Tuesday, 20 August 2019

TUESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2019

TUESDAY, 20 AUGUST 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Ministerial Statements

Department of Corrections—Prisoner Mail Management

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: I wish to make a ministerial statement, under Standing Order 356, in relation to corrections’ dealing with correspondence, and I do so on behalf of the corrections Minister, the Hon Kelvin Davis.

Last week, corrections’ chief executive issued an unreserved apology when a letter written by the man accused of the Christchurch mosque attack sent a letter that was subsequently posted on an online message board. Let me be clear: under the current law, that letter should have been withheld. The purpose of the law which allows corrections to vet and block mail to and from inmates is to prevent harm to victims and others. The family and friends of those lost in the mosque attacks should have been protected by the proper application of the law.

As the Minister, I publicly stated my disappointment and my loss of confidence in the process of prisoner mail management. Corrections immediately stopped the alleged offender from sending and receiving any further mail, and put in place changes to the system that mean all mail of prisoners who have been identified with extremist ideologies and/or registered victims will be checked centrally by a single specialist team. Corrections have now developed a revised process, which will include all of the accused’s correspondence being reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team, which includes members of the prison management team, corrections intelligence staff, senior custodial staff, and corrections psychologists, as well as partner agencies with specialist knowledge and as well as corrections’ chief custodial officer.

Withholding a prisoner’s mail is a serious step. The final decision about withholding the particular prisoner’s correspondence at issue in this matter will be made by the chief executive in accordance with section 108 of the Corrections Act 2004. The strengthened process is unprecedented and demonstrates the seriousness with which corrections are taking this and their commitment to ensuring that we get this right.

Following on from events last week, corrections will do a full review into the practice of the reading of mail and withholding of correspondence. This review will be carried out by an external party. The centralisation process will remain in place until the review has concluded and corrections is confident its processes are robust and can ensure this can be prevented from ever happening again. The review will provide a report to the chief executive of corrections, containing a broad assessment of how our current processes operate and the level of consistency across the prison network; clear recommendations to enhance the existing processes to ensure instances of inappropriate treatment of prisoners’ mail are eliminated; and, finally, advice on ensuring that the law is effective and being adhered to. The chief executive has also advised me that corrections has set up an 0800 number over the weekend so that people can report any concerns they have about receiving unwanted mail from prisoners. The number to phone is 0800 345 006.

Corrections advise that around 15,000 items of mail are sent from prisoners every week. Under current legislation, prisoners are allowed to send and receive mail. The vast majority of the around 10,000 prisoners we have write to friends and family, which aligns with what we need to do to uphold our human rights obligations. That is part of the rehabilitation process, to give them a better chance of reintegration and to reduce their reoffending on release.

These letters can be withheld for a range of reasons, and, at the time the 2004 Corrections Act was set in place, the holding of mail centred around threats to the security of individuals and the security of prisons. The current grounds may not have envisaged mail being published to a wider audience and may not have captured the broader issue of hate speech. So, as the Prime Minister announced yesterday, we are considering whether or not the current Act is fit for purpose. The bottom line is that the community should be safe from those behind bars, whether that’s individual threats or the spread of hatred, and that’s what we’re going to make sure of.

Finally, on behalf of the Minister, I want to apologise again to the many people who were directly affected by the terrible events of 15 March and who were caused further anxiety by the publication of the letter last week. The top priority of corrections is the safety of the New Zealand public. The system has let us down but we intend to fix it and to strengthen our systems so that this never happens again.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We acknowledge those victims in Christchurch and their families and the wider community that have been impacted by the tragic events that happened earlier this year and the result that that had, with the Prime Minister making it very clear that the name of the individual was not to be mentioned again and that New Zealanders should do all we can to ensure that that person does not get the notoriety and the presence that that person has seen being acknowledged in the media in New Zealand and around the world in the last week. That is a great failure on the Minister and his department, but especially on the Minister: the gross incompetence to enable that to happen against the wishes of the Prime Minister and the people of New Zealand.

This is a high-profile prisoner, unknown to New Zealand before, but there is no excuse in this case. The Minister has a duty of care to the New Zealand public to protect our people and our citizens from this prisoner. The Minister had a responsibility to act in certain ways, and that did not happen in this case. The Minister demonstrated that he had no expectations for his department. He did not monitor his department, and the ultimate failings that we have seen are the result of his incompetence. What’s worse, the Minister didn’t own up when this became public and is now hiding behind law changes, 0800 numbers, and reviews.

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The member will stay, at this time—and the ministerial statement is one of the most formal times—well within the Standing Orders.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: It is clear that the laws were enough. Letters were stopped. The Minister, his department, and academics have all said that the laws are sufficient. They did not need changing. What has happened in this case is that the Minister has created a culture of leniency to prisoners. He has created a prisoner-first culture that has meant that the department has not exercised its role in the appropriate manner. He has tried to have incentives for prisoners to behave. He seeks, in his latest strategy, to continue that process, and the system has broken down as a result.

The second thing that has happened in this case is the Minister was not vigilant with his department, he did not set a plan, he did not require them to meet any objectives, and he did not monitor them on an ongoing basis to ensure that it happened. All this led to this prisoner being able to get the notoriety and publicity that the prisoner has always sought.

This is not the end of the matter. There are more questions to be answered by this prisoner: what further communications went out? The other letters that went out—who did they go to? The Minister had admitted that there are other letters and yet would not be able to identify to who and when they went. The Minister should have that information. With a prisoner of this high level, all interactions will be recorded within the department, and we need the Minister to come out with the rest of the information around this prisoner—his phone calls, other letters, and to who they may have been—because there could be further incitement and continuation of this notoriety that this prisoner has achieved.

There is no problem with the law. There is no need for legislative change. What we needed was a Minister to stand up for the people of New Zealand, to do his job, and to make sure that his department was vigilant in this case. He had the responsibility to act. He has let down his Prime Minister, he has let down the New Zealand public, and, more importantly, he has let down the victims of those terrible tragedies. This Minister can do more than apologise; he needs to act in a way that this never happens again and that the New Zealand public are safe, as we would expect from someone that has his position.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I want to start by acknowledging the re-traumatising effect that the recent failure of the prison mail handling system must have had on the surviving victims and on the families of all of the victims of the 15 March terrorist attack. Our law and processes for handling mail sent from prisons needs to uphold public safety interests, including stopping the spread of violent incitement. At the same time, this must be done with minimal interference with low-risk prisoners. The right to send and receive mail is crucial for enabling prisoners to keep in touch with their families and supports better rehabilitation outcomes and better reintegration on release.

However, the Department of Corrections also has a responsibility to ensure that prisoner correspondence is not used to endanger the safety of any person or to incite offences. We support ongoing work to ensure that our law is fit for purpose for stopping the online spread of content that dehumanises particular groups in our society and legitimises the use of violence. This incident demonstrates the importance of considering how we ensure online spaces enhance our democracy and freedom of expression for all.

Points of Order

Tabling of Documents—Accuracy and Delivery of Documents

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Kia ora. Mr Speaker, can I draw your attention to Speaker’s ruling 150/4(2), which reads, “Where leave is granted for a document to be tabled, it must be provided to the Clerk by the end of the sitting day.” and Speakers’ ruling 150/6, which reads, “If a member is given leave to table a document and deliberately misleads the House by delivering to the Clerk a totally different document from that for which leave was granted, a contempt would be committed.”

During oral question No. 9 on 7 August, the last sitting week, regarding learning support coordinators, the Hon Nikki Kaye sought leave of the House to table a document she described as the previous announcement which showed that there were, I think, 70 learning coordinators under the previous Government. It is now recorded in the Hansard that the member never tabled that document.

I’m left with a dilemma. Because no document was tabled, and it is my informed belief that no such announcement was ever made, I seek your advice on what action I can take to maintain the integrity of the House.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just seek to put on the record that I did try to seek leave to table the document. The nature of the document referred to 70,000 children being helped under the previous National Government scheme. So I wasn’t correct in saying that it was 70 people; it was 70,000 people that were covered. I accept that error, but I did try and table that document with the Clerk. So there was no deliberate intention not to, and I’m sure the Clerk’s Office could confirm that.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): Speaking to the point of order, taking on board the comment by the Hon Nikki Kaye, when she realised her error—and I have quoted directly from the Hansard—would it not have been that the usual process was for her to come down and correct her statement, sir?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): In fact, I think Tracey Martin’s comment is absolutely correct. If, in seeking leave to table a document, a member mis-described the document and then in presenting the document to the Clerk that became apparent, it is incumbent on the member to immediately return to the House and correct the statement that they made in the House. To not do so means that they had knowingly misled the House and did not correct it.

SPEAKER: Right, I think there are a couple of points that we’re dealing with here, and I think the first is the expectation that when members become aware of the fact, especially in formal proceedings such as the seeking of leave, that they have made an error, my expectation is that that error is corrected. It hasn’t happened in this case. It cannot be an absolute rule, because we know that more frequently than one would like, members, especially when they get enthusiastic in debate, make errors—I’m not saying deliberately, but accidentally. What is also very clear as part of the Standing Orders and previous Speakers’ rulings is that members are not allowed to table a document which is not the document for which they were granted leave. It’s my understanding that the member attempted to table a document, but it wasn’t the document for which leave had been granted by the House. In that case, quite properly, the Clerk’s Office declined to have it tabled because it actually is a protection to the member who would have breached the Standing Orders and probably breached privilege if in fact it had been accepted.

There’s a final point, and that is that Speakers have ruled previously that while leave has been granted to table a document, there is no absolute obligation on the member to table any document—so it is permission but not a requirement. But Speakers have also noted that members who seek permission to table documents and don’t do so then affect the chances of either themselves or their colleagues being able to get leave granted by the House going forward, because I think it’s generally seen as not a good thing to do.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Speaker’s ruling 150/4, a series of two rulings from Speaker Smith, under clause 2, makes it clear: “Where leave is granted for a document to be tabled, it must be provided to the Clerk by the end of the sitting day.” I think that does contradict slightly the ruling that you’ve just made and I just want to be clear: are you ruling that one out and making a new ruling that, in fact, a document once leave has been granted doesn’t have to be presented?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): That is certainly the black letter of the Speaker’s ruling. However, where it says that “[Where] leave is granted for [the] document to be tabled it must be provided to the Clerk by the end of the sitting day.”—that doesn’t preclude the previous situation you’ve mentioned, which is that permission is given but it doesn’t have to be, in fact, tabled. But it’s not a permission that is endless. It lasts only for the sitting day. I think that is the most reasonable interpretation of that particular Speaker’s ruling. In fact, it’s reinforced by part one of that, which is “I have determined that documents will be tabled on the same day on which leave is granted”. Now, that doesn’t mean it must be tabled.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): I was in the House for this series of events that led to that Speaker’s ruling, and—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon DAVID PARKER: —for the benefit of the Hon Gerry Brownlee—I shouldn’t have said that; for the benefit of the House—to be of assistance, my understanding as to why that ruling was made was that there were sometimes political points being—promises of documents that weren’t then tabled, which led to the practice of opposing parties also seeking leave to table the same document so that it was actually tabled. That then led to the ridiculous situation that because one party could seek leave but it wouldn’t necessarily be tabled, another party in the House would seek leave to table the same document to ensure that it was. The Speaker then intervened and said, “Well, this is silly. If someone undertakes to the House or seeks leave to table a document they should go through with it, otherwise we’ll have these multiple applications to seek leave to table the same document.”

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Clarifying a little, that is correct. There was that strange series of exchanges. You yourself will be very, very familiar with that period of the Parliament’s history. It’s the reason why, in fact, there has been a tightening up of what is allowable and what is not allowable as a document to be tabled. But you are right: there is no strict requirement that once a permission is given that that is a must as far as a tabling is concerned. It’s also, I might point out, somewhat ironic that it’s a Minister from the New Zealand First Party requiring this particular activity.

SPEAKER: That’s not helpful. We’ve actually got quite a serious ruling happening here.

Hon Tracey Martin: Just speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: I think I’m getting pretty much to the point of being able to rule.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Associate Minister of Education): So if I understand you correctly, although my only recourse is, in the future, if a member or a particular member—this has been the case in the past—seeks leave again, the only suggested recourse is to in the future deny leave of that member. And that’s the risk that the member takes, which also can be used as a political tool—to suggest that those denying leave are attempting to cover something up. I wonder if we could spend—or if you might spend—more time just considering it if this becomes a norm.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Speaking further, sir, I think, if I could make one further—

SPEAKER: The Hon David Parker—this is the last contribution.

Hon DAVID PARKER: There was originally an intercessional order made through the Business Committee and the Speaker to address the issue. Then the Standing Orders were changed and Standing Order 377(2) was inserted into the Standing Orders, and it wasn’t there previously. So what Standing Order 377(2) says is that you have some discretion, but the Speaker’s ruling clarifies that unless there’s some other provision being given by the Speaker because of an unusual circumstance, where a member might come to you and say “Oh look, it’s taking me more than a day to get that document.”, it should actually be tabled on the day.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, no, I’m ready to rule. Thank you.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I’m trying to be helpful.

SPEAKER: Well, I think I am able to rule, and I thank the member for his pointing out Standing Order 377(2). The dilemma we have with this particular case, and I think we can differentiate this one from others—and I can think about the general case about requirements to table—is that this document does not exist and, therefore, it can’t be tabled. I think I’m able at this stage to say that I am prepared to consider, and the Standing Orders Committee might like to consider, the various rulings, and I will say that Dr Smith’s ruling was certainly inconsistent with earlier rulings—especially the one of Mr Hunt that I remember well—which indicated at that stage that documents did not have to be tabled; it was a permission, but not an obligation. I’m prepared to go back and look at that, and we can discuss it during the Standing Orders Committee, but I think it becomes a farce if we try and table documents that do not exist, as has been accepted by the member who sought permission in this case.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance) on behalf of the Prime Minister: Yes, particularly action to hold a market study into fuel prices, which has confirmed that the market is broken and margins have doubled since 2008, and confirms the Prime Minister’s statement that New Zealanders are being fleeced at the petrol pump. We don’t want to pre-empt the next bit of work, but the Government will act quickly on the final report to ensure New Zealanders do not continue to pay more than they should for fuel after a decade of inaction.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she stand by her statement that Kiwis are being fleeced at the petrol pump; if so, does she accept that her Government has legislated for 24c in petrol tax increases since coming into office?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the first part of the question, yes, and I do wonder why it is that the Leader of the Opposition has decided to line up with the fuel companies, against New Zealanders.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can she say that Kiwis are being fleeced by petrol companies when her Government has legislated for 24c of petrol tax increases since coming into office and, according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, petrol company margins have increased by just 0.1c in that time?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Prime Minister, I can say that because that is the import of the Commerce Commission’s report. I would note in terms of the rest of the member’s question that the average increase under National for the fuel excise duty was 5.76 percent and the average proposed increase from this Government is 5.6 percent.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that 0.1c for petrol companies is a world away from 24c in more taxes from her Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I accept what the Commerce Commission has said today. The import of what they are saying is that New Zealanders have been fleeced, and I repeat: I cannot understand why the National Party wants to get on the side of fuel companies, against the interests of New Zealanders. But given that they got such an easy ride under National, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.

Hon Simon Bridges: Would petrol prices be more like $2, rather than $2.20, if it wasn’t for all her taxes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member opposite knows that every cent of the fuel excise duty goes to the cost of transport in this country, just as it did under his Government and just as it does under this Government. I repeat again: I thought the National Party believed in competition, but it seems they just want to back the fuel companies.

Hon Simon Bridges: Isn’t the reality that that additional petrol tax revenue is quite simply sitting in the bank because her Government isn’t spending it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely not. On this side of the House, just as previous Governments have done, we have increased fuel excise duty because that’s what we need to do to pay for the transport needs of New Zealand. Every cent of that goes there. What the member should be focusing on is how he can support Kiwis to make sure that petrol companies give them a fair go. I’m shocked he doesn’t want New Zealanders to have a fair go.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she think her Minister of Corrections, the Hon Kelvin Davis, has done all he could to ensure that the man accused of murdering 51 people in the Christchurch terror attacks was unable to send out his extremist views by letter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The chief executive of the Department of Corrections has been absolutely clear that this was not handled well and that she does not have confidence in that process. The Minister is now putting the matter right; that is the focus for the Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: Can she confirm the current law states corrections officials can read and withhold mail so that no shortcomings of law are actually apparent?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We’ve been very clear that these letters indeed should have been stopped. That doesn’t mean that the law is perfect. The law does need to be relooked at. It does need to ensure that not only does it focus on individuals but also on the impact of publishing to a wider audience, and it predates the overall use of email and the internet—all of those things can see the law upgraded, but nothing takes away from the fact that this should not have happened.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can the New Zealand public have confidence in corrections and the Minister, following the decision to release convicted murderer Jason Reihana from prison nine years before the end of his non-parole period and without advising the family members of his two victims that he was released so that they had to find out by seeing him for themselves?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Obviously, the member knows that the decision was one for the Parole Board, not for the Minister or indeed for the Government. In terms of the wider matters around the circumstances of that release, clearly that was not handled well at all by the police or corrections, but I would add that it is not new for there to be issues with corrections. Need I reference Philip John Smith and Brazil, or Serco, or fight clubs, all of which happened under the previous Government? We are getting on with fixing the issues in corrections.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister accept the finding of this morning’s Commerce Commission draft report on petrol prices that of the $2.20 for a litre of 91, 34c is taken by petrol companies?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I don’t have that particular bit of paper in front of me right now, but I think all New Zealanders will understand that the report that has been provided by the Commerce Commission today is very clear that New Zealanders are not getting a fair go at the pump, and the Government is going to make sure we address that.

David Seymour: How much does this Government think that the petrol companies’ 34c share on $2.20 per litre of petrol could reduce without putting out of business the companies that store, transport, and retail petrol?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that Mr Seymour is backing the petrol companies against the best interests of New Zealanders, but, on this side of the House, we have now finally got the information we need to give New Zealanders a fair go, and that’s what we’ll do.

David Seymour: Point of order.

SPEAKER: I don’t think I need a point of order; the Minister will have another go at answering.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Could he repeat the question.

SPEAKER: Repeat the question.

David Seymour: How much does this Government think that the petrol companies’ 34c share of $2.20 per litre of 91 could be reduced without putting out of business those companies that store, transport, and retail petrol?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Those are matters that will be decided as we go through looking at the Commerce Commission’s report. What I know is that that report has been clear that people right across New Zealand are not getting a fair deal. If we compare ourselves to the rest of the world, we’re not getting a fair deal. We have to act on that. I am absolutely bemused as to why the Opposition—who I thought believed in competition—are now saying that they don’t actually want to sort that out.

Hon Simon Bridges: So what is the Government going to do, now it’s got this report, to stop, in her words, the “fleecing”; and when can we expect to see those actions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As was announced today by the Commerce Commission, this is the interim report. We will wait for the final report to come. But I’ll tell you what: we will act on it, rather than the nine years of inaction we saw over there. What’s been confirmed today is that the Opposition wants to back big petrol companies against New Zealanders. This is a very clear fight, Mr Bridges.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Would it be possible for a future Government to increase spending on road building and cut the revenue to pay for them by cutting fuel taxes at the same time?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: That is indeed a very good question, because, as I stated earlier, all of the money that is collected in fuel excise duty goes to transport, and it is incumbent on any political party to be able to say how they will pay for their roads if they’re not prepared to increase fuel excise duty.

Hon Simon Bridges: Given the answer to my last question about waiting for a further report, is this a case from the Government that talk is cheap but petrol prices won’t be for a very, very long time?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, what this is a case of is a Government that’s actually (a) given the Commerce Commission powers to do this, (b) got the report, and (c) is going to act on it. It’s not a case of nine years of giving petrol companies an easy ride, which is what we saw from his Government.

Hon Simon Bridges: So when will something happen?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As soon as we get the final report, which will be a lot quicker than the nine years of do-nothing from the member opposite?

Hon Simon Bridges: What will this working group cost?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This is not a working group; it’s the Commerce Commission.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of the Government’s statements, policies, and actions in relation to the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context that they were given, made, and taken.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What policies, if any, is he considering to help Kiwis who have saved all their lives for their retirement and are now facing very low interest rates on their deposits and the prospects of negative interest rates?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the member well knows, the decisions around the official cash rate are made independently by the Reserve Bank. When it comes to what we’re doing to support, particularly, older New Zealanders, I think the achievement I’m most proud of in that regard is actually restarting contributions to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, which the previous Government had stopped for nine years.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that retirees receiving less interest from their savings will particularly struggle to pay this Government’s higher fuel taxes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I know is that those who are in receipt of New Zealand superannuation are especially pleased about the fact that this Government has brought in the winter energy payment, which is actually making it much easier for them to meet their costs of living right at the moment. As I stated before, the decision around the official cash rate and what that means for interest rates is an independent one made by the Reserve Bank Governor.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that the Government’s winter heating bonus was simply a device to compensate older New Zealanders for the cancelation of National’s tax cuts?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I accept is that it’s a policy that has been received around New Zealand with acclaim. It was part of a package—the Families Package—that meant that low and middle income New Zealanders and those on fixed incomes got a boost in their income, rather than a series of unfocused tax cuts that would have delivered more than $1,000 a year to Mr Goldsmith and myself.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he comfortable with the prospect of negative interest rates or printing money, and, if not, what’s he doing to avoid it being required?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Those are not decisions that are taken by the Government; they are taken by the Reserve Bank. In terms of what we are doing, what we are doing is getting on with investing in our economy—for example, making sure that more than $40 billion worth of capital expenditure will be going out the door; whereas the previous Government only had about $30 billion planned.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: With regard to the Governor of the Reserve Bank’s comments about Government spending, “Our challenge is that spending actually gets done because there are lags and delays and challenges around infrastructure spend.”, has he encouraged his transport Minister to revisit his decision to cancel or delay dozens of road projects that were ready to go and replace them with a bunch of projects that are not ready to go?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I back the transport Minister’s decision to have a transport strategy that works for all New Zealand, across all modes of transport, and I particularly back the fact that he is coming forward with transport projects that are actually funded, not ghost roads that Mr Bridges put forward.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Minister of Finance confirm that a number of the roading projects promised at the end of the tenure of the last Government had not been planned, consented, or funded under their Government?

SPEAKER: No, no, no. The member might’ve got it right if he went a couple of days later.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How is he confident that the increased investment that the Reserve Bank expects from lower interest rates will actually occur, given the very low levels of business confidence in this country right now?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I back what the Reserve Bank Governor said. This is a great time to invest in New Zealand. This is a country that has an enormous amount of potential, and it is just really sad to see the relentless negativity of the Opposition when, actually, there is so much to celebrate about what’s happening in the New Zealand economy.

Question No. 3—Finance

3. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): On Monday, the BNZ-Business New Zealand Performance of Services Index showed New Zealand’s services sector expanded in July at its fastest rate this year, with a reading of 54.7 above the historical average. This did follow a mixed Performance of Manufacturing Index survey released on the Friday, which indicated some softness in the indicators, although production in the manufacturing industry remained expansionary. In his commentary on Monday, BNZ economist Doug Steel said that following the manufacturing survey, they were awaiting the services numbers with some trepidation. But he said, and I quote, “It turns out we shouldn’t have [been] worried.”, written beneath the headline “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reports has he seen on how the New Zealand economy is being affected by global economic headwinds?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: ASB economists on Monday released their latest quarterly economic forecasts, which show that they expect the New Zealand economy to keep growing at about 2.5 percent over the next year, and for the unemployment rate to remain near 4 percent. In their commentary, the ASB said there are growing global headwinds, noting the US-China trade war and Brexit as key uncertainties. They added that slowing global growth, in part due to escalating trade tensions, is likely to impact New Zealand’s export performance over the coming year. We are aware that the volatile international situation is feeding through to the New Zealand economy, which is why this Government’s plans include supporting businesses to become more productive to keep the economy growing, which means higher wages for New Zealanders.

Dr Duncan Webb: What measures is the Government taking to make sure the economy is resilient in the face of these global headwinds?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: At Budget 2019, the Government announced increased investment to build more classrooms, hospitals, and other infrastructure such as rail. This builds on our record investment plan for transport infrastructure, support for low- and medium-income families in Budget 2018, and our moves to raise the minimum wage. We’ve also announced a number of policies to help businesses become more productive and grow, including the R & D tax credit to boost investment in new research and science, and investment in new technologies to take advantage of the opportunities created by a shift to a lower-carbon economy. We are making these investments to support activity in the economy, particularly in the face of global headwinds that are affecting many advanced economies around the world in a far more dramatic way than in New Zealand.

Question No. 4—Economic Development

4. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister for Economic Development: Does he consider manufacturing to be crucial to boosting jobs and growing our exports; if so, is he concerned that under this Government, the manufacturing sector fell into contraction for the first time since 2012?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): Yes, this Government is focused on supporting New Zealand manufacturers. The latest Performance of Manufacturing Index was a mixed bag, with some components expanding as the manufacturing sector continued to produce more, and some components contracting. The Government is concerned that international headwinds and labour market capacity constraints continue to have an impact on manufacturing. Given that manufacturing accounts for more than half our total exports, the change in the index for new orders shows the effect that international uncertainty is having. This is similar to what we’re seeing in the UK, the eurozone, China, and Japan. Similarly, manufacturers are being held back by skills shortages, with a reduction of 2,000 people a year enrolling in manufacturing and related training programmes since 2009. That’s why Minister Chris Hipkins is reforming vocational education.

Hon Todd McClay: How does he explain export prices being at record levels whilst business confidence is falling and manufacturing is in contraction; and isn’t it actually his Government’s policies that are responsible, not international markets or headwinds?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, it’s true that by international standards our manufacturing sector is particularly trade-exposed, because manufacturing accounts for half of our exports. The global uncertainty that you can see with Singapore, India, Indonesia, and South Korea—all seeing significant falls in exports. China’s economy grew at its slowest pace in almost three decades in the second quarter as the trade war with the US took its toll. That uncertainty is, without question, flowing through into investment decisions being made by New Zealand manufacturers.

Hon Todd McClay: Which of his Government’s policies does he believe are most responsible for the first contraction in manufacturing in 81 months?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Only those policies that we inherited from the former Government that we haven’t yet had the time to change or upgrade.

Hon Todd McClay: Who does he agree with: the Deputy Prime Minister, who said the problems in the manufacturing sector are contrived doom and gloom, or New Zealand manufacturers, who believe that the Government’s economic policies are responsible for this contraction?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, the Government is concerned by the headwinds that are being experienced by New Zealand manufacturers. We are moving as fast as we can to reorient the economy away from a heavy reliance on population growth and housing speculation. We can’t turn that situation around in 18 months, but we are laying a very strong platform for New Zealand manufacturers, for growth. We’ve got industry transformation plans under way, including food and beverage manufacturing and wood processing as two of the first four of those industry transformation plans. We’ve got a massive project under way to reform vocational and industry skills. There’s a specific skills shift project that we’ve negotiated and worked out with the manufacturing industry. R & D tax credits, Reserve Bank reform—this is a very busy Government.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he agree with Martin Simpson of Fraser Engineering, who said: “I have absolutely no doubt that the costs imposed upon all businesses throughout the country are going through the roof”, and, if so, which Government policy is most to blame for this increased cost on manufacturers?

Fletcher Tabuteau: It’d be health and safety.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, it’s not so much the cost of the Government policy but, actually, as so many commentators and so much data shows—

Hon Simon Bridges: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. You’ve, by my count, taken five questions off our supplementary questions for interjecting during question time. I appreciate that’s your rules and that’s life. Mr Tabuteau just yelled across the Chamber and he should have the same treatment.

SPEAKER: But I think the difference was he yelled while the answer was being made. There is a difference. Now, I’m going to ask Mr Tabuteau: did he interject while a question was being asked?

Fletcher Tabuteau: I waited for the speaker to answer.

SPEAKER: I take the member’s word and I will remind the Leader of the Opposition that they have gained, as well as lost, questions today. Back to the start of the reply.

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Actually, the biggest cost that manufacturers report to us—and it’s supported by the data—is actually skills shortages, based on the skills shortages that we inherited after nine years of a failure to invest in the manufacturing workforce. The former Government left us with a situation where quarterly employment in manufacturing was falling in the year prior to our Government taking office. We are determined to turn that around, but it will take a little bit of time.

Question No. 5—Housing

5. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing: Does she agree with Treasury advice that “subsidies—whether to financiers, developers or homebuyers—are becoming a part of the actual or expected KiwiBuild toolkit”, and “this is in practice inevitable until reforms to regulatory settings and more-efficient construction take hold”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Yes, in the broader context it was made. However, KiwiBuild is not a direct subsidy in the same way that, for example, a HomeStart grant is. KiwiBuild houses are homes sold at cost. This Government is simply providing the development capital to get affordable homes built. But as the quotes in the member’s question highlights, Treasury see any assistance in the housing market as a subsidy. On this side of the House, we make no apology for active Government involvement in housing. The advice the member refers to also states “Our housing is amongst the least affordable in the OECD.”, and the “Increases in housing costs have reduced home ownership, increased hardship, reduced economic growth, lowered wellbeing and increased inequality.” Of course, as I’ve told the member on numerous occasions, I’m currently resetting the KiwiBuild policy and will be taking a Cabinet paper to that effect by the end of August. This is, of course, in addition to the work on regulatory settings by my colleague the Hon David Parker.

