Thursday, 22 August 2019

THURSDAY, 22 AUGUST 2019

THURSDAY, 22 AUGUST 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Visitors

Germany—German Bundestag, Ulrich Lechte

SPEAKER: I’m sure that members would wish to welcome Mr Ulrich Lechte, MP from the German Bundestag, who is present in the gallery.

[Applause]

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Next week, the committee stage of the Appropriation (2019/20 Estimates) Bill, the Estimates debate, will continue. It has eight hours and 55 minutes remaining. Other legislation to be considered will include the first readings of the Dairy Industry Restructuring Amendment Bill (No 3) and the Venture Capital Fund Bill. The Government will introduce legislation to allow some premises to extend their opening hours during the Rugby World Cup.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I wonder: will the Leader of the House be making the bill that extends opening hours for Rugby World Cup purposes available to all parties to have a look at before it comes into the House? Secondly, can he tell us when item number 10 on the Order Paper—that’s been available for three months now—might make some progress in the House?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I don’t have a copy of the Order Paper in front of me, so I can’t say. Unfortunately, they don’t put them on our desks any longer, so I can’t answer that. Which one is it?

SPEAKER: Equal pay.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In the fullness of time we will get to the Equal Pay Amendment Bill. There are a couple of issues that are still being resolved around the Equal Pay Amendment Bill that weren’t able to be resolved at the Education and Workforce Committee. With regard to the first part of the bill, I’ve asked that a draft copy of the bill for next week be distributed as soon as it’s available, including with a proposed timetable for passing it through the House. I envisage that we’ll discuss that at the Business Committee on Tuesday.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): One question that relates to that might truncate discussions considerably. Can the Leader of the House indicate if that bill will consider all licensed premises or just a narrow band of licensed premises?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I’m advised by the Minister in charge of it that it will cover all licensed premises.

Motions

Ollie Langridge Climate Emergency Protest, 100 Days—Leave Declined

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and without debate to acknowledge 100 days of Ollie Langridge standing on Parliament’s lawn, calling on this House to declare a climate emergency.

SPEAKER: I just want to check that it’s been worked around the parties [Interruption] It has. Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none [Interruption] There is objection. When I asked if it had been worked around the parties, I got a positive response. The implication of that generally is—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: —let me finish; I’ll stand up I have to—that it’s got approval. I will stand up. Back in the period—I think I’m now the only member in the House, today, who was part of the arrangement—members used to be able to stand up and seek leave to move notices of all sorts of things, and it would often go on for a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes. It was a decision that that didn’t add to the order of the place; it added to the excitement, but not the order. There was a decision made in the mid-1980s that, in fact, that practice would stop. Now, in recent times it has crept back in a little bit, but Speakers before me have ruled that leave to be sought of that type should be cleared with other parties first to make sure that, in fact, the approval will be granted, and that when it’s done without that occurring, it is disorderly. Now, I haven’t made this sort of ruling before, but I do want to make it clear to members now that while, generally, members can seek leave for anything at any time, there are a few exceptions to that. Seeking leave for something which a member knows will not be granted is, in fact, disorderly.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Speaking to the point of order.

SPEAKER: No, there is not a point of order any more. I’ve ruled.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Education

1. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What actions has the Government taken to increase the number of New Zealanders participating in vocational education?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Earlier this month, the Government announced a new award for vocational education, including the trades, which is open to all secondary school students. The Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Award celebrates young people training to be our future creators, innovators, crafters, and tradespeople. It’s available to every secondary school and wharekura in the country for their top student in vocational education. We want to recognise and encourage a new generation of builders, plumbers, software developers, agricultural trainees, designers, and many others on to further study or on-the-job training.

Jan Tinetti: How will the Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Awards lift the status of the trades and other vocational training?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Government is committed to raising the status of vocational education. The Prime Minister’s award in vocational excellence sends a strong message about the value that we place on trades training. Trades training and on-the-job skills training has too often taken a back seat to university in terms of the school leavers’ desired career choices, even when this isn’t necessarily the best choice. We want to show students through this award that the trades provide exciting opportunities that are an equally important career pathway. The award is part of a wider package of vocational education reforms so that we see more people training on the job and training to meet the skill needs of employers.

Jan Tinetti: When can schools apply for the award?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m pleased to say that right now, every public secondary school and wharekura across the country can apply for the $2,000 cash prize for their top vocational student. The Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Awards will be available for prize-givings in 2019—this year—and the Government is providing funding for every public secondary school and wharekura to participate in the programme.

Jan Tinetti: How does the Prime Minister’s award recognising vocational excellence complement the greater reform of the system and work in this area?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The award sits alongside a number of other initiatives, including activities that are taking place right now to promote trades training, such as speed meets, where, across the country, students are meeting with an employer from a range of industries that offer on-the-job training for six minutes to find out about each other. In addition to this, we’ve put more money into the Telford polytechnic to ensure that it can be revitalised for the primary industries, and, of course, we are undertaking a very comprehensive set of reforms in vocational education and training to expand the range of skills options available in all parts of the country.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: What measures, if any, does he have in place to ensure New Zealanders receive good value for money from the Government’s major spending initiatives?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The 2019 Wellbeing Budget made use for the first time of a wellbeing analysis and Treasury’s Living Standards Framework. Initiatives that sought new funding were assessed for their impact against the Living Standards Framework domains and for their intergenerational wellbeing outcomes. As the Wellbeing Budget states, “This meant [that] the Wellbeing Budget was developed with an understanding of the impacts it would have across the range of areas that matter to New Zealanders.” The wellbeing analysis allows for a more robust and developed understanding of value for money than a simple understanding of the costs. As Tim Ng, who is the chief economist at Treasury, said, this is the most rigorous approach we have ever seen to a Budget. Within major spending programmes, there are, of course, various benchmarks, measures, and indicators. To give the member just one example of our work, in child poverty, not only are we committed to tackling one of our biggest long-term issues after nine years of neglect; we are also hitting the targets that are outlined in the Budget to address the shameful legacy left behind.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Halfway through the three years of the Provincial Growth Fund, what hard data has he seen on the outcomes from the investment in terms of jobs so far?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m not sure if I would regard Minister Jones’ interviews on Newshub Nation as hard data, but I would certainly describe it as data of a sort. In that interview, I heard him talk about a figure of a thousand jobs over two years. We are continuing to see fantastic outcomes. Just this morning, I was in Rotorua at the Building Nations Symposium. Representatives of city councils and industry bodies across the country were praising the Provincial Growth Fund for the fact that finally we have a Government taking a long-term issue for New Zealand seriously.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I did ask about jobs so far. He referred to jobs in the future. Are you happy with that?

SPEAKER: Well, I’m not sure that I could tell that was in the future or the current or whatever. I think it was more in the time of Matua Shane.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he have a system in place to keep a measure on how much the Government is spending for each KiwiBuild house delivered so far; and, if so, what is the figure?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: All initiatives funded in the Budget are there after the subject of the review process that the member participates in but are also reported against by each Government agency. No doubt, in the fullness of time, the member will find time to read the reports that come through from the KiwiBuild unit.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What has he got to show for the $317 million so far allocated to working groups?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would strongly—strongly—question the number that the member is using, and, in particular, the use of the phrase “working groups.” I know that the Minister for Sport and Recreation frequently gets questions from the Opposition about the International Working Group on Women in Sport, which is actually an international group—and they ask us how much it’s costing us; so I actually would question that. What I would say is that one of the significant working groups we had was the one into mental health and addition. That is a serious, long-term issue which will take many years to solve, but we have made a very good start with the significant mental health package in the Budget.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So what is the figure that he would give to deal with the amount of money being invested in working groups so far by his Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It would be a significantly smaller number than the one that the member gave. But it is an interesting contrast between people who like to base their policy on evidence—as we do on this side of the House—and people who would rather base it on some preconceived prejudice.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Which has created more jobs so far: the Provincial Growth Fund or his Government working groups?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I am quite sure that the Provincial Growth Fund right around this region is seen as a job-generation scheme. What I do know is it probably outstripped the big idea from the last Government of the nine-day fortnight, which I know was their big idea and has clearly been taken on by this Opposition as their mode of working.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think taxpayers are getting good value for money for the 2,500 extra bureaucrats this Government has taken on in its first year of Government; and, if so, is he aware that that’s the biggest increase in the number of bureaucrats since 2005 under the previous—

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Again, I would want to look at the numbers that the member is putting forward, to analyse them pretty closely. I do know that the statistics the previous Government used to use around numbers of public servants were created so that whole chunks of them were taken out so that they weren’t counted. On this side of the House, there are programmes that this Government has had to bring in to fix up the mess that we were left by the last Government. The hard-working public servants of New Zealand will remember how they’re being described, I’m sure.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Minister of Finance confirm that within the definition of “bureaucrats” there are people such as educational psychologists and teacher-aides that work directly with children, people that work at the border, and people that provide other front-line services directly to New Zealanders?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Quite clearly that is the case, given the definition that the member opposite has just used. On this side of the House, we have a great deal of respect for people who, in some cases, put their lives on the line for New Zealanders every single day. I do recall being in this House and hearing public servants previously called “useless bureaucrats” by people across the aisle there. It’s not a term I choose to use.

Hon Shane Jones: Does he agree, given the stellar figures of economic growth—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to ask the member to ask a question, and not do a self-promotion.

Hon Shane Jones: I started with “Does he agree,”. That is an interrogative. Does he agree, given there have been significant economic activity upgrades in those provinces that have enjoyed the fiscal leadership and attention from the Provincial Growth Fund, that the two are connected?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sit down. Are there any further supplementaries—in order?

Hon Shane Jones: I want to make a point of order.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m going to be very strict if the member’s not careful.

Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to make an important point here. We are drawing on publicly available, economically robust data. I am inviting the Minister of Finance to draw an obvious conclusion: my good work and the good news.

SPEAKER: No. The member will resume his seat. That was not a point of order. While the member has only ever shown a passing interest in the rules of the House, he has been here long enough to know that that was not a point of order and, in fact, was disorderly. He will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Shane Jones: I withdraw and apologise.

Question No. 3—Housing

3. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing: Will there be any further delays to the conclusion of the KiwiBuild reset, including due to the resignation of the KiwiBuild head of delivery?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): No.

Hon Judith Collins: When was the KiwiBuild head of delivery’s six-month contract due to be concluded?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The head of delivery’s contract was due to be concluded at the end of September. She started work on 5 February, from memory, which meant that it could have gone through to the end of October. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Helen O’Sullivan for the wonderful work that she has done in this role.

Hon Judith Collins: When does she expect a replacement head of delivery will be appointed?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The intention is—given that Kāinga Ora is coming into existence—that there will be a temporary head of delivery. Once the new agency is in place, then that role will be filled.

Hon Judith Collins: How will it impact the success of the $2 billion programme to have first a head of KiwiBuild resign, then an interim appointed for four months, then a new head leave after five months, and now another interim lead while yet another replacement can be found?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think the member is trying to cause mischief where there is none. There has been significant progress this year with KiwiBuild under Helen O’Sullivan’s leadership. There has been significant reform, and we are confident that when we announce the reset, we will have made a number of improvements. We are the first people, on this side of the House, to acknowledge that KiwiBuild has not delivered in the way that we wanted it to.

Hon Judith Collins: How is it possible that this Government has, after only two years, a housing policy in full reset for seven months, looking for its third KiwiBuild head, a State—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s had two now.

Hon Judith Collins: Oh. OK then. That’s enough. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: That is possible, and, actually, we’ve made a number of achievements. We had a target of delivering 1,600 additional public housing houses; we have delivered 2,100 because of changes we made in Government. I would like to remind that member that this stuff is difficult, and that member should know it. She was a member of a Government that aimed to deliver 39,000 houses through the special housing areas, and they only delivered 3,900—100 of which were deemed affordable.

Hon Judith Collins: If that is so, then how is it that the State waiting list has now doubled in 18 months?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I’m very glad the member asked me that question. That member was a member of a Government that not only sold off State houses; they ended their term of Government with 1,500 fewer public housing spots. But, added to that, there was the opportunity cost of them not building. If that party, when in Government, had built 1,600 houses a year like we are planning to, we would have 14,500 more public housing spots, which is more than the number of people on the waiting list.

Hon Judith Collins: And how many of those 1,600 new State houses were consented under the National Government?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Obviously, some of them were, but what we can tell—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I’m warning Nikki Kaye.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I was clapping.

SPEAKER: I think it’s fair to say that my intervention was not quiet. She continued her disorderly behaviour afterwards.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Some of them were, but what I can tell that member is that many of the developments were added to the business cases by us when we came into Government, because that was a Government that was intent on selling off State houses—not building them, and not providing affordable houses. We are proud of our record. That member and the party she belongs to should be ashamed of their record on public housing.

Question No. 4—Courts

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Oh, thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister for Courts: what recent reports has the Minister seen regarding the Canterbury Earthquakes—

SPEAKER: Now, the member has a very good qualification, including literacy. He should read the question as it’s written down.

4. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister for Courts: What recent reports has he seen regarding the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Courts): On Friday, it was reported that after less than 50 days of operation, the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal has already resolved its first case. The case that’s been resolved was referred from the Greater Christchurch Claims Resolution Service and dated back to the first earthquake on 4 September 2010. It’s pleasing to see such rapid progress under the changes introduced by this Government, and the progress made by the tribunal so far represents another win for the Wellbeing Budget.

Dr Duncan Webb: How many cases have been lodged with the tribunal so far?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Since the tribunal came into operation roughly 50 days ago, 21 cases have been lodged from affected Canterbury homeowners, as of last Friday. Two of these had been transferred to the tribunal from the High Court. The number of cases already received shows just why the Government created the tribunal in the first place, which is to be a circuit breaker for people who have waited far too long to move on with their lives from botched repairs and damage to their homes. It’s about tackling the big, long-term issues in Canterbury.

Dr Duncan Webb: Why has the coalition Government set up the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The coalition Government set up the tribunal to give Canterbury homeowners a fair, flexible, and cost-effective way to resolve their outstanding insurance claims relating to the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes, including claims with Southern Response and the Earthquake Commission. The delay to resolve residential insurance claims has had a significant effect on many Cantabrians’ wellbeing. They need another opportunity for closure, and the Canterbury Earthquakes Insurance Tribunal will go a long way to meeting this need.

Question No. 5—Education

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): I seek leave to hold my question over for the next question time so that the Hon Tracey Martin can answer the question directly.

SPEAKER: Leave is sought. Is there any objection? Yes, there is. Does the member want to ask it anyway?

5. Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) to the Associate Minister of Education: Does she stand by her statement regarding learning support coordinator allocations, “I’m pleased, I’m really pleased. I know there are people complaining, and that’s OK. We seem to live in a world where somebody’s got to complain about everything”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Education: In the context of the six minutes of my 6 August video blog where I outline the intentions of the role in detail, yes.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Is Greerton Village School board chairperson and parent Erika Harvey wrong when she says, “There’s really no rhyme or reason why we were left out. We have 140 children on our learning registry. I’m getting emails to say that I’ve got to stop or cut staff, and I’m going to have to choose between health and safety or following the law of inclusion. It’s ridiculous.”

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I would say to the person who made that comment that the Government has committed to 600 learning support coordinators in the first tranche of rolling out learning support coordinators into every school. Not every school can have one of those 600, obviously, but we do acknowledge that this is one of the areas of need that schools are really struggling with. It’s why we agreed to establish the roles, and we’ll continue to expand the number of learning support coordinators available in the future.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Is New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI) president, Lynda Stuart, wrong when she says that the learning support coordinator allocation failed the test of whether it would get to the children who needed it first and putting arbitrary system requirements ahead of what schools have said they want and need to meet the needs of children is disgraceful?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I disagree with Lynda Stuart’s comment on that. When the NZEI first started campaigning for these roles, they said that they wanted them to be a dedicated role specifically for this purpose. They have subsequently argued that, in fact, it should be an increase to the staffing entitlement for schools. We don’t agree with that. We are honouring the commitment that we made originally, which was that these would be dedicated roles and they cannot be used as part of the school’s staffing entitlement for something else.

Hon Grant Robertson: How many dedicated learning support coordinator roles were in place when the Minister took office?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There were no dedicated learning support coordinators in place when we became the Government. We have acknowledged that this is a gap in the system, and we’re committed to addressing that.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Will she listen to the comments of principal Gaye Turner, who said, “I very rarely get gutted. I very rarely get angry, but that’s how I felt.” and change the learning—

SPEAKER: Order! Shorter quotes.

Hon Nikki Kaye: —support coordinator allocation so there is greater fairness and equity for children with complex needs?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I do accept that for principals up and down the country, who for a decade now have had to fight tooth and nail to get support for the kids who have additional learning needs, who have been frustrated that they haven’t been able to get that support, there is a degree of impatience in them wanting to see more resources in that area. I point out to all of them that the introduction of learning support coordinators is not the only thing this Government is doing. We’ve also expanded the number of Ongoing Resourcing Scheme funded spaces that are available to the kids with the highest and most complex needs. We’ve put more money into early intervention in early childhood education. We’ve expanded a range of other areas of learning support. We know that there is significant unmet demand for learning support across the country, and, unlike the previous Government, we are actually going to work towards meeting that.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was actually, after I made the quote from the principal: will they change the learning support coordinator allocation? That was the question. That’s the question that thousands of principals want to know—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume her seat. If the member precedes her question with a long quote, then any part of the quote can be addressed.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Has she analysed the amount of time that she’s spent on making decisions on learning support coordinator allocation versus the amount of time she’s spent trolling Opposition MPs and principals on social media?

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I wish to seek a point of clarification as to why you moved on, because, as I understand it, the word “troll” or “trolling” has been used in this House on many occasions. In fact, I believe it’s been used by the honourable—

SPEAKER: Not by way of question, and, if I missed it, I was wrong, and, if my predecessors missed it, they were wrong. Accusing a member of this House of being a troll is something which I consider to be disorderly.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think it would be a valuable exercise for the Clerk’s Office to look through Hansards, particularly to answers to questions, to see if that word has been used alongside—well, not alongside but also the word “fascist”.

