Thursday, 19 September 2019

THURSDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2019

THURSDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Legislation to be considered next week will include the first readings of the Arms Legislation Bill and the Rates Rebate (Statutory Declarations) Amendment Bill, the committee stage of the Local Government Act 2002 Amendment Bill (No 2), and the third readings of the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission/Te Waihanga Bill and the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill. Wednesday, 25 September will be a members’ day.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. In response to the Business Statement, is the Government planning on progressing the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill, currently set at No. 22 on the Order Paper, before the local body elections on 12 October, so that the voters and candidates know the transfer of responsibilities in advance of the election?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Given the Government’s very busy programme, that is very unlikely.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all of his statements, policies, and actions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in particular the Government’s economic policies, which have delivered economic growth of 0.5 percent in the June quarter and annual average growth of 2.4 percent in the year. Under this Government’s solid economic management, the New Zealand economy continues to outperform Australia, Canada, the euro area, Japan, the UK, and the OECD average.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How does he think his Government’s economic policies are working when annual GDP growth has fallen to 2.1 percent year on year and just 0.5 percent per person?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I believe that because all around New Zealand, I see people in work. I see today that nominally New Zealand’s GDP reached $300 billion for the first time, which was in excess of where it was predicted to be when we took over—or in the pre-election fiscal update anyway. So I go on the evidence I see all around me, Mr Goldsmith.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he saying that New Zealanders should be happy with 0.5 percent, per person, GDP growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On this side of the House, we will never be satisfied. We will always strive to go further and faster and better.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think Winston Peters’ September 2017 prediction that the country has “dark days ahead” was helpful, and do we just have to accept those dark days have arrived?

SPEAKER: No, no, there is absolutely no responsibility for an Opposition member’s statement from September 2017.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he agree with the ANZ’s assessment that “the broader narrative that economic momentum is slowly running out of puff” was confirmed in today’s GDP figures, and, if so, what is he doing to restore the nation’s puff?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: If the member had read the whole of the ANZ document he would have noted their statement that trading partner growth has been softening and that as a small, open economy that’s a growth anchor to be particularly concerned about. That is exactly the issue that New Zealand faces at this time, but we do stand here today with annual average growth of 2.4 percent—faster than many of our trading partners—and, I would note, larger than it was on average across the National Party’s time in Government, where it was 2.2 percent.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why does he think business investment was negative in the last quarter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, I’m sure, as the member does, as we go around the country and we talk to business leaders, we know many of them in the export industries are looking across the world and they are seeing that there is a slow-down in the global economy. They are concerned about the orders that are coming through from offshore. This is common in a small, open economy like New Zealand. The good news is we are well positioned to deal with this. We have low public debt, we have operating surpluses forecast, and we have unemployment at historically low levels. The New Zealand economy is in good shape but we are facing global headwinds.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So what is his plan to grow the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m delighted—and obviously there’ll need to be an interchange between us. Well, there’s just so much to be able to deal with, and that’s the issue. So let’s kick off dealing with productivity—an issue that the previous Government ignored completely. There is $40 billion worth of capital spending going in to our infrastructure around New Zealand, and a $300 million venture capital fund, just announced in the Budget, to be able to spur on our entrepreneurs to the next stage of their development. Massive investment is going in to skills and training. Again, after nine years where active labour market policies were put on hold, we’re out there supporting people to get into work. We want to build a productive, sustainable, inclusive economy and clean up the mess that we were left with.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So why does he think, after delivering two Budgets—the last including $3.8 billion of new spending—economic growth has still slowed to barely 2 percent and business confidence remains so low?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I want to help the member out here. These are the June quarter GDP figures—the period ending on 30 June. The Budget that had the $3.8 billion per annum of new operating spending and $10 billion of capital spending starts on 1 July, so the member is just a little confused there.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): More good news worthy of repeating. Today, Stats New Zealand released GDP data for the June quarter. It shows that New Zealand continued to grow, with an expansion of 0.5 percent, coming in slightly ahead of market expectations, and an annual average growth rate of 2.4 percent. GDP per capita was up 0.8 percent from a year ago. I’m also pleased to report to the House that in nominal terms, the New Zealand economy reached $300 billion at 30 June, which is larger than was forecast at the pre-election fiscal update.

Kiritapu Allan: What industries contributed to economic growth in the June quarter?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Statistics New Zealand said that the services industries, which are more domestically orientated, led GDP growth in June, with quarterly growth of 0.7 percent. Our primary industries expanded by 0.7 percent, showing solid underlying fundamentals in these parts of our economy. The data today also showed the impact that global economic volatility is having on the economy. Our manufacturing sector is the most exposed to what is going on in the rest of the world, and activity in New Zealand’s goods-producing industries was down by 0.2 percent in the quarter. It’s worth noting that our goods-producing industries are up, though, 1.8 percent from a year ago, which does highlight the resilience of those who work in these industries.

Kiritapu Allan: How does New Zealand’s growth rate compare to the rest of the world?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We all know that New Zealand has a small, open economy that makes a living from selling things to the rest of the world, so it is important to keep our relative position to the rest of the world in context. It’s pleasing to see that on comparable figures, our June quarter growth from a year ago is stronger than Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, the UK, and the OECD average. While we are facing global headwinds, the New Zealand economy has strong underlying fundamentals.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How does New Zealand’s per-person growth compare with the OECD average?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Our per capita growth that we have in this quarter of 0.8 percent is indeed lower than we would want it to be, but that’s because we have to turn around nine long years of not having an economic strategy based on productivity or sustainability; rather, we have the member’s prescription of increasing house prices and increasing population.

Question No. 3—Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti

3. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti: Does he agree with mana whenua that their land should be returned at Ihumātao, and that the Government should “negotiate with Fletchers for the return of Ihumātao to its ‘rightful owners’ ”?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti): It’s not my place to agree or disagree with mana whenua, but instead to respect their opinions and views. Our focus is on supporting a resolution that respects the mana of all parties, including mana whenua, the Crown, and Fletchers.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he agree with the Māori King that the land should be returned to Māori ownership?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: As I said, it’s not my place to agree or to disagree, but instead to respect the opinions and views of all those involved, including the Māori King.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Supplementary.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: We generally have two supplementaries first.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does he agree with the Acting Prime Minister, Winston Peters, that any involvement of the Crown in purchasing the land would compromise the principle of full and final settlement?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I take great interest in the views of the Rt Hon Winston Peters, and I respect the views of most people when it comes to this whole situation.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Who, on what date, and about what land said this: “The owner of that property is Fletcher Residential. They have indicated that they are happy to sit down and to talk with some of the Māori groups that are concerned. The member has made representations to me along those lines; I would be happy to facilitate that, because I think there is the capacity on that site to come to a common-sense solution.”

SPEAKER: In as far as he has responsibility, which is a bit hard to tell, but we’ll go.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I believe that that comment was made by the Hon Dr Nick Smith, then Minister for Building and Housing, on 18 February 2016; he was speaking of Ihumātao.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Can the Minister confirm that the reason the issue has turned to custard over this land—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. His question will be within order. I’m going to give him a last chance today to word a question in order without losing it.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Can the Minister confirm that the issue regarding this land has become so contentious because Labour and Green MPs, in Opposition, made promises to protestors that have not been fulfilled?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has a Government contribution of a loan or any financial support been considered at any stage in respect of supporting the purchase of this land?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I have no responsibility for loans in this regard.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Has the Minister been involved in any discussions in respect of this land in which a Crown financial contribution, loan, or any other support was considered?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the Minister visit the site and meet with the protestors, given the high expectations he’s created as Minister responsible for Crown-Māori relations?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I reject the premise of his assertion that I’m creating high expectations. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! If the members want the Minister to answer the question, they will be quiet—especially Mr Hudson.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the Minister visit the site and meet with protestors?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Quite possibly. It depends on the timing, but, again, I go back to my previous answer that I haven’t raised any expectations because I haven’t made comment on this issue.

Question No. 4—Transport

4. PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour) to the Minister of Transport: What progress has he made, if any, on the Auckland Transport Alignment Project?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Good news, Mr Speaker. Earlier this week, I turned the sod on another Auckland Transport Alignment Project project with Auckland mayor, Phil Goff. We are transforming the Puhinui rail station into an efficient, modern, and user-friendly rail and bus interchange. This was only possible because of our landmark, fully funded, $28 billion Auckland Transport Alignment Project with Auckland Council.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: When will construction be completed?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: This project will be completed within 18 months, and it will ease the pressure on Auckland’s transport system that events like hosting APEC will create. Work will also start, in the coming weeks, on upgrading State Highway 20B, which runs between the station and the airport, and this will also be completed by 2021.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What will this mean for access to Auckland Airport?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, this is one of the transport agency’s big priorities in Auckland right now. There will be a bus service using dedicated lanes to begin with, and, in the future, it will become part of a rapid transit route connecting Manukau and Botany with Puhinui and the airport. This means that anyone with access to the rail network will have access to a 10-minute trip to the airport from that station.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: What other progress has been made on the Auckland Transport Alignment Project?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, progress includes, but is not limited to, the Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway construction. Construction is due to start soon on the K Road enhancement and cycleway project. Fifteen new electric train units have been ordered and are due to arrive within this financial year. The Albany station park and ride extension is in construction, as is safety improvements in the Dome Valley. The detailed design work is under way on the Matakana link road, the Eastern Busway is being built as we speak, and there’s much more to come.

Question No. 5—Prime Minister

5. MARK PATTERSON (NZ First) to the Prime Minister: Does he stand by his Government’s policies and actions?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Acting Prime Minister): Yes, and how refreshing it is to have someone finally to hold this Government to account. We stand by reviving mental healthcare and the Wellbeing Commission, shut down by National in 2012; cleaning up New Zealand’s waterways; restoring funding to New Zealand hospitals and schools; planting a billion trees; a $3 billion Provincial Growth Fund to benefit welfare in real New Zealand, not the big end of Queen Street; 100 new locomotives and 900 new wagons; and, dare I say, 800 more front-line police men and women to make our communities safe.

Mark Patterson: What reaction has he seen to the policies of this Government?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: An extraordinary range of reactions, actually: most effusive and complimentary, and some, from most unusual quarters, seeking to break the door down to attend—they being provincial members of a certain political party. But it’s come from the working-end of town, not the big-end banking end of town. The minimum wage has risen and will be further raised to $20 per hour by 2021 while unemployment declines, and, dare I say it, in June 2019, first-home buyers’ borrowing outstripped investors for the first time.

Mark Patterson: How has this Government increased New Zealand’s prosperity; if so, how?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: That’s a fantastic question. By having a serious understanding of how business works—by having a serious understanding that exports have always been New Zealand’s greatest level of dependency, and that is why we have taken export revenue in 2017 from $37 billion to, as we speak, $46 billion. Of course, just five years ago, the dollar was going at US88c. It’s now at US65c, which is the reason why smart farmers are cheering from the rooftops about this new Government.

Mark Patterson: What are some of the significant recent achievements for seniors? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Some of us take this matter very seriously.

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well, I want to say to certain members, including Nick Smith over there, that next week there’ll be a SuperGold card announcement. We’re talking about restoring super fund contributions shut down by the previous Government, keeping the age at 65, and doing one thing that other parties in the past have: not ever forgetting that New Zealand seniors built this country and deserve some respect.

Hon Grant Robertson: How many questions has he answered from the Opposition since he took over as Acting Prime Minister this week, and what explanation would he have for that number?

Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Alas, in the public interest, I’m sad to say the answer has been none, and I put it down to the old adage “Don’t go to a gun fight carrying a small knife.”

Question No. 6—Māori Development

6. Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) to the Minister for Māori Development: How many meetings, if any, has she had with mana whenua, Tainui, the Kīngitanga, ministerial colleagues, or any other person in respect of Ihumātao?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development): I’ve had two meetings, each well reported in the media, the first on 25 July and another on 31 July, and I regularly meet with my ministerial colleagues and talk about a variety of topics; Ihumātao is likely to have been one of them.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Was financial support being considered or discussed at any of those meetings for purchase of the land?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: No.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does she agree with the Māori King that the Crown should negotiate to purchase the land and return it to Māori ownership?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Mr Speaker—

Hon Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m not challenging your ruling, but I’m just questioning around responsibility for the views of the Māori King from the Minister for Māori Development—I’m just not sure quite how that lines up.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Well, no, I don’t need to hear from Dr Smith. This is a public opinion about a matter for which this Minister has been given responsibility to answer this question in the House, and we often—and, in fact, you know, as recently, I think, as yesterday, Mr Robertson, you answered questions based on the opinions of outside persons in an area for which you had responsibility. I think that the question of the Māori King commenting on an issue which affects Māori—the Minister for Māori Development does not have responsibility for that, but can and has been asked for her opinion on the comment, and that is within, I think, a reasonable question.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The views of the Māori King are a matter for him and, of particular note, for mana whenua groups. We acknowledge and thank him for his leadership in bringing mana whenua groups together.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will she rule out the Government taking up the advice of the Māori King—of the Government negotiating to purchase the land and return it to its Māori owners?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: It’s not a matter of whether I will rule anything in or out. This Government is trying to find a constructive solution to a complex set of issues at Ihumātao, and if he was concerned about getting a really good outcome where there’s certainty, I’m sure he would change his line of questioning.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Does the options of a constructive solution to the problem include the taxpayer providing money for the purchase of the land, as suggested by the Māori King?

SPEAKER: “Do the options”—but anyway, yep.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I’m not entirely sure how the member jumped to that question, based on the primary, but what I can say is that this Government is concerned about getting certainty of outcome to all parties involved, and in order to achieve that, we need everybody to come to the table and look for a constructive, innovative solution.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Will the Minister visit the site and meet with the protesters?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I think the Minister fails to recognise that I—

SPEAKER: The member.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I think the member fails to recognise that I have connections to that area. I don’t need to visit a site to know that the rubbish that they created in trying to ram through development without the support of the local community has proven to be a problem, and we have to sort out the mess that he started.

Question No. 7—Police

BRETT HUDSON (National): My question is to the Minister of Police. How many police to date—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Both sides. Start again, please.

7. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Police: How many police to date have been deployed at Ihumātao, and what has been the total cost to date of their deployment?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Under section 16 of the Policing Act, the role of the Minister and the role of police are very clearly defined. Enforcement, investigation, and prosecution are, quite properly, the responsibility of the commissioner. This includes a decision to deploy officers to an incident or a dispute. I am advised that the number of staff deployed is operationally sensitive, and I’m also advised that to calculate the cost is a huge task that the police were not able to do in time for this question.

Brett Hudson: What representations have been made to him about increasing the police presence at Ihumātao, and by who?

Hon STUART NASH: As mentioned, it’s a completely operational decision which I would have no input into whatsoever.

Brett Hudson: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I just asked him what representations he’d received. He could have said none or—

SPEAKER: Yes, and notwithstanding the fact that it’s not his responsibility, it may be that someone asked him to do something that wasn’t his responsibility, and he has a responsibility to answer for that.