Hon Judith Collins: Will reforms to the regulatory settings in the resource management system be made during this term of Parliament?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is not something I have ministerial responsibility for. As I’ve told the member before, if she wants to ask about Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, she should put a question down to the Hon David Parker.

Hon Judith Collins: Has she discussed them with him?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We have had David Parker give updates at our joint ministerial team meetings, but I have no ministerial responsibility for them. I suggest she put a question down to the Hon David Parker.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with Treasury advice that without a housing market structural fix, Government programmes like KiwiBuild cannot “make homeownership possible for more than a limited number of middle-income households”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: It is precisely why our Government is getting on with the business of RMA reform, and why David Parker has begun that work stream. As I’ve noted, that question is coming from a member who was a member of a Government for nine years that failed to get it across the line—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat, because that’s not accurate.

Hon Judith Collins: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Who does she agree with: Treasury, which says that subsidies have become part of the KiwiBuild tool kit; or the Prime Minister, who said, “It’s not about subsidising housing.”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think I answered that in my answer, in the broader context. Treasury do see subsidies in any form of assistance. I do point that member to the advice that Treasury gave to the National Government in 2015, which said the first home subsidy through HomeStart was poor value and all that would happen was it was likely to bring forward purchases that would otherwise happen anyway. It also warned against increasing demand in the supply-constrained environment, which would raise prices, undoing much of the benefit of the subsidy.

Hon Judith Collins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t believe that was even an attempt at addressing the question. The question was really clear: which one does she agree with?

SPEAKER: No, no. Order! I think right at the beginning, she did. I probably let her run on too long afterwards.

Question No. 6—Defence

6. DARROCH BALL (NZ First) to the Minister of Defence: What announcements has he made regarding capability for the New Zealand Army?

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): On Saturday, I announced that the coalition Government has approved tranche two of the Network Enabled Army programme. A capital investment of $106 million will be rolled out over the next four years to give our men and women in uniform the tools they need to function in today’s environment. This announcement reinforces the coalition Government’s continuing commitment to the men and women of the defence force and our delivery of the Defence Capability Plan 2019.

Darroch Ball: What will the Network Enabled Army programme mean for soldiers in the field?

Hon RON MARK: The programme equips the army with a wide range of hardware and software—this includes radios; satellite terminals through modern, secure digital capabilities; command posts; and power generators. This will allow for better command and control on operations, getting real-time information to soldiers and commanders, maximising our resources in order to achieve more at home in the Pacific and further afield when engaged—be that in resource protection, civil defence, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, or combat. These technologies will help our people to respond to events quickly, with the right assets and to maximum effect, whilst reducing the risks of losses and casualties.

Darroch Ball: What will tranche two of the programme deliver?

Hon RON MARK: Tranche two will extend the network enabled army communications technologies across a light task group of around 250 personnel, including logistics, medical, and engineering, and other support elements. It will also expand network enabled army capabilities to include intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance sensor systems, and will help commanders and personnel see beyond their immediate vicinity, and feed that information back into a common picture, so providing, among other things, enhanced real-time situational awareness. The work to deliver this set-up and capability will commence this year.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How much of this equipment and technology is being made in New Zealand?

Hon RON MARK: Oh, I couldn’t give a blow-by-blow, but I can tell the member—former Minister—that, as he knows from tranche one, it’s very similar as was introduced in terms of the ratio of home-grown technology and technology which has to be imported, to ensure that we have compatibility and interoperability—something that that member was a strong champion of.

Question No. 7—Local Government

7. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Minister of Local Government: Does she agree with the Prime Minister’s statement, “I am sure the Minister of Local Government would be willing to help coordinate a process” to enable pubs and clubs to stay open for the Rugby World Cup?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: Yes, I am always willing to facilitate a process. However, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, bar owners need to go directly to councils and, indeed, to district licensing committees for advice about licensing issues.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Did she have any conversations with the Prime Minister prior to post-Cabinet yesterday about her new role as being responsible for coordinating some of the work around pubs and clubs being open for Rugby World Cup?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, I cannot comment specifically about conversations with the Prime Minister on it, but it is pretty clear that in the last 24 hours there has been some publicity about this issue. Some club patrons and, indeed, RSA club managers, and, indeed, one or two politicians, have brought to the public’s attention, quite properly, that there seems to be a gap opening up in the provision of appropriate hospitality and bar services—in some cases, late at night—for some Rugby World Cup games, at least in the 2020 version. So it is appropriate that a responsible Government, looking to the best interests of all New Zealanders, ensures that the licensing laws are working as intended, and that we ensure that those who wish to avail themselves of the hospitality of premises such as clubs and RSAs, and other humble abodes, get to avail themselves of such occasions.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Can she confirm, as Minister of Local Government, she has no legal powers to change licensing arrangements so that all pubs and clubs in New Zealand are able to stay open for New Zealand Rugby World Cup games?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, I think this is an interesting grey area, where district licensing committees are part of their local government matrix of governance in our communities, but they also must administer a law that falls under the aegis of my colleague the Minister of Justice. But, nevertheless, this is a Government that works totally collegially across portfolios and across Ministers, and we all take this issue very seriously. It is very important that the issues that members in this House have raised, and that members of the community raise, about the ability to be duly hosted and enjoy convivial environments for very important sporting events of national significance—are able to enjoy themselves in the company of others and suitable premises.

SPEAKER: Order! Before the member takes the next call, I hesitate to give Ministers advice, but I would remind the Minister about the indivisibility of the Crown.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Will she commit to having a conversation with her colleague the Hon Andrew Little about supporting David Seymour’s member’s bill to resolve these issues so that pubs and clubs can have access to Rugby World Cup games?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, of course I am happy to admit all sorts of wonderful occasions that have happened in my working day, including talking to the Minister of Justice, who, it turns out, has provided most astute advice on this matter and many other matters in this most indivisible of Governments. And, on this particular issue, there have been discussions, and we take the issue very seriously.

Question No. 8—Statistics

8. Dr JIAN YANG (National) to the Minister of Statistics: Does he agree with the Census 2018 Independent Reviewers’ conclusion that two of the four investment objectives were not met and the third is likely to be “very challenging”, and what responsibility, if any, will he take for the shortcomings of Census 2018?

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Statistics): In answer to the first part of the question, yes. I note that the first investment objective is to undertake a census of population and dwellings in 2018 that meets statutory requirements, and that the report finds that the census data is likely to meet all statutory requirements. In answer to the second part of the question, I did specifically ask the independent reviewers to look into the role that I and other Ministers had in the census. The report found that there was “a level of optimism in the reporting to Ministers that was not always consistent with the level of issues being managed by the programme.” This finding was recently corroborated in the media by the Hon Scott Simpson, one of the previous Ministers of Statistics. I also agree with the reviewers that “it would be easy to conclude that the 2018 Census was not successful. However, there are important aspects of the programme that surpassed expectations and can be used as building blocks for the future.” [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon JAMES SHAW: Stats NZ have advised that the data will be of sufficient quality to meet the most important uses of the census. This includes—

Brett Hudson: Rubbish.

Hon JAMES SHAW: I guess the member doesn’t believe the independent reviewer after all. This includes electoral boundaries, population projections, and district health board funding. The report of the independent panel upholds that advice. I therefore disagree with the member’s assertion that the census was a failure. To characterise it as such is irresponsible and contrary to the truth.

Dr Jian Yang: Can he claim to have been fully engaged in the successful transition to a digital first census when the only press release issued before Census 2018 was to express his disappointment that Census 2018 did not include gender and sexual identity questions?

Hon JAMES SHAW: If he believes that the success of a census came down to ministerial press releases, that might explain why the previous Government got it so wrong when it came to housing—if the number of press releases had something to do with the actual outcome.

Dr Jian Yang: Would he still advise the Northern Age editor, Peter Jackson, to “stop believing everything that he sees on Twitter” when Mr Jackson said, “This census shows all the hallmarks of being a shambles”?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Actually, yes, because of the number of untruths that have been spoken about the census—in particular, by members of the Opposition, where they have actually given lie to their own decisions in the lead-up to the census—I would suggest that people should be wary of what they read in the media and on Twitter, particularly those things that come from Opposition MPs when it comes to the census.

Dr Jian Yang: Did he forward my report entitled Census 2018 – A multi-fold debacle to the Census 2018 independent reviewers, and what other contribution, if any, did he make to the independent review’s report?

Hon JAMES SHAW: As soon as I was able to get a copy of the member’s self-authored report, I did forward it on to the independent review team and to the chief executive of Stats NZ for their edification; so they had the member’s report for the entire time that they were developing their own independent report. In terms of other interactions that I had with the independent review team, like I said, right at the very start I specifically asked them to look into the role that I or any of the five previous Ministers of Statistics had to do with the 2018 census to see if there were failures of oversight and governance on behalf of Ministers. In addition, I think I had perhaps three interviews with the census, including a follow-up interview for clarification around some of the answers that were given. So I believe that all of the information that I was asked to provide by the independent review was provided to them.

Question No. 9—Social Development

9. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development: What recent announcements has the Government made on homelessness, about providing extra support for individuals and families?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): On Sunday, Minister Faafoi and I announced additional measures to prevent and reduce homelessness—$54 million in Government funding will be put into initiatives that will provide additional wraparound services for at-risk individuals and families in emergency housing, and extra support for families to stay in their existing tenancies. We will be investing in intensive case managers and navigators and in more social services to support people with complex needs and unstable circumstances, including homeless families with children and people with mental health needs. Minister Faafoi is also expanding the Sustaining Tenancies programme to ensure that tenants who may be at risk of losing their tenancy receive practical support to help them get back on track.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What support will the intensive case managers and navigators provide?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As part of the announcement, we are investing $31 million over the next four years for 67 intensive case managers and navigators. The intensive case managers and navigators will be a single consistent point of contact for each family or individual. The case managers will be a Ministry of Social Development (MSD) staff member and will take a whole-of-person approach to people’s needs but, where more support is needed, navigators will coordinate services and provide ongoing support for people with housing needs. Navigators will be from a local community organisation contracted by MSD. They will work with the community, health professionals, Government agencies, and NGOs to ensure that people get the help they need.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Why is it important to work with social services and community partners?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Government is working to ensure we have more people on the ground to support people with complex needs in unstable circumstances. We are committed to tackling the long-term challenges facing New Zealand, and homelessness is one of these. That’s why, on top of the extra support through navigators and case managers, we are putting a further $16 million towards social services to support people staying in emergency housing, including services for mental health needs, family violence, and addiction, as needed. As a Government, we know that people face a range of complex issues that can be a barrier to finding and keeping a home of their own. That’s why we’re taking a balanced and holistic approach to support them and ensure they are able to access the support they need.

Question No. 10—Social Development

10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Is the Government considering changing the principles of the Social Security Act 2018 in response to the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, including the principle that “work in paid employment offers the best opportunity for people to achieve social and economic well-being”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): As I’ve said previously in the House, and as outlined in the publicly available Cabinet paper, the welfare overhaul work programme will include a review of the principles and purpose of the Social Security Act in response to the recommendations in the Welfare Expert Advisory Group report. This is currently under way, and I am unable to provide more details on the potential for changing the principles at this stage. In saying that, this Government believes that for those who are able, finding a job that is sustainable and meaningful is important for long-term wellbeing. That is why this Government has invested an additional $76 million in employment-focused case managers, $26 million to support people with disabilities or health conditions into employment, and nearly $50 million into Mana in Mahi. This reflects how seriously we take our responsibility to support people into employment.

Hon Louise Upston: Does the Minister believe that paid work best supports people to achieve social and economic wellbeing, and, if not, why not?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I think that where people are able, paid work does have an absolute role in supporting their social and economic wellbeing. What we do know, though, is that over 50 percent of those that are in the welfare system on main benefits have a health condition or disability of some sort or are caring for someone with a health condition or disability of some sort. Therefore, it is much more complicated than just doing what the previous Government did, which was saying that everyone must get off benefit and into a job. We absolutely support everyone who is able to be earning, learning, volunteering, or caring, and all of the policies that have been announced by this side of the House in the last two years reflect that commitment.

Hon Louise Upston: Does the Minister agree with the Minister of Finance, who said, and I quote, that “everyone who wants to work should be able to.”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I often—and more often than not—agree with the Minister of Finance. Can I also say that, actually, for even those that have barriers to employment—and let me refer again to those that have disabilities—we’ve seen the evidence to show that they do want to work. Something like 74 percent of those with a disability on a main benefit expressed the fact that they wanted to work. But there are barriers in their way to sometimes accessing that employment. So rather than stigmatise those on benefit, this side of the House is committed to breaking down those barriers and making that investment so that those opportunities are opened up to all New Zealanders where they are able to work.

Hon Louise Upston: Is it now her Government’s approach for those on jobseeker benefit to choose if they want to work or not?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That member consistently underestimates the people that are in the welfare system. The vast majority of people who enter into the welfare system actually want to work, and that is the starting point for us on this side of the House. Can I just say, we are committed to helping and supporting those that are able to get into meaningful and sustainable employment. We see the role of the welfare system to support with income support where that’s required but, equally, to provide people with opportunities to employment. And I think, actually, this side of the House is doing a much better job than what the previous Government did.

Question No. 11—Commerce and Consumer Affairs

11. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: How much relief in cents per litre will New Zealand motorists see, if any, as a result of the draft market study into the retail fuel sector, and how does that compare to the increase in petrol taxes since the Government entered office?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): As the member pointed out in his question, the study released this morning by the Commerce Commission is a draft study. It has made draft recommendations, and the Commerce Commission will come back to us in December with its final report and its recommendations. The Government will wait for that before we make any policy decisions. Because of that, I am unable to address the member with the precision I think he would like, and therefore I cannot answer the second question in terms of a comparison. But what I can say is that the Government will act on this report, because it is quite clear that New Zealanders are paying too much at the petrol pump.

Brett Hudson: Did the report look at the impact of new and higher fuel taxes on consumers?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: It noted fuel taxes, but if the Opposition is still interested in facts, I would suggest that they look at pages 80 and 81 and look at the effect that fuel taxes have had over time. They have remained a relatively constant component of fuel prices, but what it did show, and it has highlighted, is that margins for companies who sell fuel at petrol pumps have grown, and grown considerably, under the previous Government. We will not let that happen, because that, in English, means that New Zealanders are paying too much for petrol every time they fill up their car.

Brett Hudson: OK. Over the last 18 months, how much have fuel taxes increased in Auckland compared to the retailer margin?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I don’t have that with me at this stage, but what I do know is that in terms of competition—that was highlighted by the Commerce Commission in this morning’s report—there isn’t enough of it, and, because of that, New Zealanders are paying too much at the petrol bowser. This was left to continue in an upward trend by the previous Government, who did nothing for nine years. We have managed to get to this point, where we have evidence that New Zealanders are getting fleeced, and we will do something about it.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Does the draft report identify a year when those margins started rising?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I believe it may have been roughly—coincidental, I think, perhaps—when the previous Government took office, and then it went north while they were in office.

Brett Hudson: What has more impact on consumers: a petrol company margin that has increased by 0.1 of 1c since the Government came into office, or legislation for an additional 24c per litre of taxes?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: What I find interesting is that on the day that the Commerce Commission has found that there are competition issues and that petrol companies are charging too high a margin to New Zealanders, the Opposition is taking their side and thinks that New Zealanders paying too much at the petrol bowser is a good thing.

Brett Hudson: Does he agree with the Commerce Commission that there is no guarantee that a competitive market will develop rapidly if the barriers they identified are removed?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: What I would say to that is this Government is going to do something about the competition issues addressed by the Commerce Commission, because we believe that customers are getting ripped off at the petrol bowser. That is more than the previous Government did in nine years.

Question No. 12—Commerce and Consumer Affairs

12. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What reports has he seen about the New Zealand fuel market?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Notably, I have received the Commerce Commission’s draft report that outlines the findings of their market study into the prices New Zealanders pay for their petrol and their diesel. The Commerce Commission has found that the retail fuel market is not as competitive as it could be, due to the lack of an active wholesale market in New Zealand and a lack of retail competition.

Dr Deborah Russell: What conclusions does this draft report present?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: It backs up the Government’s concerns that New Zealanders are getting fleeced at the pump and that the market is broken. The draft report outlines that due to a lack of an active wholesale market in New Zealand, not enough retail competition is happening and New Zealanders are not getting a fair deal at the petrol pumps. The draft report also found that the high profitability of the major fuel suppliers in New Zealand is out of step with international comparisons and not consistent with a healthy market place. The report shows that big fuel companies’ margins have been climbing since 2008 during a period where the National Government did nothing and New Zealanders steadily paid more at the petrol pumps. During that lack of leadership, National—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! Order! Two reasons for ruling it out: one, it’s a shot at the Opposition off a patsy, and the second is it’s getting repetitious.

Dr Deborah Russell: What will the next steps be?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, as I mentioned earlier to the House, this is a draft report. We shall wait until December when the Commerce Commission comes back. What we can assure New Zealanders is we won’t sit around on our hands doing nothing for nine years while New Zealanders get ripped off at the petrol pumps. We will do something to make sure New Zealanders get a fairer deal.

Dr Deborah Russell: What will be the Government’s response?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: As I said, this is a draft report. The Commerce Commission has proposed some options for recommendations and is looking for feedback on these issues. I encourage interested parties to take part in that consultation process—perhaps even the Opposition. The Government will respond to the Commerce Commission’s recommendations following the report in December.

Speaker’s Rulings

Tabling of Documents—Accuracy and Delivery of Documents

SPEAKER: Before we started question time, Tracey Martin raised a point of order, I made a ruling, and the Hon David Parker made an intervention. Since that time, I have had the opportunity to read the Standing Orders report to which he referred, the 2008 report, and the changes which occurred in Standing Orders which made the Speaker’s ruling on which I relied out of date. It does, however, leave us with a problem, and that is where an absolute obligation to table a document is created but the Clerk’s Office has an obligation not to let documents be tabled that do not fit the description of the document for which leave has been given. I am now going to rule that in future, if this occurs, the member and the Clerk, or the member or the Clerk, will refer the matter to me and it will be a matter of a ruling in each particular case, which is likely to, if I find with the Clerk that the document is not the one described, result in some criticism of a member who wrongly described a document.

Urgent Debates Declined

Department of Corrections—Failure to Prevent Prisoners Sending Letters

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from David Seymour seeking to debate under Standing Order 389 the failure of the Department of Corrections to prevent prisoners from sending letters from prisons. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Public confidence in our corrections system is critical, particularly when it comes to matters relating to the 15 March shootings. However, I have also received a letter from the Hon Dr Nick Smith seeking to debate the resignation of the Government Statistician and the report of the independent review of New Zealand’s 2018 census. This is also a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The resignation of a public servant would not usually warrant an urgent debate, but the census is of great significance to the public and to this House. There can only be one urgent debate each day. Where I receive more than one application that I consider would otherwise justify a debate, I must choose the most urgent, under Standing Order 391.

In light of the fact that the House has had an opportunity to respond to a ministerial statement on the failures of the Department of Corrections, I’m inclined to select Dr Smith’s application for debate. That approach enables the House to debate both issues today. The Minister of Corrections has announced that the Government will review the Corrections Act 2004 to ensure that it is fit for purpose. I would consider a further application for urgent debate following the results of that review.

Urgent Debates

Statistics New Zealand—Resignation of Government Statistician and Report on Census 2018 Review

SPEAKER: I call on the Hon Dr Nick Smith to move that the House take note of a matter of public importance.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

This is, notably, the resignation of the Government Statistician and the damning report on Census 2018. It is official that last year’s census was a shambles, and it matters a great deal. We have tens of billions of dollars of money for health and education and other public services that relies on the census. We have crucial planning for infrastructure, for roading, for schools, for hospitals that depends on a reliable census. We have all sorts of public policy research that depends on the reliability of the census. And, of course, we have the setting of the number of Māori seats, the number of general seats, and the boundaries for electorates dependent on the census. So it is entirely appropriate that this House debates the report and the resignation on the worst census that has been conducted in New Zealand.

It is a basic fundamental job that simply involves counting New Zealanders. It’s been done since biblical times. In this country, we’ve done it regularly since 1851. And no amount of spin can hide the fact that over 800,000 New Zealanders were not counted. That is, one-in-seven New Zealanders did not participate in last year’s census, and for Māori and Pacific it was even worse with one-in-three New Zealanders not being counted in the census. And for all the window dressing and spin that we get from the Minister of Statistics that somehow this is the best census that’s ever been conducted, we on this side of the House say “Not good enough.” and we seek some accountability.

Now, the reliability of the census depends on a high level of participation. The last two censuses received a level of 95 percent. The target for this census was 94 percent. The fact that only 83 percent of New Zealanders filled out and completed a census really brings into serious doubt the reliability of the census with that huge hole.

National seeks three things in this debate. Firstly, we want an end of the charade, Minister. For 18 months, you’ve been dismissing concerns, Minister, about the census. You’ve said that it’s been the most successful census ever.

SPEAKER: Order! The member should address the Chair.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: It was not—this report brutally exposes the scale of the multiple failures that occurred and the complete lack of openness and transparency by the Government. Secondly, we want some accountability. The chief statistician has accepted some responsibility but we want the Minister to stop lashing out, to stop duck shoving, and to actually accept his share of the responsibility for the debacle that was Census 2018. And, thirdly, we want some reassurance that the lessons of that census have been learnt. We keep seeing these really basic errors from this Government, whether it be KiwiBuild, whether it be in terms of the Budget where basic confidential information is released, whether it’s the fiasco in the Department of Corrections, where the worst criminal in New Zealand history is able to spread his hate from letters behind bars.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. This is a very narrow debate on the census and the Government Statistician’s resigning. It is an urgent debate and the member’s been going for five minutes now; he has 15. There’s no obligation to use it all, and if he can’t stay with the topic, then I will terminate his speech.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: My point is this comes one after another after another of basic failures in public services by this Government, of which there is a pattern, of which the census is the latest failure.

The first concerns I had reported to me about the census were when major retirement homes in my community, in which there were over 200 homes, received a single census pack. I had long-experienced census field officers contacting my electorate office concerned about it all going to custard, and we had all over New Zealand media reporting experiences of people unable to get access to the 0800 numbers, unable to participate in the census. There were people from Kaitāia in the north to Bluff in the south who were being frustrated in their attempts to participate in the census, and, even more concerning, fieldworkers for the census were being told that they shouldn’t bother with long driveways in rural areas. And yet the Minister of Statistics repeatedly told the Parliament that it was all going swimmingly well. He told us that all the targets were being met and he dismissed concerns. Can I give one example. The Northland Age reported the census being a shambles. The Minister said that the Northland Age editor was wrong, that it was fake news, and that we shouldn’t believe what we see on social media.

What we saw in last week’s report was truly damning. It says that the census suffered from poor governance and leadership, that there was a lack of transparency and overly optimistic reports on how well the census was going, that there was a failure to elevate when things went wrong up to the appropriate levels of management, and that the project of delivering the census was flawed. At a very basic and practical level, the census failed because there was not the backup for those people who were not able to participate on an online basis. There were very basic errors where the printer was unable to print the additional census forms that were being requested. And even though there was a decline in the number of field officers for the census—even then they failed to provide the number of those staff. Yet we hear that the Government said in its response that this was all National’s fault. The default position if anything goes wrong in the Government is “Oh, it’s just the previous Government’s fault.”

We had the Prime Minister say that the primary concern was funding. Well, the independent report said that there was adequate funding and the level of budget was no excuse. The independent report from the Government said the Prime Minister was wrong. The Minister has attempted to sheet blame back to the previous Government as part of his ducking and diving from taking responsibility, saying that it was the digital-first strategy that was flawed. The independent report rejects that. It says that digital-first was an appropriate strategy—it worked in Australia; it worked in Canada—it was the delivery that was a failure.

I want to hold the Minister responsible in five specific areas where he let down the Government and the people of New Zealand. It is truly remarkable that in the six months after he became Minister—the six months before the census—he did not request or receive a single specific, in-person briefing on Census 2018. I contrast that with the record of Maurice Williamson, who had 10 specific meetings on the census in the six months prior to Census 2014. The Minister was asleep at the wheel. The briefing to the incoming Minister made plain that delivery of the census was one of the most important issues, and he was missing in action.

In the period prior to the census, his predecessor for Census 2014 issued 12 press releases encouraging people to participate in the census. How many did this Minister issue? Not a single one. In fact, he couldn’t even be bothered being in the country for the census, such was his lack of leadership—an issue that is criticised in the report, which identifies it as one of the key failings. I say to the Minister, you made a serious error of judgment—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —on the one week on which the census occurs in every five years, for the Minister to not even be participating in the census and being out of the country.

Then there’s the issue of transparency. If we look at the Minister’s response, he was telling the Parliament in April of 2018 that all the targets were being met. That was not true. We now know from the independent report that the census was failing to meet its targets on participation rates all the way from census night. Every single daily report showed that they were behind targets.

It has been like drawing teeth to get information about Census 2018. The target was 94 percent. Finally, after four months, the department of statistics admitted that it was only going to achieve 90 percent. Earlier this year, under scrutiny at the select committee, they finally admitted “Oh, no, no, no—oops!” Was it 90 percent? It was 85 percent. Then, finally, the independent report showed that participation was only 83 percent. In other words, 800,000 New Zealanders did not participate in that census, and my question for the Minister is: why was he not more upfront with New Zealanders when he knew within days of the census that the wheels were falling off?

Then, the Minister played the blame game and said that, oh no, it was nothing to do with him—it wasn’t his responsibility. He has the ministerial warrant. Under the Westminster tradition, he is finally responsible. I’ve seen colleagues from his side of the House call for Ministers’ resignations for far less than the census failure in 2018, but the Minister repeatedly refused to accept any responsibility and, indeed, ducked and dived in terms of providing open and honest answers about the degree to which the census failed.

This is how bad it got in the select committee. When we finally got out of the department of statistics that there were over 700,000 people that had not responded to the census, Government members on the select committee insisted that that information be secret until the end of the parliamentary term and after the next election. Hang on a moment, this is meant to be the most open, transparent Government ever, and they wanted—

Ginny Andersen: You leaked it—you leaked it.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member who interjects laid a privileges complaint against me in respect of providing the public with honest, frank information about the scale of the mistakes that were made and the hole in the data.

Then, we had the outrageous statements from James Shaw last week that somehow National is engaging in fake news and Trump-like politics, because he had become so defensive and so embarrassed about the census failure. Here’s the interesting part: compare the independent report with the public statements that were made about the census last year, and every one of James Shaw’s statements, whether it was “We were meeting all the targets.”, “It’s going to be the best census ever.”, “Those people that are criticising the census are in the business of fake news.”—line that up with the independent report and we actually find that National’s opposition and the media were far more accurate in their description of what had occurred with Census 2018 than what the Minister was saying. For that misinformation, he owes the Parliament and the people of New Zealand an apology.

The mess that occurred with Census 2018 now requires administrative data to be backfilled to try and fix this mess. Members on this side of the House have real questions about how you might pull that together—whether it be health data, education data, or IRD data—and somehow produce accurate statistics for New Zealand to plan and move forward. We have real doubts. We believe that if the census had been done properly, we would have had far more reliable information with which to deliver those important public services for New Zealand.

The department of statistics has failed. It’s failed to be transparent. It’s failed to deliver a census of quality, and my challenge for the Minister this afternoon is to stop the ducking and diving, take some responsibility, and recognise that you made serious errors of judgment—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —in preparation for the census, because New Zealanders will pay dearly for the failure that occurred last year.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Statistics): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I do welcome this urgent debate on the resignation of the Government Statistician and the report of the independent review into New Zealand’s 2018 census because I have been saying for much of the last 12 to 18 months that we should be reserving our judgment about whether the census was a failure or to what extent it was a failure until after we had the independent report.

I want to thank the reviewers—Murray Jack, who is a management consultant based in Auckland, and Connie Graziadei, who is a former deputy chief statistician for Canada—for their time and their efforts over the course of the last 12 months to produce what I think is a very comprehensive and very good report. I also do want to acknowledge that the Government Statistician has taken accountability for the failings in the census programme and has tendered her resignation.

Dr Smith has made a number of points about the failings that were outlined in the report, and they were quite extensive. The report refers to failings in the structure of the census leadership team, and found that that was overly complex; failings in governance and oversight of the census operation; and failings in the culture, which meant that key information wasn’t making it up the chain, certain risks were being managed without being escalated, decisions were made to vary the on-the-ground operation against the business plan without escalating those either to the Government Statistician or to Ministers, and so on.

As Dr Smith has outlined, there were also a number of on-the-ground failings in the operation, particularly to do with things like the failure to print enough paper forms, changes in the way that the list-leave process worked—or, rather, didn’t work. Stats NZ did fairly early on in the aftermath of census day itself say that they were quite clear from the early indications that they did not make it easy enough for people to participate in the census. So that has, essentially, been corroborated and borne out by the subsequent report. Dr Smith asks me to take my share of accountability for the census, and I do. I specifically asked the independent review panel to look into my role and into the role that previous Ministers made in respect of the census. I’d just like to enumerate the decisions that were made by previous Ministers and myself in relation to the census.