SPEAKER: Well, if they find another of my errors, then I’m sure I will be reminded of it, but assigning that title to a member of Parliament is, in my opinion, disorderly.

Hon Nikki Kaye: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, if it’s about this—if the member’s trying to reiterate that point, she will be being disorderly, and it will be treated very seriously.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. What you said in your comments—and I ask you to reflect on the footage—is that I have called the member a troll. I didn’t; I used the term “trolling”, which in the Oxford Dictionary, I think, is making comments that are inflammatory. It is a very different—

SPEAKER: The member will stand—she will now sit—and now she’s going to stand, withdraw, and apologise. She has deliberately—she has deliberately—defied my ruling. The member said another member was trolling. To troll means that you are a troll. Stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Nikki Kaye: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: I mean, it’s pretty basic English.

Kieran McAnulty: Doesn’t even know what “troll” means.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Kieran McAnulty will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Kieran McAnulty: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And this is now a more general warning to members on both sides of the House: when I make a ruling, I do not expect comment on it, whether it is oppositional or supportive—both are disorderly.

Question No. 6—Pike River Re-entry

6. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney) to the Minister responsible for Pike River Re-entry: Does he stand by all his statements, policies, and actions on the Pike River Mine?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister responsible for Pike River Re-entry): Yes. In particular, I stand by all the actions taken to date in fulfilment of this Government’s commitment to re-enter the Pike River mine to better understand that avoidable tragedy. I stand by the approvals I have given and my support for the project, which has proceeded in strict compliance with underground mining best practice and New Zealand’s health and safety laws and regulations, and which has enjoyed possibly the most stringent oversight by WorkSafe New Zealand, New Zealand’s health and safety regulator.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Will any exemptions from the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 or any of its regulations be sought in relation to the Pike River mine re-entry?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Yes, and the conditions on which an exemption can be given require conditions to be met, and the principal condition is that any standards applied in order to achieve an exemption have to be equal to, or better than, the standards provided for in the regulations. Any exemption sought by the Pike River Recovery Agency will be because their standards they are applying will be better than, or equal to, the standards provided for in the regulations.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Why would the Government want to exempt itself at Pike River from the very law that was put in place following this tragedy to strengthen miners’ safety?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I might, if I could, assist that member because I think he’s fallen under the influence of an erroneous and misleading article produced by Mr Gerry Morris from the West Coast when he talks about regulation 170 of the Health and Safety at Work (Mining Operations and Quarrying Operations) Regulations 2016. If I just take a moment to talk about two parts of regulation 170. One is subclause (1); the other is subclause (4). Subclause (1) is a regulation requiring a second means of egress; it is one of the issues that was examined by the royal commission of inquiry into the original tragedy at Pike River. Subclause (1) of regulation 170 does not apply to existing mining operations, and the Pike River mine—because we picked up all the old consents—is an existing mining operation until December 2024. So that regulation doesn’t apply. There is another regulation in subclause (4) of regulation 170, and that requires that the mine operator must ensure that “at least 1 of the escapeways at the underground coal mining operation is designated as the primary escapeway and is—(a) an intake airway or a combination of adjacent intake airways;”. That is the issue that the agency is working on with WorkSafe and a number of local and international experts to achieve world’s best practice for that standard, and they will apply for an exemption to that part of the regulation on the basis that what the agency does with the mine in order to get access to the drift will be equal to, or better than, the standard required in that regulation.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Will the miners, or workers, have access to two exits from the mine, as required by the regulations?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I have just tried to point out to that member, and, unfortunately, he’s fallen under the influence of Mr Morris—I should point out Mr Morris wrote to my office today and he pointed out—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Answer the question.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: —his credentials, which included, amongst other things, that he organised Norman Kirk’s visit to the West Coast—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, the member will resume his seat. This is a serious matter. It has involved a number of deaths. It is a matter of safety. The House is interested in the answer, even if people don’t like it, and, especially, Dr Nick Smith will not interject again while Mr Little is answering this set of questions.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is a breach of the Standing Orders to suggest that anyone in this House is under the influence of someone from outside this House. Andrew Little has done that twice now, at least, in his answers today. If he wants this House to treat his answers seriously on what is a serious matter, then he should show this House the respect it deserves.

SPEAKER: I understand the point that he is making. My view is that Mr Little did not breach the Standing Orders in the way that they were intended.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Point—

SPEAKER: Sorry, the member will resume his seat. They are generally intended in that way to say that members are acting improperly, generally for financial reward or other of that sort of influence. The idea that a member can’t suggest that someone’s read an article and been influenced by it is not what that Standing Order and Speakers’ rulings have been aimed at.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, with respect, I disagree with you. The term that was used—

SPEAKER: Lovely!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: The term that was used was “under the erroneous influence”. Now, that’s expressing an opinion, which is also, frankly, not allowed in the Standing Orders for answering of questions—

SPEAKER: What!

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Read your Standing Orders. It’ll probably be quite instructive.

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s now going to resume his seat. He’ll have an early shower if he keeps that one up. To suggest that Ministers can’t suggest that other people are in error, or even questioners are allowed to suggest that people are in error—if we ruled all of that out, we wouldn’t bother coming here.

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

SPEAKER: No—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker, while you’re still on your feet.

SPEAKER: Mr Brownlee, last chance, and—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, my point is that the statement “under the erroneous influence” is too strong—far too strong. It’s quite reasonable that any member might read an article and want to ask questions about it, but then to have it thrown back at them as if to say that “Actually, you’re simply wrong because what you’ve read is wrong.” is not a Minister answering a question. It’s a Minister dodging his obligations to answer strictly the question.

SPEAKER: All right, OK. The member is erroneous.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. You’ve been pretty tough on the Opposition in ensuring that we do not add material that is irrelevant to the question and answer. In both the primary question and in the supplementary, the Minister has chosen to have a go at a journalist on the West Coast, rather than answer my colleague’s question.

SPEAKER: And I am now getting the impression that the member is arguing with my decision earlier that I made very clear to him about not intervening further during this question, where he was absolutely and deliberately reflecting on my chairing, and he will withdraw and apologise now.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I’d like some clarification of what I’m withdrawing and—

SPEAKER: No, the member can’t. If the member wants to stay, he will withdraw and apologise.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I’d just love to know what offence I’ve committed.

SPEAKER: Right. The member will withdraw from the Chamber.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Mr Speaker, I have to get kicked out for not even knowing what you’ve done wrong.

SPEAKER: Well, I just want to make it very clear that there are some things that I’ll take responsibility for. The member not knowing what he’s done is not one of them.

Hon Dr Nick Smith withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Speakers’ Rulings is the guide that guides most members of Parliament in the way in which they conduct themselves in the House. You moved to tell Dr Smith that he couldn’t participate in any further points of order on this; he then did. He got upset and went out. I don’t believe that it’s the role of the Chair just to deny the right of members of Parliament to raise points of order.

SPEAKER: Question No. 7, Angie Warren-Clark—

Hon Mark Mitchell: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Oh, the member has a further supplementary?

Hon Mark Mitchell: Sorry, Mr Speaker, do you mind if I ask that question again? It was interrupted.

SPEAKER: If the member wants a further supplementary, he can ask it. I think we had an answer which—we certainly had an answer to the question that he asked.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We did not. I interrupted his answer because of the offence—

SPEAKER: The member interrupted well after the question had been answered. I mean, frankly, we had a conflict: we had the member saying he wanted more, the member behind him saying that he wanted more, and other people saying that they wanted less.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Will the miners, the workers, and the police officers that are asked to re-enter the Pike River mine have two points of exit, as required by the regulations?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It’s unfortunate that that member did not listen to the previous answer. It is not a regulatory requirement that there be two points of egress. That regulation doesn’t come into force until 2024. That member knows members of the agency. He knows the leadership of the agency. He knows the level of technical and expert advice that the agency has been drawing on for all of the 18 months of its existence, and it certainly has a lot more than a journalist or a part-time historian from the West Coast whose credentials, according to a letter he sent to my office this morning, are that he organised Norman Kirk’s visit to the West Coast in 1971 and that his mother worked at Paddy’s Bakery.

Hon Mark Mitchell: If the miners, workers, and police officers asked to re-enter the Pike River mine are going to have only one point of exit, and if that point of exit is blocked, how are they going to get out?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As that member well knows, in all the planning that has gone into this exercise, the highest standards of health and safety have been applied. No person who works for the agency, no miner, no experienced miner, and no technical expert will enter the mine if it is unsafe to do so.

Question No. 7—Environment

7. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: What action is the Government taking to enhance urban development and protect elite soils?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): The Government has proposed national policy statements on urban development and on highly productive land. These will improve the provision of housing in our major cities while protecting our most fertile and versatile land used for growing food. Through the combination of the two, we get the balance right, which is the development we need, in the right place. We need to both house our people and feed them.

Angie Warren-Clark: Why is the Government protecting elite soils?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Only around 5 percent of our land is classified as class 1 or 2 highly productive land which is suitable for growing a wide range of fruits, vegetables, or fibre, and we can’t afford to lose these. These bring significant economic benefits as well as food, obviously. Our productive land, once it’s either built on or chopped up for lifestyle blocks, can’t then generally be used efficiently for food production, so we need to act now to protect our most productive land for future generations.

Angie Warren-Clark: How will the national policy statement on urban development allow our cities to make room for growth?

Hon DAVID PARKER: To have enough affordable homes, we need planning that allows our cities to grow up, especially in city centres and around transport connections. We also have to allow cities with fast-growing populations to expand in a way that protects our special areas like our highly productive land. This combination enables more affordable homes in quality urban environments. Combined with the protection of productive land, we’ll be helping local authorities to make room for growth whilst ensuring that this doesn’t come at the expense of the natural environment.

Hon James Shaw: Does he agree that the national policy statement on urban development needs to promote low-emissions urban design and ensure that our towns and cities are planning for higher density development, with better public transport?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I agree with that statement, especially around transport nodes, and enabling people to live in more dense living patterns around public transportation nodes increases their transport choices, reduces their costs, and also reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

Question No. 8—Agriculture

8. TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Agriculture: Does he have confidence in New Zealand’s agricultural sector?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Absolutely.

Todd Muller: What actions is the Government taking to improve agricultural business confidence, which is at a 14-year low?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I’m proud to announce that New Zealand farmer confidence has risen for the second quarter in a row. I will acknowledge that farmer confidence did take a hit when we first came into Government, but what we have seen is that since more and more farmers started not attending National Party meetings, their confidence has lifted consistently, particularly in the last two quarters.

Todd Muller: What does he say, then, to the agribusiness sector survey which says the level of agriculture sentiment is minus 80 percent, the worst in 14 years?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I’m not quite sure how that member refers to sentiment. Can I say that for the second straight year, there has been an over $7 billion increase in gross exports, a 7 percent return. Dairy exports in May this year were up 15 percent. The measures of confidence across the sector are numerous. I acknowledge that there are some sectors that are less confident, the dairy sector in particular, and anyone who has been listening to the reports from Fonterra would be concerned, as are their farmers, and it would be fair to say that since 2011, 2017-18, Fonterra made many, many mistakes, both at governance and at senior management level. I have to—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Damien O’Connor will resume his seat. I mean, the member’s mike goes off when I stand up, so he should work out that it’s not worth going on afterwards.

Todd Muller: What assurances can he give New Zealanders that the wider economy will not be put at risk by the Government’s proposed introduction of a suite of new environmental policies, when confidence is already so low in a sector that represents 56 percent of this country’s exports?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: In 2015, a KPMG report said there are some hard things that need to be done. The previous National Government buried their head in the sand and did nothing. This Government is proud to stand up and say that in the area of animal welfare, in the areas of traceability and biosecurity, and in the areas of water management and soil protection we are moving to lift the standards and to protect the long-term opportunities for farmers and for this country’s economy. That Government did nothing, was not prepared to take the hard calls, and we are stepping up to the task.

Hon James Shaw: What reports has he seen of farmers and agribusinesses moving to both enhance value, increase profitability, and restore environmental integrity to New Zealand and its brand?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: At virtually every forum I go to around the country talking to farmers and farm leaders, they acknowledge that we need to move ahead in these areas of water quality, of animal welfare, and of traceability, because if we don’t, then the brand value that generations before us have built up in this country to sell quality exports will be undermined. The absence of any leadership and action from the previous National Government means that we have to do—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Todd Muller: Does he agree with the comments made by the Hon Shane Jones that many dairy farmers will find themselves struggling when they have to meet the new Government environmental requirements?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: What I do agree with the Minister the Hon Shane Jones on is that Fonterra shareholders are bitterly disappointed with the performance of their company. From 2011 until 2017, that company has failed—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat when I stand. The member will now start to address the question asked, not another random statement.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I agree with many things the Hon Shane Jones says, and his objective analysis of the dairy industry is one that I respect. He’s from a dairy farm; I’m from a dairy farm. We understand what the dairy farmers are concerned about. Yes, they want to know what the changing water standards will mean, but they’re more concerned with the performance of their own cooperative companies, and, because of the poor leadership—[Speaker gestures member to sit]

Question No. 9—Corrections

9. Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he stand by his statement, “We have never had to manage a prisoner like this before”, in relation to the alleged Christchurch gunman?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: Yes.

Hon David Bennett: What steps has the Minister taken to ensure the remaining four letters that the high-profile prisoner sent do not contain objectionable material?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister, the prisoner is now not allowed to have any mail received or heading out of the prison.

SPEAKER: No, can the member address—I mean, it might be that the answer is that, on behalf of the Minister, the Minister answering the question doesn’t know, but it was quite a different question that was asked. Repeat the question, Mr Bennett, please.

Hon David Bennett: What steps has the Minister taken to ensure the remaining four letters that the high-profile prisoner sent do not contain objectionable material?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister, I do not have an answer to that question.

Hon David Bennett: Did corrections record to whom the remaining four letters were sent by that high-profile prisoner?

Hon STUART NASH: I’m not aware of an answer to that question, but what I do know is that the letters sent by the prisoner were checked by corrections.

Hon David Bennett: Has corrections monitored all telephone calls, except those that are exempt, made by this high-profile prisoner?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister, my understanding is yes.

Hon David Bennett: Has corrections recorded all monitored calls made by this high-risk - profile prisoner?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister, I do not have an answer to that question.

Question No. 10—Infrastructure

10. JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First) to the Minister for Infrastructure: What recent announcements has he made regarding the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission - Te Waihanga?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister for Infrastructure): I will show due moderation, and I shall read their names out, the members of this entity, for fear of being sent to join the hīkoi. Yesterday, I announced, on behalf of the Government, the chair and the fellow board members of the independent Infrastructure Commission. It is to be led by Dr Alan Bollard, no stranger to this House, and assisted by Mr David Cochrane, a very senior lawyer from Simpson Grierson; Raveen Jaduram, chief executive of Watercare; Sue Tindal, an experienced chief financial officer and banker; Sarah Sinclair, partner at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts; and Stephen Selwood, a well-known advocate and leader of infrastructure thinking. I think it’s important that when all members are dealing with such a professional group, we don’t indulge in a passion of name-calling, and treat them respectfully all the time.

Jenny Marcroft: Why were these people chosen?

Hon SHANE JONES: Helping our country meet the infrastructure deficit is something that should not divide our parties. This body of people will bring together significant expertise in financial, legal, regulatory, and practical on-the-ground experience. It is likely that this organisation from time to time will provide analysis that these parliamentarians or other parliamentarians will not fully agree with, but such are the virtues of having an independent source of expert advice.

Jenny Marcroft: What has been the reaction to these announcements?

Hon SHANE JONES: A number of positive remarks from the other side of the House, and I want to acknowledge the other side of the House and the role that they have played in bringing the bill through the select committee, although I did think it was disappointing that the Opposition finance spokesperson launched an ad hominem attack on a leading Northland businessman, Wayne Brown, yesterday at the infrastructure conference. Such intemperate outbursts are unbecoming of parliamentary life.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Will he refer all consideration of the Northport infrastructure decisions to this independent commission before making any major investments on rail in Northland?

Hon SHANE JONES: Obviously, the Budget made an overdue allocation in terms of rail for New Zealand—$300 million of that pūtea announced in the Budget came from the Provincial Growth Fund. The legislation related to this body has not been passed. However, the trains are already on the move.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So that’s a no?

SPEAKER: I think that’s a fairly clear one, yes.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Transport: Can he rule out any further increases in transport taxes or charges under this Government?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: On behalf of the Minister, what I can say is that this Government has been very transparent about planned increases to road-user charges and fuel excise duties. The Government has announced an increase in petrol excise duty of 3.5c per litre to take effect from 30 September 2018 and further 3.5c increases in 2019 and 2020. Road-user charges will increase by an equivalent amount. All fuel excise duty and road-user charges contribute to building our transport system, and every responsible Government plans and lets the public know about how they’re going to fund investments in infrastructure.

Brett Hudson: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No, we’re not even up to that yet. I realise the member’s delivering an answer on behalf of another Minister, but she does have responsibility to have the question asked addressed. Have another go.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I cannot rule it out, because, as I said, we’ve been very transparent about—

SPEAKER: That’s all right; that’s clear. The member’s done it now.

Brett Hudson: Why is the Government exploring additional funding tools to raise money for transport projects?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: On behalf of the Minister, because we have a massive infrastructure deficit in this country. On this side of the House, we believe in investing in infrastructure that benefits New Zealand society and business. Over the three-year period of this National Land Transport Programme, we will invest over $8.5 billion on highways, local roads, safety improvements, and maintenance, including an increase to road policing—all of which languished and, actually, had a reduction in funding under that previous National Government.

Brett Hudson: Will the additional funding tools Treasury reports the Ministry of Transport is exploring add to the costs being faced by New Zealand motorists?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: That is a hypothetical question.

Brett Hudson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In the Budget documents released by Treasury, Treasury makes it clear that the Ministry of Transport is actively considering these things. It’s a fair question.

SPEAKER: I think all the member’s doing is disagreeing with an answer, which is not a point of order. I think he actually knows that, doesn’t he.

