Thursday, 27 June 2019
Volume 739
Sitting date: 27 June 2019
THURSDAY, 27 JUNE 2019
THURSDAY, 27 JUNE 2019
The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.
Prayers.
Speaker’s Statements
End of Life Choice Bill, Second Reading—Tone of Debate
SPEAKER: Members, I just want to very briefly thank members for the tone of the debate last night. I also thank Adrian Rurawhe and Aupito Willian Sio, who, with staff, led a short ceremony here earlier this afternoon to acknowledge the fact that we had invoked the names of a number of people who are close to us as part of the debate, to help us move along from that.
Business Statement
Business Statement
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources) on behalf of the Leader of the House: Today, the House adjourns until Tuesday, 23 July. Legislation to be considered in that week will include the remaining stages of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill, the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill, and the Copyright (Marrakesh Treaty Implementation) Amendment Bill. The Taxation (KiwiSaver, Student Loans, and Remedial Matters) Bill will receive its first reading. On Thursday, 25 July, the Ngāi Rangi Claims Settlement Bill will receive its third reading.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank the acting Leader of the House for her update and wish her and her Labour colleagues all the best for 3.15 this afternoon. Can I inquire—
SPEAKER: Order!
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —as to any progress in obtaining sufficient support to progress the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill, including the support of Government parties?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank that member for his well-wishes for this afternoon, and I can advise that member that that legislation will progress at the appropriate time.
Oral Questions
Questions to Ministers
Question No. 1—Greater Christchurch Regeneration
1. Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills) to the Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration: What progress has been made on the Crown’s Global Settlement with the Christchurch City Council for costs flowing from the Canterbury earthquake sequence?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister for Greater Christchurch Regeneration): I can confirm that Crown and council have reached an agreement in principle and are negotiating the details of a final agreement, with the intention of this to go to council in August. Any final agreement will provide a full and final settlement to the shared costs faced in the Canterbury rebuild and provide clarity on future regeneration. Settling these costs is a key part of returning Christchurch to local leadership as the city moves into the future.
Hon Ruth Dyson: What are the next steps in the settlement process?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The council has said that details of a proposed final agreement will be released to the public on 29 July, giving the public the opportunity to comment. The proposed final agreement will be considered at a special council meeting on 6 August for a vote on 8 August. Cabinet will also consider the agreement shortly thereafter.
Hon Ruth Dyson: How will a global settlement contribute to Canterbury’s regeneration?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The global settlement is a key part of the transition to local leadership. This will settle questions of ownership of the major anchor projects, the funding for the remaining projects, and the institutional arrangements for the future. It’s about the long-term settings that will enable Canterbury to complete its regeneration and look to the future with confidence.
Hon Ruth Dyson: How does this global settlement differ from the draft cost-sharing agreement of 2017?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: That cost-share agreement in 2017 focused only on relatively easy things and left many unanswered questions. This global settlement will cover all outstanding issues in one package. By covering major anchor projects as well as institutional arrangements, it will provide a clear path for the future. This will provide the certainty Canterbury needs to complete its transition to local leadership.
Question No. 2—Finance
2. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his policies, statements, and actions?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Minister of Finance: Yes, in the context in which they were made, given, and undertaken.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: What involvement, if any, did his office have in the timing of the release of the State Services Commissioner’s report into the actions and statements of Mr Makhlouf?
Hon DAVID PARKER: So far as I’m aware, the release of that report was a matter for the State Services Commission.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: What responsibility, if any, has he taken for the breach of security around Budget documents?
Hon DAVID PARKER: The Minister has previously gone on the record that he was disappointed that the Treasury website could be accessed in the way it was, and he looks forward to the Jack inquiry into that very issue.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why has he taken no responsibility for the breach of security around the Budget 2019 documents?
Hon DAVID PARKER: It’s not correct that he hasn’t.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Well, does he take responsibility for the leak of the documents?
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Why haven’t you?
SPEAKER: Order!
Hon DAVID PARKER: The operational responsibility for the computer system is, of course, a matter for the officials at the department of the Treasury.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he agree with the State Services Commissioner, Peter Hughes, that “The breach of security around the Budget documents should never have happened, under any circumstances,” and in relation to the Secretary to the Treasury, “The right thing to do here was to take personal responsibility for the failure irrespective of the actions of others and to do so publicly.”, and that he failed to do that?
Hon DAVID PARKER: In respect of the first part of the question, yes, I’m sure the Minister of Finance agrees that the computer systems at Treasury should’ve been better. In respect of the second question, I would note that the report, contrary to the accusations that have been made by the National Party, concludes that the use of the word “hack” was reasonable, but that the phrase “deliberately and systematically” used on the Wednesday was too strong given what the Secretary to the Treasury by then knew.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has he seen the report’s conclusions, which had the following effect: that Mr Makhlouf acted in good faith, had views sincerely held and was honest, acted in a politically neutral manner, and his statements were reasonable in all respects? Has he seen that part of the report?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, and I think that is a fair summary of the report.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is it not the case that the State Services Commissioner’s criticisms of the Secretary to the Treasury apply equally to him, that he ultimately is responsible for the breach of security, and rather—
SPEAKER: Order! That’s two questions.
Hon DAVID PARKER: I think the report doesn’t opine as to what the responsibility of the Minister of Finance was. It’s an inquiry into the conduct of the Secretary to the Treasury.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: And does he not accept that those criticisms apply equally to him as the Minister responsible for Treasury and responsible for the security of Budget documents?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Not in the sense that the member suggests. I would also note that, in terms of responsibility for what the report says was reasonably described as a hack, that responsibility rests with the National Party, because they did it.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Who was it that accessed the Treasury website over 2,000 times?
Hon DAVID PARKER: The report concludes that that was the National Party.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: So is he still blaming the National Party for the fact that there was a breach of Budget documents—he didn’t take the responsibility that he was responsible for, for those Budget documents—and is he going to continue to blame everybody else for that breach?
Hon DAVID PARKER: No.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has he read section 249 of the Crimes Act, which says this: “Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who, directly or indirectly, accesses any computer system and thereby, dishonestly or by deception, and without claim of right”—has he read that section?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Not today, but I am sure it has been accurately represented by the Deputy Prime Minister.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I understand we just lost two questions.
SPEAKER: Yes.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Well, the Deputy Prime Minister interjected vigorously during one of my questions earlier in this—
SPEAKER: That’s right. And the member gained some then. The member should stay alert.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that, when significant mistakes and failings occur at Treasury, the buck stops with him; if so, why did he not offer his resignation to the Prime Minister?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Because that would have been a complete overreaction to the issues. I am confident in the way in which the Government has responded to this issue, and the way in which the Minister has been proper.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Has the Minister seen section 252 of the Crimes Act, which says this: “Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 2 years who intentionally accesses, directly or indirectly, any computer system without authorisation, knowing that he or she is not authorised to access that computer system, or [be] reckless as to whether or not he or she is authorised to access that computer system.”?
Hon DAVID PARKER: I am aware—[Interruption]
SPEAKER: Order! Order! Just before the member starts, I’m going to say I am going to ignore the interjections from Mr Woodhouse then, which were inappropriate.
Hon DAVID PARKER: I am aware of that section of the Act; I’m also aware that the report from the State Services Commission says that it was reasonable of the Secretary to the Treasury to refer the matter to the police.
Hon Paul Goldsmith: How long did the New Zealand Police take to determine that there had been no crime?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Their opinion that there was no crime was determined within a matter of days.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: In contrast, how long did the police take to come to a decision in the “tea party” tapes?
SPEAKER: Order! No responsibility.
Question No. 3—Housing and Urban Development
3. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing and Urban Development: Does he stand by his statement in response to a question on if he would meet his commitment to be a keynote speaker at the KiwiBuild summit on 24 June, “No, because I have two papers at Cabinet”, and did he take two papers to Cabinet on 24 June?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Housing and Urban Development): Yes to both parts of the question.
Hon Judith Collins: When the Prime Minister stated at her post-Cabinet press conference that the housing reset didn’t go through Cabinet, was that because no housing paper was taken?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: No.
Hon Judith Collins: So what happened to that paper?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: There were housing papers discussed at that Cabinet, but not the ones to do with the reset.
Hon Judith Collins: Can he tell New Zealanders when this Government’s housing policy reset will be announced?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: In due course.
Hon Judith Collins: Is he anticipating being the Minister to announce it?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, just as was the case with the member’s infrastructure portfolio, portfolio responsibilities are solely a matter for the leader.
Hon Judith Collins: Is it acceptable for the Minister to state that there is a housing crisis in this country and to then go six months with a housing policy under pending reset?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I would say to the member that the fact that we’ve been doing a policy review of the Government’s build programme hasn’t stopped this ambitious Government from continuing to review the rental laws, quadrupling the construction of State housing—the biggest investment ever in tackling homelessness—reform of the planning rules, and advancing the project of new ways of financing the infrastructure for urban growth. This is a very busy Government.
Hon Judith Collins: Is it correct that the number of KiwiBuild houses contracted and committed to be built has not changed since January this year, when the reset was announced?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, the issue of the number of contracted and committed KiwiBuild houses is improving all the time as work goes on to do new deals with developers and bring on new large-scale projects.
Question No. 4—State Services
4. GARETH HUGHES (Green) to the Minister of State Services: Does he support measuring and improving the energy efficiency of Government buildings, both leased and owned?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of State Services: Yes.
Gareth Hughes: What proportion of all buildings leased or owned by a Government agency have been assessed under the NABERSNZ rating scheme, which is backed by the Electricity Efficiency Conservation Authority (EECA) as an effective tool to promote energy efficiency in commercial buildings?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Currently, any new building developed for Government office accommodation is required to be measured for a NABERSNZ rating, with a target rating of four stars. We do not have information on existing leased or owned buildings that have been assessed under the NABERSNZ rating scheme before this requirement for new lets came in. It’s been up to the discretion of the landlord.
Gareth Hughes: Is the Minister aware that energy used in buildings makes up 20 percent of New Zealand’s emissions, and does he agree that measuring energy efficiency could significantly improve standards to save taxpayers money and reduce pollution?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Yes, I agree that energy efficiency schemes have a role to play in improving standards across the board. The Government has committed to reducing energy use across its property portfolio. We’ve created a new rule 20 in the Government procurement rules that directs Government agencies to support the Government’s objective of low emissions and waste in Government contracts. This rule comes into effect on 1 October this year.
Gareth Hughes: If the Government doesn’t know the energy efficiency of its buildings, has the Minister commissioned any research or received any advice on the cost savings of mandatory use of NABERS in New Zealand for existing Government buildings, given the cost savings in Australia have been $750 million since 2008?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Possible savings like that are, obviously, very attractive. It’s one of the reasons why the Government has officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment together with the New Zealand Green Building Council working with EECA on a cost-benefit analysis for the implementation of NABERSNZ across the Government office portfolio, but that final advice has not yet been received.
Gareth Hughes: Would the Minister support making NABERSNZ mandatory for all Government buildings, given the Government currently funds the scheme but hardly uses it?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, that’s a very fair question to ask. I would agree that Government should have a leadership role, that we must take steps to improve energy efficiency and to include that as a key outcome for Government office leases. All new buildings are required to be measured to that effect. The next step is to include leased buildings in that measurement technique.
SPEAKER: Before we go on to the next question, I just want to remind members that “givens” either before or after questions are almost, by definition, superfluous and should not be there. It’s a particularly egregious offence when it appears to be a patsy.
Gareth Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I take offence at the allegation that was a patsy question.
SPEAKER: I apologise to the member. Sometimes when I see Ministers reading responses, I think they might have been pre-warned as to the subject matter.
Question No. 5—Health
5. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statement yesterday that “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”; if so, when will he “set that right”?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Yes, and we are already setting things right. It will take years to modernise our hospital facilities, address the legacy of deferred maintenance, and add the new capacity we need. That’s why we invested $1.7 billion in capital projects in health in the Wellbeing Budget. It will also take years to rebuild our health workforce. That’s why we’re investing in training and why we’ve already hired 1,300 more nurses, 440 more medical staff, and 300 more allied health workers since we took office. It will take years for district health boards (DHBs) to recover from the austerity of the previous Government. That’s why we invested $2.8 billion into DHBs in Budget 2019.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he agree with Dunedin North MP, Dr David Clark, who said of Budget 2017, “District health boards this year needed at least $650 million to stand still, but they’re over $200 million short of what they need.”; and does he accept that if he had followed Dr Clark’s advice over the past two Budgets, the DHBs’ combined position would presently be close to break-even?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Yes, to the first part of the member’s question.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he aware that average wage increases for health workers under the previous Government were 55 percent higher than the cost of living increases for that period?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: What I do know about the settlements done under the previous Government is that they compare particularly poorly to those done under the current Government. For example, the nurses’ settlement is worth more than the three settlements combined done under the previous Government—
Hon Ruth Dyson: What?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: —more than the three settlements combined under the previous Government. This Government values the clinical staff, the nursing staff, the allied health workers, and all who contribute to our health system, and we want to make sure those services are sustainably funded into the future so we can continue to attract great people who serve our communities every day by providing the healthcare services that New Zealanders expect and deserve.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: In light of that, is he aware that days lost due to strikes in his first full year of office were 625 percent higher than the average for the previous nine years?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I am aware, yes, that there has been huge frustration at the underfunding under the previous Government that’s led to industrial action to ensure that there were sustainable increases in funding to make sure that we have the workforces we need.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he aware that the average annual number of DHBs in deficit under the previous Government was 10 and that in his first year he oversaw 16 DHBs in deficit and this year is likely—
SPEAKER: Order! The member had two questions quite a long time ago.
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I am aware of the first part of the member’s question, yes.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: Well, when will he accept responsibility for the growing problems in the health sector that are his and his Government’s and stop blaming the previous Government?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I don’t accept the premise in the first part of the member’s question and, to the second part of the member’s question, it will take us some time, more than one or two Budgets, to address the nine long years of neglect that that Government oversaw.
Question No. 6—Justice
6. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Justice: What recent announcements has he made regarding community law centres?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Earlier this afternoon, along with the Prime Minister, Minister Faafoi, and New Zealand First’s Darroch Ball, I announced that the coalition Government will fund community law centres a further $8.72 million over the next four years, bringing the total annual funding to community law centres to $13.26 million. The Labour - New Zealand First coalition agreement committed to increased funding for community law centres, and in this Budget we have made that permanent.
Dr Duncan Webb: Why is increasing funding for community law centres so important?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Community law centres play a vital role in ensuring access to justice for all New Zealanders but especially for those on low incomes. The 24 centres across the country help New Zealanders with up to 50,000 cases each year and provide law-related education to around 25,000 people annually. These services play a crucial role in ensuring New Zealanders receive what they are legally entitled to and that their rights are upheld.
Dr Duncan Webb: How does this compare to previous Budgets?
Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Budget 2018 increased funding for community law centres by 20 percent. Budget 2019 has made this a permanent increase. The previous Government froze core funding for community law centres for six years. The staff and volunteers across all of New Zealand’s community law centres do a crucial job ensuring New Zealanders’ access to justice, and the coalition Government along with the Green Party as well, who have supported this initiative, are proud to support our community law centres.
Question No. 7—Transport
7. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: What will the percentage increase in the fuel excise duty and accompanying road-user charges be on Monday, 1 July, and what will be the total revenue raised from this increase?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): The increase in fuel excise and road-user charges is funding road safety improvements to save lives and much-needed infrastructure to get our cities and regions moving. Both fuel excise duty and road-user charges will increase by 5.55 percent on 1 July 2019. I’m advised that the changes are estimated to raise, over the 2019-20 financial year, $106 million in petrol excise duty and $89 million in road-user charges.
Chris Bishop: Why, after legislating to collect $1.5 billion of extra revenue, are councils around the country being told that previously committed projects are in doubt and are making comments such as that of councillor Pauline Cotter, “We are all set to go, we’re shovel-ready. They have gone out and made these promises and then pulled out the rug from under us … it’s pretty gutting, really.”?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I reject the premise of the member’s question. There are no cases of councils being told that previously committed projects have been cut. What has happened is that the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) have updated councils on programming in the three-year National Land Transport Fund. They’ve given councils a very clear reading of which projects have already been approved, which are likely to be approved, and which projects are unlikely to be approved. The fact of the matter is that there is more money being spent on transport in this National Land Transport Programme than ever before—a very significant increase on the former National Government’s spending on transport. And I’ll say this: outside of the six major urban centres, in this three-year period we are spending more than $700 million more on roads in regional New Zealand.
Chris Bishop: Why does he say that councils are not being told that previously committed projects have been delayed or cancelled, when State Highway 58 safety improvements, which the Minister trumpeted in a press release only a year ago, have been delayed?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: As part of the NZTA’s mid-term update to councils, they’ve gone round councils one by one and given them an accurate reading on what will be funded in this three-year term. There have been no projects that were previously approved that have been cut, and that is the fact.
Chris Bishop: Why can the New Zealand Transport Agency not tell Auckland Transport which projects in the Auckland Transport Alignment Project will be funded and which ones won’t be?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Because it’s a 10-year, $28 billion programme—the Auckland Transport Alignment Project. We’re only in the first year of it. The programme is evolving as we go—it’s a constant work in progress—and I’ll say this to the member: I will not do what the former transport Minister Simon Bridges did and leave a $5.9 billion hole in the Auckland Transport budget.
Angie Warren-Clark: What was the percentage increase in the fuel excise duty and accompanying road-user charges over the 2008 to 2017 period, and how much revenue was raised?
SPEAKER: Order! No responsibility.
Chris Bishop: Was Julie Anne Genter correct when she told the transport committee last week that the East-West Link in Auckland is not progressing?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The East-West Link project in east Auckland has been under review. The NZTA has produced an alternative package of investments intended to take advantage of the $800 million which is earmarked for that project in this National Land Transport Plan. The business case and the design work is under way and engagement with stakeholders is about to begin.
Rt Hon Winston Peters: Could it possibly be that some councils are confused because a certain party has a hoarding—namely, on State Highway 1 north of Wellsford—claiming that the Labour Party has stopped a four-lane highway development, when, in fact, not one cent had ever been set aside by the previous Government?
Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, I thank the member for that question. There’s no doubt that community expectations have been confused by the fact that the former Government promised $10 billion worth of motorways without any ability to fund them, and, in fact, officials told them before the last election that those promises would have required an 8c per litre increase in the fuel excise duty.
Hon Michael Woodhouse: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I waited till the end of the exchange, but I can’t see how on earth the Minister has any responsibility for the subject matter of that question.
SPEAKER: I can deal with it fairly easily: I was relatively flexible with Chris Bishop when he talked about confusion on the part of councils around funding for projects. That was exactly the same type of question. I agree with the member that there’s marginal responsibility for it—but about the same amount.
Question No. 8—ACC
8. Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) to the Minister for ACC: Does he stand by all of his answers during the Vote Labour Market Estimates hearing at the Education and Workforce Committee meeting on 12 June?
Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister for ACC) on behalf of the Minister for ACC: Yes.
Hon Tim Macindoe: Why, in those answers, did he support ACC’s intention to centralise staff in New Zealand’s main centres, which will result in 20 redundancies in Palmerston North, a halving of staff numbers in Timaru, and further job losses in Whanganui?
Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, the programme for the new case-management model at ACC is supported by this Government. ACC have realigned their services to meet the demands of the clients, and the assertion that the regions are being ignored is completely untrue. There will be no closures of ACC offices, staff numbers will remain the same, and if we want to look at the investment in the regions, I need look no further than at the lion of the provinces—the Hon Shane Jones.
Hon Tim Macindoe: How is ACC’s relocation of staff from regional offices to New Zealand’s main centres consistent with his Government’s commitment to relocate Government functions into the regions, which was an agreed priority in the Labour and New Zealand First coalition agreement?
Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, can I make it clear once again: there are no ACC offices closing in the regions. I also want to make it clear that ACC management are working closely with those staff members to make sure a smooth transition is had.
Hon Tim Macindoe: Has the Minister received any representations from the Hon Shane Jones about the transfer of a large number of ACC jobs from the regions to main cities; and, if so, what notice did he take of the advice from the self-styled “champion of the regions”?
Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, I’m not aware of any correspondence between the Hon Shane Jones and the Minister for ACC. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Order! Does the member want another question?
Hon Tim Macindoe: Yes, please, Mr Speaker.
SPEAKER: Well, he’d better go for it.
Hon Tim Macindoe: What does the Minister say to ACC staff who face redundancy unless they are willing to move their families from towns such as Palmerston North, Whanganui, and Timaru to larger cities in order to keep their jobs?
Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, I’ve had a good chance to get around to many of the centres to speak with staff directly about these matters, and have the assurance from management that the process will be managed with them thoroughly.
Hon Shane Jones: Would it not be inappropriate for the provincial champion to comment or interfere on staffing decisions in an independent body?
Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, yes.
SPEAKER: I’m flabbergasted.
Question No. 9—Health
9. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What, if anything, is the Government doing to better support the wellbeing of parents with mental health and addiction needs?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): We know that parental mental health and addiction issues can have a significant lifelong negative impact, not just on them but also on their children. To better support parents living with these challenges and their families, the Wellbeing Budget includes $10 million of funding to pilot early interventions such as intensive home visits and nurse-family partnerships during pregnancy and the first two years of a child’s life. Of course, parents will also benefit from the roll-out of the new front-line service for people with mild to moderate mental health and addiction needs.
Dr Liz Craig: So what sorts of supports will be offered to parents as part of the pilot?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: There’ll be a range of supports offered to parents both in and outside the home. Services respond to individual needs but may include home visits, peer-based support, and talking therapies. At the heart of it all will be the ongoing relationship between the parents and health professionals such as nurses. By better supporting parents with mental health and addiction needs, I am confident we will see better long-term outcomes for families. The pilot will be rolled out to three sites around New Zealand.
Dr Liz Craig: What else is the Government doing to support pregnant women and parents experiencing problems with alcohol and other drugs?
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: More good news. Budget 2019 also includes new funding to extend the existing harm reduction programme for pregnant women and parents who are caught in the web of addiction. This intensive outreach service provides both clinical and peer support to parents to help them tackle alcohol and drug issues. It’s currently available in Waitematā, Northland, Tai Rāwhiti, and Hawke’s Bay and will be extended to a further two areas as a result of a $7 million investment over four years.
Question No. 10—Women
10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Women: How can she be responsible for eliminating the gender pay gap when the Ministry for Women’s gender pay gap has gone from 5.6 percent in favour of women to 6 percent in favour of men?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Firstly, I’d just like to say the Government is absolutely committed to progress for the 30,000 women who work in the public sector, with the most recent figures across the public sector showing a drop in the overall gender pay gap to 12.2 percent, the smallest gap ever. Of course, the Ministry for Women is well aware of gender equality, and my expectation is they are ensuring gender equality in their own organisation and across the public sector. I wouldn’t get too fixated on the gender pay gap at the ministry.
Alastair Scott: Don’t get fixated—don’t worry about it. Just ignore it—forget about it.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I’m sure the Opposition will be interested to know that for very small organisations, it jumps around a lot.
SPEAKER: Mr Scott, please settle down.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I support the ministry’s diversity strategy, which includes hiring more men. In fact, the ministry now has six men employed, which is more than it’s ever had. Due to its size, the ministry’s gender pay gap does not meet the threshold required to produce meaningful high-level gender pay gap statistics, but we do still release it, and I note the figure has previously jumped around from 10 percent in favour of men to 48 percent in favour of women. So it does move a lot from year to year. While the number was 5.6 for 2018, it was in favour of women by 6 percent the year before. If you look at the average over the past two years, it’s close to zero, which is about as good as you’re ever going to get for an organisation with only 33 full-time people.
Hon Louise Upston: Why is the Minister minimising a 12 percent gender pay gap movement in the wrong direction?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I’m not sure if the member listened to my answer, but I’ll give it to her again if she’s interested.
SPEAKER: No, no—order! Just short—not the whole thing again.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: OK. Due to its small size, the pay gap for a small ministry like that jumps around a lot. What this Government is interested in is the overall gender pay gap across the core Public Service, and I note that when that member was Minister for Women in the National Party, across the Public Service the gender pay gap was 14 percent. It’s now down to 12.2. We want to close it, and we will.
Hon Louise Upston: Why does the Minister think that going out and hiring more blokes in the Ministry for Women and paying them more than the existing staff is a good idea?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I can understand the member’s getting very excited—she thinks she’s got a real smoking gun here—but what’s really important is closing the pay gap for the 30,000 women who work in the Public Service. You can take any small number of employees and there will be a little bit of movement, maybe up to 10 percent, on either side, but what’s really important is that we have men working to support closing the pay gap across the Public Service. [Interruption] It’s amazing. I know—
SPEAKER: Ignore it—ignore it.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I know the Opposition struggles with maths, but let me explain: 30 people is a very small percentage of 30,000 people, and what matters to women is that they are not facing unconscious bias. This Government has a gender pay action plan at every organisation in the Public Service, something that did not exist under the previous Government. So we are making real progress towards equality for women, and men are going to be part of that journey, and I’m happy to say that. [Interruption]
SPEAKER: Order! Before the member asks, I will remind people that, generally, I would cut back a question that’s going on at that length, but when members on my left are continually inviting, by way of interjection, further comment, I’m not going to do that.
Hon Louise Upston: Why won’t the Minister just accept responsibility for a 12 percent movement in the wrong direction in her own ministry when the gender pay gap has clearly gone backwards?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I absolutely take responsibility for leading the work across this Government that has seen the gender pay gap across the Public Service drop to its lowest level ever, 12.2 percent. But I’ll also say that, while that member was Minister for Women, the overall national pay gap went from 9.9 percent to 12 percent, and that would have affected many, many more women.
Hon Tracey Martin: Can the Minister confirm that there has been previously between a 10 percent to a 48 percent movement, and what period of time around about was that in?
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: In 2010, the pay gap was 10 percent in favour of men. It moved to 48 percent in favour of women in 2011, then it moved back to 8 percent in favour of women, 51 percent in favour of women, 56 percent in favour of women—it’s a very small organisation. But, obviously, the Ministry for Women understands better than any other organisation in Government the importance of gender equality, and that’s why they’re leading the work and why we now have a task force across the Government to close the gender pay gap and why we are going to see real progress for the 30,000 women who work in the Public Service.
Hon Louise Upston: What steps will the Minister take immediately to walk the walk and eliminate the gender pay gap in the Ministry for Women?
SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’ll let the Minister answer, but I do want to warn members that that was inviting a Minister to breach State Sector Act.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I’m happy to let the member know that the Ministry for Women has a gender pay action plan, as does every other Government ministry—something that the previous Government never bothered with. But this is how we’re going to make progress in closing the gender pay gap and ensuring that there’s no unconscious bias or discrimination against women across the Public Service, where there are 30,000 female employees, who deserve to be paid fairly for their work. We take that seriously. That’s why we’re doing the mahi.
Hon Louise Upston: How can the Minister credibly “lead and catalyse” elimination of the gender pay gap in the public sector, let alone the whole economy, when her own house is a mess, or is this just another dead rat that she’s prepared to swallow?
SPEAKER: Order! No, there’s irony in that. The question’s ruled out. Further supplementary?
Question No. 11—Energy and Resources
11. JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: Does she stand by all her statements, policies, and actions?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Yes, in their correct context.
Jonathan Young: Does she stand by her statement that the Government has an ambitious goal of 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 in a normal hydrological year?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes.
Jonathan Young: Can she confirm that the Interim Climate Change Committee has advised her Government that the Government’s renewable target will push up electricity prices by between 14 and 39 percent?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I am not going to comment in detail on a report that hasn’t been released, but what I will do is answer more generally that we have a target that is 16 years in the future. We make no apologies for the fact we are ambitious. We make no apologies for the fact that we are aspirational. But we also make no apologies for the fact that we are setting policies within the framework of carbon budgets that will have five-yearly check-ins.
Jonathan Young: Can she confirm that a 14 percent rise in residential electricity prices equates to a $300 a year increase and will disproportionately impact on vulnerable families in poor-quality housing who can least afford it?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’m not going to quibble with the member’s mathematics there, but what I am going to quibble with is the fact that he is talking about a report on a report that is yet to be released. What we are talking about is a target that is 16 years in the future. If I looked back 16 years to where technology and the energy industry was, I would not have been able to predict where we are today. We are a Government that’s putting in place the futureproofing and forward-planning to make sure we are planning for the kind of future that will deliver New Zealanders the most affordable forms of electricity, and that is renewable energy.
Jonathan Young: Why won’t she release the report or her response to it, considering 13 papers across this nation yesterday had written commentary or editorials on it?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Because the editors of 13 papers don’t dictate when Cabinet releases reports. We are currently considering the Government’s response to that report. This is an important piece of work. We are a responsible Government that is giving due consideration to our response, and I can assure that member it is imminent.
Jonathan Young: Well, does the Minister think that retail prices will see an increase, considering wholesale prices for the 2020 year have climbed 40 percent over the last 12 months?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think that member is once again showing his lack of understanding of how it is that retail pricing works. That will not flow through to the retail pricing. What that member needs to understand is that this is a Government that is setting our country up—and the people in it—for the most affordable forms of energy. Let’s have a look at those levelised costs of electricity again: in 2020, 8c a kilowatt hour for solar, 6c for wind, and 20c for gas. I’d like to fast forward to 2035: 6c a kilowatt hour for solar, 6c for wind, and 25c for gas.
Jonathan Young: Isn’t it hypocritical of the Government to be conducting a review—
SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member can start again.
Jonathan Young: Isn’t it incoherent of the Government to be conducting a review of electricity prices when her own policies are set to increase electricity prices by up to 39 percent?
Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: No. This is a Government that has a great deal of coherence, especially when it comes to its energy policy. We are a Government that is not content to let consumers face the kind of tangle that has led to the rise in retail electricity prices that that member’s Government oversaw for nearly a decade.
Question No. 12—Pacific Peoples
12. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Pacific Peoples: How does Budget 2019 support Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand?
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): The Wellbeing Budget has delivered a significant Pacific package of $113 million over four years of targeted support for Pacific communities across Aotearoa New Zealand. This unprecedented allocation will help Pacific peoples lead the way in the pursuit of a new vision of Pacific Aotearoa, who are confident in their endeavours, thriving, resilient, and prosperous in the areas of education, health, languages and cultures, economic and community wellbeing.
Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What funding in the Wellbeing Budget is allocated to support Pacific languages in New Zealand?
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Many of our Pacific leaders, past and present, have championed and advocated for Pacific languages in Aotearoa to be valued and celebrated as an asset. We know that when we have our language, we have our story, and when we have our story, we have a sense of place, and when we have a sense of place, we have the confidence we need to thrive and achieve wellbeing. The coalition Government recognises this and allocated $20 million over four years to establish the Pacific Language Unit. This new initiative will enable Pacific people to self-determine, for Pacific languages to be passed on to future generations.
Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: Pātai tapiri.
SPEAKER: No, the Government has used its allocation of supplementary questions.
Bills
Holidays (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Amendment Bill (No 2)
Discharge of Previous Bill and Introduction
GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, I seek leave.
SPEAKER: Well, you’ve got to say what for.
GINNY ANDERSEN: Oh, sorry. Mr Speaker, I seek leave for the House to withdraw the Holidays (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Amendment Bill in my name and to introduce the Holidays (Bereavement Leave for Miscarriage) Amendment Bill (No 2) and have it set down as members’ order of the day No. 7.
SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that process? There appears to be none.
Bills
Maritime Transport (Offshore Installations) Amendment Bill
First Reading
Debate resumed from 25 June.
Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport): I move, That the Maritime Transport (Offshore Installations) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 29 October 2019.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2)
First Reading
Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I move, That the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill, and that it be reported back to the House by 4 November.
This is a significant bill for farmers across New Zealand, for their families, and for our rural communities. Farming is a vital part of New Zealand’s economy, national identity, and rural communities. Farming is a major contributor to our economy, delivering more than $45.7 billion in export revenue last year. What’s more, farmers are often the lifeblood of rural communities, providing rewarding careers to the approximately 350,000 people employed in the sector. Farmers are entrusted as the stewards of New Zealand’s economy and environment. Farmers face many risks outside of their control, including climate change, biosecurity threats, and global trading conditions affecting market prices.
Farm businesses also carry significant levels of debt, which has been increasing steadily in recent decades. As at March 2019, $62.8 billion of farm debt was owed to New Zealand banks, up from $17 billion in March of 1999. That’s an increase of 270 percent over 20 years. The Government is committed to supporting the primary sector in a just transition to an environmentally, socially, and financially sustainable future. The Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) also represents the outcome of the examination of agricultural debt mediation as well as receivership fees charged, as agreed to by the Labour - New Zealand First coalition Government agreement for the 52nd Parliament.
I’d like at this time to thank New Zealand First for their efforts in promoting this bill. The Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) is an important component of the Government’s support for farmers. It’ll help mitigate some of the key barriers that farmers and creditors face to effectively negotiating mutually beneficial debt arrangement. The scheme supports farmers involved in agriculture, including sharemilking, horticulture, aquaculture, or any activity involving primary production carried out in connection with these. As such, farm debt refers to financial arrangements secured against farmland, including buildings, farm machinery, livestock, and harvested crops and wool.
The bill applies to all secured creditors—both banks and secondary lenders—and has broad support from all major New Zealand banks. It has been created through a well-informed process, taking into account a wide range of stakeholder views and lessons learnt from international experiences, like the New South Wales farm debt mediation scheme.
The Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) will provide for fair, equitable, and timely resolution of farm debt issues with two key objectives: first, for farmers and secured creditors to meet in an equitable manner to constructively and objectively explore options for business turn-around and, second, to provide for a timely and dignified exit for those where few other options exist. The Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) will require secured creditors to offer mediation before taking any enforcement action in relation to debt held over eligible farm businesses. It will also allow for farmers to initiate mediation with a secured creditor without any statutory restriction other than having a debt secured over an eligible farm business.
The balance of power between the parties in lending situations is often skewed. The bill will provide a structured and consistent process for resolving farm debt problems that both farmers and creditors can have confidence in. Mediation is seen by farmers and lenders alike as an effective means of addressing the power imbalance between farm debtors and lenders. This process will be supported by independent and expert mediators with a strong understanding and experience of the rural sector. A neutral and independent mediator will support both parties to understand and have trust and confidence in the process. The bill establishes a standard mediation process of 60 working days. During the mediation period, there is a prohibition on enforcement actions related to that debt.
The bill recognises the diversity of farmers, lenders, and farm debt, and the importance of getting the right person to mediate. Under the scheme, farmers and lenders have combined input into the selection of a mediator, with farmers making an initial recommendation of three mediators, which creditors then can select from. Stakeholders from across all sectors have recognised the importance of having independent and highly skilled mediators.
The bill provides for an approved mediator model, based on the family dispute resolution mediation model. This allows for mediation organisations to apply to the administering ministry to approve a mediator organisation if they meet certain terms and conditions. Approved mediator organisations will be responsible for authorising and monitoring the performance of farm debt mediators, in line with the standards set by the administering agency.
The model provides a light-touch, low-cost model for accrediting mediators, with an effective approach to ensuring high standards of expertise and subject matter understanding. It also provides for flexibility in the farm debt mediator market. This is key to ensuring the market can grow alongside the demand and keep costs to a minimum. Mediation is a real opportunity to discuss and develop mutually beneficial outcomes. We know that the earlier farmers and creditors have discussions, the better the outcomes are for both parties. For this reason, the bill places no statutory restrictions on farmers accessing farm debt mediation, other than having debt secured over an eligible farm business. We will work with farmers, industry bodies, and rural professionals to ensure that the scheme is well promoted and understood.