The Hon Maurice Williamson between November 2008 and May 2014 was the Minister. In February 2014, Cabinet agreed in principle for a modernised 2018 census. That was kind of the key part of the business case, and I’ll come back to the use of administrative data, which Dr Smith has raised some questions about. The Hon Nicky Wagner was the Minister between May and October of that year, 2014. There were two key decisions made on her watch in Budget 2014—that was the Budget for the first year of the census cycle—and there was also the detailed business case that followed on from that, in June.

The Hon Craig Foss was the Minister between October 2014 and December 2016, and there were three decisions there: Cabinet agreement for the proclamation of census day, and obviously the North Canterbury earthquake had an effect, including to reduce the scope of, and delay, the census test. That’s not his fault: obviously, the circumstances that were outlined in the report talked about the impact that the earthquake had on the ability to do the test. The Hon Mark Mitchell, of course, was Minister between December 2016 and May 2017. He oversaw the final census test, and one of the really disappointing things that I read in the report was that what got tested was not actually what got delivered on the ground. A number of decisions made about the variance to the plan were made on the ground whilst the census programme was being rolled out, which was obviously after the census test. So that was obviously disappointing. The Hon Scott Simpson, of course, made the final content decision.

The decisions that I was involved in as Minister started on census day itself, and essentially led to what happened afterwards. So as one of the many, many commentators on the census pointed out, I might not have created this mess, but I am responsible for fixing it, and I do take responsibility for that, Dr Smith.

So what I have committed to is that I will make absolutely sure that the recommendations that are outlined in the independent review will be implemented. I will make sure that I work very closely with the incoming chief executive of Stats NZ, and the outgoing chief executive of Stats NZ, the new Government Statistician, to ensure that those lessons are learnt and that the recommendations will be incorporated in the business case for the next census, which will take place in 2023—and, of course, the background work on that business case has already started, and that should happen in the first half of next year.

So I think that the accountability for what has happened in the census—the Government Statistician herself takes that extremely seriously and has had a number of conversations with me about that since not long after it became apparent that the numbers weren’t coming through. And, you know, some of those initial concerns were being expressed.

Now, I want to turn to the question of some of the language that’s getting used about the census being a failure. This is actually the point in the debate that I really want to take issue with. There were definitely failings in the census—that is absolutely clear—and they were severe, and they were particularly severe in terms of the inputs to the census. Dr Smith has enumerated these in some detail—the response rates that were coming through from people on the ground. So what the report makes clear is that the online component of the census actually was going extremely well; it was well above expectations, well above what was planned. There was a target of 70 percent online completion. The actual online completion was above 80 percent—somewhere between 80 and 81 percent—but the problem was that Stats NZ over-relied on the online component of the census and actually thought that people who weren’t completing it online would eventually kind of get the message and complete it online.

But actually what they should have been doing was going door to door and ensuring that people had not just log-in codes to get into the online, but actually that they had paper census packs—and they weren’t doing that. That is actually at variance with the original plan that was signed off by previous Ministers. So that was one of the key failings of the census.

As a result, there were very poor response rates, particularly, as Dr Smith says, from Māori and Pasifika communities, and that will have an impact on some of data sets that do come out of the census when they start getting released in September, December, and then early next year. However, there is a difference between saying that there was a failure in the data gathering, in the form of response rates, and saying that the census as a whole is a failure. And this is a very important distinction, and it’s one where the Opposition are continually conflating one with the other—that because the response rates were poor, the output is equally poor. That is because the remediation work that the census team have done since people were responding—that phase was closed. The remediation work has been outstanding, and in this the report says, actually, that the lessons learnt here are so good that not only should we continue to be using administrative data to supplement the response rates but it looks like that work is so good that not only should it be used here in New Zealand but actually there will be lessons learnt for other countries around the world as well—and that those techniques should be looked at for other countries. In fact, other countries are already using administrative data to supplement their response rates.

And I want to highlight this point as well—but, actually, I’ll just say this before I move on to the use of administrative data. The response rate is different from the coverage rate; the coverage rate is how many New Zealanders actually got counted in the census, and on this, this census has greater coverage than any other—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Spin—spinning out of control.

Hon JAMES SHAW: It is not spin, Dr Smith. It is not spin; it is in the independent report. In addition to this independent report by these two reviewers, there is also an independent data-quality review panel, with data experts from all over New Zealand and from the UK census office, who are verifying the methodology that has been used to create the output. And if you keep saying that the use of administrative data to supplement this is shonky, well, that is a lie; it is incorrect to say so.

And so what we’ve actually got is a greater coverage rate than we have had before, and that is because other parts of Government have got real data about real people from a variety of sources, including things like ACC records, district health board (DHB) records, education, births, deaths, and marriages, and so on and so forth. They have supplemented that in an incredibly rigorous way to make sure that we are actually counting all New Zealanders, or as many as possible. Therefore, because of that, what that means is that for the key uses of the census—that is, things like the setting of electoral boundaries, deprivation indices, DHB funding—the very things that Dr Smith was highlighting at the start of his speech about how important the census is for those most important censuses that Statistics NZ have advised, and the independent review here has corroborated, is fit for purpose and will meet its statutory requirements. New Zealanders need to know that, because no amount of spin from the Opposition will actually undermine that.

Fundamentally, the census will likely achieve the statutory requirements, and the quality of the data, for the most important purposes, will still be available for use. And Dr Smith can dispute that and they can take the Electoral Commission to court to try and overturn the results, and they will lose—they will lose—because they will be up against not just Statistics NZ statisticians but independent academic statisticians from all over New Zealand, from Canada, from the United Kingdom, who have taken a look at their methodology and said it is sound—it is sound. And so I would like Dr Smith to maybe just hold fire until the actual census data comes out. The population counts will be out in September, there’ll be subsequent information out in December, and then in the following years.

His own leader, I have to say—when Dr Smith talks about the need for openness and transparency—has said that one person’s fact is another person’s misinformation. That is why they’re trying to undermine the public’s faith in the census, because they want an environment in which no one trusts any of the data or any of the information. “Don’t trust Stats New Zealand. Don’t trust any sort of independent review. Don’t trust independent experts.”, so that they can therefore project all of their howling demons into that void and say, “Well, trust us. We know what we’re doing because we used to be Crown prosecutors in Tauranga and our information’s way better than all of the academics and all of the experts and all of the independent agencies that we’ve got here in New Zealand or around the world.”

Stats New Zealand are using international standards. They’re using some of the best practice to remediate the census, and it’s working. Not only that, the business case that that Government signed off on in 2014 called for the use of administrative data. In fact, there was advice from Treasury at the time that they didn’t even need a census—they didn’t even need to go door to door—because the administrative data should be good enough. So that Government signed off on a long-term census transformation plan that called for, ultimately, three or four censuses down the road, the idea that you might not even use a census at all because the Government administrative data would be so good you wouldn’t be able to use it. What we could say about the census is that we’ve actually started to create the future that they were designing as a result, unfortunately, of the circumstances that we found ourselves in because of the decisions that they had made.

So Dr Smith is, I think, playing fast and loose with the key findings of this report. I have committed that I will ensure that I work with the incoming leadership of Stats New Zealand in the transition to ensure that the lessons will be learnt not just within the census operation but right across the organisation and that we will be looking at leadership, and governance, and structure, and culture, and the other recommendations, and that we’ll be applying those lessons for the whole agency.

I do want to say that the Government Statistician has done everything that was asked of her by Peter Hughes, the State Services Commissioner, who said that he wants his chief executives, when there is a problem, to own it, to fix it, to learn from it, and to take accountability for it, and she has done that. I think that she can hold her head up high for having done that and that the remediation work that she is leaving is in good hands.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I welcome this opportunity to make a contribution on this urgent debate about last year’s census and put a few more facts on the record, because I think that there were a few contributions from the Minister which were perhaps a little bit understated. So allow me to elaborate on them a little bit further for those who might have missed it.

I think that asking for this debate is a spectacular own goal on the part of the Opposition—on the part of the previous Government, who were the ones who established the parameters under which last year’s census operated. It was the last Government that signed off on the decision to move to a digital-first model for the census. It was the last Government who were driving towards the use of more administrative data in future censuses. It was the last Government who supplied four of the five Ministers of Statistics who oversaw last year’s census, and yet you don’t see any of them accepting responsibility for what followed—not one of them—despite the fact that most of the major milestones towards last year’s census happened under their administration.

They were the ones that set the budget. They were the ones that decided to go digital. They were the ones that were pushing for more administrative data. They were the ones who were asking Stats New Zealand to undergo a massive transformation process all in that cycle of one census. Do you see anybody on the other side accepting any responsibility at all? No. Well, first of all, they wouldn’t be able to decide which one of their four Ministers of Statistics might actually accept responsibility for that. I tell you what, if we’re talking about quality oversight: on this side of the House, we have had one Minister of Statistics for the entire time that we have been in Government. We have provided a continuity that four Ministers under the last Government were unable to do.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Over nine years.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Our Government—it wasn’t under nine years; it was during the time of the planning for the census. Those four Ministers were in the last couple of years of that Government. They constantly reshuffled the role, because they didn’t think it was important. They just gave it to whoever the next Johnny-come-lately in their Cabinet was, because they didn’t think statistics was important. Perhaps if they had accorded it a little bit more priority and they’d had Ministers actually taking more interest in the planning for the census, they would have picked up that the decisions that they had made were creating problems. The decisions they made to go digital, the decisions they made to put more reliance on administrative data, the signing off of the milestones on the way to the preparation—all of which have been under their Government. No responsibility is being accepted by the National Party for that whatsoever, and I think it’s about time they did.

But instead, what we’ve seen from the National Party is this desperate attempt to discredit everything to do with the census—the burn-the-house-down style of politics that we’re seeing from the National Party, imported from their mates in Australia after their nice little cup of tea that Simon Bridges had. They came back and decided that the best way to get into Government was to just completely destroy the credibility of the entire Public Service by discrediting everything that any aspect of the Government does, because they are that desperate to get back into Government. We know that because of Simon Bridges’ own words: “One person’s facts are another person’s misinformation.” In other words, “Let’s create as much confusion as possible. Let’s discredit every aspect of Government whatsoever—every aspect of Government we possibly can—in order to try and get back into office.”

Well, I can say to the members opposite that it isn’t going to work, because New Zealanders can see through that type of behaviour. They can see how desperate the National Party have become—lashing out at everything and everybody in order to try and discredit this Government, and it’s not working.

So the National Party, the National Government, made the decision to adopt the digital-first model. That was one of the decisions that would have had an impact on the turnout. What is Nick Smith’s solution for getting a better turnout at the census? He thought the Minister should have issued more press releases encouraging people to fill in their census forms. Apparently the 2013 Census had a better turnout result, a better response result, because Maurice Williamson issued more press releases than James Shaw did. Apparently the golden solution to getting more people participating in the census was to get—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: The Minister was missing in action.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: —the Minister issuing more press releases like Maurice Williamson did.

And now Nick Smith is yelling, “The Minister wasn’t in the country when the census took place.” Well, I can tell Nick Smith that that would have made a difference to one census result, and that was the Minister’s own census result. Other than that, it would have had no impact whatsoever on the census whether or not the Minister of Statistics was in the country or not at the time the census took place. A Minister issuing press releases is not going to result in more people filling in their census forms. And if he thinks that Maurice Williamson issuing more press releases was the reason for the turnout in 2013, he is seriously, seriously deluded.

Ultimately, the census did not go as anticipated, did not go as planned by the last Government, and there has to be some accountability for that, and there has been accountability for that. I do want to acknowledge that a senior public servant has stood down from her job. She has done the right thing by accepting responsibility, by accepting accountability, and I commend her for doing so, because that is ultimately where the buck stops—with the chief statistician, who is responsible for ensuring that the census was delivered in accordance with the rules, with the law, and with the obligations that were set down for the chief statistician. I think that she has done the right thing, and I commend her for doing that.

Now is the time for us to ensure that we have got robust data on which we can make decisions. Who am I going to rely on for advice on that? Not Nick Smith. I’m actually going to rely on the panel of international experts that have been formed to tell us whether or not we have reliable enough data to make decisions. Their advice is that, yes, we do. I am happy to take that advice, because they actually know what they’re talking about. They’re not trying to create confusion deliberately. They’re not peddling in misinformation, as the National Party have openly admitted that they are willing to do. They’re willing to say that one person’s fact’s another person’s misinformation. The statisticians who have been running a ruler over this exercise are not engaged in that type of behaviour. They’re actually interested in making sure we’ve got robust data on which to make decisions. I am confident that if they are telling us that they think the census has been able to produce that, supplemented with the other information that’s been obtained, then I am willing to take that advice.

Dr JIAN YANG (National): It is simply astonishing to listen to the previous two speakers. Minister Shaw—after listening to his speech, I came to the conclusion that, basically, firstly, as the Minister he has no responsibility whatsoever for the disaster of Census 2018; and, secondly, it was actually a good census, because we achieved a high coverage rate and because we did well with many other areas. He also claimed that he trusts academics more than other people. But if you listen to the academics, you’ll find they claim that this is a disaster. Listen to Professor Arnold. Listen to Professor Paul Spoonley. You’ll see they all believe the census is a disaster.

Listen to the Hon Chris Hipkins. You’ll find that he has not read the report at all. He continues to blame the previous Government for the decision and for the funding issue. Well, the report has made it very clear that the decision was a good decision and the census was sufficiently funded. Also, Mr Hipkins said that “Oh, the PR issue? PR is not particularly important, and the Minister does not have to be in the country for the census.” But what we can see: in a battlefield, a general can be away, seeing all. In the end, the general will not shoot anyway. So the leader must be there, and the Minister should stay in the country. This is very simple. To be a leader, you need to be in the country to lead your team. But he was away, and he did not express any particular interest in the census. That was highlighted by the fact that he did not issue a single press release to encourage people to participate.

This report has confirmed what we have known for about 18 months—that is, Census 2018 is a disaster, a failure, a debacle, a shambles. The review—I quote this review—says, “Two of the four investment objectives … were not met and a third is likely to be very challenging. As such, it would be easy to conclude that the 2018 Census was not successful.”

Hon James Shaw: That’s right; it would be easy to conclude that.

Dr JIAN YANG: That’s right. Instead of taking any responsibility, the Government has been blaming the previous National Government about the decision, saying that “Oh, the National Government made the decision. It was the wrong decision.”, while it is clear the decision was made to be in line with international census development. Look at Canada; look at Australia—the two countries who did online censuses in 2016. In Canada, the response rate was 98.4 percent. In Australia, it reached 94.8 percent. So these two countries did very well—the online census—and with good results. That is why we believe in a future which moves to an online census. The problem is that this Government, from the Minister down to Stats New Zealand, did not pay attention. The online census did not do well, did not execute the operation well, and made huge mistakes.

Looking at this report again, it says—to quote—“The design principles for the 2018 Census were feasible and were influenced by a successful methodology adopted internationally,”. So there was no problem with the decision. In terms of funding, this Government claimed the National Party did not give enough money to the census. Minister Shaw and also the Prime Minister continue to complain about this. Well, this report, again, says on page 16 that “The 2018 Census programme had sufficient budget to carry out its programme plan.” So there was no problem with the funding at all. So what’s the problem? The lack of leadership is the major factor: the lack of leadership from the Minister and from this Government, not just Stats New Zealand’s leadership.

As I’ve mentioned, this Minister did not express any particular interest in the census—no press release, was away from the country—and from the very beginning he expressed blind confidence in Stats New Zealand without doing his own job. Well, look at it. Just four days before census day, there had been various signs that Census 2018 was running into trouble. Minister Shaw had no such sense and was not concerned. He was still aiming at a response rate of 95 to 99 percent—95 to 99 percent. More astonishingly, he stayed out of this and went overseas. Then, one month later, on 12 April last year, he told this House, in answering my question, that “from all indications we are on track to meet the census numbers, as with any previous census.”, and that “What I would say is that this census looks to be more successful than previous censuses, that we’re meeting all of our targets,”. That’s over one month after the census. He still expressed his blind confidence, because he did not know what really was going on.

However, three months later, he started to realise there was a problem—there was a mess. Then he started to hide behind officials. He said, “I expressed my confidence based on advice from Statistics New Zealand”—that’s not my problem; that’s the officials’ problem, right? He has continuously hid behind the officials. Officials have become the shield for Minister Shaw. He has no courage to face up to the failure and—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! You can’t say that about a member.

Dr JIAN YANG: OK, sorry. He has not taken any responsibility. Well, chief statistician Liz MacPherson took the responsibility and resigned. That should have exposed the Minister, but still he has not acknowledged any—any—fault or responsibility. Well, the question is: had he asked the officials tough questions about the 2018 census? Obviously he had not. So on 6 March 2019, the anniversary of the failed 2018 census, we were told in this House that Minister Shaw had not taken advice on key risks surrounding Census 2018, and that was one year after the census debacle.

So this Minister was asleep at the wheel for the past two years, when he has been Minister of Statistics. We ask: why do we need a Minister if whenever something goes wrong in his department, he will simply say, “Well, that’s not my problem; that’s the officials’ problem.”? So the Minister should take his responsibility.

Now, we are concerned about this census because we are concerned about the accuracy issue. This Government has been labelling itself as a wellbeing Government, but in the end they delivered the worst census in our history. Without accurate data, how can we ensure that this Government will be able to deliver wellbeing? Those agencies who really are dependent on accurate data will not be able to deliver or to carry out their own responsibilities or job to make sure that wellbeing is indeed being delivered. So health and social workers, social support, education—these agencies will not be able to have up-to-date census data and therefore will not be able to really deliver what they should be able to deliver in terms of protecting or promoting wellbeing and equity in New Zealand. I do ask the Minister to face up to the challenge and take more responsibility.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d just like to thank the member Dr Jiang Yang, Dr Yang Jiang—I think that’s how you say it—with his rendition of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, with his generals in the field, shooting guns and being there. I think that was eloquently spoken. I’d also like to take a moment to acknowledge Liz MacPherson for having the fortitude and courage to do the honourable thing, to actually tender her resignation for her role as chief statistician. It wouldn’t have been an easy decision to make, although it was the right one. I think you have to take a moment to consider what will be taking a huge weight off her mind, but also the weight that she has had to deal with over the last couple of years in coming to terms with this.

The report that’s come out—although I haven’t read it in its entirety, I’ve had a chance to have a look at it. I think it’s given a very clear and fair overview of some of the failings from this census, but it also acknowledges some of the failings and some of the avoidable problems, moving forward, that we can take some learnings from. I’d also like to acknowledge quite strongly how impressed I was with the speech that the Hon James Shaw has given today, because he, I think, has humbly acknowledged his responsibility in this situation, unlike what Dr Jian Yang has spoken about with regards to saying he’s not taking any responsibility at all. He’s taken this matter very, very seriously from the very start, and has acknowledged, as the Minister, he is responsible for it, but, moving forward, he is responsible to ensure that these problems don’t happen again.

I’ve got Nick Smith smiling at me like a Cheshire cat across the House at the moment. In none of his speeches, in any of his attacks that he has given in the House about this situation has he—he’s been completely disingenuous for not giving any responsibility to Ministers of the previous Government for their planning and their lack of execution from it. With five Ministers that they’ve had at the helm to actually deal with this problem, the first decision—and, I have to say, the right decision—to start phasing into a digital framework has been completely and utterly discounted from this member’s elastic—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has the member read the report?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: You should have been listening—with his elastic conscience when it comes to this issue moving forward.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Sorry, you are, yes.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has the member read the report?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: I’ve already spoken, Mr Smith. You’ve got to start listening, all right? So the point being is what we’ve got to deal with here is a bit of a bugger’s muddle, but nothing that we can’t tidy up from. I have to say, the idea to move into a digital framework moving forward is important. But the push that they have made, the previous Government had made, to try and make this all happen within a five-year period—when the elections took over and a new Government took its new phase in 2017, in late October, there were only five months until the census came on board. Yet there’s an expectation from Nick Smith and the previous Government that the Minister should take on all the responsibility for all the work leading up to something that had been planned out for five years.

Now, it’s not as bad as the member across the House would like to make out. There has been a lot of exceptional data that is going to be very, very useful. But we’ve also got the opportunity to make sure that, moving forward, we don’t have these technical issues repeat themselves. That’s the key to this. That’s what I’ve picked up out of the Hon James Shaw’s comments this afternoon, is that there is a lot of opportunity to tidy things up in certain spaces.

There are also some issues that were out of any Minister’s control, and that was the incident around the Kaikōura earthquake. Now, that took a lot of focus, a lot of time, and took resources away from Statistics New Zealand. When they were doing that trial, there were issues with the depth of that trial that took place. Certainly, moving forward, we cannot predict when we have a natural disaster such as the one we had and those people’s availability, but we can just ensure that Statistics New Zealand and the role that they play needs to be taken very seriously. This is why we’ve had the continuity of the role under the leadership of this Government, whereas in the past we’ve had very much a changing in and out, baton-changing sort of an atmosphere, which doesn’t help for that continuity to take place. Of course, we’ve got extra funding to ensure that Statistics New Zealand can actually get the data that they need. They certainly do have the expertise there, and we’ve just got to make sure that we’re not out there virtue-signalling, trying to discourage or discombobulate—which is the favourite word of the month—the public, which will be listening to some of this rhetoric from across the House and have been, definitely, misinformed.

Moving forward, some of the key positive, independent findings of that review is that the IT systems and a register of addresses will now be available for future census surveys, and Stats New Zealand has a good understanding of integrating administrative data with census information to produce high-quality data sets—which was the idea set forward by the previous Government, but they didn’t quite come up with a plan of how they were going to execute that. The 2018 census attempted to implement unprecedented changes as Stats New Zealand moved forward, over a short period of time. I think, in hindsight, it would have been better to take a slower, more methodical approach than the one that the previous Government had come forth with at such rapid fire.

So to wrap things up, I would just like to, again, say to the Minister who is taking responsibility for fixing this mess up to ensure that the next census that we have in a little over three years’ time is going to be a lot better—and with the learnings that we have learnt from the mistakes that the previous Government has made that we’ve been left to tidy up, we’ll be certainly well-pleased.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: You haven’t read the report.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Yes, I’ve read some of the report, as I said in my earlier contribution. So, ladies and gentlemen, that’s all I’ve got to say today. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon JACQUI DEAN (National—Waitaki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a wonderful speech we just heard from that Government member, Clayton Mitchell, just now: “It’s a bit of a … muddle,”. I won’t repeat his exact words: “It’s a bit of a … muddle,”; “Nothing we can’t clean up. It will be all right, we can clean it up.”

Well, that member obviously has not read the independent report, which found that, to the contrary of what the Prime Minister and Minister James Shaw have been touting for the last 18 months about how well this census is going—the independent report absolutely gives the lie to that. In fact, what the independent report found was the statements made by the Prime Minister and James Shaw were to be less trusted than, perhaps, they might have been, because what they found was that the census was not underfunded, and that the digital-first strategy was a perfectly good, sound strategy. So they were not the issues that caused the terrible failure of this census, which has unfolded in front of us for the past 18 months. So any notion that, yet again, it was the previous Government’s fault for this current Government’s failings—a very convenient narrative of this Government—well, I’m afraid to tell that member and members of the Government that that story just does not hold any weight. Do not believe my words—you wouldn’t, of course—but please do read the independent report to find the truth of the matter, which is that Census 2018 was adequately funded and the digital-first strategy was more than adequate.

So I do look forward to perhaps some more sensible and less defensive debate, perhaps a little bit less defensive and a little more clarity coming from the Government over what has been an absolute “something something muddle”—not going to say what it is. Can I suggest to the Government that this needs a little more than an attitude of “Nothing that we can’t clean up.” I’ll tell you why that is: because in the next five years—the next period of this current census—$100 billion in public money will be spent based on the information in the 2018 census. So for the next five years, public expenditure on health, on education, on infrastructure, on numbers of people, and on the number of teachers in schools—goodness knows! The number of birthing units we have down south, to name but one example that matters to those people, will be based on information where this current Government had to backfill for 825,000 people whose statistics were not counted.

So with those 825,000 people who were unable to fill in a census because they couldn’t get the documents or figure out or have access to the online version, the Government will just guess. They will just guess. The chief statistician will just guess. They’ll use matrixes and they’ll use all sorts of data, none of which may be relevant to that day on 5 June last year, if I’ve got the date right, and that was the year of census week. And, by the way, that was also the week when the Hon James Shaw was flying off to parts unknown to speak at a climate change conference.

So in terms of a Minister whose really got a handle on his portfolio, I don’t think that could be said of James Shaw, who in the 18 months leading up to the census did not receive one specific briefing on the census—not one. He didn’t issue one press release reminding people that we were moving to a new online platform and it would be a good idea to raise some public awareness because, actually, your details in census do matter. Letting the public know and getting them a bit excited about census does matter. Particularly when we have a Government which is so very keen on bowling head-on into online voting, one would have thought that there would have been a high degree of support, but where was it? It was completely absent.

Well, at least the chief statistician has had the grace to take responsibility for this census. What a poor result. What poor support the chief statistician has had from her Minister. Where was he during the census? He was nowhere to be seen. Where is he now? He is washing his hands. It’s all good—it’s all good! The census will be fine!

Except that it’s not fine, because that public money, that $100 billion in the next five years which will be based on the census findings, will be largely guess work. So the expenditure on infrastructure planning—that is very important for local government. As they begin to grapple with issues around infrastructure spend to do with Three Waters, who can trust the statistics that underpin that infrastructure spending for any local authority area in New Zealand?

The electoral boundaries—there is an election in a little over 12 months. How can members of Parliament and how can those people that we serve be assured that the boundaries as drawn effectively and realistically reflect the populations they’re in? It does matter, particularly in large electorates where the boundaries shift a lot over time, that those voters are getting the best representative to represent them based on the size of their electorate.

What about social policy research, something held dear by every Government? How will the Government know where to direct its attention around social policy when it has such poor return rates from Māori and Pacific Islanders? So for Pacific Island people, only 63 percent of their population were counted in the census. What’s the rest of it going to be? Is it going to be guess work? What about Māori—68 percent? What’s the rest of it going to be? Is it going to be guess work? Well, the short answer is, yes, it is going to be guess work. This is a Government and this is a Minister—James Shaw—who’s literally been asleep at the wheel and is letting down the people of New Zealand where it absolutely matters.

I want to turn to Maurice Williamson, who is well known to this House and who was very proud of the roles that he was involved in. We all remember SmartGate, and we’re getting a bit far from the argument here, but he achieved that project because he was enthusiastic. He gave the House updates every second week, and it was a project that worked. He was fully engaged with it, as he was with the census. He gave the House many, many updates on how the census was going. He was engaged and he cared; this is not so for the current Minister.

For the past 18 months, this country has had to endure shifting sands of targets. Well, they started off with a 95 percent target for the whole population. It dropped to 90 percent because things weren’t going so well. Then it dropped to 85 percent. Finally, the final report said that only an 83 percent target of returns was achieved. That is a fail. That is an epic fail, and nothing this Government tries to do to dance around the issue and shift the blame—which they’re getting very, very good at—is going to wash where it really matters, and that is with the allocation of public funding to New Zealand.

So we’ve had the charade of dismissing concerns about the census for 18 months. How much longer is this going to go on? There has been a complete lack of openness and transparency in this whole process by a Government which, at the start of its term, promised to be the most open and transparent Government this country has ever seen. Well, goodbye to that charade as well.

Finally, this is an example of a part-time Minister and a part-time Government absolutely failing to deliver for the needs of New Zealanders.

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. If there is one thing that is appropriate to say at this point, it’s that, obviously, we’re debating the resignation of the Government Statistician. This is an incredibly unfortunate event. Actually, I really hope that the individual concerned isn’t listening to this as we dissect the pros and cons of what she did right and what she did wrong, from where we sit, from our seats here in the debating chamber. The fact remains that the Government Statistician has accepted her liability in this process. She, herself, has said that the buck stops with her, and she has tendered her resignation.

What I’d like to say is that this was a mistake. There was a very big mistake that was made here. We have to find a solution through this. When it comes to mistakes, the best thing that you can do is own up to them, and that’s exactly what the Government Statistician has done and that’s exactly what our Minister, James Shaw, has done as well. I am yet to actually hear any kind of responsibility from the Opposition, who, despite planning for the census starting in 2014, remain very, very silent and accusatory towards our current Government and for the part that our Government has played in this.

This independent review found, obviously, that the census did not achieve all of its goals; there were significant shortcomings. But it also showed that thanks to Statistics New Zealand’s remediation efforts using their administrative data, the most important statistical information regarding population coverage is better than previous census service has achieved.

So, thankfully, the message that we’ve got to send to New Zealand is that work is under way to ensure that these mistakes don’t happen again. A mistake was made, it was owned up to, and we have to ensure that the next census is the best that it can be. It is, as I said before, appropriate that the Government Statistician has accepted her part in this. The Minister has accepted the decision taken by her to step down at the end of 2019. The timing is going to ensure that there will be a level of continuity while Statistics New Zealand work to complete the data analysis of this census and also to start planning the next census.

The Minister will be closely, obviously, monitoring Statistics New Zealand to ensure that they rebuild a very strong foundation for the next census. Naturally, there were some positive findings from the review. The review found that the census had provided a population coverage of 98.6 percent, which was around 4.7 million people. As I said before, that is better coverage than the 2013 census. Online participation was expected to be at 70 percent—that was the expected target, 70 percent participation—but we’ve found that online participation actually exceeded that and it came in at 80 percent. IT systems and a register of addresses will now be available for future census surveys, and Statistics New Zealand has a good understanding of integrating administrative data with census information to produce highly high-quality data sets.