Brett Hudson: Why, when the Government increases to fuel taxes will bring in over $1 billion in new tax revenue, is he looking at new funding tools to raise even more money?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: On behalf of the Minister, we have in New Zealand an infrastructure deficit, and I’m sure that most people would agree with that. We have a need to invest in the quality and safety of our roads right across the country, and the previous Government failed to sufficiently invest in safety, failed to invest in the type of maintenance we needed for our local roads and our State highways, and failed to plan to increase rail and public transport, which is vitally important, and this Government is committed to investing in the future of transport in New Zealand.

Brett Hudson: Does he agree with the New Zealand Transport Agency that the National Land Transport Fund is nearly fully committed; and, if so, does that mean that there is no money available for new projects?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I would have to see that quote. It doesn’t sound correct to me.

Question No. 12—Women

12. DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie) to the Minister for Women: Why did she say yesterday that the equal pay legislation was in select committee when it was reported back on 13 May, and has been sitting on the Order Paper for three months?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): It was a mistake in the press release. The select committee has reported back. Minister Lees-Galloway and I are considering feedback on some aspects of the bill, and the officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Ministry for Women are working very hard on this.

Denise Lee: Is she disappointed it is taking so long to make progress on pay equity, or is it not a priority for her?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It absolutely is a priority for this Government. This legislation is a world first to ensure a pathway for pay equity for women. We want to ensure that we get it right. This work is parallel to approximately 80,000 women progressing pay equity claims—increases to the minimum wage, which predominantly benefit women. So we’re making good progress and we want to make sure the legislation is right.

Denise Lee: Why does she think women in New Zealand should have to wait until it fits the Government’s PR schedule for progress on the equal pay bill?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to—because the member’s a new member, I’ll allow her to rephrase that question to bring it into order.

Denise Lee: Does she think women in New Zealand should have to wait until it fits the Government’s PR schedule for progress on the equal pay bill?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I have no idea what the member’s referring to in terms of PR. What I can say is that the previous Government’s equal pay bill had its first reading three sitting days before the end of the last Parliament—that’s after nine years in power. This Government made it a priority and is continuing to make it a priority, and we certainly have not slowed down progress; we’ve accelerated progress on pay equity claims for over 80,000 women.

Denise Lee: Will the Equal Pay Amendment Bill receive its second reading on 19 September, Women’s Suffrage Day?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I have no idea.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What are the points of concern mentioned by the Leader of the House this afternoon that are holding up this bill’s progress?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: There are a number of areas that we have received feedback on from a range of submitters and stakeholders, and we’re working hard to ensure that we can get this right in the legislation.

Bills

Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move that the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. [Singing begins in the gallery]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Order! Order! I’m warning the people in the gallery to stop now. [Singing continues] All individuals in the gallery will face a one-year ban from the buildings. Please take all their names. And I’ll say that as someone with some experience of similar behaviour in 1977. [Members of the public were removed from the gallery]

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: You would never have done a thing like that, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The Hon Chris Hipkins, start again.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move, That the Education (School Donations Amendment) Bill be now read a second time.

This bill amends the Education Act of 1989 to support schools to access the Government’s extra funding in lieu of school donations scheme that we announced in this year’s Budget. [Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Could I just ask—the Minister’s struggling to even hear himself, let alone anyone else here. Thank you.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you, Madam Speaker. This bill reflects the Government’s commitment to breaking down the financial barriers to participation in education at all levels, and it delivers on our commitment to restore the right to a free school education for all New Zealand students.

The bill is actually very simple. It creates a new category of grants called discretionary grants. It enables the Minister to place conditions on the payment of this extra funding—primarily that boards would stop soliciting voluntary donations from parents, or voluntary payments from parents, and if these conditions are breached, then the bill allows that the funding can be recovered from the boards. These changes are necessary because they give participating schools a strong incentive to comply with the conditions of the extra funding in lieu of donations scheme, and it will ensure that parents are actually relieved of the pressure to pay voluntary school donations.

I’d like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of the bill, and to thank those who took the time to make submissions. One issue that arose very clearly during the submissions process was the place of school camps. I think everybody recognises that school camps are a very important part of the Kiwi tradition of schooling, and they are one that we want to see continue. School camps are a great tradition, but we also need to be very clear that under the current law, schools cannot legally charge for school camps that are part of the curriculum, and that’s an area that’s been hotly contested. But the current law is clear that if a camp is part of the delivery of the curriculum, a school can ask for a donation to cover the cost, but they cannot charge a fee for the school camp and they cannot exclude a student from the school camp if their parents don’t pay that donation. Now, there’s often been a lot of misunderstanding about that, but that’s the state of the current law.

We will be moving, in the committee of the whole House stage, to exempt school camps from the prohibition on asking for donations. So schools who accept the extra funding will still be able to ask for a school donation to cover the cost of a school camp. They will not be able to exclude a child whose parents do not pay that donation from the school camp. They could not do that now under the current situation. So if, at the moment, they ask parents to donate money to cover the cost of the camp, and those parents don’t pay, that child is still entitled to attend the school camp—that’s the status quo, and that will prevail even for those schools who opt in to the scheme.

I want to briefly cover the amendments that the Education and Workforce Committee have recommended. They recommended, by majority, some changes in response to the submissions. The first of the changes is a recommendation that any extra conditions attached to the payment of the discretionary grant, beyond the mandatory requirement not to ask for solicited payments, must be communicated by a Gazette notice. That means that everybody is clear and up front about what that is. I agree with that change.

The second recommendation is that the bill should clarify that a school board may receive a discretionary grant only if it is decided by resolution to do so. We were very clear when we announced the policy on Budget day that we expect boards to go and consult with their communities before making a decision as to whether to opt in to the scheme. This makes it very clear that it will be, ultimately, the board, by way of a formal resolution, that will make that decision.

I acknowledge that many of the submitters who went to the select committee submitted not on the bill itself but on the policy that the bill allows the Government to implement. In particular, there were submissions from decile 8, 9, and 10 schools who argued that they should be included in the eligibility for the policy. The bill itself allows them to be included in eligibility. And at any future point that a Government chooses to do so, it can change the eligibility criteria so that additional schools can be made eligible for the scheme. I want to be clear here that this is the first roll-out of this and we are open to extending that to other schools to those decile 8, 9, and 10 schools in the future. And, of course, we’ll be considering that actively as part of our work around ultimately deciding the future of the school decile system.

Too many schools are dependent on financial contributions from parents, and we know that for those low-decile schools—particularly those decile 1 and 2 schools—many of them receive very little by way of donations from parents, because those parents simply are unable to pay. When you stack up the donations that those low-decile schools get compared to those decile 8, 9, and 10 schools, it is a substantial difference in the overall revenue that those schools are able to generate through school donations. And that is one of the reasons why we targeted this policy to the decile 1 to 7 schools in the first instance.

So this bill will go a long way to allowing the Government to deliver on its commitment to reduce the financial pressure on parents to pay donations—of course, we’ll keep the policy that underpins this under review. But the bill itself is a very sound bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, I rise to speak on this piece of legislation. At the outset, I do want to say that National really does believe we need to do everything possible to ensure that we have better fairness and equity in our education system. We believe passionately that there are parents out there that struggle in terms of costs of living. But we also do believe that, unfortunately, this bill has been so shambolic that it’s going to actually lead to a lot more inequity for disadvantaged kids, and we do not believe in entrenching that type of system. It’s been a shocking and appalling process; actually, undemocratic—and I’m going to talk through that. And also it is very complicated and there are a whole lot of things that haven’t been determined, and I’m going to talk to that.

But I do want to take a moment just to acknowledge one thing that occurred before the Hon Chris Hipkins and I got up to speak. There were a group of young people here that were just taken out and banned from Parliament for a year. I accept that in this House we cannot have disorder. But a year-ban from Parliament for having their voice heard, I think is excessive—and I want to put that on the record.

So from my perspective the first—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I just remind the member that she is, actually, herself breaking the rules of the House by making comments about a ruling that the Speaker has made. So she—

Hon NIKKI KAYE: I take on board the comments.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: —will have to take the consequences of that.

Hon NIKKI KAYE: Thank you.

So from our perspective, the process has been atrocious. What we know is that this bill was rushed through in a truncated way, when the Government has had—and committed to this in the election campaign—a whole lot of time, and what we had was a truncated select committee process. As a result, we didn’t get the amount of schools being able to engage with this as we could. We raised this at the outset, but they barged on through with a truncated process that affects 800,000 students, but also more than a million parents.

The second issue that I want to raise around the process is, again, in my time at Parliament, I have never seen this before, but we had issues with access to information. And, again, this was referenced in the Minister’s speech, but we had real issues with the officials saying, “Well, actually, this bill is not necessarily about the detail of the donation scheme.” The reality is that if we had taken that approach, then 90 percent of the submissions would have been knocked out, because what people were raising is the approach that Labour has taken—which is breaking their promise to only provide this for decile 1 to 7 schools—is hugely inequitable given that you have disadvantaged children and families in many decile 8, 9 and 10 schools. So, again, this issue of process of access to information, I’ve never seen in my time in Parliament, and we had to go through a process to actually get decent information about donation schemes—and I was very disappointed with that.

The final issue regarding those issues of process is that we’re on a truncated time frame, we’ve had issues of access to information, and then thirdly, instead of the Minister putting very substantive amendments to—because they’ve realised they haven’t thought through the policy, and you’ve got a whole lot of people submitting about the future of school camps and what that means in terms of take up—the Education and Workforce Committee, which he could have done, he’s chosen to completely bypass the select committee. And I’ve said it before: on this particular issue, it’s very undemocratic and we completely disagree with it.

So the next issue is around that substantive point: how do we ensure that we have funding equity? How do we ensure, actually, in my view, that donations are voluntary? It is true that some parents have felt that this is more of a fee.

I do believe we could have strengthened the law to make it absolutely clear that a donation is voluntary, but we haven’t been able to do that. Instead, we’ve got a scheme whereby we’ve even had to go to the extent of defining “parent” in the law. Again, we have a whole lot of unanswered questions about what schools can and cannot charge for. Again, I would argue that that stems from the fact that at the very outset the Minister didn’t clearly define “donation”, and that was a fundamental flaw in terms of the approach that he has taken.

The other issue, as I say, that I’ve raised is we’ve now heard from the Minister that he’s going to exempt school camps. Again, it may be a generic Supplementary Order Paper. People have raised with me the issue of “How do you define a school camp?” An outdoor education trip, is that covered? What about music education? Is there a difference between certain types of music education and that being core curriculum or not? But these are really serious issues because, at the board level and the principal level, they’re trying to determine whether they take this $150 payment or whether they’re better to actually be able to ask parents for those costs.

The other thing that I would say is that the reason that National is opposing this is we had a very fundamental view around funding. We said we need to do an absolute review and look at some of the inequity that exists. We said we need to scrap the decile system and put more funding into schools to enable us to have equity so that no school loses. That is a very equitable process that enables schools to be able to deal with the social challenges that they’ve got. We know the decile system is crude. We know that it’s complex. We know that it’s not targeting those kids it needs. We’re now nearly two years in and the Government stalled that decision. So National’s view is that rather than going and spending $200 million and entrenching more inequity, we should have gone on with scrapping the decile system and provided more equitable funding into schools rather than doing this.

I think the other thing that I would absolutely raise is that 95 out of 139 submissions in this process raised this issue of eligibility. I’ve had principals upset, I’ve had parents upset, where they have pointed out to me the tens of thousands of dollars of disadvantage that they will be at because, basically, Chris Hipkins didn’t get the money in the Budget and he broke this promise to New Zealanders.

I think the other point that I’d raise that I’m really concerned about is there are a whole lot of parents out there that heard from Labour that we will scrap school donations. So their expectation about what they’re getting—and there’s a whole lot of people that are waking up to the fact that a third of the schools, potentially, in New Zealand are not going to have access to this. They’re upset. They feel really let down, not only because it’s hugely inequitable, but also because they feel that this is a broken promise.

So look, from National’s perspective we are upset with the process. We think it’s completely undemocratic. We think this is aligned with a number of other education policies whereby they’re not well thought through and they’re bypassing the public and principals. We also know that there is significant inequity in the system. From our perspective, we would have proceeded to scrap the decile system and provide more equitable funding. We also believe it would’ve been better to spend time making it absolutely clear that donations in New Zealand are voluntary, because we do want to enable schools to be able to do fundraisers if they want to be able to do that. And we would have taken that approach.

So we’re really, really gutted and disappointed to be in a situation where, at a principled level, we can’t support this bill because it’s complicated, it’s inequitable, and there are a whole lot of disadvantaged kids that are going to miss out. We’ve got upset board chairs and principals because they’re not clear about whether they should take up this policy, but also because it is another broken promise, alongside 37 other broken promises in education from this Government.

Hon JENNY SALESA (Associate Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. This is legislation that will alleviate the financial pressure on thousands and thousands of our New Zealand families, especially our parents. This is not a complicated issue. For us on this side of the House it is pretty simple and it is about ensuring that more of the cost pressures don’t continue to go on our parents, especially those parents who are from the lower decile parts of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Before I go on to the rest of my contribution I’d like to thank the Minister of Education, the Hon Chris Hipkins, for his leadership on this and many other issues in the education sector. I’d also like to thank the chair as well as the members of the Education and Workforce Committee for their careful consideration of all of the submissions to the select committee. I’d like to thank each and every person that submitted not only in writing but, as well, those who came to Parliament to submit in person.

One of those submissions was from the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZFP). One of the points that the Hon Nikki Kaye covered before was about equity in funding. The New Zealand Principals’ Federation covered this. They basically stated in their submission that schools at the lower end of our decile system have warmly welcomed this announcement of $150 per student in lieu of asking for donations. NZFP is one of the largest professional organisations of educators, representing over 2,000 principals from primary, from intermediate, as well as from area school principals. One of the things that they actually stated in their submission is that many of the schools within their membership report that they have actually already stopped asking for donations from parents within their schools. Why? Because parents keep telling them that they cannot afford to pay. Others within their school membership have asked for minimal donations, and they only get between 10 to 20 percent of donations, because these are the only numbers of parents that can actually afford to pay.

I’ll give you an example from Waterview Primary School, which has a submission that was also made to the select committee. This is a decile 3 primary school. They have 300 students. They say that they only ask for an $80 donation voluntarily from parents, which equates to about $24,000. However, when they budget annually, they only budget somewhere around about $9,000 because this is the only amount that they get per year.

However, with this legislation that is going to be put through, the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill, by the Minister of Education, this particular school will get a total of about $45,000 per year, and they say that this would allow them to actually employ one extra teacher, which is something that they actually need. I’ve been around so many of the schools in South Auckland from the area that I represent and they also tell me the same thing, that they themselves have stopped asking for donations from parents because many of our parents just do not pay, because they cannot afford to pay for this voluntarily. So, yes, it is said that it should be voluntary, but when you’re a parent that cannot afford to pay it, this is why these fees are no longer paid, and this is why we need this legislation.

We have gone through the right process. Yes, it has been a shorter than usual process, but that is because we want this legislation to be enacted and we want our parents to no longer have to pay this voluntary donation and we want our schools, especially those in the lower socio-economic areas of Aotearoa New Zealand, to be able to get this assistance from their Government. I strongly commend this bill to the House.

Dr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This side supported this bill in the first reading but now we have decided that we cannot support this bill from here on, the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. But before that, as the chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, I want to thank all members from all sides for their contribution. I also want to acknowledge all the officials for their work, but most importantly I want to thank all the submitters. We received 139 submissions on this bill, and it looks like it’s a big number, but if we look at the number of schools that we have, if we just look at schools that are from decile 1 to decile 7, schools that are going to receive this discretionary grant to compensate for not asking for school donations—a number of parents, a number of students—I think 139 is a very small number. It’s a small number, and I believe that there was an effect from a shorter, truncated select committee process. I believe that if the select committee process was for the full length, then we would have received more submissions on this legislation.

Why I say this is because I know that some people—they have resources, they understand when to submit, they know when the legislation is coming before the House, they’re prepared, but then I know that there will be some people that would have never submitted in their whole lifetime, and for them, if they ever submit, it will be like a one-time opportunity in their life. For them, they need that time, because after their routine work and other things that they have to do in their daily life, to get into this legislation, to understand what this legislation does, and to get over that hesitation of not having the experience of submitting before—it takes time. So truncating the process definitely impacts the number of submissions that we receive, and I think we should have received a lot more submissions on this legislation.

This legislation, when it was introduced, it sounded like it was a good thing, and that’s why we supported this legislation in the first reading. We wanted to see that this legislation goes through to the select committee, we wanted to hear from submitters, but now, based on what we heard in the select committee process, we have decided that we cannot support this legislation any more. If I summarise what submitters said in just two points, one point would be that using the decile system to decide who gets this grant to compensate for their school donation and who doesn’t is not a fair system. The second thing is about the amount of this discretionary grant per student. We understand it’s going to be $150 per student, but we know that in schools, it’s not like there is a random donations box and you walk in and you donate as much as you like. Schools actually have a fixed amount that they go out and ask for. They proactively communicate to parents at the start of the year. What they do is in that letter, sometimes, some schools also explain how this money is going to be helpful for their child, and they also go on to explain that if parents are not able to pay that amount in one go, then they can set up instalments with their school. So that makes parents feel that this is something mandatory, not voluntary. They feel that there is an obligation to pay this payment. As I said, schools have a set amount that they ask for. So it’s important for us to know what this amount is going to be and how it’s going to impact various schools.

In the select committee process, we did clarify that this is going to be an opt-in thing. It’s not like, automatically, all schools from decile 1 to decile 7 are going to get this grant to compensate for school donations that they will be told not to ask for. This will be a choice for schools that will be provided, and it looks like a lot of schools won’t actually like to opt in for this option, because there are a lot of schools that ask for more than $150 per child.