Hon STUART NASH: None.

Brett Hudson: Does he think it has been a good use of police resources, keeping an eye on the land occupiers at Ihumātao?

Hon STUART NASH: What I would say is that the District Commander for Counties Manukau is a woman called Superintendent Jill Rogers. She is an officer of 26 years’ experience. I trust her totally to deploy her officers in a way that she sees fit to maintain law and order.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: When approached by the Minister for Māori Development, did the Minister support the increase of presence of Māori wardens, a voluntary organisation, in order to better relate to the community on the issues at Ihumātao?

SPEAKER: No—no. There is no responsibility of the Minister of Police for Māori wardens.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister for Māori Development, who asked the question, was recently asked a number of questions by Dr Smith for which she did not have ministerial responsibility, including negotiations over this very matter, which she doesn’t have ministerial responsibility for.

SPEAKER: Well, I think, once again I’m being accused of being soft on the Opposition and hard on the Government. I’ll just wear that.

Brett Hudson: Is he expecting members of the New Zealand Police force to receive any further abuse from the protestors at Ihumātao?

Hon STUART NASH: What I would comment on is I think the police have behaved with utmost professionalism and respect in their duties, as do all members of the New Zealand Police force up and down this country.

Brett Hudson: Will he visit Ihumātao?

Hon STUART NASH: No.

Question No. 8—Fisheries

8. RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga) to the Minister of Fisheries: What recent announcements has he made about helping the aquaculture industry deliver economic growth and jobs for the regions?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Fisheries): Good news. Yesterday, I announced the Government’s strategy to work alongside and support the aquaculture industry to become a $3 billion industry by 2035. The strategy looks to maximise the performance and value of existing inshore farm footprint and to enable industries to sustainably extend farming into an open ocean and to modern, land-based facilities. Aquaculture contributes significantly to regional development. It generated over $600 million in revenue in 2018 and employs around 3,000 people. We are on track to reach a billion dollars in annual aquaculture sales by 2025, but we can deliver more, and this Government is committed to helping the aquaculture industry do so.

Rino Tirikatene: How is the Government investing in building a productive aquaculture industry?

Hon STUART NASH: The coalition agreement recognised the path aquaculture has been on and the potential for the sector to further deliver economic growth for the regions. Thanks to the investment by my colleague the Hon Shane Jones, the Provincial Growth Fund has so far invested around $30 million into aquaculture for the regions. That includes $20 million for a mussel processing facility at Ōpōtiki and around $10 million to establish the National Algae Centre and an artificial intelligence institute, both based out of Nelson. We need an economy where more New Zealanders get to experience the benefits of economic growth, and by investing in aquaculture, we are supporting towns like Nelson, Akaroa, Blenheim, Thames, and Bluff, where aquaculture is set to thrive.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: How has the Minister been allowing the application for Farm Switch to sit on his desk for more than two years when it is the greatest opportunity for growing aquaculture in New Zealand?

Hon STUART NASH: I haven’t.

Rino Tirikatene: How does the aquaculture strategy balance economic growth and the environment?

Hon STUART NASH: At the heart of the strategy is sustainability. It sets actions to reduce waste and emissions across aquaculture production and a plan for how the industry can adapt to climate change. Aquaculture is a primary industry leading environmentally sustainable practices across the value chain. Because of this, aquaculture is well placed to be a bigger part of our future low-emissions economy that advances New Zealand’s wellbeing.

Question No. 9—Housing

9. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua) to the Minister of Housing: How many houses has the private sector built in the last 12 months, and how many has the Government built?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Housing: Data on all completed homes is not centrally recorded. However, drawing on consent data, to the end of July 2019, the total number of new homes consented in New Zealand was 35,472. According to Statistics NZ, that is a record number of consents since the mid-1970s. Of this, 2,116 consents were to central government agencies, including Housing New Zealand. That figure does not include KiwiBuild homes built by private developers. I’d like to point out to the member that the Government consents have more than doubled from June 2017 to June 2018.

Andrew Bayly: Will developers be less likely to buy land and build new houses if there’s a possibility that iwi will renege on full and final Treaty settlements and attempt to claim back land?

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s going to have to relate it to the primary question.

Andrew Bayly: Will developers be less likely to buy land and build new houses if there’s a possibility that iwi will renege on full and final Treaty settlements?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I reject the premise of the question.

SPEAKER: And I should have also rejected the question. It’s got nothing to do with houses built in the last 12 months.

Andrew Bayly: Has she asked for or received any advice on any potential chilling effects from reneging on full and final Treaty settlements that would have an effect on new developments in the last 12 months and going forward?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Again, I reject the premise of the member’s question.

SPEAKER: Well, I just want to say to the member that I’m glad he could understand it, because I couldn’t. It was looking both backwards and forwards at the same time, which seems very hard.

Andrew Bayly: What does she think is a better use of Ihumātao: building affordable houses for everyone or returning the land to be used as a reserve?

SPEAKER: Order! That has no relationship to the question.

Andrew Bayly: What does she think is a better use of Ihumātao: building new houses on that land—building new houses on that land?

SPEAKER: Even with the extra bit at the end, it still didn’t get there. Does the member have another supplementary?

Andrew Bayly: Has she had any advice on how many houses will now not be built on Ihumātao that were planned—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m now convinced that that member is being deliberately disorderly. He will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Andrew Bayly: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: Further supplementary.

Andrew Bayly: Will she visit Ihumātao?

SPEAKER: Order! The member will leave the House.

Andrew Bayly withdrew from the Chamber.

Hon Shane Jones: Haere rā.

SPEAKER: And the member who interjected then will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Shane Jones: I withdraw and apologise.

Question No. 10—Women

10. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister for Women: What progress, if any, is the Government making on increasing the proportion of women in leadership positions in the State sector?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’d like to acknowledge that today is Women’s Suffrage Day, and acknowledge all of the women throughout the history of Aotearoa New Zealand who have led the social and political progress of our country. The Government has set a target of 50 percent for women’s participation on boards and committees in the State sector by 2021, and we are well on our way to achieving that, with women currently holding over 47.4 percent of these positions, as at December 2018.

Dr Deborah Russell: What progress is being made in the Public Service?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The Minister of State Services and I launched the action plan to eliminate the Public Service gender pay gap in June last year, which included milestones for women in leadership. There has been some great progress made in this area, with the number of women chief executives exceeding 50 percent for the first time. In addition to meeting this milestone, more women chief executives have been appointed to larger jobs, which is a fantastic sign of the kind of progress that we want to see.

Dr Deborah Russell: Why is this work important?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Having more women and diversity in leadership is not only the right thing to do; we know that diversity helps organisations function more efficiently. More women in leadership means better decision-making, better organisational resilience, and better performance. It opens up more opportunities for women to succeed and influence, and it is essential to a more inclusive and fairer society. We want the boards that are governing in New Zealand to look like the communities they represent.

Dr Deborah Russell: What about the private sector?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: There have been some small gains for women in the private sector, as of June this year—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I am going to rule that out, because that doesn’t relate to the primary question.

Question No. 11—Health

11. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Associate Minister of Health: Does she stand by all her statements, policies, and actions regarding vaccination and the measles outbreak?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Health): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Yes, in the context they were given,

Dr Shane Reti: Did her officials make formal public notification of measles outbreaks in Northland, Lakes, and Hutt Valley, when written questions in her name show these have been part of nine measles outbreaks in New Zealand this year?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Sorry, Mr Speaker, I’m not sure I understand the question. The answer has been given in—

SPEAKER: I’ll ask the member to ask it again, and, I will say, I’m also looking very carefully at how it relates to the primary.

Dr Shane Reti: Did her officials make formal public notification of measles outbreaks in Northland, Lakes, and Hutt Valley, when written questions in her name show these have been part of nine measles outbreaks in New Zealand this year?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Again, Mr Speaker, I’m sorry; I’m not sure what the member means by “formal notification”. Obviously, the answers have been given, so the officials have acknowledged it. I don’t know what he means in addition to that.

SPEAKER: Well, I think that was an answer, even if it sounded like a point of order.

Dr Shane Reti: When she has stated there is no shortage of measles vaccine supply, why then have officials deprioritised 30- to 50-year-olds from the measles vaccine?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I’ve been assured by the Director-General of Health that there is no problem with supply of vaccines, and the member will be aware that, in addition to the 52,000 additional vaccines that arrived this week, the Ministry of Health has announced that 100,000 more have been secured and will be arriving in the coming weeks. What is essential right now, in the midst of this very serious outbreak in Auckland, is that we ensure that children are the first priority for vaccination, because they are the most vulnerable to the illness and they are the most likely to be hospitalised.

Dr Shane Reti: When she continues to assert that there is no shortage of vaccines, are people today attending their GP for a measles vaccine being turned away due to vaccine shortage?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: As we’ve covered at length in this House, when this stocktake was undertaken, it did find that there was some shortfall in the distribution of vaccines, and so the Ministry of Health, district health boards, and public health organisations are working to ensure that vaccine is available where it is needed, when it is needed. That is not a shortfall nationally; it’s a need to ensure that each GP practice has enough.

Dr Shane Reti: When she says there is an additional 100,000 measles vaccines, can she reassure New Zealanders that these vaccines match the measles strains identified in New Zealand?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I can assure the member that the best quality assurance has already been undertaken by Medsafe and by Pharmac, and the Ministry of Health and Pharmac have been working to secure vaccine that will provide immunity for those in New Zealand. But I have to say that the Opposition is not doing much to reassure the New Zealand public with their constant scaremongering about a shortfall of vaccine, which is irresponsible, but typical of National. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! I’m just waiting for people to settle before I call Mr Goldsmith.

Question No. 12—Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations

12. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations: Does he agree that Treaty settlements should be full and final?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is the land at Ihumātao in an area covered by a Treaty settlement?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The land at Ihumātao has been the subject of a number of settlements. It has been referenced in the Waikato-Tainui raupatu claims settlement. It has also been referred to in the settlements relating to a number of other hapū and iwi—and that includes Ngāi Tai ki Tāmiki, Ngāti Tamaoho, Te Kawerau ā Maki—and is currently under negotiation in relation to Te Ākitai Waiōhua. Each of those settlements that have been achieved have made reference to those lands.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Will he give a clear assurance that his Government will not undermine the principle of full and final settlements in any arrangements at Ihumātao?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he believe that every generation has the right to reopen past settlements?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I trust that the iwi who have reached agreements to settle historical Treaty grievances will stand by those settlements. Those who are yet to conclude negotiations, or even to commence negotiations, and to reach agreement on settlement will also, I trust, stand by those agreements.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Has he seen, as reported yesterday, that when delivering news of consensus of mana whenua, Kīngitanga stated—and I quote—“Mana whenua agreed the return of the land is outside of the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process and therefore requires an innovative and modern solution that does not financially disadvantage iwi.”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It certainly has been very encouraging that Kīngitanga has exercised, I think, a very good leadership role in dealing with what has been a very difficult dispute between iwi and between hapū and between mana whenua. So yesterday’s statement and agreement between those parties, I think, was a very positive step forward, but the Crown maintains an interest, if only for the sake of peace and good order, in ensuring that there is a final resolution to the issues surrounding that piece of land. That is consistent with maintaining the integrity of the Treaty settlements achieved so far—and there’s about 88 of them—and those remaining to be achieved.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he concerned that there is a risk that public support—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I apologise. I thought the member had finished before. The National Party has used all its supplementary questions.

Hon Grant Robertson: Not very well.

SPEAKER: Order! Grant Robertson will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Grant Robertson: I withdraw and apologise.

Bills

Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I move, That the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill.

Te Whare e tū nei, te marae e takoto nei, tēnā koutou, tēnā kōrua. E ngā mate te wā, haere atu rā. Ki a tātou, te hunga ora, tēnā koutou. Ki a koutou hoki, Ngāti Hinerangi, nau mai haere mai, whakatau mai. Nā koutou tēnei rangi, nā reira, rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[The House that stands before me, the marae that lies before me, greetings to you all, greetings to you both. To those who have passed on recently, go safely. To us, the living, greetings to us all. To you also, Ngāti Hinerangi, welcome, welcome, be welcome. This is your day, so, to the distinguished masses, greetings, greetings, greetings one and all.]

We are joined in the House today by Ngāti Hinerangi, and I extend the warmest of welcomes to you all and thank you for making this journey to this House, to this place, to witness the first reading of your bill. That you are present today to witness such a momentous occasion reinforces the importance of your settlement to both Ngāti Hinerangi and also to the Crown.

In May this year, I was welcomed on to Te Ōhākī Marae, in the heart of the rohe of Ngāti Hinerangi, to sign the Ngāti Hinerangi deed of settlement. Some four months on from the signing ceremony, I’m very pleased to speak in support of this bill, which, like many others, has been many years in the making. It has been nearly four years since the agreement in principle was signed, and so it is an auspicious occasion that we celebrate today.

To those of you who have worked so hard to make today possible, I offer you my most sincere thanks. The late Matuakore “Mac” Koperu MacMillan and Annie Uruwharangi Marsh, along with other Ngāti Hinerangi kaumātua and kuia, started this journey many years ago. They have all played a part in strengthening the history of Ngāti Hinerangi, and they are in our thoughts today. Moe mai rā.

I’d also like to acknowledge the various members of the Ngāti Hinerangi negotiation team—negotiators, trustees, and others—for their commitment to their people. The negotiations have been long, and I acknowledge the hard work, tenacity, and perseverance of all involved to achieve an enduring settlement for Ngāti Hinerangi.

I want to make special mention of Ngāti Hinerangi’s overlapping interest process. Ngāti Hinerangi engaged in a process that demonstrated, in my view, great leadership and pragmatism. That approach should provide for long-lasting relationships with Ngāti Hinerangi’s neighbouring iwi as Ngāti Hinerangi progress to a post-settlement environment. I’d also like to thank the many people who have worked and contributed to this settlement: the former Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Chris Finlayson; the Crown team, including officials from Te Arawhiti; the Department of Conservation; and other supporting Crown agencies.

In February 2014, the Crown recognised the mandate of the Ngāti Hinerangi Trust to represent Ngāti Hinerangi in negotiating a comprehensive historical Treaty of Waitangi settlement. The trust and the Crown signed terms of negotiation in February 2014. The Crown and Ngāti Hinerangi signed an agreement in principle in December 2015, and the deed of settlement was initialled in December 2018. Following ratification of the deed of settlement by the Ngāti Hinerangi claimant community, the Ngāti Hinerangi deed of settlement was signed on 4 May this year at Te Ōhākī Marae.

I’d like to reflect on some of the interactions with the Crown following the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi by representatives of Ngāti Hinerangi in Tauranga in 1840. In the early 1860s, Ngāti Hinerangi became adherents of Kīngitanga. Ngāti Hinerangi joined forced to fight against the Crown in both the Taranaki and Waikato wars. Ngāti Hinerangi were also among the forces that fought against the Crown at Gate Pā. Crown acts of purchasing land, such as in the Te Puna-Katikati block, an area in which Ngāti Hinerangi had interests, were not investigated properly, and Ngāti Hinerangi received no benefits from this sale and were not able to retain parts of this land. Further and sustained acts by the Crown continued to alienate Ngāti Hinerangi land, both within the Tauranga Moana and Waikato areas of Ngāti Hinerangi’s tribal rohe, including significant land loss within Matamata itself. This land loss was the major factor that resulted in the cultural and economic marginalisation of Ngāti Hinerangi.