This has been an incredibly drawn out process. It was right to initiate the independent review. It was right for the Government Statistician to step down from her role. But it’s also right that we as a House of Parliament, not just a Government, do everything that we can to ensure that we get it right for the next census, because, as the previous speaker indicated, so much of what we fund, so much of our boundaries—so much relies on good-quality data and information. So we are standing here debating it, but it’s my opinion that this has been remedied. The move has been made, the resignation has been tendered and accepted by the Minister, and we need to start focusing our events on the next census and where exactly we can tidy up this process.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call the Hon Scott Simpson—five minutes.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Speaker. One of the problems with using, as the basis for a speech in a debate like this, talking notes that have been prepared by somebody else and that purport to be a review of an independent review report is that sometimes they’re wrong. The previous speaker in this debate, Tamati Coffey, has just proved that case very aptly, because much of what he was saying actually was not in the report, and it wasn’t actually a fair or accurate reflection of what the independent reviewers made in their report. I have taken the trouble, as a former Minister of Statistics, to read the report very thoroughly, and I have to say that I’m very disappointed to find out how little work was done after the change of Government.

It’s appalling, really, that a Minister could take over at a crucial time in a census calendar programme and have so little focus on the job at hand in the crucial last six months before a census. When all the detail work had been done, when all the prep work had allegedly been done, I would have thought that a new Minister would have been very eager and very keen to get into the detail. What do we find? Actually, that did not occur. The report is scathing in its indictment upon the lack of credible detail that was provided not only to me and my predecessors but also to the current Minister. I would’ve thought that even a Minister who was clearly more focused on other portfolio responsibilities at the time would have taken time and trouble to ask some very basic questions, if only to seek for himself some personal reassurance that all was going well. It seems now, from the evidence in the report and also corroborative evidence from diary matching and similar information, that meetings simply didn’t occur, that questions simply were not asked. It’s not that they weren’t answered; it’s just that they were not asked, and that is a sign of a Minister who was literally asleep at the wheel.

Much has been made of the fact that the Minister was not in the country, didn’t participate in the census on census night. Now, yes, there was a Labour Minister who said, “Well, that made one difference to one census return.”, but, actually, it’s far more important than that. It’s a symbolic leadership function of a Minister of Statistics to participate, surely, in a census process. For that not to have occurred is absolutely a failure to deliver.

I was concerned to read in the report, and I want to quote from it, “We find a level of optimism in the reporting to Ministers that was not always consistent with the level of issues being managed by the programme.” Now, that’s really code for “Yes, Minister.” That’s really what it’s code for. Code is “Yes, Minister.” So when I was asking regular, consistent, persistent, obvious questions about the progress of Census 2018 and getting positive, gung-ho reassurances from officials, from the chief executive, about progress and about how the impact of the Kaikōura earthquake and the inability for Stats to service Statistics House and how they were operating from three different sites in Wellington, and I was being told that, no, they had that under control, it turns out now that some of those answers were, as the report says, provided in terms of a “level of optimism in the reporting to Ministers that was not always consistent with the level of issues being managed by the programme.” That is a sad thing not only for those officials, but it’s a sad thing for New Zealand and for the information that we rely on.

Just in summary, in my own electorate of the Coromandel, there were media reports in the days following the census that census personnel were instructed not to bother going up long driveways or to geographically challenged areas, and that then leads me to think that, as a member of Parliament, I don’t have confidence, and I don’t think we can, as a Parliament, rely on the information that is now being filled in—backfilled, if you like—in terms of setting electoral boundaries for next year’s general election. This is a sad indictment on a Minister who was asleep at the wheel.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this urgent debate. The question I have for this House today is: is there a genuine desire to get good-quality data in New Zealand? Is there a genuine desire in this House to give New Zealand the truth, information about what’s happening in our country? I would say, on this side of the House, there is a Minister and a genuine desire to get things right, and when there have been issues in terms of delivery, there has been a comprehensive review on how that transition to digital needs to happen more effectively, and an accurate plan how we can move towards that.

We have heard good information tonight from the Minister about how there were active steps in place to make sure we do have good-quality data here in New Zealand. But from that side of the House, it’s not quite the same thing. First of all, there has been absolutely no recognition of the fact that there were issues in the set-up that went right back to 2014—that there was a real problem, back in 2014, under the different Ministers who have administered this project over time. The different Ministers and people involved—[Interruption] Let me read them out for you once again, to those members opposite. Maurice Williamson, number one. Number two, Nicky Wagner. Number three, Craig Foss. Number four, Mark Mitchell. Number five, Scott Simpson. These are five different people that’ve had responsibility for coordinating and shepherding one piece of work. So how can we expect that there is consistency and accuracy in how we deliver these issues?

One of the main issues raised by the report that’s so quietly being mentioned on the other side right now is that the issue was with the testing that was agreed to by Mark Mitchell—the tests in place—and it was the real, apparent lack of understanding how those tests would translate into practice. The problem with the delivery was the fact that the plan, which was not even tested back in 2014, is one of the underlying reasons that this report found that the issues we received when delivering were not fulfilled. That is the truth, and that is the truth that New Zealanders deserve to hear when this issue is being debated, because there is more to this. There’s not just an inaccuracy in terms of what’s being said on the other side of the House; there is a deliberate, purposeful misrepresentation of information, and that is systematic of a wider agenda by those members opposite. That, also, is typified in the behaviour of the Hon Dr Nick Smith in the Governance and Administration Committee when considering this issue and hearing from key officials and the chief executive over this time. I would say that the leaking of information by the Hon Dr Nick Smith over this time got to the point of being farcical. Instead of actually having to—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member has alleged that I leaked documents from the select committee. That has been the subject of a privileges complaint by that member. That was dismissed by the Speaker, and it was found that the information that was released was entirely appropriate. I seek the leave of the House to table the letter from the member and the reply from the Speaker regarding the information concerned.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to deal with the first part first. I apologise to the House; I was slightly distracted on another matter at the time, but I’m going to ask the member Ginny Andersen whether that is correct.

GINNY ANDERSEN: I would like to be able to table the Stuff article which was published after the—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, no, that’s not what I asked. The Hon Dr Nick Smith has said that you made an accusation; is that correct or not?

GINNY ANDERSEN: That is correct.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

GINNY ANDERSEN: I withdraw and apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you. And to the second part, the seeking of leave—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek the leave of the House to table the letter from the member seeking to keep the Statistics decision around the 700,000 people who didn’t comply secret and the response from the Speaker, saying that it was appropriate for the information to be released.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. The document can be tabled. Are you continuing with your contribution?

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

GINNY ANDERSEN: Yes. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It was also interesting to note that there was good coverage in the media around that time that was always readily available, and sometimes instead of reading my agenda for the Governance and Administration Committee that night, I would just turn on Radio New Zealand and would hear Dr Nick Smith telling us exactly what would be considered in the committee the next day, and that was often a much quicker way—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! That’s not part of the independent report or the resignation of the Government Statistician. So come back to the motion on the Table.

GINNY ANDERSEN: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. So what we were hearing from the issues—[Interruption] And it’s interesting to hear that there are concerns, because there was a lack of good information available, and that is right. The problem is that there is a deliberate attempt to give misinformation about the history of this issue, and that is what has got the backs up of the members opposite. There is truth in the fact that National has no credibility to call this decision now into question, and the idea even that there should be a consideration in this area needs to be revisited for the fact that there is a history that goes right back. That is obviously a very sore point for those members opposite, in fact. The history is that there was a long time when decisions were taken under a previous Government that were contributing factors to where we have been placed right now, and the report quite clearly points that out.

There are some significant issues, and when you come back to what we have actually heard today, what we have actually heard is that there have been two main points made in terms of what the National Party considers should happen next. The first one is that they have concerns that the Minister wasn’t in the country at the time the census was happening. Now, I fundamentally fail to see how that relates to any of the issues in terms of transitioning from a paper to a digital platform, any foresight into how we can make this process better; it is simply making one statement of fact that has absolutely no ramifications on the outcome of this issue. The second point made by those members opposite is that there weren’t enough press releases issued over this time—that somehow we would all be in a better position right now and there would be no problems if the Minister of Statistics had whacked out a few more press releases. So I am assuming that there is a tally of the number of press releases released by the Hon Maurice Williamson under his watch, and we’ve got a tally kept there that that’s included in the National Party key lines today, that you’ve won out on press releases and that that somehow demonstrates a greater transparency on that side of the House.

The key area is that, yes, there have been some delivery details in place, and that is why there has been accountability at the highest level from this side, to make sure such errors do not occur again. It is important, the other point that we heard Scott Simpson mention today. It was also about this backfill data, and a more accurate term you might find for “backfill data” is the fact that it’s administrative data. In that report, when you go back in terms of those previous Cabinet decisions taken by the last National Government, there was an agreement in there to acknowledge that administrative data can be used quite accurately. So it is an inaccurate comment and it contributes to the ongoing issues—that National wilfully misrepresents what the problems are and that there is a high level of scaremongering, and this has a negative effect in the sense that it undermines the public confidence in Statistics. There’s a burn the house down, let’s say it’s all gone approach without trying to move forward and have a good outcome. I do believe that New Zealanders have a general expectation on issues of such importance—of data, of reporting about what’s happening in people’s lives—that there is some good, cross-party coordination in this, there are some levels, instead of playing petty politics and not actually looking at what the facts were in this situation. That is quite clearly what has happened here. It has quite clearly happened.

Look, I am looking forward to coming into an era when we do have good-quality data, but the important fact that we need to take away is that the work is being done to use administrative data—that we are in a good space to have good-quality information moving forward. National members knew back then that that was a possibility, and it has always been able to be used as a backup to get good data when it’s required in those areas. That is the misinformation that those members opposite have continued to perpetuate in this area. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Often reports of this sort become part of the parliamentary record. On this occasion, it’s a report to the Minister and the Government Statistician. I think it is of sufficient moment that it should be tabled in the House. I seek the leave of the House to table the review of New Zealand’s 2018 census.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): That document is publicly available, so it can’t be tabled. It is available for all members to read at their leisure.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Estimates Debate

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’ve got quite a bit to read out, members, so bear with me.

We turn first to the Appropriation (2019/20) Estimates Bill. The Standing Orders provide for 11 hours of debate on the Estimates, divided into 10 separate debates covering the sectors set out in the Estimates of Appropriations (2019/20). Each debate will be led by a call from the chairperson of the select committee nominated by the Government as the major committee reporting on the sector. Other calls are allocated to parties on a proportional basis and may be taken as parties see fit during the 10 sector debates. At the end of each debate, the question will be put that the votes in each sector stand part of the Schedules.

The times taken on each question is in the hands of members, depending on the parties’ use of their allocation of calls. However, this debate does expire after 11 hours. The Estimates debate should be relevant to the Government’s current spending plans as contained in the Estimates of Appropriations. All of the votes are available for debate, and a compendium of the reports of the select committees on the votes is available here on the Table.

Members will be aware of the joint venture package on family and sexual violence, which is funded under eight different votes, falling under three different sectors. The Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on its briefing on the joint venture package has also been included in the compendium. In accordance with a determination of the Business Committee, members will be able to debate the joint venture package and the committee’s report as part of the debate on the social services and community sector.

I understand that it may be the Government’s intention to adjourn the debate at some time in order to move to other business. A motion to report progress on the bill must be moved on a call, not a point of order. Because the Estimates debate will run for a fixed period of time and the calls have been allocated proportionately, it would harm the proportionality of the debate to treat the motion to report progress as a member’s entire call. Therefore, when a member moves to report progress in this Estimates debate, the presiding officer will call on that member first when the debate resumes.

Colleagues, we come first to the votes in the economic development and infrastructure sector, B.5, volume 1. The question is that Vote Business, Science and Innovation and Vote Transport stand part of the Schedules, and it’s my understanding that the chairperson is not available today and therefore the deputy chairperson will be taking the call.

Economic Development and Infrastructure Sector

Tamati Coffey (Deputy Chairperson of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee) on behalf of the Chairperson of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I’m very pleased to stand in place of our chairperson, Jonathan Young, to talk about the Estimates—the appropriations for Vote Business, Science and Innovation, which fund a very large and a very diverse range of activities. In total, the appropriations sought in this vote amount to $3.852 billion.

There are 10 Ministers responsible for appropriations within the vote, and we held meetings in select committee with a number of those Ministers to talk about their main appropriations. They include commerce and consumer affairs; communications; economic development; energy and resources; infrastructure and regional economic development; research, science, and innovation; and also tourism. In my short contribution, I’m going to cover some of the appropriations and the issues that we discussed with those relevant Ministers.

First up: commerce and consumer affairs appropriations. We discussed with the Minister in our select committee everything from cryptocurrency to wheel clamping to predatory lending. What we found was that, actually, a large amount of that fund is appropriated for the regulatory business environment that’s carried out by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, or MBIE, and also the work of the Commerce Commission and the Financial Markets Authority. We heard from the Minister the Hon Kris Faafoi, who is responsible for the appropriations.

One of the things—the many things—that we talked about in that select committee meeting was about predatory lending. The Credit Contracts Legislation Amendment Bill is currently being considered by the House, and it looks at strengthening requirements to lend responsibly, to limit the amount of interest and fees on high-cost loans, and also to propose some changes in relation to truck shops, including putting in place a fit and proper person test for those people that choose to partake in that kind of activity. That work is ongoing, but we had a good conversation around the whole idea of loan sharks and predatory lending.

Minister Faafoi is also the Minister for communications, and we spoke with him in his role as the Minister of Broadcasting, Communications and Digital Media, which, in this vote, was responsible for around $41 million in communications appropriations under this Budget 2019. The Minister told us about the work that he’s leading to improve connectivity for very rural and remote parts of New Zealand. He reported that by the time these projects are complete, 99.8 percent of New Zealanders will have access to high-speed broadband. This leaves only around 4,500 of the most remote households around New Zealand without that same kind of access to high-speed broadband.

Also, we spoke to—just trying to cover off as much as I can in the next minute and a half—economic development: the appropriations under that. The Hon David Parker came and presented on his appropriation, which totalled $595 million. A lot of that was, obviously, to fund advice and services designed to promote economic development throughout the country as a whole through using firms, sectors, and regions as well.

We talked a bit about procurement and about the new Government procurement rules, which focus on access for New Zealand businesses, construction sector skills and training, employment standards and health and safety, and also reducing emissions and waste. The rules come into force in October 2019, but we were pleased to hear that agencies that could carry out that work sooner were being encouraged to.

When it comes to energy and resources, the appropriation totalled $182 million, and most of that appropriation was to fund the work of the Electricity Authority and the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, otherwise known as EECA. We talked generally about low-emission vehicles and about the contestable fund that’s been set up—up to $7 million a year—which supports projects that accelerate the uptake of electric and low-emission vehicles. We asked how the fund was tracking towards its goals, and the Minister said that it was making good progress with about 12,000 new electric vehicle registrations up from 8,700 in December 2018.

I think my time is up.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Thank you very much. This debate’s taking place today at a very important time when businesses up and down the country realise the economy is slowing, some commentators are saying it’s faltering, and the Government is in absolute denial over (1) that happening and (2) who’s responsible.

It was interesting, earlier this year, that there was a debate between the Prime Minister and Simon Bridges, not over whether the economy is slowing but over whose fault it is. We continue to hear from the Prime Minister, and we continue to hear from the finance Minister and the Minister for Economic Development, it’s global headwinds.

Well, what we heard in the committee, and what we hear every single day, is that the Government is saying that, actually, our exports are at record levels and export prices have never been so good under this Government—albeit they’re not spending a lot of time overseas talking about trade deals; they’re spending all of their time back here criticising our number one trade partner, Australia, and our number two trade partner, China—or the other way around, depending upon the commodity prices. But, actually, at the same time the Government is saying that the reason the New Zealand economy is slowing, or business confidence is at record low levels—close to global financial crisis (GFC)—is because of international headwinds. Well, I say to the Minister for Economic Development, the business community doesn’t believe that; the economic experts, the commentators, and the economists don’t believe that; and, increasingly, we’re seeing that Kiwis don’t believe that either.

So what exactly is happening with the economy, and why, after two years, has this Government not got an economic development plan? Actually, that’s what business needs. Business confidence will increase—will go up—if there is a plan that businesses can understand. Well, when this lot came to Government, GDP growth was around 4 percent. Now we’re told we’ll be lucky if it’s 2 percent. Around the world, there’s talk of recession; in New Zealand, of negative interest rates. We see the Governor of the Reserve Bank drop the official cash rate (OCR) by a whole 0.5 percent—a whole 0.5 percent—not because he sees that inflationary pressure is there or the economy is doing so well; because he is worried about the economy.

Do you know the only other times the Governor of the Reserve Bank, in living memory, has dropped the OCR by half a percent? Well, it was the GFC, half a percent; 9/11, half a percent; the Canterbury earthquakes, half a percent; Grant Robertson with a Labour Government, half a percent.

Hon Member: All disasters.

Hon TODD McCLAY: Oh my gosh—all disasters. So it’s no wonder that the ANZ business confidence index is telling us it’s minus 44 percent. Minus 44 percent tells us that businesses are not confident and they are not investing.

GDP growth is very important. It’s much more important than how people feel. Well, the problem that we’ve got is that with no economic development plan, businesses can’t be confident, and, if they’re not confident, they’re not investing, they’re not growing the economy, and GDP growth will fall. When GDP growth falls, do you know what this Government does? They decide they need to borrow more—we’ve heard that—or tax more. So what are they saying to New Zealanders and what are they saying to businesses? Well, they’re saying, actually, that they’ve got new taxes or cancelled taxes, and that’s the economic development plan. Businesses should grow by being taxed more. They’ve cancelled National’s tax relief, there are three new fuel taxes, there’s a regional fuel tax on top, and they’ve got the brightline test. It’s tax after tax after tax, and at the same time those big, big surpluses that they inherited—didn’t grow themselves for an economic development plan; they inherited—are running out faster than Winston Peters’ knee after he comes back out of hospital. They’ve said they are going to have to borrow.

I saw something on Facebook the other day. It was a meme, but it was the smiling face of the Prime Minister, and above it it says, “We intend to borrow enough to get us completely out of debt.” That’s the problem we have when a Government has no economic plan after two years, when they say business confidence is not important, the Prime Minister pays more attention to consumer confidence—and now that’s fallen as well—and they blame everything on global headwinds. No wonder businesses are so concerned.

The final bit here is we need a Government that actually is paying attention to all of the small things as well. Why are there not enough workers in the New Zealand economy? Because they can’t process visas for skilled workers or unskilled workers in our economy. They should actually stop making excuses and they should just do their job.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): The previous speaker, Todd McClay, had a singular focus on GDP growth. Let me quote something he said: GDP growth is much more important, he said, than how people fare—GDP growth is much more important than people. What an astonishing thing to say. What an absurd thing to say. The purpose of people is not to serve the economy; the purpose of the economy is to serve the people, and that is the fundamental difference between that side of the House and this side of this House. On this side of the House, we care about the people. On this side of the House, we know that the purpose of the economy is to help the people, not the other way around.

Now, we know that when we came into Government, there were some big long-term issues facing New Zealand, and we are tackling those problems. Particularly, we are tackling them in this set of portfolios around economic development. We have got long-term plans in there that are looking 30 years ahead, not just to the next three. Let me give you an example of one of these, taken directly from what this set of portfolios is concerned with. Let me talk about the Infrastructure Commission—the Infrastructure Commission. What is that about? It is about setting out the longer-term plans for how we intend to develop infrastructure in this country, from roads to rail to power generation, setting it out in a long-term, structured way so that businesses in the construction industry know where their work is coming from—not just for the next 18 months, not just for the next three years, but for the next 30 years. That is the sort of long-term planning that this Government is involved in in respect of economic development, and that gives businesses the certainty they need.

Let me talk of another issue that is concerned within this particular portfolio. In particular, I want to talk about how we get businesses growing in New Zealand. Now, we know already that it’s a fairly easy place, New Zealand, to start up a business. We know that people can get going with businesses, but we also know that there is a gap in taking a good idea, a good business that is starting to grow, and helping it to really expand on to the world stage. There’s a funding gap there, and it’s really hard for businesses to make that leap. So one of the actions that this Government is engaging in to ensure that those businesses can get ahead is setting up a venture capital fund. The New Zealand Venture Investment Fund will come under the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, and we’ll be taking some of that money and using it to support New Zealand businesses. That’s long-term action. That’s the sort of long-term action we need in this economy. You know, it’s a start. We’ve got to do a lot of work in this space. We can’t do it all straight away, but we are getting started and making some really good progress. This venture capital fund is one of those items of good progress.

Let me talk about another one—again, all coming out of the action that this Government is undertaking—and that’s to do with research and development, a long-known problem in our economy, that there simply is not enough expenditure on research and development. This Government, this far-sighted Government that planned for the long term, is putting in place a research and development tax credit to ensure that firms can get access to support for R & D—critical to our success. In the process of doing that, we have adjusted that R & D tax credit to ensure that the help really does reach the firms who need it.

So when we talk about which Governments are responsible, which Governments are doing the work that is needed, I say that that work is being done on this side of the House, and it is being very clearly done in these economic development portfolios, where we have a plan to address the problems that New Zealand faces in a changing and unstable world and a plan that will do its best to give certainty to business so that business can operate successfully, so that our economy is successful, and so that our economy serves the people of this country.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you—it’s a good choice. I’d like to start off by actually responding to the comments made by the honourable member from across the House Deborah Russell, who actually began her contribution by saying that this Government cares about the people and how people feel is a better indicator of New Zealand’s growth than the GDP. I have to say, maybe let’s see how the Labour Government actually feels about these numbers. When National left the Treasury benches at the last election, National left a strong and growing labour force. There was an average of 10,000 new jobs a month in our last two years of governance of this country, and job growth has more than halved under this Labour-led Government. How does this Labour Government actually feel about those statistics? Wages grew twice as fast as cost of living under the National Government, whereas this Government has resulted in more and more people sitting on the dole queues instead of getting a job. Job seeker numbers are up by 14,000 in the last 12 months. I wonder how Labour actually feel about that. They say making people feel good about it is how this Government measure their performance. Well, let me tell you that New Zealand certainly isn’t feeling good about this Government.

I’d like to acknowledge Tamati Coffey, who actually got up and talked about some of the things that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee discussed during the Estimates hearing. One of the things that I have to actually say is that I was actually quite floored by the performance of one of the Ministers. It was actually Minister Shane Jones, the Hon Shane Jones, who came to the select committee. Often, when Ministers turn up to select committee, they come with huge numbers of support people from the ministries, and he came, you know, for the estimates on infrastructure and regional economic development. I have to say that when the Minister was actually asked lots and lots of questions, there were many questions that he could not answer, and yet he would not let any of his officials answer them at select committee, saying that he’d rather the Minister actually have a personal relationship with the select committee and actually answer the question.

But the problem was he could not answer them. He actually asked us to write it down and send it to the officials, so that the officials could respond. What an appalling performance by this Minister and very, very arrogant. And how dare he say that the select committee should not be asking the officials to answer the questions. I was absolutely floored by that Minister, I have to say, and I’m sure that members opposite—the Government members—would have been absolutely floored as well, but they just could not say that because they’re in coalition with that Minister’s party.

One of the things that I have to actually say is that often when we talk about growth, growth in unemployment—I have to say that during question time when the Hon Louise Upston asked the Minister in charge of social development, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, one of the excuses that she uses for the number of those in unemployment, people on the dole, and everything that goes up she actually blames the population growth. Population growth in two years—how soon do new children who are born to new mothers end up on the dole queue? How does the Minister actually use population growth as an excuse? I am just really appalled by that kind of response from Ministers who absolutely have no clue about their portfolios.

And the other one is immigration. Do we actually have an immigration blow-up in this country?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I have to interrupt the member. It’s very interesting, but we are actually on commerce and consumer affairs.

MELISSA LEE: What I’m getting to is that—thank you, Madam Chair. What I’m actually getting to is that this is actually about estimates of this select committee which is about economic development, science, and innovation.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Good to mention it.

MELISSA LEE: Those are important to this country for the economic growth of New Zealand, and some of the details that we actually discussed are very, very important indeed, and that’s what I was actually getting to.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d just like to start my contribution off—in fact, I’d actually written down a point to say that I actually really enjoy the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. For the most part anyway, Melissa Lee, I think we get on very well. That was a bit of an outburst from you, but I think you must be living in a parallel universe, because, in actual fact, I sat through all of those estimates and I thought the Minister answered those questions exceedingly well. I thought he was very robust and very forthright and Goldsmith was struggling to get some points made that he tried to make in the House.

Hon Members: Who? Who?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Full name.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Mr Goldsmith. Anyway, so my point is this: look, it was a very good interaction. There’s a huge vote coming under economic development, science, and innovation of $3.8 billion.

Of course, transport sits in there also, which is another very large vote of $5.79 billion. We’ve heard over the last weeks about this Government over this side from the Leader of the Opposition referring to no spending on roading, nothing going—no infrastructure. Yet we’ve had a 2.7 percent increase on infrastructure spending, particularly on transport, of which 65 percent is going into roads that they haven’t spent money on in the past. If we wanted to talk about ghost roads and ghost highways and ghost bridges, I think we’ve had nine years of ghost leadership from the previous Government because we got nothing in return. And we’re doing a great job of tidying up the underspending that we’ve seen after nine years of neglect.

What was absolutely fantastic was when the Minister Mr Jones came in to our select committee and talked about rail specifically: a $1.1 billion boost into rail, that has been underfunded for a generation almost. Where money has not been spent by the previous Governments—certainly for the last nine years—now we can actually see some things moving forward. We’re getting connectivity with some of our most provincial, rural, and exposed areas. Hawke’s Bay, for example—they had the rail lines breakdown and $5 million that the previous Government would not spend on it now has gone through. Thank you very much to the Provincial Growth Fund. Thank you very much for a Government that’s absolutely committed on coming up with some solutions that we’ve not had before for some of the transport issues.

The benefit that we’re talking about here is taking this traffic, the heavy traffic, off our roads, particularly those containers and logging trucks, and putting them back on to rail. We’re using ships better than we’ve used them in the past. We’ve coming up with initiatives to invest in our coastal shipping again, making sure that funding is allocated so we can make our roads safer. We can actually get longevity out of the construction of our roads because they’re just being used for cars and lightweight vehicles as opposed to the heavy trucks that we’ve been seeing, with no solution from the previous Government.

But with this contribution I cannot get away from the Provincial Growth Fund and what an economic powerhouse that has become for the provinces of New Zealand.

Hon Member: How many jobs?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Oh, thousands and thousands of jobs. But 873 jobs; not the 65 that you’ve talked about or the 32—

Hon Paul Goldsmith: 54.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Fifty-four now, is it? The number changes all the time, Mr Goldsmith. Now, the reality is it’s going to create thousands of jobs, but you can’t just say, “We’re going to spend some money and we’re going to miraculously make appear thousands of jobs.” They will come as those businesses grow and develop.

Look, $20 million—just under—has just been invested into Rotorua, for example—a great investment into tourism. It’s going to unlock $350 million of potential private funding and private investment into Rotorua for our tourism industry. Now that’s not going to happen overnight to create those jobs. But, like Pantene, it definitely will happen. Hawke’s Bay’s received $70 million looking at water, looking at jobs, looking at employment opportunities, and also developing roads.

Now my favourite town, my favourite city—Tauranga. Just last week, we had the Minister from the Provincial Growth Fund, Shane Jones, come through and speak to us, and he’s just unlocked a huge potential there by announcing $980,000 going into our tourist hub. Now this is an essential piece of infrastructure because Tauranga is one of the ports in the world—and certainly in the Pacific—that is one of the most highly regarded. We get $91 million of revenue coming in from 223,000 passengers a year with over 115 ships that are coming into Tauranga, and now we’re going to have a beautiful facility which will be a feeder facility sending people to the Waikato, and sending people to Rotorua to look at our beautiful landscape in and around the Bay of Plenty. So it’s a great thing.

Things are looking up, and I have to finish off with some great words that were spoken by another great leader that certainly the members across will be talking about, where John Key himself spoke about the economy: “It’s going in the right direction. It’s not doom and gloom. Things are looking up. Put your sunglasses on. It’s very bright.”

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a great pleasure to speak here on the debate around infrastructure, in particular. We’ll all be aware that the Reserve Bank Governor has been out there sort of saying—massively cutting interest rates. People are a bit worried about that: what does that portend; what does that point to in the future? But his other message has been that the Government needs to spend on infrastructure in order to bolster supply and investment in the economy.

The only problem is that the Government—as we heard from Shane Jones, the Minister for Infrastructure, when he came before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee—of course is investing less in infrastructure than they expected to. So this Budget that we’re talking about, the Budget 2019, shaved $3 billion off the infrastructure spending over the next five years in just six months since the previous estimate at the end of last year. So in six months, they’ve shaved $3 billion off what they expected to spend on infrastructure. And why? Why—because they can’t get their act together.

