSaver savings scheme which locks that money away, makes sure it’s ring-fenced, and is there for that young person to be able to make their own decisions and their own choices as to what they want to do in their lives.

The second one was another young person, who had managed to save $700—not a huge amount of money, but a substantial amount of money for a young person to have saved—and that money was then lost because that child had moved so many times between foster homes. That highlights what many of our foster children do, the number of homes that they are in, and the journey that they are on in their journey through life as they make their way into adulthood. So this bill seeks to allow those young people the opportunity to be able to open up their own KiwiSaver funds to secure their future, as it were, to be able to make decisions for their future.

But this bill, in the National Party’s view, doesn’t go far enough. Currently, the law states, under section 35 of the KiwiSaver Act, that children under the age of 16 can only be enrolled if all their guardians consent or if approved by the guardian of—the Act defines the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act guardian as the following people or organisations, under circumstances of the Oranga Tamariki Act: the chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, an iwi social exchange, a cultural social service, or the director of a child and family support service. Unfortunately, what that has meant is that Oranga Tamariki has never opened a KiwiSaver account for a foster child, despite many requests being made to social workers for that to be done. That is because they do not get across the desk.

What this bill does is it changes that so that those children who do have a legal guardian will be able to. It will be, as the title of the bill suggests, the Oranga Tamariki guardian, and they will be able to open a KiwiSaver account for the child in their care. However, this leaves approximately 5,900 foster children who are without a guardian without the ability to be able to open a KiwiSaver account, and so the vast majority of young people who are in foster care will still not have the ability to be able to open a KiwiSaver account. I think that’s something which this House does need to reflect on as we go towards the committee stage.

I’m pleased that this will be going through with support from across this House, but as it goes towards the committee stage, I hope that this is something where all sides of this House can consider the Supplementary Order Papers which my good friend and colleague Hamish Walker will be putting forward to try and seek to widen the number of foster children who are able to open up their own KiwiSaver accounts.

I think it’s important to note that, yes, there are concerns around the fees that KiwiSaver accounts can accrue and young people being able to understand what their KiwiSaver account may mean. I know that not all KiwiSaver providers are going to necessarily remove all the fees, and that’s certainly something to be aware of in part of that conversation with the young person, but there are also many young people who are incredibly aspirational and want the ability to be able to secure their future and to open their KiwiSaver accounts, to be able to take some control in their own lives, because this may be one of the only ways that they will be able to actually show some independence and have some independence and make decisions for themselves.

So I commend this bill to the House. It is an excellent piece of legislation. As I said at the start, it shows a member of Parliament who is listening to his constituents, who is trying to make sure that the issues which come across his desk are brought to this Parliament, and that is exactly what I tried to do with my bill on synthetic drugs. Unfortunately, the Government decided to vote that down, but this bill, I’m glad, is continuing to progress, and I wish Hamish Walker all the very best with the continuing stages, and I hope that it can be widened up so that as many foster children as possible are able to open KiwiSaver accounts. I commend this bill to the house.

Bill read a second time.

Name changed to KiwiSaver (Oranga Tamariki Guardians) Amendment Bill.

Bills

End of Life Choice Bill

Second Reading

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I move, That the End of Life Choice Bill be now read a second time.

As this bill approaches its second reading, it is already over four years old. Very few bills engage with our lawmaking process as fully as this one does. This House supported the motion that the bill be read a first time by a margin of 76 to 44, and, immediately after that vote, it supported a motion that the Justice Committee would have nine months instead of the usual six to report back. The report back period was extended three more times for a variety of reasons. In total, this bill was at select committee for 16 months. Almost 40,000 New Zealanders made a submission to that committee, which travelled to 14 centres and heard 1,350 submissions in person.

I say all of this for two reasons. Number one: there has been rigorous consultation on this bill. By sheer numbers, it is the most rigorous consultation on any bill in this Parliament’s history. Now, I know I’m opposed to rushed legislation, but this is the opposite. But I also say for another reason that it’s been rigorous, and that is to record the enormous time and effort that has been put in by the Justice Committee chair, Raymond Huo, and the members of the Justice Committee. I want to thank them for their monumental effort. I should include other members of Parliament, who sat in on the various hearings up and down the country, and the officials from the Office of the Clerk, who have been unfailingly professional right throughout this marathon process. I’d also like to thank the committee for hosting me, as a non-voting member of the committee, for the purposes of this bill.

What came out of that? Well, the committee has made a number of changes that improve the bill from its original form. Ministry of Justice and health officials also deserve our thanks for poring over existing legislation and the regulations in the rest of our legal framework to make sure that this bill, coming back to the House, aligns with all other existing legislation and regulation. These include the Burial and Cremation Act, the Health Act, and the Coroners Act. The committee also strengthened the complaints process by making it explicit that the registrar can refer cases to police, the Health and Disability Commissioner, the coroner, or any other authority that it deems relevant. The committee made it explicit that if coercion is suspected at any point in the process, then the person becomes ineligible for assisted dying. The committee made it explicit that life insurance contracts must be valid in the case of an assisted death.

However, I think it’s worth pausing on the fulsomeness and time that’s gone into this process, in comparison with the relatively small amount of change made to the bill. Some have tried to run the argument that it is a poorly drafted bill because it was drafted by a private member. I put it to those people that over 16 months, with many thousands of submissions and expert advice from two Government departments, the committee has returned a workable bill that is very substantially the same as the one that was introduced almost two years ago, and that shouldn’t be surprising. This is a bill that the Attorney-General has said is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. This is a bill that is consistent with, and modelled on, the Canadian legislation that has worked successfully in Canada now for three years. This is a bill that is remarkably similar to the Victorian legislation adopted by that state of Australia, which came into effect just a few weeks ago. This is a bill which has been endorsed by Matt Vickers, who is here tonight, and he endorses it with the advice of the legal team that pursued Seales v Attorney-General.

I’m mindful that the Standing Orders prevent me from discussing changes that might be anticipated at the committee of the whole House stage in detail. However, I’d like to reflect on some changes that the committee considered, and reports in its report that it decided not to make. At the insistence of some members, the committee restricted itself from making any substantive changes to the bill, and I want to record my disappointment with that approach. We could’ve got much better value out of the considerable time and resource that went into that process if all members of the Justice Committee had been prepared to work more constructively. Nevertheless, issues that were raised, and that might be changed in future stages of this process are whether assisted dying should be limited to those only with a terminal illness, and not those with a grievous and irremediable medical condition; whether the settings are correct for the assessment of the patient’s competence to understand the nature of assisted dying and its consequences; and amending the bill to either allow or prohibit health professionals from raising the option of assisted dying with a patient.

Outside of the select committee process, New Zealand First have raised with me the prospect that the commencement clause should include the condition that the bill comes into effect after being confirmed by a referendum in which every adult New Zealander is eligible to vote. Others have raised the prospect of explicitly deeming that a person cannot be eligible for assisted dying under this bill purely on condition of disability, old age, or a purely psychological condition. Suffice to say, I listened to these concerns and intend to move an amendment that will address such issues. It has been prepared by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, thanks to the facilitation of the Minister of Justice. I believe it’s a high-quality amendment that can give comfort to those members who have concerns about the bill as reported back from the Justice Committee. It is on that basis that I ask members who have such concerns that they vote this bill through the second reading.

In all, we’ve had a lengthy and comprehensive process that has returned a workable bill, not so very different from that which was introduced. Our parliamentary procedure allows for further changes to be made at the committee of the whole House stage that I believe will further improve what is a world-class bill.

Now, let me turn to some of the public debate that has taken place over the past 19 months. I have personally attended over 30 public meetings, literally from Kerikeri to Gore. Some of those meetings were attended by over 300 people, and a range of issues were canvassed. I’ve also privately met with people from the religious community, my fellow MPs, people from the medical profession, across civil society, constituents, and a much greater number of private meetings over that period. The debate has been fulsome, and I’d like to thank those that have engaged constructively. But I’d also like to say that there’s been some disappointing contributions. People have said, for instance, that assisted dying being legalised can lead to suicide contagion. There is no evidence for that claim and those that have hijacked such a sensitive topic in this country with no evidence, I believe, should be seriously considering how they approach political debate in the future.

People from the medical profession have said that they will somehow have their careers or their profession damaged. That is plainly untrue. The only obligation faced by a doctor is that, if they wish to conscientiously object, they merely need to tell the patient so that the patient can get another doctor assigned to them by the Ministry of Health.

People in the disability community have said that somehow legalising assisted dying will devalue them, while others such as Philip Patston have pointed out that this bill does not allow people to have an assisted death purely because they are disabled already—and we’re going to clarify that even further. But, actually, it’s those people who somehow imply that disabled people are not able to make their own choices that are taking the debate around autonomy and dignity back three decades.

I won’t have time to canvass all of the debate and all of the arguments that have been raised and, in so many cases, refuted over the last 19 months. But let me leave members with two thoughts. One is that the opponents like to say that, in many jurisdictions, bills like this have been voted down by legislatures, and they are correct. It is true—to scare members of Parliament in other legislatures away from voting for these bills. But in not one of the now 15 jurisdictions housing 200 million people that have legalised assisted dying have they gone back. That is the difference between the rhetoric and the reality. Finally, I ask what does this House say to the small minority of people who find themselves suffering at the end of their life? Do we require them to suffer on for the morality of others, or do we give them compassion and choice? Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The Hon Amy Adams—a five minute call.

Hon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Mr Speaker, thank you. I do want to come down and speak tonight in this debate. It is an incredibly important issue for this Parliament, and not an easy one; one that is complex, difficult, emotional, and one in which all MPs have been actively engaged, thinking, being lobbied, discussing. I want to first of all thank the member who has brought the bill, David Seymour. It is courageous—and I don’t mean that in the Yes Minister sense, but truly courageous—to take a stance on something you know will be so divisive and difficult. But there is clearly a mood in the public of New Zealand for Parliament to have this debate. It’s not the first time it’s come, but it’s certainly the time that I think the public has sent such a clear message that they want to see this Parliament properly consider this issue, and so I thank the member for doing that. As he said himself, he probably had no idea quite what he was getting into when he took it on, but he has been tireless in it.

It’s almost trite to say it’s a complex issue. Of course it’s a complex issue. There is probably almost no more complex issue, but that doesn’t mean we can shy away from it. I want to speak very personally as to how I see this issue, and my position is clear in one sense and not in another—clear in that I absolutely believe there should be a method by which the terminally ill can choose their time and the manner of their death. That is a belief that I hold, but it is not unfettered, and I don’t say that without recognising the challenges around it.

At the same time, though, I find that the bill in its present form is not one that I think is ready to be passed into law. But what I am going to do is vote for it at the second reading because I think the select committee, for a range of reasons—and it’s certainly not a criticism of the members—failed to do what the select committee would normally do and work through the bill’s deficiency. I think the bill deserves that. I think the bill has the kernels in it of what could be a good system, but I don’t think it’s there yet. So I want to be very clear that my support is to see it progressed to the committee stage and to allow there to be an opportunity for the bill to be amended in ways that I think would remedy some of my concerns.

Principally, I do not support at all the extension to grievous and irremediable suffering as is currently in the bill. In my view, there could be a workable scheme devised to allow people for whom death is inevitable and is imminent to, as I say, choose the time and method of their own death. The bill is currently far wider than that, and I think the concerns that have been raised with me by the mental health community and by the disability community in particular are valid. I do have real concerns as to how that could work. But should the bill be constrained to be truly end of life and allowing people, as I say, for whom death is already inevitable and imminent to have some say in how that works, I support that. I do not believe the State has a role in how people choose to experience their last days on earth.

All of us are affected by our own experiences in this issue. For me, it was watching my mother die a gruesome, painful, and dehumanising death, and it wasn’t because there was a lack of palliative care. It wasn’t because there wasn’t every opportunity and every drug available, and if she’d wanted to spend her last days drugged to the eyeballs, feeling nothing, I’m sure that was possible, but that isn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was to be able to choose exactly when that end would come in the last few days, and that’s really all we were talking about. This was a woman who was proud, independent, intelligent, who knew what she wanted, and the last thing she wanted was to be able to have the ability to choose the time of her death. Instead, we watched her literally get eaten alive from a vicious melanoma and suffer, as I say, in immeasurable ways. There should be the opportunity to work out if we can devise a scheme in which that sort of suffering doesn’t need to happen.

Now, I’m not blind to the very real challenges around coercion, and they do need to be looked at. I’ve spoken with the member around how we enhance the coercion controls in the bill, and, as I said, I do think there are some significant changes that need to be made. But I strongly am of the view that this Parliament owes it to the people of New Zealand who have said they want this issue properly looked at and debated. We owe it to them to have a chance to get this bill into a workable stage and to allow those, actually, I believe, very few people who will necessarily take up this choice. None the less, it is one that the State should stay out of and let them find a way to choose the time and place of their own death. So I support the bill at second reading and I look forward to its progress.