As a result of the Crown’s acts and omissions, Ngāti Hinerangi became virtually landless, lost their autonomy and connection with their environment, and suffered from severe social and economic deprivation. Through this settlement, the Crown seeks to atone for its past injustices that it has inflicted upon Ngāti Hinerangi and to provide more opportunities for Ngāti Hinerangi and the Crown to move forward.

The settlement package contains an agreed historical account, Crown acknowledgments and apology, cultural redress, and commercial redress. The cultural redress recognises the traditional, historical, cultural, and spiritual association of Ngāti Hinerangi within their core rohe and areas further afield with which Ngāti Hinerangi have associations. The settlement package includes the vesting of 14 sites of significance, including the Wairere Falls property, Te Tuhi East, Te Tuhi West, and the Ōkauia property, to allow Ngāti Hinerangi to re-establish the connections with the various parts of the Ngāti Hinerangi rohe and strengthen the identity of Ngāti Hinerangi.

The cultural redress acknowledges the connection of Ngāti Hinerangi with their rohe through the overlay classification, deeds of recognition, and statutory acknowledgment. These instruments will enhance the ability of Ngāti Hinerangi to participate in specified Resource Management Act processes, and require the Crown to consult with Ngāti Hinerangi and have regard to their views regarding the special associations within certain areas. The cultural redress package also provides for relationship instruments with key Crown agencies, a co-governance arrangement over the Waihou Piako catchments, and a payment of $200,000 for the cultural revitalisation of the Ngāti Hinerangi people, and $20,000 for a marae-rebuild fund.

The commercial redress package includes financial redress of $8.1 million; the transfer of five Crown-owned properties to Ngāti Hinerangi, including the sale and leaseback of Manawaru School—that’s land only—and the Matamata police station—again, land only—and a right of first refusal over 51 other Crown properties and the transfer of part of Waihou forest. The redress provided in the settlement went through significant changes during negotiations and in response to overlapping interests. I believe it will go a long way towards Ngāti Hinerangi re-establishing a connection with various parts of their rohe, strengthening the identity of Ngāti Hinerangi, and providing the foundation for a stronger social, cultural, and economic future for the iwi.

I mentioned at the deed of settlement signing ceremony in May that it’s not possible—never possible—to fully compensate Ngāti Hinerangi for the loss and prejudice they have suffered. I therefore acknowledge their generosity in graciously accepting the redress contained in this settlement package, and trust that today will mark a new beginning in the relations between Ngāti Hinerangi and the Crown. This settlement lays the cultural and economic foundation for Ngāti Hinerangi rangatahi, mokopuna, and future generations. This is reflected in the name chosen for the Ngāti Hinerangi post-settlement governance entity: Te Puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi Iwi Trust, meaning the blossoming of Ngāti Hinerangi.

Through this settlement, the Crown hopes to restore its honour and alleviate Ngāti Hinerangi’s acute sense of grievance. The Crown looks forward to building a new relationship with Ngāti Hinerangi based on cooperation, mutual trust, and respect for Te Tiriti o Waitangi and its principles. So thank you again to Ngāti Hinerangi for your unwavering commitment to achieve this settlement. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon NICKY WAGNER (National): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Tihei mauri ora! Te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Te papa e takoto nei, tēnā koe. Ngā mate, haere, haere, haere. Ngā reo, ngā mana, tēnā koutou katoa. Kei te kōrero ahau mō te pānuitanga tuatahi o Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. I stand. To the House that stands before me, greetings. The ground that lies before me, greetings. Those who have passed, go, go, go. To the spokespeople, the authorities, greetings one and all. I am speaking about the first reading of the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill.]

I really liked the Stuff heading of 25 May 2019, reporting on the day that Ngāti Hinerangi and the Crown signed the deed of settlement that will be implemented through this legislation today. The headline read “An iwi blossoms – Ngāti Hinerangi take back their mana after signing a Deed of Settlement”.

Today, we celebrate the first reading of that claims settlement bill, for an iwi that was nearly forgotten. If it wasn’t for kaumātua Rawiri Thompson, who was one of the few who knew that Ngāti Hinerangi wasn’t merely a hapū of Ngāti Raukawa but an iwi in its own right, we wouldn’t be here in the House today discussing and debating this legislation. I think it was just in time: another generation down the line and the iwi may have been lost for ever.

The rebirth of Ngāti Hinerangi began in 2004. Through research, the Māori Land Court proved the existence of the iwi. The Ngāti Hinerangi Trust began negotiations towards this Treaty settlement in 2014. The agreement in principle was signed in 2015 by the then Minister of Treaty settlements, the Hon Chris Finlayson, and this is the final step.

If we go back to pre-European times, the people of Ngāti Hinerangi were a strong iwi inhabiting land all the way from the eastern Waikato to Tauranga, including part of the Kaimai Range. But when Rawiri Thompson was a boy, they were landless, reduced to owning only the marae in Matamata and a few houses on Douglas Road. How did that happen?

Back in 1840, rangatira proudly affiliated with Ngāti Hinerangi signed the Treaty of Waitangi when it was taken to Tauranga. But in the early 1860s, Ngāti Hinerangi, in an attempt to slow down land sales and to gain political influence, joined the Kīngitanga movement and, when war broke out in Taranaki, joined the Kīngitanga forces in opposing the Crown. Their warriors also opposed the Crown during the Waikato War. In April 1864, Ngāti Hinerangi was among the forces of the Tauranga Māori who defeated—defeated—Crown troops at the Battle of Pukehinahina at Gate Pā. That was a significant victory—a significant victory—for less than 250 Māori warriors defending Gate Pā, and it was a crushing defeat for the nearly 2,000 of His Majesty’s finest and well-equipped soldiers and sailors. And, in fact, today it is still considered the most devastating battle for the British military during the New Zealand Wars. But, unfortunately, it was swiftly followed by the Battle of Te Ranga, which ended in defeat for Tauranga Māori, including Ngāti Hinerangi.

Multiple land confiscations followed, with increasing violence over land surveys, and in 1867 the Crown mounted a scorched earth campaign against several Māori villages. Even the Native Land Court conspired against the iwi, and Ngāti Hinerangi were alienated from their land. They became virtually landless. Over the course of the 20th century, that loss resulted in social, cultural, and economic marginalisation of the iwi.

Today, in this bill, the Crown unreservedly apologises to Ngāti Hinerangi for failing to uphold its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, and the resulting damage that was done to the iwi. The bill provides for cultural redress to recognise the traditional, historical, cultural, and spiritual associations of Ngāti Hinerangi with sites owned by the Crown, and provides for the vesting of 14 cultural redress sites, including part of the Wairere Falls, which, of course, is a sacred awa to Ngāti Hinerangi. It also allows for co-governance of the Waihou and Piako river catchments and total financial redress of $8.1 million. There’s also a cultural revitalisation payment of $200,000 and a marae rebuild payment of $20,000, but, of course, nothing will fully recompense Ngāti Hinerangi for the loss, for the hurt, and for the terrible consequences of the events of the late 19th century and the 20th century.

This legislation today provides for a new beginning—an opportunity for the descendants of Ngāti Hinerangi to start to re-establish their iwi, and, as Dianna Vaimoso says, “It means that Ngāti Hinerangi can hold its head high and be proud of what it’s accomplished.” Ngāti Hinerangi can now build a sustainable future for the iwi for this generation and for those that follow it. Mō tātou, ā, mō kā uri ā muri ake nei—for you and your children after you.

With the signing of this Treaty settlement, the name changes to Te Puāwaitanga Ngāti Hinerangi. Puāwai means “to blossom”. Today is a giant step forward towards the blossoming of today’s Ngāti Hinerangi. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Kia ora.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Ngāti Hinerangi, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ngā uri o te tupuna, Koperu. Nau mai, nau mai, whakatau mai. Whakatau mai ki Te Whare Pāremata e takatū nei.

Tēnā koutou i ō tātou mate maha. Ngā mate huhua o te wā. Haere, haere, haere koutou, e okioki.

Hoki mai ki a tātou te kanohi ora. Tēnā koutou. Nō koutou tēnei rā nui, whakahirahira. He hōnore nui tēnei māku ki te tū ki te tautoko tēnei pire i tana pānuitanga tuatahi. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, ōku rangatira. Huri rauna, ngā rangatira o tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. Ngāti Hinerangi, greetings to you all. Greetings to the descendants of the ancestor Koperu. Welcome, welcome, be welcome. Welcome to Parliament that stands before me.

I acknowledge those who have passed on. To the many who have passed on in recent times, rest, rest, rest in peace.

Returning to us, the living, greetings. This is a most important day, your important day. It is an honour for me to stand in support of this bill and its first reading. Therefore, greetings, my distinguished masses throughout our House. Greetings, greetings, greetings.]

It’s a wonderful day today—a wonderful day for Ngāti Hinerangi. I want to acknowledge our manuhiri that have travelled—I would imagine many from the Bay of Plenty, Matamata, around the beautiful Kaimai Range, Tauranga Moana—and all that have travelled to celebrate this wonderful occasion. As we’ve heard in previous speeches, this is a day of blossoming. It’s a day of the re-emergence of an iwi reclaiming identity and restoration of mana. All of those things are embodied in this bill and the deed of settlement which was signed, and I am truly honoured to be able to speak in support of this bill. Can I acknowledge, in addition to Ngāti Hinerangi, the work on the part of the Crown and Minister Little and his officials and everyone that has been involved with this Treaty settlement.

At times like this, I’m looking over to the plaque that we unveiled just last week, the plaque to commemorate the New Zealand Wars, and Ngāti Hinerangi were right in the midst of those wars—right in the midst of them. And it’s very appropriate that we acknowledge through the presentation of that plaque all of the losses that were sustained in those New Zealand Wars and, in particular, for Ngāti Hinerangi, as we’ve heard in previous speeches—and I’d like to acknowledge the Hon Nicky Wagner. It was a tremendous decade, the 1860s, for our country. It certainly was a very dark time. Wars were raging and the chiefs of the tribes were left with very hard decisions that they had to make. There was an insatiable appetite from the settler colonial Government of the time for land, and, obviously, with the conflict that erupted from that, Ngāti Hinerangi were right in the midst of this—right in the midst.

I want to acknowledge their chiefs and their tūpuna, who bravely made the decisions, firstly, to sign the Treaty of Waitangi and then also, when those New Zealand Wars broke out, to lead gallantly their people into those conflicts that we’ve heard of—famous names, which I’m sure will be taught up and down the country in our schools very shortly, like Pukehinahina, Gate Pā, and Te Ranga, and many other battles that took place in Tauranga where Ngāti Hinerangi and their tūpuna fought bravely and gallantly and made a huge sacrifice, and that sacrifice was felt very severely through the confiscations of lands that took place under the passage of legislation passed in this very House.

Ngāti Hinerangi suffered greatly, suffered greatly the loss of lands, the loss of identity, the loss of those connections. This wonderful iwi had to disperse, in a way. They intermarried with a lot of their cuzzies, neighbours, neighbouring iwi, and they were unable to have that hub, that base, to be centred on their ancestral lands because those lands were all gone; they were all confiscated. Barely fragments remained, and so it’s very significant that we are passing this bill that recognises the hurt, the loss, and the historical record which is contained in the deed and the bill.

I’m only giving just a very quick summary, but, indeed, there has been a tremendous loss which has been passed on to these people of Ngāti Hinerangi. I’m so pleased that we as a country have the Treaty settlement process. It’s very important—some 30-plus years now of Treaty settlements. I’m very proud that it was instigated by a Labour Government, through the original Waitangi Tribunal and then the jurisdiction of that, the inquiry into the historical grievances, and then a mechanism by which those could be settled. So many years have passed, and it’s really important that we as a nation not only confront these issues but record them in these deeds and provide some means of recapitalisation for the loss that has been sustained by the iwi. Also, we want to promote harmonious relations into the future between the Crown and iwi.

So this is a very significant occasion for Ngāti Hinerangi. I’m very proud as the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee. I’m looking forward, hopefully, for us as a committee travelling up to the heart of Te Rohe o Koperu. We will go right up there, wherever that may be. We are looking forward to travelling up to Matamata, or right into the heart of the Bay of Plenty, to hear from the whānau, to hear the submitters on this very bill. So this is a historic occasion.

Can I just pay tribute to a distinguished kaumātua, Matuakore “Mac” Koperu—what a fantastic name that Koperu is. It’s what we would say is a heavy metal name. There’s plenty of mana in that name, Koperu. So Matua Mac Koperu knew as a child that he was Ngāti Hinerangi, and he maintained his identity, his connection, his whakapapa. He knew all of that, and he ensured that he was able to pass that on to the whānau, to continue the detailed work that was required to ensure that Ngāti Hinerangi was, indeed, recognised and can re-emerge as an iwi. And I know that Matua Mac Koperu is highly regarded—this day, in particular. So I want to acknowledge Matua Mac. I want to acknowledge all of the Ngāti Hinerangi, who have waited a long time, and I want to congratulate them on the work that has been done, because Treaty settlements are not easy. It takes years and years of hard work, of meticulous research, of negotiations, of huis, of so many different phases that every iwi has to, basically, jump through all the hoops, to ultimately achieve a signed deed, and then, likewise, follow through with a passage of legislation through the House.

So there’s a tremendous amount of work that’s gone on, and I want to acknowledge Ngāti Hinerangi for their courage and fortitude in pushing this through and ensuring that we can honour Matua Mac and all of the tūpuna who dreamt of this day. It certainly is a privilege to be here to tautoko and to mihi to Ngāti Hinerangi. I wholeheartedly support this bill.

Nō reira, rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Therefore, to the distinguished masses, thank you, thank you, thank you, one and all.]

MATT KING (National—Northland): It’s a pleasure to speak on the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill; nau mai, haere mai. I’m a permanent member of the Māori Affairs Committee, and we’ve heard from our chair over there, Rino Tirikatene—a huge man with a great lot of respect, and a friend of mine. He does a great job, and we have an enjoyable time on the select committee, the Māori Affairs Committee, because we’re part of this process, and I look forward to travelling up to the rohe as part of our work at select committee.

So this bill gives effect to the deed of settlement signed between the Crown and Ngāti Hinerangi. It’s the full and final Treaty claims settlement from acts or omissions from the Crown from prior to 21 September 1992. Now, a lot of the speakers have said what I’m going to say, but I’ll say it again. I know that Ngāti Hinerangi are an iwi based in Matamata, but their rohe extends from eastern Waikato through to Tauranga, including parts of the Kaimai Ranges, which is a truly beautiful part of New Zealand, second only to Northland, my patch—just a little bit biased there.