What they did when they came into Government, this Government, was to say, “We’re going to stop a whole bunch of projects that were ready to go.” Some of them were ready to go. Most of them were in the pipeline. They were road projects. They were in places like going north from Tauranga to Katikati—and we’ve just heard from the previous speaker how wonderful it was that Shane Jones came into Tauranga last week and promised them $980,000 for a tourist hub, but in the meantime they’ve completely cancelled the road that everybody needs in order to get out of town and to get around. So it makes no sense whatsoever.

So Winston came to Katikati and he promised it; they’re not happening. So the road going north from Tauranga through to Katikati—cancelled. The Mill Road going south out of Auckland—postponed to the never-never. The East-West Link—cancelled. Going north up to Northland—postponed to the never-never. All these things—so what they did was they cancelled and postponed a whole lot of projects, some of which were ready to go, and replaced them with a bunch of projects that aren’t ready to go and won’t be ready to go for quite some time, including the infamous light rail project that has been suggested.

Anybody who lives in Auckland will be struggling with the concept that the number one priority for transport in Auckland is a slight improvement to the public transport down Dominion Road. That is what this Government is suggesting: that they’re going to spend $4 billion or $6 billion. Shane Jones, I think, doubled the price of the potential light rail. He thought it might have been somewhere around $6 billion or $8 billion that it would cost. He didn’t in any way suggest he was up for it, but that is what the Government is talking about.

We’ve also been talking about the higher fuel taxes that New Zealanders are paying. Unfortunately, they’re getting less for it.

One of the most outrageous suggestions that we’ve heard about the light rail project in Auckland—the main justification for it now—is that it’s an urban regeneration project. So nobody believes that it’s going to the airport any more. It’s not going there because the most obvious thing to do if you want to go to the airport is you go down the electric railway to Puhinui and then jink across a few kilometres to the airport—so nobody believes it’s about that. Now, their only justification is urban regeneration. But hang on a moment, they’re taking fuel taxes from motorists, out of their pockets, and making it more difficult for Kiwis to get around in order to fund an urban regeneration project. That’s not what the fuel taxes are about.

So you’re paying higher taxes and getting less for it, and, in terms of infrastructure actually being built, there’s going to be less of it than we expected in the next couple of years because they’ve cancelled a whole lot of things that were ready to go and replaced them with a whole lot of things that aren’t ready to go. That, I think, is one of the reasons why the Reserve Bank Governor is worried about the impetus coming into the economy over the next little while.

Then we’ve heard about the Provincial Growth Fund. Mr Jones—he’s out and about. He’s spending all this money, apparently. He’s allocated $1.7 billion. The last figure that we heard of money actually going out the door and into the hands of people, it was about $50 million. He might have got it up a bit in the last couple of months, but not very fast.

The main theme that we hear about this Government is that they’re great at announcing things and they think that’s all we have to do. You just announce that you’re going to spend a whole lot of money and that’s all you have to do. But, actually, when you get to deliver and actually see some improvements from the money that is spent, that’s a very long way off, and they haven’t delivered much at all. It’s a gonna Government—“We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, we’re gonna do this, but we never quite get round to it.” At the moment, they haven’t built the roads. So it’s deeply disappointing, because this is a time when money is cheap and we do have an opportunity to invest in quality infrastructure in order to make this economy grow faster, and to improve people’s lives and to get them home on time, safely.

This is the time when we could be investing and we should be investing. A National Government would be investing, and we would be continuing on with a clear pipeline of projects in order to get this country moving and for New Zealanders to get around. But, instead, we’ve been overtaken by Phil Twyford, who thinks we’ve over-invested in roads, and Julie Anne Genter, who doesn’t want to give in to the car fascists in any way, shape, or form.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Thank you, Madam Chair. Firstly, I want to say, from my perspective, my commiserations to you for having to listen to 11 hours of this debate. I know, from when I was sitting in your Chair, I would often wonder when this would be over, so my commiserations to you. I’m going to try to make this as light as possible to alleviate you of any pain. I can’t guarantee I’ll be witty, but I’ll do my best.

I really enjoy being a member of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. It’s a great committee. There are some real characters on it, and we have some really lively debates. It’s ably chaired by Jonathan Young, and he brings a certain level of decorum to our discussions, and so it’s in that vein that I wish to make my contribution today.

I want to kick off by just perhaps addressing a couple of the issues that have been raised by previous contributors: firstly, in terms of the rate of unemployment. Melissa Lee made a comment about the lack of job growth and the like, and I just want to remind the committee that in 18 months in Government, we have achieved the lowest rate of unemployment in 11 years. Not only that, but we have managed to lift wages by 4.4 percent. Those numbers don’t lie, so I just wanted to put that in perspective.

The other thing I wanted to say too was that in terms of the previous contribution, there is just our investment, really, in terms of looking at new and innovative ways of moving people, goods, and services around our nation. We are taking an approach that’s about the 21st and 22nd centuries, and not about the 1950s. Our future does not lie in roads; it actually lies in other ways of moving goods and services around not only this country of ours but into the world. I just want to assure the Opposition that we are taking a future-looking approach at this situation, so they don’t need to worry. We’ve got this in hand. So, you know, just leave it to us for the next—I don’t know—nine, 12 years or so, and we’ll be fine.

I just want to talk about—

Brett Hudson: You can’t do much from Opposition, Poto.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What was that? Sorry, Mr Hudson, I didn’t catch it.

Brett Hudson: I said you won’t be able to do much from Opposition.

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: That’s why we’re doing it from Government, and we will do so for several terms. Thank you for your vote of confidence, Mr Hudson.

Today, it was interesting. We got a question at question time about the competition market study report into the drivers of the petrol prices. I think it’s really interesting, because when the Minister came to the Estimates discussion, we did have quite a lively conversation about the value of market studies, or, as I think the Opposition wanted to describe them, they didn’t see any value in market studies at all. It’s clear that we are actually now able to identify where we can target some changes, because there’s no doubt that today’s market study has proved invaluable to us and that we are, as a nation, being overcharged in terms of our petrol prices.

But, in the greater scheme of things, the other work that’s being undertaken, of course, is the work that we are doing around ensuring that we transition from carbon-based energy into other forms. In April 2018, the announcement was made that we were going to stop issuing permits for offshore oil and gas extraction, and a gasp was heard when that happened. But a year later, when we returned to Taranaki to talk about what that would mean, we found an industry that was actively engaged in the discussion of being future-focused. It was wanting to engage in this discussion and wanting to ensure that jobs were protected and created, so that we move from what is, essentially, driving huge issues of climate change into a future where our energy is much more sustainable.

So I am enormously proud of the work that we are doing on this particular select committee. I think we have some great discussions. We have a breadth of discussions, from cryptocurrency right through to the Provincial Growth Fund. It’s fascinating to be part of this discussion. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to speak in this part of the Estimates debate. Just before I move on to the general theme, I just want to point out to the member Poto Williams, who’s just resumed her seat, that, actually, it was the National-led Government that put together the legislation that included the powers for the Commerce Commission to undertake market studies. We introduced that, we did the work on that, and they simply had the good fortune to be able to put it through the House.

We entered these Estimates hearings with the backdrop of a softening economy. Whereas economic growth had been running at around 4 percent under National, it’s now at about barely over 2 percent under this Government. Incidentally, looking for the causes of what might bring that about, given we’re running record or near-record trade export receipts, it’s not international conditions which are creating the slowing in the New Zealand economy. It’s actually the measures the Government has put in place that are reducing business confidence, eroding investment within New Zealand, and, ultimately, creating fewer jobs and reducing growth.

The point Ms Williams made about the unemployment figures are quite startling, actually, because at a headline level, in percentage terms, it looks like the lowest rate of unemployment in New Zealand in some years. But look inside. If one lifts the hood and has a wee look underneath, why would that be the case when we know that job creation is slowing under the policies of this Government? In fact, in the first quarter of this year, job growth was negative, so how is it possible then that unemployment can be at the so-called lowest level in many years? It’s because this Government has removed the obligation for those who are able to work to be seeking work.

In fact, if we use the words of the Minister of Finance, it’s “Those who want to work should be able to work.”; it’s not that those who can should have to. So in the media, when the latest unemployment figures were announced, the commentary was noted—I believe it was newsroom.co.nz; it was one of the one of the major media outlets—that the principal reason why the unemployment rate had reduced to the level that was reported was that 6,000 fewer people were reporting that they were seeking employment. And they don’t have to—they don’t have to seek employment under this Government. They’ve changed that rule. So why do we have a softening economy, a headline unemployment rate that looks good, but reduced job creation? Because this Government’s policies are simply undermining Kiwi businesses, people that invest and risk their own capital—it’s undermining their confidence to invest in new plant, to invest in growth and to invest in hiring additional people.

I want to turn to this market studies thing—quite important. Ms Williams talked about this as a great and new innovation. Well, actually, the draft report shows that the Commerce Commission have identified nothing new in the fuel market study, because, in 2017, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment issued an independent report that identified wholesale markets, among some other elements, as being a potential pressure point where greater competition could potentially be achieved in the retail fuel market. The Commerce Commission has simply restated what they already knew in 2017, but along the way they’ve spent. If we take the Commerce Commission’s own submission on the legislation that empowered them to do these studies, they said that a budget of $1.5 million a year would only permit them to undertake a single study. So by the time we get to December, for somewhere between $1 million and $1.5 million, the Commerce Commission will issue a final report that has shown that they have learnt nothing new, despite the expenditure of that much money, but it instead spent 12 months talking about stuff they already knew, whereas both they and the Government could have taken action at the end of last year to actually reduce the pain of petrol prices in the hip pocket of New Zealand motorists on that side by simply removing or forestalling the taxes they had imposed or had planned. On 1 July this year, another 4c a litre went on in fuel excise. They’ve legislated for a further 4c a litre from 1 July next year, just beyond this current financial year. All up, that is going to amount to an impost on Kiwi motorists, if they live in Auckland, of 24c a litre, and, if they have the good fortune not to live in Auckland, of about half that.

So we’ve got a combined effect of Government policies which are eroding investment in business, which creates fewer jobs, and people who don’t want to work don’t have to look for it, and now the Government’s also increasing costs on those same people. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we’re sitting in—[Bell rung] Madam Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Are you taking a second call?

BRETT HUDSON: Am I able to, Madam Chair? I don’t know that I’m able to, actually. I think I’ll sit down, just in fear I might overstep the mark.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Madam Chair, thank you very much. I’m quite glad, for one, that member did choose to sit down. Madam Chair, kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. I rise to speak in support of the Estimates debate. It’s a privilege to sit on this committee. I’d like to acknowledge the chairperson, Jonathan Young, and all the members of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. You know, when you look at the energy component of this report, it’s a time of incredible change in all sectors, actually, and the report just before the energy section deals with issues the committee heard from blockchains, the internet of things, artificial reality—these are all technologies rapidly transforming the energy landscape in New Zealand.

I guess I’d like to start by pointing out it has to change. You know, as a dad, it’s something I feel viscerally. Any time I’m on social media, with the latest news from around the world—I mean, this month we’ve seen the Arctic is literally on fire; Greenland has melted 55 billion tons of water in only a five-day period, and, in fact, 50 years earlier than climate forecasts; and we see damaging heatwaves literally killing people today around the world. So we need things to change, and, when you look at what’s in this report, it’s a road map and a foundation for change, because what we’re seeing is a huge opportunity to electrify our industry and transport in New Zealand. This is not only an opportunity to reduce carbon; it’s an opportunity to reduce the $6 billion to $9 billion of annual fuel imports we have and to produce our products more productively, more efficiently, cheaper—actually helping people’s bottom line. The fact is it is a time of rapid change. We need it to change and it is changing. When you look at the information contained in this report, we’ve got action on electric vehicles, zero-carbon Act legislation coming through Parliament, a Green Investment Fund being established, a just transitions unit established within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and a clean energy research centre in Taranaki—a vision for 100 percent clean energy.

Here I’d like to acknowledge the Minister, because she came to the committee and pointed out that New Zealand has already seen $656 million in renewable investments over the preceding 18 months. We’re blessed—we’ve got a wealth of renewable energy opportunities in New Zealand. So if we do want to electrify our industry and transport, if we do want to get closer to 100 percent, we’re one of the countries most fortunate, with a range of choices from wind, geothermal, and solar. I guess that’s my vision for energy going forward. It’s not just drilling holes in the ground; it’s actually creating jobs by installing insulation under roofs and solar panels on top—and the Minister pointed out that we’re seeing a rapidly reducing price for renewables. Back in 2011, the world saw a tipping point where more money was invested in renewables over fossil fuels. For decades previously, the world had always gone down a nuclear or fossil fuel path. The global ship has literally turned around, and we see those rapidly dropping costs in New Zealand. I mean, just across my lifetime, the cost of solar panels has dropped 99 percent per watt—phenomenal—and continues to drop. So we have a vision for getting close to 100 percent clean energy: insulating homes, people being able to produce their own power—and for New Zealand, we’re never going to be exporting electricity across a cable to the Islands or to Australia, but we have a tremendous opportunity to be exporting intellectual property: the software, the services, and the smart ideas the world is crying out for.

However, though, if you listen to the National members’ questions in the debate, or what we hear tonight—or, in fact, today, in their response to the Commerce Commission’s report into fuel prices—National is focused on last century’s economy. They’re focused on more fossil fuels, more resource extraction. Now, it’s incredible—when the Commerce Commission’s come out saying that the fuel companies’ margins doubled under the previous tenure, who on earth do you think National would come out to bat for? Incredibly, they chose today to come out and bat for the oil companies.

Now, something I’m incredibly proud to see is that this Government’s winding back the subsidies that the previous Government put in place to promote more fossil fuel extraction in New Zealand. Under the previous Government, over the last 10 years we saw $237 million of taxpayers’ money go to fossil fuel extraction subsidies in New Zealand. We saw support for resource and development, for data packs, for hosting conferences, and for special sponsorship. I still remember the time Phil Heatley spent a cool quarter of a million dollars just hosting 11 oil executives for four days. So what you’re seeing is those subsidies being wound back, a vision for the future being articulated, real support on the ground—be it the research energy centre in Taranaki or the just transitions unit. This is New Zealand’s future, looking towards the future, where the future is low carbon. It is investing in intellectual property and innovation. It’s not just kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies, hoping that OMV find something, you know, off our coast. It’s about making our own way in the future, looking at those global trends, and this is why I’m glad to say in this Estimates report there’s a huge amount of support for clean energy, not just fossil fuels.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Chair, and it’s a pleasure to be speaking on these, the Estimates. I’ve been a member, a former deputy chair, of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and it is a good committee, but I prefer my time on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee. It’s certainly a hard-working committee, and it’s got—I see the chair’s not here, but I’ll mention Darroch Ball for his leadership and the work that he’s putting together on the agenda, which is the coalition Government’s agenda, where we are tackling the big, long-term issues. He’s doing a good job at that.

Look, a previous speaker spoke about the Commerce Commission, and those on the other side got quite like, “That’s our work. We did all that work around petrol.” The reality is that that report, that work, had not even been introduced into this House—that’s a fact. But I digress, and I want to focus on a more important issue, and, again, a colleague here talked about the establishment of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission / Te Waihanga. That brings back memories, good memories, of the Ministry of Works, where we had one single ministry. People laugh—people laugh—but we’ve spent 29 years since that disestablishment with a poor apprenticeship scheme—disestablished, actually, by the other side because we were told that privatisation of this workforce was going to be our saviour. In fact, in local government I remember somebody telling me that there won’t even be a rates rise on anything to do with roads—that side’s passion—because the private sector’s going to look after us.

Twenty-nine years later, what a shemozzle we’ve been left with after nine years’ worth of neglect. So, luckily, we’ve pulled this together and said, “Let’s set this commission up. Let’s get those projects working into a pipeline, because that’s what the Ministry of Works used to do.” When I spoke on this, I gave one example in my electorate around the Chatham Islands—a real victim of having no pipeline and a piecemeal approach. This is going to be the solution in terms of bringing local and central government together with the private sector to fix some of these things that have been the result of hoping that the private sector will fix it. It hasn’t. This will, and this will be a big step towards achieving that.

I want to say, as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, we heard from our two Ministers: the Hon Phil Twyford and the Hon Julie Anne Genter as the Associate Minister. I have to say this: the members on the other side were quite complementary. They were quite good. We heard about our rail investment—not too many fusses around that. In fact, there were lots of nods, particularly around the City Rail Link. On road safety—in terms of the prioritisation for this Government and where we are heading—there wasn’t a bad word. Unless people were at a different committee to me, it was a positive response.

When I look back to the work that was done on the GPS—and it went live on 1 July last year—this Government’s priorities and the transformation of that plan and the signals that we were sending, they got the thumbs up. They got a green tick around making sure that we had a safer transport system free of death and injury, accessible and affordable transport, reduced emissions, and, of course, value for money. I think there’s no better example than the announcement earlier in this year in mid-May around Let’s Get Wellington Moving. It’s a great title because it sat there for nearly a decade—

Stuart Smith: Release the letter, Paul.

PAUL EAGLE: —nearly a decade. I’m not getting into letters. The only letter I like is a green one and it’s got a light on it saying, “We got the tick.” That’s all I need to see, because after a decade of delay, on this side of the House, I know that my young boy will be able to catch light rail, to get around, and to enjoy a second tunnel at some point within the next decade, and Wellingtonians are going to be very, very happy with this side of the House.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to take this call. As the spokesperson for research, science, and innovation, I feel quite frustrated to see that the Government doesn’t understand how to increase business spending on research and development. So they campaigned on their R & D tax credit policy, and, yes, they have implemented their R & D tax credit policy, and that’s a different story that, actually, the bill passed after the policy was already implemented. That clearly shows how inefficient this Government is, because they couldn’t even stick to their own time line.

So they believe this policy is going to do that big magic of increasing business spending on research and development to 2 percent of GDP. Last year, we heard that this is going to be achieved in 10 years. Again this year, we hear that this is a long-term goal and this is a 10-year policy that will be achieved in 10 years. I really hope they understand that it started in 2018—their 10 years—and the countdown has already begun. So this year it should be nine years, not 10 years. Maybe the Government realised that they are not going to be able to achieve this target as in this Budget the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) officials have clearly stated that the Government of the day needs to invest around $150 million a year to reach that target of increasing business spending on research and development to 2 percent of GDP. The Government has failed in this very second Budget to meet that goal—that is, of public investment to reach the target of 2 percent of GDP.

It’s really appalling to see that this is their very second Budget, and in their very second Budget they can’t keep up with what they should be doing to reach that goal. During the select committee process, the Minister very conveniently said that “It’s a long-term goal, so we are looking at long-term objectives.” That’s fine, because any Minister can sit here and set goals for the 10, 15, or 20 years when the Minister is not able to deliver in just one term in their second Budget. So, clearly, the Minister has failed in delivering in their very second Budget on what should have been delivered to reach to that goal.

During the select committee process during the Estimates hearing process, of course, we talked about business confidence, which is sliding down. We talked about GDP growth, which is sliding down. As this is linked to GDP, as it is done internationally—that is how business spending on R & D is measured—I asked if the Minister is feeling quite relaxed about her goal of increasing business spending to R & D to 2 percent of GDP given that GDP growth is sliding. Of course, the Minister felt agitated, but that is the reality. So every Government member stands up and talks as if this is a big goal, when they haven’t delivered in their very second Budget what they should have. MBIE officials clearly told the Minister in March—this is well before the Budget—that this is the minimum appropriation that is needed under the research, science, and innovation portfolio, which the Minister couldn’t deliver.

The other interesting point which I hear again and again from Government members is that growth should not be measured in terms of GDP. So I’m really glad that business spending on R & D is still being measured in terms of GDP, because that is how internationally it is measured. I hope that the Minister doesn’t change that measure also because GDP growth is not working in their favour, as other members, very conveniently, keep changing their argument, saying that GDP growth is not the measure of growth or wellbeing.

Not just that, the Minister put forward 15 initiatives for research, science, and innovation. Out of those 15 initiatives, only six were within the scope. Six were in line to achieve that long-term goal of increasing business spending on research and development to 2 percent of GDP. So that clearly shows me that the Minister is out of her depth. She doesn’t understand what kinds of initiatives are needed to reach to that goal. So through this, what they have done in their very second Budget is they have sent a very wrong, very negative signal to the business community and to the scientific community as well, because, sadly, we know that research and development investment is seen to be high-risk investment.

The Government has a very important role to play here. MBIE officials said clearly that $150 million per annum is needed, and Government didn’t invest that kind of money in this Budget, which has sent a negative signal to the business community and scientific community, because, if they see that the Government is not willing to invest their share, then why will they invest? That creates that impression that there is something not very good in the environment for investment in research and development. So I don’t have any confidence in this Minister of Government’s ability to increase business spending on research and development.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair. There’s been a lot of talk this evening about a whole lot of intentions and so on, but I want to actually talk about issues that have been caused by not consulting, particularly with the business sector, before making some of these changes. Some of the changes that were discussed during the select committee process were around the oil and gas ban leading to the 100 percent renewables target by 2035. Had they, in fact, consulted with business and more widely in general, they would not have got in the position that they did. By having an oil and gas ban, that puts at risk our electricity supply so that we are now having to burn more coal—a record amount of coal, in fact, this year in electricity generation. Since 2013, this is the most that’s been imported and used by the energy sector. So international energy consumption is 84 percent delivered by fossil fuels. Yes, as the member for the Greens said, there was a lot of money invested in renewables in the last year, but that percentage is going to take a very long time to change.

We’re at the point now with renewables where there are only incremental gains to be made. In terms of solar, we’re getting pretty close to what the theoretical actual energy output from solar is, because no one has found a way to make the sun shine at night yet and generate some energy from that. There is a theoretical limit also for wind generation, and the technology is approaching that limit. So there are no Moore’s law gains or orders of magnitude in change; there are only incremental levels of change. One of the big hopes there for the renewables sector was, in fact, to get viable batteries, but they are approaching the limits of the laws of physics. In fact, the lithium ion batteries have quite a few problems with them, and now the hope is that redox batteries might be the answer, but they are a long way off yet as well. All of these things are just out there, just out in front of us, and they have been for decades, and so these things aren’t going to change quickly.

Then, when we look at that 100 percent goal, that has been completely undermined by their own climate commission, which went through that and pointed out the failings with that policy, in that we would end up with significant increases in electricity prices: 14 percent for households above what it would’ve been otherwise, and 39 percent higher for industrial users. So the Government has backed off from that, and I welcome that decision, but that actually brings us right back to where we started, with the oil and gas ban putting us at risk because we have a limited supply of gas and we need more of it, actually. The US dropped their emissions quite significantly because they moved away from coal to gas generation of electricity, and so that’s something that we should be looking at as well just to keep our system running.

The Germans—who have gone, of course, very hard at their renewable electricity—in fact, have increased their emissions in order to match the power supply. When the percentage goes up with renewables, you have to keep these peaker plants ticking over to be able to kick in as the wind dies and it clouds over and you lower your solar generation. Something has to pick that up or the whole system falls over—as we saw in South Australia, leading to a massive blackout.

We also heard about science and innovation around genetic modification, and we have the high metabolisable energy grass, which we aren’t allowed to test here in New Zealand. It’s being tested and field-trialled over in the States. It grows 50 percent faster, and it has 23 percent less methane—one of our key emissions—so we should be doing everything we can to fast-track that, to have it as a tool in our valuable tool box to lower our emissions, and yet the Green Party, according to Chlöe Swarbrick in a debate I was with her on last week, is taking a precautionary approach on that. That means do nothing, I think, because we’ve been taking a precautionary approach because of the flawed Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act. The changes around genetic modification in the HSNO Act were really a compromise that should not have been made.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Vote Business, Science and Innovation and Vote Transport be agreed to.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Votes agreed to.

Education and Workforce Sector

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Colleagues, we come now to the votes in the education and workforce sector, B.5, Volume 2. The question is that Vote Education, Vote Education Review Office, Vote Labour Market, Vote Pike River Re-entry, and Vote Tertiary Education stand part of the Schedules.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (Chairperson of the Education and Workforce Committee): Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to lead this debate as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. I want to start by thanking all members on the committee, and I also want to acknowledge both Ministers, the Hon Chris Hipkins and also the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway.

I want to start by talking about a couple of process issues, and I would like to start by talking about the education sector first. This is regarding the Hon Chris Hipkins. The committee worked around the availability of the Minister. A date that worked for the Minister was provided by the Minister, so the committee agreed to meet and have the Minister for an Estimates hearing on that date. The committee decided the length of the time, and the Minister’s office agreed to that, but then, very close to when the Minister was to appear before the select committee for the Estimates hearing, the Minister unilaterally decided to cut down the time. We understand there was a reason for that, and I want to—

Marja Lubeck: I raise a point of order, Madam Chairperson. I hate to interrupt the member, but I believe that this debate should be a reflection of the committee’s deliberation on the Estimates. I don’t believe that our chair is doing that in that position.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): It is reasonable that the chair is expected to give a report of what happened at the meeting without political inference. I was listening. I think it’s marginal, but I don’t think that she actually went too far. But I take the member’s point.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Speaking to that point of order—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): No, I don’t need you to speak to the point of order. I’m saying that you can carry on, but it is marginal, and you need to get back to a wider discussion of what happened in the select committee. It is reasonable to report if the Minister cut down the time—that’s fair enough—but continue on.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you. I would like to also add that in the report of the Education and Workforce Committee—this is to the House—the Estimates process has been part of that report. It has been included in the report, so it’s very much documented in the report back to the House.

There were two issues about the process that I would like to talk about. One is that the Minister cut down the time. But I want to give some credit to the Minister, because then he didn’t provide any opening remarks; he went straight to the questions, which was good. It gave the opportunity to members to ask questions, but then, still, that didn’t compensate for the time that was cut down.

The second process issue, which is, again, in this report back to the House—I would like to highlight that as this time the Budget was later than the usual time in the month of May, for the supplementary questions to be lodged, members had only a few days to dig into the Budget to prepare those supplementary questions. As we know, the standard questions are provided beforehand, but I’m talking about specific Budget-related questions. Members provide those questions before an Estimates hearing in the hope that the responses will be received before the Minister appears before the select committee, but that didn’t happen. So there were several questions asked during the select committee process about the Minister not being able to provide responses to those supplementary questions that were lodged before the Estimates hearing. That added to the frustration of some of the members on the select committee, because members felt that they didn’t get a proper opportunity to scrutinise the Minister and also Budget 2019.

I really hope that this doesn’t happen again next year, because for Opposition members, it’s their opportunity to scrutinise the Budget and also scrutinise the Minister based on responses they get to those written questions.

Kieran McAnulty: Anything else in the report, perhaps?

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: It’s a very important point, and it’s a process question. This is the opportunity for Opposition members to scrutinise the Minister, and that should not be curtailed.

Kieran McAnulty: The member is a committee chair.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: I want to repeat that that should not be curtailed. That opportunity should be there for Opposition members.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Could I just interrupt the member, because I think you’ve made your point. As the chair, I would ask you now to come to the report on the actual examination.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Madam Chair, because the member kept interrupting from there.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): Well, you don’t have to answer.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Madam Chair. Coming to the select committee process, the Estimates hearing, there were wide-ranging questions.

Kieran McAnulty: One minute 20.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: We know that this Education and Workforce—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): That doesn’t help.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: —Committee covers a wide range of portfolios. The good thing is that we have just two Ministers looking after these wide-ranging portfolios: the Hon Chris Hipkins for early education, also primary and secondary and tertiary education, and then the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway for ACC, immigration, and workplace relations. During the select committee process, members asked about several areas. Very quickly, I would like to—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the time has come to leave the committee. The committee will resume at 7.30.

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

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR: Thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity to finish my call. Before the dinner break, I was talking about Vote Education, and I raised a couple of issues around the process. Now, very quickly, I would like to touch on Vote Labour Market. In Vote Labour Market, we covered a wide range of topics—we talked about business confidence, and the Minister talked about the Government’s goal to increase the minimum wage to $20 by 2021. We also talked about labour market productivity—this is in workplace relations—and, also, ensuring that businesses are supported.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m not going to spend three minutes and 40 seconds of my contribution talking about process as the previous speaker, Dr Parmjeet Parmar, did, because there are so many good things to talk about about education and what we are doing in the select committee.

I think it’s of no surprise to anyone that I am absolutely passionate about education, but education has some big issues, just like a lot of other areas in this country. We are prepared for that, and we are tackling the big, long-term issues that are facing New Zealand. After the nine years of neglect—and I can talk about that, because I lived through all nine years of that neglect in education—there is a lot to fix. But, hey, we’re up to it, and we’re making a really, really good start. It was exciting to see the Minister come into our select committee and present the wonderful things that are happening in our education system—school property, for a start.

Now, I don’t know about other people on this side, but when I go into schools, I hear a lot about school property. It is one of the number one issues that school principals and boards of trustees will raise with me, because school property has had great neglect. But the exciting thing in our select committee—and as part of our Budget this year—we heard about was the largest ever investment that’s been made by a New Zealand Government going forward into school property. The National Education Growth Plan is exciting. We are building new schools and classrooms; I think it’s over 100,000 children and young people who will benefit from those new schools and classrooms. But here’s the best part: it’s that principals know what is happening in that growth plan. It isn’t being left to chance, it isn’t being left to “Oh, the school down the road got something and we didn’t, but we’ve got needs too.” Needs are being assessed; they’re being assessed as part of that growth plan, and that is really exciting to see.