The second thing which we clarified in the select committee process was that if schools are not compliant, then some amount can be recovered, but that amount should not be more than the original grant that was given to that school. In the select committee process, what happened, after we had finished listening to all submitters, was the Minister informed the select committee that the Minister intends to introduce a Supplementary Order Paper in the committee of the whole House, and that is to do with exemptions. That actually makes me laugh, because the purpose of this bill is to reduce that burden that parents have because of that letter they receive from their child’s school to pay this donation, but then there will be some exemptions. So while schools can still be accessing the discretionary grant, they can go out and ask for donations. How does this make sense? It doesn’t make sense to me. It is very jumbled legislation, and with that Supplementary Order Paper, if that is introduced in the committee of the whole House, as the Minister indicated to the select committee, then it’s going to become even more jumbled, because it won’t be able to deliver anything that the Minister thinks this legislation should deliver. So it’s really important that we understand what the policy intent is and what we are trying to achieve through this. If the policy intent is that there is financial burden on parents because of school donations that they pay—which is not mandatory but voluntary, but sometimes parents feel that they should—then this legislation is not going to deliver that purpose. This legislation will not.

During the select committee process we received several submissions. There were some that were quite to the point and there were others that shared some of their own experience. One question that came from around 70 percent of submitters was why there is a cut-off at decile 7—so why is there a cut-off at decile 7? That means: why is this going to be applicable only to schools that are from deciles 1 to 7? Some submissions from decile 10 schools, before the select committee, said that parents of students that come to their school are not better off than parents of students that go to lower decile schools. So it’s unfair. And one submitter, Belmont Primary School, they finished their submission by saying “Equity, Minister, equity.” That is what submitters are asking for and that is why we have decided not to support this legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It’s an absolute pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to support this Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. Contrary to what we’ve heard from the Opposition, this is a very simple bill. It is bringing in a discretionary grant of $150 per student, or the option of doing so, and, in doing so, stopping the necessity to solicit voluntary donations. This will make a huge difference to those decile 1 to decile 7 schools, and we’ve heard from many of them, both in the select committee, and certainly anecdotally, just how appreciated it is. For those schools from less well-off communities that haven’t got the ability necessarily to raise so much outside capital, it takes the pressure off. It gives them some certainty of funding to do the things they want to do that they just can’t budget for, and we’ve heard, as the Hon Jenny Salesa said, that can be down to 10 percent or 20 percent of students actually paying these fees.

What a miserable lot the National Party are, because what’s the counterfactual here—what’s the counterfactual? Let’s do nothing. That’s what they were going to do. Let’s do nothing. Let’s just throw it to the wolves, have a voluntary donation out there, see what comes in. We are moving to support schools in our poorest communities. It’s just the same argument, actually: the running against these learning support coordinators. We’re putting 620 learning support coordinators in.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry—let’s just focus on the bill, shall we?

MARK PATTERSON: I will, Madam Speaker, but I guess how I was tying that in—

SPEAKER: I know, but you weren’t.

MARK PATTERSON: Yes, OK. I will take your guidance. We are doing something to help those schools, we’re doing something to help learners, and we’re certainly doing something to help those schools from lower decile communities. This is a $265 million injection into those schools over four years and it is targeted.

Of course, the other line the Opposition runs at times is that we are a tax and spend Government. Not true. We are a fiscally responsible Government. We are set to achieve our target of a debt to GDP ratio of under 20 percent by 2021. So we are not throwing cash around willy-nilly. We are targeting those communities most in need.

The other point that keeps getting raised is that this is a broken promise somehow because Chris Hipkins, who was the Labour Party spokesman for education in the election campaign, outlined the Labour Party’s policy. This is not the Labour Party’s policy. This is a coalition Government’s policy. That’s the fundamental thing that the Opposition, the National Party, do not understand, and they do not understand the reason they sit there is because the Labour Party work in a coalition and were prepared to work in a coalition in terms of those negotiations. What I do recall from those negotiations—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, again, negotiations aren’t in the bill. You can talk about the select committee. You can talk about the broken promises—that’s fine, because that’s relating, but actually the coalition documents are not in the bill.

MARK PATTERSON: OK, Madam Speaker. Our priorities are aligned and one of those priorities, of course, is to make sure that we get equitable outcomes for our children. We actually heard in the select committee process on a petition that was presented this week about how—it was on postgraduate education. One of the things that came through from one of the submitters was that almost a vast majority of the people in postgraduate education—students—come from decile 8 schools and above. So that ability to access funding has a flow-on effect right through even into postgraduate tertiary education.

I’d like to thank the officials that worked so hard on this bill. It was a simple bill. The select committee process itself—and it’s had some criticism that we have actually expanded this out or are going to expand this out through the committee of the whole House. Now we’ll have a provision coming in there for school camps. Well, that’s exactly what the select committee process is about. It’s about hearing submitters and when they do make relevant points that are good and perhaps weren’t as clearly articulated in the bill as they should have been, that is now something that we can effect and change for the better in the committee of the whole House stage. So to say that the process was flawed is wrong. It’s showing exactly the opposite. It’s showing the process working as it should. I’d commend the Minister as well on bringing this bill forward. He has been a reforming Minister and this is yet another one of the wave of reforms that we have coming through the Education and Workforce Committee.

In conclusion, this is a good bill. It does for our most disadvantaged people and communities—and, actually, 70 percent of our communities are going to be advantaged by this bill and the $150 per student. I go back again to the announcement of the Government and the Rt Hon Winston Peters talking about putting back the human face of capitalism. This is just another example of how this Government is going about addressing the inequalities that have been created in our society. So within this bill is just yet another component of the direction of travel with this Government and New Zealand First. I’m very pleased to commend it to the House.

DENISE LEE (National—Maungakiekie): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a confusing concoction of policies put together by this coalition Government, led out by the Labour Party, who did promise this. They have failed to deliver, and there are no two ways about that. It’s crystal clear. Whether it was policy or practice or party promise, we went back and back and back as select committee members trying to get a hold of where the clarity was on this particular policy. We had Ministry of Education officials come back to us probably about three times trying to clarify where the clarity was on policy, and we couldn’t find it. Neither could all the schools that submitted, which is why so many schools submitted on out-of-scope matters.

The Government has led out on this policy and they’ve kept out—they have kept out, in my electorate, one school. I’ve got one State school in my electorate that is above decile 8—one school. That one school, I happen to have been the chair of the board of that school back in my day. I remember with crystal clarity one particular gorgeous lady that I knew and I got to know her because I also ran, as well as being the board chair, a coffee group with mums. Her name was—and I’m going to change her name, actually, because I don’t think it’s fair to her—Milai. Milai used to come to me because I personified the school to her as the board chair, and she used to apologise to me every February when school started up, because she couldn’t pay the school donation. I used to remind her that it was not lawful. She had the capacity to not pay. It was a donation; it was not a fee. I remember her talking to me, crystal clear. She was in a Housing New Zealand home. Yes, the school at the time was decile 7; it’s now just gone above that, and she couldn’t pay the donation. She couldn’t pay for kids’ shoes.

There was a raft of things she struggled with, and as a committee of mums we’d get in behind her and we’d help her out. That is the type of person that this bill excludes and the Government—and, yes, all the coalition partners, thanks to the last speaker, Mark Patterson—they should be fronting up to the Milais of this world because you’re leaving her out. You’re leaving her out and the many other people who are in decile 8, 9, and 10 that don’t fit your stereotype, the Government’s stereotype, of everyone being really wealthy if you’re in deciles 8, 9, and 10. That’s not the reality and they should be very, very mindful of their broken promise. It was supposed to go to all schools; it has not done that.

Now I’m going to finish speaking with a quote from a fantastic principal who came to submit to us from a ropey school, and he said, “It will not save the greater problem of inequity because it’s not a positive step for all children and whānau.” Simple as that—you couldn’t get any more straightforward than that. “This will not solve the problem for all children and whānau. This plan is aligned with a blunt tool from the past”—and he’s referring to the decile system—“that only seems to perpetuate inequity and competition.” And that’s why we on this side of the House were looking to scrap the decile system and do something different. I’m not sure what the other side of the House are doing. I’ve never even seen it. “To me”—he said—“this announcement is tinkering. The Budget announcement seems to perpetuate a lack of collectivity providing a band-aid using a simplistic tone from the past with the hope of addressing the issue of inequity in our system.”

Well, it doesn’t. The Milais of this world deserve the Government to front up and tell her why she has to once again approach the school board chair and wonder why she should personally feel sorry for not being able to pay her school donation.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green): E Te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. What a day! I never thought that I would be sitting in this House and hearing the National Party extolling such socialist virtues as equity and complete free access to education in this country.

But before I get into the cut and thrust of what is actually contained in this Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill, I want to acknowledge not the ruling but the action which just occurred in Parliament, which was raised by the Hon Nikki Kaye, and to state that, pertaining to the education system and the young people that are included in it, young people, rangatahi, in this country currently do not have a straightforward means to express their view to the House of Representatives, let alone elect us. When they take to the streets to protest, they’re belittled and when they try to get the right to vote, they are patronised for a lack of life experience. So my question is: what are they to do if not to organise actions such as what we have just seen in the House today?

But turning to the bill, I stand today on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa in support, and I want to acknowledge the incredible mental gymnastics of the Opposition to pretzel their logic beyond the point of comprehension such that I think it’s kind of worthy of an Olympic medal. This legislation is not perfect, as has been raised by many speakers from the Opposition, but actually also it was a point that was acknowledged by the Minister of Education himself and the Associate Minister of Education. This bill isn’t perfect and I would like to say to members of the Opposition that frequently we don’t actually get perfect pieces of legislation—of law—in this place, but what we don’t typically do is throw the baby out with the bathwater. We do our darnedest to take a step forward and improve things and continue taking those steps forward.

I also want to touch on the point that’s been raised by a number of National Party speakers—that being that the decile system isn’t perfect. We know that the decile system isn’t perfect and of course it absolutely currently excludes the fact that there are a number of children who are deprived or from lower socio-economic backgrounds who do go to higher decile schools. But what I also want to say is that the way to fix the problems of the decile system was not to move towards the minority report - type social investment approach, which would have further, I think, moved towards stigmatising certain characteristics of certain children, certain rangatahi and tamariki, in our education system—the likes of those who are born and raised in single-parent households like myself, those like myself who were the first in their family to go to university, and those like myself who eventually signed their dropout forms from their high school.

But I want to note in particular that I am continuing to advocate for—and the Minister has it on record that the Greens want to see this extended to deciles 8 through 10, as I think all of us in this House want to. But this is an important step forward. And I’d also note, to the point raised by my colleague Mark Patterson of New Zealand First, on the point of also reinstating the postgraduate student allowance that I continue to keep that on the radar of the Minister of Education as well.

Aotearoa New Zealand prides itself on our education system. We are frequently, in overseas rankings, seen as having one of the best curriculums, for example, in the world and the performance of our students is somewhat rather incredible, given the resourcing that is available for it. But my old man used to always say that there is no such thing as a free education, unfortunately, in this country, despite that mythology that we continue to peddle, because it is, in fact, the case that regardless of whatever school you go to in this country, frequently kids need uniforms. Uniforms do not grow on trees—in the same way that the National Party frequently likes to say that money does not—nor do schoolbooks or stationery.

The important thing to recognise here, as has been raised by other speakers contributing to this debate but also by recent research, is that the inequities that start to show themselves and manifest in the early stages of someone’s education journey—right at the point of early childhood education through the compulsory system—continue to get bigger the further that somebody goes down that education journey. And if we can do something to increase access and affordability to the education system, starting with 70 percent of the country who presently are identified among the characteristics that we have, which are the decile system—notably to implement something like the social investment approach, even if it were to be implemented and not as flawed as I’ve already articulated—the problem would be that that would take a number of years to roll out to uproot the current system. Meanwhile, we would not be providing that quarter of a billion dollars, as mentioned by Mark Patterson, to provide support to those in deciles 1 to 7 schools. So I’m glad to hear that the National Party are talking about values such as universalism, because, interestingly, it’s actually a point that’s quite in opposition to the notion of social investment.

But, finally, I just want to touch on the point which has been raised by a number of speakers—most recently, Denise Lee who is the representative for Maungakiekie, which is the area that I grew up and went to school in—speaking about the fact that these donations are currently voluntary and that it is illegal to put it forward that they are somehow mandatory. The fact of the matter is for the experience of so many of these kids who are fronting up to the fact that their parents may or may not have paid that $150 donation, when you are a kid in school and your parent has not fronted up with that $150 donation and your school is refusing to release the school yearbook to you, as was the case when I was at school and my family, my household, was not able to put forward that donation, it feels a lot like coercive behaviour. It does not feel like it is a voluntary donation.

I understand that one of the many points that the Minister has tried to put forward in this legislation is to really re-emphasise the fact that these are voluntary donations and to really, really make it clear. And it’s an attempt to balance things out, because on the one side we want to make sure that schools are not worse off, but at the same time we want to make sure that these kids and their families are able to have access to the education system without unnecessary barriers that may mean the trade-off of things like healthy food on the table or school shoes or a raincoat, of all things, to get to school whatever the weather may be.

So just in summation to address the points that have been raised by the Opposition, which seem rather confused, I think that it’s important that we acknowledge where a step forward has been taken. I really, really want to ask those members of the National Party who presently oppose this legislation at its second reading, after we have heard from the Education and Workforce Committee where they themselves note that 95 out of 139 submitters want all schools to be eligible: why would you begrudge schools from deciles 1 to 7 that opportunity to be those who are recipients of the first step?

If the purpose is, ultimately, getting to a point of universalism, where all schools are able to get this, why would you begrudge those students and their families—70 percent of the schooling population are at deciles 1 to 7—being able to receive that first step? Why would you not accept that this is a starting point, and we move forward from this point in time?

The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is incredibly pleased to be supporting this move towards a more equitable schooling system, towards more equitable and fair and just access to our education system in this country. Kia ora.

JO HAYES (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill in its second reading.

I found it quite interesting when the Minister of Education said that this bill will stop schools from soliciting donations from parents. I can almost guarantee that that won’t happen. I think that even though the $150 will go to deciles 1 to 7 schools in this bill, it still will not stop schools in those deciles from actually soliciting further money from some of those parents, because it is not enough per head, per student, to cover all the costs that schools need to meet out of those donations.

Now, the Hon Nikki Kaye talked a little bit about outdoor education. My children went to a rural school and then they went to secondary school in Palmerston North and Feilding. Each time, every year, we were asked for donations. Every year, as parents, we went out fund-raising just to make sure that all the children of those respective schools were able to participate in areas of education activities that their parents could not afford to contribute in the donations side of the school. It has been one of those areas that I have been brought up with, that my children have been brought up with, and that they have now brought others up with as well.

It is an inequitable bill, this bill: only deciles 1 to 7, not deciles 8, 9, and 10. Why not all the deciles? Why did this Government change its mind over including all the deciles in this particular bill? Why, in fact, did not this Government look at wiping the decile system, as the National Party policy that we had prior to the 2017 election as one of our election policies would have done? All of these things were handed to that Government across the way on a platter, and they walked away from it. So that would have been more equitable, had the decile system been wiped out and everything been evened out.

One area that I haven’t heard spoken about in this bill today is there’s a clause that’s been added by the Minister, who will have wide discretion to cut payments for schools if he thinks they haven’t complied with the conditions of the scheme. One of the things that I haven’t seen in this bill is what the monitoring process that this Minister is going to do to actually see whether or not the school has been compliant—there has been no detail around that monitoring system, and that is actually very unfair, because every organisation that I’ve worked with and that I know of is monitored for their funding actually have some sort of audit and monitoring system as part and parcel of their contract.

In this particular bill, there is no detail around how the Minister’s discretionary processes will be enacted within this bill to actually take funding off those schools, and if he or she does that, then how will that school recover from that loss of donation? How will they recover? So there’s that big gap around how is the Minister going to use his discretionary powers and how is it monitored. Where is the detail?

Anyway, without any further ado, this is just one of the key areas that I looked at in this bill that has big, gaping gaps in it and that needs to be addressed. I think that the process that this Government has gone through to bring this bill to a second reading has been shoddy and has actually disrespected all the schools of New Zealand. I do not support this bill.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very privileged to take a call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.

The message from the Opposition is clear—if it’s not good enough, then better to not do anything at all—and that is something that we’ve seen from them very much over the last nine years. There’s been nine years of neglect and, basically, they’re continuing that narrative: “Let’s just do nothing. It wasn’t bad enough.” So I am proud to be part of a Government that is tackling the big, long-term challenges facing this country, and one of the things that we are doing here, as we have heard, is that kids have missed opportunities for education and we are tackling that.

What this bill does is it actually acknowledges that child wellbeing and the ability to become the best you can be and to get the best out of life is linked to educational outcomes in life. So with this bill, families of nearly half a million children at 1,700 schools will benefit from no longer having to pay school donations. So why on earth anybody would vote against such a bill is an absolute mystery to me. This bill is supporting the implementation of the school donations—$150 per student. There are some conditions attached to it, with one of them being that schools shouldn’t lie, but we are not assuming schools will do that.

The Opposition seem to think that schools are dishonest and that boards will lie to try to get the funding and still get donations—well, no. We believe that people will do the right thing because this is actually a really good opportunity for kids and parents to get ahead in education.

Just very quickly on our select committee process: we received 138 submissions on this bill and we heard four oral submissions, and a lot of those submissions related to the scope of the voluntary payments from parents that boards would be prevented from requesting under this bill. We’ve heard from the Minister of Education already that one of those was about camp payments, and that will be addressed in the next stage, so I won’t talk about anything more.

I do want to mention something that NZEI talked to us about. They spoke about the right to free education. They spoke about the very creative idea, they believe, that sits behind this particular bill. They also said that the levies had become an intolerable burden and an embarrassment, and when it comes to an embarrassment, it is about the poor children that are missing out because the parents can’t afford the donations, and then they are excluded—and that was a very good submission from Emma Pearce. Emma Pearce said that “This is a sensible solution to the problem of families not being able to afford the donation, or some families paying in, and others don’t, and the child being singled out or excluded from additional activities if their parents haven’t paid the Donation.” Now, we don’t believe that is correct—we don’t believe that people should be denied the opportunity to participate. This bill is working on that equality and trying to bring many more opportunities together.