AGNES LOHENI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in opposition to this bill. This bill goes against my core values and everything that I stand for. This is a conscience vote, and it is unconscionable to me that we could allow State-sanctioned killing. I want to give voice to our Pacific community, who have come together. They have petitioned, they have emailed MPs, they have gathered at the front steps of Parliament, they have met in church and community halls up and down the country. They’ve reached out to me and to the Hon Alfred Ngaro and to all our Pacific MPs in this House to convey their strong and heartfelt objection to this bill.

I stand with our Pacific communities. It is this community and the values it stands for that has shaped who I am today. As a spokesperson for Pacific peoples, it is the community that I will serve to get better outcomes in health and education, and to be aspirational and support opportunities for our young. Our Pacific voice is a collective one that speaks for our families and our communities and our vulnerable. We are a Pacific community who holds strong to our faith, and we hold the value that life is sacred.

This bill is in conflict with those values and our Pacific culture of care. In Pacific families, it is our duty to look after and care for our elders, be it our parents, our grandparents, aunties and uncles. They are treasured and respected in our culture. We care for them out of love and deep respect for the hard work and the sacrifices they have given to their families. This bill opens the door to the vulnerable being coerced and to feelings of being a burden on their families. This bill erodes the sanctity of life and aspects of social relations that are important for strong, healthy, resilient families and communities. This bill focuses on the individual—my life, my choice—that is in conflict to Pacific values and culture, which sees and interacts with society through a lens of families and communities.

We have a suicide problem in New Zealand. Pacific peoples have one of the second-highest suicide rates overall and one of the highest suicide rates amongst our Pacific youth. We cannot hide from that. At a time when we should be rallying to address suicide, at a time when our message should remain “Suicide is never the answer.”, we are backing off. I’d just like to reflect on a submission made by a general practitioner in South Auckland, and I quote from the submission: “I am concerned about the message sent to our youth about the validity of suicide—we are telling [our] youth that suicide is not the answer and yet, saying to our disabled and terminally ill that it is. Those youth [who] have talked to me about the issue have mentioned the double standard.”

It is no comfort that Mr Seymour says that his carefully crafted bill will only apply to terminally ill patients who have a set period of time to live, because the experience of the Netherlands and Canada shows us that the slippery slope is inevitable. No amount of drafting will stop definitions such as “unbearable suffering” sliding out to mean things such as extreme depression or it being unbearable to live without a loved one who has died.

It has been said that a nation’s greatness can be measured by how it treats its most vulnerable, its weakest members. We cannot risk one wrongful death. This bill will not guarantee that that will not happen. There are people that I’ve met, people in the gallery, who have physical disabilities or what they would describe as grievous and irremediable medical conditions. They have shared their stories, reached out to all members in this House, and implored us to value their life. I value their lives and I oppose this bill.

MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, in the first instance in this debate, wish to acknowledge the member David Seymour for bringing this issue and this bill to the House. I believe he does so with a high degree of integrity and for reasons that are only good. I acknowledge him for that. At the first reading of this bill, I supported it to the select committee on that basis and on the basis that I believe this is a complex and important ethical issue that New Zealanders and this House deserve the opportunity to properly consider. I did so with doubts in my mind at that time, and at the time of this second reading the conclusion that I have reached is that those doubts have not been sufficiently dealt with by the debate that has occurred, and my vote at this reading will be to not allow the bill to proceed.

There are a couple of important reasons for this that I wish to put on the record. The first is on the impact on vulnerable people within our communities. In this regard, I’ve been particularly persuaded by many of the representations made by New Zealand’s disability community. I wish to especially acknowledge Dr Hūhana Hickey, one of New Zealand’s foremost disability community advocates, and a constituent of mine by the name of Raymond Mok. Raymond, who was approached to meet with me on a number of occasions, is a man around about my age who suffers from a condition known as Duchenne muscular dystrophy. It is an incurable and progressive disease that means that Raymond is unable to move about by himself. He requires assistance with his breathing and is not able to lead a life in the same way that many of us do. He is a person who has told me that at points in his life he would have, if the option had been available to him, taken up the option of ending his life, but with help and support, with mental health assistance he is a person who has been able to live a meaningful life.

Raymond tells me, when he meets with me, that his concern with this bill is that it creates a situation where people who have, as he does, a grievous and irredeemable medical condition—would be people who would be placed in a category in which the end of their life is legally permissible. And that is not a category that many other New Zealanders are put into. This is a concern that I share. I’m concerned that in many cases the people who would have access to end of life choice under this bill are the old, are the unwell, are people with devastating and difficult diseases. By definition, these people are often in a vulnerable position.

I acknowledge the genuine attempts that have been made to try and ensure that overt pressure is not placed upon people to access the provisions of this bill. But I do not believe that it is possible to design a system in which that occurs in every single occasion. And the evidence from overseas jurisdictions is that there will be cases in which people have pressure put on them to access the provisions of this bill. And while I acknowledge that in most cases the people accessing its provisions would be people who freely make that choice, for me, having even a small number of New Zealanders whose lives are ended through a legal provision and not through their own choice is sufficient reason not to support that legal framework.

I am also deeply concerned on the basis of conversations with people and my knowledge of people, including my own loved ones, approaching an end of life situation that many of those people do not experience overt pressure but they feel the implicit pressure. They feel the burden on their families, they worry about the pain that the final months may put them through, and they may see it simply as a better choice for other people to access the end of life provisions that are included within this bill. I do not believe that is conscionable.

This bill moves us from having a hard line in which there is no legal option to access end of life choice to a soft line. We create the option, and that means that further debates will inevitably occur about where we draw the lines, and that again has been the experience in overseas jurisdictions. And it is my concern that, if the bill proceeds, we will be back in this House and we will be considering further extensions to the bill. That is the international experience.

I’m a social democrat. I believe that individual rights are important but I also believe that when individual rights are afforded, people with power and agency are able to exercise them more and vulnerable people are able to exercise them less. I believe that we also need to consider the broader social context, the need to protect the vulnerable. This is a difficult debate. It is not easy for any member, and I will be voting no.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Can I begin by acknowledging the members of the Justice Committee, who have put in such a long number of hours and have heard arguments from both sides of this particular option that currently sits before the House. I know that, in the environment they had to do that, they had to maintain a high degree of decorum even though emotions at times would most definitely have run high, as people have their particular view on an issue like this. I want to acknowledge the mover of the bill. I know that he does so from a deep belief that this would be something that would be of advantage to many New Zealanders. But it’s not a bill that, having considered it for a long period of time, I can support.

I would acknowledge the comments that were made by the previous speaker, Michael Wood. I think it would be something that we could all do, talk about people we know who have a particular challenge in their life that might lead them to a point where they wanted to no longer live. And I think the way Mr Wood outlined that, in the case of his friend, is a very good example of what many of us will know.

The other issue is on the coercive power that a bill like this could see exercised over elderly and vulnerable New Zealanders. We often have debates in this House about how we should be treating people who are elderly or, for that matter, people who are living in difficult circumstances, perhaps through their finances or their family situation or some other such reason. I think when we do that, there’s always a desire, regardless of the outcome, to ensure that there is the best possible option available to the people who need that particular assistance.

What concerns me here, though, is that as we have an ageing population—we know what the New Zealand population profile starts to look like and we know that the cost of healthcare for all New Zealanders in the later stages of their life can be a huge fraction of the total health bill; a disproportionate fraction, in fact. I think it would be unfortunate if we were to see people starting to think, “Well, I’ve had a good innings, so now maybe I should perhaps opt to make the choice that makes it easy for so many others.” That’s been mentioned by two other speakers already.

I can only think about my own mother, who died a difficult death with her brain cancer. I had to go and tell her what the specialist had discovered when she had the scan, and her options were at that stage no treatment and death perhaps within a month, or to undergo some treatment and life could be extended perhaps as far as 18 months. There was no in-between. It was: choose to live on or choose to go very, very quickly. When I told her that, it was very distressing for me, I have to say, but she just sort of sat up and said, “What, a month?”, and I said “Yep, Mum, it could be a month.” And she said, “Well, bugger that. I’ll have the treatment.” It wasn’t easy; it was awful. But she did it as much from her desire for us to have a farewell, if you like—the last time that we would have with her, the last weeks or months or whatever it was. The treatment that she got, I think, didn’t alleviate all of her pain by any manner or means, but it did give her a degree of comfort, and in the last hours of her life she was not able to experience or was not experiencing that particular pain. I only say that because it is in itself the start of a confusion, because that was her choice.

In this case, I don’t think we should have a bill passed into an Act that makes that choice to end a life so much easier than it is at the moment.

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Twenty-five years ago I held my father’s hand as he died, and he died with massive amounts of morphine in his system. He was someone who was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and given a few weeks to live. He lived six weeks, and in that time he held court for his friends from the RSA to come and visit him and he was able to be farewelled by us individually.

When his body collapsed, he went to Matamata Pohlen Hospital and he knew to say, “I have terrible pain. I need morphine.” He got morphine and he got morphine and he got morphine, and one day later he was dead. He died without losing his dignity.

I have always been opposed to euthanasia as of right on the basis that people like my dad got to, essentially, tell everybody when they wanted to go, and I thought that was available to everybody. It’s not available to everybody. It’s not available for people like my dad who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and without a family saying, “You give my dad everything he needs.” That’s the shame of this.

I have always been very concerned about coercion that could be brought upon vulnerable people, and it is something that as a lawyer who has 20 years’ experience before I came to this place—I have seen people try to manipulate parents and others who are vulnerable. So when I spoke with David Seymour about this issue, he assured me and showed me exactly what he wanted to put into the committee stage of this bill to deal with those concerns. I am concerned that the Justice Committee, for whatever reason, was not able to properly amend this bill in the way that I think many submitters would have expected it to do. I don’t know what those reasons were, but it clearly did not do what most people would expect. That is, I think, unfortunate for the submitters.

It’s also very unfortunate for David Seymour, who, in my time politics, has done more than anybody to give up a ministerial career, as he did, an opportunity to be a Minister, to keep this bill going through as a private member. That is a huge commitment and it’s not one that I think many other people in Parliament would do, and that is actually because it’s a genuine belief. Mr Seymour may be occasionally extremely irritating—extremely—but that does not mean to say he does not have very genuinely held beliefs, and he has showed utter commitment on this.

I’ve talked to many people about this issue. It’s troubled me for a long time, and this year I have been very troubled by it because I’ve felt that, having been opposed to it, I was on the wrong side. I am on the wrong side of it in opposing it. I’m on the right side now, saying that everybody deserves some dignity in their lives.

I talked to Amy Adams about her mother dying—it is awful to think that people are eaten away by something, losing their face, told that one day they could die when the cancer breaks through to their brain. What a dreadful thing to do, and there are options. Somebody shouldn’t have to say, like my dad did, “I have so much pain, I need morphine.” and to have his children saying, “Please give my father more morphine.” because that’s what he wanted. I would do it again. It’s the right thing to do, and it preserved his dignity, and I am very shocked and saddened to hear that so many people don’t have that. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): I actually can’t see my notes. I’m crying before I even say anything. It is appropriate that every single member in this House is feeling an incredible weight on our shoulders to get up and speak to this bill, and it is an absolute privilege to get up and speak to this bill on behalf of all of the Green Party MPs. We are supporting this second reading of the End of Life Choice Bill. We are supporting this because our members worked hard and vigorously among ourselves, among our movement, to come up with a policy after assessing and debating views from all along the entire continuum of this debate, with discussions among our activists, our members, our disabled members, and our community networks, including at our MP level. And we decided that we support people with a terminal illness to be able to dictate the circumstances of their passing, to allow for that dignity at the seen end of their life.

This policy as it is currently drafted goes beyond what we, and I, believe we stand for, which limits end of life choice to people with a terminal illness. We are supporting the second reading to go through, because we think this debate is a deserved one for all New Zealanders. We want to see it go through the stages, and we want to see safer and better protections put in place and, indeed, to see a draft bill that ends up aligning with the scope of our Green Party, member-fought-for position. We think that is worthy enough of putting this through passage to continue, to see the debate on strengthening protections against coercion, on ensuring that this bill does not extend end of life choice beyond people with a terminal illness. We believe that that is how we can best honour the rigorous and long-held, robust, and informed discussion of our members.

I also want to acknowledge, as a Māori woman, that there are diverse ranges of opinions held among our Māori community—that there simply is not one particular clear view, from a tikanga Māori perspective, on what is a right decision here. I acknowledge that any decision that I could be standing up for tonight to support would solicit criticism from any number of my own friends and family, and that all that is left is to stand and speak to what I think is the right thing to do. I acknowledge that, in Te Ao Māori, no decisions can be seen as individuals making decisions in isolation of whānau and community, and that we have a preciously held understanding of the importance of relationships and connections when we make decisions about our own person—that they are never about our own person, that all of our individual decisions impact and ripple out to our whānau, our hapū, our iwi, and our community.