Farms are often much more than a business. They are the centre point for a family and for a community. While the bill is focused on facilitating discussions about farm debt, the benefits are much wider and include mitigating the toxic stress on families facing farm debt and supporting the involvement of wider family, hapū, and iwi. Acknowledging and supporting the mental health crisis and the mental health impacts that contribute to and are associated with farm debt will also be addressed. Providing support, better animal welfare and environmental outcomes, and creating opportunities to improve business and farm practice before they hit crisis point, as well as being accessible for financially struggling farmers, the system has a light touch administratively, allowing it to be implemented with minimal impact on the running lender’s current business models, reflective of the overarching goal of the suite of initiatives to support the primary sectors into just transition.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) will administer the scheme. Day-to-day responsibilities are cohesive with MPI’s focus on and network with rural communities and support for farmers. Officials from MPI, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and Te Puni Kōkiri have worked together to ensure that the approach incorporating tikanga is consistent across farm debt mediation and the proposed introduction of dispute resolution in the Māori Land Court. The mediation process has been designed to allow for tikanga principles to be incorporated where parties consider it appropriate, acknowledging that tikanga differs across iwi and across regions.
To genuinely incorporate Te Ao Māori, parties must be at the centre of determining the “what” and “how” of tikanga in their mediation process. The bill acknowledges that farm debt is a complex issue, taking into account a variety of stakeholders with different levels of understanding of financial issues and differing views and values. The complexity of farm debt has not been undervalued in the creation of this bill, and provisions to monitor the system have been taken into account.
The farming sector remains vital to New Zealand’s growth and wellbeing, and it is in New Zealand’s best interests that farming businesses are supported in the economy’s transition to a sustainable, inclusive, and productive future. This bill provides an opportunity to level the playing field for farmers and to provide equitable resolution of debt that will benefit farmers, lenders, rural communities, and all New Zealanders for generations to come. I support this bill to the House.
Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a wonderful opportunity to discuss the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2). The first question for the Government is: why is this bill the second bill? What happened to the first bill?
Hon David Bennett: Yeah, where’s Darroch?
Hon NATHAN GUY: We should traverse that. Yes, Darroch Ball stood up and baited this side of the House when we were raising concerns about banks circling farmers as a result of the response to do with Mycoplasma bovis. We were hearing that farmers were under pressure from banks, so we agreed to support the New Zealand First bill, which had been around since 1999. Yet when we discovered the bill in the select committee, officials came in and said, “Pretty much it’s like an old mangy dog.” and it needed to be put down. It was unworkable.
So there’s New Zealand First, had a bill since 1999—the old mangy dog bill. It comes into the select committee; senior officials come in and say it’s unworkable. That’s why we find ourselves in this position now, with this second farm debt mediation bill in front of the Parliament. I felt that that was a real embarrassment. Officials came in and said, pretty much, the select committee—the Primary Production Committee—couldn’t panel-beat the bill well enough to get it in a shape so it could come back into the House, so it needed to be discharged. So, while we will hear speeches this afternoon from New Zealand First saying it’s their idea, if they’d done their homework way back in 1999, this bill could indeed have been law by now. But now we are faced with the facts of this bill.
When I read this bill, I think it’s a hell of a lot better than the mangy dog one. This is basically the New South Wales model cut and pasted and inserted into a Government bill. Indeed, the National Party have decided to support it, but we want to interrogate it through the select committee process. We have got a lot of questions. How can we be convinced that it’s only going to cost $6,000 to go through this mediation process, cut fifty-fifty between the banker and the farmer? We want to be convinced in the select committee that costs aren’t going to run away on our hard-working farmers going through this process.
I’m also led to believe that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) think that they have the wherewithal to be able to administer this scheme. Why on earth would MPI want to be getting involved in something with the banks? You would’ve thought that Treasury would be the logical place to provide the advice and oversee this and run the bill. The other question that we will have to interrogate in the select committee is: what is the real definition of a farm? So, yes, we will support it through the first reading, but we will need to be convinced in the select committee that we can make the changes that we believe are necessary to give us some certainty going forward.
Also what has been mentioned by the previous speaker, Jenny Salesa, is the size and the quantum of farm debt. It is now about $63 billion, and about $42 billion of that is held in the New Zealand dairy industry. For people listening or watching Parliament this afternoon, they’ll think, “Well, that’s a horrendously big number.”—and yes, it is a large number. It’s not as big as the national household debt, but yes, it is a large number. What I want to say is that that’s because of the positivity that farmers and growers have in the primary sector of New Zealand. They have, basically, gone and borrowed to expand their business, to purchase the property next door to lift their overall performance, whether it’s through fertility, lifting their animal genetics, or whether it’s development, more water reticulation, doing the right thing for the environment, fencing off and excluding stock from waterways. It’s not acknowledged anywhere on that side of the House that farmers, over the last five years, have invested about a billion dollars in enhancing and improving the environment, fencing off the distance from Wellington to Chicago and back again. A lot of riparian planting is already under way.
So, yes, this debt number is large, but we shouldn’t forget that that has helped to underpin and grow the overall New Zealand economy. But right now we see ourselves in a different situation, having just come off the large Fieldays event—120,000 people coming through those gates over four days, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. Those farmers that I spoke to up there, when they look out and they see the returns being quite profitable and healthy for the sectors, they are concerned about sentiment. A lot of that sentiment is coming from the worry of this Government. We have the billion trees programme, which is now causing some issues out there in rural New Zealand. No one wants to see a sea of trees and rural communities hollowed out, because, if that occurs, that will put more pressure on banks and indeed may mean that this Farm Debt Mediation Bill is needed.
Also what’s occurring out there right now is a real issue with the Reserve Bank and whether they decide to make changes with the capital that individual banks need to hold, therefore forcing more pressure on to farmers, who have a larger amount of debt than most. If the Reserve Bank make the changes that they are talking about, it’s likely to cost the farmers with the most debt 25c to 30c a kilogram of milk solids. That is a massive cost off the bottom line. So right now, farmers are concerned about that.
They are also mindful of the fact even though they’ve done all of those things that I outlined before, enhancing the environment, they know that this Government wants to do more in terms of freshwater regulations. And if this Government goes hard on the primary sector, it will indeed drive up more costs. And what will farmers do if they have more costs and more taxes like fuel taxes imposed on them? They will turn to the bank and likely say, “We need more money.”—so therefore more debt. So those are the things that are playing out in rural New Zealand right now. The other one that is significant is this horrendously high and unrealistic methane target. And there’s a hell of a long way to play out in the select committee.
In conclusion, I also want to talk about dairy land sale prices being back, and it depends on who you refer to, but it’s in the vicinity of 10 to 20 percent in the last 12 months. We know that banks are being tougher, and this bill may indeed be necessary and give farmers a little bit of comfort that there is a mediation process between them and the banks. My advice to farmers is: if you get to this point where mediation is necessary, you’ve gone too far. Farmers need to be very mindful of the fact that they need to seek professional advice and not get in this situation. It’s very hard to determine the number of mortgagee sales in New Zealand. No one will really tell you, because they tend to be bad in terms of reputational damage for the banks. So they are tending to be managed exits out of the industry. But I am hearing and getting more and more concerned about those numbers increasing.
So I say to the House this afternoon that the National Party will support this bill through the first reading, but we have some concerns, and I’ve outlined those this afternoon, and we will use the select committee process to interrogate those concerns to make sure that this bill is not like the first mangy dog bill from New Zealand First that had to be put down, but that it is actually going to be workable and it’s going to be practical and make a difference for our farmers.
KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Well, what an interesting contribution from the member that just spoke then, Nathan Guy. I actually got quite an insight into where the National Party’s view towards the regions and to farmers is right now, because I tried to follow it—and I was studiously trying to take notes just to make sure that I could follow the logic of the Hon Nathan Guy—but it was an incredibly distracted and defensive contribution with regards to farmers, and I ask myself why Mr Guy would be so defensive about a bill and about a measure that is targeted to ensure that the wellbeing of our farmers and our rural communities is protected. Why would he be so defensive in this regard?
It took him over two minutes to even turn to the whole purpose of the bill. I thought, well, that’s because the feedback—and he mentioned it: when we were all at Fieldays just the other day—if you are, like many of the members on this side of the House, entrenched in your regions and in our community, is poor for the National Party. There is poor feedback because the communities know those people that have been so loyal—so, so loyal—to that party that has promised to be the bastion for the rural communities, the bastion for the famers. Those communities know that they have been deserted. They have been upstaged by this coalition Government, and they know that the real champions for the regions, for our rural communities, for those sectors that are the backbone of this country, are on this side. So what an incredibly insightful contribution, and I thank that member.
But now I turn to more serious matters before us. I’m really pleased that this bill is before the House. I am incredibly pleased, and I want to acknowledge the work of the new member Mark Patterson from New Zealand First, from Lawrence. I want to acknowledge him for his work in bringing this bill before this House and working closely alongside the Hon Damien O’Connor. Look, the member prior made note that this bill has been in various iterations since 1999. I had the pleasure of sitting alongside Mr Patterson in a range of different fora. In the communities that he seeks to represent, coming from a sheep and beef background, coming from a very strong farming background, I know that that member is held in very high regard. So when we have an issue like farm debt—we know the rates of farm debt.
Now, over the last 20 years, we have seen our farm debt increase by 270 percent. That’s 270 percent that New Zealand banks, actually, are carrying on behalf of our farming community. That number’s up around $62 billion to $63 billion. It is a large number, and that’s one thing I can agree on with the member that spoke just prior, Nathan Guy.
Now, when you have that level of debt sitting over a particular sector and one that is critical for our country’s economy—we know and we see this play out all throughout our own electorates, those of us that come from rural, provincial areas. We know the immense stress, and, look, I talked about it, actually, a couple of nights ago, but one of the biggest areas that I see or interaction that I’ve had, in particular, with the Rural Women’s support network, has been around the advocacy around mental health—mental health on behalf of the farming community. Now, why that has really come to the forefront is because of the amount of foreclosures, because of the debt levels that these families are carrying, and because of the impact of the wellbeing of the sector. It’s been a rough time, a really rough time, and I want to acknowledge those people that have really put a spotlight on the wellbeing of our farmers and our farming communities.
Now, when you’re carrying that level of debt, whether that’s a small farm, one of the things—in an area like mine, up in the East Coast, you’ve got a lot of sharemilkers. They might have really high levels of debt to equity ratio. Now, their incomes, of course, are dependent on factors often beyond their control. So let’s take a biosecurity outbreak like M. bovis. Well, they can’t control that but their vulnerability to their debt that they’re carrying, obviously, that continues. So this measure—and this is why I really do support this measure, this alternative dispute mechanism to require or enable the option for both banks and for farmers to be able to trigger the ability to go through a mandatory mediation process—the guts to the bill is about early intervention so that we’re not getting to that point where we’re having to see foreclosures, because we know in our communities that when one farmer loses their farm because of debt, that has a massive impact in the broader community—to the wellbeing of the community in every aspect in these small rural towns. The guts of this bill is about early intervention.
Now, the member just prior said, “Well, if you’re getting to that point where you need mediation, then you’ve gone too far.” but just prior to that he said, “But people are carrying such high levels of debt because they are invested and have seen the prosperity that they can obtain from the sector.” So the thing is that a lot of these—sharemilkers, in particular—go right out on a limb, and they want to become prosperous in these areas and they’re working blimmin hard, but sometimes things beyond their control happen. So this bill triggers a process where you can call on mediation.
Now, what I like about it in particular is there are really tight, confined time frames that you can have, basically, an “out-ser”—subject to, you know, any exemptions and deferrals that the parties may mutually call upon—but you’ve got 60 working days to get to the end of that mediation process. Because what’s happening right now is that there is so much uncertainty and things are going all over the show—it’s the stress of not knowing when you might have an outcome or an answer from that bank.
The other thing that is coming through from a lot of farmers in the rural community is that they’re feeling a little bit the power imbalance between the big bank coming after your home, your property, and all these types of things. This restores a bit of balance to those discussions, particularly at a time that’s very frightening for many. So, in terms of the actual cost to establish this mediation service, it’s really low-cost. It’s low-cost when we’re talking about the implications across the board. So I think they’ve estimated, the fine people at Treasury and the Ministry for Primary Industries, it’s going to be about $350,000 to establish the scheme and about the same, there or thereabouts, to maintain it per annum—so, really low-cost—but the certainty, I guess, long-term, ongoing is something that I think so many farmers are looking towards us right now and going, “Thank you.”
Now, I’ll turn to the words of Richard McIntyre. He’s the president, I think, of the sharemilkers section at Federated Farmers. He had a big discussion the other day about this and just said it’s about time that this bill comes before the House. He said this is hugely beneficial for those sharemilkers that are impacted, kind of disproportionately, in this area. So it has really good support from not just the “Feddy Farmers” but from those throughout the sector. It also has support from the banks because—now, the banks, obviously, they’re carrying massive debt and they have to carry the risk of that debt that they discharge. Well, I don’t think that the banks are wanting to—well, actually, I won’t get into what the banks want to do, I don’t blimmin know. But what we do know is that they support this particular measure, and so, I think, again, just to acknowledge the stewardship of, of course, the member Mark Patterson, but, alongside the Hon Damien O’Connor, who has worked to ensure that they’ve got the balance right when working with both sectors, the farming community and the banking sector.
So I think this is a day that we can be immeasurably proud of on behalf of our rural and regional communities. This is a small but pragmatic step to ensure certainty for the wellbeing of our regional communities, and it’s without hesitation that I commend this bill to the House.
Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Businesses only want certainty from Government. They only want to know that there is a Government that is prudent in its management of the country’s finances, that understands the rules that they operate their business in. Businesses don’t expect Government to give them a handout; they don’t expect Government to be there to make them survive in their worst times.
That is the fundamental prospect that we see in front of us in this House tonight, because I, personally, don’t believe there is a need for a bill like this. I understand there’s massive farm debt and I understand farmers get into trouble, but every business can have that problem. What we actually need from a Government is a Government that controls its expenditure and provides the environment for business to flourish and make commercial decisions, and not have those decisions be influenced by the long hand of Government going into business and changing the prerogatives that manage how those business people make their decisions.
What the member Nathan Guy said was completely true. What he went through was a whole range of things that this Government has done that is destroying confidence in all businesses, but especially in our rural communities. I say to that member that just finished speaking that the reason that the public out there and the business community are so against this Government is because they see a Government that wants to be entwined in their commercial decisions, a Government that does not understand the economy—
Mark Patterson: You’ve changed—changed back, unfortunately.
Hon DAVID BENNETT: —and that does not understand how business operates. Now, those members over there, New Zealand First members—they’re going to stand up in five minutes’ time and say this was all their idea, this was the thing that they had promoted, and Darroch Ball did. It was his idea. They’ve given it to Mr Patterson, for some unknown reason, and I’m not sure even why the Labour Party has to go through the indignity of having to lead off the debate on this, because it is a New Zealand First bill. It’s a New Zealand First cop-out, because they want to go to the regions and into the farming communities and try and buy their votes and say, “Look, we did this, we’ve done this, we’ve been there for you.” That’s not true. Everybody knows in the rural communities that New Zealand First is not there for them, that New Zealand First creates more problems than good.
Fletcher Tabuteau: Talk about the bill.
Hon DAVID BENNETT: They understand that this bill is bad for them, Mr Tabuteau. He says, “Talk about the bill.” Well, the bill isn’t needed if you’ve got a Government that does the right thing. It isn’t needed if the Government understands its finances. It’s not needed if the Government goes out there and slaughters the rural economies, as it is doing at the moment. There is no confidence out there in the banking sector, amongst farmers, because they know what’s coming from this Government. They know what’s going to happen around the environmental reforms. They know what’s going to happen around taxation over time.
Dr Duncan Webb: Scaremongering.
Hon DAVID BENNETT: What? Did you say something?
Dr Duncan Webb: I said you’re scaremongering.
Hon DAVID BENNETT: Is it that member there who said something? He’s never said anything in this House. He’s come from Christchurch, doesn’t know what the hell’s going on in the rural sector, and yet comes and makes all these comments here this afternoon. Well, I think that member needs to go and have a look at what his Government’s policies are. Look at what they’ve done in agriculture in the last couple of months, or are going to do. The tree aspect is a really important part of it. You know, New Zealand First and their billion dollar trees. That is causing major land use change in New Zealand and that puts farmers under financial pressure. Once farmers are under financial pressure, then they need to have a bill like this. If the Government of the day didn’t cause all those problems, then you wouldn’t need a bill like that.
So that’s the point that our members have been saying: that the New Zealand First - Labour coalition Government is actually causing the lack of confidence in the New Zealand dairy and agriculture and horticulture sectors, and, directly by causing that, now they’re trying to repair it with a farm debt mediation bill on the other side. That is exactly the problem when you have Government involvement in the economy.
What businesses really want is just certainty. They want to know that they can get on with business within parameters, and they don’t want Government trying to take on the one hand and give on the other and think that they know best. That is the ideology that you find in the left wing all the time. That is this thing that never works, has never worked economically, and will continue to fail in the future. Thank you, Madam Speaker.
MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): I am very humbled actually to get up and speak on behalf of New Zealand First on this Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2). This bill has a long genesis. It goes back to a member’s bill by Doug Woolerton in 1999. It was also a bill under the name of Hon Ron Mark in 2015, and more latterly under my name in a previous iteration as a member’s bill.
How disappointing it is to see the grudging acceptance of this bill by the National Party. This is a thoroughly sensible and well-needed measure, particularly in this time, and how disappointing—a party that used to purport to stand up for the regions playing cheap, petty politics. While this bill may have come forward as a member’s bill, it was actually of such importance and magnitude that it did deserve the full weight of the Ministry for Primary Industries officials’ support and the wider consultation that a bill of this consequence should have behind it. So I condemn the National Party, actually, for their grudging position on this bill. We have been championing this measure for 20 years. They are grudgingly there now and dragging their heels, and they should have a good look in the mirror if they want to purport to champion the farming sector. So in that light, I would like to thank Minister Damien O’Connor for bringing this bill forward and giving it the resourcing that it needs to make the bill an effective measure for a formal mediation process for farmers.
Farming is an inherently risky business. Much of the success of an individual farmer comes down to a number of measures that are beyond their control, no matter how competent they are as an individual operator. There is climate risk. There is commodity price risk. We have seen some major biosecurity outbreaks that seem to be a constant presence. We’ve seen the M. bovis outbreak, of course, recently and not long before that a major Psa outbreak in the kiwifruit industry. We have a fruit fly incursion at the moment that we’re dealing with. There are risks everywhere. We have got Trump and China going head to head in a trade war that throws currencies about in export markets. So there are a lot of things outside of farmers’ control.