So, once again, we are building a New Zealand that we all can be proud of. We know that there is a lot to do. We know it can’t all be fixed overnight, but we’ve started to address those neglected problems of the past, and we’re getting on with the job under the brilliant leadership, of course, of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I missed the early speeches in this debate as I was attending a meeting elsewhere, but I arrived as Mr Patterson from New Zealand First was telling the House that this is a good bill. Well, no, it could have been a good bill, but, yet again, here’s an example of a Government that has mucked everything up. Rather, what we have here is a bill that reflects a Government that breaks its promises. It’s a bill that reflects a Government that doesn’t do its homework, that doesn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s, and which, time after time, lets down not only those who voted for them, assuming they would keep their promises, but, instead, let’s—in this case—down all New Zealand families with school-age children.

Well, Ms Lubeck has just, effectively, argued in the House that a poor bill is better than no bill. Well, no, a poor bill is a poor bill. No wonder people are suggesting that Labour’s election campaign slogan next year should be “It’s the thought that counts”, because here is another example of a ludicrous sort of expression of good intentions without the ability to deliver on the promises.

Well, National speakers who have spoken before me in this debate have made the point that we think it is wrong and inequitable to exclude deciles 8 to 10 schools from the donations scheme, and in part that is because the decile scheme is a blunt and, in this particular context, sometimes quite unfair mechanism. Chlöe Swarbrick, when she spoke a few moments ago, acknowledged that point, but was unconvincing in her rejection of the National Party’s alternative proposal, because for Ms Swarbrick to argue that adopting a fairer model risks stigmatising some children and their families is not a given, as she has suggested, and, worse, it leaves them at a distinct disadvantage under this bill—that’s just wrong.

I just want to conclude by making the point that the National Party is also very concerned about the truncated select committee process that was undertaken, because this is a bill that, in just the 13-day period that it was open for submissions, received 139 submissions, which suggests that there was huge public interest and considerable anxiety and unrest, particularly in our school communities around the country. They should have been given the opportunity to submit in a normal process. After all, the Minister has got plenty of time to include whatever decisions arise from this in next year’s operational funding decisions. But, no, they’ve rushed through with their half-hearted, poorly conceived idea. This is an unfair bill, it’s a poor bill, and it’s very disappointing that yet again the Government has mucked things up.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s kind of interesting, really, that in the speeches this afternoon from the National Party they’ve all focused on the deciles 8 to 10 schools, and there’s been very little talk about the rest of the schools in the country from deciles 1 to 7.

Last Monday night, I visited one of my schools and sat down with the board of trustees and the principal. They told me about the very high percentage of at-risk children from vulnerable families at their school, who had suffered enormously under the policies and actions of the previous Government. They told me that this Government’s school donations policy, in this bill that’s going through Parliament to provide the regulatory framework for that, is going to make a huge, huge difference for their school because more than half of the families at the school could not afford the school donation. The school never put those parents under pressure and, as a result, really struggled. This policy and the legislation that we’re debating today are going to make an enormous difference to so many schools around the country.

Gosh, I listened to what the Minister said. He has not ruled out extending this legislation to deciles 8 to 10, but can anybody in this House get up this afternoon and say that we should not have prioritised the deciles 1 to 7 schools. I mean, that’s really the guts of it, and the other points that are made around “shambolic process” and “hastening things through” and changes that are made at select committee—goodness gracious, often those comments were made, largely, from first-term members who, clearly, haven’t sat on that many select committees, which is where you do the work to make sure that you bring back the best bill possible to the House. And that is our job. That’s our job—all of us—to make sure that the bill that comes back to this House is in the best possible shape, and that’s what this bill is, even though the National Party members didn’t support it.

The Minister and the Associate Minister have acknowledged that it’s not the most perfect that it could be, but it’s dealing with one of the long-term issues that we have in this country—and, boy, did we have a lot of issues, particularly in the education sector: huge infrastructure deficits with school buildings; the high cost of the donations that families just simply cannot afford; the cost of NCEA. The vocational reforms that this Government is putting forward in less than two years are enormous reforms that are needed for our education sector, looking forward 30 years, not just the three-year cycle, which is what that Government when they were in Government always did.

This legislation is an example of how we cannot fix all of the problems at once, but this is an enormously important step. The amendments that have been made—and we are going to be discussing one of them in the committee of the whole House stage—all of the questions around how that’s going to work can be put to the Minister then. As my school told me on Monday night, they are enormously grateful. They, of course, want more, and of course learning support is the other area that every single school that you go into talks about—learning support for children with special needs. We’re making huge strides in that. This is a Government, a reformist Government, that’s looking to the long term and is taking a balanced approach. I commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I’m concerned that people listening to this debate, particularly parents, could become quite confused about their current right to a free education in New Zealand, because, if we are to believe the Government speakers this afternoon, somehow this bill is resolving for parents a fact which is that they have had to pay school donations. So I just want to read from the Education Act 1989, section 3, which is explicit about the existing right to free education: “Except as provided in this Act, every person who is not an international student is entitled to free enrolment and free education at any State school during the period beginning on the person’s fifth birthday and ending on 1 January after the person’s 19th birthday.”

We already have a right to free education in this country, and it is a right that has been maintained by Governments of both colours in this House. What we do have is a real problem—so all this bill is is a band-aid, because the underlying problem we have with the school funding system in New Zealand is a decile system that has become inequitable and that does not target funding at the children who are most vulnerable and who most need support.

So what should we do about it, Madam Speaker? Well, the National Government had acted. The National Government, in 2017, made a Cabinet decision—it’s minuted—that said that we would rescind the decile system and that we would replace it with a fairer, more targeted decile system that would ensure that no school or service would lose funding. That was a brave, reforming decision because that was about getting to the underlying issue, which is to ensure that those children who have greater need get greater funding when they go to school.

And what has this Government done, this allegedly reforming Government that Clare Curran refers to? What did they do? They rescinded that decision, and so, instead of getting to the root of the problem, they will put in place a mere band-aid which is a mess, which got hurried through, on which there couldn’t be full submissions, on which we couldn’t get full advice at the committee—officials were constrained by the Minister in what they were and weren’t allowed to tell us—and which creates all sorts of inequities and problems over what can be charged for, what can’t be, what can be policed, what can’t be. This is not a great step forward; it’s a mere band-aid, and National will do much, much better when we are sitting on those benches.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): I am absolutely delighted to have the last call in the second reading of the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. I, sadly, didn’t get the opportunity to listen to all of the speeches here, because I, like Mr Macindoe, had another meeting that I had to go to. But I’m actually sad and a little bit pleased, because what I have heard from the other side wasn’t quite correct. I’m actually having to stop as I say that because I’m having to think about polite language to use that is in line with what I can use in this House.

First of all, I’d like to say that I’m a little bit perturbed that we’ve got the National Party sitting on the other side of the House who are constantly negative towards this Government. They have no new ideas—no new ideas—and this is absolutely one of those examples of that. They are like the kids that won’t go out and play four square because they weren’t the ones that came up with the idea first.

They are absolutely and totally against this bill because they didn’t come up with that idea first. And to say that this is a band-aid? I challenge that member Nicola Willis to go and talk to the principals in deciles 1 to 7 schools what they are making of this bill. And I challenge that speaker to go and say to them that this is a band-aid.

I will also tell the previous speaker that their decision to look at the funding review was widely criticised throughout the sector, because there wasn’t enough detail in that review. That is the reason why that was stopped in its tracks. We are looking at that at this present point in time to find a better way through. Just replacing one blunt instrument with another is simply not good enough.

This might be a simple bill, but it will have huge positive implications for the schooling sector. Yes, we are prioritising deciles 1 to 7 schools, but, as the Minister said in his speech, this does not prevent deciles 8 to 10 schools from being eligible for the scheme in the future. We can’t solve all the issues that happened over those nine years—we cannot solve all of those issues in one go—but this is an extremely good start and I am proud to be part of the team that is putting this through.

This bill is another example of this Government tackling the big long-term issues in this country, and school funding is one of those issues. We are making education cheaper for our families not only by allowing schools to apply for this particular grant but also by getting rid of things like the NCEA fees.

I was really concerned when I heard the member Jo Hayes questioning the integrity of school principals and boards of trustees. I found that one of the most shocking things that I have heard in this House—by saying that schools would still be doing this and that they would, effectively, be lying when they would say that they weren’t asking for school donations. How frustrating for school principals when you get a member from the other side who stands up and says, “Oh, well, they don’t have auditing systems; they won’t have an audit for this. This hasn’t been thought through.” Does she not realise that schools have extensive audits every single year?

Marja Lubeck: No idea.

JAN TINETTI: No idea. And already, recovery systems are in place when there have been overpayments or different payments in the school system. That was embarrassing, absolutely embarrassing, and shameful.

This, as I’ve said, is a very, very simple bill. We heard from the submitters—we only had a few that came in, but we had a number that made submissions. I really enjoyed reading through all of those submissions. They highlighted the complexities in school funding, and if some of those members on the other side had actually taken the time to read through them, they might have a better understanding of the school funding system. And I really thank those submitters for helping this House understand how complex school funding actually is.

This bill will make a difference to those deciles 1 to 7 schools. I know this. I know that as a school principal, I would have been really excited. I would have been excited because it would have meant a difference, and $30,000 to my school funding.

Marja Lubeck: How much?

JAN TINETTI: $30,000. That makes a big difference to young people in that school. It makes a big difference to parents who don’t have the ability to be able to afford—

Nicola Willis: What about the refugees at decile 8 schools in my area—what about them? They get nothing.

JAN TINETTI: Now, I can hear this noise coming from the other side of the House, talking about deciles 8 to 10 schools. Let’s talk about that for a moment. Those deciles 8 to 10 schools—as the Minister said, that doesn’t stop them being eligible for this in the future.

But let me tell you about one decile 10 school that I went to two weeks ago—actually, it was with the member here Dr Duncan Webb, in Christchurch—which charges $350 for their donations every year, and was it 80 percent that they get in?

Dr Duncan Webb: At least 80.

JAN TINETTI: At least 80 percent. She said, “I wouldn’t even look at this bill. It’s not something that I would look at.”

Angie Warren-Clark: Or need.

JAN TINETTI: Or need. But in the future, there might be that opportunity there for her to actually have that, because that’s what the Minister has said.

We did recommend changes in select committee. They have been highlighted by the Minister, so I don’t need to talk about those here. But I will finish up by saying that this is a wonderful step towards free education—a really truly free education system in this country, one that I am really proud of and one that will make a difference to a large number of families, but, more importantly, a large number of students in this country. I commend this bill to the House.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Education and Workforce Committee by majority be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 7 August.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Minister of Conservation): Madam Speaker, thank you. I was saying previously that the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill will ensure that 57 species of native fish, including eels, will have the same level of protection on public conservation land as our birds, insects, geckos, and other wildlife. So it will end that double standard that currently applies where native fish don’t have any protection.

The Environment Committee has recommended that there be some changes here in terms of the authorisation that the Director-General of Conservation can give to go fishing on conservation land, where the bed of a stream or river is conservation land. The committee has recommended that there be a one-year transition period to ensure that there are quite careful decisions on what fishing authorisations are to be issued, and to ensure that this year’s whitebait season isn’t affected. And I also welcome the select committee’s addition to the bill of an ability for the director-general to authorise fishing not just by one person but to authorise it generally by Gazette notice. I’d also note that the number of rivers and streams where the bed is conservation land is a small proportion of the area where whitebait is fished, so I think some of the concerns that we have heard from the Opposition are somewhat erroneous.

I think the minority view that is in the select committee’s report back also indicates some confusion about the relationship between this bill and the consultation that the Department of Conservation is doing on whitebait management. It started that work last year, and it happened earlier this year as well. So the relationship is quite simple. The bill provides a tool box for managing freshwater fisheries. How that tool box is used needs to be decided in consultation with tangata whenua and with stakeholders and the wider public. There will be a discussion document on this released for public comment later this year, and then the bill will ensure, once it becomes law, that whatever comes out of that consultation and review process will be able to be implemented. Without this bill and the changes that it enables to the freshwater fish regulations, that would not be possible.

There were a large number of submissions from Fish & Game licence holders. They were concerned that the bill would affect the ability of Fish & Game councils to manage sports fisheries, such as trout and salmon, and so the committee has recommended that clause 5(3) be deleted. Now, that clause was all about ensuring that there was certainty if there was any conflict between provisions in a sports fisheries management plan and one for native fish, but the deletion of that clause has been supported by the New Zealand Fish & Game Council.

But the key issue is that for native fish to thrive—for any fish to thrive, whether they’re native or sports fish—they need suitable habitat. It’s the loss of spawning areas, the barriers to fish movement up and down streams, the sediment pollution, and the loss of habitats such as wetlands that have pushed our native fish towards the brink of extinction. The Government is tackling those issues through the freshwater reform, but this bill is also really important in the way that it goes about protecting spawning sites, because those spawning sites need to be protected if we are to have productive fisheries. But the existing law was unworkable. The committee has recommended some changes there, in that for spawning sites to be protected, they actually need to be identified and declared as spawning areas so that people know where they are, and before any of the offence provisions could come into play.

The hundreds of submissions that the select committee received on the bill highlight the passion that New Zealanders have for our native species, for native freshwater fish, and the overwhelming public support for protecting them and improving their management. The provisions in the Conservation Act around native fish are old, they’re incomplete, and in many cases they’re poorly drafted. This bill as reported back and when enacted will provide me, as Minister, and the department with a complete tool box for starting to address the serious issues facing our native fish. I want to thank submitters for their views, the Environment Committee, and the departmental officials for their work, and I look forward to a future in which every New Zealander can visit their local stream to either feed a tame eel, watch a shoal of īnanga, or can eat a whitebait fritter without worrying that they are eating threatened native fish. Thank you.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise with anticipation and expectation, a desire to inject clarity into this argument as to the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill, because what I’ve heard in the media from Government members and throughout select committee is that it’s clear that Government members have not read the fine print, have not read the bill, or are simply applying a very wide, mischievous approach to the statutory interpretation of that bill.

Before I get to the detail of that, I want to talk about the process—an extraordinary select committee process that was fraught. Quite frankly, officials came into the Environment Committee and didn’t know whether they were Arthur or Martha. They did not understand exactly the purpose of the bill and what the bill was required to do. It was introduced to this House with very little consultation. It was introduced to this House as a minor and technical amendment, and what ensued was anything but. It was an absolute shemozzle, and what ensued from that were recreational fishers, were Māori groups, were whitebaiters who submitted, and, quite frankly, their fears have been confirmed.

Look, we supported this bill. The National Party supported this bill at first reading. We had a real, genuine desire to be collaborative with this bill and this process and have a desire to add protections with respect to our indigenous fish. We were the party that increased funding to clean up our rivers and wetlands, from $3 million to $30 million. We have a desire to invest in our indigenous freshwater fish, but, quite frankly, the wide-reaching ramifications of this bill run roughshod over recreation and private landowner rights. Hence, we are not prepared to support it. I will say, however, that it was National Party pressure that came to the aid of sports recreational fishers. We were able to put pressure on the Government to change clause 5 and make it clear that with respect to the hierarchy of plans between freshwater fish, indigenous fish, and sports fish, a freshwater indigenous plan would null and void a sports fish plan. It was through our pressure that we were able to make those changes in select committee, which obviously keeps Fish & Game and anglers very happy.

But whitebaiters and private landowners ought to be very, very concerned. This bill does primarily two things, and it’s there in black and white in new section 26ZHB, inserted by clause 7. It’s in black and white. The first thing that it does with respect to the take of indigenous fish on conservation land is it renders it illegal unless there is specific authorisation. For rivers and streams and water bodies that are outside the conservation estate, you may take fish provided it is for food and in accordance with regulation. It is through that regulation that we believe this Minister is trying to ban the practice of whitebaiting, and that is proven by the inclusion of the transitional clauses that give a one-year grace period to whitebaiters until another management plan and pseudo-consultation process is conducted. That is the method and manner of this Government: to run contiguous consultation processes to confuse the public as to a line of sight of what this Government actually intends. It’s designed to fatigue people and stakeholders that are interested in the management of indigenous freshwater fish.

Whitebaiting is a favourite Kiwi pastime. It is a tradition. In some cases, it provides a livelihood to people, and these people already sign up to sometimes voluntary but pragmatic measures to sustain the whitebait population. I have spoken to many, many whitebaiters over the course of this bill and none of them want to eat the species to extinction. They want to provide a legacy for their children so that they can continue to recreate on the conservation estate and elsewhere and collect a feed of fish for their table. Now, Mr Duncan Webb should agree with that, because I heard that he wants to eat kiwi. Now, I wouldn’t want to go that far, but sustainable management of our indigenous fish can be done in balance with taking a feed. And what about the money that goes into these stands, people investing into these stands—

Maureen Pugh: Tens of thousands.

SARAH DOWIE: —to undertake whitebaiting? “Tens of thousands.”, my colleague Maureen Pugh from the West Coast says. What is going to happen with these people’s livelihoods when this ban comes into place? Now, the Minister has been quite tricky, in my opinion. She’s been heard quoting that “Oh, maybe we will, maybe we won’t; it depends what comes out of another consultation process.” She talks about moratoriums. Well, “moratorium” means ban, and that’s what she’s after. Her intentions have been exposed by this party. We need to make sure that we mobilise and hear from our hunter-gatherers in our regions who still go out and catch a feed for the table.

The other thing that this bill does is it talks about spawning sites, and gives the director-general, on the grounds of a reasonable belief, the ability to declare a spawning site on private property. Now, this has not been addressed by officials as to the ramifications of what this means. There is no process for the declaration of a spawning site; it is simply arbitrary and based on a reasonable belief. It has not been addressed as to how department officials will go about this. There has been very little research and acknowledgment and monitoring as to what a good spawning site is. It is unclear as to whether a spawning site will override any existing consents or concessions as to activity on, for example, a river bed. This is a Government that says that there are infrastructure problems. Well, you need gravel extraction to handle infrastructure issues. So if we’re going to shut down all of our gravel extraction then there’s going to be problems and that will cost people time and money. I certainly hope that it doesn’t turn into another area where people lose their private property land rights because of an officious little Department of Conservation officer that comes onto private property and makes a claim that is unfounded and not based on science.