I acknowledge also the people who have come to all of us directly with passion and pleading, who sit along the entire spectrum of experience, with fear and anxiety, for all the different opinions and insights that they hold—that I have heard directly and passionately from people who need to have this decision.

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

MARAMA DAVIDSON: Before the dinner break, I stood to clarify that the Greens will be supporting the second reading of the End of Life Choice Bill dependent on good changes to be made further down the track to ensure that we limit the scope to those with a terminal illness, to also ensure that we have got good supports in place to reduce coercion, to not allow for ongoing stigma that disability groups came to us to address directly, and that focusing on terminal illness will be part of the solution to ensure that we not only focus on death with dignity but that we do all we can to focus on quality of life, and for people to ensure—for us here in this House to ensure—that we understand the related environmental factors that we have to be responsible for to allow people to live their lives to the fullest and healthiest extent that they possibly can, to understand that that means that we cannot look at death with dignity in isolation of ensuring that people have access to good systems for good lives.

I want to acknowledge Matt Vickers, whom I was privileged to speak to over the dinner break, and Lecretia Seales and her leading advocacy for wanting people to be able to have that choice, when all is said and done, at the end of their lives, as the last piece of power and dignity that is available to them, as long as we have made sure that we have wrapped supports around people to live good lives, and they have been at the forefront in a very public way, sharing a very intimate story of their fight for this piece of legislation.

The whānau focus that I spoke about before dinner goes further, and I want to, at this point, acknowledge that this bill is very clear on the conscientious objection for physicians to be able to opt out and not have to be part of the process of a terminally ill person making this decision. And the Greens absolutely support that protection for their morality, for their conscientious objection as well.

It has been said over the dinner break by other MPs that tonight the House is full of human emotion, and that is absolutely as it should be. I was saying before the dinner break that the Greens have had—I think most MPs, most of the members in this House will have had—representations from across the board, including from people who desperately want to be able to have this choice; including from people who are validly fearful of what stigma this will create for them living their lives, perhaps with a disability and having fears around the message that will be sent about the value that they give to their communities; including from people who are concerned about our definition of “quality of life”—people who are actually living lives and need to be valued as worthy contributors simply for being who they are, and that that may not be up to current standards of living life with dignity according to the narrative that is dominant at the moment, that we need to understand there are many different ways to live with dignity, and that any legislation needs to not add further stigma to a narrative to deny people the different ways of living.

So I add, and end, again that the Greens are very clear that a focus on allowing this choice for people with a terminal illness will help to address a lot of those valid fears and anxieties that I as an individual MP with my conscientious choice do support the mana motuhake, the sovereignty also, of people to be able to make that choice—that that level of mana motuhake as a person is also a valid, well celebrated aspect of Te Ao Māori as well, that our stories are full of individual achievement, celebrations, and success, and examples of mana motuhake, but that that does not ever have to separate how that impacts on the wider inclusion of whānau and community in being able to be an informed part of these decisions that we make.

It has been an absolute honour and deep anxiety to speak on this bill tonight. Again, I think this debate deserves to go forward. I think we absolutely want to see stronger supports put in place. That is what the Greens’ ongoing support is dependent on. I think that New Zealanders deserve to have this properly informed and robust debate. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand as the first member of the select committee which considered this bill to speak in the House tonight, and it’s been quite some journey getting here. I will be supporting this bill to the committee of the whole House stage, and I implore those members in the House who are undecided to do the same thing.

I stand here very disappointed that we don’t have a bill that went through a process where those of us who travelled the country, heard thousands of submissions, read thousands of submissions, were exposed to people with a vast variety of views weren’t able to take those views and ensure that this bill—this bill that has arrived at this House from a very, very long journey, through those who have brought the subject to the House unsuccessfully; those who, in case of a Lecretia Seales, have taken it through the courts to arrive at this House. There have been many journeys to come to this place, and we, when we come to this House, come for many reasons, but I think everyone here comes to do the right thing.

Now, we all will have an incredible number of pressures on us. I myself am a practising Catholic. You don’t think I get a bit of pressure from my mother when I go home? My father spent six years in the seminary. You don’t think that memory doesn’t fit long? However, what I have been elected to do here is to do the absolute right thing. So, in sitting through the submissions that we did—the thousands of them—as we went around the country, we had everyone who stood before us, who spoke before us, come from a very considered position. They all came from an emotional position, but what they all didn’t have the advantage of is doing what we as a select committee did: to hear the different sides.

I have spent my life before this place as a detective, and one thing you learn as a police officer and as a detective is that there are always two sides. And I implore those who have made up their mind to actually have a look at the other side of the argument, because there has been much disinformation about this out there—so much of that disinformation that, unfortunately, is used to reinforce. But can I ask members of this House, because now it comes down to us, to actually look at the information. Give yourself a chance to actually see beyond much of the rhetoric, much of the downright lies that are being told in relation to this, and the only place we now have to do it, having been denied the opportunity at select committee—the only place we have to do it—is at the committee of the whole House. Now, that will be another process, and there will be those—I understand there is going to be quite a large number of amendments, but we can see through that. We are politicians, we are elected to be here, we can see through those who will come here with an objective, determined to have their way. But sit back and watch and take it all on board, because that’s what we’re here to do.

Can I just share a personal story? I stand here as a cancer survivor—someone who, my surgeon nicely told me after he did give me the sign off, wasn’t expected to make it. He wasn’t quite that blatant with me at the time during my treatment, but I knew I was pretty crook. So I have faced down my own destiny.

Also, I have a disabled son. My son was born very ill, not expected to live, intellectually disabled, and clearly he was going to have a hard road ahead of him. It’s quite something to be standing with your wife when the paediatrician tells you to your face and looks you in the eye and says, “You know there won’t be a post-mortem if this boy dies, don’t you?” Well, there’s only one way you can take that. But there wasn’t a post-mortem, he didn’t die, and any implied option, in that case, wasn’t taken up. However, that same boy, about three months later was—the predicted pneumonia, his inability to breathe by himself, did occur. Against all advice, his paediatrician put him on a respirator. The reason they didn’t want him on a respirator was because at that age it was going to be clear that they would never get him off. At that stage, because of his difficulties breathing, then the fear was that his only option was to remain on a respirator. When he was on the respirator, he was fine. He wasn’t in a comatose state, which often is the case when people are considering removing people from a respirator. He was actually quite a happy boy there, enjoying the world in his ability to do so.

So we attempted to get him off that respirator unsuccessfully twice. The third time was going to be the last chance. Each time we took him off, he stopped breathing and he, essentially, died. So the third time was going to be the last chance. So we made a decision. The decision wasn’t to do nothing; the decision was actually to do something. The decision was, actually, to remove the ventilator, which we did. It was like watching a little diesel engine starting, you know, just with a “poof, poof”; you’re not quite sure if he’s going to make it. He did make it—I’m pleased to say he did make it; in fact, he was in the gallery here when I made my maiden speech.

But I bring that up because what that’s given me is the opportunity to, perhaps, see and get close to death either side of it—my own, my son’s—that many don’t get the opportunity to do. I think that, alongside with my experience at the select committee, considering those that came to see us and hearing how it’s administered overseas has given me the opportunity, I think, to use my life experience to make the right decision. So what I would say is that I’m here today to make the right decision.

There were some things that happened along the way—a little serendipitous. The Hon Nick Smith and myself were going to Invercargill, and we were taking a taxi in from the airport. I’m not going to presuppose—I don’t know where Mr Smith is going to sit on this, but we were chatting and the taxi driver asked us what we were there for and we told him and, well, did he start. Mr Smith, I’m sure you’ll distinctly remember this. He told us about his brother—a big, strong, strapping farmer from up in northern Southland who had become ill, seriously ill, with cancer and died a horrible death begging to be able to be put out of his misery. He just simply said, “You guys have just got to do this.” in his good Southland way. The R’s may have rolled in there somewhere. But certainly—that’s my memory of that; Mr Smith may have a different one. But that was, again, one of those moments that we consider.

We then went to, I might say, the hearing where we did have, I think, 95 percent—I think we may have had one person in favour of the bill. Like many of our hearings, we did hear from people who were opposed. If we left it to that, we would think, really, yes, no one in New Zealand wants this. However, we get out there—we are out there at our markets, we’re out there at our cafes, all of us MPs are out there every week. If we’re only looking for people who will agree with us, that’s all we’ll see. If we go looking for reassurance of our position, that’s what we’ll find. But what I’ll challenge everyone in this House is: don’t do that; don’t come in here with what your Pope wants you to do. Don’t come in here with what those—your vicar or anyone else—want you to do. Come in here and do the job that you have been tasked to do. Do the right thing.

Now, I am going to be voting for this bill to go to the next stage, and that’s all I’ll be doing. But what I’ll be doing is making sure it goes to the next stage and we do get to look at the facts; that we don’t come here with the opinions of those things that are actually opinions of others. That we actually make right—just think, in this House how many times have issues been debated here that we hear, “If this goes through, it’s going to be the end of it.” I’ll challenge people now, what about homosexual law reform? Now, I was on the other side of that, as you might imagine with a religious background. That was a terrible thing—people were opposed to that. What was going to happen to the world if it passed? I think of Invercargill again. Wasn’t there an MP down there who said there would be sodomy in the streets? No, it didn’t happen. Now, I would challenge those people who were listening tonight, those that are here. I would say: think about what those who are influencing you said at that time. Ask them now—challenge yourself now—who believes that men engaging in consensual sex should go to jail? Because I would suspect very few of us do. However, those who opposed that bill, that was what they were advocating. Look at the other things that have happened in the meantime—prostitution law reform. I was involved heavily in that in my last profession. Again, the predictions were: it’s going to be the end of time, hell in a handcart; we are all going to be doomed. That’s come and gone, and where are we now? Does anyone even talk about it?

I suspect it will be the same thing with this bill. I suspect that in three or four years’ time, as it has been in other jurisdictions—and, again, I ask you to look at what happens in other jurisdictions. Do not believe the absolute rubbish that much of what we’re hearing is. Have a look for yourself. Put a detective’s hat on, put a politician’s hat on and go and have a look and do not be guided by the absolute gibberish that is much of what is being espoused out there. Do the job we’re here to do, and at least send it to the next stage so we can do the job that the select committee was denied. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It’s a pleasure; it’s a real honour and a privilege to speak on the End of Life Choice Bill in the second reading. This is my first speech on this bill, so I’d like to start out by, certainly, acknowledging my friend and the sponsor of this bill, David Seymour. I’ve known David since university and I know him to be a man of great conviction and a true believer of his values; so I do want to acknowledge you in the House today. I also want to acknowledge everybody on the Justice Committee, who have heard many, many thousands of submissions—in particular Raymond Huo and Maggie Barry. To all the people on the select committee: you’ve done a fantastic job in making sure that their voices have been heard and that we have been well informed on this bill.

I want to take you back to the by-election because that was when I was recorded in my first ever public position on this bill. I want to tell you that if anybody googles my position on this bill during the by-election they will find that I was in favour of the End of Life Choice Bill. When someone comes to you and says, “Do you want the right to choose how you end your life?”, I said, “Yes.” It is with a heavy heart today that I announce that I have changed my mind and I will not be supporting this bill in its second reading. I want to walk you through what has changed since I’ve become an MP, and what’s led me to this decision. Firstly, I’d never even read the bill. So once being elected to the Northcote seat, I sat down and read the bill. Secondly, I took time to sit on the select committee, hearing the many thousands of people—including many from my own electorate of Northcote—who wanted their voice to be heard on this very important and delicate topic that we face today. I held a public meeting, and I read much correspondence from many thousands of people who emailed me and who came into my office, and many from Northcote voters.

So the main reason is really three key reasons that I oppose this bill today. The first is that I am concerned about the lack of safeguards with respect to protecting our most vulnerable in New Zealand. Now, of course, if you asked me: do I want my right to choose? Yes, I want my right to choose to be intact. But it’s our job as MPs to make sure that we think outside the realm of the individual to the wider impacts of this bill on the wider New Zealand society. I especially worry about its impact on the elderly. I will tell you, Mr Speaker, I’ve had several cases in the last year as an electorate MP of elderly people coming into my office and saying, “Dan, I need your help. I need your help because my son or daughter has complete control of my financial affairs and I’m worried about my safety.” It’s brought me almost to tears. So I have very grave concerns about how this bill protects our most vulnerable elderly from coercion.

The second, in what’s been alluded to from previous speeches, is certainly around disabilities, people with disabilities and people with mental health. And most important is just about the lack of safeguards to protect from coercion. We heard from the select committee that it’s very difficult for doctors or lawyers to actually detect coercion. It takes many, many months. I don’t have confidence that this bill, as it’s been written, has adequate safeguards in place to protect our most vulnerable. Now, we could argue that if it goes to select committee or the committee of the whole House that that might change. But again I don’t have full confidence in that process. So that is why I rise and vote against this bill.