I know that principals are excited about that, because they’re telling me that they’re really excited. I met with a board of trustees chairperson the other day, who is really excited about the fact that they know what’s happening in their school now. They know what to expect and how far into the future they have to look. That board of trustees chairperson told me that that’s the first time that they’ve actually known that to be the case in their 13 years as chairperson of that particular school. It’s really, really exciting to see that we are planning with communities. We are actually bringing them in on the discussions about what is actually happening in that space. But not only that, we are staying true to delivering cheaper education for our families. That is really exciting.

Now, I’m not certain who might be spreading some misinformation in this particular space, but there must be some misinformation that’s being spread out there, because I had a principal in Auckland tell me the other day that someone had told them that they wouldn’t be benefiting from the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What? Who said that?

JAN TINETTI: As I said, I’m not certain who might be spreading that misinformation, but someone was certainly spreading that to them. When I worked it out with that principal, not only were they benefiting from the school donations bill but they’re going to be benefiting, if they choose to take it up, by $70,000. The principal of that school burst into tears on Friday, when she found that out, because that has made such a relief. That wasn’t how that had been portrayed to her in the past few weeks. So she was feeling a great sense of relief with that; working through how that was going to work.

The other aspect of making education cheaper is taking away those fees from NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship. What a big difference that is making to so many young people in this country. I have an ex-pupil of mine who has not been able to take up their NCEA because they’ve never been able to pay those fees in the past. About three weeks ago, they said to me that they can now proudly show that qualification, and that’s going to help them get a job in the future. That is the difference it is making for people: being able to have that sense of achievement by showing that qualification. I’m proud of what this Government is doing. Thank you.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I’m pleased to speak in this debate. Firstly, can I just take a moment to acknowledge Jan Tinetti. What we do know about the Labour Party is that for years they talked about free education; we now know what their commitment is. It’s like everything else they do in Government: they scale it back. It’s called cheaper education; not free education any more—it’s called cheaper education. We know this is a Government that has overseen 37 broken promises, and this is what these Estimates demonstrate for us. When we look through the line of the Estimates, we don’t see 100 percent qualified teachers in early learning; we don’t see the teacher ratios that they promised in early learning. Where are the devices for every child? Where is the promise that all schools would get access to a donation payment? The reality is this is a Government that has overseen, like never before, broken promises and scaled-back promises. Let me walk you through some big areas. I want to say to Jan Tinetti: she might have met one principal in tears; well, I’ve met multiple teachers and principals who were also in tears because they were promised a number of things they haven’t got.

Let’s talk about school property. It is true that this is the largest ever amount in school property. Well, guess what! When we came into Government, it was the largest ever amount in school property. The Auditor-General noted that we had seen a huge kick-up in investment, about 40 percent, under the last Government. We conducted condition assessments across New Zealand. What I would acknowledge, and the Minister himself in our Estimates committee acknowledged—so to hear these lectures from Jan Tinetti—is that this Budget funds 50 percent of the growth requirements over the next 10 years. That’s right, Chris Hipkins; he knows a whole lot of ghost schools. He turned up with the Prime Minister in parts of Auckland—they haven’t actually decided where these schools are going to go. He delayed the Auckland growth plan by two years, hasn’t actually made final decisions on a number of those schools, and what do we know? We know it will only accommodate 50 percent of the growth.

What we also know is with the existing money that they have, they are so incompetent that we saw one of the largest ever underspends in school property, at, $170 million. Yes, that’s right—they can’t actually spend the money that they’ve got. That’s why principals and teachers, while they had huge expectations of Labour, they know they can’t deliver, because they scale everything back and then they have broken promises.

Let’s look at the issue of complex needs and children with additional learning needs. I want to acknowledge the work that Tracey Martin has done in this area, and I want to acknowledge in this Budget, actually, there are learning support facilitators. But what was incredible about question time today was that this Government spent minutes forensically talking about a tabled document, whereby I pointed out it was actually National who started the initiative around learning support facilitators and, actually, we were referring to 70,000 kids that were helped as a result of that. What I can tell the member and what I can tell the Minister is, actually, all over New Zealand, I’ve got emails from principals who are saying, “How on earth could this be such a flawed roll-out of learning support facilitators?” That’s right. I’m going to want Shane Jones to walk up to Northland and talk to people like Pat Newman and talk to Matt King about the fact that north of Whangarei, we’ve got a very limited number of learning support facilitators for children with complex needs, because this is a Government that fritters money away and doesn’t actually target it on some of those children that are most in need. It’s not just me who is saying that; Oranga Tamariki pointed that out and Treasury pointed that out. It is, again, an incompetent Government.

Now, let’s talk about donations. Again, a Minister that used to talk about free education, and then in the election campaign, it became: “We’ll provide an incentive payment for schools to not charge.” Then, we had a situation where it was scaled back to decile 1 to 7 schools. Then, we had the extraordinary situation that I was being blocked, in my view, for basic advice at the Estimates hearing about exactly what the detail of the donation scheme would be. Then, we find out that the Minister is going to bypass the select committee process, to put in an amendment to clean up a law that he pushed through in a truncated process. Again, this is a Minister that has abused the process of the select committee to do that. It’s very relevant to these Estimates hearings, because we’re dealing with what is, again, another scaled back promise from the Labour Party.

Now, let’s look at vocational reform, and I’m sure my colleague Shane Reti will also deal with it. So, again, in an area where we have precious funds in education—that’s right—a party that committed to an extraordinary number of broken promises, why is it—why is it—that this Government is choosing to do a single megamerger of all of the polytechnics in New Zealand? Well, Chris Hipkins, I was there at Southern Institute of Technology, and I will never forget—and Mark Patterson’s looking at me with little beady eyes at the moment—the people of Invercargill who stood up at that meeting and said, “Don’t take away our institution. We have millions of community assets. We breathe life into the town.” Chris Hipkins has shown in this Budget that not only is it going to be a centralised system but also a couple of hundred million dollars in this Budget is being spent on merging these entities, when people don’t want it, and, actually, he’s been told by multiple different officials that this is the wrong thing to do—and then he’s going to take industry training away from industry. Again, deeply centralised and deeply ideological, and at a time when you’ve got precious education funds, children who need access to additional learning support, and I get emails every single week from those parents and those principals—

Hon Clare Curran: Where was it under the National Government?

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I’ll tell Clare Curran where it was. We had this thing called the global financial recession and the Canterbury earthquakes. We had a situation when we came in, where we were staring down a decade of deficits. Yes, that’s right; this Government has had hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, but instead we’ve seen it spent on diplomats, slush funds, and that’s all.

Look, if we look at the rest of this Budget, we can absolutely see that Winston Peters has had money for racing and diplomats and provincial growth funds, and all of that money is less money for education. Why do I know that the Minister is slightly nodding his head? It’s because when I look at the official information around the Budget request that Chris Hipkins put in, miraculously it’s all blanked out. We actually can’t see the fact that there were a whole lot of failed Budget bids in education, because this is a Government that, despite one of the greatest opportunities in New Zealand’s history, handed over very good boards, they’ve managed to see business confidence tank, they’ve managed to see an economy massively slow down, and they’ve managed to fritter away huge amounts of money. And in the education estimates area, and areas like vocational structural reform, that isn’t wanted by a whole lot of communities, that will take away the autonomy of a number of communities, and that will strip away community assets from New Zealanders.

So this is a Government, in these education Estimates, that we can see has not only failed to deliver on its promises but it’s scaled back. I mean, let’s take the whole School Leavers’ Toolkit; they promised $197 million. Again, where’s the free driver licensing in every school? Where’s the career plan for every child? Again, they’re still working it through. They’ve got 15 working groups in education. It’s absolutely evidenced by the learning support plan, again, whereby it’s not in the next year or even the next two years that we’re going to see huge progress; they’re talking about 2025, because it’s the case that in this Budget, you can see several billion dollars on regional growth, and money, again, for diplomats.

So, look, I am, unfortunately, not that pleased to be speaking in this Estimates debate, to see a Government that has been given more opportunities than ever before. What the education sector is saying to me is they believe that this Government has overseen broken promises. No better could it be articulated than by the slogan that we now hear from the Labour Party: instead of free education, they’ve started talking cheaper education. When they talk about the initiatives that they promised, they start saying, “Oh, we never said this term.” That is a Government that is absolutely pulling back on its core promises. New Zealanders will remember, because they are breaking trust with New Zealanders. The education sector will remember, because every single dollar in education matters because it’s about helping young people and children to get ahead.

So we don’t agree with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on vocational reform that people don’t want, we don’t agree with them scaling back and creating a complex donation scheme, and we don’t agree with the fact that the learning support facilitators have been allocated in an incredibly flawed way. Again, that is an example of this Government being incompetent and not delivering.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m pleased to take a call in this Estimates debate. I was confused after the first five minutes, and I’m afraid that the second half made it even worse. It’s also unfortunate for the member the Hon Nikki Kaye’s colleagues on the other side, who were deprived of being able to share their views through the House. It confused me in the first five minutes, because on the one hand the National Party has been saying it has been a waste to offer free education, but, on the other hand, we’ve heard from the Hon Nikki Kaye, the member that just sat down, that education is not free enough. So which one is it?

But the confusion is so tangible. It started off, actually, when the chair of our select committee—it was very disappointing, as my colleague Jan Tinetti mentioned before—took nearly three and a half minutes of a five-minute call to talk about process. In the end, I would like to put on the record that the Minister was asked to stay a little bit longer. The Minister obliged and stayed another half an hour, but the Opposition ran out of questions, and with five minutes to go, the Minister was free to leave. They had nothing else to ask. Yet the chair spent three and a half minutes discussing that process. I think that is a little bit of a hole in the foot, right there.

I’d also like to talk a little bit about the broken promises. The broken promises in education of a record investment in school property—the largest ever made by any New Zealand Government—that must sound like a broken promise to some of you; maybe not. New Zealanders having the biggest pay rise in a decade, with wages up 4.4 percent—sound like a broken promise? Not to me. The unemployment rate is the lowest in over a decade, now down to 3.9 percent—another broken promise!

Now, I just came back from—

Alastair Scott: How many new jobs?

MARJA LUBECK: 92,000 new jobs since we came into office, to the member whose name I forgot—92,000, since we have been in office. Actually, yes, let’s talk about those jobs. The member Brett Hudson wanted to lift the hood on the numbers. He said, “Oh, let’s look at the numbers because, you know, the Government doesn’t like us looking at the numbers.” Well, actually, every time the Opposition talk about record growth, they talk about “a job”—any job, it doesn’t matter what kind of job—never mind the quality of those jobs they created. Never mind the fact that most of the people under their watch had to take two or three jobs to make ends meet, one job wasn’t good enough to make ends meet; people were doing it rough. Never mind that under their watch, 40 percent of children living in poverty lived with parents who both worked—shameful. There is shameful silence on that side now. Never mind that under their watch, a whole new class of workers was created called “the working poor”. Now, that is worth a shameful silence.

It’s clear that this Government is very different. We are tackling those big long-term problems facing New Zealand. We are forecasting more jobs, and addressing the cost of living for our Kiwi families—that includes higher wages. At the same time, as I said, we have created 92,000 jobs since we came into Government. That proves you can actually raise minimum wages, and you can have more jobs all at the same time. When a deflated, delusional—what is another “d” word?—and desperate Opposition says, “You can’t increase minimum wages. You couldn’t possibly remunerate workers for the jobs that they do and create more jobs”, well, guess what! We just did it. So unemployment is at an 11-year low, and wages are the highest that we’ve ever seen, and it’s very plain and simple: this Government is delivering for New Zealanders.

In workplace relations and safety—which, you know, I should be talking to, to the report—we are lifting the minimum wage to $20 dollars by 2021, which will benefit another 210,000 workers. We are restoring core employment protections for workers, as well as strengthening collective bargaining, and the people out there are absolutely rapt about it.

My red cheeks are not just from talking so enthusiastically here in the House. They’re also from running up and down to PSA House, where I was talking to the WorkSafe reps, who all complimented us and applauded us, some with teary stories on how life has been for them over the last few years. On the work that we’re doing, they’re very hopeful. We have reassured them that, obviously, there’s a lot more to do.

But we have started, and, under the lead of our brilliant leader, Jacinda Ardern, we are continuing what we’re doing. We’re making things better for New Zealanders: increasing jobs, lifting wages, providing free education, and investing in record property. We are making things better. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): It’s a pleasure to speak tonight on the Estimates, and I’ll be speaking to two main components: to fees-free, referenced in the Estimates on page 27 of the transcript, and to the review of vocational education, which is page 24 of the transcript of the Estimates, with the Minister.

To talk to fees-free: well, clearly, that’s been a flop. There’s just no other way you could look at a $197 million underspend for participation rates that went down. Let’s be clear: participation was one of the key objectives of the Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE). The Minister, around about November 2017, said the RoVE would increase participation by 15 percent. In fact, 80,000 were predicted, and 50,000 turned up. There are fewer learners after fees-free than before. What we know from the Canterbury study is that only 6 percent of students in that study said fees-free made a difference to them; the rest were already going to university. It’s the wrong lever; it’s not the right lever to pull. You would achieve different objectives with fees-free, but to say participation increase is one of them is not correct. And the $197 million underspend—in fact, the Minister didn’t even announce that himself on the day the $197 million was announced; Grant Robertson actually did it.

The Minister’s offered comments before. In fact, in the Estimates, when it was raised with him around the underspend, this was put to him: “So do you agree with the comments of Chris Hipkins, who once said that a significant underspend is bad project design by Ministers?” The Minister replied: “Yes.” Well, he sort of needed to, because, on 24 February 2017, when he was discussing underspends in Investing in Educational Success, he said “Whereas they’ve poured that money in, it’s barely been touched, and that shows the whole concept was badly designed from the beginning.” On 11 July 2015, he offered a similar comment on the underspends, indicating that it was poor management, saying that he called the underspend in special education “incompetence”. We just heard from my colleague Nikki Kaye on the underspend in building. So with his own words, underspends are incompetence.

An incompetent Minister—and I’d put it to you that the fees-free is clearly an indication of incompetence. It is the next KiwiBuild, closely followed by the RoVE—the Reform of Vocational Education—which will be the third KiwiBuild in evolution. The amalgamation of polytechnics, removing local autonomy, and centralising apprentices under polytechnics—it will fail. How do we know it will fail? Well, I don’t need our analysts to tell us that. Let’s look at the Minister’s own documentation. The programme business case says that in the short term, there will be nearly 14,000 less industry trainees, 2,310 less apprentices, and 2,248 less learners at polytechnics. That’s the short term. It actually gets worse in the medium term: 18,000 total industry trainees who will not be participating.

The programme business case goes on to say, “Well, what is the likelihood of some of the risks actually happening?” The risk of workforce disruption: almost certain. Participation in vocational education dropping: almost certain. The needs of industry and employers not being met: again, almost certain. The needs of the regions not being met: almost certain. Here’s the spinner—the risk of the new model not achieving the desired outcomes: likely. Not my information—your information. Download it. It’s your data. Then it was backed up, of course, by the regulatory impact assessment (RIA). So if you don’t like what the Tertiary Education Commission is saying about all of this, about the RoVE, why don’t we see what the RIA is saying—the regulatory impact assessment by the Ministry of Education and Treasury—on the quality assurance assessment: “the panel does not find the RIA fully convincing and complete at this stage”—wow.

Again, if we look at some of the risks, the additional costs of the proposed approach—the certainty of additional costs was all medium for the workforce development councils, the regional leadership groups, and the mega polytechnics. Now, maybe the benefits are going to be there. Maybe we’re missing something. Maybe it’s not all about the costs. The certainty of benefit for the Crown getting cost efficiencies: low; employment and productivity benefits: low; the community voice and better skills across all industries: low. So the costs: medium risk to be high; the benefits: low. In fact, this written parliamentary question from about an hour and a half ago—thank you, Minister, for sending it to me—my question to him was “What is the net economic impact of the reform of vocational education?”, and he wrote to me, “It is not possible, at this point, to accurately quantify the broader benefits sought from the reforms”—wow.

All this risk—80 percent of submitters saying, “We don’t think one polytechnic is going to work for us”, and, by the way, I think it diminishes the voice of the 20 percent who sent in form submissions, including Southern Institute of Technology—yes, they may have been a form submission, but many of them actually spent a lot of time and a lot of effort writing what they put. It wasn’t just the default submission. So 80 percent against; this will fail, in your own words.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I tell you what: one of the most telling things about Nikki Kaye’s speech to the House tonight, with all of her carry-on about broken promises, etc., etc., was that when she was challenged about what her Government did about all the issues that she was challenging this Government about, she said “the global financial crisis”, which was 2007 and 2008. When did that Government cease? In 2017. So it was like: that is the same old line that continues to be used as to why her Government couldn’t deliver the reforms that she keeps challenging this Government about—and it really blows that out of the water.

This Government—and I’ll say: new schools, classrooms, 100,000 students, 623 learning support coordinators; that’s just the beginning. Financial pressure off parents by increasing funding to decile 1 to 7 schools so that they don’t ask the parents for school donations, removing the fees from NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship, transitioning all of the charter schools to the State school system, and investing in early childhood—as well as that, on top of that, vocational reform. This is real reform. This is about deep change in the education sector. It’s actually looking forward 30 years, rather than just the three-year cycle. It’s actually what a real Government does. It’s about the long term, and—[Interruption] Oh, they laugh on the other side, because all they had to say was, “Oh, global financial crisis. That’s why we couldn’t do it.” Well, that’s what your education spokesperson said anyway.

Vocational reform: I want to talk about vocational reform, because there’s a really important message and a conversation that we need to be having in the public arena about vocational reform, and that is around the fact that working with your hands—and we need to be delivering this message to young people—and learning a trade is important, if not more important than getting a university degree. I wish that we could all say that out loud more and believe it, because for too long, trades and on-the-job skills training has played second fiddle to how we see success at school and later career choices. There are huge skill shortages in our country, across many industry sectors—and I challenge that party over there to get up and say that that’s not correct.

If they are getting up and saying that it’s not correct, then why do we have so many long-term issues—deep issues—in our community? Actually, I heard Nikki Kaye talk about principals crying; well, I actually sat with a principal and a board of trustees last night, and there were tears. The tears were about the last decade, which produced social circumstances for so many children’s environments that have ballooned into huge issues in our schools, where deep change and long-term reform is absolutely necessary. And that’s what this Government and that Minister, Chris Hipkins, are actually delivering.

Just as an example of that—and we talk about the skills shortages in all the different sectors—the primary sector is actually one of those sectors that has been hollowed out and where you’ve seen the two agricultural colleges that have been in dire straits. How has that happened? Get up and defend that. I’d really like you to get up and defend it, because it is indefensible. We’ve had to put a hundred million dollars into the vocational sector since we’ve been in Government—it’s absolutely ridiculous. And what Chris Hipkins did a couple of weeks ago was to go down to Balclutha, and announce that the Telford farm campus was going to get ongoing funding to let it get back on its feet. The Southern Institute of Technology is going to deliver that. This is just the beginning of the vocational reform that’s absolutely fundamental.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Chair. I find it surprising that the member opposite, Clare Curran, just sat down and said, “And Southern Institute of Technology is going to deliver that.” Well, Southern Institute of Technology won’t be around under this Government’s reforms to deliver anything if the Minister can get away with making sure they nationalise all of our institutes of technology and polytechs across New Zealand. That speech was shameful.

The member stood up and said that we’re going to be building classrooms like no classrooms have ever been built before, but all I heard were words and announcements and all sorts of other numbers. I’d like to quote my very learned friend Erica Stanford, who interjected and said, “Announcing a school is not building a school.” That is what is in this Budget: half of their promises for building the schools are funded. Only half of the money is actually in there, and I do echo the call from the member for East Coast Bays and say, “Where is the school for Albany? Where is the money and where is the delivery for that electorate?”

I also really am surprised to hear the member talk about partnership schools being closed down, as if that’s some incredible achievement by this Government, and a 30-year vision for the future of our country. I think that’s a victory for the unions, but it’s not a victory for the children who are going to those schools and whose lives are being changed so that their next 30 years would be turned around and so they could actually have a bright future.

Then we come to vocational education, where the member talked about the conversation and how there were skills shortages. Well, I’m not sure if that member has actually read the business case, which was released by the Minister only a couple of weeks ago, which talked about the risk of workforce disruption being “almost certain” and the impact being “extreme”—whether she read the bit where it talked about participation in vocational education dropping being “almost certain” and the impact being “major”, and whether she read the bit which said the needs of industry and employers not being met was “almost certain” and the impact “extreme”. The proposed changes to our vocational education system by this Government verge on reckless, and they will only lead to fewer people going into vocational education—the complete opposite vision which was outlined by the member opposite.

This Budget is not delivering for New Zealanders. It is full of broken promises in the education sector, and I would, again, like to touch on the impact of the fees-free policy, which Shane Reti outlined as being something which is considered a flop. We’ve seen 2,400 fewer students going to tertiary education last year than the year before. This policy was meant to increase participation in tertiary education, but what we’ve seen is a reduction in the number of people going to tertiary education—a failure of a policy and an expensive mistake—and $197 million from that policy is now being allocated to the review of vocational education, which is, again, going to be a mistake. The business case says it’s going to cost probably twice that in order just to pay for the establishment costs of this new nationalised institute of skills and training. So not only does it rely on fees-free failing once but it relies on fees-free failing twice in order for that other policy to be able to be funded.

The costs of the review of vocational education—not just the establishment costs but the ongoing costs—come to a staggering $686 million to $1.08 billion, three times the benefits which are being estimated in the business case for that. That’s not a cost-benefit analysis where the benefits outweigh the costs; that’s a cost-benefit analysis where the costs outweigh the benefits. I’d expect that, in that instance, the Government would be looking at it and saying “No, we won’t be going down there.”, particularly with all of the incredible and major and extreme risks which are outlined in the business case. This policy will be the next fees-free flop.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I thoroughly enjoyed the select committee scrutiny of the education Estimates this year, and I have to say I was concerned because the Opposition members on the committee wanted me to be there for longer than I was willing to make myself available for. They demanded I be there for about 2½ hours, and I only had an hour and a half available, but at the end of that time they were banging their fists on the table about how outrageous it was that I wasn’t giving them more time. So I said, “All right. Well, I’ll stay a bit longer.” And they ran out of puff; they didn’t have any more questions that they wanted to ask me. But, anyway, I thought I’d come to the House, and I sat here with my pen and paper at the ready, ready to answer any questions that they had. Well, that’s what I got from their contributions today. [Holds up blank sheet of paper] They didn’t ask any questions for me to answer in the House. What we did see was a lot of desperate misinformation, which seems to be the trend from the current Opposition—I remember those days: when you’re in Opposition, everything’s a crisis—but they didn’t actually raise any new issues or any substantial issues.

I do want to respond to one or two things, though, because there were some concerns raised about the review of vocational education, and in particular some quoting from the business case. I have to say I’m staggered that, for a party that prides itself on its commercial and business acumen, there don’t seem to be any members on the other side of the Chamber that actually know how to read a business case. When a business case is put together, you start with the unmitigated risk—so you identify all of the risks and what the potential consequences of those could be. And then you look at the mitigations for those risks. So, when the members are rattling off the risks assessment, which they have done just then, they are talking about the unmitigated risks; what they don’t talk about is that the business case then goes through and talks about how the risks will be managed so that they don’t have the impact that could happen if they weren’t being properly managed. But the members opposite don’t bother to read that far through the business case, which staggers me, really, seeing as they seem to pride themselves on having such a high degree of commercial acumen.

There is a lot in this Budget that our Government is very proud of: the largest injection of funding into new school property that New Zealand has ever seen—over a billion dollars extra in school property funding so that we can get ahead of the growth curve. In the next 10 years, we’re going to need around 100,000 more places in our schools to cope with population growth. The funding that we have set aside now, including from this year’s Budget, last year’s Budget, and the money that was there, gets us at about halfway to funding that population growth all the way out to 2030. On the other hand, what did we inherit when we came into Government? The Opposition had the temerity to say, “That’s not enough, because you still haven’t funded half of it.” Well, under them, they’d barely funded any of it at all. They weren’t planning for the population growth, which our Government is actually doing.

They’re complaining about learning support coordinators and the fact that we’ve funded only 600 of them. Well, they funded none of the learning support coordinators, and, yes, I don’t think 600 are enough; we’ll be coming back with more. But 600 are a heck of a lot better than the none they got under the last Government. To schools that don’t ask for parental donations: $150 per student; better than the nothing they were going to get under the last Government. As for teacher salaries, they were decrying the fact that we weren’t giving teachers more money. They had the choice to give teachers a bigger pay packet not once, not twice, but three separate times, and they did not do that. They chose tax cuts instead. They had the opportunity the year before the election to give teachers the pay bump that they are now saying they deserve, and they did not deliver it.

Teacher supply was something that you won’t hear the Opposition mentioning, because their record on that is absolutely shameful: a 40 percent reduction in the number of people training to be teachers, and we inherited a teacher shortage. We had the temerity, again, of the Opposition banging their fists on the desks and saying, “Why do we have this critical teacher shortage?” Well, they should look in the mirror. They created the teacher shortage that our Government is going to deal with.

Then we had the outrageous claims about how there could be fewer people in vocational education and training as a result of the reforms. There are fewer people in vocational education and training now. There were 40,000 fewer people in on-job training and apprenticeships when National left office than when they came into office. So what National did was drive a knife through that system. We’re trying to put things back together because we’ve got critical skill shortages and, unlike them—unlike the previous Government, who were happy to coast along and say, “Nothing to see here. Don’t really want to know.”—we actually take business and industry seriously when they come to us and say, “We need better skills. We need better skilled workers to up our productivity and to make sure we’re delivering what our industries need.” We’re taking them seriously, where the last Government simply shut the door in their face and did not listen.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate taking this call on the Estimates hearing on this year’s Budget. The Government’s incompetent handling of the Budget documents before they were released is exactly the same way that they are handling our economy, our health, and our education system. It was botched—a botched Budget. The Government is slowing the economy down, and this we know. They’ve inherited growth of 4 percent, but we’re down to about 2 percent now. They’ve installed bad policies around oil and gas bans, foreign investment restrictions, and labour law changes. These are the policies that they were certain about, and, on everything else that they’re uncertain about, we’ve got working groups—260-plus working groups. They’re failing to deliver on their promises. That’s what we’ve got from this Government: KiwiBuild, $10 cheaper doctors visits—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): If the member could come to the education and workforce review.

DENISE LEE: —and they said no new taxes; we’re up to nine already. That’s right: we’re up to nine already, and we’ve got broken promises on education.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Education and workforce review.

DENISE LEE: And those broken promises on education: we’ve got 57 broken promises on education that we’ve clocked so far and 37 that have been partially delivered. Let me get on to that. On the broken side of education promises that we’ve talked about in the Estimates hearing at select committee: ensuring that all students have access to mobile digital devices—how’s that going? That’s a fail. How about extra funding for early childhood educators that employ 100 percent qualified and registered teachers? That’s a fail. That’s not happening.

How about giving industry training organisations (ITOs) a greater role in career advice and guidance to school leavers? Well, that’s not happening either. But here’s the irony with that: instead of giving ITOs this greater presence in schools, the Government then turns around and completely turns everything upside down for them. And do they want that? No, they don’t. Just talk to the likes of polytechnics, Southern Industry of Technology, and ITOs—they do not want the Government’s mothership mega-polytechnic scheme.

How about the partially delivered promises? Well, let’s go, of course, because we all know about this, and we talked about it in select committee: scrapping school donations. It’s not at all equitable—the way that the Government’s delivering their broken promise. In fact, it’s only going to low-decile schools. Now, in my electorate, we’ve got one school—one State school only—that is over decile 8. How do you think they feel about being the only school in my entire electorate that does not get the same treatment as every other school. In that school, do you think that everyone in that school is well off and can afford school donations? No, they can’t. It’s a flawed system and a broken promise, and the Government should be ashamed.

We also have—along with that school donation—a really poorly thought through delivery around uncertainty and confusion for the likes of school camps. We do not know where this is all going to end up. There are many aspects to this policy that are confusing to regular Kiwi parents in New Zealand, and I’m going to pay particularly close attention to that, being someone on the board of Sir Peter Blake Marine Education and Recreation Centre, where hundreds and thousands of children have gone through and have had the most amazing camp experience that delivers real benefit to their schooling. Let’s see the clarity on that. We don’t have it—another botched delivery.

Auckland property: again, in my electorate, I have three schools that are crying out for certainty around what’s happening with property. All they’ve had is a trifecta of botched communication between the Minister’s office, the Ministry of Education (MOE), and them as schools. They can’t get certainty. They’ve been told to apply for special funds, and MOE says you need to go and apply for special funds. The Minister’s office said it too. No one even told the schools what the special funds are. For over a year, I have been trying to communicate to the Minister’s office and MOE to get certainty for schools going through massive roll growth and upheaval, and nothing is coming through to them or to me around certainty for their future and for their growth. For those on the other side of the House that said it’s all about the growth: only 24,000 of the 100,000 additional places in schooling are funded. Only a quarter of the Government’s 10-year programme is funded. It’s not about assessment; it’s about building.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It’s a pleasure to take a call in this Estimates debates on, broadly, the labour and education portfolios or areas of expenditure within Government. Unlike the previous speaker, Denise Lee, I’ll actually try to address issues pertaining to those areas. That is not going to be hard at all, because anyone that—sometimes we get the empty rhetoric from across the House that we’re a do-nothing Government. If you’re on the Education and Workforce Committee, you have got waves of legislation coming at you from Ministers that are reforming their sectors.