This is the party that believes in pragmatic conservation. We believe that it can be balanced; use can be balanced with conservation if it is based on good science. That is simply what we need—some decent monitoring with regards to whitebait populations, in particular, and some decent monitoring as to catch. The people who whitebait need to be listened to, and private land owners need to be listened to. It is quite clear that National is the champion of recreation and recreational activities. We will continue to champion that as we move through this second and the third reading. For that reason we simply oppose this so-called minor and technical bill that is anything but.

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s sometimes said that in these days of social media we’re into an age of “post-truth politics” where people ignore facts, try to go direct to the public via social media and think that they’ll believe the tripe that’s served up to them. Self-praise doesn’t make things true. I read the National Party minority view on this and the same phrases were trotted out that we heard from the last speaker, Sarah Dowie, and I’m going to quote from it: “The National Party is the champion of recreation and sports fishing”. When the National Party was in power they threatened the Fish & Game Council and said they couldn’t have the increase to their fees that they wanted for habitat protection, because they were advocating for environmental protection. That was the Hon Kate Wilkinson; it was exposed by the Fish & Game Council at the time. This is the National Party that is the “champion of recreation and sports fishing”.

Then they claimed credit for the change in the bill that went to the Environment Committee, which was the deletion of clause 5(3), which was a provision in the bill, as it went to the select committee, that said in the event of a conflict between a plan relating to native fish and a plan relating to sports fish, the native fish plan would prevail. Well, that was actually something that many parties spoke to in the first reading, including me, who said that we needed to fix that at select committee; it has been, by the Government, which includes the Greens, New Zealand First, and the Labour Party. Of course, it’s a change that, I suspect, National does agree with but, of course, they’re not voting for the bill. So to claim credit for that, again, is ridiculous.

The other thing I would say to the National Party that claims to be the “champion of recreation and sports fishing”: there’s not much recreation to be had when there’s no whitebait. That’s the point of the bill. We’ve got to the point in New Zealand where 70 percent of our freshwater species are classified either as “threatened” or “at risk”. Now, there’s 22 species “threatened” and 17 are “at risk”. That’s a total of 37 out of our 57 species. Some of those species, indeed, most of them, are found nowhere else in the world. What’s the answer, in the National Party viewpoint of that? Private property rights. They are so absurd in their articulation of private property rights that they think the private property right of a landowner includes the right to make whitebait extinct. That’s what they’re saying; they are just barking mad when it comes to this view of private property rights. A private property right doesn’t include—they’ve got this view that somehow rural private property rights are different. No one in a city can change their land use from a residence to a 20-storey commercial building or a tannery. We can’t do that. Our private property right does not include the right to change land use. But, no, we just heard from the National Party that if you own a bit of land that’s an estuarine piece of land your property right includes the right to stop it being the margin of an estuarine area, and turn it into a piece of pasture and kill off all the whitebait. That’s, effectively, what they’ve said there, because they think that it’s a property right to change the nature of a piece of land which is currently habitat for threatened fish species, and without any intervention be able to say, “My land is my castle and I’m going to turn this into something different and kill all the whitebait”. That’s what Sarah Dowie just said is their position in respect of private property rights.

Self-praise does not make it true, and for them to say that they’re the champion of recreation and sports fisheries—then they say they’re “The defender of private property rights”. I’m a defender of private property rights too. I believe in the importance of private property rights, I just don’t think the private property right that attaches to owning a piece of property includes the right to change its land use and to kill off habitat. If that was the case—taking that theory to its extreme—if the last tuatara was on a piece of private land they would say that the private property owner could actually just change that, cover over the bit of habitat where the last tuatara was and make it extinct. Private property rights have never been that extensive in New Zealand. They never will be and they never should be, unless you get the National Party, which is the “champion of recreation and sports fishing”, changing the law to say that a private property right extends to the right of doing away with the protection of habitat.

Now, they say, “While it supports protection of indigenous freshwater fish, any declarations as to spawning areas on private property need to go through a just process.” Well, I actually agree with that. But the idea that you have to have some long convoluted process before some sensible person at the Department of Conservation (DOC) can conclude that the water was already up to half waders or gumboots and those little fish that were swimming around, most people call them whitebait. And, by the way, they look like the whitebait that was in someone’s bucket that’s just put a net over. But that’s not good enough for the National Party. They want some process that goes to the Court of Appeal before they can determine that it’s not the right of a private property owner to change a habitat which already exists on that property.

Hon Member: What a leftie.

Hon DAVID PARKER: What’s that? Half a sentence from the other side, that’s typical of that member. He’ll be able to double it one day but at that point it still won’t be worth listening to.

I don’t think there’s much more to be said. This is a good bill. It is a good bill; it’s a necessary bill, because we do need to do more to protect our whitebait habitat. I think just about every New Zealander knows that there aren’t nearly as many whitebait as there used to be when I was younger. [Interruption] That’s true.

You know, the only place there’s really good stocks of whitebait left are really where it’s coming out close to the DOC estate. On the West Coast, we’ve got some areas where the catchments are pretty much unmodified and we’ve got good whitebait in some of those areas, but you go to most of the parts of the East Coast, where most of the wetlands have already been filled in, and you’ve got problems. You know, the last report in New Zealand on environment Aotearoa, which came out last year, said that 100 years ago, New Zealand lost 90 percent of our wetlands, and that was when we cleared all of our land for farming—90 percent, and that includes national parks. We lost 90 percent of New Zealand’s wetlands about 100 years ago. Do you know in the last decade in New Zealand, we lost 5 percent of the last 10 percent—we lost one-twentieth of what was left. That’s what’s happening. We’re losing this habitat, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve got to the point where more than half of our indigenous fish species are either threatened or at risk, and that’s one of the reasons why whitebait fisheries are in decline. So I thank the Minister of Conservation for bringing this forward rather than doing as the prior Government did, which was actually to oversee the decline of the whitebait fishery.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister who has resumed his seat is going to need to do an awful lot better than that if he wants to sell his water reform package in a couple of weeks’ time, because if that was a warm-up speech for a kind of defence that he is going to mount on that kind of policy and it applies to this tricky, slippery whitebait-banning piece of legislation, he’s going to have to do an awful lot better.

At first reading, this bill was presented to the House as an innocuous indigenous fishes’ protection piece of legislation. It was delivered to the House as a technical, minor piece of legislation, a piece of legislation that was designed to be protecting and to ensure enhancement of a fishery. When we got it to the Environment Committee—having been aware of the legal opinion that Fish & Game had had prepared by none other than that legal giant Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who had expressed, in his opinion, great concerns about the bill—it became immediately obvious that the bill as introduced, as presented to this Parliament, actually was something quite different. The officials were completely at sixes and sevens in terms of their understanding of the purpose of the bill. They were completely unsure about the direction that the Minister of Conversation was trying to take, or, indeed, what was the required outcome from the bill. It was only after lengthy, sustained, and persistent questioning by National Party members on the select committee that the true purpose of this bill began to emerge, and it was like pulling teeth to try and find out what it was all about. We went at them week after week to try and get clear, simple answers.

What we found was that, actually, within this bill was camouflaged intent, camouflaged language, camouflaged purpose, and absolutely a camouflaged attack on, really, the whitebait fishing that has been so much of the tradition of the New Zealand way of life. What this bill seeks to do—and I listened to the Minister completing her speech this afternoon, and she again repeated that this is a piece of legislation designed to create a tool box, to give a complete tool box to her and the conservation department. What we found out is that “a complete tool box” is a euphemism for “a ban”—a complete ban—and that is not what was put to us at first reading.

This is a Government that at one stage—I remember back to the Speech from the Throne, where the Speech from the Throne proclaimed that this was going to be the most open, transparent, and honest Government that New Zealand had ever seen. Actually, this bill is an indictment upon that pledge, because nothing could be more open or transparent or honest than a bill that purports to do one thing but actually has an intent and a desire and an objective to do something completely opposite. It’s Orwellian in its definition, this bill.

So we have a bill on the face of it that appears to be some kind of conservation measure but that actually is designed to achieve a political purpose that is not what was put to this House at first reading, and it was only through diligent, careful, persistent questioning at select committee that we were able to get to the bottom of it. I want to commend the work that my colleague Sarah Dowie has done on this, because she’s been able to delve into the detail of this bill and find, really, what the Minister’s true intent is.

So we had a disguised purpose, a hidden meaning, and what is, essentially, the use of a piece of Government legislation to pursue what is a political, ideological debate around the rights of people whitebait fishing. Actually, what this piece of legislation does is ensure that the Minister will have a tool box that enables her to ban whitebait fishing when she wants to. Previous comments that she’s made, not in Government but in Opposition, would indicate, actually, that that has been an intent for some considerable time. So when the Minister says “no ban within the next 12 months”, that’s code for “a ban very soon after 12 months”, after the so-called consultative process is complete.

So we on this side understand completely what the objective of this piece of legislation is. What we will continue to do is to make that objective very clear to New Zealanders, who have for generations been able to whitebait fish in a way that has ensured that the traditions are maintained and upheld. We will defend our right as an Opposition to expose the hidden objective and the hidden agenda of this Government who want to do things under the guise of conservation. This is a bad bill. It’s much worse than we thought it was going to be, and it’s deeply flawed in so many ways.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s an absolute pleasure to stand on behalf of New Zealand First and take my call on this, the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill, now in its second reading. I’d just like to begin talking about our taonga, our native fish species that we have taken for granted for so long. On this side of the House, we understand that they need protecting. They desperately need our protection, and this is what this bill will ensure—that these little fish are protected. There are 57 known native freshwater fish species, and, you know, actually, some of them are really incredibly interesting: tiny fish that migrate enormous distances between fresh water and out to the ocean; some of them can survive out of water for a period of time as well, but they can actually end up carelessly killed when we drain our wetlands, when we clear our drains. An example of an incredibly interesting slippery creature—and not from that side of the House—is the long-finned eel that’s been swimming up and down New Zealand’s waterways for around 23 million years. It’s not unheard of, too, that eels can climb around 20 metres up waterfalls, so they’re pretty interesting creatures indeed.

Something is happening—actually, it’s just been announced today—and it’s something that a lot of New Zealanders have embraced, and that’s Bird of the Year. Now, we love our birds. We see them in our backyards, we see them as we drive to work, and New Zealanders have an affinity for them because we see them regularly. But our freshwater fish, they’re in our rivers and our wetlands—we don’t tend to see them, so we don’t tend to have that compassion or understanding that they actually need protecting. So instead of just Bird of the Year, I think it’s time to turn to our fish of the day—not about our puku, but our protection of these species.

So something that has been leaching a whole bunch of misinformation from that side of the House, we really need to spell out clearly—that sedimentation that’s oozing from the Opposition. In fact, let’s get the facts here: there are no plans for a blanket ban on whitebaiting—it’s as simple as that. Three-quarters of our native fish species are threatened; they are at risk of extinction. There is very strong support—these are the facts—for improving our whitebait fisheries. There is a review underway. There will be a chance for the public to have their say on any changes to the whitebait regulations, but that is not inside this bill. So perhaps the Opposition would like to stop their campaign of misinformation and confusing the public.

Something that they do need is educating—our young people, when maybe a teacher takes their class down to the local river. One of the things that the Environment Committee has recommended, after listening to the submissions during the committee stage, is that to temporarily take maybe a bully from the river, enabling the kids to have a little nature science time to learn about these little fish is a good way to educate them, but they need to be, actually, not taken from that area; so too, if there’s going to be a temporary take, to make sure that they stay there and that they’re returned back to a close proximity to where those fish were taken. So that’s one way we can educate our young people on species we don’t get to see, like we see the birds in our backyards, to ensure that future generations have an understanding of the importance of these freshwater indigenous species that do need our protection.

The Environment Committee had quite a number of submissions, and I do note Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC and the work he did on behalf of Fish & Game.

You know, our freshwater sports fishing is an exciting thing for many to do—150,000-odd New Zealanders, along with international visitors who come to New Zealand specifically to fish trout, browns, rainbows, and in some parts of the South Island, there are salmon as well. They spend a lot of money coming to New Zealand for a chance to catch one of these fish.

I spent a period of time, a wee while ago now, living in Taupō, and one of the things I did every day is listen to—as part of the programme on the very first radio station that I worked on Hits and Memories, Radio Lakeland—the fishing report with Chris Jolly and his boat Prime Time, and every morning he would ring up and talk about what rivers to fish, where the trout were running at that time, or what parts of the lake to fish in. So this is something that we know a lot of New Zealanders are very interested in. So for Fish & Game, obviously, with their work in managing our sports fish, we acknowledged their concerns around clause 5(3), and that was then removed from this bill, allaying their concerns.

I did mention earlier these fish that travel, draining of the wetlands, how these small fish do get munched, whether it’s through these hydro dams that are no longer actually fixable—they are old and unfixable—so that we have made some recommendations to change the bill so the requirements of any new regulations relating to fish passage do not apply to existing hydroelectricity dams. And I think that is a good change and a very sensible recommendation from the committee.

So just in closing, I think that fish are highly important in terms of being a part of our whole ecosystem, and our rivers, and, you know, not just something that we just want to eat. So all of these little species—of smelt, there’s galaxiids, and little eels as well—do need our protection, they do need to ensure that they are able to have spawning sites, and that must be at the forefront of our conservation to ensure that these species are not only surviving now but actually thrive into the future.

So I am pleased with the changes that the Environment Committee has made. I acknowledge those in the committee who worked hard on this, alongside the officials. I acknowledge the Minister, Eugenie Sage, as well, for her work in this space. And I commend the bill to the House.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and may I first acknowledge your high elevation. It has been a while since I have spoken in this House, and certainly not since you have been given this role. So I acknowledge that. I must think what it must be like now—penny for your thoughts—listening to all the various contributions and forcing yourself to keep a straight face. Your discipline does you credit on a Thursday afternoon, Madam Speaker.

Now, I just want to make a couple of comments on the rather remarkable contributions that we’ve heard so far. Firstly, is it not the case that every single time that David Parker stands up to speak, the red mist of anti - dairy farming just descends from the heavens. It doesn’t matter what the issue, it doesn’t matter what the bill is, it doesn’t matter which piece of legislation it is, he has to wind in this fundamental view that New Zealand with its economic engine driven by primary industry is somehow flawed, it needs to be constrained, and, actually, his utopia is everyone walking around and just, sort of, singing “Kumbaya”, and not having anything to do with rural New Zealand at its best. My goodness, it’s going to be fun in the next couple of weeks when he announces his water-quality standards. If—as my colleague, Mr Simpson, said—what we’ve heard in this debate is going to be the entrée for that, it is going to be a fascinating debate indeed.

At the core of the debate, this afternoon, is this view from the Government side that somehow our critique of this legislation and suggesting that it can constrain the average New Zealanders’ right to whitebait is fundamentally flawed. And they have come up with the most extraordinary statements and accused us of overreacting. Well, ladies and gentlemen at home, I know you won’t be able to see it, but here is the bill—here it is reported back from the Environment Committee. And if we turn to clause 7, inserting new sections 26ZHA to 26ZHD, under Indigenous freshwater fish—which I believe we’re talking about; not birds, although that was quite an entertaining departure from the core subject that we’re focused on—there was—

Simon O’Connor: It was a flight of fantasy.

TODD MULLER: It was flight of fantasy, well done. Indigenous freshwater fish: there is an explicit section in here, 26ZHB, and I quote, “Prohibitions and restrictions on taking … indigenous freshwater fish.” It lists the powers that are given to the Minister to decide whether he or she may or may not give the right to a New Zealander to whitebait.

So I tell you: this view from the Government side that we are scaremongering is absolute nonsense. This is an attack as they attack everything that, actually, real New Zealanders like to do—like farm, like fish—

Hon Scott Simpson: Hunt.

TODD MULLER: —hunt, oh, and, by the way, have an oil and gas industry that underpins it; anything that moves, they want to tax it or ban it and they’re going down the same track. It’s the Green Party that are part of this Government, they’ve written this and they want the power for a Minister to say no; not “Maybe” but “No”. And it’s explicit in terms of the power that the Minister has and the regulations that they can apply and the conditions in which they can say no. And so it is absolutely right for the National Party, that has always argued strongly for people to be able to manage themselves, within, of course, the constraints of the overall environmental system, to be supported and to have clarity around what they’re doing. This Government is saying, “No. More power to the Minister to decline your right to whitebait.” That’s the reality, it’s written here; it’s in the bill. These guys are the ones that are twisting the scrum. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): I was only just today reading an article from that excellent publication The Spinoff, headed: “You wouldn’t eat a kiwi—so why is whitebait okay?” And I thought it was a great article, I must say, because, you know, the extraordinary thing is that whitebait are as endangered as kiwi.

I would impress upon the members on the other side—there they are—to have a bit of a read of this: this 2017—which largely repeats a 2013—study, telling us about the conservation of New Zealand freshwater fishes. And do you know what? It tells us that one of the species is on the threatened list; not threatened with the frypan but threatened with extinction. And yet here we have a party that is saying it is our God-given right to go out and grab our whitebait and fish them to extinction. If that’s private property, you can have it. That fact is that we are stewards of our indigenous fish, of our flora and our fauna.

Look, here we have these fish which are currently not protected at all. The Wildlife Act protects 12 species of weevil, and yet we don’t protect our indigenous fish. If you took the time to actually have a look at these, these are actually fabulous creatures—creatures that can climb up a waterfall, creatures which, at maturity, are fantastic and important parts of our flora and fauna. The irony is that if we were to trade these internationally we would be in breach of the CITES treaty—the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. So along with elephants and rhinoceroses, these are actually endangered fish. These are fish which we have committed internationally to protect.