The second and equally important issue is around the message that this bill sends to wider New Zealand. We have the worse youth suicide rate in the OECD. How are we to help them and how are we going to make progress on this bill, on this issue, if we’re sending the wrong message that we don’t want people to commit suicide at one end but we’re giving you an option to do so at the other end of life. I believe in a world where we strive to protect life and do whatever is necessary to preserve and value life for New Zealanders. So I do rise in opposition to the bill. Thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to begin by acknowledging the thousands of New Zealanders who submitted to our select committee on this bill, both for and also against. The submissions we heard were compelling, they were heartfelt, and some of them were heart breaking. Ninety-two percent, or over 35,000 of those submissions, were opposed. And Parliament needs to be cautious of overriding such strong opposition.

The problem I have with this bill is it’s out of step with a core part of our Kiwi culture: that respect for human life. In many parts of the world, life’s cheap, but here we go to extraordinary lengths to protect human life. It’s actually not that New Zealanders are puritanical or deeply religious. It’s actually a very down to earth, practical caring. It’s why we’ve been a world leader in an area like the Special Olympics and disability rights, in asserting that every life has value. It’s why we were one of the first countries in the world to get rid of the death penalty. We want to err on the side of life. The cold, calculating clauses in this bill allowing the termination of the life of someone who’s unwell or disabled contradicts those basic Kiwi values.

This sort of intuitive view is actually backed up by the experts. The most powerful submissions for me are those palliative care doctors and nurses that, all over New Zealand, every day care for dying Kiwis. No one can doubt their professionalism or their compassion. They were adamant and consistent in their opposition to this bill. You see, the problem with euthanasia is that it’s one of those ideas that superficially sounds quite attractive but the more you look into the detail the more sceptical you become. Hundreds of doctors, backed up by their representative organisations, made submissions opposing this bill. They have absolutely no difficulty with patients rightly making an informed choice to refuse treatment or of using medication for the purposes of pain relief that may in fact bring forward the time of death. Their concern is about legalising the administration of drugs with the deliberate purpose of killing a patient. The deadly flaw in this bill is that it assumes a level of certainty in medical judgments that actually just doesn’t exist in real life. Its clauses require that a doctor certifies that a person is free of mental illness or depression, that they’ve not been unduly influenced by others, or that they have only six months to live. It assumes that those judgments are 100 percent accurate. They are not. It is inevitable, if we pass this bill, that there will be fatal mistakes.

I was also unnerved by the extensive international evidence we heard from jurisdictions that have passed such laws. Advocates say that this bill is about alleviating pain, yet the experience in those jurisdictions is that the most common reason given for requesting assisted suicide is concern of being a burden on their family or a community. I do not want a society in which people feel guilty for living.

We also need to heed the message of disability advocates. They have worked tirelessly over the decades to ensure that our society values people with disabilities. The provisions in this bill that enable people with an irremediable condition to access assisted suicide is the State saying that suicide is OK for these people. It is blatantly saying in law that their lives are of lesser value than others.

I also worry, like others, about the mixed signals we are sending on one of the biggest challenges our country faces: over 600 New Zealanders each year taking their own life. This law change erodes the value that we put on life by saying it’s OK for some to end their life. It blurs the message that, actually, life is precious.

I also reject the ACT Party’s rampant individualism in the detail of this bill that ignores the importance of family. It entitles someone to take their own life without their partner, their children, or other loved ones even knowing about it until after the event. Family is the greatest institution ever invented and, actually, it’s at its most important at the beginning and at the end of life.

It became plain in listening to the submissions on this bill that there is a fear that many deaths involve extensive pain and suffering that will be alleviated by assisted suicide; that’s not supported by the evidence. We heard from palliative care specialists who have cared for thousands of dying patients that it is extremely rare for pain not to be managed. And, of course, the technology and the medication associated with pain relief continues to improve. I acknowledge people, including myself, are fearful of a painful death, but as lawmakers we must legislate on the basis of the facts and not the perceptions.

We should also be concerned about the inherent instability in the legal criteria as to who is eligible for assisted suicide. Mr Seymour was very confident a year ago that he had the criteria, his words, “exactly right”. Now he’s proposing extensive changes. The same has occurred overseas as the criteria have had to change. The problem is that, once we cross the line into the grey zone of assisted suicide being OK, drawing a line is actually fraught with difficulty. If it’s not OK for an 18-year-old to suffer, what about a 17-year-old? If it’s not OK for a person with Parkinson’s disease, what about multiple sclerosis? If it’s OK for the quadriplegic, well, what about the paraplegic?

This bill uses the phrase “unbearable suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable”. Every person will have a different view of what is tolerable. The problem with the ideology of individual choice on this issue is that we end up drifting to a point where anybody can request assisted suicide.

Now, we’ve all had our own experiences with the death of loved ones. I had a dying friend. When I sat beside him, he was unconscious. I held his hand and actually reflected and said to myself, “I wonder whether Dave is all right?”, because he was in such an awful, emancipated state. He woke up and we had a most wonderful 10 minutes of laughs and remembrance that I will remember for the rest of my life, and, for me, it was my being uncomfortable with his state rather than actually being focused on the needs of the dying.

My point on this issue is that the answer is to focus on ensuring quality care, as with hospices. Last month, I was with the Prime Minister, and we opened a wonderful new hospice in my community that is supported by hundreds of volunteers. The hospices’ sound philosophy of making people’s last days as comfortable and fulfilling as possible is actually the right answer to this issue.

My plea to Parliament is to reject this bill. I do not doubt it is motivated by genuine compassion, but it is mistaken. It might make death more convenient, but it will not make New Zealand more caring. It will make our job of tackling suicide more difficult. It will make our most vulnerable citizens like our elderly and our disabled more vulnerable. We should leave the lid of this Pandora’s box of legalising assisted suicide firmly closed. This is the truly caring and compassionate society I want New Zealand to be. Focus on quality hospice care and reject this notion of assisted suicide.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish to take a call in my capacity as the chair of the Justice Committee to reflect, among other things, on the nature and the shape of the committee’s report. First of all, I want to thank all the submitters who have taken the time to be part of this very important legislative process.

The Justice Committee received and considered 39,159 submissions, and we heard oral evidence from as many individuals and organisations as possible at 42 public hearings in 14 cities and regional centres across the country. It took lots of time and energy for us to organise such meetings—a big thankyou to both the Clerk of the House and the clerk of the committee and their respective teams for making the admin side of the Justice Committee possible. We received advice from both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, as well as from the Parliamentary Counsel Office. I thank our officials and advisers and all the relevant parties.

I want to pay tribute to the member who sponsored this bill, Mr David Seymour, and also the Hon Maryan Street, who is in the debating chamber. She organised the petition under her name which was considered by the Health Committee of the last Parliament. The same applies to the Hon Maggie Barry, who fought tirelessly and fiercely against this bill. I thank her for her passion, conviction, and her true belief in palliative care.

I thank the many others who have been directly or otherwise involved in this very important legislative process on this bill, which is one of the most socially and legally challenging bills that this select committee and, indeed, this Parliament have ever considered. The Justice Committee’s report contains a summary of the 39,159 submissions, as well as a number of recommended amendments to improve the workability of this bill.

This is a member’s bill that involves conscience issues. The committee was unable to agree that the bill be passed. This was a conscious decision in keeping with the established practice of select committees dealing with such bills. By convention, select committees focus on improving the technical workability of these bills without forming a view on whether they should be passed. This reflects the principle that it is up to all members of the Parliament individually to judge, based on their conscience and assisted by the select committee’s report, to decide whether or not the bill should proceed. Consistent with that approach, the committee did not recommend amendments of a substantive nature, such as changes to who would be eligible for assisted dying. The definition of that term itself may be of a substantive nature, and we have since learnt that, by calling it “assisted dying”, it may be misleading to some and may be not misleading to others.

Substantive policy issues raised by submitters are listed in Appendix C of the Justice Committee’s report. The committee, however, unanimously recommended technical amendments to make the bill more workable, regardless. The report follows over 15 months of work on the bill. This was the No. 16 bill when we reported the bill back to the House. The Justice Committee has so far considered 22 bills, and we have sent 19 bills to the House. In 2018 alone, we had 340 hours—

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m rising to speak in support of the End of Life Choice Bill. I want to outline why my conscience and the evidence I have heard compels me to support the bill. I believe the law should allow for a dignified death. I believe palliative care is a wonderful thing, but it cannot end all pain and suffering. The status quo actively denies terminally ill people the choice of dying at a time of their choosing with their autonomy recognised and dignity affirmed, and instead gives them an invidious choice: take their own life—often dangerously—or suffer needlessly. I believe we can and must do better.

I had the pleasure of sitting on the Justice Committee for the consideration of the bill. We heard excellent arguments for and against the bill. We also heard some poor arguments, and I intend to discuss those in my contribution tonight, but first, I’d like to make a comment on process.

As members have mentioned, we undertook an exhausting process of meetings around the country to hear from as many people as possible. We went around the country, and I know that that was actually welcomed by the communities we visited. I visited Napier, New Plymouth, Whanganui—along with my colleague Ginny Andersen from the Hutt—Christchurch, and Auckland, and a frequent comment in the regional centres we visited was how good it was to see MPs making the effort to get out of Wellington and engage with the communities in, frequently, the hotels where we held the meetings.

I want to pay tribute, like the chair of the committee did, to the Justice Committee staff who worked on the bill alongside the officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Health. It was a long process. Some have criticised the length of time we took. I think that criticism is misplaced. For a bill as contentious as this and as politically charged as this, to not take our time and to report it back without proper consideration would, I believe, have been a dereliction of our duty.

We took our job seriously. I took notes on my laptop during the hearings. Sometimes, they were detailed; sometimes they were just a few sentences. I wanted to record every person who was in front of us. I have 150 pages of notes in 11-point font. I have 30,000 words recorded. The committee alone had over 38,000 submissions—a record. If this bill passes—and I hope that it does—nobody will be able to say that it wasn’t considered thoroughly and that there was no mandate for the bill.

So let me return to where I started. The Canadian author, academic, and former MP Michael Ignatieff has said, “There are few presumptions in human relations more dangerous than the idea that one knows what another human being needs better than they do themselves.”, and as a liberal, the starting point for my consideration of the bill is that individuals make better decisions about their lives than Governments do. End of life choice is fundamentally grounded in human agency and autonomy. It affirms and upholds human dignity. It places primacy on the individual and their choice to end their life.

My other starting point is a practical one. I want to make three particular practical points. First, the best palliative care cannot provide relief from physical suffering in all cases. During the committee process, many doctors and palliative care experts appeared before us, and so did many nurses. Some were in favour of the bill, some were not—some were vehemently not—but most agreed that there were rare circumstances when palliative care could not ease all suffering, when people died horrible, painful deaths. Some doctors were at pains to emphasise that they are a minority of cases, but a minority is still a collection of individuals for whom we should have compassion. That was the evidence we heard, that was led also in Seales v Attorney-General, and actually accepted by both side of the argument in the court case of Seales v Attorney-General, accepted by palliative care experts: that no matter how good palliative care can and should be, there are some people for whom it just cannot end all suffering.

The second point is that people take matters into their own hands. Justice Collins in Seales v Attorney-General drew on the evidence provided by Drs Weaver and Munro, who conducted research into suicides in New Zealand from 1900 to 2000—a comprehensive study. It suggests that between 3 percent and 8 percent of suicides in the last century were committed by people who were rational, competent, and suffering a terminal illness. In a substantial number of those cases, it was expressly found that the deceased had ended their lives because they still retained the ability to do that but believed they would not be able to do so if they waited any longer. The Supreme Court of Canada has considered this issue extensively and has summarised it in this way: “A person facing this prospect has two options: [they] can take their life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or [they] can suffer until [they] die from natural causes.” The choice is cruel—and I want to repeat that: the choice is a cruel and invidious one.

The third point that I want to make, in a practical sense, is that medically assisted dying happens already. A 2017 study published in the New Zealand Medical Journal found that nearly one in 10 doctors who responded to the question had at some time provided or administered a lethal dose of medicine intentionally to help someone have a hastened death. Nearly 1 percent of doctors had done so several or many times. This happens now; it’s just unregulated. Now we have the opportunity to regulate it properly.

During the select committee process, we heard, I believe, poor and good arguments against the bill. Let me start with the good arguments. The first is that end of life choice would result in coercion and inappropriate pressure towards vulnerable people. I believe that is a good argument; many submitters were concerned about this. Ultimately, though, the bill has clear safeguards based on international best practice. Moreover, the expert opinion from people who’ve done research into this is that, in Oregon and the Netherlands, the predicted abuse and the disproportionate impact on vulnerable populations has not materialised.