There has been considerable change already—the abolishment of national standards, and charter schools, and we’ve got the review of Tomorrow’s Schools, after 30 years, which is now yesterday’s schools—but within the Budget we have had several initiatives that are being so welcomed.

I’ve just heard the previous speaker bemoan the $150 per student contribution to abolish school fees in decile 1 to 7 schools. Now, talk about the Grinch that stole Christmas. You can’t necessarily do everything in one day, or in one year, or in one term, but we are starting to address these very real issues, and they have been incredibly welcomed by these schools. It’s $265 million worth of contribution, and it is not a broken promise. That was a Labour Party commitment; this is a coalition Government, and you have just demonstrated that you do not understand that. You do not understand how to count and the realities of coalition Governments, on that side of the House.

But I would like to touch on the vocational training, which has come under some scrutiny. I have been involved in this debate. I was actually at the Southern Institute of Technology on Friday, and they are coming together with this. They are seeing the advantages. They are starting to understand what we are trying to do. The system was broken. We’ve heard from the Minister that there was a 40,000 decline in people going through vocational education, at a time when we’ve got massive skills shortages in our industries. It’s the likes of Business New Zealand, it’s the likes of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, and it’s the likes of Dairy NZ that are coming out and backing these reforms, because they know what was broken.

I would especially like to give the example of Telford. Telford was run into the ground and enfeebled under that previous Government. You sent that luminary in there Todd Barclay to sort it out at one stage, and it failed miserably. They had $10 million in reserves, and they were pillaged by Lincoln, and you let that happen—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I didn’t—I didn’t.

MARK PATTERSON: Sorry, Madam Chair. The National Party let that happen when they were leading the last Government, and then they allowed it to fall into the hands of Taratahi. One of the great announcements the other day that has been widely regarded and well received in the South is the $4.7 million injection into Telford to put that back in its rightful place as the jewel of agricultural training in the South, and, hopefully, it takes its place leading vocational training for agriculture into the future. I commend the Minister of Education, who actually had to come off his holiday in January to save it when the wheels were almost totally off, and put $1.8 million into it to just get the wheels on to get it to this point—and now followed up with $4.7 million. I absolutely commend the Minister for his work there, and that has been incredibly well received.

In my last minute—because a lot of this stuff has been traversed in some detail, but I see that the Pike River recovery is part of this Estimates debate, in this particular section. I sat in on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, where Minister Little gave his contribution to that. This Government has been united in putting that travesty right—29 New Zealanders went to work that day and did not come home. We individually made commitments before the election to do something about that, to put that wrong right, and we have. The National Opposition have finally come round to that, but never let it be forgotten: they were going to concrete that place in, and we have absolutely stopped that travesty. We are going in there. We’re going to give some closure to those families on what could be New Zealand’s biggest—well, one of its biggest—crime scenes. We are acting, and I’m very proud that we are.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): For those watching this at home, can I tell you what this is about. This is about the Budget and how people choose to invest the priority of Government spending, and what we can see in these Estimates is what is a priority and what is not a priority for Government. Last week, I visited a number of primary schools in the Wellington Central electorate, and not one of those schools—in fact, not one single school in Wellington Central—had been allocated additional funding for a learning support coordinator. They were really disappointed, and I’ll tell you why they were disappointed: they thought that Labour had promised the world. They were going to wipe every tear from every eye, they were going to sort out all the problems, and they haven’t seen delivery. So you look across the Wellington region. Are there learning support coordinators allocated in the Rongotai electorate? No, no. Are there learning support coordinators allocated in Ōhāriu? Yes, for a small group of schools in the Newlands cluster, but across our city, we don’t, apparently, have children who are in need of additional special-needs support via this scheme, because the children in our city aren’t a priority for this Government. Budgets are about priorities, and this Budget has failed to prioritise the things that really matter.

Let me turn to early childhood education, because this is another area where Chris Hipkins, before the election, was very happy to go on to the front steps of Parliament, sign a pledge, wave a banner, and promise early childhood teachers that he would do their things—that he would fund 100 percent qualified teachers. He would ensure that there were lower teacher to pupil ratios. He would rain funding upon the sector. And here we are, two years in—we’ve had two Budgets. Have we seen delivery of those promises? No, we have not, because Mr Hipkins has not prioritised the early childhood educators of our country. He has not prioritised our youngest learners. He has not prioritised the thousands of early childhood teachers in New Zealand.

Do you know, what makes it worse is that what we learnt during the Estimates hearing from the Minister—he was direct, to his credit, in answering my question. I said “Well, did you bid for additional funding to ensure that the Government could deliver on these promises?”, and do you know what the Minister said? The Minister said “Oh, yes, I did.” And do you know what happened when he went to his Cabinet colleagues—when he went to you, Mr Lees-Galloway, when he went to our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, when he went to Grant Robertson—and said “I need more money to deliver on promises for early childhood education.”, do you know what his colleagues said? “Sorry—not a priority. We’ve got other things we’d prefer to do. We’ve got $250 million worth of working groups to run. That’s what we’d like to spend our money on, because if we can shuffle a few more papers around and defer a few more decisions, that would be politically more expedient than delivering for the early childhood education sector. What we’d prefer to prioritise billions of dollars for is free fees for tertiary students, because what we’ve promised is that it will increase participation in tertiary education—oh, look, never mind that it hasn’t achieved that at all; that’s where the money will go.”

Then, we learnt in the Estimates hearing—because you’d expect, well, maybe the reason that the early childhood education sector hasn’t had its promises delivered despite having a severe teacher shortage, despite centres struggling for months to find teachers to staff their centres—perhaps the reason there isn’t funding for the promises is because there’s not enough money. There’s just not enough money, because it’s been spent in all of these other areas. Well, what we actually learnt at the Estimates hearing was that there had been a significant underspend in early childhood education—it had been estimated that $1.975 billion would be available. That’s how much the Government had budgeted would be available, but, in fact, only $1.9 billion was to be spent. So what we learnt is that there was $75 million out there that could’ve been allocated, that could’ve been invested in early childhood education, and the Government chose not to make that investment.

So we asked about some of the problems that our early childhood education centres are having across the country—finding teachers, finding the people to look after and educate our kids—and the Minister’s excuse for not having one single initiative in these Estimates to address that chronic problem? His excuse: “We don’t have good, reliable data.” Well, tell that to the early childhood education centres around this country. I have visited dozens of them, and I tell you what: they have good data that demonstrates this is a severe problem, and this Minister has chosen not to prioritise it.

Budgets are about priorities. This Estimates debate is about what this Government’s priorities are, and they prefer working groups to investing in our children and their potential.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Deputy Leader of the House): I move, That the committee report progress presently and move to consider the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill.

Motion agreed to.

Bill to be reported with progress presently.

Bills

Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill

In Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Members, we now turn to the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Bench-making) Reform—(Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill. That may be the lightest moment in the debate.

Part 1 Amendments relating to derivative margins

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think you’ve just stolen my first-pass speech. I don’t think I’m going to be able to drag many people back to Parliament TV as we discuss the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill, but it is an important piece of legislation. Just to give a little bit of context in plain English for this, our banks here in New Zealand do fund their activities in part by raising money offshore, and to protect against exchange rate risk associated with borrowing money overseas, they do enter into financial contracts called derivatives. I understand also that large public sector entities—for example, the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and ACC—also rely on these derivatives for their activities, as do many in the private sector as well.

The banks, the super fund, and ACC are currently facing an issue around new rules introduced by the G20 countries relating to derivatives. They require that parties to certain types of these arrangements also exchange security, and this security is also referred to as collateral or a margin, which is in the aptly named title of the bill. So if one party defaults in that contract or becomes insolvent, the other party can call on or enforce a margin agreement and is therefore protected to some extent from the party’s financial distress. Part 1 of the bill amends various Acts here in New Zealand to ensure that parties to these derivative-type contracts with overseas entities aren’t limited or prevented from exercising rights to enforce those security interests over collateral that is posted by the derivatives.

Can I acknowledge the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC), that deliberated over this piece of legislation. They made three changes to the bill: specifically, removing an amendment that was intended to clarify that an outright transfer of collateral does not create a security interest for the purposes of Acts; requiring that before a counter-party to a qualifying derivative can also exercise their rights over collateral, the collateral must be in their position or control; and, finally, amending some transitional provisions so that amendments in Part 1 also apply to other derivatives entered into before the amendments come into force.

So can I thank the select committee for that and particularly a number of members who worked on both sides of the House to ensure that this piece of legislation was as good as it can be, I think. I want to acknowledge certainly Duncan Webb on my side, who came to me as a member of FEC to sort a number of issues. So with that I’ll leave it to any of the members of that committee that may want to make a contribution, or not.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to Part 1 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Amendments relating to financial benchmarks

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Members, we move now to debate on Part 2, clauses 21 to 36, and Schedule 5—amendments relating to financial benchmarks.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I might have stood precipitately on this particular part because I’m particularly interested in the financial benchmarks, but my more substantive question for the Minister is going to be his Supplementary Order Paper 294 that changes the date of commencement for the provisions in Part 2, which will of course come under those clause 1, 2, and 3 debates.

There has been no argument across the importance of this bill, and indeed the importance of ensuring that we are meeting the regulatory requirements of not only trading partners but, particularly, the power—authority—of a large trading bloc, the European Union. So we have no particular issue, and I won’t rise now to raise an issue with the benchmarks themselves, nor who may participate and be the inputs into the sitting of those benchmarks.

My question will come up in the proper part of this bill, which will be clauses 1, 2, and 3, because I don’t believe we are debating the Minister’s amendment that changes the commencement date for Part 2 as part of Part 2. Although the Minister is in the chair, and if he would not mind—slightly a little bit out of sequence—answering the question as to why, at this stage, we have changed the commencement date for this part when it wasn’t a matter that was canvassed at all in select committee. Officials didn’t recommend that we do so and there certainly was no controversy nor disagreement with the provisions as related to financial benchmarks.

So if the Minister is in a position to respond now, it would save a call a little bit later in the evening—to describe why in the SOP that was handed in quite late in the piece we’ve got a split in the commencement dates. So perhaps, given the Minister has talked to his officials and I think he is prepared to say something to that very point, it might be best that I just sit down and allow him to respond.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think the member has foreshadowed a question that he would have asked later in the debate, and I think the Minister is happy to foreshadow an answer he would have given later in the debate in the interests of progressing this matter.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Not wanting to be out of order but responding to the member’s question, I’ll refer to the document here around the changes to clause 2. Part 1 of the bill has to come into effect on the day after Royal assent. Part 1 previously commenced by Order in Council to allow time for regulations to be made, and regulations are no longer necessary following changes at the select committee, so Part 1 can now come into force immediately after the Royal assent. So the Supplementary Order Paper 294 amends what I’m being told is the backstop commencement date in clause 2(3) from six months to 12 months, and this is to ensure that there is sufficient time to make regulations necessary to support Part 2 of the bill. So I guess in plain English that means that because of the changes that the select committee made, the regulations that we thought we were going to need to have the original commencement dates are no longer necessary. So in my reading of that, I think that we can get on to things a bit quicker.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to Part 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Schedule 4 agreed to.

New Schedule 4A

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to insert new Schedule 4A be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

New Schedule 4B

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to insert new Schedule 4B be agreed to.

Amendment agreed to.

Schedule 5

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to Schedule 5 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 5 as amended agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2

Clause 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): The question is that the Minister’s amendment—I’m sorry, members, I omitted to put the Minister’s amendment and I’d like your indulgence for my error.

Hon Member: Aye.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Thank you, I appreciate that. I know this has been such a riveting debate that it’s quite hard to concentrate on the voting.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 294 in the name of the Hon Kris Faafoi to clause 2 be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Clause 2 as amended agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): I appreciate your indulgence, members. I will report this bill with amendment.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported progress on the Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill, and reported the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill with amendment.

Report adopted.

Bills

Contempt of Court Bill

Third Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): Thank you very much, and it is a great pleasure to speak to the House in this, the third reading debate on the Contempt of Court Bill. This bill has had a very interesting passage and a very interesting set of origins. I think it pays to remind the House of the origins of the bill, because during the course of the debate and the various stages of the bill, some mythology has been built up around it. For those who say—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the Minister, but you have to move the—

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Oh, sorry, Mr Speaker—I am obliged. I move, That the Contempt of Court Bill be now read a third time.

To continue where I left off, I think it is very important to address some of the mythology that has built up around the bill. Let’s remember that the Hon Chris Finlayson, the former Attorney-General, was deeply committed to codifying the rules and the law of contempt of court from his personal experience but also because he understood that in this day and age, those rules should be clearly laid out, clearly spelt out, and easily accessible to those who participate in our court processes. So he sought to make sure that there was good work done. In the previous Government, no doubt a former Minister of Justice—and I’m not sure which one—commissioned the Law Commission to have a look at the area, and the Law Commission went one step further and not only did a report with some recommendations but it actually drafted legislation.

It is true that part of the story of this bill is that the Hon Mr Finlayson strove to persuade his colleagues in the previous Government to introduce the legislation as a Government bill, but he could not persuade his colleagues in that previous Government to do so. So he was compelled, once in Opposition, when that fortuitous circumstance arose, to take the drafting and the work of the Law Commission and turn that into a member’s bill. So this was a member’s bill based on work of the Law Commission commissioned by the previous Government, which had decided for whatever reason that it did not wish to legislate for this very important area of the law.

I know that Mr Finlayson, having not only been put in Opposition but having also had his member’s bill drawn from the ballot—so lucky twice in that regard, for the purposes of this legislation—was then very pleased for it to be picked up as a Government measure so that we could apply the full benefit of the State’s resources in giving advice, improving the drafting, and getting it in the form that it is today. So that is the origin of it.

I’m very pleased that through the examination by Parliament and certainly the Justice Committee and further debate by this House, we have arrived at, I think, a very tidy piece of legislation. It achieves the original objective, which was to modernise but also to codify the rules around contempt of court, leaving, of course, those things that are not provided for within the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court to determine otherwise. But this is a good bill.

Contempt of court is a very important provision and a very important part of our administration of justice in this, a country that observes and celebrates the rule of law. It makes rules to make sure there are strictures of the court around applying evidence—making sure, for example, that juries don’t conduct their own independent investigations and that they rely solely on the evidence that is put before the court and properly examined there—and to make sure that those participating in court do not cause a disruption, and, of course, the other part is making sure that those who might otherwise seek to undermine public confidence in our judiciary and in our court system are not allowed to do so.

I know that that was a somewhat contentious part of the passage of this bill through Parliament, because there are those, or I should more accurately say there was one, who thought that what was the old law of scandalising the court, which is what we now provide for in what is currently clause 24A, publishing a false statement about a judge or the court—they took the view that that wasn’t needed. All that needed to happen was that there should be the ability to remove offending comments from any public record, and that was all that was needed. Of course, that assessment and that stance completely understated and underestimated the impact of very damaging but actually totally untruthful comments about judges and the courts they administer.

Of course, this House—certainly in the committee stage—had the benefit of an understanding of and was read passages from a very important case, which is the case of Solicitor-General v Smith from 2004. I’m very thankful to my colleague Greg O’Connor for his exposition of that case and, indeed, the contributions I was able to bring to the debate in that regard, because that case illustrates a very important point, which is that the court is concerned about those who are either participating in the court process or standing outside it and disagreeing with what’s happening and who would seek to undermine public confidence in that court process. It is not right that some people arrogate to themselves some sort of superior status and superior knowledge that makes them think that that is OK, because that is what happened in that case.

A person, a Mr Smith—in fact, it turns out it was a Dr Smith—made comments about a judge and a court, and it happened to be the Family Court, that that court described as derogatory. Frankly, they were appalled by it, and they had a number of other epithets that they applied to it. It was the classic case of somebody who had heard one side of an argument and decided that they knew what was best, who went on a public campaign not just to criticise but to undermine that judge and that court.

So it was very good that the Solicitor-General—and in fact, it was a very rare event, actually. We don’t often get many contempt of court cases in this country. But the Solicitor-General of the day saw fit to prosecute, that prosecution was upheld, and the person who made those statements was found to be in the wrong, and it is that stuff that is now encapsulated in this bill. As I said during the passage of the bill through this House, there was an attempt to remove that. It’s a very important part of the law of contempt of court, and it’s right that it should be properly provided for. It is now properly provided for, along with the other aspects of contempt of court. That is there, sitting in all its glory in the bill, and following this third reading, it will become the law.

That will benefit everybody. It will benefit the courts, it will benefit the judges, and it will benefit the lawyers, if only as they advise clients and family members of clients who come before the court, because the reality is that in this day and age, it is very easy for someone who is momentarily angered or frustrated by something that happens to them in court or from a judge to express that anger in most unfortunate and importunate terms on social media, or otherwise on the internet, and land themselves in a lot of trouble. Well, there does have to be restraint—there does have to be restraint.

Judges are not like any other citizens. They are not allowed to participate in public debate, certainly about their courts and their work and the decisions that they make—in fact, they’re not meant to participate in much public debate at all. So when they come under attack, they have no means of defence.

Now, other countries have dealt with this, and I know that in the debates in the House people referred to what happens in the UK as if that somehow is the standard. What happens in the UK today is not the standard, and not only is it not the standard; it is an exception, and they now rue the day that they took away provisions for the old offence of scandalising the court, or what we now say is making untruthful statements about a judge.

In the UK now, things are said about judges that make it very, very difficult for judges to seek recourse. We had that gross display of contempt of court by the Daily Mail last year, or a couple of years ago, when the senior courts in the UK declared that the decision about legislation exiting Britain from the EU had to be passed by Parliament, and the Daily Mail declared the judges who made that decision to be enemies of the State. Absolutely appalling—absolutely appalling—and in any other civilised country, the Daily Mail would have been held in contempt of court. Well, that can now happen in New Zealand, because we cannot have the situation where our courts, whose duty and responsibility it is to administer the law impartially and without fear or favour, come under that sort of egregious, indefensible attack.

So I am very pleased that the bill is in this form. It is a very good bill. I’m very pleased with the work that all members of the House have done on it, and I commend it to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to commence on this side of the House the debate in relation to the Contempt of Court Bill at the third reading. In my time allotted, I will note briefly the history of the bill, notwithstanding that the Minister has already done so; go on to discuss the way that the bill was considered at the select committee; and then look to the purposes of the bill and the way that we think that those are very helpful indeed for some worthy objectives within the justice system more generally, and the way that that plays out in our courts. Next, I will spend a little bit of time on the offence that’s created at new clause 24A, which was inserted by way of Supplementary Order Paper 289 at the committee stage, because that is important to the way that we on this side of the House will ultimately view the bill, and then, as time allows, I will touch briefly on some of the ways in which those purposes that I will have mentioned previously are going to be achieved by the bill.

The history of the bill, as I say, has been described in some detail by the Minister. I won’t traverse that fully, because he’s done so, but I do wish to pause to note again, as Minister Little has done, the contribution of the Hon Christopher Finlayson QC. We regard him as a friend as well as a great legal mind, and we are indebted to him for his work in commencing what we have now in front of us, essentially, as a bill, and to those within officialdom prior to the change of Government, and, indeed, since, who have also contributed to the passage of the legislation to date. I commend the good taste of the Government in picking up the work that Mr Finlayson had initiated, such that this is now a Government bill.

So it was that we found ourselves at the Justice Committee considering this bill, and so I pass on to that part of my contribution now. At the select committee we had a pretty thorough and, I think, collegial examination of this piece of legislation. We were advised on aspects substantive and procedural alike, and came to some views on some, I think, pretty minor changes that we thought might be worthily made, and that was a very helpful and instructive process. As part of that discussion, we formed a view in relation to new clause 24A and the offence that was created around false statements, or, rather, an offence that re-entered the lexicon as “false statements”—but, again, I’ll come back to that shortly and in the meantime just proceed to look at some of the purposes of the bill and why we think that, overall, it is a very good piece of law.

The principal purposes of the Act, as set out in clause 3, include promoting and facilitating the administration of justice and upholding the rule of law. These are very worthwhile things, of course, including in relation to maintaining public confidence in the judicial system. That old chestnut that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done seems relevant to note in this context, and we are reforming the law of contempt of the court in this legislation, both in the sense of reforming to make it better, generally speaking, and also to put it in a different form. That is to codify rules that in many cases are already in existence but not so clearly, perhaps, to the average person who comes before the courts—and, indeed, some professionals as well—because these rules have developed over time through the common law and cannot be readily found in one place in the same way as they can in the form of a statute passed by Parliament. So that’s part of the purpose. That’s the codification that Minister Little has referred to already, and that in itself is a worthy object and one that we support on this side of the House.

One of the purposes that I would like to pick out particularly, under the subheading of “make certain orders and impose certain sanctions” as something that the court has the ability to do, is the fact that “jury verdicts are based only on facts admitted or proved by properly adduced evidence after free, frank, and confidential jury discussions,”—for the sake of brevity, I’ll leave it there. That’s a very important thing. That’s the ability for the public to have confidence, and especially the key players within the judicial system to have confidence, that it is based on evidence that’s properly brought before the court and able to be tested and challenged in our largely adversarial system. So that’s appropriate in the way that it, essentially, buttresses and supports the other rules that we have to ensure that decisions are made in as safe a manner as possible—for example, the rules within the Evidence Act.

Another aspect that’s particularly noteworthy, I think, under the heading of “Purposes”, is affirming the presumption that proceedings are open to the public and the news media, and to the public through the news media. This is an important presumption, because the starting point, again, is that justice must be seen to be done, and it would offend our principles within a free and democratic society if we did not think that it would be possible to know the goings on of court. But of course that is subject to certain limitations, certain exceptions, and so the bill does go to the trouble of stating situations in which the law restricts access to the court or the reporting of proceedings, and it gives specifically the example of proceedings in the Family Court or the Youth Court. I think that most members of the House would agree that there are particular characteristics of those kinds of proceedings and other “unusual circumstances”, to use the language of the legislation, that justify such a departure from that usual presumption of open justice.

Orders of the court must be enforceable—that too is a worthy aim of the legislation, as described under the heading of “Purposes”. We could have a jurisprudential discussion about whether a rule that is not enforced or enforceable is a rule at all, but perhaps we won’t, and I’d simply note that it’s helpful for us to have something on the statute book that states clearly that the courts are being able to order a certain thing must be done, and if not, then there must be certain consequences for that if the rule of law as exercised through the courts’ jurisdiction to make such findings is not upheld. The common law contempts of disclosing juror deliberations, disobeying court orders, and scandalising the court are covered to the extent that they are being abolished in the common law rule. So, again, we’ll have in a pretty clear expression in one single place where we can find these rules, and I’ve touched on that purpose of codification before.

So I do wish to turn to that one part of the legislation that, ultimately, we’ve been unable to agree on on this side of the House in terms of support for this provision, and indeed therefore for the bill as a whole. That is the newly created offence, or rather the newly expressed offence, at new clause 24A, namely the “Offence to publish [a] false statement about Judge or court”. In the committee stage we discussed that with some level of detail and a certain amount of passion. I don’t think it would be helpful to rehearse all the arguments on either side, except to just note for the record at this, the third reading, that on this side of the House we regard the balance that needs to be struck, of course, between freedom of expression as enshrined, among other places, at section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on the one hand, and the need to protect the integrity of the judicial system on the other. We regard that balance as better struck by way of the take-down order mechanism that is already in the bill, rather than having at first resort the ability of the court to imprison an individual or to fine a body corporate up to $25,000. So somewhat a matter of taste, I suppose, in all human rights matters, but the way that we have landed is to say that we don’t believe that that’s the right balance to be struck. Accordingly, we do not support that particular provision and therefore, ultimately, the bill itself.

In my brief remaining time available, just to touch briefly on some of the ways that those purposes are achieved within the bill, the disruption that can be caused by adverse behaviour within a court proceedings: there the judicial officer is able to cite disruptive behaviour and deal with that clearly as set out, for example, under Part 2, in Subpart 3. So that’s a useful level of detail again. Subpart 4 then goes on to talk about the investigational research of cases by jury. So those are a couple of examples of the way that those worthwhile purposes that we discussed before are able to be achieved.

I complete my time by again acknowledging Mr Finlayson, his hard work, and those who have picked it up and carried it on. But, regrettably, ultimately we can’t support the bill, given that one provision that we feel the balance has not been correctly struck on.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Often when we stand up in the House to speak on bills, we are speaking about what may happen. We are seeking to put a bill through that will, when it becomes law, fix something we know in the future might happen. That’s not the case with this bill. With this bill, we know exactly why it is that it needs fixing.

I listened to the contribution by the member opposite—Mr Chris Penk—and I noticed that he was supporting the bill. I sat here thinking that perhaps there’d been a change in their attitude. He was very reasonable as he went through each of the parts of the bill, until, rather surprisingly, he came to the last one minute and 30 seconds, where he then chose to address the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 289, the very excellent SOP relating to an offence of prohibiting the publication of false statements about a judge or court.

It’s a little disappointing, because that side of the House are very aware of previous debates that have taken place here, and aware that of one of their own members, Dr Nick Smith, was convicted of an offence very close to what this offence is. Just to give some idea so we know what we’re talking about, the judgment at the time was Solicitor-General v Smith in the High Court at Wellington, on 2 April 2004. Justice Wild said that Dr Smith’s statements and comments had gone “well beyond the fair and temperate, with the intention of placing pressure on one of the parties to a proceeding in the Family Court.”, and in doing so had undermined public confidence in the Family Court. The contempts had been serious, and Dr Smith had failed to express any regret for his actions: “Throughout, right up to this hearing today, Dr Smith’s approach has been belligerent and confrontational, particularly towards the litigant, the caregiver. [He] has expressed no remorse for his actions. His comments demonstrate an unwillingness to accept the important values at issue in this proceeding.”

There are several other statements I could make. During the course of this conversation, Dr Smith asked the caregiver—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to interrupt the member. This is the third reading of the bill in front of the House as accepted by the committee of the whole House. What you’re reading out is not part of that bill. So if you can link that to the actual bill, then have a go, but speak to the bill.

GREG O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Speaker, because your last point was exactly my point. I am linking this. This is not in the concept; this is a bill that we actually need, because where we have individuals—whether they are in this House or anywhere—who, as a result of their actions, undermine the court, that is what this bill is about, because the law reform is not about defending judges at all. I know previously I’ve been someone who has somewhat cast aspersions on some of the decisions by the court. That’s not actually what it’s about. What it is about, actually, is telling falsehoods about judges—telling lies about judges. This is not about ensuring that no one can criticise judges and no one can say they disagree with a judgment. That’s not what it’s about. What it’s about is actually someone who tells untruths.

I’ve found in my experience that those who are users of the court system, many of whom have been going to court since they were in Youth Court, going through the system—while they might be, in many aspects of their life, out of control, the one part of their lives, often, that they have some respect for is actually the court system. They will turn up. Often their lives will be in disarray in many places, but, generally, they will make it to court, and when they get into court, they have certain expectations. They actually do behave. It’s probably the one place in their lives that they do behave. So that’s why it’s incredibly important that we have one aspect of their lives that actually has some modicum of control and has some modicum of respect.

Mr Mark Mitchell, on the other side, is an ex-police officer, an ex-dog handler, and he will know this. He will know that even some police officers, who may, for different reasons, or witnesses, for other reasons, and other people who might have their own views on the world—when they get into that court system, the justice system, generally there is an expectation and a belief and, generally, a practice that everyone will actually be part of and will respect the system, and that’s what this bill is about. That’s why it’s so important and that’s what I attempted to do in bringing up the actions of someone as an example of what happens when people lose faith in the system.

The disagreeing with the SOP that the Minister’s brought here—that is not exactly the same SOP that we had at select committee. It is a very refined, defined offence. It’s simply about ensuring we’re talking about falsehoods, about prohibiting the publication of false statements about a judge of the court—false statements, and that’s very important.

Dr Smith is here. He talked about the fact that the Australians had done away with this. That’s actually not correct. The Australians do actually have such an offence. It hasn’t been abolished in Australia. It’s not a breach of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act at all—the Auditor-General has concluded otherwise. Again, that’s just some, shall we say, aspects of this bill that have been brought up in this House that were actually not correct. So it’s important that we do actually correct those.

This is not about the protecting the niceties of the judges. This is not about respecting the feelings of the judges, and that’s a very important factor. This is about preserving the respect and making sure that the ultimate court in the land—that the ultimate place where people can take their disputes—is respected. If someone who does disagree—and I notice Dr Smith’s here. I’ve spoken about individuals. We all have individuals who will never accept a finding—who are actually in full belief that if they believe it, it is right—and I’d say Dr Smith is one of those people from the way he behaved in this case, which was that nothing anyone did and nothing anyone said was going to change his mind. I think we all have people—I’ll say to those in the Opposition—like that who turn up at our electorate offices. It doesn’t matter what anyone says: they are right, and anyone who gets in their way—they’ll never accept any answer than the one that they believe they’ve arrived at.