In 2014, the Crown recognised the mandate of the Ngāti Hinerangi Trust. In December 2015, there was agreement in principle which was signed which formed the basis of the settlement. On 14 December 2018, the deed of settlement was initialled, and in May of this year—4 May—the deed of settlement was signed. This recognises the wrongs of the past and attempts to strengthen the relationship between the Crown and iwi. These sorts of settlements help unlock the economic potential and boost regional and provincial areas, and this process was begun under the Hon Chris Finlayson. Many, many settlements were begun under that Minister, Chris Finlayson, so he’s done some really great work and we’re really proud of the work that he’s done. He’s a loss to our side, and no doubt he’ll be doing work in other areas, but he did some great work—some great work.

In this bill, the Crown unreservedly apologises to the hapū and whānau of the Ngāti Hinerangi for failing to uphold the obligations of the Treaty of Waitangi. These claims relate to conflict with the Crown in Tauranga and the Crown’s acts of land purchase, which left the iwi virtually landless, including confiscation between 1865 and 1868 of 290,000 acres of land in Tauranga. Some was returned, but the process was flawed, and this contributed to economic and social marginalisation of the iwi. It’s simply not possible to fully compensate Ngāti Hinerangi for the loss and prejudice they suffer—simply not possible—but this settlement will forge a new relationship between the Crown and Ngāti Hinerangi and be a real positive catalyst for change.

Now, the settlement includes an agreed historical account, which is important, Crown acknowledgments, an apology, cultural redress, financial redress of $8.1 million, a cultural revitalisation payment of $200,000, a marae rebuild of $20,000—like I said, we can’t fully compensate for the loss, but it’s a good gesture, I think—co-governance arrangements with the upper Waihou and Piako river catchments, and vesting of 14 cultural redress properties, which includes Wairere Falls Scenic Reserve, which I know Ngāti Hinerangi consider a sacred awa. The benefits of this settlement will be available to all Ngāti Hinerangi, wherever they may live.

Under a National-led Government, we made great progress in completing final and durable settlements of Treaty of Waitangi claims. As a result of our focus on historical Treaty settlements, which this Government continues, New Zealand has completed settlements for the majority of the country. The sooner that we settle Treaty of Waitangi claims, the sooner iwi, and indeed all New Zealanders, will see the benefits these settlements bring to the country. We had 56 settlements in principle and 58 deeds of settlement signed between 2009 and 2017. We also set up the Post Settlement Commitments Unit to safeguard the durability of settlements and recognise the full potential of Crown-iwi relationships. We are very proud of our record in this area.

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): Ko Kahukura kei te rangi. Tāwhana kau ana mai i ngā pae maunga i Kaimai tatū noa ki ngā pārae nui. Tae āwhio ana ko ngā awa e rere, ko Piako, ko Waihau, Huihuia ki Te Moana, te tūtakitanga o ngā tai ki roto i te rohe ka puta atu ki Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.

Māturuturu ngā roimata mai ngā marae ki uta, tutuku noa ki te tai.

Ko Ngāti Hinerangi, nau mai, haere mai te kanohi morehu, te kanohi e hia noa atu te roa kei te ātārangi o ētahi kē atu e piri ana. Te kanohi mō te hia rā nei roa kei te rehurehu e rapuhia ana i tēnei rā ko tō koutou ingoa, ō koutou tūpuna, tō koutou rohe e whakapuakina ana ki roto i Te Whare Pāremata, nā reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Kahukura to the sky. The mountain ranges of the Kaimai stand tall and extend to the vast countryside. Looking around, you will see the rivers that flow, Piako, Waihau, Huihuia to the sea, the meeting of the tides, and the opening to the Pacific Ocean.

Our tear drops flow for those who have passed—on the land and out to sea.

Ngāti Hinerangi, welcome, welcome the descendants, the familiar faces of the multitudes who have lived in the shadows alongside one another for the longest of time; the familiar faces of the multitudes who have struggled and who have searched for your name, your ancestors, your land, all of which is being acknowledged here in Parliament; therefore, thank you, thank you, thank you all.]

I’ve said in our Māori language that this is not only a historic day for the people that belong to Ngāti Hinerangi but the fulfilment of a journey. As colonisation displaced historic Māori tribal groupings, many are the kin groups that have disappeared into the mists of history, assimilated by different tribal names. This tribe, Ngāti Hinerangi, are here to affirm, number one, they are a legitimate identity in that part of the Māori landscape, and, number two, they have rights, they have interests, and they have mana. We today in Parliament, in the highest court of the land, accord them our respect by binding together to pass legislation that acknowledges that despite the processes of colonialism, the various wars, and the ebb and flow of economic forces in that part of New Zealand, they have found the tenacity and they have the spirit within them to continue to perpetuate their own identity.

When the Prince of Wales, in the 1920s, came to Rotorua, my mother’s tribe were not recognised as a tribe as such. Their name was Ngāti Kahu, from the Doubtless Bay area—unfortunately for me, where my relations won’t let Captain Cook’s Endeavour replica waka arrive, but I’ll have more to say about that when I get back up home on the weekend. Ngāti Kahu’s leadership stood before the various tribes who had assembled in Te Arawa to greet this figure of British royalty, and they asserted that they were a distinct, definable tribe.

This wasn’t a question purely of economic importance; it was something of the spirit. Fortunately for the quality of leadership that prevailed at that particular point in time in Ngāti Kahu, they now sit with pride alongside the other tribes of the North. So no more will Ngāti Hinerangi be regarded as a fragment in someone else’s house.

This actually is important not only for generally educating us parliamentarians but for the next generation. Of course, a number of us who have frequented that part of Aotearoa know these marae. A number of us have put on weight going with our Rātana relations to the Omeka Pā. No one ever goes skinny from that pā home. But this is an area of contrast. We have in the rohe an example of modern storytelling in the forms of Hobbiton, which is in the broad area where our visitors to Parliament today hail from. We have to believe that by re-establishing, with some pūtea, reconnecting Ngāti Hinerangi with certain sites of historical significance, and, basically, affirming the worth of their journey, they can enjoy new opportunities in that part of Aotearoa.

Soon we will be looking at what will comprise the context of New Zealand history. Naturally, I expect to see my Tararā history there as well, not only the Ngāpuhi history. But small but telling stories like this one, I only hope—all members of the House, when we have the ability to influence the final shape and character of New Zealand content and curriculum—that they loom large, because in many respects, what we’re doing here today in the overarching size of the economy, which is $300 billion, it’s a modest amount of money. That’s the nature of the pragmatic Treaty of Waitangi settlement process, but it’s important that our words today and the way each of the parties affirm the importance of this legislation also encourages policymakers, political leaders, and other stakeholders to ensure that these stories are told and represent an epitome of what happened to vast areas of Te Ao Māori.

It takes a great deal of courage to assert that you are a distinct tribe. I should know, because I was the chairman of the fisheries commission and had a low level of tolerance for people writing themselves back into the pages of history. But you have to have a certain mana as well, and that is not a mana that can be visited upon any group by Pākehā or Māori politicians in this House; it has to grow from te ūkaipō, and those seeds have to be from Rangiātea. So we salute the group who sustained the journey, who want to celebrate by deed, by song, by speech, by carving, by construction, both material and spiritual, the ongoing existence of their distinctive group called Ngāti Hinerangi.

I’m told that Ngāti Hinerangi also have a group called Ngāti Tawhaki. In the Tai Tokerau, the traditions are not really of the god of the forests, Tāne, but they are of Tawhaki—Tawhaki, who ascended when two cords came down from the heavens as he sought to find the woman who he had shared a child with. The first cord that came down was a red cord, and Tawhaki, being something of a pragmatic chap, sent his friend.

Me kake ki te rangi mā te aho whero.

[Fly high, fly to the sky, follow the red thread that connects us.]

Up goes Tawhaki’s friend on the red cord—I presume that was the Labour cord. Then the next cord—fortunately for my story, there is no blue cord—came. According to the story, we were brought up on te aho mā, and Tawhaki ascended to the heavens and had the unbelievable quality of changing the character of his form. If he struck the wrong sort of people in the journey to find this heavenly maiden of his, he would take on the features of an old man, and then when he struck another group of people, he would take on the features of a young man. I say that because the way in which Ngāti Hinerangi evinces itself through this legislation is a combination of young and old. If you descend from Tawhaki, you are ancient, but the journey that we are assisting through Parliament and this legislation faces new challenges. So we need the wisdom of Tawhaki and the strength and the endurance of the next generation. Tēnā koutou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I must apologise; I was so wrapped up in the story I forgot to give you the two-minute bell. I call Dan Bidois.

Dan Bidois: Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā—

Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you for noting that. I only hope I have a similar impact on the voters.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Te Whare e tū nei, tēnā koe. Te papa e tū nei, e takoto nei, tēnā koe. Ngā mate, haere, haere, haere. Ngā reo, ngā mana, tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Dan Bidois tōku ingoa. Ko Tainui te waka. Ko Ngāti Maniapoto te iwi. Ko Te Kauae te marae. Ko Michael Bidois tōku pāpā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker. The House that stands before me, greetings. The ground that stands before me, lies before me, greetings. Those who have passed, go, go, go safely. The spokespeople, the authorities, greetings to you all. My name is Dan Bidois. Tainui is the ancestral canoe. Ngāti Maniapoto is the tribe. Te Kauae is the marae. Michael Bidois is my father. Greetings to you all, greetings one and all.]

It’s a real privilege to be speaking on the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill in its first reading. I do have a connection to Ngāti Hinerangi: my late grandfather Lawrence Bidois is buried in the hills of the Kaimai Ranges, and he hails from Ngāti Tokotoko. So I’d like to acknowledge everybody who’s come down here from Ngāti Hinerangi. It’s a pleasure to welcome you here in Parliament today.

I grew up in Maniapoto. I didn’t really have a strong connection to Ngāti Hinerangi. My grandfather married a Searancke, and we ended up in Maniapoto. I would have liked to have spent more time in Ngāti Hinerangi, but we didn’t have a marae to go to, so I look forward to visiting Ngāti Hinerangi throughout the course of this bill. My grandfather was a very, very hard man, as stubborn as they come and very, very pig-headed—it’s just lucky that there’s a lot of pigs up in the Kaimai Ranges. Certainly, his Te Reo was good, but that didn’t flow through to my father or myself, so I blame possibly my father for my lack of Te Reo. But the Kaimai Ranges is a fantastic part of New Zealand. It’s a natural border of the waka of Tainui, and it’s a fantastic place to visit. There’s a lot of history, some of which we’ve heard today and some of which we haven’t. There are eight hapū that are signatories to the settlement, and that includes my grandfather’s hapū, Ngāti Tokotoko.

This bill addresses many wrongs of the past and grievances that stem from the Crown’s actions or inactions, where villages were attacked, where land was confiscated, where land was purchased without the consent of Ngāti Hinerangi, and as a consequence the people of Ngāti Hinerangi were alienated from the land, causing a loss of culture and a social and cultural marginalisation.

This bill, and the settlement that this bill gives effect to, goes some way to addressing these grievances. But I’d like to acknowledge that this does not fully encapsulate, and can never fully address, the grievances of the past. In itself, $8.1 million is a tiny sum of the amount that was taken from Ngāti Hinerangi and the people of Ngāti Hinerangi, but it is, I think, symbolic of the desire to acknowledge the grievances of the past and in some way offer some form of compensation. The bill also allows for 14 sites to be given back to the people of Ngāti Hinerangi, an acknowledgment of 10 areas, as well as a level of consultation between the Department of Conservation, and two sites in particular, and the people of Ngāti Hinerangi.

I’d like to acknowledge that the road has not been easy to this point. Of course, the people of Ngāti Hinerangi started this process with the former National Government back in 2014, and I do want to acknowledge that there have been lots of arguments along the way, as is very common in Māoridom. My uncle Rawiri Bidois has, of course, been sparring with David Thompson, who I understand is up there, from Ngāti Tawaki, and I think it’s been interesting talking to my uncle about the sparring, of course. We’ve come to an arrangement here today, and I am very, very supportive of the outcome and where we’re at today. But I would like to take a step back and take some lessons and reflections from this process, because I think that, going forward, the way we’re going to address settlements that have not been settled yet, I think there are certainly some lessons to learn from this.

The key principle of the Treaty of Waitangi settlements is that these are enduring. As my colleague Matt King said, these are supposed to be the final settlements on offer. But these can only be enduring if these settlements benefit all members of Ngāti Hinerangi, no matter where they come from. And talking to my uncle, who certainly had some grievances about the process, there were two hapū, in particular, that didn’t feel like they wanted to sign up to the settlement, because of the process. It was too cumbersome and it was too expensive for them to actually mount any successful attack. And I say this in a very genuine sense, because we all want to get to a stage where Māori have settled and there are no grievances left unturned or unsettled. I think that in the spirit of the Treaty of Waitangi, in the spirit of the Waitangi Tribunal, it’s really important to make sure that we engage with iwi in a structure that allows for all hapū to feel like they are benefiting from the final settlements that are in fact brought to the House through a bill.

So it is, I think, in that spirit that I will be looking forward to, as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, engaging the people of Ngāti Hinerangi more and to work out whether this bill, in fact, does fully benefit all people of Ngāti Hinerangi, because I think that we want to get to a stage where, if we pass this bill and we disperse the money, everybody who is a member of a hapū benefits equally from these settlements.

I just want to take a step back and acknowledge everybody who has brought this bill to fruition in the House today: of course, the former Minister, the Hon Chris Finlayson; I’d also like to acknowledge the current Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little; the staff at Te Arawhiti; and, of course, the people from Ngāti Hinerangi who are here today. Thank you for coming down, making the trip down to Wellington. I would just like to say that I am supportive of this bill. National supports this bill. We support the kaupapa. So it is my pleasure to commend this bill to the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s, as always, a huge privilege to stand on behalf of the Green Party and offer our support and acknowledgment to Ngāti Hinerangi in this, the first reading of their claims settlement bill.

I too want to acknowledge this acknowledgment of this, representing a re-emergence of the iwi against profound forces that came so close to eradicating their identity and place and mana as an iwi, and I think that this bill and this re-emergence represent quite an extraordinary example of resilience and resistance that many in this country would do well to look to and learn from. I feel as if in this speech I should say “Ngāti Hinerangi” as many times as possible, because it is so important, the process and the struggle to get to this point of us formally re-acknowledging your existence and your right to be and your place, which is part of what this settlement does.

Interestingly, it’s not usual that I follow a National Party speaker in these debates and offer the Green Party perspective where we’re on the same page in saying that we don’t see these settlements as necessarily full and final—but amazing efforts of negotiation and the best possible outcomes in the circumstances that are still set up against iwi and hapū. I do think that some of the detail of the former speaker’s speech speaks not to a problem within Māoridom but a problem of our processes and the overlapping interests and large natural groupings and the Crown’s traditional failure to support good tikanga-based processes to lead to solutions that genuinely reflect an accurate history and a fair settlement and restitution. I do think the point made by the previous speaker of when we don’t get this right and it is rushed and it continues to be dominated by the Crown, then actually that sets up further grievances for the future. The Green Party will always continue to stand for the intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, because we believe that that represents the hope for all of our communities to flourish when we abide by those agreements.