Here we have Ms Dowie saying that our whitebaiters have an absolute right to go and pull them out of our waterways. Well, look, I don’t deny that gathering of food is an important tradition in many parts of our country. You know what? We want to preserve it, but you don’t preserve it by doing nothing. Not by the nine years of nothing that happened on the other side. This is an issue that needs addressing. We can’t solve it right away. It needs a long-term approach. That’s what this Government is going to do. It’s going to take a long-term approach to make sure we can restore these fisheries by appropriate management, not saying, “It’s yours. It’s private property. Go and pillage it until they’re extinct.”, but taking a balanced approach.

The transition is important. There is a moratorium. We want to make sure that people aren’t immediately deprived of what they thought they were going to be able to do come September-November. But we’re going to take a balanced approach and make sure that the spawning grounds that are on conservation land are protected, because that’s the only way we’re going to have these fish available for years to come.

Of all of the other species, one is absolutely threatened and the others are all declining. They’ve been declining for years. We need to turn that around. It’s a tough job, but we’ve got to look ahead, not just to what’s going to happen to the next whitebait season, but the next one and the next one and the next one. Look ahead for 30 years, not just for one, two, or three. So we can’t solve this straight away, but it’s time to start.

It’s absolutely mischievous—it’s pernicious to start calling this a ban, because it’s absolutely not. It is managing in a responsible way. There is nothing in this legislation which talks about banning on non-conservation land. So the vast majority of the streams and rivers that people have their nets on, people can still have their nets on. For one minute I do not apologise for saying that spawning grounds—if reasonably identified by the Minister—need to be protected, because that is the absolute heart of this fishery. If we have people disrupting spawning grounds, the fisheries will die. The fish will become extinct.

We’re very lucky in many ways that, as far we know, only one native fish has become extinct in New Zealand to date, but of this long list of indigenous fish in New Zealand, almost all—the vast majority—are declining or threatened, and some on the brink of extinction. So that’s why all of our indigenous fish need protection. Just because it’s not furry doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look after it. The fact of the matter is that these are an important part of our flora and fauna, so it’s no good muddying the waters saying that this is a ban, because it’s simply not. It’s management. We won’t be sold down the river by the National Party telling us that they’re protecting the rights of New Zealanders, when in fact they’re not. All they’re doing is—

Hon Andrew Little: They’re making it worse.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Absolutely, Minister Little, they’re making it worse. They’d be destroying our infrastructure. So the whole thing is really just a beat-up by the National Party, where we are absolutely trying to protect the rights of people to go fishing in perpetuity. So it’s no good to have the National Party meme of private property again and again. And we know that every responsible landowner wants to protect the flora and fauna on their property, including indigenous fish and other native species. But what we want to be able to see is that the Minister of Conversation can identify those sensitive areas, inform the owners, and the owners, I’m sure, will not be unhappy to know that they have an important spawning ground on their property, and, if they were thinking of running a bulldozer over it, that would be a bad idea. That’s absolutely what it’s about, because we know that everyday New Zealanders want to be good stewards of the land, and good stewards of the flora and fauna. So we want to see it absolutely protected—these fabulous creatures, which really are an important part of our fauna.

So what we have here is a long-term approach. An approach which finally—and the other thing is it was absolutely aberrant that we had these whitebait native fish as practically the only native species not captured by either the Conservation Act or the Wildlife Act. So all of our native wildlife is covered by the Wildlife Act—absolutely protected. You can go to jail if you kill it. You can go to jail if you try to export it. But the whitebait—just as important—and many of our other fish, and including our eels, as member Marcroft pointed out, are not protected. All of a sudden we’re aligning these pieces of legislation, bringing them into alignment with each other so that we are protecting this. What happens on the other side of the House? They cry foul. I am absolutely astounded that they’re not supporting this bill and that they would see us fish these things to extinction.

This is an issue that we’re addressing. We’re addressing it now. It’s a long-term issue, but we’re taking a balanced, careful, and fair approach, and I’m proud of that.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. How that member, Duncan Webb, kept a straight face for that six or seven minutes that he spoke, I will never know. This from a member who, not just in the privacy of his own home or to a mate, but on television, said quite forcefully that he would eat a kiwi and he would eat a whale. And now he’s standing up telling us that we so desperately must protect these little slimy fish. It’s remarkable that he managed to keep a straight face that whole time.

I’m pleased to speak on this bill, but just before I do I just need to take a quick step back, because I promised that I would do something. I’m just going to take a couple of seconds to congratulate someone in my electorate very quickly: Harry Shine. He’s in year 6 and he won the speech competition at Pinehurst School, and I said I would mention him. He did a speech on why we should get rid of trees, so getting a clever segue into this important piece of environmental legislation was quite difficult. So my segue is that there’s no segue.

This bill has been described, as people have said before me, as a bill of minor technical changes. The regulatory impact statement said that most of the amendments are relatively minor and technical, and they’re not expected to have any unintended consequences at all—famous last words. I’d just like to point out that this bill was allocated to the Environment Committee a year ago, in two weeks—a year ago. This is a small, technical amendment bill on freshwater fish that has been in the select committee for 11 months. Just contrast that, if you would, with the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill—the biggest challenge facing humanity and we’ve got a three-month, truncated process.

What I want to go into today is why we had 11 months in select committee. Why it was that a minor, technical amendment bill that should have taken three months to rock through, actually ended up taking us 11 months, and I want to get into that. Basically, what happened was the Minister of Conservation realised that she had an unutilised Environment Committee, because, despite being the “Greenest Government ever”, we’ve had almost no work—certainly no good environmental bills. So she saw an opportunity. She thought, “Here’s a bill that we can race through. Don’t worry about it. Don’t need any consultation. We’ll just race it through.” And her poor officials had that to deal with.

I would say at least 80 percent of the submissions that we had mentioned the fact that there was very little or no consultation on this bill. We had Fish & Game, the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations of NZ Inc, Tourism Industry Aotearoa, the Eel Enhancement Co. Ltd, South Island Eel Industry Association, and Te Wai Māori. All were very disappointed at the fact that there was no consultation.

I want to talk about Te Wai Māori for a little bit. They had a terrible time. They were told that the bill was a minor, technical fix-up bill. “Don’t worry about it. We’re not going to consult with iwi.” They pushed back and they wanted to see a copy of the bill, which they managed to get. They were of the understanding that they would have a chance to provide input on the draft bill, but the bill was put to Parliament on the same day that they were due to put their comments.

So, effectively, no consultation, and no changes were able to be made from iwi consultation. This just sums up this Minister’s disregard for the views of New Zealanders. Had we had proper consultation, had we gone out to people like Fish & Game, we could’ve had this bill sewn up in three or four months.

I want to talk very quickly about clause 5(3), the clause that is no longer, and that is thanks to the National Party. It is a—

Hon Clare Curran: Oh, rubbish!

ERICA STANFORD: The member says “rubbish”, but we fought and fought to get this clause out. Stay with me, because it is very complicated. Basically, there was a clause in the bill that said, “Well, look, if we’ve got a freshwater fish management plan and we’ve got a sports management plan and a little bit of either one are in contradiction to each other, then there is a hierarchy and the freshwater fish management plan will override the sports management plan.” Of course, that raised the ire of every single sports fisher in the country, and Fish & Game had to hire a hot-shot lawyer in Sir Geoffrey Palmer, spend loads of money—

Hon Scott Simpson: A legal luminary.

ERICA STANFORD: —a legal luminary, as my colleague Scott Simpson so eloquently puts it—at great expense, and then after many months, the poor officials, who are just as confused as the rest of us, came back and said, “Oh, well, actually, the reason we’re doing this is because, as the law currently stands, if there is a contradiction in two clauses of the bill, then, actually, the sports management plan—the whole thing’s null and void.” This is brand new information to everyone on the Environment Committee, months down the track, and then they tell us that, actually, there’s never been a freshwater fish management plan, so that’s why it’s never happened—again, brand new information to us, months down the track. The Minister has not briefed her officials, and we were certainly not briefed. It was all brand new information. We eventually had to send the officials away back to Fish & Game and say, “Look, sort it out, because this is a shemozzle.” They came back and said, “Oh, actually, yeah, we didn’t need that clause anyway, because it turns out that Sir Geoffrey Palmer was right in the first place.” Months and months and months of this and of us demanding better advice from the officials—and it’s not their fault; they were not briefed by the Minister.

Freshwater fish management plans are required to help our indigenous fish, 75 percent of which are threatened, and we need a serious and coordinated approach that looks at the declining state of fish habitat and land-use change. It’s easy to point the finger at low-hanging fruit like the whitebaiters, but that is not the answer. This bill has a massive overreach into private property rights. The other side of the House will say “Oh, no, it’s not.”, and Mr Duncan Webb got up today and told us that, you know, if the Department of Conservation officials come in and they reasonably identify a spawning zone, then, you know, no problem, we’ll be fine, but he wasn’t in the select committee. The officials told us in select committee that, actually, it’s really difficult to identify a spawning site, and, actually, in most cases, it’s a best guess. So you’ve got these poor landowners who have got officials coming on to their land, making a best guess, and then telling the landowners that they can’t do anything in that particular part of their own land. That’s why it’s a massive overreach, and that’s why we will not support this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call Kiritapu Allan—five minutes.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai. Usually, I love listening to my colleague from across the aisle, Erica Stanford, and her contributions on conservation, but in this instance, that side of the House has things abysmally wrong. On this side of the House, I guess, this is another area—protecting our indigenous native fish species—which the previous Government, for nine long years, turned a blind eye to. Now, on this side of the House, we are tackling these long-term issues and we’re taking not a short-term view, not a do-nothing view; we’re taking a long-term view, an intergenerational view. We’re looking at things 30 years down the track.

Now, I am one of these people—and my colleague Dr Duncan Webb might not like it so much, but I’m a recreational fisher, and that’s why I’m quite pleased to speak to this bill this afternoon. A couple of weeks ago, my father-in-law and I and my daughter, who’s two years old—we did what we do in preparation for the whitebait season. We walked up the Rangitaiki River. We looked at and we identified all the spots, and we watched the other whitebaiters who are getting ready for the season that opened up a week ago. We identified our spots, we looked at the river, and we do what we do every single year, as do many whitebaiters up and down this country.

Being a recreational fisher, whether that’s on the sea or in fresh water, it’s inherent to our DNA. It’s something that we enjoy the privilege of, but we take the responsibilities very, very seriously. In my own little patch of the world where I live, quite close to the Rangitaiki River, it is a significant responsibility that we all feel, and we seek to practise those kaitiaki responsibilities. If we see a spawning ground, that isn’t where we go drop our nets, but that’s not the law. That’s not the rules. We don’t have regulations around that. So I want to commend what the Minister of Conservation, Eugenie Sage, is doing in this area, because what she’s doing is ensuring—now, my daughter, Hiwaiterangi, she’s coming out this weekend. We’ll be whitebaiting. We won’t be selling it; we’ll be taking a little bit for our family. She’ll be learning how to whitebait. She’s learnt how to set the hīnaki, the eeling traps, and she’ll learn those practices from my father-in-law, from me, and she’ll go on to practise those, hopefully, when it comes her turn.

But what we want to do on this side of the House—we want to make sure that her right to do that in 10 years’, in 20 years’, in 30 years’ time is protected. Now, I would’ve thought that that’s a pretty common-sense approach. I would’ve thought that what we’re trying to do here is pretty balanced. It’s a reasonable thing that we’re trying to do, to understand the state of those fisheries, ensure that we’ve got good regulation, and protect the right of all New Zealanders to practise those practices in the future.

I don’t have too much more to add to that but to say that we’re taking a common-sense approach. It’s pragmatic, it’s balanced, and we’re thinking in the long term for next 30—

Hon Andrew Little: It’s a balanced approach.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: It’s a balanced approach; that’s exactly right, and I’m proud to do that under the leadership of our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern. Tēnā koe.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Hamish Walker—five minutes.

HAMISH WALKER (National—Clutha-Southland): I just want to acknowledge that last speaker on the other side of the House there, Kiritapu Allan. There’s a bit of red mist going on, and what I mean by red mist: why have we got people in Maureen Pugh’s patch here attending a town hall meeting—three or four hundred people—absolutely terrified this way of life is going to get taken away? I just want to acknowledge the excellent work that Maureen Pugh is doing.

This might sound a little strange, but people in Southland are best prepared for the full effects of this bill. You’re probably wondering why people in Southland are ready for the full effects of this bill. Well, basically, in the last 18 months, we’ve had everything else taken away from us. We’ve had every other critical health service taken away from us. Now they want to take away whitebaiting. This Government wants to stop farming. They closed a children’s care—our most vulnerable kids. They reversed the National Party’s decision on a 24/7 police station. They took away a 24/7 helicopter service. They shut a small, rural maternity hospital, forcing mothers to give birth on the side of the road.

Now it comes to whitebaiting. This is a favourite pastime for Southlanders. When they’re hard-working on their farms, it’s actually quite nice to head along the river. I used to do it when I was a child, and I had a lot of fun. If you want to talk about a common-sense approach, I was a commercial fisherman. In 2003, I used to go out—some days, I’d catch one, two, three crayfish for a whole 12 hours a day. For the record, that’s probably $5-10 for me for a whole day fishing. Fifteen years later, that fishery is now probably the second-best fishery in the country. Why—because fishermen spoke to each other, they planned accordingly; now they have one of the strongest fisheries in New Zealand.

Now, if some of the Government members actually left the beltway of this Parliament often, they’d actually talk to the people, find out why these people are rallying in places like the West Coast. People in Southland have already suffered so much. We don’t have cops. We don’t have maternity hospitals. We don’t have choppers. We’re probably going to get hit rather badly by the Southern Institute of Technology. Whitebaiting is just another one. We’re here for the commercial fishermen and the recreational fishermen, and we will continue to fight for them.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thanks, Mr Speaker. Well, I can tell you why you got that many people at a meeting, and that is because of the wilful misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, dirty politics campaign that is being run by the National Party on a number of issues including this one, and it is actually telling untruths to the community about the impact of this piece of legislation. That’s why, and we’re seeing the ugly, dirty politics tactics coming out again, which is what the National Party does.

Interestingly, I’m sitting on another select committee at the moment which is looking at misinformation, disinformation, malinformation being waged during election campaigns and having what feels like a sensible discussion about some measures that we can do in this country to address that. In the meantime, the National Party is out there spreading those—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! I want to ask the member to come to the bill. It’s been nearly 1½ minutes.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Sure. Well, what I’ve heard during this debate tells me that the members have been either deliberately or refusing or just had their fingers in the ears while the Minister of Conservation was speaking about the impact of this bill on the whitebait fisheries. I’m going to remind them. Actually I’m going to suggest that they all pay a visit to their GP to get the wax removed from their ears, because I think that’s a bit of a problem. The Minister clearly said that the bill does not change the general controls on whitebaiting or prevent commercial fishing of whitebait. Now, I wonder which part of that is not clear.

What the bill does is ensure that we can better tackle threats to whitebait populations, particularly the loss of spawning sites, which is what David Parker talked about. So, gee, that means more whitebait not less whitebait. It’s actually about growing the whitebait population, about managing the whitebait population, and looking at providing some protection within protected areas, requiring that any fishing in a protected area needs permission—in a protected area. Now, I know that is apparently a huge encroachment on private property rights.

What I find extraordinary is that the spokesperson, the National Party spokesperson on conservation, studied ecology and, not only that, she worked for the Department of Conservation. She said that we needed to take a science approach, but she appears to be oblivious to the actual science around this particular issue, which is around the threat to the 57 indigenous freshwater fish, more than half of which live nowhere else in the world.

I haven’t heard one National Party speaker this afternoon in this debate, which is about a bill that’s called the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill, talk about the protection of indigenous fish. Now, why is that? Is that just something that is just being wilfully ignored? And, of course, whitebait is there, as are various species of eels. The conservation status of freshwater fish was reassessed in 2017. This information was provided to the Environment Committee, and I know, Maureen Pugh, that you sat on that select committee a few times, so you did have access to the papers and you could have actually read some of the information that was provided, where it said that 22 species are now listed as threatened and 17 as at risk, and that 70 percent of our native freshwater fish are classified as threatened or at risk.

Maureen Pugh: So where’s the data?

Hon CLARE CURRAN: Is she challenging the data—is she challenging the data? Well, in that case, get up and give us the alternative data that the National Party has access to, because this is about protecting and growing our indigenous freshwater fisheries that have significantly declined over the last century and about broadening the protections for that. Now, you can’t really dispute—well it’s really hard to know what the argument is that disputes that.

I do want to make a couple of comments about the removal of clause 5(3) and the claims that have been made by the National Party speakers that somehow that’s all because of their work. I want to give a shout-out to Fish & Game New Zealand, who are our pre-eminent, respected organisation in this country that does the hard yards around the recreational activities in fishing and game hunting, but is also concerned about protection of habitat. Now, they came to the select committee and they brought one of the most pre-eminent lawyers and previous legislators in the country, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who had done a lot of work on looking at the impact that clause 5(3) might have. There was a lot of discussion about that in terms of whether or not a freshwater management plan would have—what impact that would have on the sports fisheries plan. In the end, it was decided and, as I recall, the committee agreed—

Angie Warren-Clark: I recall that too.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: And that was everyone on the committee, if I recall correctly, who agreed with the advice that it be removed. In fact, we ourselves suggested that the officials go back to Fish & Game and talk to them about that and come back and report to us in the committee. That was the whole committee, and they did. We agreed that that was the best course of action, and I really do want to commend Fish & Game for the approach that they took with us. They didn’t go out and run a misinformation campaign. They came to the committee and gave a well-reasoned argument, which the committee listened to and acted upon. As a result, Fish & Game have said that they felt that that dealt with their biggest concern around this piece of legislation. So that kind of undercut, to be honest, the National Party’s misinformation campaign, because they didn’t have the backing—

Brett Hudson: No more whitebaiting.

Hon CLARE CURRAN: —of Fish & Game. So, therefore, they’ve had to just rely on their “No more whitebaiting.”, even though what this bill does is actually increase the whitebait population in this country and protect it.

You know, when all of those submitters, those individual submitters that came with their pro forma submissions to the select committee, worried that somehow they weren’t going to be able to do whitebaiting again, because the likes of Maureen Pugh had been out there telling them that, and they were asked by me and other members of the committee that if their concerns were to be alleviated, did they support the management of our indigenous fish species. What did they all say? They all said yes. And guess what? That’s what’s this bill does.