At a macro level, the $63 billion worth of debt has been identified by the Reserve Bank as a systematic risk to the New Zealand economy. On top of that, we have a banking sector that is in a managed pull-back. I think it’s not a well-kept secret that there is a pull-back from the Australian banks in particular, some of it related to the banking inquiry over there, where the banks are just rationing their credit. And when you’ve got $63 billion worth of credit—and that credit is held in a relatively small number of hands. Only 20 percent of farmers carry almost all the debt or the vast majority of debt, so it is systematic risk. Of course, farming supports 350,000 workers and much more across the wider economy, if you spread that out, and, of course, our $46 billion of exports. Listening to the Opposition speakers, you would think that agriculture was in dire straits. In fact, we have record exports at the moment at $46 billion and growing.
So at a macro level this is a risk but, at a personal level, when farmers to get into trouble, there is a significant power imbalance. The banks literally hold the purse strings and the farmers’ resources. To have a fair process is somewhat limited, and those processes tend to be when things have got to a point where they’re past the point of no return. The absolute aim of this bill is to have the fence at the top of the cliff. This is not, as Mr Bennett seemed to infer, designed to rescue people that have made poor commercial decisions or are, in fact, in an insolvent position. This is not to do that at all. This is to put a circuit-breaker in place that either party can call in so that, before we get to that stage, there is a chance to have a fair, balanced discussion about the direction of the farming business before it gets to the point of no return, so some good decisions can be made.
I know that farmers are so connected to their land. It is so deeply ingrained in their psyche, and many of these businesses are multigenerational. They will do almost anything to maintain their farms, particularly a family farm. Actually, sometimes it will be saving them from themselves. So it is not designed to mitigate commercial failure. It will give the opportunity for a managed retreat or an exit with dignity.
It also will put some oversight on to the sector and lending practices. I know, since having the member’s bill, I’ve become a bit of a lightning rod in our office—Michael Haliday, up there in the gallery, who I commend for having done a lot of work on the member’s bill. We have been inundated by farmers coming to us with their issues. We have two cases at the moment in front of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) because, while you have a first-tier level of bankers who are, broadly speaking, responsible, you have behind that some vulture second- and third-tier lenders that are circling, and farmers desperate to hold on to their farm will sign almost any piece of documentation to hold their farm and they will dig deeper and deeper into debt. That’s what we’ve seen, and we’ve seen some shoddy behaviour, and the SFO will sort that out and have some justice there, hopefully, for the farmers that we are representing there.
The other thing about this that I think is really important is that loans are secured against farmland, of course, but farm machinery, crops, livestock, wool, aquaculture—we have to, in the select committee, I think, nail that down. I’ve had beekeepers come to me, “Are bees livestock?” I would argue that they are, and I would hope that they will be incorporated. But particularly, as Kiritapu Allan outlined in her contribution, the sharemilkers, who are such an important part of our biggest industry—the dairy industry—are particularly vulnerable. And in this banking pull-back that we’re seeing at the moment, they are the ones that are the first to feel the squeeze.
As Richard McIntyre, the chair of the Federated Farmers sharemilkers section, said, this is a much-needed piece of legislation. I hope the National Party were listening to Richard. I hope they were listening to Andrew Hoggard, the vice-president of Federated Farmers, who also endorsed this bill. I hope they were listening to Rural Women New Zealand’s Fiona Gower, who said this was a much-needed piece of legislation. I hope they have taken notice of the Hayne royal commission in Australia into their banking sector. That commended the New South Wales legislation, on which this is based, and recommended that the other states in Australia pick this up, such has been the success of that piece of legislation in New South Wales. This will put some independent mediators in place. There are good provisions in there to make sure the allocation of these independent mediators is done fairly so that it’s at the agreement of both parties—and, again, that’s taking away that power imbalance; it’s having equal parties sitting at the table and having a balanced discussion.
So New Zealand First have absolute pleasure, actually, in bringing forward this bill. We have fought long and hard for this measure to come forward. We have been stymied at every hurdle along the way, and there are some parties opposite that need to look in the mirror as to why they would have done that when this is such a sensible piece of legislation. So New Zealand First and I have the honour, actually, of commending this bill to the House. Thank you.
STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’m a little bit confused, actually, because the bill that was introduced by Darroch Ball was actually roundly criticised because it was unworkable. We actually, in the select committee, did our very best to try and get that bill into a shape where it might actually make some difference and work, but we couldn’t get it there; it just simply wasn’t possible. Fortunately, the Minister of Agriculture has come to the rescue and has actually done a bit more work on it. I’m still yet to be convinced that this will work. It’s a laudable attempt to have a bill that will work, but I’m yet to be convinced, and we’ll just have to wait and see.
I do share some of the concerns that the Hon Nathan Guy raised—the $6,000. Will that be enough? Is that enough cost? I think it will actually cost more than that, and I do have some experience in that from my former life with New Zealand Winegrowers, when the wine industry went through a downturn after having had two large vintages in a row and then the effects of the global financial crisis coming a bit later through to the wine industry, when there were a lot of issues around debt. So I’ve actually seen it first hand and have been involved in some of those negotiations. The problem is that by the time we get to a situation where this bill will be used, it’s already down the slippery slope, and actually what you’re really talking about at that stage is often what the exit plan is. I have seen from first-hand experience that that takes quite a lot for the people who are concerned to actually come to the realisation that there really isn’t any point in continuing on and it’s best just to move out.
The problem is that the longer you delay it, the more it costs. Now, this will put a halt to those costs going up while you’re in that situation—and I think that’s a great thing—but emotions run high and sometimes the opportunity to take a step back and have a good look at the situation from a bit of distance will be helpful. It is not a simple process, and I don’t think that very many cases will end up being the happy ending that most people might think this bill will do. Why the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI)? I don’t know why we would have MPI involved in this at all. I don’t think they’re the right entity to be involved in a debt mediation bill at all. Maybe it’s the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment; maybe it’s someone else? Treasury, I think the Hon Nathan Guy mentioned. What’s the definition of a farm? That’s going to be an interesting debate. All these things get far more complex when you get into the select committee and into the details. So we’ll look forward to hearing how that will work.
This is actually coming into sharp focus now because of this Climate Commission bill, which will actually load more financial pressure on the farming sector. It already has agricultural risk, which is around climate risk and suchlike, which it’s always had in the farming sector—international markets, currency risk, all of those things—and, then, now we’re adding the uncertainty of an outrageous methane target when, really, the target should be CO2 emissions. This will likely bring forward those debt issues and make it much more difficult for rural New Zealand to get on with this. I was interested in the member Mark Patterson, who mentioned the second- and third-tier lenders, and that’s interesting. Who is involved in this debt mediation bill? That will also be interesting and the definitions when we get into it in the bill.
Yes, we support it, but it’s qualified support. It is a difficult area. I am not convinced this bill is in great condition. We’ll see if we are able to actually rescue it in the select committee, and I look forward to that process.
Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Thank you, Mr Speaker. On behalf of the Green Party, I rise to speak on the first reading of the Farm Debt Mediation bill, which we will be supporting. We did support the original member’s bill, which has been referred to, which preceded this bill and had some distinctions, but we supported that to select committee at the time. And we support some of the key changes that have been provided in the first draft of this bill, the key change being that there is a new Farm Debt Mediation Bill that establishes a standalone Act rather than amending the Receiverships Act.
I suppose that, if you look at the big picture of this, this is a Government that wants to support people, and particularly our regions, during what is going to be a transition—a transition to a sustainable economy, one in which we’re looking after our land, our water, and our climate—and we want to make it easy for people to do things that are good for the land, that are good for the water, and that are good for the climate. The previous speaker, Stuart Smith, I’m happy to say, is supporting the bill, although he raised a bunch of uncertainty. One thing is certain: if we don’t take action to control climate change that’s caused by humans, our farming sector will be wiped out—in fact, our civilisation will be wiped out—and we don’t have that much time. That’s what the science tells us: that we have to start now.
Now, we should have started 20 or 30 years ago. That’s what the Green Party was saying 20 or 30 years ago, but the next best time to start is right now, and by sending clear signals that the Government is putting in place a plan to transition to a sustainable economy—and that means supporting farmers to make it through the difficult times and to make that transition. We know that farming is vital to New Zealand. It’s in the country’s best interests that farming businesses and families are supported, and farmers who operate a family business often don’t have the resources to negotiate their own protections when dealing with lenders. And we know that unsustainable debt in the agricultural sector has also driven unsustainable farming practices. Not to mention—and this is something that we’ve often brought up—farmers are especially vulnerable to business downturns as a result of conditions that are well beyond their control, and that can be weather, market price volatility, pests and diseases like Mycoplasma bovis, and for many rural communities the failure of just one farm has a rippling effect through the community.
Farm debt is often complex, and resolving the debt problems of financially struggling farms can be tough and drawn out. It’s best for farmers and secured creditors to meet in an equitable manner to constructively and objectively resolve farm debt issues. So what this bill does is provide a fair, equitable, and timely resolution of farm debt issues. It creates a mandatory mediation scheme, requiring secured creditors to offer farmers who default on payments mediation before they take any enforcement action. And farmers are also able to initiate mediation if they wish. Of course, this bill on its own isn’t going to provide all the support and signals that we need to, to transition to truly sustainable land use here in New Zealand, but it’s just one part of the piece that recognises that there are people out there and we can’t make sudden, dramatic changes to the economy without looking after people and ensuring that they have protection.
I also want to note and recognise that there’s often a connection between farm debt and mental health issues. Obviously, the Government has made a huge commitment to ensuring that there’s mental health support for people who need it. Tragically, at times when there have been downturns in commodity prices, people feeling the financial pressure haven’t had the help that they have needed. So, hopefully, this bill will help ensure that there is that additional level of protection so that they have the mediation process before going straight to enforcement. And then the other side of that is the Government’s big investment in mental health and in ensuring that we have those services available to people who need them—whether they’re farming families or people in cities.
So the Government is very much taking a holistic approach and recognising our responsibility to create conditions which are fair and reasonable for people out there but also to set us on a trajectory and to show that leadership in saying, “We have a responsibility. We have an absolute responsibility and need to respond to climate change, and we’re going to break that down into the different sectors and everybody in New Zealand is going to play their part. But we don’t want unsustainable debt to be a threat to the wellbeing and mental health of farming families, and we don’t want there to be a large human cost.” But we all have to work together, and I guess I would ask members on the other side of the House in the National Party to think about how we can all, across all parties, constructively support communities in our constituencies to think about how we do tackle the challenge of climate change, how we do tackle the issues facing the health of our water and our soil, so that we can work together as a country to achieve an outcome that really looks after the future of all New Zealanders.
We’re not blaming anyone for the current situation, but we do need to recognise that some things need to change. When 60 percent of our rivers are unswimmable, we need to do something to change, and we need to support those who are in the sectors that are responsible in part for the degradation of waterways or the degradation of the climate. We need to support them to transition their activities to earning their living in a way that enriches our environment, that enriches our human society rather than cuts it short or pollutes it. I completely believe that that is possible, but we can’t change without change. Nothing will change if we don’t change what we’re doing. So this is just one example of a bill that the Green Party supports because it will look after farmers who are facing difficult situations when it comes to debt. We don’t want to see predatory lending practices. We don’t want to see unsustainable debt drive unsustainable land use. And I’m happy to note as well that virtually all of the stakeholders for this bill support it. Rural Women New Zealand supports the proposal. So I think there’s very, very broad support across the sector for a bill of this type, and the Green Party will be supporting it.
HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I just acknowledge that previous member’s speech? There was actually a bit of pro-farming in there, and I think this is one of the first times I’ve heard that from a Green member of Parliament. So I must acknowledge you for that, Julie Anne Genter.
I just have a few questions around this bill. It has been around for a long time—around 20 years. I congratulate Darroch Ball for introducing it, and obviously Mark Patterson for trying to get it through the select committee last year. Mark, you did a good job; there just was a bit of confusion around the bill and, unfortunately, you didn’t get it through, but it’s great that the Government’s picked it up.
Can I just start by acknowledging the banks and their support around helping farmers plagued down by Mycoplasma bovis. Take Southland, the Southland Building Society have done a wonderful job of sticking by farmers in quite trying circumstances, and I also want to acknowledge Ray Smith. Since coming on as head of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), he’s been doing a great job with the M. bovis response, and one thing where he’s made a real difference is that MPI have started issuing letters of assurance. A letter of assurance is, basically, when a farmer is under pressure, he may have stock caught up by M. bovis, he can’t move his stock, he can’t produce an income, the bank’s putting a wee bit of pressure on him, the overdraft is increasing, and MPI, to help out the farmer, are issuing letters of assurance. So that’s making a real difference.
Questions around this bill are: how will they apply the definition to farms; what if you’ve got a dairy farm or, say, a sheep and beef farm or a cropping operation with large numbers of trees; what if it’s an overseas-owned farm—will it apply for them? The costs involved—the officials recommend it’ll cost around about $6,000 per farm for mediation. How are those costs split? At the moment, it’s fifty-fifty, but what if the mediation, as it often does, goes on for a number of months, six to 12 months? It’ll probably be a lot higher than the $6,000.
Really disappointed last week during the Primary Production Committee when we asked the Minister of Agriculture, “What have the officials told you in terms of how much the costs of the high-methane targets are on farmers?” Unfortunately, he hadn’t asked for that advice, which is very disappointing. My follow-up question was around the Labour Party’s rural proofing policy—“Show me any evidence in any of your rural policies where you’ve put the rural ruler over it.”—and he said he couldn’t point to any. That’s possibly why this bill’s been around for 20 years and it’s needed now. Farmers are under a huge amount of pressure by this Government. We have a glut of farms on the market. Prices in some areas have dropped by as high as 24 percent. Rural business confidence is the lowest in 10 years. Job growth stalled from 12,000 jobs per month when we left office to 300. Growth’s dropped from 4 to 2.5 percent. Fuel taxes—the first bill after the Budget was a fuel tax. How on earth does that work?
Around 3 to 4 percent of farmers are struggling with debt. This is really going to benefit them. It’s usually the younger farmers that are high on the bill. They have a high loan-to-value ratio. So this bill will benefit them. That’s around 3 or 4 percent of farms who are struggling with debt. It will benefit them.
So we look forward to making this bill the best possible bill we can, and I look forward to the select committee process.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call Dr Duncan Webb—five minutes.
Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. This is a fantastic piece of legislation, yet another block in building a New Zealand we can be proud of, one that is inclusive, looks after everyone—farmers included. You know, the wellbeing of farmers is just as important as the wellbeing of any other citizen in this country and absolutely essential to our economy. I fundamentally recognise the pivotal place that those great men and women do out there day and night. I must say I’ve worked in the area of debt recovery—often on the side of the debtor, I must say—and I know the impact that this kind of financial crisis in a farm or other business can cause on mental health, as Minister Julie Anne Genter mentioned before. This is also just being decent and looking after people and having a country where we recognise and we care for everyone.
The other thing that I want to mention here just before I get into a few more details is that this is about building a strong economy, because we have a structural problem, one that the Reserve Bank has pointed out, and that is the high leveraging in some dairy farms. So we’re just getting started here building a resilient economy. The Reserve Bank, in its recent financial stability report, noted—and I quote—“[one] third of dairy debt is held in farms with high [debt to income] ratios. [They] struggle to make profits … repay debt, despite good milk prices.” So there we have it. In fact, it gives the number in there: $35 of debt per kilo of milk solids produced annually. That is a very significant ratio there, and what it means is that if dairy prices fall, then we’ve got a problem in our dairy farm sector. Nobody wants to see a farmer thrown off their land, and I recognise that, for some families, they’ll have been there for generations, that it’s more than just a business for them; it really is their tūrangawaewae. It’s where they belong. So we want to look after not just the financial aspect of this but also something that runs a lot deeper than that.
We know that mortgagee sales are not the best solution, and even if the business isn’t sustainable, even if the fact of the matter is that they’re over-leveraged, they’ve made some poor business decisions, and they need to exit that farm, you want to do it in a careful, managed, and humane way, and that’s what this bill is about. It’s not about letting people get off their financial obligations, it’s not about sticking it to the banks; it’s about saying let’s de-conflict this, let’s negotiate, let’s mediate, let’s find the best solution. That might be the sale of the farm. It might be putting a manager into the farm to help it over the debt crisis that they’re in at the moment, or it might just be giving a bit of a breather so that they can ride out the storm, recapitalising the debt, whatever it might be. So there are a whole lot of solutions which, if you get into a debt recovery mode, you don’t see.
Can I just say this is another example of this Government being innovative when it comes to dispute resolution. Just like the Canterbury earthquakes tribunal, we’re not doing it the same old, broken way; we’re trying new things, and this is exactly where we’ll need it. So we’re going to have a farming sector which, if the farmers get into trouble, they will be dealt with reasonably, carefully, and if the banks don’t act in good faith—or other creditors if they don’t act in good faith—you can hit the pause button for a full six months. So it’s a real incentive for banks and other creditors to come to the party and try to work through this debt crisis.
So, once again, a great piece of legislation doing it differently, doing it right, doing it in a caring way, building a New Zealand we can be proud of. Thank you, Mr Speaker.
ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Barbara Kuriger—five minutes.
BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s interesting now today that the Government is making a claim of being all things to farmers, and, you know, this bill is a step in a direction towards being kind to farmers, but I can say that out there there’s a whole lot of things going on at the moment. Fieldays was mentioned, I think in Kiri Allan’s speech around farmers. Well, what farmers were most concerned about at the moment wasn’t the pricing, it wasn’t the financing—although there is that concern around banks tightening up because prices are good at the moment—what they were most concerned about was uncertainty, and it was the uncertainty of all the things that are coming at them around climate change, for which they don’t have the tools, around methane—those sorts of things.
I was very pleased to hear the speech from the Green Minister Genter today around the transition, because what farmers are most concerned about at the moment, with all the things that are coming to them—all they want to know is: “Where am I now, where do I need to go, and how long have I got to get there?” So, if I’ve got a request of anything around this Government other than financial mediation, it is around some sort of mediation of transition for farmers, because they’re trying their best, but they just don’t have the tools. So thank you for that today. I will also acknowledge the member Mark Patterson, who does a lot of good work in the farming space.