I will just take a moment to acknowledge some of the history that is in the deed of settlement and commend all New Zealanders who may be watching this debate to seek out this settlement, and I will reference two earlier speakers who acknowledged the importance of the decision for our history to be compulsory in our schools, because so many of us have come to any understanding of what was done very late in life, and many people never have, unless they have experienced and been subjected to it. If they’re only gaining the benefits from colonisation, I don’t think we can have truly fruitful conversations or positive relationships until we get on the same page. Making history compulsory in schools is going to be, I hope, a very important step in that journey, and these settlements, I hope, will feed into that history and can help us understand ourselves better.

So, in 1840, rangatira affiliated with Ngāti Hinerangi signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi when it was taken across to Tauranga. Then, in the 1860s, Ngāti Hinerangi joined the Kīngitanga movement as an act of an attempt to restore Māori authority and to slow down that sale—I would say illegal sale—of Māori land. It was an act of joining together for survival, and we don’t see that in many settlements as clearly as we do in this settlement. They joined the forces opposing the Crown when the Crown waged a war on iwi across Taranaki. Ngāti Hinerangi joined the Kīngitanga forces to fight back against those incursions of the Crown and those acts of aggression. And then, in 1864, the Crown sent troops into Tauranga to disrupt the movement of men and supplies to the Waikato and, as a result, many Tauranga Māori who had fought in the Waikato returned home to aid in the defence of Tauranga. Ngāti Hinerangi were among the force of Tauranga Māori who defeated Crown troops at the battle of Gate Pā, which I have absolute confidence will be in our history books for all of us to learn from.

Then, in the years after that, after that battle of defeating those forces with their arms, the Crown then went on to—the words are “confiscate” in the deed of settlement; I say “steal”. They stole approximately 290,000 acres of land across Tauranga and deprived Ngāti Hinerangi of, basically, any land base, and with that loss of land base was a loss of identity, loss of economic opportunity, loss of society and wellbeing, and the impact of that just cannot be understood, I don’t think, fully by those of us not affected directly by that. So this settlement, which has, again, been five years of work to get to this point of negotiation with the Crown, offers, I think, $8.1 million to the iwi and cultural redress and vesting of sites back.

I do want to mention specifically, and within the settlement, that I just think it’s a demonstration of the leadership and the generosity and the mana of Ngāti Hinerangi, where, on their initiative, there are areas of land that are being returned that they are not keeping to themselves. They are agreeing and have reached out to co-govern with Tauranga Moana, and, in fact, another block of land, once they receive it through the settlement, they will be re-gifting to Tauranga Moana iwi. The explanation is a way of maintaining connection with the iwi and whānau. That is such wonderful leadership, and I think so many discussions in this country about land and ownership miss that potential. I do believe that the Crown could learn a lot from listening and learning from the example of Ngāti Hinerangi. I think our waterways and our land and our people across the whole country would be much better off if the Crown reflected that sense of shared interdependence and generosity. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Tēnā koutou, Ngāti Hinerangi. Rau rangatira mā, ko aku mihi atu ki a koutou. Nau mai, haere mai.

[Greetings, Ngāti Hinerangi. To the distinguished masses, I would like to acknowledge you. Welcome, welcome.]

You have arrived here at last. Even though it has taken a long time for the journey to make it here, it has arrived. Welcome to the iwi members who have travelled to be here today. I want to acknowledge their leadership and perseverance. I want to acknowledge the kaumātua who honour us with your presence; the trustees; the negotiators for Ngāti Hinerangi; all of those who have worked tirelessly to pursue this moment.

For too many years, Ngāti Hinerangi was an overlooked iwi, very much part of the Kīngitanga movement but not Waikato-Tainui. Based in Matamata, by the Tauranga Moana, in the Kaimai mountains, a land of rich resources. This settlement is a vindication for years of struggle for recognition. No longer will Ngāti Hinerangi be overlooked. Now, the Crown is your Treaty partner. I know that the people of Ngāti Hinerangi have shown great patience, resilience, and a willingness to resolve overlapping claims issues. I know future generations will reap the fruits of your labour.

I want to acknowledge Ministers Finlayson and Little, who have helped lead the process that took us here today. I want to acknowledge the Matamata-Piako District Council, who, I understand, have been very supportive, including Mayor Jan Barnes. And I want to acknowledge the negotiators for the Crown, from Te Arawhiti, and in particular Crown negotiator James Willis, who also happens to be my dad.

My dad became involved as a Crown negotiator in late 2013, holding the first negotiating meetings in 2014. He’s in the gallery today, and I know he is very proud and very excited. How impressed he has been with those he has negotiated with. He speaks of what was sometimes a fraught process but one that was conducted with dignity and pragmatism, with a real will on both sides to forge a renewed relationship. I know of the joy Dad experienced earlier this year at Te Ōhākī Marae, where there was the signing of the deed of settlement and the Crown apology. On that momentous day, the sun shone. It was a beautiful day, and people, I know, felt great significance in the signing that took place. It was a day that signified the dawn of a bright future, and Dad was so happy to be able to be present.

I know full well that Dad is not easy to negotiate with, and I know that he found in Ngāti Hinerangi a more than worthy team across the table, and I want to acknowledge that today. I know that Dad’s enthusiasm for this settlement comes from a satisfaction at seeing wrongs corrected, of seeing justice being done, because we are here today because the Crown broke its promise. The Crown breached the Treaty of Waitangi that it had signed with one of your rangatira. The history of the relationship with the Crown must be acknowledged; it is bleak—colonisation, land wars, alienation, partition of lands, confiscation, scorched earth tactics, loss of land, forestry, waterways, disrespecting of tikanga, cultural and economic marginalisation, and iwi left virtually landless, taking refuge in other whakapapa, almost without recognition. Marae were unable to be used, children punished for speaking their language, land lost, economic means taken. Now the iwi has walked back, in your ancestors’ footsteps, and rediscovered your true identity: not a subtribe of Ngāti Raukawa; an established iwi.

Rebirth began in 2004, when kaumātua began the journey to iwi recognition, and with today’s settlement, the Ngāti Hinerangi Trust has blossomed—te pua Waitangi Ngāti Hinerangi. It is not possible to fully compensate for the loss Ngāti Hinerangi has suffered, but the very process of documenting the past, of hearing the wrongs, is cathartic and important. It is, in itself, a reclaiming of identity, and I want to acknowledge the goodwill of those involved in enduring that process. The settlement today includes an unreserved apology from the Crown for failing to uphold its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi. Yes, today is about past wrongs, but it is also about strengthening for the future, setting the foundations for a strong future partnership between Crown and this iwi, unlocking economic potential, allowing for proactive initiatives to enhance the lives of people and community, allowing for innovative business investment, educating mokopuna, discovering culture and traditions, and building a sustainable, proud future.

I want to acknowledge in particular the work and effort that has gone into resolving overlapping claims issues with Ngāti Hinerangi and surrounding iwi, some of whom initially refused to acknowledge these claims. The settlement includes some novel management approaches: co-governance of land, and the gifting of land by Ngāti Hinerangi to another iwi; mana-enhancing and pragmatic tikanga-based agreements, bringing together iwi in the spirit of shared purpose and values.

Today, I say to you, let us live these settlements for the benefit of future generations. This is the beginning of a new relationship. Let me acknowledge, once again, those who’ve persevered to make today possible. Today is about restoring the honour and mana of both Crown and iwi, reaffirming our commitment to the Treaty of Waitangi, the blossoming of Ngāti Hinerangi—no longer overlooked, a partner to the Crown. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So the next call is a split call.

TAMATI COFFEY (Labour—Waiariki): Tēnā koe e Te Mana Whakawā. Tuatahi, ka tika me mihi ki a koutou o Ngāti Hinerangi; koutou kua tae ā-tinana mai ki tō tātou Whare i tēnei rā. E mihi atu tēnei mema o Te Waiariki ki a koutou, te whānau o te pae maunga o Te Kaimai, nō reira ka tika me mihi ki a koutou. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora anō tātou katoa.

[Firstly, it is only right to acknowledge you of Ngāti Hinerangi; you who have arrived in person to our House on this day. I, the member for Waiariki, would like to thank you all, the families of the mountain ranges of the Kaimai; therefore, it is only right to acknowledge you all. Thank you, thank you, thank you one and all.]

You’re an elusive lot. Why? Because, actually, many have never heard of you before. But today, let the minute takers, let the Hansard know, that Ngāti Hinerangi is in the House. Let us tell your story. I also understand that you too are also finding your own stories, your own footsteps, retracing the steps of your tīpuna, as well, and to that I say kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui. Though your battle has been long, your story is still getting out there, and today we bring your story to the House, and what a story you have: your struggle, your determination, your loss of land, your humility. I mihi to you today.

I want to, in the short time that I have to address you, acknowledge the overlapping claims process. That was something that negatively affected the relationship between the Hauraki Collective and the Tauranga iwi through Hauraki’s Treaty settlement negotiations. But you will become the first iwi to co-govern land, as well as gift some land to another iwi—something that this House has never seen before. For those that don’t know, Ngāti Hinerangi has been given some land through the settlement in Tauranga Moana. Two pieces in particular are the tracks which run from the west to the eastern side to Tauranga: the Te Tuhi Track and Te Ara o Maurihoro Track. I understand that he made an agreement with Tauranga Moana iwi that they will co-govern the land.

Another block, called Ngāti Hinerangi Waipapa, is also in the Tauranga Moana area. Ngāti Hinerangi has decided that, when they receive it, as my colleague said earlier, they will gift it to Tauranga Moana iwi as a way to maintain a connection with the iwi and with the whānau. I found a quote from a Stuff article that was written in May this year. The quote comes from Dianna Vaimoso, and here it goes: “It’s been a huge talking point for other iwi and certainly the Crown. In the old days if you wanted to create a bond with another iwi you would normally gift a virgin bride otherwise known as a puhi to the iwi. Of course we don’t do that these days, but we thought we would work in the same way. We wouldn’t gift a puhi but we would gift our land. It’s been a mana enhancing process for all of us, where we will all walk away feeling happy about the process and I think the day we get that land back it will be a huge deal in the history of New Zealand.”, and that is something that our Government is quite passionate about.

You may or may not have heard, but, just last week, we announced that by 2022, we will be teaching New Zealand history in all of our schools, in all of our kura, and we want to make sure that it’s got a local flavour too, so, hopefully, your story gets taught in amongst that as well. Hopefully—and I want to quote from that same article—we won’t hear other stories, like the one from Hari Smith, who said in this story that he was very young when the Treaty negotiations began but remembers feeling his parents’ and his grandparents’ excitement. He said, “When I was younger up until the age of 11, I never really knew about Ngāti Hinerangi at all. It wasn’t until our kaumātua told us that I actually belong to this iwi on my grandma’s side. When they started the treaty process I thought it was cool, but it wasn’t until I got older that I realised the gravity of this situation.” Now that the Treaty has been settled, he said it’s important to educate our mokopuna and discover our own customs and our own traditions.

Today, we acknowledge you, Ngāti Hinerangi. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Tēnā koe. To Ngāti Hinerangi: tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. It is wonderful to rise and take a call on this as the member of Parliament for Waikato, the most beautiful region in the country, and I need not explain this to Ngāti Hinerangi. They know it well already. Of course, their rohe extends across the Kaimai Range, into the Bay of Plenty, but west is the best, so we’ll stick with that.

Now, I’m fortunate to know this region as well, and, having grown up at Te Poi, and schooled in Matamata, I appreciate the beautiful place that we share. I have fond memories of fishing at the Waiho river, and, without fail, every time as a teenager that I would go fishing, I would catch something in that river. Generally, it was a tree overhanging the other side, but every now and again, on rare occasions, it was a fish, and that was magnificent.

I spent many days hunting in the Kaimai Range, as well, and hiking those trails, and, again, the hunting was more often a hike with a rifle than actually anything particularly productive. But it is a beautiful part of the country, and I know you value that, as do all people who visit and live in that area.

There’s a lot been traversed today in terms of the challenges of the past, the issues around the land confiscation, and nearly becoming a landless iwi, and I can relate to that, being a member of the only landless iwi in New Zealand—Ngāti Tūmatauenga—actually. So I am glad that you did not join them in having no particular lands, and I am encouraged to see that, now, we have reached agreement.

I would like to acknowledge also the negotiating teams for both the Crown and for iwi, who have worked through this process over a number of years since the original signing, back in 2014, to get to this point now, so that we have an agreement in place—an agreed historical account—and a Crown acknowledgment and an apology, along with a number of other aspects, including the financial redress, the cultural revitalisation, and co-governance, as well.

But there is also the vesting of different sites, and Wairere Falls, in particular, is one that is dear to me. The highest waterfall in the North Island and in a beautiful part of the country, it gives a magnificent view out over the wider Waikato region, and I would actually encourage members of this House to come and visit. I’d be happy to show you around and take you for a walk up the hill, and I’m sure Ngāti Hinerangi would extend that invitation as well. It is a magnificent part of the country. We are very lucky to be able to call it home, and I am encouraged now that future generations of Ngāti Hinerangi will be able to grow up in that area with a slightly different lens to what there has been in the past.

It was wonderful to see the young tamariki today in the Beehive theatrette—a stoic young lad, who’s journeyed down with his father to be here today—and I’d like to acknowledge him. When he grows up, he will have faint memories of this process, and it will be, I think, a wonderful milestone that they are able to move forward—our children—from this time, knowing that the future will be slightly different and slightly better as a result of what has been able to be achieved through this particular process.

I’d also like to take a moment just to acknowledge the work of the Ministers, both the current Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little, and the Hon Chris Finlayson, the former Minister, who began this process some years ago. It’s not easy, and we have seen a number of Treaty settlements progressed over the last few years under the last Government and continuing, now, under this Government as well. This is progress. It’s encouraging to see, as we move forward towards what I think will be a better future in each of those particular settlement areas.

So look, today is an exciting step for Ngāti Hinerangi. We are beginning on this journey. There will be a few more debates in this House, but I look forward to it progressing through the remaining stages. I look forward to celebrating back home in the Waikato, as well, and seeing you, no doubt, on the streets of Matamata at some point, although, hopefully, not like the gentleman who was there on the weekend for a stag do. I won’t go into the details of what was happening there, where he was attached to a tree on Broadway, but this is part of your rohe—a beautiful area.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Tell us.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: I might share that story later, Dr Smith, but this is part of the Waikato. We have all sorts, all different people, and we enjoy many different experiences in a beautiful part of the country within that. So I commend this bill to the House and look forward to the final stages progressing.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Civil Defence): Ka noho tonu ahau ki roto i Te Reo Māori.