The second argument that I believe has merit is to do with people with disabilities. There was fierce debate on this in the Justice Committee. We heard from the Disability Rights Commissioner. We heard from the Disabled Persons Assembly. We heard from disability advocates. Some argued that assisted dying diminishes the value of life for disabled people; others said that disabled people should have the same rights as other individuals. Let’s be very clear: the eligibility criteria in the bill would not include a person on the basis of disability or mental illness only; all the criteria in the bill must be met—and people often conflate them. The issue was recently considered in Victoria, which has become the most recent jurisdiction to legalise end of life choice. The Ministerial Advisory Panel considered the impact that the law change would have on people with disabilities and concluded that disability does not satisfy the eligibility criteria for access to voluntary assisted dying, nor does disability exclude a person from eligibility to access voluntary assisted dying. In other words, all people should have the same rights and protections under the law.

A lot of people came before us and talked about youth suicide. They told us that end of life choice was suicide and asked what sort of message it sends to young people, when youth suicide is a national tragedy—and I agree. But I think, when most people think about it, they quite rightly draw a distinction between a young person with their life ahead of them who suffers from depression ending their life irrationally, and a person suffering at the end of their life facing a potentially horrific and painful death, bringing forward their death in some cases by only a few days—because that’s what it’s about, it’s about terminal illnesses; these people are going to die anyway. It’s about the manner in which they die. On the Justice Committee, we considered the issue of youth suicide very closely—so did, by the way, the petition of the Hon Maryan Street in the committee in the last Parliament, and they sought advice on whether suicide rates are higher in jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal. The select committee report in the last Parliament said, “The Ministry of Health told us there does not appear to be any connection between assisted dying or euthanasia and rates of suicide. Causes of suicide are complex, increases in suicide rates are unlikely to be caused by one single factor. The certainty in the area is very difficult.”

There were quite a few poor arguments made against the bill. Let me quickly run through them, to conclude. The first is that it’s poorly drafted, therefore we should oppose it. The problem with this argument is that it isn’t true. The bill is based on international best practice, it’s been drafted by legal experts, it’s going to be improved later, I hope, as well. The second problem is that that is an argument for improving the bill; it’s not an argument for voting it down. Often it was made by people fundamentally opposed to end of life choice, generally, but they were using the words in the bill—it’s an argument for improving it, not for voting against it.

Another argument we heard is that the majority of submitters are opposed to the bill, therefore Parliament should vote it down. Well, that might be true of the majority of the submitters to the Justice Committee, except the polls of New Zealanders show that a clear majority of the New Zealanders support end of life choice. At the end of the day, I think the argument goes, really, nowhere. We should do what my colleague Greg O’Connor said, which is do the right thing and act on our conscience.

We heard that doctors don’t support it, but a survey in 2017 found that 37 percent of doctors and two-thirds of nurses were supportive of legalising assisted dying. So some may oppose it; some support it. We heard from doctors who came before us say that they were very comfortable to participate; we heard from some who said they weren’t—that’s fine. A supplement to the argument was that people would be having to go against their conscience—but the bill contains extensive conscientious objection provisions.

We heard that many countries have not legalised end of life choice. That’s true, but many have—over 120 million people live in a country where it is legal. Just recently, the Australian state of Victoria legalised end of life choice.

There were many poor arguments made, there were many good arguments made against the bill, but, ultimately, this is about individual dignity and alleviating human suffering. I commend the bill.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is no ordinary run-of-the-mill decision that we are charged with making here tonight. Perhaps, not since our parliamentary predecessors voted in this place in 1961 to abolish the death penalty have members of Parliament had to make such a serious life and death decision that will impact on the lives of so many. When Parliament threw out the death penalty some 60 years ago, one of the most persuasive arguments against it was the fear that an innocent life might be taken. That same level of serious consideration needs to be at the heart of our decision here tonight

Of course, there are very strongly held views—we’ve heard some of them already. That’s as it should be when we are debating a bill that would legalise—for the first time since we abolished the death penalty—the State-sanctioned killing of one person by another. This bill, which only ever refers to “assisted dying”, which to many people means turning off life-support, refusing medical treatment, refusing food and drink—these are not going to be changed by this bill. The patient’s right to choose to refuse will remain intact. But let’s not sanitise. We need to be very clear what this bill is trying to do, which is to change the Crimes Act to legalise culpable homicide, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. That’s it in a nutshell. Pro-euthanasia advocates would have us believe that this bill is narrowly focused and will affect only a very few individuals. That is an incorrect misrepresentation, because, as lawyers and doctors have repeatedly told us, this bill signifies the most seismic shift in New Zealand law and medical practice in our country’s history.

We need to decide here tonight, according to our own individual consciences, if there is any point at all in persevering with this fundamentally flawed bill or to just vote it down now and be rid of it once and for all. It has already taken up thousands of hours of parliamentary time and was returned from the Justice Committee with only minor and technical changes and deemed to be unfit to be passed into law.

This particular bill has been one that has weighed more heavily on me than any other bill has in my eight years in this House. That’s partly because it is the most poorly drafted bill I’ve ever seen, and also partly because, as the deputy chair and one of eight permanent members of the Justice Committee, I spent some 28 days chairing and hearing submissions. I heard a lot about hope and I learnt a lot about courage, and I commend everybody who wrote submissions and who came in front of a group of strangers to tell their often very personal and very harrowing stories.

This issue is intensely personal to all of us and, as we’ve heard here already tonight, it is our own experiences that have moved and shaped us. My father introduced me to hospice and, at that time, I met a lot of lonely older people. They didn’t have friends and family to protect and advocate for them. That was in my mother’s experience, too, with dementia. I think about those people when I object strongly and reject this bill. Why would we risk the lives of the vulnerable by voting in favour of this? There are no genuine protections against coercion and abuse. Some 10 percent of New Zealanders over the age of 65 have been abused, either physically, mentally, psychologically, or by neglect. These are the people that we need to protect. These are the people that we can imagine it would not be too much of a jump for the abusers, three-quarters of whom are in their own family ranks, to then encourage them to take their lives early.

Who would have to decide on whether someone with dementia has the capacity to understand the decision they’re being asked to make? It would be the doctors. One 10- to 15-minute consultation with a doctor a patient may not even know. The second consultation doesn’t even have to be face to face. The select committee did make the change that it could be done electronically through Skype or through messaging, which, personally, I think further undermines the credibility of the processes. Doctors are required to do too much, and they don’t want a bar of it. The Doctors Say No open letter, which was signed by more than a thousand doctors, and 93 percent of the 1,800 medical professionals who made submissions pleaded with us that instead of trying to borrow the respectability of medical professionals and to sanitise euthanasia under a cloak of medical legitimacy, let us allow them to follow their consciences and to focus on caring for their patients and not killing them.

One of the biggest myths that the bill’s supporters have peddled very hard is that eligibility criteria will never change; it will stay exactly the same. We in this Chamber, where legislation is passed every single sitting day, know full well that laws are altered all the time. Judging by what’s happened in other countries, once euthanasia is legalised, it sets in motion an inevitable loosening of the eligibility. This is a bill that’s very similar to the Dutch laws, so it’s worth looking at for a moment. What began in Holland as a response to the suffering of a small number of terminally ill people in 2002 has rapidly escalated to cover those who are tired of life. By 2010, euthanasia expanded to include mental illness, eating disorders, and tinnitus. Without having once to go back to their equivalent of this place, in Parliament, the Dutch made some 17 changes to the criteria through regulations, Order in Council, and protocols.

Dr Theo Boer, one of the architects of the Dutch law for 30 years, has had a complete change of heart. He’s read this New Zealand bill, and he strongly advises us not to change our laws, because, as he says, once the genie is out of the bottle, there’s no going back. In Holland, he says it has had far more consequences than they had ever imagined, and he wishes they had never ever done it. For increasing numbers of people, he says, euthanasia becomes the default way to die. The availability of euthanasia promotes despair rather than hope, and what he describes as a culture of death. Is that really what we want in this kind and compassionate New Zealand? As Dame Tariana Turia says, how does this contribute to the wellbeing of our whānau and our vulnerable communities?

Our current laws are straightforward the way they are. They protect all human life equally. No one person’s life is treated differently from anyone else’s, not based on wealth, ethnicity, or any other points of difference. As so many submitters have told us, the lives of the sick, the disabled, and the elderly will be defined by their medical conditions. As the Disability Rights Commissioner, Paula Tesoriero, told the committee, this bill undermines the position of the disabled and the vulnerable. It devalues their lives and poses significant risks. The so-called right to die for some would all too easily become a duty to die for others. For many submitters, their biggest worry was the risk that legalising assisted suicide would normalise it and our already high rates would increase. At best, it would send mixed and confusing messages. The burden of proof is with the bill’s advocates, and they have never proved there is no link.

The bill’s supporters have told us that New Zealand’s apparently behind the times and that a law change allowing euthanasia is inevitable. That is simply not so. The reality is that 5 percent of the world’s population have legalised the intentional killing of one citizen by another. So the rest of the world—that’s around 6.65 billion people—are living and dying without it. The current New Zealand law is not broken, and our courts are able to take a compassionate overview while still sending out the strongest possible message about the importance of caring for and protecting the most vulnerable.

Before we push the nuclear button of legalising euthanasia, I think we need to acknowledge that, in some parts of New Zealand, the level and quality of end of life care is just not good enough and we need to do better—better funded care for people who are dying, and to commit to delivering holistic, wraparound palliative care. It is effective, and more palliative care will be more effective. I’ve drafted a member’s bill currently in the ballot to guarantee access wherever people are in New Zealand so that they can get the best quality and, with ministerial overview, end of life care. That’s what we owe our vulnerable, and that’s what we owe future generations of New Zealanders.

Public safety and protection of the most vulnerable, rather than an individual’s personal choice, must be the overriding concern of any Parliament. Our role as lawmakers must be to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number, and we have a duty to ensure that the degree of safety built into legislation matches the gravity of the risk. The stakes are very high, and we each have to ask ourselves the question and then be able to live with the answer: how many unintended deaths are too many? Can anyone here put a number on it? As with voting down the death penalty 60 years ago, we have to ask ourselves whether one innocent life lost is OK and can be treated as collateral damage and something we can live with. I know I can’t, and that’s why I am opposed to this bill and that is why here tonight in this Chamber I am voting against this fatally flawed “End of Life as we Know It Bill”.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to say that I will be voting for this bill for a number of reasons that have already been canvassed by this House. I want to begin by acknowledging the sponsor of the bill, David Seymour. I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee, and I don’t think there will have been a piece of legislation that has exercised the time and effort and energy of a select committee in this House for some considerable time; so thank you to the committee members for that. Can I also acknowledge a former member of this House, Maryan Street, who was the first to champion this cause and champion legislation for this cause when she was in this House previously.

This debate about this bill is not about alternatives to or substitutes for palliative care. I think we have to be very careful in this debate that we don’t set up these false alternatives. Of course palliative care has a place and will continue to have a place in the healthcare of those who are suffering and dying in this country. So it is not about an alternative to or a substitute for palliative care. This is not a debate about suicide, in the sense that we understand that those who are in a state of despair or depression or who have just given up because of the circumstances of their life and who can see no further way forward—that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about those people whose health condition is such that they have no future. They are terminal but, more than that, the quality of their life has gone. They have their faculties, they are capable of making up their mind, they are capable of making a decision, and the question is whether we should allow the law as it is at the moment to stand in their way to make a decision of their choice about how they wish to meet their inevitable end. That’s what this bill provides for.

Some say it doesn’t provide safeguards or enough safeguards. When Maryan Street first had a draft bill, the reason why I was supportive of it and why I have been supportive of David Seymour’s bill is exactly because I looked at the safeguards and I was satisfied that the safeguards are there. It requires the person who is making the choice to meet a number of criteria: first of all, that they are capable of making a decision. Someone in a state of despair is not capable of making that decision. So they have to be capable of making a decision. That they consult their medical practitioner—and not just one medical practitioner but two and possibly three, and not just once but throughout the time it takes when they make their decision, up to the time that it is carried out. The medical practitioner or practitioners are required to regularly review with the person the decision they have said they wish to make.

Those safeguards are there but, more than that, as a result of the debate that was carried out in front of select committee members as they traversed the country and heard the submissions, new ideas were put up about strengthening the safeguards. Had the select committee—and I cast no blame when I say this—been in a position to propose improvements and amendments to the bill, maybe some of those strengthened parts of the safeguards would be in the bill now, but they’re not.

The sponsor of the bill, David Seymour, has already foreshadowed improvements that he sees he can make in the bill. In the absence of the committee itself being able to make those decisions and put in front of us those improvements, let this House, in the committee of the whole House stage, have the chance to have the fulsome debate—clause by clause, line by line—draw on the submissions that the select committee has heard, and see if we can agree on improvements to the bill even as it is at the moment, because I’m confident that, with all of the wisdom of this House, we will be able to do so.

As I said, it is clear that this bill could be improved. That is not an impediment to this House, at this second reading stage, voting down this bill. This bill represents the opportunity for that small number of people who are in a position to reflect on themselves, their health when it is at a terminal stage, their loss of quality of life, to make a decision about how they bring that to an end.