I want to say here and now that bankers are generally good people. For someone who has been in the dairy farming industry all my life, and financially been in it for about the last 35 or 40 years, our experiences with banks have been really, really good. The front-line bankers out there are generally very good to deal with, generally very conciliatory, and generally will give people an opportunity, if both parties are willing, to come to all sorts of arrangements, actually. But those bankers are currently, right now, because of the banking system coming under a lot of pressure to tighten—and there is a lot of farm debt out there. So, again, it’s about giving people the opportunity to transition to a new time, and, you know, debt does need to come down and it needs to be into some sort of context.
But what I will also say is that we are talking about helping farmers, and when I talk to people about mental health in rural communities, wellbeing, work with Farmstrong, finance is only one of the stresses that put people under pressure. There are all sorts of other things. Sometimes, they begin with finance; sometimes it’s around relationships, but it can be all sorts of other pressures, and sometimes those pressures can also be the things that get people into financial debt. So I think it’s the uncertainty of a whole range of things that we can look at as being responsible for the mental health of farmers.
We’ve had a few questions today about our little bit of just holding back on full support of this bill. We’ve said we’ll support it at first reading and we’ll get it to committee stage, because there are some things that others have brought up today around the definition of what is a farm, but I also would question the involvement of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) in this process. I do think there are other Government agencies that are far better placed to be doing that role given that MPI is probably going to be involved in a range of things that are actually implemented in this country around farming. So, to me, there could be some of those situations where it could be quite a conflict for that organisation to do it.
I just want to finish my contribution this afternoon by mentioning sharemilkers. Sharemilkers were mentioned earlier on in the day. When downturns come, when pressure comes on, the landowner farmers have much more stability than the herd-owning sharemilkers, or even more so the sharemilkers and the farm managers who have no equity in the property. When things get tough, it is often the sharemilkers, the farm managers, and the farm staff who become the people that are most hurt. So I just want to make mention of those people today. So thank you for the opportunity for a contribution. Thank you.
RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just wish to make a brief contribution but wholeheartedly in support of this bill at its first reading. We’re implementing a farm mediation scheme under this bill. It’s one of those bills where we actually hope that we don’t have to use this legislation too much, but it’s there. It’s a mechanism that’s in place that we want to try and alleviate the stresses that many farmers and other folks involved in the primary sector face, with the burden of debt and their relationships with their bank.
So this is a very pragmatic piece of legislation. I want to commend Minister O’Connor and also Mr Patterson for their work in bringing this bill to the House. It is very important. It is a process. It does not get the lenders off the hook, but it puts in place a process where, hopefully, mediation can help, in certain instances, navigate a way forward for both the debtor and the creditor. So I support this bill. I’m looking forward to hearing submissions through the Primary Production Committee. I think there will be interesting questions just around the scope of the bill, just around the mechanics of mediation.
I note that the bill incorporates tikanga Māori in the mediation process, so that’s quite an innovative measure. I’m looking forward to learning a bit more about that, but I certainly hope, in terms of the Māori agribusiness—inherently, Māori farming interests are very conservative, so they don’t have a hell of a lot of debt that they have incurred, just by nature of the fact that by having communally owned land, banks are reluctant to take on security interests around Māori land as such. But it’s nice to see that there is recognition of that within the bill. So I’m looking forward to the further progress of this bill, and I commend it to the House.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I rise to take a call on this bill with a little bit of background in rural banking that I’d like to bring to the debate. I came into the rural banking sector off the back of the global financial crisis, and that was an interesting time to get into banking. There were a number of challenging discussions that were being had on farm at that stage, and then, of course, through the subsequent years, there are ups and downs in farming, as there are in most industries, and, on occasions, there would be situations where clients, unfortunately, got into a position that was not sustainable longer term.
In those situations, the banks—certainly the ones I worked for, but across the industry—would always be proactive. No bank makes a lending decision expecting to have to foreclose on someone, or wanting to. That is a worst-case scenario. It is not good for either side of that contract, and, certainly, from the bank’s perspective, it’s not good from a reputational perspective as well, if they’re seen to be acting in a manner that’s not believed to be consistent with the general lending practices.
So as bankers, we would go out of our way to pre-empt any potential issues arising with clients. First and foremost, you have to understand the business, so that’s critical, and build that trust with clients. Then it’s about understanding where they want to be going, what the numbers look like, and how they might get there, mitigating some of the risks along the way. What we’re proposing here in relation to those bank agreements, actually, I think, is not particularly necessary, because banks have whole departments set up to work alongside clients to help avoid this situation.
But the part that I particularly like within this legislation is that it captures all securitised lenders to a particular client, and that’s the one where I feel there is an actual need. That might be family lenders, it might be third-party lenders, or whatever, that have got into some sort of contractual arrangement with a farming client to lend money, and then subsequent issues around that as performance might not meet expectations, etc. So this will, in that situation, be a good tool to enable both parties to come to the table and, hopefully, get an outcome that is as best as possible for those particular parties. So I think, in that aspect, it’s good.
From the wider banking sector, I don’t think there’s as much need as the Government might suggest, but having said that, it’s not all bad. My question would be around the cost, of course—how that’s managed, who takes that on. Look, this is a challenging area, and we’ve seen a number of issues in farming over the last few years. Farmers are certainly—and I’m hearing this in the Waikato as well—feeling under pressure, and there’s a lot of regulatory uncertainty on the horizon; so anything we can do to provide a bit of additional comfort should certainly be looked at, and I think we’ll need to scrutinise this in further detail before we know whether it’ll be supported through the remaining stages. But, at this stage, we commend it to the House. Thank you.
KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): They can’t help themselves, can they? Here we have a bill in front of the House that is going to make a tangible difference to the farming community right across this country, and that is the community that that side of the House is supposed to represent. This bill is going to help many families in tough situations, and it recognises the unique place that farming communities have in this country. And can they bring themselves to get behind it? No. They’ve got to have a whinge. They’ve got to put the boot in. Some of the speeches have just been a list of things they don’t like about this Government rather than actually standing up and saying, look—sending a message to the rural community, a message that they love to see: this House coming together and supporting something that will benefit rural communities. So I’m not going to waste any more time. This is a great bill. I’m looking forward to talking about it in the select committee for primary production, and I commend this to the House.
Bill read a first time.
Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.
Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I move, That the Farm Debt Mediation Bill (No 2) be reported to the House by 4 November 2019.
Motion agreed to.
Bills
New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill
Second Reading
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I move, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill be now read a second time.
This bill will allow for the term of the Waikato District Health Board (DHB) commissioner to be extended from December 2019 until the triennial election scheduled for 2022. It provides the commissioner sufficient time to develop, oversee, and implement a financially sustainable plan for Waikato DHB and to improve clinical service performance. Without legislative change, the commissioner would have less than seven months to improve the Waikato DHB’s position.
In May 2019, I dismissed the board of the Waikato DHB and appointed a commissioner for the DHB, following my serious dissatisfaction with the performance of the board. In particular, ongoing clinical service performance and poor financial performance had caused me to lose confidence in its ability to deliver on its strategy for the region. Financial deficits have been a feature of Waikato DHB’s performance for some years. The DHB recorded a deficit of approximately $37.2 million for 2017/18, which was unfavourable to budget by $27.2 million. I’ve not approved the DHB’s 2018/19 annual plan, given the scale of the deficit and the clinical service issues.
I thank the Health Committee for its consideration of the bill, appreciating the short time available due to the upcoming local body elections later this year. The Health Committee examined the bill and recommended it be passed without amendment. Two issues which were considered by the committee were the impact of the bill on the democratic process in the Waikato and how Māori representation and participation could be provided for. The committee considered that the ability for the people of Waikato to vote for representation on their health board is fairly balanced against the need for a commissioner to address the serious financial, service, and governance issues that the DHB is facing.
With regard to Māori representation and participation on the Waikato District Health Board, I have emphasised the importance of achieving equity for Māori, in the terms and conditions of the commissioner’s appointment. The objective in the Act for the DHB to reduce health disparities by improving health outcomes for Māori and other population groups remains in place. To assist with this objective, the commissioner has appointed a deputy commissioner with significant experience in Māori health, and is engaging with the Waikato Iwi Māori Council and Waikato-Tainui.
I do not propose the cancellation of a local DHB election lightly. The bill therefore impacts only one election at Waikato DHB and will help ensure that the next board to be appointed as part of the 2022 local body elections will begin its term on a more secure financial footing, with more stable governance in place. I have appointed a commissioner in an attempt to resolve the DHB’s financial service and governance challenges for the people of the Waikato district. It is important that the commissioner is given a sufficient period of time to achieve the significant changes.
This Government is tackling the long-term problems facing our country. We’re tackling the challenges created by years of under-funding in our health system. We’re fixing problems that have accumulated over many years and were ignored by the last Government, down to kids growing up in cars, down to rundown schools and hospitals, down to stretched workforces, and dirty rivers. We know that everything cannot be fixed overnight, but we are getting started.
In respect of this particular bill, I do, however, want to acknowledge that the Opposition have also supported it through its progress. That, I think, is due recognition that there are significant issues to be addressed in the Waikato that have taken some time to build and that will indeed take some time to fix. I do thank the members opposite for the mature and supportive way in which they have approached this process, recognising the need to put the local population’s interests first. So it is that I commend this bill to the House. I look forward to hearing from the Opposition in support of this bill.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As the Minister said, the National Party did support this bill at first reading, and it will continue to do so through its remaining stages. I firstly want to acknowledge the Government in its reasonable adjustment to the report-back date for the Health Committee. This was a bill that was introduced at first reading, and while I wasn’t present for the first reading debate, I am aware that the shadow Leader of the House asked for an extra week in order that there be a very speedy—but at least something of a more thorough process—and the Government benches agreed to that. So that did enable the Health Committee to do its job, I think, very well.
There were only a small number of submissions, and the Minister has articulated the two main concerns as reported back by the Health Committee: that is, the obvious loss of the democratic process, and that’s not one that I think anybody in this House would take lightly. We have some precedent for that, and certainly the previous Government needed to take steps of a similar nature at the Southern District Health Board. I would suggest that the response from the Dunedin-based Opposition spokesperson for health at that time will be identical to the response from the Dunedin-based Opposition spokesperson at this time, and that is: we understand the circumstances that lead to what is a loss of the democratic process and the people’s right to choose its representatives on the district health board, but there are some occasions when that is necessary and appropriate, and I think the Waikato situation has reached the threshold for such action being taken.
Karen Poutasi—Dr Poutasi—is a very experienced both clinician and health service manager, and it will be for her and the commissioner’s team to drill into the circumstances that led to the difficulties that are facing the Waikato District Health Board both from a clinical and a financial perspective. I would make the opposition that a threshold for intervention has now been reached and met, and the Minister has taken action. It is of serious concern that that is a threshold that is being met and exceeded by a number of the district health boards around the country, and so it will be a challenge for the Minister and his Government to be consistent in their approach to the circumstances that would give rise to some kind of intervention.
It will also be an important task, I think, for the commissioner to lift the bonnet on the issues and find out where, indeed, things are going wrong, because one of the things that I think is a feature of the district health board process—and let’s bear in mind that the governance of these organisations is a very difficult thing, requiring a high level of skill not only from the election process but from the ministerial appointments to augment that process. There has been quite a bit of reflection on whether or not these very complex, sometimes billion-dollar - plus organisations actually have the right level of governance. But when things go awry, when clinical and financial milestones aren’t met, it can be extremely difficult for Ministers, for the ministry, and even for the board to understand exactly what’s going on. I think it’s a feature of our district health boards that may well be within the terms of reference, the scope, of the review that the Minister has embarked on through Heather Simpson.
I also note in passing that the Canterbury District Health Board now has a Crown monitor, and, indeed, one could argue that the threshold for the appointment of a commissioner there has been comfortably exceeded, except that the circumstances are different; the governance in place is different. But it will also be, I think, not only necessary but crucial to understand why things are changing so rapidly there, and I’ll resist the temptation to go toe-to-toe with the Minister as I have for the last weeks and months about why that might be the case and who’s to blame. What I would say is that the appointment there of Dr Lester Levy is an excellent appointment. Dr Levy is someone who’s been known to me for the 25 years that I’ve been involved in the health sector, and I find him to be an excellent health service manager. If anybody can provide detailed intelligence to the Minister, I think it’s him, but he will have his hands full.
Now, that said, I would encourage the Minister, on behalf of the people of the Waikato, to require the commission to be even more upfront than would otherwise be the case. They have had to watch from the sidelines while an escalating issue has unfolded for reasons which I won’t go over again here. But one of the things we owe to the public of the Waikato is a clear and transparent understanding of what is going to happen, what has happened, and what will happen in the future. I’m sure that, given the right direction from the Minister, Dr Poutasi will do that. When we take away a democratic process, we need to replace it with something that that region can have confidence in. So I would encourage the Minister to continue and to improve the transparent nature of the reporting not only back to him but also to the people of the Waikato. But with those words, we will be supporting this bill.
LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It gives me great pleasure to speak on the second reading of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill. I wasn’t at the Health Committee for the hearings of the three submissions, but I want to highlight that the focus of these changes—and I want to acknowledge our Health Minister David Clark—is, actually, access to high-quality services for the people of the Waikato. Essentially, what this piece of legislation does is cancel the October 2019 elections, and it does so because the Minister has appointed Dr Karen Poutasi to be the commissioner for the Waikato District Health Board. She’s a former Director-General of Health with 11 years’ experience.
The reason that had to happen, after a two-week process—and I want to highlight that the Minister engaged with the 11 board members of Waikato District Health Board (DHB)—was that, at the end of the day, they had a dysfunctional team and they weren’t working together, which was required. Nine of those 11 board members offered their resignation, and it was because of the instability at that governance level and the fact that they couldn’t recruit a permanent chief executive, that in fact Dr Poutasi was elected, or asked, to be the commissioner for Waikato DHB.
What has she done in that role? She’s actually appointed three deputy commissioners, and so I want to acknowledge Dr Andrew Connolly, Chad Paraone, and also Professor Margaret Wilson. The reason that she did that—and I will quote from Dr Poutasi—was that it will “take a team to turn the health board around”, and that, actually, is the essence of these changes. You need teams to run these big organisations which are providing services to populations. So from the perspective of the Minister, that wasn’t happening. I want to say in the time that she’s been the commissioner, we now have a chief executive for Waikato DHB; it is Dr Kevin Snee, who, from 2009, was the CEO for Hawke’s Bay DHB. So already, the DHB’s on firm footing.
The only other thing I wanted to highlight, particularly from the submissions, was a focus not only on the fact that there wouldn’t be democratic elections, and the community wasn’t represented, but a very specific focus on the fact they didn’t have Māori representation. That also came from the departmental disclosure statement, and hence the appointment of Chad Paraone. But one thing I do want to highlight, as the Minister did, is that there is actually a memorandum of understanding between the DHB and iwi. Those iwi are Ngāti Maniapoto, Hauraki, Waikato-Tainui, Raukawa, Ngāti Tuwharetoa, and Whanganui, and, in addition to that, Te Rūnanga O Kirikiriroa and their kaunihera kaumātua is actually listed within that MOU. I want to acknowledge Te Pora Thompson-Evans, who’s the chair of the Iwi Māori Council who also sits on many other Waikato DHB statutory committees.
So I want to reassure the people of the Waikato that they will have a Māori voice continue to be expressed within the context of the new governance arrangements, and I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.
Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill—a bill that we’ve supported at the first reading, second reading, and we’ll support now in the third reading. As has been commented on, we had three submissions at the Health Committee, and a number of points raised by the submitters. One of the common themes was around the loss of democracy with the postponement or failure to vote the district health board in in the 2020 elections. The comment there was, well, certainly we understand that, but, really, if we were to put in a democratically elected board in 2020 with these sort of challenges, we’d be setting them up to fail. That just wouldn’t be correct when there’s obviously challenges that we all agree with. It wouldn’t be right, nor would they have time to affect their functions and meet our expectations.
There were also comments from Māori that they’d like to be engaged in the appointment of the commissioner. That’s actually not part of the approval process, but their views were taken on board, and, more particularly, it was the Iwi Māori Council and Waikato Tainui who were saying that “this is important; we’d like to be involved”. Interestingly, the question was raised to us around the cost of the commissioner versus the cost of the existing board—is there any substantial difference there? Very late in the piece, we received some information back saying that the fee to the commissioner is $1,800 a day capped at $230,000 an annum, and the expectation is the commissioner may need to be involved two to three days per week. It was also commented that the deputy commissioner’s fees were $1,000 a day, with an expectation of 30 days per annum. When all of that was added up, it turned out to be around about $320,000 for the commissioner and the deputy commissioner, which was roughly the same as the stipend paid to board members. So net-net, there was no substantial change in placing a commissioner and deputy commissioner in, as compared to the existing board members.
I’d like to talk to the appointments—Karen Poutasi, an excellent public servant, previous Director-General of Health. She actually sat on my Harkness appointment committee, and I have high praise for Karen. I’m sure she’ll do a great job. The Hon Mike Woodhouse mentioned the chair Lester Levy, and how he’d known Lester for 25 years. I’ve actually known Lester for 40, because in a previous life he was actually a pathologist, and where Karen assessed me for appointment to Harkness, Lester actually assessed me as a pathologist at fifth-year medical finals. He was a very tough assessor, I’m sure he’ll bring those same qualities to this role, and he has our support.
I think really the only other thing we have obvious support across the House for is to raise the question that when we placed a commissioner into the Southern District Health Board, there was vehement resistance from the Greens at that time. They could not possibly get over the affront to democracy, and the affront to their morals and principles. I’ll be very interested to see their vote here tonight, to see if they’ve been subjugated or what they’ve sold them for or if they’ll vote against this as well. I look forward to that. We are supporting this bill. Thank you.
Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m not really sure how much more New Zealand First can add to the debate this evening on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill. The main points that we noted, and our caucus considered were—and I have to thank the Health Committee for the work that they have done, the report that they have provided. But clearly, what the Minister is faced with here, from our perspective, is an under-performing, under-resourced health board that has been digging itself deeper and deeper into a deficit hole. I do note from one of the Minister’s answers to a question this afternoon in question time, when he was asked how much longer it is going to take to turn things around, that he did say that it’s not possible to turn around nine years of previous governance in a short space of 18 months.