So, you know, do your worst. Get up, spout off more misinformation and your dirty politics tactics, but in the end what this bill does is responsible. It’s about the long term. It’s looking forward by generations for our freshwater indigenous species. It’s the right thing to do. It will be done well and it’s what a good Government does.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, what a load of rubbish we’ve heard here this afternoon. Now, I’m going to say that the National Party on this side of the House says that this piece of legislation is absolutely nonsensical, but I did hear—and I did attend the select committee, as that member Clare Curran, who’s just resumed her seat, said—some scary things that the whitebait population was in decline.

So I thought, “OK, I will go and get the facts. I will go and do the research.” I was concerned because on the West Coast and in Golden Bay where they do a lot of whitebaiting, we actually have down there some very special conditions that are peculiar just to the West Coast, that don’t apply across the rest of the country. Our season starts two weeks later; it finishes two weeks earlier. We have closed rivers and creeks to protect those high-value spawning areas, and we also have a significant control over the ability to whitebait because—in case you haven’t worked it out, that’s the spring period—the spring period is the wettest time of the year on the Coast and so you can only whitebait when the rivers are not in flood. So there’s a whole lot of control over it. Plus we have—and I’ve flown over the areas and I have seen it for myself—tens of thousands of hectares of wetland in South Westland. You are never going to catch the last whitebait.

Now those particular areas—so what I did, I went to the Minister of Conservation and I said, “Minister, I’m concerned about the declining numbers. Can I please have all of the reports, memos, and advice that you have received and all the data on all West Coast rivers that you have collated that justify your claim that the whitebait stock is in decline.” And guess what? They have none. They have no data. They have—

Brett Hudson: Misinformation.

MAUREEN PUGH: —misinformation. Misinformation—it’s missing-in-action information. And so I thought, “OK, this must be based on something. I will go and find an independent researcher who has got this information.” Very, very interesting, this independent researcher has shown—and this is the information that the public in Hokitika, who turned up to a public meeting outraged have heard, because they know that it’s rubbish what we’ve got in this bill—in 1964, 215 rivers across this country were surveyed and the whitebait stock numbers were recorded. In 2015, those same rivers were surveyed, the whitebait stock numbers were recorded, and guess what? There is no change. There is no change in the whitebait stock numbers over 50 years; 50 years of whitebait and no change in the stock numbers. Now that is information and that’s why the people are angry, Ms Curran.

So what we want to do with this bill is throw it out, because when you apply for land-use consents on the West Coast the regional council take into account whether it affects whitebait spawning areas. They do it on the Taramakau River if you’re going there to extract gravel, so already the systems are in place to make sure those habitats are OK.

But there’s another interesting thing that we learnt about whitebait and that is because the whitebait spawning areas on the West Coast are so plentiful. And another thing—whitebait don’t necessarily go back up the same river they were hatched in. What they do is they come into this massive nursery on the West Coast—tens of thousands of hectares—and then they come out of the river after about three months and they go around the island and they populate the other rivers. That’s where the whitebait for the other rivers come from. So this bill is totally unnecessary.

And it’s not just this bill, because if we look at this bill in isolation we can think, “OK, we can live with that.”, but it’s actually the cumulative effect of all the other legislation and the policies that are coming out of this Government. No new mining—on its own, probably, you know, not too bad, but then we’ve got the squeezing out of existing miners and that means job losses.

It’s funny though, because while the policy makers over there are still enjoying all the products that come out of mining we’ve had a two-year delay in a decision for another hydro scheme that would make the Coast even more plentiful in hydroelectricity. We’ve got wetland designations, we’ve got significant natural areas, we’ve got the land restrictions that will come out of this bill as well. We’ve got car tax and we’ve got fuel tax. We’ve got climate change targets and now we’ve got a new scary water policy coming down the pipe. We are told this bill is not a ban. Well, excuse me if I have no faith in the rhetoric of that Government because a ban by any other name has the same impact.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Oh, Mr Speaker, thank goodness! It’s a pleasure to stand tonight as the last speaker on this bill. OK, so first and foremost, a couple of things before I actually talk about the bill.

Maureen Pugh, I appreciate the detail that you have gone to. I appreciate that. Having a strong background as a West Coaster myself, having on either side of my family two generations of West Coasters who whitebait, and also myself having a whitebait stand, I absolutely can endorse the love that we all have for the whitebait. Absolutely—I love the whitebait. But just like the kiwi example, it is time now to protect our endangered species: 57 species—not five whitebait species; 57 species—are covered under this bill. And it is not just the West Coast of the South Island that we refer to. We talk about all the rivers in this country. We are not only referring to the fact that some of that most beautiful, pristine, conservation land in the West Coast has been protected despite the desire to mine and despite the desire to cut down the beautiful beech trees, etc.; that is what enables an amazing fishery.

Now, that fishery is surviving because there’s a shorter season, there’s a whole pile of things that those people do. And, yes, we hear you and it’s absolutely correct that we should be concerned about a way of life that’s going. But we look at the long-term future of this country and we look at the difficult problems and the way that actually is sustainable.

We cannot—we cannot—continue to have whitebait and our other species being endangered in a way that somehow, over there, they think it is absolutely, absolutely, OK. They think it is absolutely OK that we have 57 species that are endangered, 70 percent of those species are endangered—and that’s what this bill does. After nine years of neglect, there is so much to fix, but this is a very small part of what we are doing to fix what’s happening.

One of the difficulties that we know is that our environment has been degraded by those people on that side of the House. In nine long years, what did they say to us about the rivers? What did they say? “It’s OK to be wadeable.” The rest of us over here—look at the Kaipara Harbour. That’s what we’ve started doing. What did those Opposition members do? Nothing. They just said that it was completely OK.

Now, back to the bill. We heard from a lot of submitters who were absolutely concerned about a whole pile of things with this bill, and, yes, it did take quite some time to work through the process of getting it across the line. But, absolutely, most of the time we worked very closely together as quite a collegial committee. We had a lot of questions—a lot of questions—for our officials, and I want to commend them for coming back, time and time again, and answering our questions. We had lots of issues, trying to work out for ourselves where things sat. For example, when we looked at who would have the best power around the plans for fisheries, it was decided absolutely—absolutely—that we needed to consider that, and we rolled it back.

Essentially, this bill is great. We’re fixing the difficulties. We’re fixing the long-term issues. This bill is clear and sensible. I commend this bill to the House.

Amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Conservation (Indigenous Freshwater Fish) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice) on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I move, That the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Can I begin by thanking all of the groups who have contributed to making this piece of legislation and getting it to this very important third reading. First and foremost, I’d like to thank those in the industry who have worked alongside officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the Reserve Bank in a very consultative way to ensure that we have a piece of legislation that achieves its objectives. This is a complex area of the law, and the bill required specialist input from a range of highly qualified people in this sector to get it right.

I’d also like to thank the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their hard work in considering the bill. With the select committee period shortened to four months to meet international deadlines, there was a lot of detailed work to be done in a short space of time. The result of all that hard work is a very important piece of legislation now in very good shape.

As a Government, we understand how important it is to maintain strong linkages with international markets. The global financial system is highly interconnected, and our banks and other large financial institutions rely on their international linkages to be able to provide vital credit and other services to New Zealanders.

The international financial system is also increasingly rules-based, and when new rules are introduced, New Zealand has to play by those rules in order to continue to participate in the system. This bill helps do those things and brings New Zealand into line with major international reforms to the operation of financial markets. This bill will help New Zealand entities that are looking to raise funds offshore and manage financial risks by making sure they are able to maintain access to key counter-parties and markets. This will directly benefit New Zealand consumers and businesses by reducing borrowing costs and supporting the soundness of our financial system.

While there have been jokes in previous speeches about this being a dry piece of legislation, I prefer to characterise this as a quiet bill that is actually hugely significant in what it delivers for both our financial sector and everyday New Zealanders. There are some whose response to this bill might be described as actually raving about it, and one of those is no less than my colleague Dr Deborah Russell, who I think will make a contribution to this bill. I think this House will be enthused by Dr Russell’s contribution, and I think many New Zealanders will be as well—as, indeed, they should—because it’s such an important piece of legislation.

There are two parts to the bill. I hope that members opposite might get excited by the bill too, because they have contributed to it through their representation on the Finance and Expenditure Committee as well, and I know that for many of them, if not raving about it, their pulse might be slightly elevated, at least, when they come to consider it.

Part 1 of the bill contains amendments to various Acts that will remove barriers to compliance, with new rules for over-the-counter derivatives. The rules require parties to these types of derivatives to exchange what’s called “margin”, and were introduced following the global financial crisis as a way of reducing systemic risk. Compliance with the rules is important for large New Zealand banks and our other large public sector entities, like the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and ACC, which rely on derivatives for their activities. The bill facilitates compliance with these new margin rules by making various amendments across the statute book.

As I mentioned earlier, the Finance and Expenditure Committee did an excellent job of scrutinising this piece of legislation, particularly to this first part of the bill. The committee recommended a number of important technical amendments. These included changes to the transitional provisions and changes designed to clarify the position when two or more parties have certain types of competing claims to posted margin. During the committee of the whole House stage, a number of valuable amendments were also made to the bill. These included amendments to four Acts, which, while not essential to ensure compliance with foreign margin rules, will provide additional reassurance to qualifying derivatives users.

In relation to Part 2, this bill also introduces a licensing regime for New Zealand administrators of financial markets. The regime will be monitored and supervised by the Financial Markets Authority. The key objective of this part of the bill is to create a regulatory framework that will achieve equivalence with new EU regulations and enable important benchmarks to be used with EU counterparties. Administrators of New Zealand financial benchmarks who opt in to holding a licence will need to meet the requirements in the bill and further detailed obligations that will be set out in regulations.

The bill also provides the Financial Markets Authority with important new powers that are designed to avoid disruption to the market. They do this by ensuring that a financial benchmark can continue to be generated and used on an ongoing basis. These powers would be used only as a last resort in situations where a benchmark administrator is going to stop generating a benchmark, or a contributor to a benchmark is going to stop making information available for that benchmark. The powers, however, are important examples of the types of measures being introduced to make our regime for financial benchmarks more robust. Overall, this new licensing regime will reinforce the integrity of the benchmark administration in New Zealand and, as with the first part of the bill, maintain vital linkages with international financial markets.

I’m very happy that we’ve got to the stage where we’ve got to a third reading of this bill. I’d like to conclude by reiterating my thanks to the submitters on the bill, to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and to officials for all their work on the bill. This bill makes important reforms to New Zealand financial markets which will support New Zealand’s integration with global financial markets, support the soundness of the financial system, and benefit New Zealand consumers and businesses. I commend this bill to the House.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is indeed a delight. I’m full of excitement to be standing and talking on the third reading of the Financial Markets (Derivatives Margin and Benchmarking) Reform Amendment Bill. It is indeed a bill that should excite all of New Zealand for what it achieves, not necessarily for its contents. I am one of the people who, in an earlier contribution, noted that this bill and its provisions were as arid as the Sahara, and that I hold to be true. In fact, it’s not often—but we did have in this case—that submitters apologise for the fact that they feel their submissions are going to bore the committee; they certainly didn’t, and I’d like to acknowledge my colleague Andrew Bayly, who, if I might say, at an intellectual level, was like a pig in muck over this bill, and he did a fantastic job of helping us all with it on both sides of the table, although I also acknowledge Dr Russell. She too enjoyed and contributed as the bill went through the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

Now, while the bill will pass—and it appears it will; I think it still has the support of the entire House—and while it is all about ensuring New Zealand financial market participants can still participate in international markets, particularly in the area of derivatives, in actual fact what’s more important—because those things are large trading banks, the Superannuation Fund, ACC, dealing in what normal people, the average hard-working Kiwi, would see as astronomical numbers, far too big really to comprehend. But, at a real level, at the heart of what this bill actually does, are not those large scale transactions, because, at the end of the chain of what those transactions enable, is a business, small or large, being able to borrow money to buy more plant, to increase their factory or facilities, to employ more people. So this bill is about employing more New Zealanders. It’s about unlocking potential for people to get meaningful work—work that will pay well and work that will help them to meet their aspirations and to achieve what they want in their lives for them and their families.

Equally, the outcome at the end of the chain of these large transactions is moneys that individuals and families can borrow for houses or for other needs in their lifestyles to help them deliver for their families, to have a safe place to raise those families, and to have the things that help them lead the lives that they wish to. That is what this bill is truly about, because large-scale transactions, while being fundamental to being able to deliver what is at the end, it is what actually comes at the end that is most important. That’s why I say the provisions in this aren’t quite as exciting as the outcome, but they are extremely important because there is no way our large financial institutions would be able to deliver upon that if they weren’t themselves able to secure the funding they need for what leads on to that further lending down the track. I particularly see Dr Webb shaking his head a bit. I’m, obviously, referring to banks more than ACC or the Superannuation Fund, but they will actually be the largest users of this anyway. They need to be sure that they can access those capital markets and those funds around the world. This is what the bill is all about in the sense, at least, of its technical provisions.

We have supported the bill all the way through. I believe that every other party in the House has. It was actually a pleasure, despite the technical nature of the provisions, to sit on the select committee. We continue to support it, as I hope all parties still do, and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, the last speaker managed to speak for six minutes and demonstrate he did not actually understand what a derivative is. But I’m pleased to support this bill. It brings New Zealand into the international market. It makes sure that we’re compliant with EU principles. It makes sure that we can participate in the international market for derivatives, and it avoids the risk of contagion in the event that there’s a derivative failure. That is really all I need to say about this. It’s an excellent piece of legislation and I commend it to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s clearly a very interesting piece of legislation. I just want to make a brief comment on this bill. It’s designed, as the Minister said, to allow New Zealand businesses to compete in the international market place. It allows New Zealand businesses to protect themselves, and it enables them to, I suppose, secure the funds and secure their place in the market around the world. But I want to make a little comment which is slightly contrary to the comments that have been made so far.

We in New Zealand tend to borrow what’s best practice in international legislation to deal with these issues. Because of the unusual nature of our country and of our financial markets and the size of them, and also the very diverse nature of our country, sometimes these bits of legislation don’t always work out as you anticipate. I’m sure that in this case it might, but I think it’s worth just thinking as a country about how we might look at customising some of this legislation to a much greater extent to suit our own financial environment. I think we’ve seen it with a number of bits of legislation in recent years, where the intention is always good but the carrying out of that legislation and the implementation of it in New Zealand often costs us a lot more money and a lot more effort than we might have thought, and perhaps a lot more effort than is necessary.

With those few words, I will commend this bill to the House.

Hon RON MARK (Minister of Defence): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think all that needs to be said about this bill has been said, and I commend this bill to the House.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): I must admit I’m very surprised by that last contribution from the Hon Ron Mark, because I knew he was an expert in financial derivatives. When you go and buy warships, sometimes you have to buy future currency—you know, FX currency—and I thought that a man like you, with your experience, would actually know about these things and want to talk about the $20 billion you’re spending in defence and how you’re going to make sure it doesn’t cost a cent more than what you’ve actually budgeted for. So I’m a little bit disappointed by the Minister of Defence. I think I’m emotional. I’m just disappointed.

This is a very important bill. We’ve had a number of very good contributions, including from my colleague there, Mr McKelvie. We on the Finance and Expenditure Committee enjoyed this bill, because we knew it was making a difference to New Zealand financial markets. At the moment, derivatives—which can be broadly defined as things like forward rate agreements, foreign exchange swaps, interest rate swaps—are, effectively, ways of dealing with risk. In many cases, derivatives are split up. So if you decide to buy some currency and to actually buy that forward at a certain date, you can actually buy it now, with certainty that when you bought it in, say, 90 days’ time—you can actually buy it at that date, even though the exchange rate may have moved quite significantly during the intervening time.

Another example is if you want to lock in interest rates. You may have a floating mortgage, but you may wish to move to a fixed rate, and you can actually swap that part—and that’s where the name “swap” comes from. They’re complex financial instruments, but they essentially allow banks to manage their massive exchanges of cash and the way they fund their operations. That’s why they’re absolutely crucial to financial institutions, banks being one of them, but even such institutions as the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—all those large financial institutions. They are heavily using swaps, and quite legitimately so, because, as I say, it’s a way of making informed decisions, protecting themselves against unwarranted risk or, in some cases, deciding to take on a risk where they see a market is going to change. They will bet that the market is going to move against them.

This bill is about ensuring that our financial institutions can comply with the international requirements for benchmarking of these types of financial instruments, called derivatives. Now, at the moment, New Zealand is in a state where we largely rely on New Zealand’s type of benchmarking, which is the threshold or the standard by which we measure the certainty around these and the type of these instruments—the accreditation, if I can use another word—and up to now that’s been fine. A classic benchmark that most people will know is when they do a house mortgage. Banks will quote their own bank bill rate. That term is very appropriate for the New Zealand context, but in the international context it has no reference. Often, they will use a London Interbank Offered Rate, or some other banking term, to set what might be a base rate.

So New Zealand is in a situation where we’ve been using our own benchmarks, but with the movement around the world to make sure that we can standardise the benchmarking—the standardising of that accreditation—it was imperative that we moved quickly to actually make sure that New Zealand complied with our international requirements. In some cases, it’s hopeful that even some of the New Zealand benchmarks may be used in a continuous fashion. But the main thing was to move quickly so that our banks could continue to operate in international markets, buying, basically, finance to fund their banking operations—you know, banks take in money and then they lend it out—and to be able to do that in a way that they could manage their portfolio. This bill is a crucial part of that.

I think one of the things about this bill is the importance in terms of how those operations take place, and I think one of the things which will come about through this is greater certainty for our financial institutions. It doesn’t mean that we’re running our financial markets in a riskier manner; it just merely makes sure that we’re complying with our international obligations. I think that on those grounds, this is a very valuable bill and one that should be commended.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but it’s come time for me to leave the Chair. This exciting bill is interrupted and is set down for exciting resumption next sitting day.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.