This bill is about ensuring that when we’re confronted with an individual like that, ultimately, the court has to have the sanctions. The judges can be criticised. There’s a Judicial Conduct Commissioner if the judges are out of control. There is a system there to ensure that there is an ultimate sanction against judges who perhaps do get it wrong or judges who need to be disciplined in some way. What this is about is ensuring that when there is actually someone who stands up and, basically, tells untruths because they don’t accept the finding of the court, or if they, basically, tell lies about the court, then there is a sanction.

There are those who will say, “Well, the judges, they can sue.” Well, no, that doesn’t happen and it’s not going to happen, and it’s not something that any judge is going to be able to do. So that is why the insertion of a provision similar to that which went through the select committee and has been reinserted as an SOP by the Minister is an excellent idea, fully supported on this side of the House.

As I say, I’m disappointed. I hope that those opposite who are going to be opposed to this—for example, if they were looking for an example of why we need this, they should read the judgment in Solicitor-General v Smith. I challenge those opposite to actually read that judgment, and you will understand why it is folly to be opposing this provision.

In the short time left to me, I would just like to go back to also remind those opposite that probably the finest Attorney-General that they’ve had, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, actually brought this. I’m reminded by the previous speaker that this was actually a provision brought to this House by that learned gentleman. The minute the seat that he was sitting in—it wasn’t even cold before they were immediately opposing it, leaving the Hon Christopher Finlayson out to dry. Well, this is one of those situations that should defy any political divide. This is one time where we as lawmakers in this House should get together. We should look at exactly what this provision is, and this provision is a very good provision, which is designed to ensure that all those who are users or observers or beneficiaries of the court system—to ensure that the ultimate system where we take our disputes, the ultimate place, the ultimate forum for that receives respect and that the judges who are making the decisions are not subject to lies. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): It’s a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of this bill. I want to join with my colleague Chris Penk and note many of the positive reforms that are involved in codifying common law around how our court process works and many of the reforms that are contained in this bill about ensuring good court process, about protecting the confidentiality of the jury, about the respect for orders and ensuring that proper behaviour occurs in the court are entirely appropriate and are supported by members on this side of the House.

It is true that National takes a different view about the issue of the old crime that was referred to as scandalising the court. It’s important for the Parliament to recognise that in countries like Canada and the United States, the protections that they have for freedom of speech do not make it a crime for criticising or questioning the court. It’s equally interesting to note that where we inherited the common law of scandalising the court from—the United Kingdom—repealed it from their law books only a few years ago.

So the real issue on which there’s a difference across the House this evening around the third reading of the Contempt of Court Bill is around this very important and fundamental value that National members hold dearly, and that is the rights of freedom of speech.

Hon Andrew Little: Putting yourself above the law. That member put himself above the law.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Now, the comment, Mr Little—

Hon Andrew Little: That’s what he did.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Mr Little—well, actually, we write the law, Mr Little, and I’m very happy to discuss that. I’d point out to the Minister that the Law Society came to the Justice Committee and strongly objected to the provisions that he’s wanting to put on the law books. Transparency International came to the select committee and strongly criticised those provisions. I also point out the more than eight academics from different law schools from across New Zealand who were critical of what the Minister proposed.

Now, the irony of Mr Greg O’Connor raising a case from 14 years ago in which I was involved is this: Labour—

Hon Andrew Little: You were involved?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, I challenge members opposite: why was it that when we wanted to debate the issue 14 years ago, the Labour Party objected? They didn’t want to talk about it then. They shut the debate down. There wasn’t a single Labour member at that time when the case occurred that wanted to debate it, and do you know why? They were embarrassed. They were embarrassed that the Government of the day had sought to shut down a very legitimate debate. I say to the Minister of Justice and I say to Greg O’Connor, to this day—neither of whom have bothered to actually read the Family Court case, and that that was an individual case in my constituency where a mother and father together lost access to their child. It was unjust—it was unjust—and do you know what’s most interesting, Mr Little? As a consequence of me highlighting that case, the Labour Party of the time agreed to law reform that prevented that case ever occurring again.

I say to Mr O’Connor and I say to Mr Little: accept my invitation. Come and meet with the mum and dad who I stood up for. I know that Mr Little and Mr O’Connor have never put themselves on the line for a constituent that was done a gross injustice. I did. I was proud of it, and to this day I defend that family against the injustice that occurred and the loss of their child—something any parent in this Parliament would not want to occur with New Zealanders.

I have a process question, and I particularly have a process question for Mr O’Connor, because when this bill was before the select committee, when we heard the passionate pleas of distinguished professors, of the Law Society, and of others opposing what Mr Little wanted to do with the law, Mr O’Connor agreed. If you read the select committee report, there was a unanimous decision, including Mr O’Connor, that the contempt provisions regarding freedom of speech were inappropriate, and so the select committee unanimously recommended that those parts, in Subpart 5 of this bill, not proceed. Mr O’Connor and his fellow Labour members of the committee have been challenged multiple times to provide some explanation as to why in select committee they agreed with the submitters, and they agreed with National, but they only had to be invited up to a little meeting in Mr Little’s office—and some pleadings from the judiciary—to do a backwards flip for which they will for ever be embarrassed. Again, I challenge Labour members: why did you come to one view in the select committee and then the opposite when you came back to the House?

Now, there’s actually a very fundamental issue around the freedom of speech and the error that is made in this bill in putting our courts and our judiciary on a pedestal and pretending that they should not be able to be criticised. Every member of this House will know of controversial cases where the courts got it wrong, whether it be the Arthur Allan Thomases—and there will be different views about the David Bains or the Peter Ellises. It is my view that our judicial system is made stronger and that our system of law in being able to challenge and question is fundamental to a liberal democracy.

Hon Andrew Little: Not affected by the law—not affected.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I would bring Mr Little’s attention to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, which said—and said so correctly—that respect for the judiciary and for a court system is not achieved by silencing its critics but by the quality of its judgments. That is so well said and is the value that members on this side of the House hold.

Hon Andrew Little: Not affected by this bill.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Now, the Minister of Justice, who is loudly interjecting—not surprising, given the embarrassment he should have around this bill—made the claim in the committee stage of this bill that there was no risk to any member subjecting a case to criticism. But if the member bothers to actually read the law, read the analysis from the Law Society, and read the analysis from Transparency International, the provisions that say that anybody who makes a statement that may bring the court into disrepute—

Hon Andrew Little: That’s not the provision in the bill.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Well, read the exact provision, Mr Little.

Hon Andrew Little: That’s not the provision in the bill.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, it is. Indeed, it is.

Hon Andrew Little: The member is three months out of date.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: No, the member has made some very minor changes. The phrases that are included in the bill are that if it could be perceived as bringing the courts into disrepute, the person is at risk of being charged with a criminal offence. The charge of a criminal offence will have a silencing effect. It will have a chilling effect on responsible people being able to properly question and challenge the intent of our judiciary—

Hon Andrew Little: The member is just totally wrong.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —and the judgment call. Well, the Minister, who is constantly interjecting, should reflect on the fact that lauded, learned academics have read and commented on his comments in the committee stage and given opinions that they were just plain wrong and that the test for someone committing a criminal contempt and potentially being sent off to prison under the Minister’s provisions is extremely wide and is an unnecessary restriction on the freedom of speech. I would have thought that the Minister of Justice would want to take—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The Minister of Justice has almost become hysterical, rather than in terms of defending the freedoms of speech that exist in other countries.

Here’s my last question for members on the Government benches: why is it that in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, and in most European countries it is not necessary to have a criminal offence for us to be able to maintain an effective judicial system? It is over the top, it is unnecessary, and as a consequence of this law we are preventing proper scrutiny of our judicial system. The provisions that the select committee agreed to that provide for a mechanism for a take-down were a far better way forward. There is a case for reform of our defamation law, but the approach that the Minister is taking here puts greater restrictions on freedom of speech in New Zealand than in any other liberal democracy, and that is unnecessary.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Contempt of Court Bill. The law of contempt is a very, very important area of law for one really essential reason: because it protects the administration of justice. Everybody in this House knows that in order to have a robust democracy, one of those pillars that hold that robust democracy up is a robust judicial system. We need to have those protections in place to ensure that that integrity and robustness of that judicial system is maintained.

Now, I’ve got to admit that I wasn’t—and I’m still not entirely—aware of the situation that one of the members in the Opposition was involved in some years ago, apparently, in a court case in regards to criticisms of a judge or criticisms of the judicial system. By my understanding, and by what it sounds like tonight, that individual was found guilty of the law—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member should speak directly to the bill. Now, unless you can—

DARROCH BALL: Well—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Thank you. Whilst the member may—as I said to Mr Greg O’Connor—mention such things, we are debating the bill in front of the House. The member needs to link those directly to the bill. We’re debating the bill.

DARROCH BALL: In regards to the provision that was ensured it was included in this bill, it was to protect the lies and the unjustified criticisms that would slander judges and bring the judicial system into disrepute. Now, if you’ve got individuals in society that think they are above the law and that think that their opinion about the judicial system is above the law when the law is there to protect the robustness of the system, and when the law is there to ensure the protection of one of the central pillars of our democracy, that, I think, is the height of arrogance. I think that it highlights the very reason why we need this bill to pass through this House.

It also highlights the flaws in the arguments from the Opposition as to why they’re not supporting this bill. What it sounds like to me—especially from one of the members that just sat down—is the whole reason for the justification of the National Party’s opposing this bill was because of the justification of what one of those member’s actions were some years ago. Now, we’ve heard from both the Minister and the previous speakers from this side of the House about how the criticisms of the Opposition and the National Party’s argument about why they’re wanting to oppose this bill are totally and utterly false. But the National Party continue to be led down the garden path by Nick Smith and his opinions about why the National Party should be opposing this bill—about why the National Party should be opposing this bill. The fact is that if one does disagree with the courts and has certain opinions about the courts, there are legal processes with which to go down that track. It is not to think that one is above the law—not to think that one is above the law—and unjustly, unfairly criticise the judge and to unfairly and unjustly lie about the judge, and not to expect any recourse for that. To think that the minds of the National Party members sitting there think that that it is an acceptable course of action is quite unfathomable.

Barbara Kuriger: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is not about the National Party; this is about the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): My ruling on that is that this has been a robust debate. I’ve been listening carefully to all of the contributions; that’s a debating point. So I’m going to call Darroch Ball, but I am going to warn the member that he is sailing close to the wind and to make sure he does not go over the line.

DARROCH BALL: Yes, thank you, Mr Speaker. In the second half of my speech I just want to highlight very quickly what this bill actually does, why it’s important for it to pass, and why it’s illogical for the National Party not to support this bill. It goes to about five or six different areas of contempt that addresses the statute. Those are all very important areas and it’s why New Zealand First supports it.

The first is contempt. It replaces the common law with a clearer statutory offence and it prevents the publication of information that interferes with fair trial rights. It also goes into the disruptive behaviour in the courtrooms and it covers that also, which is very important. It introduces safeguards for a person who has been cited for disruptive behaviour, and also contempt for jurors, which actually brings in a new offence where a member of a jury investigates or researches information that is relevant to the case. It also creates an offence where it prohibits jurors from disclosing juror deliberations, non-compliance with court orders, and untrue allegations or accusations against judges or courts—obviously, one of the topics that has been canvassed quite thoroughly this evening.

Lastly, but by no means least importantly, the bill addresses three concerns that the Law Commission did have with the current law. The first is that it makes the law of contempt accessible, and it makes it clearer and easier to understand. This bill also makes the law of contempt workable, which the previous law did not, especially because it was developed prior to the internet age and the age of digital capabilities and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as well.

So New Zealand First supports this bill in its entirety, and commends the Minister for bringing it through to the House through this third reading and the Justice Committee for making it as workable as it is—a very effective piece of work. New Zealand First commends this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this, the third reading of the Contempt of Court Bill. Can I just acknowledge the other Justice Committee members in the House tonight, and the chair of the committee. But I want to reinforce the question that I have in my mind, which is: why this sudden flip and change of position when we had debated this, and when we had had very good constructive discussions on the committee in terms of feeling that we were going too far and that we risked having a chilling effect and impeding on Kiwis’ freedom of speech to be able to actually speak out and talk about their experiences with the court?

The reality is this: as members of Parliament, we’re sent here—or many of us are; some of us, of course, are list—to actually represent the people from our electorates, the people that actually send us here. One of the important roles we have is actually protecting—believe it or not—our constituents and Kiwis that don’t have a voice in this Chamber or don’t have a voice in the court, to protect them against the State, because the State’s got extraordinary powers. The State is extraordinarily powerful. Actually, for everyday Kiwis that are living back home, the one thing that they’ve got, the one thing that they can use, is their voice.

Hon Andrew Little: Not to make false statements.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: They can actually—not to make statements, did somebody say?

Hon Andrew Little: Not to make false statements.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Not to make false statements? I agree with you that people shouldn’t make false statements, and if they do make a false statement, then there should be a remedy for that, and we agreed with that on the select committee. But what did the Minister and this Government come back with? After we had made the change, after the select committee had agreed—the National members, the Labour members—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It was unanimous.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: We’d all agreed. It was a unanimous decision, and it was as a result of the submissions that we’ve heard from people like the Law Society that warned us against it. We listened to them and we made good changes, and we brought the bill back and we support the rest of the bill—we think it’s good. But we couldn’t agree with the provision that we felt very strongly, as a committee, was going to have a chilling effect on the ability for people to be able to speak out about their own personal experiences with the judiciary.

Do we think that something should be done around people that make false statements? Absolutely, there should. But don’t send them to jail.

Hon Andrew Little: Well, what is it?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, a take-down notice is effective, and if they want to ignore the take-down notice, then there are other remedies that can be taken, like being put in front of the Solicitor-General, who can make a decision. That to us is a fair process. That to us is all that was required.

So what this Government has said is no. At a time when they’re telling us that they want to reduce numbers in prison, they’ve brought a bill to this House where they’re now going to put Kiwis into jail. They’re going to put a Kiwi that comes out and makes a false statement—they may firmly believe in what they’re saying. Their experience through that system may firmly have put them in a position. We’ve all heard of people that are deeply passionate about things, and sometimes they even become obsessed about an issue, but they believe in what they’re saying. Yeah, so Michael Wood laughs and thinks that’s funny. That’s actually true. That’s correct. They feel deeply passionate about it.

The answer for Michael Wood and the Minister and this Government is to do—what? It’s to put them in jail. Let’s put them in jail, because that’s exactly what this bill does. That’s exactly what it does. If someone has a bad experience—

Greg O’Connor: Read the Smith judgment.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: And those members have spent most of their time in the House tonight standing and attacking Dr Nick Smith. In my view, all Dr Nick Smith did is give us all an example of what a good electorate MP does—that is, represent his constituents. If he’s got to put himself on the line to do it, he’ll do that—no problem at all—and you know what? Sometimes some of the best changes that are made in this House are when there’s a disruption, when someone’s actually willing to take a stand on something when they see that it’s grossly unfair and the system’s not working. That’s what he did. He took a stand, and what happened? There was a change made—there was a change made.

Do you know what? I actually find it perverse that we’ve got the Labour members attacking a member of Parliament that stood up for a mother and a father to reunite them with their child, and they’re sitting over there and they’re attacking him for it. They’re sitting over there trying to defend a bill that we have come to this House and said, clearly, we’ll support the rest of the bill—no problem at all—as we discussed on the select committee. We will not—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Just repeating the same interjection over and over again is not only annoying, it’s out of order.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thanks you, Mr Speaker. We will not support a bill that is brought to this House by a State that already has enormous power against members of the public that don’t share that power. You come to this House and say “If you speak out against the judiciary, if you make a false statement, do you know what we’ll do? We’ll send you to jail. You’ll go to prison.”, because that’s what this bill does.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I hope not.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Sorry, Mr Speaker—not you, of course.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Why would you make a change like that to this bill—sorry. Why would the Government make a change like that to this bill?

The next speaker, stand and take a call, because I notice that the justice Minister—I can’t refer to him not being in the House, so I won’t.

Hon Tracey Martin: No, you can’t. No.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: I would ask the next—or maybe Tracey Martin. She’s got a lot to say for herself. No, she won’t stand and take a call, because Tracey Martin’s the MP that for six years stood up in Warkworth, and she told everyone in Rodney: “I’ll be there for you. I’ll advance your issues. I’m going to be there for you every step of the way. I’ll be a strong MP.” And what does she do? What does she do? She moves to the Wairarapa. The minute they’re in Government, she moves to the Wairarapa. She’s gone—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): As interesting as that is, and it might be great in tomorrow’s general debate, but come back to the bill.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Thank you for reminding me, Mr Speaker. I’ll be seeking a call tomorrow in the general debate. Thank you for reminding me.

So we won’t support this bill for one reason, and one reason only: this Government went against what the Justice Committee agreed on. We said that it would have a chilling effect. We believe it will have a chilling effect on freedom of speech. We believe there are much better remedies to deal with false statements. We do believe in the integrity of the court, and it can be protected through other means. So we don’t support this bill because, quite simply, we don’t support putting Kiwis in jail for wanting to express their view. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s been quite a night in the House, in this debate about this excellent bill, actually. So just to bring it back to the bill, I would like to note and acknowledge the work of the Hon Chris Finlayson QC. It has been a bill with an origin story that all bills should have, in my view, which is to say that members of the profession and the Law Commission did research at the front lines into this very complex area of law, brought it all together, and found the difficulties that the profession and the public were having. The recommendations that this bill adopts came out of that, which in the law and the justice system is really important because there is often a disconnect between the difficulties of applying the law and upholding our system of justice that we in Parliament often ignore for many years. Then it was a member of the Bar, of that profession, who put the bill together.

So it is an excellent bill. It does address issues in our system that needed to be addressed, and the broad, broad issue that this bill does address is upholding the rule of law, which, in any system, includes the necessity of the law to be accessible, knowable, clear, and contained, ideally, in legislation that the public can access in one document. That hasn’t been the case when it comes to the law of contempt in New Zealand. It’s been contained in multiple statutes and in case law, which, really, is completely inaccessible to laypersons—you know, between knowing how to find case law, and then reading a case and finding how it would be applied. We can’t really expect that members of the public would comply with the law of contempt in those circumstances.

Lastly, in terms of the broad aspects of the law that this bill addresses, it updates our law, and makes it workable for the digital age. One of the offences that this creates that will, I know, make it much easier for trial judges to manage their work is to say clearly to members of juries that they can’t go off and do research on Facebook and google-search case facts and then come to the court and base their decisions on that, rather than the evidence. I think that’s important, because New Zealanders need to know that decisions made by juries are based on fact—evidence that was admissible and reliable and proved in a court of law. So that kind of thing has, for a few years now, undermined our system of justice in many ways, and has actually caused mistrials, which are expensive and time-consuming and put great stress on both our system and also witnesses, victims, and the accused, who all have to come to court again and again.

Just to lastly and briefly address the big, contentious issue that the House has been fighting about tonight, and to make it really, really clear that the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 289, as it relates to falsehoods told about judges—it’s absolutely not the case that a falsehood that was told with the honest belief in those so-called facts would come under this law. It’s very clear how high the threshold is.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Did the member read the submissions?

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: The prosecutor has to prove—I’m reading from it. Sorry that you haven’t read this law, as well as previous law, which you breached, Dr Smith. So the law—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: The law as—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! E noho, kia ora. I thought this speech was going to be a really good one, but the member just crossed a line and should not have, OK? No matter what the provocation, she does herself no good service by actually saying what she just said, and she should refrain from further references to it.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: I apologise, Mr Speaker. So what does fall under this bill is a falsehood deliberately told—a deliberate falsehood—that also was told with the intention or recklessness as to whether that falsehood would bring the justice system into disrepute, and the falsehood has to be about a member of the judiciary. It is not a criticism of a judgment, not a criticism of a decision, not a criticism of a judge; a falsehood told about a member of the bench with the deliberate intention of undermining our system of justice. And even if all of that is the case, it’s still the case that you need leave of the Solicitor-General. The bar is so high.

Of course we know, as with all such New Zealand Bill of Rights Act rights, limitations are absolutely allowed in a democratic and lawful society in order to protect the greater good and to protect our system of justice and the public safety. The public interest in having confidence in our courts is one of the most fundamental aspects of our democracy. So deliberately undermining that public interest through deliberately told falsehoods absolutely does not fall under the right to free speech, just as defamation is an exception to that because we know that there’s a public interest in protecting individuals against falsehoods that damage their reputation, and, therefore, their lives.

So this is an excellent bill. It does simplify, clarify, and make our law much more accessible, as it should be, and it upholds our system of justice and the rule of law. Thank you.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in opposition to the third reading of the Contempt of Court Bill. The previous speaker, Golriz Ghahraman, just mentioned the word “falsehood”, which is not in the bill. It is the criticism of the judge of the court. So let me clarify, to start with, that this bill doesn’t include “falsehood”. So the word time and again being used by the Government benches is not right. It is the criticism which this bill is dealing with.

We supported this bill during the first and the second readings. In the first reading, we said that there should be some improvement in this bill during the select committee stage, and at the Justice Committee, all the members together—from the Government side and from the Opposition side—made some amendments to this bill to improve it. That was the intention, and that is always the intention of the select committee—that bills should be improved and reported back to the House so that the best can come out of any legislation. But at the committee of the whole House stage, the Minister introduced Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 289, which was exactly the opposite of what the select committee has recommended.

So we have got that reservation. The select committee decided to drop that particular clause, but the Minister wanted to bring it back during the committee of the whole House, and because they have the majority, that SOP was passed and, again, included in this legislation.

The National Party will keep opposing this and will not support this, even though we know that this was a member’s bill introduced by the Hon Chris Finlayson. This Government, we have seen in the past 18 to 19 months, have picked up the majority of the bills which were introduced by the National Government during our days, and they are continuing to work upon them because they were really good bills introduced under us. I oppose this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call the Hon Clare Curran—five minutes.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’ll just make a few points. The law of contempt is an important area of law. It protects the administration of justice, and our current laws are vague, out of date, and inaccessible to New Zealanders and need updating. As the Minister said, this is about modernising and codifying rules around contempt of court. Nobody—no citizen—in our country is above the law, no matter what Dr Smith might think.

I want to talk about the separation of powers, briefly, because the term trias politica, or separation of powers, was coined by a baron, actually: Baron de Montesquieu, who was an 18th century social and political philosopher. But the concept came from ancient Greece, where the State was divided into branches, each with separate, independent powers and areas of responsibility, so that the powers of one branch—the legislature, the executive, or the judiciary—were not in conflict with the powers of the other branch. That, unfortunately, is what we’re talking about tonight, and that’s where Dr Smith refers to the chilling effect and the undermining of freedom of speech.

The guts of Supplementary Order Paper 289, which Minister Little has put up, is not about criticising the courts; it’s about not making false statements. No one is above the law, free speech is not an absolute right, and this is ultimately about the separation of powers.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): The Hon Maggie Barry—five minutes.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m still trying to work out what it was exactly that the last speaker, Clare Curran, was referring to—whether it was casting aspersions on Parliament or quite what. Like much of what the member has said in the past, it’s a little bit murky and probably best left unanalysed.

We speak about a bill that was initially very good indeed. We liked it. It came from the Hon Chris Finlayson, as many have said. There was a lot that was good about this bill. All was going well until the Minister of Justice intervened with his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 289. This was never intended to be a bill that would protect judges from criticism; it was about protecting public confidence in the just, the speedy, and the inexpensive administration of the justice system. It sought to do a whole lot of things to modernise, to make in one place, and to collate it in a single piece of legislation to make the law more accessible in this regard.

So to us, at the beginning, it was all fine, and it was going very well through the select committee process, and I was on the Justice Committee and marvelled at the flip-flop and the changes that did occur. The SOP from the justice Minister, which proposed a different offence—and, therefore, something we could not support—was that it now uses the phrase “false statement”. A person must have known or ought reasonably to have known the statement would undermine confidence—six months’ imprisonment, or for corporations, up to $100,000, which was the same as the original bill. But, frankly, by imposing the different offence it has removed this bill from our ability to support it. It has gone overboard. It is a mystery to us why that did occur, but we now oppose this bill as a whole on the basis that it does contain a highly objectionable aspect.

We need to make it clear, though, that we supported all the remainder of the bill, and had the justice Minister not sought to intervene on this, we would have probably been supporting it tonight. But, as it happens, we do not support this bill and I do not commend it to the House.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. As the chair of the Justice Committee, can I just say I wasn’t part of it while they debated this particular bill, but I stand in support. Clearly, there’s been some issues around the other side not supporting a very comprehensive bill that does address and modernise our contempt law. It puts it into one piece of legislation. We’ve heard the outline by the Minister. It is to address a very critical part of our law system. I commend this bill to the House.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a surprise to take a short call on this Contempt of Court Bill this evening. It has been quite interesting listening to the debate as I have sat here. I am quite surprised because, of course, last Parliament I was the chairperson of the Justice and Electoral Committee, and it was a very collegial committee, one in which people worked well together. So I was very surprised to learn of the passage of this bill and the fact that new clause 24A was inserted at the last minute, without the members on this side of the House knowing and without proper consideration and debate, after it was agreed that this clause and the intent of this clause should be removed from the original bill.

Of course from our point of view, this is quite a travesty, because, as it states in new clause 24A, “(1) A person commits an offence if—(a) the person publishes a false statement about a Judge or a court;”. Now, “false statement” is not defined. We have heard debate that that is a high threshold, but, quite frankly, this is a frightening piece of law that means that no one can legitimately disagree with the actions of a judge or a court in the outcome or passage of that outcome.

So what that means, for example, is that with respect to, perhaps, Mr David Bain and the fact that he continued on his crusade to prove his innocence, those people that criticised that process from go to whoa could potentially be found in contempt of court. That is ridiculous. It is legitimate, if you truly believe that a process is flawed, that you should be able to speak out and go through the motions of proving that. It is a travesty that free speech is being overruled with respect to this Contempt of Court Bill.

Of course we support the codification. Of course we support a fair and just legal system. But this goes too far, and for that reason we do not support this bill.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Contempt of court is an important area of law. I have lots to contribute, but, given the progress of this bill, what I really want to stress is that Minister Little’s Supplementary Order Paper 289 strikes the right balance. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Contempt of Court Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Statutes Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 8 August.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): I’m pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Statutes Amendment Bill. This bill looks at minor technical and non-controversial amendments to a number of Acts. The bill allows amendments to be made that would not usually receive sufficient priority to progress individually. This has achieved the support of all parties in Parliament. The bill reports back amendments of 46 Acts administered by various Government agencies. Each of the amendments of the bill has received unanimous cross-party support, and the bill is a good demonstration of all the parties working together.

The bill was reported back by the Governance and Administration Committee on 24 May 2019. I want to thank the committee and the chair, Brett Hudson MP, for the careful consideration of the bill. We received and considered eight submissions, seven of those submissions supporting the intent of the respective amendments and one submission received from an interested party of the public which did not relate to any part of the bill. The committee did not recommend making any changes to the House. The committee’s report, however, recommended a number of changes to the amendments of the bill as it was introduced. I support these recommendations and will now detail some of the changes made to the bill.

Many of it was designed to correct drafting errors. Like I said earlier when I opened up my contribution, technical and minor bills—for example, a recommendation to the Immigration Advisers Licensing Act 2007 and the Parliamentary Service Act 2000 by correcting their cross-reference errors. Some recommendations reflect the legislative programme as a whole—for example, the recommendations that the committee have made remove Part 9 relating to the Coroners Act, clause 50 relating to the District Court Act 2016. The bill also reflects provisions contained in the Contempt of Court Bill, which is currently before the House, and then, when passed, will restore the full powers of the coroners to punish for contempt occurring in the courthouse and replace the old contempt provisions for judicial officers with new ones.

Some recommendations are non-controversial and support improvements to the way some Acts work in practice, such as the recommended change to the Summary Proceedings Act 1957. The Act currently requires infringement fees to be paid at a specified address. The recommended change will clarify that payment of an infringement fee to be made at a specified address may not involve payment in person at a physical address. It means that legislation governing infringement regimes can implicitly authorise payment by any method the agency offers. The committee also recommended inserting a new provision to clarify that infringement and that reminder notices can specify more than one method of payment. This would reflect modern methods of payment, such as online banking and other online tools available to ensure payments are completed. Another example is the recommended amendment to the Disputes Tribunal Act 1988, which would replace the references to 28 days with 20 working days. Different time frames have inadvertently been prescribed for applying for a rehearing of a disputes tribunal decision; the Disputes Tribunal Rules 1989 prescribed the time frame as 20 working days, like I said, instead of the proposed time frame of 28 days.

Like I said, these are non-controversial amendments that we’re bringing to the House that form part of the Statutes Amendment Bill. As a supporter of this bill, I’m sure that we will hear from other contributors as to the importance of the individual bills, but, like I said, they’re non-controversial, and I commend them to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, sir, for the opportunity to speak on behalf of the National Party to continue our contribution on this side of the House in relation to the Statutes Amendment Bill. In keeping with the general nature of these types of bills, this case is no exception in that we support changes that are merely technical—largely non-controversial for that reason. The previous contributor, Meka Whaitiri, who I acknowledge, by the way, as the chair of the Justice Committee, has referred to the large number of—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member. However, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.