I thank the Opposition for their support for the Government in passing this legislation. I note that this is just another example of some of the challenges that the Minister is facing. That the board in 2017-18 should be reporting a deficit of $37.2 million, forecasting $56.1 million for the 2018-19 fiscal year, with increasing deficit forecasts in future years, was clearly a matter of concern. Ongoing performance issues with clinical services was clearly a matter of grave concern, and their inability to recruit a permanent chief executive, I think, would probably have been a bit of a final nail in the coffin, from the Minister’s perspective.
Having served on three district health boards (DHBs) myself, appointed by the Hon Tony Ryall as a Government appointee, I know the challenges and the difficulties. I know, from first-hand experience, sometimes there are complications that are injected into the governance structure through people who are elected but who do not necessarily bring with them the commensurate skills necessary to operate at such a level. I think this is a challenge, and when we discuss—and New Zealand First has in the past expressed its concerns about the removal of boards, and the appointment of commissioners. We have, like those submitters who submitted to the committee, expressed our concerns around the loss of democracy. I think sometimes the reality is that at some times, boards simply display an inability to do effectively that which they are charged to do.
At that point in time, in the interests of public safety, in the interests of public health, and in the interests of being able to deliver good health services in a sustainable way within the budget levels that are set by the Government, we have to take steps such as this. It is regretful. It is not something that we want to do or that we do without a considerable amount of thought. Removing the democratic right of a community to elect its health board is something that New Zealand First believes in, but when that board gets itself into strife and continually demonstrates that it’s unable to extricate itself from that, then the Crown cannot sit by and let those matters go unchecked.
So it’s with regret that we accept it is necessary to pass this legislation and to support our Minister of Health as he seeks to place Commissioner Dr Karen Poutasi, a previous Director-General of Health, in the position, in the hope that she will turn the DHB around. We note that this is a three-year suspension and that the intention is that there will be elections in 2022. We are hopeful and, indeed, confident that Dr Karen Poutasi will be able to achieve those targets and those goals.
I do note—from listening to Dr Reti’s submission—with some satisfaction that this will be a fiscally neutral transaction in terms of standing the board down and paying the commissioner and deputy commissioner to do the work. If it turns out to be fiscally neutral, that’s a good thing.
Like I said, it’s regretful and it is a sad turn of events, and in the normal course of events, New Zealand First would be uncomfortable. But this has to be done, and we accept that. On that basis, New Zealand First supports this bill.
Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Amendment Bill. As other speakers have indicated, this is a bill that enjoys support throughout the House.
The chair of the select committee, Louisa Wall, when it came before the Health Committee, managed that process well. We were all very clear that there’s a big deficit. If we don’t move quickly, the $56 million forecast deficit could balloon out to $500 million by the end of the year. That is the kind of thing that needs to be acted on very quickly and very decisively. It is entirely appropriate, then, that we look ahead and try and prevent bad things from happening. I think this is a very sensible intervention, as does National generally, which is why we’re supporting it.
Taking on board the points of the previous speaker, Ron Mark, who’s just resumed his seat, the skill set around the district health board (DHB) table is the key. These are multimillion-dollar organisations with big decisions to make, and sometimes—not necessarily in this case; I’m not commenting on individuals—on some occasions, local interests and people’s set interests can overtake good outcomes and be very expensive for all concerned. I think that nobody wants to see a DHB fail, and when you see something happening that is going to be as greatly disastrous as this, we would be derelict in our duty if we didn’t do something quickly.
I think the former Director-General of Health Karen Poutasi, as others have indicated, is an excellent choice to sail the good ship Waikato DHB through the choppy waters it’s found itself in. She did a stellar job over a long period of time in the Ministry of Health. I worked with her when I was on the National Health Committee back in 1996, I think it was—a while ago now. But when you have someone with a breadth of experience, as Dr Poutasi has, I think that the DHB is in very safe hands, and even at $1,800 a day—the figures that Dr Shane Reti quoted before—I think it’s about $320,000 for the commissioner and the deputy commissioner to have this role for the next couple of years, which would be cheaper than running in the elections.
We needed to do this quickly because the deadline is looming—9 December is sort of the cut-off point, and it was very clear that there wasn’t going to be a significant change or development before that time. So I think acting quickly is a good idea. It’s time-limited and it needs to be, and I think the next election—the triennial general election of 2022—will be the time when the DHB has enough time to get itself back on its feet and have a proper governance plan to ensure that it can run itself in a way that isn’t going to spiral into debt. So this is a very sensible, pragmatic thing, which is why National supports this bill and commends it to the House.
JAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to offer the Green Party’s support for the Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill. As was previously signalled by a member of the National Party who spoke previously, this is not an easy decision for the Green Party on one level. We hold local decision-making dear to our hearts. It’s part of our charter that informs all of our policy making. We have in the past, on one other occasion, supported legislation in the public interest that overrode the public elections of councillors in the interests of public safety, and we have been convinced that this piece of legislation has the same purpose. We have had very strong assurances from the Minister of Health that there will be more mechanisms put in place to enable local input and ensure there is a new vehicle for democratic participation while Waikato waits for the next election in 2022.
The reasons that the Minister has had to propose this legislation are significant. The financial forecasted blowout in terms of the Budget has a consequence for the entire country when we look at the difficult trade-offs that are made for Governments around spending. A massive blowout in one area because a district health board (DHB) is not able to manage their costs has a consequence for everyone, as well as that community, and there was a history of instability in terms of governance at executive management levels. Most concerning for me, when considering this proposal, was the increasing number of clinical concerns that we were hearing, and I don’t think anybody can responsibly sit in this House and ignore clinical concerns coming through from the community that they could address through measures like this.
We also had seen the issues around improper spending by the former chief executive (CE) and the board’s inability to appoint a permanent CE to be able to address the issues that had been identified. There were examples of the board’s decisions reportedly reaching the media while the board was still meeting—just showing a real breakdown in relationships on that board that was not serving the community—and senior doctors being concerned about the decisions being made, and some GPs as well as other hospitals in the area were also starting to raise concerns. So those are issues that would, I suspect, concern everyone in that community, and they would want to see us taking that seriously. If we didn’t have the ability to get a good CE in there to address those issues, then we believed, and we were convinced, that the appointment of a commissioner really was the only option in this situation.
So there’s no way that we’ve taken this lightly, but with regard to our concerns around ensuring that local decision-making, we’ve been given that strong commitment from the Minister that there will be clear expectations about community engagement, replicating what was used for the Southern District Health Board. We’ve had the feedback from people down South that, on the whole, that’s actually been a really positive process for them.
In the South, where there was a commissioner, the Southern DHB has continued to operate a range of local engagement mechanisms and public advisory committees, including an iwi governance committee, a hospital advisory committee, a disability support advisory committee, and a community and public health advisory committee. These committee meetings usually also involve public forums that open up this process to the public in a way that, actually, it would be lovely to see more of our DHBs, as normal business, pick up mechanisms to increase that public engagement.
We would also note, recognising that one of the submitters to the select committee raised some concerns around Māori representation, that alongside the very well-respected Commissioner Dr Poutasi, is Chad Paraone, a senior health executive from Te Aupōuri, who is of Ngāi Tahu descent, who has been appointed, and that there is an existing iwi Māori council and consumer council within the Waikato through whom that relationship can be strengthened. We expect to see that strengthened through this process, to ensure that the inequitable health outcomes for Māori can be addressed in this process.
So it was with a lot of consideration but, really, coming down on the side of public interest and safety and wellbeing that the Greens are supporting this, with the confidence and the assurance from the Minister that there will be many ways for the people of Waikato to engage and be part of this and have a sense of creating a DHB that serves their community.
Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Speaker, along with everyone who has taken a call to this point in the second reading debate. I express my support, cautiously, for this particular bill. It is always unfortunate when the House finds itself in a position where such a measure is necessary, but I think the reasons why this particular step has been taken have been well articulated by previous speakers, and I want to thank everyone for the thoughtful contributions they’ve made.
I would, however, just wish to take issue with Ms Logie, who spoke on behalf of the Green Party on one matter, and that is that she referred a couple of times to clinical concerns. I just wish to put on record that it’s certainly not my view that there are clinical concerns in this matter. On the contrary—and it’s good to have my colleagues the member for Waikato and the member for Hamilton East here, because I’m sure that they will endorse what I’m about to say—the clinical care that is provided at Waikato Hospital and throughout the region in which the Waikato District Health Board (DHB) operates is second to none, and we are very proud and grateful to all of those who provide that clinical care. We have extremely dedicated, compassionate, and competent clinicians, and they are well supported by all the secondary staff, the administrative staff, and others. I’m sure Ms Logie didn’t mean to cast aspersions on their work, but I just wished to put on record that this is not, in any way, a matter that has arisen because of clinical concerns within the Waikato DHB.
It is, of course, as I said, not a welcome development, but as the MP for Hamilton West, the Waikato Hospital is located in my electorate, and the Waikato DHB operates out of boardrooms and offices adjacent to the hospital. So I have met most of the board members and many of the staff many times. I know a number of them well, and therefore I’m sure that I can say, with some knowledge, that they and my constituents are welcoming the fact that even though this step has been taken, we have received an assurance from the Minister that he will be seeking the restoration of local democracy in the elections of the DHB within a three-year period, and that all should—we hope—be back to normal by 2022.
I also want to echo the comment that I think was made by Louisa Wall earlier, that it should be noted that all but two of the outgoing board members actually offered their resignations. So by no stretch of the imagination has the board been sacked. I think it’s important to put that on record, because they are people who have given their time and talents—in some cases, over many years—and they deserve to be acknowledged for that.
As I say, I want to acknowledge all of the staff. In particular, I want to acknowledge the outgoing acting chief executive, Derek Wright, who has been a very fine leader. He’s a man of great integrity, and after the very unfortunate and sudden exit of his predecessor for the reasons that have been well explained and which are inexcusable—no doubt of that—he has brought competence and integrity and calm leadership to his role. I think many were hoping that he might’ve stayed on, but I understand his desire to move towards retirement, and I just put on record my thanks to him and all his senior staff and others who have worked so well to calm things down. As I say, I also want to thank all of the clinical and administrative staff who work within the DHB.
Could I briefly, in closing, say the very best of good luck and support to Dr Karen Poutasi, who is, as others have noted, both an experienced and highly respected practitioner commissioner. I’m sure she is going to continue doing a very good job. She is to be congratulated on the fact that she’s already managed to secure the appointment of the new chief executive, which is one of the problems that the outgoing board was struggling with. I think it’s understandable why they were having difficulty finding a replacement, but Dr Poutasi has done very well, and I welcome the announcement that Dr Kevin Snee, who is currently the chief executive of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board, and I know that members in this House will be familiar with him—I can’t bring the Speaker into the debate, so I won’t—I hear he is very well regarded. I look forward to meeting him at an early opportunity, and I certainly wish him well.
I think that is probably all that I need to say. We are pleased to know that this is a short-term measure. I think that people in the greater Waikato region understand the reasons for it, and we look forward to seeing things return to normal at the earliest opportunity.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call.
JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a brief call on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill. Now, the purpose of this bill has been very eloquently outlined by a number of speakers. I would just like to continue with the particular local focus on this bill.
The outgoing board members—many of them are known to me personally. I’d like to acknowledge the former chair, Sally Webb, and the deputy chair, Margaret Wilson. Now, many of the members in this House will know the Hon Margaret Wilson for the wonderful work she’s done across many, many fields.
The board recognised that they were facing quite challenging circumstances, and as we’ve heard, nine of them offered to resign. They felt that it was the best course of action.
I’d like to acknowledge the leadership of the Minister of Health, the Hon David Clark. Certainly, this action was not taken lightly, but the action needed to happen, and that’s been acknowledged both here in the House and across the community of Hamilton and the Waikato region.
The Waikato District Health Board (DHB) serves 420,000 people. It’s important that the leadership is strong, stable, and that that leadership is able to provide that sense of stability so that the services—the excellent services—continue to take place. I commend this bill to the House.
TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I also rise to take a call on this bill, with some trepidation, but, at the same time, we are supporting it, of course. I say “trepidation”, because in any normal circumstance, we would be encouraging, of course, the democratic process to continue as expected. The district health boards (DHBs), the election of those members who choose to stand for election and subsequently represent a district health board and the region, are an important part of the process.
Now, obviously, in this particular instance, we’ve heard already tonight, but I understand some of the challenges that have led to this decision by the health Minister to appoint a commissioner. Obviously, the well-canvassed situation of the previous CEO, in terms of that scenario, was probably the most highlighted aspect of concern. I certainly want to echo my colleague the Hon Tim Macindoe, with his comments that there are no concerns, from our perspective, around the clinical performance at the Waikato DHB, but rather a series of other concerns that have led to this appointment.
Actually, just most recently, it’s been highlighted—just in the last week or so—that a number of the hospital buildings actually do not currently have warrants of fitness, due to non-compliance with fire issues. So that’s a concern as well, and it just adds to the challenges that the commissioner will have to deal with, supported by the deputy commissioner, and, of course, now the newly appointed CEO. And I’d also like to welcome Kevin Snee to the role of CEO and wish him all the best in what will be a challenging period of transition to make significant improvements at the Waikato DHB. And I wish him well for those endeavours and look forward to meeting him in due course.
Now, this is an area—of course Waikato is the best region in the country. Any DHB role is very important. And so it is with some caution that we look to appoint a commissioner, because, of course, as I mentioned, democratic process is absolutely critical. But in this instance, it would be unfair and challenging to let the normal process that will happen for other DHBs roll out later this year at the elections, because of the challenges that have been canvassed already. And so the appointment of a commissioner, I think, will provide a coherent focus on dealing with some of those issues and setting the Waikato DHB up to then be able to resume normal democratic processes at the subsequent election. So, on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.
ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a real pleasure to rise and take a brief call on the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill. First of all, I want to stand in support of the Minister the Hon Dr David Clark for his actions in appointing a commissioner. We have traversed in this House quite thoroughly the difficulties, or the poor financial performance, of the district health board (DHB), and some governance issues. I also want to acknowledge the way that we in the Health Committee have worked. We knew that this was quite a time-pressured situation, and we worked together very, very well under the chairmanship of Louisa Wall.
Waikato Hospital has a special place in my heart. Waikato Hospital is where my daughter was born some 26 years ago, and I lived in Hamilton for 18 years and know the city well. I do believe that the DHB is an incredibly, incredibly important large employer, groaning under the previous regime’s financial issues, but by and large it works very well. Recently, unfortunately, I was there for the death of my grandmother, who was under palliative care, and she died in the hospital. The work and the care that they gave my grandmother were amazing. So, yes, life and death comes to us all.
The bill essentially works to solve one simple matter, and that was that with the appointment of a commissioner, as we know, the elections that were going to happen in October this year essentially couldn’t happen. We needed to act quickly; there was a gazetted notice and we had to beat that time frame in order to change the law, so that the process didn’t occur and the election didn’t take place.
Now, we heard from three submitters. These submitters were, as we’ve heard, concerned about democracy and the opportunity to be represented. And we addressed that absolutely by balancing out the needs of both the community but also the needs of the community to have a well-managed DHB. So on the balance of that, we came clearly on the side of needing to put in place a commissioner. Secondly, there were concerns, absolutely, about Māori representation, and that has been traversed in this House and covered well.
It is important to acknowledge, absolutely, that this is a good bill that’s fixing a small problem but a problem that was important, nevertheless. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think everybody has really approached this bill with the right attitude this afternoon, and we’ve heard a lot of thanks to the staff at the Waikato District Health Board (DHB), and I think that’s very much appropriate. They have endured public—you could say, nearly—condemnation of the way that the organisation has been run, when they have done a sterling job through all that time in providing the services that they do, day in, day out, as doctors, as nurses, as staff that assist in looking after people, cooking meals, and cleaning, and everything that’s there. I think they’ve done a wonderful job in very difficult circumstances, so I’d like to also pay my thanks to the staff of the DHB.
As the Hon Tim Macindoe said, you know, many board members had recognised there was a problem there and were willing to seek change. And I think the Minister has done the right thing in this case. And I’d like to thank him for the way that he has kept us informed and also approached the DHB as well. I think he’s done a good job there. And we had Derek Wright there, as Tim Macindoe mentioned before, that had done a very good job, and it would have been lovely to see him continue in that role, but not to be. We wish the new leadership team of Karen and Ken all the best as they move their DHB forward.
But I think it does raise an issue that we need to really focus our minds on as communities and not just parliamentarians, and that is that, you know, we all accept that being an MP is a great honour and a great privilege, and if you’re a councillor and a local council, it’s similarly a great honour and a great privilege. But sometimes we don’t put enough value on the board positions of some of those really big community organisations like DHBs. And if the reforms that we’re going to see from the Government around education come to fruition, we’re going to see exactly the same thing there with large-scale education organisations as well.
We need people in our communities to step up to those governance roles. You know, at the end of the day, we can do these bills every five years and find some DHB that fails to meet its requirements and that, but it’s actually a symptom of the fact that, you know, we’ve got great people in the Waikato that manage significant businesses, and some manage significant community organisations, and some are very active in their local iwi and other cultural activities, and we have people that lead large migrant populations. And do we get these people standing up for our board positions in education and health? No, we don’t. Often, we get ex-politicians that have got name recognition, that can basically do well in the voting system that’s based on the most popular name that’s on the list, or the most recognised. There needs to be a better way of doing that so we encourage people, first of all, to take out that leadership position because it is a community responsibility.
And, secondly, we need to inform the voters of who is standing and what their credibility is and what they have to offer to that organisation. And so that is a challenge that this Minister, like previous Ministers of Health, have all experienced. And I would encourage the Ministers to look at that—you know, there’s the perennial question of should we have DHB reforms, and that’s always something that’s raised. And that may be not what we need to do here today. But, certainly, I think the governance capacity on our DHBs needs looking at. Whether we have a group of people that have been shown to be experienced and have skills that can then be considered as appropriate for going into elections, and have some kind of mandate, or have some kind of certification showing that they’ve passed a director’s course or they’ve shown themselves to be worthy in that—maybe there’s something like that that we need to do locally or nationally.