E ōku rahi, e te tuakana, e Joby e ārahi nei i ngā rahi o Ngāti Hinerangi ki runga i tēnei Whare, e mihi atu ana ahau ki a koutou hei tāpiri atu ki ngā mihi o tēnei Whare ki a koutou, koutou i haere mai i tawhiti, koutou i haere mai i tata.

Pīkauria mai ko ngā aituā maha kei runga i ō koutou pokowhiwhi. Ko ētahi kua kōrerohia, ko ētahi kīhai i kōrero; heoi anō kotahi tonu te whakaaro me te kōrero atu ki a rātou kua ngaro atu ki te pō, haere mai, haere.

Ka whakahokia mai ngā rārangi kōrero ki a tātoue. Āe, kua kaha kōrero mai ngā mema katoa o Te Whare nei i ngā tū āhuatanga o te pire. Ka mea nei ki roto i te pire, ko tētahi āhuatanga ko te whakapāha. Āe, e tika ana me pērā.

Ka rikoata ki roto i te pire nei i te hītori o tēnei o ngā iwi motuhake, o tā rātou ake wāhi. Heoi anō ko tāku ake e whakaaro ana i a au e whakarongo atu ana ki ngā kōrero o Te Whare i te rā nei, ka whakaaro ake mō ngā kōrero i puta mai i te wā i noho a Ngāti Hinerangi i mua i te aroaro o Te Taraipiunara o Waitangi, ko te rahi ake o ngā kōrero kei roto i tā rātou nohoanga me Te Taraipiunara, kīhai au i kite ki roto i tēnei pire; ahakoa kua kapohia te nuinga o ngā kōrero, ko ngā hītori e pā ana ki a Ngāti Hinerangi, ko tāku atu i a au e pānui ana i ngā kōrero a Te Taraipiunara o Waitangi, ko reira katoa wētahi atu kōrero e pā ana ki te takahanga o tēnei pire, me te takahanga o Ngāti Hinerangi ki roto i Te Whare i te rā nei. Heoi anō ka waihona atu taua kōrero ki runga i te papa o Te Whare i te rā nei—he aha ai? Nā te mea kua kōrero mai ngā mema o Te Whare mō te kaupapa hou o tēnei kāwanatanga i whakarewaina i te wiki kua pahure ake nei e pā ana ki ngā hītori me ngā whakapapa, me ngā whakapapa o te motu whānui.

Heoi anō ko tāku atu, anei tētahi rikoata ki roto i te pire nei, ko tētahi atu anō ka kitea ki roto i te Hansard, ko tētahi atu anō ka kitea atu ki roto i ngā rikoata a Te Taraipiunara; ko reira ka kapohia ake ai wētahi o ngā kōrero o rātou kua ngaro atu ki te pō, hei mea tāwharau i te hunga o nāianei. Ka waihona atu tēnā kōrero ki runga i te papa.

E waru ngā kerēme i kawea e Ngāti Hinerangi ki mua i te aroaro o Te Taraipiunara o Waitangi. Ko reira te tūāpapa mō te noho ngātahi a te pāpā o Nicola Willis ki te āta whiriwhiri i te huarahi kei mua i a Ngāti Hinerangi, ka kitea ki roto i te roanga ake o ngā kōrero o te pire i te rā nei. Nō reira ngā mihi nui ki tana pāpā i kawea mai i a Ngāti Hinerangi ki runga i tēnei haerenga e pā ana ki te pire e kōrerohia nei e tātou i te rā nei.

E ai ki te pire e waru ngā hapū o Ngāti Hinerangi kua tāpae, kua whakakotahi nei mō tēnei kaupapa. He mea pai tēnā kia kite atu i ngā hapū maha kei roto kia kaua tētahi i mahue atu ki waho; he mea tika tēnā tā te mea ka mutu te whakakōhatungia o ngā hapū ki roto i te pire nei, he mea uaua te uru mai tētahi atu. He mea uaua ki te whakapanoni i ētahi o ngā ingoa me ngā hapū kua rikoata nei ki roto i te pire. Nō reira ka waihona atu tēnā kōrero, heoi anō hei mihi atu ki ngā hapū maha o Ngāti Hinerangi kua tau mai i te rā nei.

Ko te āhuatanga o tēnei pire, ehara i te mea ohorere ki tēnei Whare. Ko ngā wāhanga e pā ana ki te whakapāha, ko ngā wāhanga e pā ana, e mea nei te kōrero Pākehā he cultural redress, ko tētahi atu wāhanga e pā ana ki te rahi o te pūtea. Heoi anō ka whakaaro ake mō ngā whenua ka kōrerohia nei e te pire, he maha. Ko te nuinga o aua wāhi rā, ehara i te mea wāhi noa iho nei; he mea wāhi motuhake ki a Ngāti Hinerangi, he wāhi e kōrero ana i te hītori o Ngāti Hinerangi, he mea wāhi tapu ki ngā mātua tūpuna o Ngāti Hinerangi. Ka whakaaro ake ki ngā mea kīhai i uru atu. Heoi anō kei a Ngāti Hinerangi tēnā kōrero. He aha te take i kōrero ai au i tēnei tū āhuatanga?

Anā kua kī wētahi o ngā mema o Te Whare nei, anei te otinga o te kaupapa. Mehemea ka whakatutukingia te wāhanga o tēnei pire, ka kī atu kua tutuki, kua tutuki mārika. Heoi anō ko tāku e kī atu nei ki a Ngāti Hinerangi e hoa ehara tēnei i te otinga, he tīmatanga kē, he tīmatanga kē. Ka taea tonu a Ngāti Hinerangi ki te werowero mai i Te Karauna, ka taea tonu a Ngāti Hinerangi ki te kawe ake i ō rātou ake kaupapa ka tae atu ki te wāhi i wawatatia ai e ō tātou mātua, e ō tātou tūpuna, arā ko te tino rangatiratanga, arā ko te mana motuhake; ko ngā mea katoa kua kitea atu e tātou ki roto i Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Nō reira me kaua tātou e kī atu ko te otinga tēnei, kāhore, ko te tīmatanga kē. Koinā te wero nui kei mua i a Ngāti Hinerangi kia kawea tonu rātou ō rātou ake kaupapa, kia werowero tonu i ngā mahi whakahaere a Te Karauna me ngā kaunihera ā-rohe. Kaua e pōhēhē ko Te Karauna anake, engari ko ngā kaunihera ā-rohe anō hoki. Ko reira katoa wētahi kōrero ki roto i te pire nei e pā ana ki te mahi ngātahi arā ko te co-governance e kōrerohia nei e te pire. Nō reira koinā tāku e mea atu ana ehara tēnei i te otinga ake, kāhore, ko te tīmatanga kē.

I a au e whakaaro ake ana ka kitea atu he aha nei nā te huarahi iāianei. Āe, ko tēnei te pānuitanga tuatahi, āe ka whakatutukihia ngā wāhanga katoa o te pire heoi anō i kite atu ahau i tētahi ingoa o te mea o te rōpū hei kawe ake i ngā moemoeā a Ngāti Hinerangi ki roto i ngā tau kei mua i a tātou, arā ko Te Puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi. Ka pai taua ingoa. Ko Te Puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi. Ko reira katoa ko ngā moemoeā a te tamaiti e ngongoro mai nā. Ko reira katoa ngā wawata o Ngāti Hinerangi e kawea nei ki roto i ngā tau maha kei mua i a tātou. Koinā tāku e tautoko atu ana i te āhuatanga o tērā kupu a te puāwaitanga. Nō reira ka mihi atu ahau ki te whakaaro nui o Ngāti Hinerangi kia ea ai ngā mea mamae ki roto i ngā hītori, kia ea ai. Kaua e wareware engari kua ea mō tēnei wā. Engari kia tirohia atu rā tātou ki te puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi kei mua i a tātou.

Mō ngā meneti whakamutunga ki a au nei i kōrero mai—[Bell rung] kei te pōhēhē ko Ngā Manu Kōrero tēnei, e hoa tangi mai te pere—i whakaaro ake ahau mō te āhuatanga o ngā kōrero a tōku matua nei, a te Hōnore a Shane Jones e takitaki nei ngā whakapapa hei tuituia a Ngāti Hinerangi ki ngā mema e noho mai nei. Kua kōrero mai a Nicola Willis mō tana pānga ki a Ngāti Hinerangi, a Dan Bidois mā, me ētahi atu. Heoi anō ko tāku e noho nei, ka whakaaro ake ka pēhea nei au e whai pānga ki a Ngāti Hinerangi kua tae mai i te rā nei? Kua kite atu i tētahi o ngā tūpuna kua whakamanahia ki roto i te pire nei, ko Koperu. Āe mārika he tupuna rongonui tēnā mō Ngāti Hinerangi, he tupuna rongonui anō hoki kei roto i a au o Te Tai Tokerau; heoi anō tāku e whaiwhai haere i ngā hononga, i ngā whakapapa. Ko Koperu te tāne tuatahi o tōku tupuna a Hineāmaru; nō reira pea ka whai karahipi ahau ki roto i ngā mahi a Ngāti Hinerangi ā ngā tau e tū nei. Heoi anō koinā te pai o tēnei nohoanga o tātou, kia whai pānga o ngā take nui o te wā, nā, ko te take nui o te wā nei ko te tatūnga o tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare e pā ana ki a Ngāti Hinerangi.

Ka mutu ki roto i ngā hekona whakamutunga, ka kī atu ahau ki a Ngāti Hinerangi te kōrero a tōku tupuna: kua tawhiti kē tā koutou haerenga mai ki te kore haere tonu; he nui rawa ā, koutou mahi ki te kore e mahi nui tonu.

Nō reira hoki atu rā koutou ki te wā kāinga ki runga i ngā manaakitanga o te wāhi ngaro.

Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[I shall be staying in Māori.

Distinguished guests ladies and gentlemen, and to you, Joby, who lead this important assembly from Ngāti Hinerangi in to this House, I bid you a hearty welcome; in concert with others of this House who have extended warm greetings, you who have come from afar or from nearby, welcome one and all.

Bring with you those many beloved whose spirits are at your shoulder. Some have been mentioned and others have not; nevertheless the one prevailing thought is to pay tribute to those who have gone beyond the veil. I acknowledge you, farewell.

And now to come back to the matter at hand. Yes, all the members of this House have spoken strongly about the provisions in the bill. I note that contained in the bill is an apology. Yes indeed, so it should be.

Recorded in this bill is some of the history of this independent people and their own special places. However, the thing that strikes me as I listen to the speeches in the House today is that the stories that emerged when Ngāti Hinerangi was sitting before the Waitangi Tribunal, the vast majority of the accounts that surfaced at the tribunal sitting, have not made it in to this bill; even though most of what was said has been recorded, the Ngāti Hinerangi history, from what I can tell from reading the Waitangi Tribunal transcripts, the whole story of the journey of this bill, the journey which brings the Ngāti Hinerangi people to the House today, is in there. Nevertheless, I shall leave those musings on the floor of the House today—and why? The reason is that which members of the House have already mentioned—i.e. the new initiative introduced by this Government in the last week about the histories and origins, the origins of the entire country.

However, I notice here that we have a record here in this bill, another can be found in Hansard, yet another resides in the records of the Tribunal; it is there that some of the recollections of many who have passed on can be found, one could say as a protection for those who are here today. I shall let that lie.

Ngāti Hinerangi has brought eight claims before the Waitangi Tribunal. Those are what have created the foundations for negotiation which have brought Nicola Willis’ father together with Ngāti Hinerangi to carefully negotiate the way forward, and which can be heard today in the speeches about the bill. I therefore acknowledge her dad, who has been instrumental in bringing Ngāti Hinerangi to this point in the bill which we are speaking about today.

According to the bill, there are eight Ngāti Hinerangi hapū who have made submissions and who have come together for the sake of this matter. It is good to see how several hapū can be included, ensuring that no one is missed out; that is important because when the hapū have been confirmed in this bill, it would be very difficult to add another one. We know how difficult it is to change names and hapū once they are recorded in the bill. I shall leave that there and simply congratulate the many hapū of Ngāti Hinerangi who have made it here today.

Provisions in this bill are no great surprise to anyone in this House. There are the sections pertaining to the apology, there are the sections around what we refer to in English as cultural redress, and there is the section that describes the amount of financial redress. But I would like us to think about the many places that are talked about in this bill. The majority of those places are not just places; they are areas of special significance to Ngāti Hinerangi; places that tell of the history of Ngāti Hinerangi; places that have been sacred since the time of Ngāti Hinerangi ancestors. Why, you may ask, do I mention this?

The reason is that some members of this House have talked about how this matter has now come to a close. If this bill is passed it seems, then the whole matter has been successfully concluded. What I say to Ngāti Hinerangi, though, is that this is hardly the end—it is only the beginning. Ngāti Hinerangi is still in a position to challenge the Crown, Ngāti Hinerangi is still able to pursue their case until they are satisfied that they have achieved what our ancestors, our forebears, set out to achieve, and that is self-determination, that is true independence; all those things that are envisioned in the Treaty of Waitangi. So let us not talk about this being the end, but rather that it is the beginning. That is the real challenge that is before Ngāti Hinerangi; that they take charge of their own destiny, that they continue to put the questions to the Crown and to local councils. Let us not assume that this is a matter for the Crown alone, but recognise the role of local councils as well. There are provisions in this bill to do with working together; that is to do with co-governance. Therefore, I reiterate that this is not the end of the matter, it is actually the beginning.

While I think about this, it is evident what the road ahead is now. Yes, this is the first reading, yes, the various stages of the bill will all be passed, but I can see the prescience within the name of the group which has the mandate to manage and implement the Ngāti Hinerangi settlement in coming years and that is Te Puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi. Such an apt name; the blossoming of Ngāti Hinerangi. Therein lie the dreams of the little one who is snoring right there. Therein are the aspirations of Ngāti Hinerangi which will be carried along for years to come. It is for these reasons that I endorse the name as such a good choice. Hence my admiration for the way Ngāti Hinerangi has gone about resolving the hurts that exist as part of their history. Let us not forget but they have been addressed for the present. But let us also look forward to the blossoming of Ngāti Hinerangi which will happen presently.

Let me mention in the few remaining minutes I have to speak—[Bell rung] you would be forgiven for thinking this was Ngā Manu Kōrero, ring the bell my friend—I was thinking about how well my senior kinsman the Hon Shane Jones recited the genealogy to connect Ngāti Hinerangi to members sitting here. Nicola Willis mentioned her connection to Ngāti Hinerangi, as did Dan Bidois and others. So I have been sitting here wondering how I can establish a connection to Ngāti Hinerangi who have made their way here today. I have found the link through one of the predecessors who has been identified in this bill, that is, Koperu. Yes indeed, he was a famous forefather of Ngāti Hinerangi, and I mention as I fossick for genealogical links, he was also a well-known ancestor among my people of the North. Koperu was the first husband of my ancestress Hineāmaru; I trust that this might make me eligible for one of the Ngāti Hinerangi grants at some future date. That, of course, is one of the delights of coming together like this and being able to relate directly to the occasion, and the occasion today is the reading of Ngāti Hinerangi’s bill in the House.