We’ve heard some wonderful, moving, and touching stories of personal experiences of members. I remember my father when he died, 17 years ago. He was an Englishman. He was a former officer in the British army, so nothing was going to stop him seeing himself through to the end of his days. He had a terminal illness, and the last years of his life were, frankly, a misery for him and my mother, and for me and my siblings. Every time we went home, we did our bit to support Dad, but I knew he was suffering. He knew he was suffering, but his spirit was such that he would not give up. He was the sort of man who was there, literally, for the last breath, and as I saw him in his dying hours on his bed in the hospice, struggling to take those last breaths, clearly in pain, he was not going to give up.

His story is, when we were all gathered around, hour after hour, late at night—and he was still there, still struggling for those last breaths—the nurse came in and said, “Oh, look, he’s got a wee way to go yet. If you want to go home and get some sleep, do that.” So we all toddled off and went home, and within an hour we got the phone call: “He’s passed.” But that was dad. You see, he was proud—he was proud—and I see now that he did not want to take his final breath in front of all of us. But he made that decision. We knew that that was how he felt.

But I’ve also seen others, and I am good friends with others who have seen their parents in, frankly, diabolical situations, where their parents have said, “It’s terminal. I can’t move my body. I can’t move my legs. I can’t do anything to take care of myself. This is not who I am. I am totally rational and I’m not angry, I’m not in despair, but this is not who I am. I am close to the end and I would like to control that end.” The law we have on our statute book today prevents someone in that situation from taking that step, from making that decision, and I don’t think that is right.

In a country like ours that respects the dignity of the person, the dignity of the individual, why would we allow our law to deprive somebody of that final decision, of that control of their life? That is why I will be voting for this bill, and I will work hard with others, if we get to the committee of the whole House stage, to strengthen the protections in the bill, to make the best bill and create the best framework that we possibly can around this very sensitive, very delicate issue.

I end on this point. As we come to this debate, as all those who came to the select committee did with their submissions, we bring our values, we bring our faith, and we bring our experiences and our various perspectives to it. This is a debate that clearly ignites a great deal of passion, as it should, but in the way that we all bring those values and our respective faiths to this debate because of what we foresee will be decisions—or might be decisions—that people will want to take, so it is that somebody in the position of wanting to exercise that choice to bring their life to an end will bring their values and their faith and their experiences and their perspectives to that decision too. We should not be preventing them or creating a constraint or a restriction on anybody from seeing through their values, their views, and their faith, however they choose to profess it, to express it, or to practise it in making a decision of this magnitude. So, on that basis, I think it is time for us to support the right for those to make a decision.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I rise to support this legislation. Can I acknowledge, David Seymour, your courage, your endurance, your commitment. Members of the select committee—39,000 submissions. More New Zealanders have engaged with this legislation than any other in our nation’s history. Can I acknowledge Maryan Street, who is in the gallery this evening.

The reality is this is not just about several years of process. We are 16 years that members of Parliament have been considering this issue. In my view, New Zealanders have consistently said that they support change in the law, and I support change because I respect those New Zealanders’ views. This is hard, and I want to set out why I believe this is one of the hardest ever pieces of legislation to come before this House.

It is hard because it deals with the sanctity of life. It is hard because it traverses human rights. It is hard because some see this as a collision and a conflict of cultures: those who believe in collective decision-making and those who believe in fundamental human rights. It is hard because it tests the very foundation and bedrock of some people’s religious beliefs. It is hard because, as anyone who has had or has a serious illness knows—can I acknowledge Bobbie Carroll, who is in the gallery, and the other people here who have got life-threatening illnesses—there is grey. The reality is that no member of Parliament in this House can argue for a perfect decision-making process. We live in a world where there are more drugs and treatment options for people, and the reality is some people’s circumstances will change.

But the fundamental reasons why I support this bill are around compassion. Ultimately, what this is about is that the overwhelming evidence shows there is a group of people who suffer. There is, fundamentally, a group of people which suffer; they’re in pain. The overwhelming evidence shows there is also a group of people who commit suicide in a very violent way because they do not believe in the current law and the process that is in front of them.

I do not agree with some of the opponents of this bill, that somehow we are at all condoning suicide, and I think some people would find that very offensive, actually. I do not agree with the opponents in terms of this bill that there are no safeguards. The reality is—and I acknowledge some of the most brilliant legal minds in New Zealand that have worked on this law: Catherine Marks, Andrew Butler—this has been one of the most considered pieces of legislation; so this has been 16 years in the making. But, ultimately, what I come back to is an extraordinary woman, Lecretia Seales—and I acknowledge Matt Vickers, and other family members that may be watching this evening. This was a bright, smart woman who understood law, she understood public policy, she had served her country. What she asked for was not a wide bill, in my view.

What she asked for—and I want to quote her—she said, “I have accepted my terminal illness and manage it in hugely good spirits considering that it’s robbing me of a full life. I can deal with that, and deal with the fact that I am going to die, but I can’t deal with the thought that I may have to suffer in a way that is unbearable and mortifying for me.” Ultimately, what Lecretia articulated, I think, has been articulated by members of this House in terms of their stories—their personal stories. I too have a story in terms of a family member who would not be helped by this piece of legislation. I realise that what this Parliament will very likely do is pass a very narrow law, that will affect a very small group of people, that will—and the overwhelming evidence is that a whole lot of people don’t take this up; they may take the choice but they never go through with it—but a small group of people will not be in pain and suffering.

I believe that that is the conscience of this Parliament. We say we are one of the most progressive nations in the world, but other jurisdictions have moved, and we have failed—we have failed for 16 years, and I would argue for every member of Parliament to consider with their conscience what the overwhelming group of New Zealanders want us to do. I support this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karanga maha o te wā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

Mr Speaker, like everyone represented in this House, I have taken this conscience vote very seriously, because I do see this as a significant decision that we are forced to confront as a part of our responsibility as members of Parliament, and I expect that the public watching at home will see how full the Chamber is today, because people on both sides of this debate are taking this issue incredibly seriously, and they’re taking their responsibilities in this House seriously.

My personal experiences, like I think everyone in this House, have shaped my view. During my childhood, my grandmother attempted to take her own life many times because she felt a burden on society as someone who struggled at times with a mental illness. My most fundamental concern with this legislation is that sanctioning euthanasia makes it easier for vulnerable people to feel that the most appropriate option is to take their own life, and that it is very difficult to ensure protection sufficient to preclude this ever happening. In Opposition, I sat for a period on a select committee that considered euthanasia and heard many harrowing stories from both sides of this debate, and I came to the conclusion that improved palliative care practices will address many but not all of the concerns raised by proponents of assisted dying.

The committee also reinforced to me the near unanimity of opposition from those in the medical professions with the most information and experience of dying, as well as those who work with those who are dying and their families. I retain a concern about the increasing desire across society to favour a sanitised experience of death, and that view of mine is shaped by my own experiences as a funeral celebrant, where I heard a great deal of euphemistic language around the topic of death. I’ve also heard a lot of talk about dignity in death, and too often it seems to me—not always but too often—that is about the sensitivities of those who surround the dying person, rather than the person who themselves is confronting death.

I do believe that we stand to learn a lot about what is important in life, about relationships within families and communities, by sharing the experiences of those who are dying. Our experience of humanity risks being diminished if we push for shorter, more succinct death experiences. As I say that, please do not think I argue in favour of glorification of suffering, but rather a turning toward rather than a turning away from the dying process, which I see as a natural process. This decision is not perfectly straightforward, as I am particularly aware of those who suffer from degenerative diseases. None the less, on balance, I find myself returning to the same conclusion, born of personal experience, as with many in this House.

I revisited the bill ahead of its reading in the Parliament in December 2017 and decided not to support it, because of my previously documented concerns. I do want to thank, of course, everybody who committed to the process, who made submissions, the public as a whole. But, as I conclude, I do want to say that I believe, whether this vote is carried or not, people in this House carry a responsibility. If it goes down, those who vote it down have a responsibility for making sure we have improved palliative care. Those who vote it up, if it goes up, have a responsibility to ensure they do everything in their power to protect our most vulnerable.

Let me be clear: I do oppose the bill, but I do not think the world will end if it passes either. It is my view that if it passes, it will be but one more step toward a more atomised and individualised experience of life and death, and a step away from a commitment to a common journey through life and death, shared with friends and loved ones. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity. I find myself tonight, I suppose, in an unbelievable position, and that is that I’ll be supporting this bill, and I never thought in my life that I would support such a bill. I have heard so much kōrero tonight about individual rights. I was brought up in a traditional Māori way, where the individual had no rights—no rights whatsoever. Brought up in a collective, whānau decided everything. Marama Davidson talked about it. We had no choice when we came into this world, and we have no choice when we go out. You can say you want to be buried somewhere; I’ve been to so many tangi where people were buried in the wrong place it’s not funny—it’s not funny. My father always said, “Dead people have no rights. The whānau decides.”

Whānau decides the names of the kids. I named my son—I gave him one name, Dad gave him another name the next week, and he’s had two names all his life. The collective is everything. Whānau, hapū, iwi is everything. Tikanga is everything. That’s how I was brought up. That’s how many of our Māori members have been brought up.

Tariana Turia is someone close to me. Others like her have lobbied myself. We got a tweet tonight from one of the whanaungas saying, “Here you are, won over by the white, liberal vote in Parliament.” That is what Māori members face sometimes, and I understand it, because I understand the background, the upbringing, the history, and the mistrust in terms of the House system, and the way that some of our people have been treated. Who will ever forget Rau Williams in 1997? Who will ever forget the health support that he was denied? Our people, whether they’re Māori, working class, poor, disabled, don’t trust the system. They don’t trust the system. I’ve heard so much kōrero tonight that I respect from both sides—from both sides—but my experience tells me that our people are nervous; our people are scared. Despite all the great work done by the select committee—and I acknowledge you all—there is still a lot of distrust out there. That comes through experience, and it comes through history. So I always thought I’d vote against this this bill.

But then, of course, we have personal experiences, and my personal experience is that my mother is dying. When you watch my mother, if you’ve watched her—and some people in the House know her—you will understand how tough that is. My mother was a speaker for our people and a leader for our people—a total mana wahine—a leader in South Auckland for women. She led our marae—our women led our marae, and Mum was at the forefront—threw all us males on the side, threw us on the side and led the way. Vibrant. Passionate. A leader—an absolute leader. No one would shut her up. Twenty years on the Parole Board, appointed by the National Party—thank you, National. National also gave her a damehood. I don’t agree with damehoods, but Mum still took it. Thank you, again, National—we had a great day. But my mum is just one of the greatest advocates, and I know people like Gerry Brownlee and others—Maggie Barry—have all acknowledged her. People in the Labour Party—Ruth Dyson and others here; Marama—you know, you’ve all acknowledged Mum. But Mum’s not that person any more, and as a whānau we’re watching her. And I know that she would never have believed in euthanasia—I know that—but then I think Mum, if she saw herself today, she may well change her view.

So I’m saying today that this kaupapa deserves another kōrero. I’m not saying I’m going to vote for it in the end, but there’s been some valid kōrero put up. Some expert people have gone through this, and rather than just condemn it, maybe it’s worth another kōrero. As a Māori caucus—I don’t speak for our Māori caucus; I’m a co-chair along with Meka Whaitiri—we split right down the middle. There is no one view. There is no one tikanga. No one has the Māori view. We can only reflect our personal experiences, and I hope that the House has got something from my kōrero tonight. Kia ora anō tātou.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think of anyone who’s been watching this debate, and of the 39,000 people that submitted on this legislation, I don’t think that anyone could argue that this wasn’t a thoughtful, respectful debate on what is a particularly challenging issue. I do want to acknowledge David Seymour for bringing this member’s bill to the Parliament. One of the things that I undertook when I became a member of Parliament—because you’re always asked beforehand, “What will you do when it comes to a conscience vote?” It’s easy to think about our own life experiences and to say, “That will be the basis of my conscience vote.” But I decided before becoming a member of Parliament that, actually, my responsibility in undertaking this role would be to hear both sides of the argument, to listen, to learn, and to respect the wide range of views that were held. That’s exactly what I’ve done on this end of life bill, having attended functions in Parliament with those who were advocating for the bill and those who were advocating against the bill.

I’ve met with constituents, as I’m sure every member of this House has, but I also took the step of asking my own questions, contacting experts, contacting people who deal with this issue every day—because, clearly, I don’t—listening to families, but, more importantly, listening to those that had terminal illnesses. As the bill as introduced includes a much broader group of people than those with terminal illnesses, I listened to them very carefully. So I have approached this issue with an open mind, but I think, at the end of the day—you know, I have been conflicted because, at the core of me, I do believe in the value of individual choice, but I also believe, fundamentally, that we have a responsibility as members of Parliament to represent those that don’t have a voice, that don’t have a strong voice or a loud voice or a powerful voice. We have a responsibility to represent those that may have a disability, that may be unwell, whether unwell of body or of mind or of soul, and we have a responsibility to represent those older New Zealanders.