But there is an opportunity, I think, for us to really encourage those people out there that do have good governance and do want to make a difference, to, actually, step up and go for things in our health and education system, because we need those New Zealanders to take on those roles. I know it’s a hard choice because you put yourself in the public light.
Many people have been successful in their private endeavours, but we need those people to also be community-orientated and help others by being able to take those roles on. So if there’s any way we can encourage that in the future, I think, then we’re actually doing a good service for our local communities, and not just going from one district health board to the next as we go through this process as we have done in the past. So thank you, Madam Speaker.
GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Often, when we read the titles of some of these bills, they’re a little bit obtuse, a little bit vague. Once we start reading through them, we get the gist of what it’s about, but this is not one of those bills. This is one of those bills that when you look at it—the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill; I think anyone at home or anyone who hears that will say “Oh, that’ll be that district health board (DHB) that’s in the news all the time, that appears to be in trouble every week”—it’ll be hardly surprising that, finally, we’re sorting it out. Well, good on this Minister.
I am not going to stand here and go through the litany—I could probably fill a 25 minute slot here, going through the things that we have all heard about the Waikato District Health Board—of course, Dr Nigel Murray, I think, probably started that and that list, there forth. But, no, sometimes you just need some decisive action; sometimes you need a Minister who’s prepared to step in and do what needs to be done. Clearly, that has happened on this occasion; I congratulate the Minister for doing it. We now have the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill, which is going to allow a situation that could not be allowed to continue to be re-diverted, and, hopefully, will get back on track. So I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.
A party vote was called for on the question, That the New Zealand Public Health and Disability (Waikato DHB) Elections Bill be now read a second time.
Ayes 119
New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.
Noes 1
ACT New Zealand 1.
Bill read a second time.
Bills
Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill
Second Reading
Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): I move, That the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.
I’m pleased to speak to the second reading of this bill, because it is an important step in the ongoing improvements to the framework for drinking-water safety in New Zealand. I want to thank everyone who made a submission on this bill, including those who came to speak to the Health Committee in person. I also want to thank the members of the Health Committee—including, in particular, chair Louisa Wall—for their work, and for their thorough consideration of the bill and the 30 submissions that were made on it. It is pleasing, as Minister, to see the bill returned to the House with a unanimous report from the Health Committee.
As the House will recall, in August 2016 there was a drinking-water contamination incident in Havelock North. Following that incident and the disabling of people and the illnesses that it caused, the Government launched an inquiry into Havelock North’s drinking water. The inquiry recommended a suite of changes, subsequently, to the current regulatory framework for drinking water. This bill draws on some of the recommendations of the inquiry, with a view to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Part 2A of the Health Act. The bill is a part of interim changes to drinking-water rules in anticipation of the introduction of a new regulatory framework for drinking water, and that’s currently being developed in the context of the Three Waters Review.
A large majority of submitters, I’m told, endorsed the bill and generally expressed support for its provisions. However, some qualified their support by noting that further legislative change is in the pipeline. As an example I’ve been given, there was overwhelming support from submissions for clause 10, which amends the powers of drinking-water assessors and designated officers. There has been some confusion among people performing official functions under Part 2A of the Act; this clause clarifies the relationships between the drinking-water specific powers in section 69ZP and the Health Act’s general powers of entry and inspection provided for in sections 128 and 128A. There was clear support from submissions for clause 4, which deletes unnecessary references to the operator of ports and airports. This amendment is seen as a tidying up of Part 2A of the Health Act.
Some concerns were raised regarding clause 7, which removes examples of reasonable steps suppliers must take to contribute to the protection of water sources. Some submitters were concerned that if the examples were repealed it would leave staff working in the front line with little certainty as to whether a drinking-water supplier had taken reasonable steps. The submission stressed that if the section was repealed, the publishing of guidelines to aid staff as to what amounts to reasonable steps should be developed without delay. There were multiple concerns raised regarding clause 9(4), which removes the requirement for accreditation of drinking-water assessors. These concerns were largely about ensuring that systems for quality assurance are maintained in drinking-water management. Submitters suggested that if the requirement for accreditation of drinking-water assessors is removed, a national quality management framework should be developed and implemented in its place.
After considering the bill and the submissions, the Health Committee did recommend eight changes to the bill. The first amendment concerns section 69H, “All practicable steps”. That section contains various elements that must be considered when determining whether or not a step is practicable under the circumstances, and some submissions expressed concern noting that, in its current construction, section 69H gives higher priority to the availability and affordability of steps than to the protection of public health. The amendment rebalances the criteria so that consideration of public health is given the same priority as the availability and affordability of steps to be taken. I welcome that suggestion from the select committee. In addition, at present a person who wishes to rely on unaffordability as a reason for a step not being practicable need only claim that it’s not affordable. The Health Committee agreed with a submitter that the provision also needs amendment and recommends that the provision of evidence be a requirement for any supplier who wishes to rely on unaffordability. That has the effect of requiring that the drinking-water supplier justify to the drinking-water assessor why it is not practicable that they should take a particular step.
Other amendments would change sections 69S and 69V, which outline a drinking-water supplier’s duty to take all practical steps to provide an adequate supply and to comply with the drinking-water standards. The committee recommends removing the references to all practicable steps so that the duty is simply to provide an adequate supply and to comply with the drinking-water standards. This makes the upfront nature of the duties clearer and is consistent with the findings of the Havelock North inquiry. While the headline duties on suppliers will be clearer, the defence available to them in section 69ZZS will remain unchanged.
A further amendment to section 69V in new clause 7A(3) relates to the implementation of water safety plans. At present, the legislation can be read that to comply with the drinking-water standards, suppliers need only implement their water safety plan to their own satisfaction. This issue was raised during the submission process as lacking appropriate scrutiny, and the Health Committee recommends that section 69V(2) is amended so that implementation of the water safety plan must be to the satisfaction of the drinking-water assessor.
Another amendment proposes strengthening the provision of water safety plans. At present, in development of a water safety plan, a supplier must identify the critical control points of their supply. This has caused challenges in the enforcement of Part 2A of the Health Act and the drinking-water standards as there is no explicit requirement that suppliers must actively manage critical control points. This amendment clarifies this requirement, stating that they must manage and control those critical control points as well as identifying them.
The final amendment relates to the notification of changes to the drinking-water standards. Section 69P requires that the Minister of Health ensures that there has been adequate consultation as well as notice before amending or adopting new drinking-water standards. Currently, section 69P(1) states that adequate and appropriate notice of the intention to issue, adopt, or amend the drinking-water standards must be published in a daily newspaper in each of the cities of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. The Health Committee recommends updating the public notice provisions by allowing publication on an internet site.
So in conclusion, the vast majority of those who submitted supported the intention of the bill, recognising that these are relatively minor improvements to the current legislative framework. Many of the suggestions made during the submissions process were constructive and have contributed directly to the strengthening of the bill. The bill as reported back from the committee will further improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Part 2A of the Health Act and, in so doing, help to promote the safety of New Zealand’s drinking water.
Can I thank again the committee for the constructive way they have engaged in these very technical issues surrounding drinking water. I think that the bill itself, with the changes also around consultation—progressing it through the House is something that everyone will agree with, because it is common sense and it’s good to have a bill going through which strengthens our regime and has widespread agreement. We cannot continue in a situation where tens of thousands of New Zealanders every year are getting sick by preventable means, without strengthening our drinking-water regulation. I want to thank again members from both sides of the House on the committee for the constructive role they have played in making sure this legislation progresses.
Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. With your indulgence, I just want to start a little bit further away from the scope of the bill and bring my point back to it. Today and tomorrow, the annual Aspiring Leaders Forum is being hosted here at Parliament, and I have just come from a forum with my parliamentary colleagues Chlöe Swarbrick and Jan Tinetti. A number of the questions that were asked about us and the way we go about our business seemed to indicate that there was a perpetually adversarial environment to this House and to its committees. We were at pains to point out to them that not only was that not the case in the engine room, the select committees, but also even in this place—that the one-minute sound bite on the TV isn’t actually how a lot of the business is done. Indeed, I would hazard a guess that probably at least half, if not the majority, of the bills that are passaged through the House in this term of Parliament have so far had the support of the majority, the overwhelming majority, of the parties. And so it is this afternoon, where we’ve had three bills where they’ve had unanimous or near unanimous support of all parties.
So it is with this one, because of course we all know of the very serious water contamination issues that emerged in Havelock North a couple of years ago. Indeed, the genesis of this was the inquiry that the previous Government commenced and which the present Government is picking up and implementing the recommendations for, and we certainly endorse both those recommendations as a whole and we will watch with interest when the Minister of Local Government brings back the proposals for how the Government intends to deliver the substantive recommendations of the Havelock North water inquiry.
But in the meantime we have this what I would call precedent or foundational piece of legislation that the Minister of Health has introduced and which we will continue to support because it is the right thing to do. It’s necessary and appropriate and it’s by no means anything like the substantive reforms that will be involved as a consequence of the contamination, but it is important to do.
I also want to acknowledge the members of the Health Committee that worked diligently under the very good chair, Louisa Wall, and the collegial way in which almost all of the business is done—but certainly on this issue—and also the submitters who came in. I’m not going to repeat the Minister’s descriptions, the very good descriptions, of the suggestions that came from the submitters, very smart suggestions, and which the select committee recommended changes to.
I will draw attention to a couple of the belts and braces issues that were referenced. The evidence of affordability, I think, is very important—to have some kind of scrutiny on those claims, and indeed there are other aspects of legislation that have that, not the least, I think, is section 31 or 32 of the Employment Relations Act, where affordability as a retort to a pay claim needs to have an evidence base. So it’s certainly by no means novel or new. Also, of course, I think the water safety plans are something that should be scrutinised by the assessor, not the supplier. Those, I think, are completely consistent with the policy intent and will actually improve the bill.
So with those short words, I’m very pleased to continue to support the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill at its second reading.
LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. It’s a pleasure to get a call on this, the second reading of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill.
I just want to provide a bit of context, because we’re actually talking about the campylobacteriosis outbreak in Havelock North and the fact that of the 14,000 residents, 5,500—39 percent—were actually affected by the contamination of their water supply. That included 45 hospitalisations, three deaths, and, actually, there were others that suffered health complications, and it continues to affect them adversely. This is an incredibly important piece of legislation because it implements recommendations made to the Government inquiry into Havelock North’s drinking water.
I want to acknowledge the 30 submitters and the seven oral submitters and, like others today, I also want to acknowledge the work of our committee—incredibly collegial. Actually, this was a technical bill, but I think those eight changes, which have been acknowledged by Minister David Clark, are significant and actually have added tremendous value. I also want to acknowledge the officials who, I think, we have an incredibly constructive relationship with, and also congratulate the Minister on having a ministry that has dedicated staff who, like us, are all concerned about public health issues. Obviously, having a clean water supply is incredibly important.
A lot of the changes were to the philosophy of the whole approach to ensuring we have a safe water supply, and, in fact, the whole intention of this legislation is about the protection of public health. But embedded within the system, actually, were a lot of choices that suppliers could make, and that’s what I really want to focus on. They didn’t have to justify whether or not they did something. They could just say it was unaffordable, and they didn’t have to do it. So what this piece of legislation now has embedded in it is not only the creation of these water safety plans by the suppliers, but they have to, under this law, now have an implementation plan, and they can’t just say, “We haven’t done it because we can’t afford it.” That is now unacceptable. The assessors will sign off these safety water plans. There will be monitoring of the implementation of those safety water plans, and there will also be a requirement to highlight what they’re calling critical points in terms of those safety management plans, and they actually have to have plans to implement it, I guess, in the worst-case scenario.
So I think this is now an incredibly proactive piece of legislation that doesn’t just rely on suppliers having these plans and that we’re satisfied with the plans. It has to be beyond just having a plan. It actually has to be about the accountability of those plans being implemented and consistent monitoring, because at the heart of what we are trying to do is to guarantee to every single New Zealander that their drinking water is safe. We never want to see a repeat of what happened in Havelock North.
I acknowledge that this is the first step in an implementation regime and there will be another piece of legislation that comes to the House. I won’t speak for much longer. Everyone, have a great recess. Kia ora.
Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this, the second reading of the bill, which we will be supporting. I want to acknowledge the previous speaker, Louisa Wall, as a very capable and pleasant chair to work with. As you can see from the work that we’re getting through the Health Committee and the whole committee indeed, we are indeed a very functional and productive committee.
As has been mentioned, we had 30 submitters to this bill, and if I look to group them they would sit into groups of local government, district health boards, individuals, industry—we had the Master Plumbers—quality assessors, the International Accreditation New Zealand, and, indeed, iwi submit to us in the Health Committee. I took from it three main points, and I’ve formatted them as: what was the issue, what was it before, and what was it after the select committee came through?
I think the three issues for me, many of which the Minister has mentioned in his introduction, were: first of all, Section 69H, to take “all practical steps”. The issue here was giving the appropriate weighting to public health in the wording of the bill versus affordability and availability. Before, the statement was “having particular regard to availability and affordability”, which seemed to unduly weight that in favour of public health. So afterwards, the impact of what the committee had was to apply equal weighting to those three aspects: availability, affordability, and public health.
The second issue which resonated with me was the definition of drinking water. Before, it was commented that it’s very important to get the definition of this right, particularly the definition between potable and non-potable water—non-potable water being water used for flushing, for washing cars, for washing clothes. In fact, it was decided that that is a body of work in another piece of legislation and maybe not appropriate to this. So we did take on board what the submitters said, but, actually, it wouldn’t be applicable to this bill. So that’s going to come at another point in time.
I think the third issue that was raised that we looked at, that has a before and after moment, was around water safety plans. Before we applied ourselves to it, how the suppliers implemented the water safety plan was somewhat unqualified. It wasn’t clear that they were under any guidance or jurisdiction. With advice from submitters and officials and with the agreement of the select committee, the implementation of water safety plans now must be to the standard of the assessor.
I agree with what others have said. This may seem relatively dry, but it is very, very important when we think of what happened in Havelock North, and it’s these sorts of bills that actually have a real impact for a lot of people. So a very successful, I think, stage here, complete agreement by the committee, and I am looking forward to ongoing progress. Thank you.
Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I will not take too much of the House’s time. I just want to rise and endorse the comments, in particular, of the Hon Michael Woodhouse when he highlighted the manner in which the committee went about its business in a very collegial manner. I’ve got to say that in my experience in the House this is not uncommon. I think we do need to sometimes just acknowledge that the select committees are the powerhouses of the work that gets done. And it’s work such as this select committee has done, chaired by the very able and capable Louisa Wall, that has highlighted and brought to the attention of the Minister the eight amendments that clearly made improvements to the bill, and that produced a piece of work that is going to enhance the wellbeing and the health of communities throughout New Zealand.
We—particularly those of us who have been on local government—will never forget the very difficult times that were endured in Havelock North, when Lawrence Yule was the mayor at that time. I think he might have been an MP, but he had been the mayor up there that prior to that. Over 5,000 people fell ill, and it resulted in the deaths of three people. It was an incident of great significance and concern, hence the inquiry and then, from that, the legislation that we are now progressing through the House.
I think we’re sometimes a little blasé. I know, when I’m out walking or running, I think nothing of dropping down into the Kaipatangata Stream on my climb up to the top of Mount Dick, putting my water bottle in, filling it up, and quenching my thirst. And when I come back down from Mount Dick, I fill up that water bottle again and carry on without so much as paying as any attention or mind to what might be in the stream further up from where I filled my bottle.
SPEAKER: What about the people who take the water further downstream and you’ve put your hands in it?
Hon RON MARK: Ha, ha! I think we do take for granted that we live pretty much in a safe country and, despite all of what we read in the papers about our dirty waterways—something that we aim to address—there are still places where we go and we can take our water. But it sometimes gives us a false sense of security. That we are, in this legislation, removing requirements for the Ministry of Health to consult for three years and Gazette changes for two years before making any changes to drinking-water standards, I guess, in itself says that the legislation was long overdue for a bit of a look-see and some amendments. Clarifying that water safety plans must include timetables to implement measures that mitigate risks to drinking water—it all seems rather common sense, all seems quite logical. It’s tragic that it has taken the deaths of three New Zealanders and over 5,000 people becoming ill to get us to focus our minds and our attention.
I’ve got to say, at home we have our own private water supply—rainwater off the roof. I said, in the first reading, that my partner, Christine, got ill in the first month of us living there. We went under the house and found that there was only one filter, and it was a filter that you’d normally find on a swimming pool, and it was certainly inadequate. Christine was sick for quite some time as a result. We installed a $2,500 filtration plant with a 20 micron filter, backed up with a 1 micron filter, backed up with ultraviolet, and I’ve got to tell you that rainwater filled it in such a way that’s absolutely pristine and beautifully soft. And Christine has not been sick once since then. That’s what we do, and we spend about $475 a year changing out filters and UV lamps, but that’s what we do for ourselves to ensure that our water quality on our lifestyle block is safe for our grandchildren when they visit, safe for our whānau, safe for our guests—anybody who comes to our home and who drinks. I’ve got to say, actually, that same water ends up being the water that we water our roses in our gardens with. So, even the gardens and the roses benefit from purified water.
I do know, when I was the Mayor of Carterton, that we often had discussions and debates about the quality of water, and we had to acknowledge that over half of the people in our district had their own private water supplies, and sometimes we worried. This legislation pertains to the public water supply, and I know the Minister has other work in progress, and we’ll look forward to progressing that through the House. But I’ll just conclude by congratulating the committee on excellent work, on very constructive amendments that have added to the quality of the legislation, and congratulate them particularly in the very collegial way in which they have worked through this legislation in committee. Thank you.
Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak at the second reading of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill, a bill that has been before the Health Committee, but before my time. I’ve read the background to it and some of the 30 submissions that were received. This does seem a very sensible response to the 2016 outbreak of the contamination in Havelock North, and as other speakers have mentioned, the health repercussions of not getting it right are too substantial to ignore. So I think the changes that are being considered about requiring water supplies to be treated—perhaps not to the same level of detail, as the previous speaker has done, to benefit his roses. But I think that the requirements for a residual disinfectant in the reticulation, making compliance with drinking-water standards mandatory—sensible measure—and establishing a dedicated drinking-water regulator as well as creating aggregated dedicated water supplies are all very sensible, all very useful.
As other speakers have noted, I was around in an era when people were a little less careful. I was in Pētone a few weeks ago and noticed that people were still queuing with their bags and bottles to collect the pure water that comes through there on the main drag at Pētone.
SPEAKER: Aquifer.
Hon MAGGIE BARRY: It’s an aquifer, and it is very popular, and a lot of people will only drink water from that. I was brought up in Tinakori Road, and there was a very similar aquifer that was there, but it was a very dangerous place to park and to stop and, eventually, it was closed for public safety reasons. But my own mother, may she rest in peace, thought that that was the best drinking-water in the world and that that was where we had to get all our drinking water. I have many fond memories of going down the road collecting it. We didn’t get sick—you know, they were different times—but I think that, with the measures that this bill is outlining, we can all be more confident about our drinking water.
As there’s more information that comes through around nitrate levels in water, around the sorts of things that can go wrong health-wise for people who drink too much water that is, if not contaminated, then it has too many of the wrong kind of minerals in it—that’s something that I think will be an emerging issue and something we need to think more about. But this is a very, I think, sensible and practical approach that other jurisdictions and local governments around the country can take note of.
This is a good bill, and I think it was such a disastrous situation and so concerning, and there were three fatalities in the Hawke’s Bay situation. I went up there at the time and there was a general air of concern and worry, and I think it is psychologically very damaging for people to think they can’t turn on the tap, drink the water. Boiling it for a while is all very well, but the contamination and the safety of our water is something that New Zealanders come to expect, count on, and so they should. So I think it’s a very sensible bill, and I commend the Health Committee for the good work that they’ve done on this. I commend this bill to the House.
Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I’m pleased to speak in support of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. Unlike Minister Mark, I’m much more careful now when I’m out walking and taking water from streams, because, with the major intensification in the agricultural sector, you don’t always know what is happening up catchment and what has actually got into waterways. That is a really sad situation, because I think, maybe 20 years ago, it was the ability of everyone who was out in the back country just to be able to stoop at a stream and drink the water there. What this bill is is only a small part of the Government’s overall programme in improving fresh water.
I live in Christchurch, and it is interesting there. We’ve got the best-tasting water in New Zealand, I’d argue, because it comes from an aquifer.
SPEAKER: The member is misleading the House!
Hon EUGENIE SAGE: Ha, ha! I’d be glad of that. It is delicious water, but just down the road from me, on the Ōpāwaho Heathcote River, there is a spring on the other side of the river. Always there is a car stopped there taking water from just a tap that the private landowner provides from a well on their property. That intrigues me—because the Christchurch City Council has a very sophisticated water-supply system—that people still prefer to take water directly from a spring rather than from the reticulated supply. But what Havelock North has taught all of us, and everyone in the House is resolute, is that we must ensure that we never have an outbreak like that again, which caused so much sickness and contributed to the deaths of several people
The inquiry found that over 100,000 people every year are getting sick from drinking water, and that’s probably an underestimate because people don’t always report their symptoms. So this small bill goes some way to making some changes to improve the security of drinking-water supplies. But it is part of a much larger programme which involves establishing a regulator for drinking-water security—a central regulator—which ensures that the providers of drinking-water supplies do meet much stricter standards and ensures the safety of people turning on the tap and taking water from those supplies. I don’t think it does all of the things that the Hon Maggie Barry outlined. I think some of those are still to come in the Government’s changes.
Ensuring that there is compliance with the standards is a key part of the changes that are to come, but that’s only one part of ensuring safe drinking-water. A critical part is ensuring that the sources of drinking-water supplies are protected. That’s protecting not only the volume of water that can be allocated for drinking water—for potable water—but also the quality of the water and ensuring that regional councils really step up to better protect sources of supply by stronger controls on land use in the catchments for those water supplies. That’s work that Minister Parker is leading as part of the Essential Freshwater programme: the stronger national policy statement on fresh water, and the requirement that councils actually implement in their plans the bottom lines in that national policy statement in a much more expeditious way than they have done to date. Because it’s protecting not only the source but also ensuring that the actual supply is really well managed that are the keys to ensuring that drinking water is safe for everyone.
So this is a small bill. It’s been widely supported in submissions, but it is making those changes more quickly so that there isn’t such a long time required for consultation before standards are improved. So it is a step along the way. There is much more work to come that Minister Mahuta, Minister Clark, and Minister Parker are leading as part of the joined-up thinking by this Government to protect and enhance our freshwater and to progressively move to a situation where, like Minister Mark, you can take water from local streams, because you can be assured of its quality. We can’t be at the moment. That is a tragedy, but we are working to change that. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.
Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, sir. I’ll take a very short call on this, partly because I wasn’t a member of the select committee that considered this bill and heard the submissions, the Health Committee, and partly because I have a group of aspiring leaders in my office at the moment who are waiting for me to return. So I will just simply—
Angie Warren-Clark: Give them a wave.
Hon TIM MACINDOE: Ha, ha! Well, I think I’ve just given them what’s called a shout-out, Ms Warren-Clark, and I’m sure that that will suffice.
But this is a serious issue, and it’s hard to imagine any member of this House not taking very seriously the responsibility that we all feel for ensuring that the legislative framework and the different authorities that are responsible for ensuring our drinking water is not only potable but of a high standard—that is a responsibility that must be accepted, and, of course, it falls for the local authorities to ensure that that is delivered, but there’s also the responsibility of the Ministry of Health and Department of Internal Affairs. So it’s a multifaceted thing that we all have a strong interest in.
I am pleased to hear that the submissions were supportive of this particular measure, and I’m also pleased that there is cross-party support in the House for it, because I think that sort of certainty is needed to ensure that all the authorities with the responsibility know that there will be continuity in the decisions that are made. So I commend those who have worked on this particular bill. I thank those who took the trouble to make submissions on it, and particularly the members of the Health Committee. Although I’m not a permanent member of that committee, I quite often do get subbed on because I’m on National’s health caucus team. I welcome the passage of this second reading as anticipated in a few moments.
PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and a short call from me just to support the comments that have been made by all the speakers already, in terms of this being the second reading of the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. Phrases like “this is a very serious matter and therefore a very serious piece of work” I certainly endorse, and I remember my time in local government and this coming to the forefront in terms of how can this actually happen in this day in Aotearoa New Zealand.
I’m not a member of the Health Committee, but it was good to see that there were 30 submissions and people have taken seriously the report done and those recommendations from the Health Committee that came through. It’s astonishing, really, when you look at some of the things that should’ve been there already—we probably thought we didn’t need them, but, certainly, the changes recommended have now been endorsed.
I was thinking, too, that the personal cost of this cannot happen again. I think the work that’s been undertaken and has been put forward in this bill will correct what needs to be correct, and, hopefully, we don’t see it happen anywhere else in New Zealand. I commend this bill.
ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take just a very brief call on the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill at the second reading. As my colleagues have traversed already, it’s a short but very important bill which makes a number of technical changes to the Health Act to allow some of the big changes that will be coming down the pipeline, no doubt, after the Havelock North inquiry.
This is actually a bill that’s a little bit close to my heart. Most of these points have already been made, so I’ll just take a couple of minutes to tell you a very short story about my younger brother, who, when he was two and I was just over three, nearly died from a water-borne illness. He was in hospital for a long time, and it was very touch and go and it was probably the darkest days for my family. Although the water he was drinking was directly out of a dam, which he shouldn’t have been doing but no one was watching him at that point, it was a pretty horrific time for my family.
This outbreak in Havelock North was truly awful, and as many speakers have said, we can never allow this to happen again. This bill is just the first of a number of changes that will go along the way to making sure that doesn’t happen.
I wasn’t part of the select committee that looked at this bill, the Health Committee, so I’ve been following it and I’ve read the report. I see that there were 30 submissions on the bill and they’ve recommended some quite good changes and that the committee worked very well together in making those changes. A lot of those changes were about the communication, essentially. The committee agreed that the current ability for water suppliers to implement their water safety plans lacked sufficient scrutiny, and the committee recommended inserting a new clause to provide for a drinking-water assessor to scrutinise water safety plans.
The bill also removes requirements for the Ministry of Health to consult for three years and Gazette changes for two years prior to making any changes to water standards. The committee also recommended updating rather historic requirements for changes to water standards to be publicly notified. One provision in the Act requires any changes to the standards to be advertised in the daily newspaper in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. The committee recommended that this needed to be changed and instead replaced with the water standards to be advertised online, which is very sensible, of course.
Look, these are all very good, necessary changes, and I commend the Minister for bringing this bill to the House and the committee for its scrutiny and its recommendations. I do look forward to seeing the more comprehensive reforms that we know are going to come off the back of this, and I recommend the bill to the House. Thank you.
GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you for the opportunity, Mr Speaker, of speaking on such an important bill for the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. It was a really big issue at the time, and I clearly remember how much concern there was when the Havelock North issue broke in New Zealand. It was a scare that went right through New Zealand, because it really shook our confidence in the fact that our drinking-water quality, in a country that we think of as being a First World country, could be compromised to the point where someone would lose their life. It’s something that we potentially take for granted. So it is encouraging to see this bill taking on board all of those recommendations put forward to making sure that we do have healthy drinking-water here in New Zealand.
Some of the key changes that this bill will give effect to in the recommendations from the Government’s inquiry into the Havelock North drinking-water outbreak are really looking at expediting how we change and making sure that the checks and balances required in legislation can be done in a way that enables a quick response in those areas. It’s important to note, too, that as we go forward and we see increase of population, increasing demand on our resources, to make sure that we are operating in a way going forward that we can maintain good-quality drinking water, something that is so precious to us, in a way that meets a wide range of competing interests. This is where this bill is only part of a wider response that this Government is undertaking to make sure that water, no matter how it’s being used across the board in New Zealand, is managed well, and we’re doing that in a way that balances a wide range of interests.
But this really marks out how important it is to make sure that the water that we get out of our taps—that when we drink that, we can make sure that we are not going to make ourselves sick, and we want to make sure that right across New Zealand, no matter where you live, you can turn on the tap and make sure that the water that you give to your family is of a good quality.
Some of the key provisions that have come through the select committee process have taken into account some of the submissions that the Health Committee heard, and it was good to see some of those changes taking place. There was strong support for clause 4, which, basically, meant amending powers for drinking-water assessors and making sure that we didn’t have—like what happened in Havelock North—that three-year waiting period, which didn’t enable a quick response.
I do note that there were some concerns raised regarding clause 5, which concerns ensuring that the Minister adopt appropriate consultation for proposed change and that suppliers are given enough time to transition once a change has occurred. So that is important as well.
The policy content of the bill, if I can touch on that quickly, is that it really shows that these amendments, and the four that are so important, will enable that response to happen, should we ever be in situations like the one that we’ve seen in Havelock North. I do note, too, that there’s a wide variety of ways that people source water in New Zealand, and all are important.
Growing up in some parts of New Zealand—when I was growing up in rural New Zealand, I vividly remember the day my father cleaned out our water tank and found the remains of a dead possum. We’d been drinking that water for quite a few months. No one got sick, but it’s not a great feeling when you know that what you’ve been turning on from the tap hasn’t been particularly good, or good for immunity in the long run.
But we want to make sure that what we’re giving our kids is good quality, and we want to streamline the processes so if there are impurities in the water supply, if there are issues in terms of where our water is coming from, and the sources of where that water’s coming from is adequately protected, then when there’s a problem we can act quickly and make sure that no longer should we have New Zealanders fearful of what they’re putting into their bodies from a tap. We need to protect what is beautiful in New Zealand, what is a fresh, natural resource, and not take that for granted.
I commend the Minister for this piece of legislation, and I really look forward to the good work being done by Minister Parker and Minister Nanaia Mahuta in terms of the wider work on water quality that is happening in New Zealand. It’s long overdue, and I’m looking forward to seeing that come forward. So without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.
HARETE HIPANGO (National—Whanganui): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I take a brief call as the last speaker for the National Party on the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. This is a watershed moment—pardon the pun, but it literally is, because it’s a turning point in terms of the health and the hygiene of our Aotearoa New Zealand water and the status of it.
Just reflecting on previous speakers this afternoon, I was one of those children from the 1960s through to the 1970s who also had the benefit of a rural community upbringing, and our water supply was, of course, either rainwater in the tank—and, yep, when it was cleared out, we found a dead possum or rat every now and then; we were pretty hardy and sturdy in those days—and also we used to go down to the river to cleanse, to bathe, to wash. Interestingly enough, for Māori, the word “wai”, water, is a significant word in terms of wairua—a cleansing element. Wairua is the spirit. Waiora, health—“wai-ora”—so the importance of the cleanliness, the cleansing, the purity of our waterways.
I now turn to the amendment itself in taking this brief call. The main provisions of this bill are that it removes “requirements for the Ministry of Health to consult for [the] 3 years and [the] gazette changes for two years” prior to “making any changes to [the] drinking-water standards”; it clarifies that “water safety plans must include timetables to implement measures that mitigate risks to the drinking water”, streamlines “processes for the appointment of drinking-water assessors”, and removes “unnecessary references to designated ports and airports.”
In keeping this brief, I just turn again to reflect on some fond memories as a child, and I reference, Minister Mark, your recollections of going to water sources to fill your bottle. My memories are going down to the Hautapu River in Ōtaihape, which was the source for many of us. There was a waterfall there. We would go down there, we would bathe, we would wash, we would cleanse, but we would take water from further up the river. Regrettably, in my childhood, in the 60s and 70s, we couldn’t do that in the Whanganui River; it was polluted. But now it’s a different story.
It just turns my mind, in closing, about who does what under this amendment bill in terms of the authorities. The local councils are responsible for supplying healthy drinking-water to local residents, and we’ve heard from speakers in the House earlier this afternoon about the watershed moment in terms of the disastrous outbreak in 2016. Who does what? The Department of Internal Affairs is responsible for the legislation within which local governments operate, and when it comes to drinking water, the Ministry of Health is to set the drinking-water quality standards and guidelines.
I will always reference from personal experience and the impact on my life, and in 2017, legislation was passed in this House called Te Awa Tupua—the Act in relation to the Whanganui River. Part of the cleansing and essence of who we are as Whanganui is our waterways and the importance of keeping that as pure as can possibly be. So that hearkens back—we have our other authorities and our Te Awa Tupua authorities in terms of Whanganui water and the Whanganui River. It’s not to be overlooked in terms of the health and safety of our waterways. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.
ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be the last member speaking on behalf of the Government around this bill, the Health (Drinking Water) Amendment Bill, which substantively tidies up—and is very technical in its essence—some significant factors that were missing and previously found in our water reporting. This is another opportunity tonight to commend my Minister, the Hon Dr David Clark, for getting on with a very important aspect of change. Infrastructure is really important, and this is part of the building blocks of infrastructure change. When we have systems in place that support good and healthy water, then through that so continues to flow wellbeing.
I’d also like to, as other members have, stand and talk for a small amount about the collegiality of our Health Committee. We all agreed on the future direction and where we needed to go. We listened and were very engaged with the seven submitters but the 30 submissions that came in. In fact, while it was quite technical, it was quite fascinating to learn what water assessors actually do, and we did talk about the workforce and the development of that workforce.
It’s so very important that we get our water right. As we have heard, there has been a significant number of people—a significant number of people—39 percent, I recall Louisa Wall, our chairperson, saying, in terms of being affected in that population. Over 5,000 people were affected by gastro in that community. Some deaths—three deaths—have occurred. I guess until this event occurred, we all just assumed that our water system was working well. We all just assumed, based on the plans that were in place, that this would work well. Well, by looking at the legislation, we’ve discovered that, actually, it was pretty slow-moving. It was pretty difficult to get action. Some of the things that were noticed were that it all had to be gazetted as opposed to being notified by email, etc. So there was a whole process that needed to really change.
But water, being so important to us, I was reminded of a trip—and I’m quite pleased you’re in the House tonight, sir—recently I was on a trip with yourself, on a Speaker’s delegation to Ethiopia and Rwanda and Turkey, and it is amazing how we, as a country, take for granted what clean water is like. So the very wonderful Wendy Hart organised that trip for us, and part of her pastoral care of us was to ensure that we were well. So we had, when we went to Ethiopia, a full and clear set of rules around what we could and couldn’t do, and one of the things was we, of course, had to drink bottled water in Ethiopia, and that included to brush our teeth. So it wasn’t only just for drinking, but it was for bathing as well.
Now, Mr Speaker, you and I are aware that things did not go that well for me, and in fact—
Marama Davidson: I heard!
ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Ha, ha!—sir, there was an incident on a plane and a bag. So this is the kind of legislation that is quite dear to my heart—
SPEAKER: The member should make it clear her mouth was involved.
ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Sorry, yes—yes. There was a paper bag and I was, unfortunately, sick into that bag. Ha, ha! I continued to be sick for quite some time. But while everyone thinks that’s obviously very funny, I’m a hearty and well woman, and I could cope with that. However, the kind of incidents and the likes of Havelock North—the people that we did lose were, perhaps, vulnerable health-wise. As a consequence, it was brought home to me that absolutely we expect in this country to have a good water system. This bill has, essentially, created part of the aspects of doing that to ensure that we have water safety plans, to ensure assessors and that there’s consultation. All of those things are in this bill, which is absolutely—while I say it’s not as spectacular as being sick into an air bag—it is most definitely part of the building blocks that we appreciate.
So having just told whoever’s watching television tonight and this House about my incident in Ethiopia, I would just like to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.
Bill read a second time.
Sittings of the House
Sittings of the House
KIRITAPU ALLAN (Assistant Whip—Labour): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Having regard to the very, well, fulsome contributions by the members across this House, and, noting that it is the final sitting period of a long sitting block, I seek leave of this House to rise one minute early.
SPEAKER: Well, it’s only 30 seconds now. Is there any objection, given that filibuster to the process? There appears to be none.
The House adjourned at 5.59 p.m.