In these dying seconds may I offer to Ngāti Hinerangi the words uttered by my grandfather: you have come too far not go further; you have done too much to not do more

Therefore, go well as you journey home, assured of the blessings from on high.

Thank you all.]

JO HAYES (National): Kia ora. E ngā mana, e ngā rau rangatira mā o te iwi o Ngāti Hinerangi, tēnā koutou. Nau mai, haere mai i tēnei Whare o te rā whakawhitiwhiti. He rongoā mō tēnei iwi engari kei konei mātou i tēnei rā.

[Greetings. To the authorities, to the distinguished masses of Ngāti Hinerangi, greetings. Welcome, welcome to this House on this day of exchange. It’s a solution for this tribe but we are here today.]

Yes, we are here today to, I guess, celebrate the first reading of the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill. Because it’s the first reading, I have been looking into a lot of the background of your history and the atrocities that happened to your whānau, to your ancestors, to your tūpuna back in the colonial war days. Like every other speech that we’ve heard in this House today, again, another iwi has been left virtually landless through colonisation and the wars.

I just want to say that, today, whilst it’s a celebration for Ngāti Hinerangi, I am taken back to the ancestors and what they suffered during the land wars. I’m taken back to the time before that, when Ngāti Hinerangi was an iwi that flourished, where it had the huawhenua, where it thrived by trading with other iwi the fibres, the flax—the whole economic development lifecycle that they had before they were robbed of their lands. From Tauranga Moana to the Kaimais, this was a people that ran their own business. This was a people that had their own economic development, and today is the first step towards ensuring that we get this bill through, so that the cash and the cultural redress that is part and parcel of this bill can actually support Ngāti Hinerangi towards getting back towards some sort of semblance of that economic development.

Last week, I spoke on the Rua Kēnana pardon bill—a very different type of Māori bill as opposed to this one. Again, it is always about the atrocities and how we try to make things better into the future of yet another iwi. I’m always honoured to be able to speak on these bills on this side of the House as a National Party MP, as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, and I always look forward to the submissions that we will expect to receive from you into the Māori Affairs Committee. It is those times that, for me, are the most special, because we hear directly from the whānau of the iwi on many things, the history—your history. Reading it is fine, but, for me, the sweetness of the kōrero, the meaning of the kōrero, actually comes from the words of the whānau of the iwi, and, in this case, of Ngāti Hinerangi. So I look forward to the time when the Māori Affairs Committee comes to your rohe and listens to your story, so that we can make things right in our stories as we impart them here in this House into the future.

I really don’t have a lot more to say. I have been away paying my respects to Koro Mullins, who passed suddenly. It’s been a very sad day for me, having to pay my respects to such an amazing person, so to finish off by a celebration for Ngāti Hinerangi has, for me, been a very moving experience.

As I said, I have not much more to add to that. I look forward to the stories, to the kōrero, that we will be imparted with in the submission process for Ngāti Hinerangi. I understand that one of our colleagues on this side, Dan Bidois, whakapapas to Ngāti Hinerangi, so it will be very special for him returning back to hear the whakapapa, the history, the kōrero that you will impart to him as well. So without any further ado, I support and I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The next call’s a split call.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ki a koutou, Ngāti Hinerangi i tae mai nei i tēnei wā, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou i whakarangatira i a mātou i tēnei wā. Tēnei te tino mihi. I tautoko au i te kōrero o taku hoa, Peeni Henare, rawe tana korero.

[Kia ora, Madam Speaker. To you all, Ngāti Hinerangi, who have arrived here at this time, I acknowledge you all who have honoured us at this time. My profuse thanks. I supported the speech of my colleague, Peeni Henare; his speech was great.]

I think what the Hon Peeni Henare said was so right in terms of his kōrero, and this settlement lays the cultural and economic foundation for Ngāti Hinerangi rangatahi, mokopuna, and future generations, and that is reflected in the name chosen for the post-settlement entity: Te Puāwaitanga o Ngāti Hinerangi Iwi Trust—the blossoming of Ngāti Hinerangi. I don’t think you could get a better name for that trust, and I’m sure everyone here is so proud. So congratulations to Ngāti Hinerangi for coming here today to tautoko.

It’s an appropriate day. Here we are, the day after Ihumātao and the big kōrero and by Māori for Māori solution—and, yes, we’ve got it all worked out here in Parliament, as you would’ve heard over the news in the last day or two.

Appropriately, the Minister for Māori Development will be wrapping up our kōrero as we go forward, because we have all the answers, as the Hon Winston Peters had to say—tino tautoko. It is a kaupapa, though, that we support, this by Māori for Māori solution. This is an example of it, this settlement today. Ngāti Hinerangi, in terms of what’s happened, in terms of the good grace shown by the people of Ngāti Hinerangi, I congratulate the tribe, because graciousness is something that all our tribal negotiators show. I heard the kōrero from Nicola Willis and her father. And her father will know better than anyone how our people work through this process. It’s a very tough process with the Crown, never better exemplified, I think, through The Negotiators series. I’m not sure who has watched that, but we have had people like Tīpene O’Regan talking about this arduous process in terms of dealing with the Crown. My aroha goes to the negotiators in terms of Ngāti Hinerangi and what they’ve gone through.

I mentioned our Minister, who was also a former negotiator for Ngāti Maniapoto—very aware of the concessions and the compromises that are made. I mihi to the team. The graciousness shown can never be understated: $9 million is not going to turn the world around, but it’s a start—it’s a beginning. It’s a beginning that—and when you look at other tribes. I watched Tīpene O’Regan the other night talking about what you can do with a minimal amount of money. The $170 million that Ngāi Tahu, that Tainui came up with, has been turned around into a billion-dollar iwi—a billion-dollar iwi. I say, in terms of what our Minister, Andrew Little, has said, that the graciousness of the tribe has to be acknowledged and supported. When we go back again and you look at the previous settlements in terms of what they could have been calculated out at—Ngāi Tahu, Tainui, both those settlements could have been calculated out at $16 billion to $18 billion—you see the potential that the tribe has in front of them.

So I’m looking forward to seeing the results and the fruits of what Ngāti Hinerangi can come up with—what can we come up with over the next few years? Because as everyone has been saying: it’s a tribe that has been landless, that has had their history put to the side, and not had the support that they should have had. Now we have things in place where the tribe can come to those terms, can make a start, can set things up for our mokopuna who are out there, who are in the cities, who have moved away from the haukāinga but know they are Ngāti Hinerangi—know they are Ngāti Hinerangi, and they will hold that with them forever and a day. So I congratulate our negotiators today, our trust chair, the board who’ve been going through the whole process, and wish you well in your future ventures. Tēnei te mihi, tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister for Māori Development): Ngāti Hinerangi, koutou, e whakatata mai nei mō te pānuitanga tuatahi a tō koutou pire, tenei e tautoko ana ngā mihi kua mihia. Kia rere haere ngā whakaaro ki a rātou kua huri atu. Koutou katoa ngā mahuetanga iho, tēnā koutou.

[Ngāti Hinerangi, you who have come here for the first reading of your bill, I support those acknowledgments that have already been made. Our thoughts are with those who have passed on. To you, the descendants of those who have passed on, greetings.]

I listened very carefully to all the contributions on the first reading of the Ngāti Hinerangi Claims Settlement Bill. Like members in this House, I want to reflect on how significant it is to come to the House with a settlement with the greatest amount of consensus around resolving historical injustices and resolving to move forward.

If you look around the House at the plaques that are here, they demonstrate quite clearly the wars that New Zealand fought in around the world. But this time, last week, at 6 o’clock in the morning, several of us gathered from across the House and were joined by iwi to unveil a plaque of our own, and that was to recognise the significance of the New Zealand Wars and the impact that it had on shaping the history of this country. And why that is significant is because one would only have to look briefly through Ngāti Hinerangi’s bill and understand the context which shapes much of the reason why a settlement is so necessary.

Now, my colleague Willie Jackson will understand this: it’s not how big the tool is; it’s how you use it. But the point of that is it wouldn’t matter how big or small a settlement is; it’s the purpose and the intent with which you want to utilise the settlement to achieve your aspirations. I really want to come to that, because it was evident to me when I had a look at some of those aspirations for Ngāti Hinerangi that it wasn’t about money. It was to restore the mana, pride, and identity of the iwi, for Ngāti Hinerangi to become a leader in its own rohe, and that is significant, because it would be so easy to remain invisible, just with the bordering iwi around you to remain invisible. This will not let it be the case.

This will ensure that Ngāti Hinerangi’s human potential, development of whānau, and expertise can continue to grow and sustain your future. This will ensure that you can restore your marae, your traditional meeting grounds, so that they can be the meeting places of the next generation. It will restore traditional knowledge systems and tikanga, and, again, increasing and enhancing of the mana of Ngāti Hinerangi, raising the educational, social, cultural, and political aspirations of the iwi, developing short- and long-term strategic goals and plans for the future, and assisting in the development of your own commercial ventures, of which you will decide what that will look like and how that will benefit your future aspirations. But here it is: establish a centre and knowledge of learning.

I think there’s a germane kind of sense of resilience in your future aspirations that we should draw confidence from and be encouraged by, because, again, it’s how you utilise the purpose of your settlement, and it’s evident here to me that the purpose is about the people, restoring place and pride and connection to your cultural areas and wāhi tapu. This is difficult in this day and time, because, if you take the context of Ngāti Hinerangi, you’ve got Tauranga Moana that’s settled, Raukawa that’s settled, Hauraki that’s settled, Ngāti Hauā, Waikato that’s settled, and here is Ngāti Hinerangi fighting to ensure that their interests aren’t lost in the ether. But the overlapping aspects impacting on Ngāti Hinerangi and how you’ve still retained a generosity of spirit, I think, is something you can’t replicate by chance; it’s within you. For that, I recognise the ambition that you have for your people in being able to get to this point, and this isn’t the end of it.

The first reading enables the House now to understand your aspirations, for it to go to select committee, for submissions to be heard, and for people to really get a sense and an appreciation of what it will take to build confidence with the Crown, with the Government, in working alongside Ngāti Hinerangi, and that is the opportunity that you have taken with both hands and said, “We are going to do this.”, and for that, I too join with other members in this House and acknowledge your leadership, because that would have had to have happened at every level. There were difficulties within the iwi—there is no doubt about it—but this is your time, your moment, and we’re here to support you to move this forward to the next place so that we can get to the third reading and support, with confidence, your aspiration. Tēnā tātou katoa.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Members, before I put the referral question, I just advise members that straight after the vote, permission has been granted for a waiata for our Ngāti Hinerangi visitors from the gallery, and we look forward to that.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

Waiata

Bills

Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill

Third Reading

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Urban Development): I move, That the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill be now read a third time.

This Government believes that every New Zealander should have a warm, dry, and secure home. This bill is about delivering on that commitment.

This Government believes in the importance of public and affordable housing—places where generations of young families have had a start in life and the chance to put down roots in their communities. This bill puts public and affordable housing at the heart of our agenda.

This Government believes in rolling up our sleeves and tackling the long-term problems facing the country, in working with the private sector and community organisations to fix problems that have accumulated over many years and were ignored for far too long. This bill is an expression of that commitment.

This Government believes that we need to plan in order to succeed, and that’s why this bill creates a Government policy statement on housing and urban development. For the first time, we will have a strategic direction and an overarching plan for housing, and set out expectations and priorities for the whole sector from local authorities to community housing providers, the private sector, Kāinga Ora itself, and iwi.

This Government believes in being a fair and reasonable landlord and treating people with respect, integrity and honesty, and that the Government should support people to lead lives of dignity, to be well connected to their communities, and sustain their tenancies. This bill legislates for that vision.

Under this Government, Housing New Zealand changed their role and the way they work. We’ve called time on an attitude of doing as little as possible, of extracting greater and greater dividends, and of treating State housing as if it were a commercial property management business. This bill reflects that change. We are repealing the presumption that Housing New Zealand, now Kāinga Ora, will pay a dividend, and we are legislating new operating principles that reflect the importance of State housing for people’s wellbeing.

Now Housing New Zealand is focusing on ensuring tenants have stable housing that will enable better life outcomes and healthier communities. The new Greys Ave redevelopment in Auckland is an exemplar of this vision. At Greys Ave, we’re building a purpose-built complex designed to best help tenants with wraparound health, addiction, and employment and skills support. This bill implements those changes.

This Government believes the State should provide good quality, warm, dry, and healthy rental housing. This bill reconfirms that commitment and repeals the ability for the Government to sell off State homes. Instead, Housing New Zealand is investing more than ever before in building new homes and renovating existing homes so that they are warm, dry, and healthy. Kāinga Ora will inherit a redevelopment programme that will see 75 percent of their 64,000 properties upgraded over the next 20 years, with thousands of State and affordable homes being built alongside that process. I am personally proud of the work this Government has done over the last two years to reposition public and affordable housing in New Zealand. This work is embodied in that bill.

I want to speak further about Government as an enabler of development, and the reshaping of our towns and cities; partnering with the private sector, with local government, and iwi to build. Now, I know there were concerns raised at the Environment Committee about the Government crowding out community housing providers in the private sector. Rather than crowding out or replacing the private sector, my message to developers is that we want you to grow, we want you to build more, and we understand the constraints on you right now. This bill is about working together to overcome those constraints and helping the private sector to build more and do more.

Kāinga Ora will enable the private sector to get on and build. For a start, it will enable the Government to move to long-term agreements with builders, where we contract a large number of homes a year across the full Government build programme, giving builders certainty and scale so that they can reduce costs, invest in off-site manufacturing, train staff, and build faster. It will also enable us to reduce complexity and to simplify processes. It simply makes no sense for builders to go through separate procurement processes with KiwiBuild, HLC, and Housing New Zealand—as they’ve been doing—each with different requirements, documents, and criteria. This is exactly what the construction industry has told us they need.

Kāinga Ora is set up so that it can be a joint-venture vehicle for Government to work alongside large developers, iwi, and local government so that they too can benefit from the tool box of development powers that will follow in the urban development bill—shortly to be tabled in the House—while making sure that those powers are exercised appropriately and in an accountable way. Our country is going through an historic shift in how we approach housing and urban development.

Currently, our cities and towns are facing unprecedented pressure from strong population growth, changing demographics and preferences, and an ageing population. There is a terrible shortage not only of homes but of the kinds of homes that people need and can afford. Traditionally, in New Zealand, really, for the last century, our cities have developed by turning neighbouring countryside into suburban streets and homes. This is still important. However, we know that we also need to intensify our urban development.

The problem is that second-generation growth in our cities is often too complex for the private sector to do on its own. Such projects require a lot of work on network infrastructure, fragmented land titles, balancing different interests, and creating high urban design standards. Often all of that together creates too much risk and uncertainty for the private sector to do on its own. We need to change the ways that we develop our urban communities, so that they can thrive and that everyone can have a place to call home.