I think part of the conflict, very clearly, for me has been that I’d love to say I live in a country where we look after our own. I would love to stand here and say that we have a wonderful, proud record as a country of families looking after their precious family members. The reality is we don’t. We have a terrible track record of abusing those in our own families that we should be taking care of. Others have talked about, you know, the 10 percent record of elder abuse, and so I take that as a context into this decision, because it is a significant one.

It’s hard not to have any influence of our own personal experiences. I remember looking in my mother’s face hours before she died, and I remember seeing fear in her face. And it’s not of a deep religious view, but I also thought that night, and I thought as I encouraged my brother to not resuscitate her anymore and to let her go, that, actually, there is something dignified in every death, and I don’t think as human beings we should be afraid of it. So it has been a very tough decision, and I will be voting against this bill.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Like many members of this House, I have spent a great deal of time thinking hard about this bill. I voted yes at the first reading, and yes with the objective of spending time reflecting on the issues very, very carefully indeed. I took the opportunity to go and sit on the Justice Committee from time to time so that I could hear at least some of the submissions for myself, to hear from a range of people, and especially to do what the previous speaker has just suggested we do: to seek out expertise and to seek out, I guess, information on which we could rely. It has been a difficult process. As some of the earlier speakers have referred to, we have been lobbied intensively, and a lot of the time the arguments from both sides have been, at best, disingenuous, but often, frankly, misleading and twisting data to suit themselves. So it became an issue of whose opinion I was going to rely on and whose information I was going to rely on to make a call on what I should do.

Like Mr Bishop, like many of the speakers in this House, I value autonomy and I value agency, and I think we must respect those individuals. But for me, it is precisely the individuals whose autonomy is compromised, the individuals whose agency is compromised, that we need to have concern for. Ultimately, that is why I am changing my vote from a yes to a no. I thought in particular of people with disabilities and I felt, in particular on older people and on young people.

In terms of people with disabilities, I listened very, very carefully to people like Dr Hūhana Hickey, but more recently I spent a lot of time reflecting on an article written by Chris Ford and published on the Newsroom site, where Mr Ford talked about the issues that people with disabilities face, in particular the social construction of disability so that people are not necessarily disabled by their bodies but they are disabled by the society which structures itself only around the able bodied. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard to access medical care. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard to access reasonable accommodation. It is a society in which people with disabilities can find it hard just to navigate the ordinary passages of human life. And as a society we do not support people with disabilities sufficiently. In particular, we make people with disabilities feel that their lives are not worth living. How often does someone who is able bodied say, “I could not tolerate living if I ended up in a wheelchair.”? But people with disabilities do that happily every day.

This is what worries me in terms of people with disability, and it is the information that Mr Chris Ford reported that already people with disabilities feel pressured to give up, feel pressured that they must go away. I believe that we have a responsibility to support people with disabilities, and until we have decent medical care, until we have decent living standards, until we have a society that structures itself around all bodies, then it is dangerous to allow this type of bill to go through, because of the impact on people with disabilities.

One of the submissions I heard and that meant a great deal to me was the submission from the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. They did not have an opinion on the bill itself. They declined to say whether they supported or opposed the bill. However, what they did do was draw on the knowledge of their members to give those of us listening to them some ideas about this bill, and they drew our attention to the incidence of elder abuse and the extent of it in this society. This is the second of my concerns: around elderly people who would feel pressured to give up their lives because they are subject to financial abuse, they are subject to physical abuse, they are subject to the abuse of lack of care. So when the Royal College of General Practitioners says that that is what they have noticed, that is an opinion that I think is worth listening to.

They also spoke of young people. It is something that others might not have noticed, but in their considered wisdom they said, “This is what should happen if this bill should go through.” They said, “If this bill should go through, then the minimum age of eligibility for euthanasia should be set at 25 years.” They felt that younger people did not have the capacity to make good decisions in these sorts of cases. They were worried about the capacity of young people’s thinking. Now, of course, our human rights legislation won’t allow that. But it did draw something else to my attention—this is a third of the groups of young people that I’m worried about—and it is the link to suicide.

Now, let us be very clear. Euthanasia is not suicide. I think it is specious to conflate the two. But here again I heard information from people who are experienced in dealing with this that worried me. And it was from submissions that I heard from school counsellors when I was sitting on the select committee. Their big concern was this: school councils say that, in their experience of dealing with young people, young people would see euthanasia as permission to commit suicide. Yes, the two things are different, but on the one hand with euthanasia we would be saying that it was permissible to end a life, and the young people would see that as permission themselves. And we know that we have a problem with youth suicide in this country. I have to say that this one is particularly personal to me. It worries me intensely with respect to youth suicide.

We have heard many speeches this evening—all of us, I think, speaking from personal and lived experience. I suppose there is not a member in this House who has not sat at the bedside of a dearly loved relative holding their hand as they leave this world. There is not a single one of us who has not thought carefully about this, and I suspect that everyone is casting their vote very, very carefully. It is for this reason that I wish to end not on the bill itself but on the process by which we got to this stage. It is something that I mentioned earlier on. This is a huge decision for us and we need good information on which to base it.

When we have people giving us data but it’s skewed in one direction—we got data telling us that a particular ethnic group supported the bill after all, but it was based on 17 members of that group—that is not good data. How can we make a good decision if we are not given good data? We had—and I really regret this because I have personal friends who are involved in the Care Alliance, but the Care Alliance sat there and told us that many of the submissions to the bill were not religious. But I sat in that select committee room and the written submissions were not religious, but it was very clear from the actual spoken ones that many people were motivated by religious views but it was not in their written submissions. My plea is for some honesty. If a submission is motivated by religion, brilliant—go for it—but don’t disguise that. Be upfront about it. It’s really important to let us know what is motivating you and where opinions come from.

So my final plea for this bill is that people, when they are talking to us as parliamentarians, treat us with respect and treat us with honesty.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Can I start by first acknowledging the sponsor of the bill, David Seymour. David, can I acknowledge the respectful way that you’ve dealt with me throughout this process, which is an extremely sensitive one. Can I acknowledge Matt Vickers, who’s in the gallery tonight. Matt, can I acknowledge you, the love and dedication that you’ve shown to Lecretia in advancing this, and I think Lecretia’s mum is here tonight too. Can I acknowledge her as well.

In terms of these conscience votes, we all deal with them as members of Parliament in a different way. My approach that I decided to take was that if a conscience vote came up before an election, then I’d go out to my electorate and I’d make it very clear what my position on that was. The reason I did that is I felt that then they could take that information and use it in the way they cast their vote, in whether or not they wanted to support me. In the case of conscience votes that come up after the election, I felt strongly that I would go back to my electorate and I would consult with them. I would use public meetings, polls, surveys, and a ballot box in my office to find out what the majority view was and to try and get the debate started in my electorate, from the south, in Silverdale, Ōrewa, Whangaparāoa, Pūhoi, Waiwera, right up to the north, Warkworth, Matakana, and Leigh.

I can report to the House tonight the results so far of that work that’s been. Of the 1,309 responses that I’ve had, 561 are for or in support of the bill, 653 are against. There are 95 people that are undecided and we’re probably operating on a margin of error of about 7 percent. So you can see that it’s very, very close. It is virtually 50/50. For me personally—I want to state here what my own position on the bill is—in its current form I definitely do not support it and I can’t see myself supporting it through to the third reading either. On this poll result, if it was a third reading I’d be voting against the bill, because I’d have to disregard the undecided in the margin of error. But I am going to support the bill. I am going to support it through to a committee stage because I want the people in my electorate to be able to continue to engage in what I think is a critically important debate for us as a country.

I want to acknowledge Maryan Street, I want to acknowledge Maggie Barry, I want to acknowledge Professor Rod McLeod and David Seymour for coming up to my electorate, where we held a public meeting. I found the biggest venue I could find and it was standing room only. That’s the amount of debate and that’s the amount of engagement that we’ve had on this. The reason why, and it’s very simple—I don’t have any clever nuanced sort of approach to this other than the fact I was on the committee. I went to Tauranga, I went to Hamilton, I went to Whangarei and Auckland, listening to submissions. Can I acknowledge the submitters in their bravery to actually trust us to come forward and share what was for them very personal details about their lives.

But really what it comes down to for me, and I don’t know if anyone can really allay my fears, is that we do deal with elder abuse in this country. Yes, you’re right. The previous speaker, Deborah Russell, talked about financial abuse, emotional abuse, and physical abuse. It happens behind closed doors, and the sad thing is that often the perpetrator or perpetrators are family members. So if someone can tell me how we can protect our senior Kiwis behind closed doors, from having the insidious pressure put on them to take a lethal dose of medicine and kill themselves—if someone can tell me how we can protect them from that, how we can remove that pressure, because I deal with it; I support Age Concern and I deal with elder abuse cases, sadly, in my office almost on a weekly basis. If someone in this House can stand up—and I acknowledge the Minister of Justice, and I’m committed too to continue to work on this bill on behalf of my electorate. But I need to be convinced, and I’ve spoken to the sponsor of the bill, about this—I need to be convinced that our senior Kiwis behind closed doors are not going to be subjected to what I think is an insidious situation where they’ve got people trying to persuade them and coerce them into taking a lethal dose of medicine and killing themselves. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The time determined for this debate by the Business Committee has now expired. I have determined that the subject of this vote will be treated as a conscience issue. That won’t surprise people. In this case, I know there are members who will want a personal vote, and I will therefore accept one. The process we follow is that I put the question, people vote on the voices, I declare the result, and I’m pretty certain that at that point someone will ask for a personal vote, and one will be held.

A personal vote was called for on the question, That the End of Life Choice Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 70

Noes 50

Bill read a second time.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 70, Noes 51.

Bills

Companies (Clarification of Dividend Rules in Companies) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): I move, That the Companies (Clarification of Dividend Rules in Companies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

What a fantastic day for the New Zealand farmers, with the opportunity to reflect on a piece of legislation that finally provides clarity: that if you wish to establish yourself under the Companies Act with cooperative principles at its core, you can, and you can structure your constitution in such a way that, if you provide supply, you can get dividends on your shares, and if you do not, you have, under constitution, the ability for those shares to be treated in a dry context and not attract the dividends.

I accept that, in the context of the conversations that this House has had to reflect on over the last few hours, you probably could not get a bill that is more contrasting in terms of its lack of consequence. But, for all of that, it is a very small, technical amendment, which, in my view, will advance the cause of those who work the land, who have produce that gets taken off around the world, and who would like to be able to structure their effects and affairs in a way that is very cooperative at its principle. We, of course, have had a select committee process that has run over a number of months, and it has been an enjoyable process. Can I acknowledge Kieran McAnulty and David Bennett, who have shared over time the role of chairing the particular committee as we have ushered this piece of legislation.

Just to remind the House, this is very much a simple bill that gives companies clarity around the right to distribute profits according to their constitution. There is currently doubt around the ability of a company’s constitution to provide for dry shares. These are shares which do not carry dividend rights in prescribed circumstances and are, typically, used in cooperatives when the shareholder no longer supplies the company and there is a desire by that company, that is structured in such a manner, to be able to differentiate between the shares of the suppliers who supply the company, and those who do not and have a differentiation in terms of dividends. Currently, section 36 of the Companies Act suggests that provision for dry shares can be made in the constitution of a company. However, section 53 can be read in a manner that would seem to negate that right. This amendment seeks to clear up this historic confusion, which will provide much more clarity for companies and their shareholders.

As we went through the select committee process, we had submissions from the cooperative association. We had a submission from Zespri International who, I know from past experiences, had had challenges with the lack of legal clarity over the effect of those two sections 36 and 53. We also had a significant contribution from David Goddard QC, and I acknowledge his support for this small technical amendment and the good work that he did with the officials to reach a simple and, I think, quite effective outcome. As we stepped through the select committee process we looked, in particular, to the clause 4 of this bill, section 53 amended (dividends), to see whether what was suggested in the original bill was still fit for purpose. We received some very good advice that all of the committee members took on board and agreed would make sense, that suggested that we replace the clause four which is in the current amendment bill with a new clause four which would replace section 53(2). It would, firstly, retain the three existing exclusions for when a board may authorise a differential dividend, and make it clear that a company’s constitution may provide for differential dividends, and that the board may authorise a dividend in accordance with the constitution.

I appreciate that this is a very small and technical amendment. But there are a number of companies that are in the agriculture and horticulture sectors that would like to be structured in a way that is under the Companies Act, but they would like to treat their shareholding in a co-operative context. The clearest and cleanest way they do that is by having a distinction between whether the supply back shares can receive the dividends and the non-supply back shares do not. The whole purpose of bringing this small technical amendment to the House is the fact that there are two parts of the Companies Act which appear to be, at a particular reading, contradictory, in terms of what they give effect to. Section 36 provides a wide assumption of what a constitution can enable, including the ability to treat shares differently with respect to dividend rights if it’s so included in the constitution. Section 53 suggests otherwise, and negates that right.

In previous lives, I have been in the agricultural sector and the horticultural sector when companies have sought to try and create this ability in their own constitution and have had legal advice which suggests that sections 36 and 53 are at odds. I appreciate it is very technical, but I think, coming from a region that has a significant number of agricultural and horticultural companies, a significant number of those companies wish to be structured like this. There should be clarity in the law. When that perspective is given voice to by an eminent lawyer like David Goddard QC—and we worked through that with the select committee—I think we’ve landed at the right place.

There have been very good cross-party collegial conversations. I appreciate that the members on the other side have had, at times, questions that they wanted to get clarity on, but I am pleased that we had unanimous support from the select committee to support this legislation through to the second reading, and I very much look forward for that support holding. It is very minor, it is a small, technical change, but it will allow companies that wish to be structured under the Companies Act but act with cooperative principles to have clear legal clarity so that they can structure their affairs in such a way that supply back shares can have dividends, and non-supply back shares cannot. I think that will be a step forward for agriculture and horticulture in New Zealand. A minor change, yes, but it is one that I know, in the areas that I have worked in over my career, will be welcomed. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I look forward to the contributions.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—End of Life Choice Bill

SPEAKER: Before I call the next speaker on the bill, I’m going to have to admit to a very embarrassing error in the declaration of the vote on the End of Life Choice Bill. The actual vote was Ayes, 70; Noes, 50. I want to apologise to members for my mis-adding. It’s not the first time that Ms Kanongata’a-Suisuiki has caused some problems in the House but, unfortunately, her name went over two lines and it was crossed off twice, and she was double counted. So I re-declare the vote as Ayes, 70; Noes, 50.

Bills

Companies (Clarification of Dividend Rules in Companies) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): If I may, I want to commence my remarks in the House this evening on this bill, the Companies (Clarification of Dividend Rules in Companies) Amendment Bill, by commending the member to which this bill is named under, Mr Todd Muller. Mr Muller brought this bill to our select committee, and it has been worked up through the primary production select committee. He identified a niche, as he said, in the companies law, which has caused some issue, and, in particular, for one of our largest horticultural companies Zespri, in particular, in the way that they wanted to structure themselves with regards to their wet and their dry shares.

That was the origin in terms of where the idea for this bill comes from. I want to acknowledge the way that Mr Muller has worked with our side of the House. I too want to acknowledge the advice that he drew on from Mr Goddard QC, who’s spending some time offshore, actually, and made time to provide us with a memorandum, answering our questions. Of particular concern to me was, yes, whilst there had been an issue identified, was there sufficient cause to make amendments to the Companies Act to tidy this piece of law, that had been a matter of academic debate and, as my colleague across the House has said, had caused much consternation in terms of changing structures at various times for companies like Zespri?

We called for submissions in respect of this bill; we received four. One of the driving questions—and I want to acknowledge the work of those that came and advised us from the Ministry for Primary Industries—one of our constant questions to them was “Can you please explain to us the nature and the gravity of how significant this issue is, and for how many companies?”. Because if we are amending the Companies Act, and we’re amending that—well, we’re seeking to clarify the conflict between section 36 and section 53—if we do incorporate some legislative amendment, as is set out in this amendment bill before us, will we be opening a Pandora ’s box? Can we anticipate the unintended consequences? And does the risk justify the means? We’ve been working diligently with the members opposite and across this side of the House. As those discussions have gone on, I guess the issue that we have to balance as a Government is if we make these amendments, if we open up that Pandora’s box, does it justify the cost, does it justify the time, if we were to make such an amendment?

I want to again acknowledge the stewardship of Mr Muller. He has been dignified in the way that he’s worked with us. He has drawn on his personal experience as a senior manager at one of these large companies. They’ve had to deal with this particular issue in practice. He has drawn on experts in the field. They’ve given us their time. So I cannot fault the work of the member in any way, shape, or form. But the challenge for us on this side of the House has been to find the breadth and to understand the nature of this issue beyond the particular, for example, circumstance of Zespri, which was very unique.

What they did there at that time, and the member who has championed this bill will know, is that they found a workaround. This is essentially the conflict. It’s quite hard to find any academic articles, it’s hard to find any case law in respect of just how large this tension is, but there are a couple of quips. For us, we went “Well, how many other companies are really in this position?”, and we put out the call, if you were. We put out that call to companies and members of the public alike and we were not inundated with submissions that would show us that this was, indeed, an issue that required our time and energy and would mean that we were making an ad hoc amendment to this companies bill.

I’m of the view, and I think our side of the House is of the view, that there are issues that have been raised. They have warranted our time, and we considered that warranted our time in going down and understanding really just what this tension was, how costly it was to these companies that had to grapple with finding workarounds where there was a lack of clarity. But I think on this side of the House, because it’s a niche amendment to the companies bill, perhaps it might be more suited to a reform, and we’d be looking at a whole reform of the companies bill, or making substantive amendments, and to work it in with a broader package of reforms. So on this side of the House, we support the member’s intention to try and clarify the laws and the implications and the practical applications, but in this case, this side of the House deems that the time and energy to actually make the amendments to the Companies Act, in this case, don’t warrant the investment of the Government’s resources. But indeed, it doesn’t justify, more importantly, the unknown consequences that might be, that might come, that might flow through, in this particular area. So on those grounds, this side of the House will not be supporting the member’s bill.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Well, this is a wonderful opportunity to stand up and support my colleague Todd Muller for bringing to the House a small bill but a very important bill.

I’m very disappointed to hear from Kiritapu Allan, who sat on the select committee, who from all of the engagement that we’ve had in the primary production select committee gave me the impression that Labour were going to be supporting it. I look forward to Mark Patterson’s speech this evening because all of the communication and body language that I got from Mark Patterson in the select committee was that New Zealand First were going to be supporting this small but very important change to shares and constitutions. I can only but feel and understand that the tentacles of the leader of New Zealand First, the Rt Hon Winston Peters, has decided for some unknown reason that this bill now shouldn’t progress. So we’re going to hear from Mr Patterson in a moment.

We know already that Labour are against. I think Mr Patterson’s going to get up in a couple of moments’ time and say that New Zealand First are against. But what we are hearing is the Greens are supporting. So why on earth would New Zealand First and Labour collude like this and not include their coalition partner for what is a simple, small, but important bill that is going to make a difference to companies to clarify about wet and dry shares getting dividends?

We heard from Queen’s Counsel, we heard from the head of the cooperatives for Business New Zealand, and we heard from Zespri, who were all supporting this bill. So something has happened. Winston Peters’ tentacles have come down for some unknown reason and said, “No, we don’t support this.” So I commend the position of the Greens for supporting the National Party and doing the right thing for cooperatives and clarifying these particular issues to do with shares.

I don’t want to speak too much more because I want to hear from Mark Patterson New Zealand First’s views and why they have changed from the sentiment and the communication that we had in the Primary Production Committee, which is one of the more general select committees where we get on and actually do the business for the New Zealand public. So I’m going to sit down now and I look forward to hearing from Mark Patterson why is it—why is it—that they have suddenly changed their tune and got the Labour Party to roll over, and now they don’t support this very important bill.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As you can see, I’m not Mr Patterson, but I want to speak and articulate our position for our opposition to this bill. But I want to acknowledge Mr Muller and his leadership in bringing this bill to the House and the wide consultation that he has undertaken up to this point.

What we are dealing with is an issue which, arguably, can already be dealt with under existing law. It was unclear to officials, and, in fact, officials thought it was unnecessary for us to go to this extent to actually put a change in the law to accommodate what, arguably, could be done anyway.

Hon Nathan Guy: No, they didn’t say that.

RINO TIRIKATENE: It is true—it is arguable—because what we are dealing with here is an instance where there is different treatment of a single class of shares. There are wet shares and dry shares in terms of those companies that want to operate under cooperative principles. Now, for any company that is established and that wants to actually operate under those principles, there is all the flexibility in the world for them to do that by way of the constitution, by way of creating different classes of shares, or by way of shareholders’ agreements between shareholders, so there is enough scope within the provisions of the Companies Act, which has always been very flexible in terms of how companies and how shareholders want to make their arrangements.

So there is already a sufficient degree of flexibility within the Act itself, and that was brought home by the officials who were advising on this bill. Sure, there were others that took a different view in terms of the fact that, well, we need to be absolutely explicit and create a separate law in itself for this very unique situation. Again, as I say, any company that establishes itself under cooperative principles today can create the desired scenario under an existing constitution. They don’t need to actually rely on a change in the law—they can do that. They can create different classes of shares. They can create wet shares and dry shares, and they can make the conditions amongst themselves.

What we’re dealing with here is the situation of a significant cooperative exporting and marketing company, Zespri. There’s a very large shareholder base. A lot of those shareholders were the pioneering shareholders that helped grow the business and helped produce and contribute their fruit to make the company what it is today, and a lot of those pioneering shareholders no longer are contributing to the company because they’ve retired, but they still sit on their shares. So what situation we have here is a company which is a multimillion-dollar company which now the directors face the difficult decision of “How can we distribute our profits to our shareholders when a lot of those shareholders no longer actually contribute their kiwifruit to the business?”

So that’s the situation which has been created. Perhaps if the company had foresight and actually made it more explicit that when these pioneering shareholders, if they do no longer supply fruit or grow fruit which they supply to the cooperative—when that happens, they won’t be entitled to dividends. If that was the case when the business was established and that was very explicit and very clear, there would be no need for this piece of legislation. That’s why I say there isn’t a real need for this piece of legislation. It is arguable. I’m pretty sure that directors will be able to make decisions along those lines.

In terms of Zespri, well, you know, they have to look at their total shareholder base, and they are probably in difficult situations. As a select committee, we didn’t actually hear from the potentially affected shareholders. So, you know, with only four submitters, we weren’t able to actually gauge what their thoughts were in terms of having their shareholder rights potentially being overridden by this piece of legislation. So those were the issues.

I’m sure Mr Muller and the directors and the board of Zespri will find a way through this, but it’s really unnecessary for them to put an amendment right into the legislation itself for this very, very narrow conundrum that they find themselves in. But I’m sure they’ll find a way. I understand that they have the Greens’ support. So I look forward to hearing further contributions.

Hon Members: Come on, Mark.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I rise for a much anticipated—I note —contribution on behalf of New Zealand First, on this particular bill. Now, first may I start by commending Mr Muller for bringing this bill forward. He, obviously, believes strongly that there are some anomalies—

Hon Nathan Guy: You believe it too.

MARK PATTERSON: —in the law that need to be fixed—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Please don’t bring me into the debate.

MARK PATTERSON: So Mr Muller brought this in in good faith. We did look at it through the Primary Production Committee. But, unfortunately, New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill forward, which in terms of Mr Muller, it has been a bad week, unfortunately. It’s disappointing, I’m sure, for him to be rejected by New Zealand First and Labour, but he has also been rejected by his own leader, and is much more highly regarded on this side of the House than on that side, by all accounts.

But nevertheless we had to address this bill on its merits, and the supposition was that there is a technical conflict between sections 36 and 53 of the Companies Act 1993. Mr Guy, in his contribution, called it “a small but very important amendment.” There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this is a very important amendment, and that, ultimately, was where our decision fell. There is no case law to suggest that this is a problem.

The Zespri example that has been given—they found a way through that. There is plenty of precedent here, as Mr Tirikatene pointed out in his contribution. There are already these provisions in place within our cooperative companies. So this, essentially, is a solution looking for a problem.

There was some specialist—and some quite high-powered specialist—opinion that did suggest that we should take this bill: David Goddard QC. But also there were other specialists that refuted that there was a problem. I’ll quote Stephen Laybern who is a member of the Commercial & Business Law Committee at the New Zealand Law Society, and he submitted “it is logical that only if section 53 is an irrevocable rule which cannot be overridden by the constitution … there is a problem that needs fixing.” Section 53 is not an irrevocable rule, so there is no problem to fix.

So we as laypeople sitting on this committee with no precedent to bring forward, no conceivable groundswell of cooperative companies, which are a major part of our economy, coming forward and demanding that we must put this in place because their business model is in peril—none of that came forward. So, essentially, as Kiritapu Allan pointed out in her contribution, if we change the law for the sake of it because we feel that Mr Muller is a nice and well-intentioned member of this Parliament, that, somehow, we should acquiesce when there may be some unintended consequences that have not been canvassed—when the law itself has been proven to be negotiable for those companies that wish to bring in these provisions, the wet and dry shares, there is, essentially, no problem to fix.

So New Zealand First thinks the threshold for changing the law of New Zealand should be quite high, and in this case the bar has not been met, so New Zealand First will not be supporting this bill. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Companies (Clarification of Dividend Rules in Companies) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 65

New Zealand National 55; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1; Ross.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9.

Bill read a second time.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): We’ve had a pretty good day in Parliament today. I seek leave for the House to rise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

The House adjourned at 9.58 p.m.