We want our cities to be well designed, people-focused, and ready for the future, and Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities will need to be at the forefront of innovation in urban development, building and construction, and exploring new technologies and methods as they emerge. It will act as a catalyst for the private sector also to be more responsive, integrated, and innovative in its thinking. This bill makes the Government an enabler of this vision, and in this regard passing this bill into law today represents a step change rather than a continuation of business as usual.

Finally, I want to finish where I began. Every New Zealander should have a warm, dry, and secure home. They should be treated with respect and dignity. This requires all of us to ensure that New Zealanders are supported. We know that it’s easier for people to address their health or employment issues once they have a secure home. When the Prime Minister announced the new Housing First programme in May being rolled out to a number of centres, she shared a part of a letter written by a Hamilton man called Mohi, who has been homeless for 18 years until he was helped by Housing First.

Mohi is deaf in one ear and has suffered a brain injury. And he wrote to the Prime Minister, “My first-ever meeting with you I hadn’t heard of you and so I didn’t know what you were about or what to expect. And what I got … was ‘come hold our hand, we are going to take you through this process. It will take a wee while, you just have to persevere, and we will catch you if you start to fall.’ ” Mohi’s letter goes on to describe what it felt like moving into his own home. He was so overwhelmed, he said that he cried and cried and cried. He wrote, “I used to think you have got to help yourself because no-one else will, but I was wrong, there are angels … in Hamilton … who believe in me, and who’ve helped me believe in myself so that I can persevere. I took their hand, held on to it tightly and didn’t fall over.”

This bill is another step in ensuring that we as a Parliament support people like Mohi, that we ensure there are enough homes that are affordable and secure, that we work with him to sustain that tenancy, and that we make sure he is able to live a life of dignity, to be a full and active part of the community. Those are the principles we are legislating today for Kāinga Ora.

In conclusion, I reiterate my thanks to members of the committee, submitters, and officials for their contribution to this bill. It is a key milestone in modernising how we approach housing and the development of our communities in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I’m pleased to take a call. Look, I think it’s absolutely marvellous that we’ve got the Hon Phil Twyford back on the housing portfolio here. He’s been missed, so lovely to have him back. And look, marvellous that we’ve finally got to this bill as well. The amount of filibustering undertaken by the Government itself on its own bill over recent days has been quite, quite extraordinary, because if you’ve been listening to the Minister’s speech of earnestness—the general public may not have realised that yesterday literally hours were spent by the Government filibustering or slowing down its own bill, its own bill.

But one thing I will initially agree with is that story at the end, and I think it’s great actually that the Minister shared that story because Mohi used the term “hands”—“many hands were involved”. And I will acknowledge the Government’s role, but I think it’s important too to acknowledge, if there are many hands involved, the National Party, which started Housing First. I acknowledge—I think important—the Government has extended that, but actually it was the National Party which started the programme and we are incredibly proud of that.

So I am—well, not delighted; one can’t be delighted to oppose, but I stand in opposition of this third reading of the “KiwiBuild Bill”. Oh, so this isn’t the “KiwiBuild Bill”, this is actually a different—I do apologise. This is a Kāinga Ora bill. I’m sorry that I’m confused, because as I was listening to the Minister, every word, every promise is verbatim of the promises that were put forward by this Government under KiwiBuild. I just took a few notes. The Minister was talking about “every New Zealander is to get a home. It’s about respect and dignity. It’s a step change. It’s about sustainability. It’s about vision, leadership, history. It’s about working with the private sector. It’s an expression of our commitment.”, said the Minister.

The thing about all of this is these are the exact same words and phrases and empty promises which followed KiwiBuild, and why that’s important is because everybody in this House, and particularly those on the Government side, know exactly where those words of “promise” and “partnership” and “history”, of “commitment”, of “sustainability”, “calling time on doing as little as possible”—to end the quote—all of these words, all of these phrases and good feelings were put forward for KiwiBuild and we all know where that ended up. It was a complete and utter failure—

Hon David Bennett: A shambles.

SIMON O’CONNOR: —a complete shambles, a reset which turned into a retreat—an appalling retreat, an appalling retreat.

And so from this side of the House, our concern, our opposition to this bill is not based on the fluffy words—we all agree on the importance of housing—but we oppose the bill because the same empty-headed rhetoric that brought about KiwiBuild is the same empty-headedness which is behind Kāinga Ora, and it will fail in the same way that KiwiBuild failed because words do not build houses. Pulling together Housing New Zealand, HLC, and the failed KiwiBuild—blending it all together, rearranging the deckchairs—doesn’t build houses. Unfortunately, on this side of the House we see that the words and intentions are well played. They are the very same that led to the failure of KiwiBuild and so we oppose Kāinga Ora.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s a real pleasure. Well, actually, no, it is with some disappointment that I rise after Mr O’Connor and his “do nothing” speech—do nothing, just like National did over the past nine years. Three hundred and thirty-eight houses; in the past two years, Housing New Zealand has added 2,026, and we will keep doing that because we think housing of all kinds—State-provided houses, community providers of houses, private sector houses—they are all important. And you know what? That’s exactly what this bill, this excellent bill led by an excellent Minister for Urban Development, does. It says, “We need absolutely to have an overview here and we need to …”—and this is the great thing about this bill; it’s an enabling bill.

I must say, when the Environment Committee heard submissions the bill itself was almost universally supported. And so I’m very surprised—even when we had local bodies, Infrastructure New Zealand, all kinds of people supporting this bill—that we now have the National Party being the lone guy in the party, sitting in the corner by itself, no friends, sitting there saying, “No, no, no. Do nothing. Sit down. Let’s not take action again.”

Look, the Minister in his speech touched on community housing and I also want to just reaffirm how important community housing providers are and how this bill absolutely wants to engage with them, wants to cooperate, facilitate at every level. We had a number of housing providers. We had the Auckland Community Housing Providers’ Network come in and they had some real concerns. I mean, they identified the fact that there’s 200,000 working families out there who are struggling to pay rent, let alone to own their own home. Again, this is a bill that can and will address that in a whole lot of ways: by ensuring there’s an appropriate supply, by ensuring that there’s an ability to embark on different ways to own a home—a rent-to-buy scheme or a shared-equity scheme. Also, the Auckland Community Housing Providers’ Network identified the fact that we needed to tap into the expertise of community housing providers and the fact that they were really well networked in their communities: with the community in general; with the faith community, in many cases, particularly those people like the Methodist Mission; and also hapū and iwi.

So we can absolutely tap into that expertise when we’re embarking upon these projects, facilitating them, or whatever the case might be. Of course, the community housing trust there, they also had a lot to say—really wanted to emphasise the need for partnerships, the need for Government and community housing providers to be hand-in-hand along here, and, also, again emphasised decision making at a community level. I’m very pleased that this bill, as I’ll, hopefully, get a chance to identify in particular, does exactly that. One of my favourites submitters was the Māngere Housing Community Reference Group, who came along and informed us that Māngere was, in fact, the appropriate capital of New Zealand—which I quite liked—but also, again, talked about the need for engagement with community housing, and also just expressed some concerns that, historically, they’ve been tied down with bureaucracy. So bringing these entities together with a clear purpose is exactly what we want to do, because it’s time to take real action because this is a problem that’s been here for a long time, well over—for many, many years, throughout the last Government’s term.

So we’re going to build a country that we can be proud of, and we’re starting here with the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. So if we do look at what happened to this bill; it came before us in good shape, but we’ve taken it—we’ve very much listened. For example, even the definition of “financial assistance” in clause 5(1)(a)—rather than just looking at it as a loan or an indemnity or insurance or underwriting, the definition was expanded to include “shared equity, shared ownership, or rent to buy or option to buy”, and that’s not exhaustive. If people come up with other designs, new and innovative ways to help people into homes—whether it be on a rental basis or on a part-ownership basis or any other basis—Kāinga Ora is equipped to provide that assistance, including a grant or a loan or more traditional ways to do it.

I want to talk about the membership of the board as well, because that’s important. And if we look at clause 10 of the bill, we can see that that board will have a very broad base. Obviously, we want people with infrastructure and urban development and technical housing expertise, but, equally, we want people with knowledge of Te Ao Māori, with community connections, with perspectives of public housing, with perspectives of being or assisting tenants in public and community housing, because that’s all part of understanding how these projects are best delivered. A number of submitters came to us—community submitters—and said, “Well, in some of these projects that Governments have embarked upon we felt left out of the process. We felt we were only taken into account at the last.” Well, here we have it that we’ve got an ability to have those people around the table at Kāinga Ora and making sure that they’re absolutely included in the decision-making process.

Then, if we go to the functions—it is really the heart of the bill, the functions of Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities. If you look at that, clause 13(1)(f) is really important, and that was substantially changed through the select committee process. Rather than just being initiating and undertaking urban development, a small but really important word was put in there, and that’s to “facilitate” so that Government doesn’t have to be the deliverer, doesn’t have to be the centrepiece. In fact, they don’t even have to be there when the project is embarked upon. They can simply be there in an overarching way helping people along, perhaps simply by providing expertise, perhaps by sending them to the appropriate people with expertise. Then the other word in that clause which is really important—a new word—to do that whether on its own account or in “partnership”. And I think that’s really important as well, so that it’s a new and express recognition that at the heart of this are going to be partnerships—partnerships with community housing providers or with other entities. Conceivably, with the private sector as well, because we know the private sector has an important role to play; we know that many homes are delivered into the market, whether they be for rental or for purchase by private providers. It’s really important to recognise as well that these relationships can be built with any entity, whether it be the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church in my own electorate, which is itself doing a very small project with 15 social houses on the lot at the back of the new church it’s just built—the church is fine—or whether it be with a large corporation or, indeed, a community housing provider who has much expertise and a long history in the area.

Of course, we’ve got, again, the operating principles. So the functions are there, we’ve got the operating principles and we look at it—and it’s about time we said these out loud: the idea of providing good quality, warm, dry, healthy rental housing. Not tenuous rental housing where you get thrown out at a moment’s notice if there’s a sniff of P on the walls. That’s what we had under the last Government. Well, here we have a stated legislative policy to sustain tenancies. We know for a fact that having somewhere to live for our most vulnerable, for our most at risk, and—look, to be honest—for those people who cause us the most trouble in our communities, having somewhere to live is the starting place. Only then can we really go and deliver all of those other services that they need to become meaningful, engaged, contributing members of society. So that’s fantastic.

Then there is clause 14(1)(c), working with community providers to support tenants and ensure those most in need are supported and housed, because—in fact, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner has said this very clearly—housing is a human right; and tenuous housing is not meeting up to the expectations that a nation like ours should have and, indeed, taking into account, in terms of its operating principles, its environmental, cultural, and heritage values. Also, an important one, is the environmental framework—taking into account the need to mitigate and adapt to the effect of climate change. This is a fantastic bill. This is a real sea change. We’re turning around New Zealand after nine years of it going nowhere and falling away, and I’m very proud to support this bill.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I listened carefully to the chair of the Environment Committee and the Minister for Urban Development, who spoke first in this third reading debate, and neither one of them actually clearly enunciated what this bill does, what it’s about. And the reason they didn’t is because it does very little. It’s kind of like a Christmas stocking stuffer of a cheap variety that is a terrible disappointment when you come to find it in your Christmas stocking on the day—

Erica Stanford: $2 Shop present.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: It’s a $2 Shop type of Christmas present—because this is a bill that was designed in two parts. Well, there are two pieces of legislation required to actually make this new thing fly. This bill, all it does is establish a new Crown entity—that’s all it does, a new Crown entity. It’s a Crown entity made up of three existing agencies that include the merging of Housing New Zealand, its development subsidiary HLC, and the skeletal bones of what used to be the KiwiBuild unit. It puts it into one unit but it doesn’t empower anything to happen after that. There’s going to be another piece of legislation that will have to be introduced by the Minister later this year or early next year—depending on how slow they can make the legislative programme go—and one wonders why. Well, it’s because there isn’t much in the legislative programme at the moment. So here was a bill that was sent to the Environment Committee; it’s, effectively, a bill that creates a Crown entity. It was sent to a select committee that had almost no work on its agenda to give the committee something to do, and so last night we had the ridiculous situation of the Government filibustering its own bill to try and slow it down. Why would the Government want to do that?—because there’s nothing in the pipeline. There’s nothing happening over there on that side. It is a deliberate plan to slow things down.

Now, on this side, we’re opposing this bill not because the establishment of an Urban Development Authority is not necessarily a good idea; we are opposed to it because simply doing it without substantive, real, dedicated reform to the Resource Management Act makes this piece of legislation, frankly, a joke. The real stumbling block to building homes and getting homes built fast is actually the rules that have been developed over years through the Resource Management Act that prevent homes being built faster. The merging of existing entities, simply in the hope that a better outcome will be obtained, is nothing more than futile. So we are opposing it because we just think that the merging of these three entities achieves nothing of itself. Indeed, the Minister knows that, because he’s going to have to introduce a more substantive piece of legislation to give this piece of legislation some shape and form later in this Parliament time frame.

It’s well known that the vast majority of houses built in New Zealand are actually built by the private sector. They’re developed. They’re built by entrepreneurs and developers who can see an opportunity in a market to build homes. Now, the Government tried to do this a little bit on their own with KiwiBuild and failed utterly—absolute, humiliating, disastrous failure. What this bill fails to do is it fails to acknowledge the needs of the private sector, which are simply not addressed or met in this bill. For that reason alone, we oppose it.

CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): What a great pleasure to stand up on behalf of the Government to talk on the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. I have to say, there’s nobody in New Zealand that wants a cold, moist, or unsafe home to live in, in this country. The thought of that actually sends shivers up my spine—makes me feel like drinking cocktails. What we’re looking for is warm, dry, safe, and secure homes for all New Zealanders that are underpinned by affordability—something that the previous Government didn’t deliver on for nine years.

Kiritapu Allan: What did they do?

CLAYTON MITCHELL: I’ll tell you what they did. For nine years they sidled up alongside these properties, the accumulation of State houses, and sold them off to the lowest bidder that possibly they could get.

Now we’ve got a new plan, and I have to say that I know Mr Simpson didn’t feel that this bill has got the credibility that it deserves, but beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, and I think this is a very beautiful thing. So too do New Zealanders when they see the efforts being made to ensure the security, the wellbeing, the longevity, and the sustainability of our housing plan through this Government. Now, when the Government comes together and works collaboratively with the private sector to ensure that they can deliver on these homes, it’s going to be a very successful outcome. When we can provide work and the long-term work for our building and commercial construction sector, we enter into a boom phase, which is also very good for our economy. We have 64,000 homes owned by the State—is that right, 64?

Hon Member: 68.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Sixty-eight thousand—it gets better. Oh my God. I’m just getting blown away. Sixty-eight thousand homes are going to be upgraded—75 percent of those homes are going to be upgraded. Who’s going to upgrade them, of course? The private sector. They will go out and they will do that.

We are looking to be a fair and reasonable landlord, ensuring that for the most vulnerable people in our society—those people on fixed incomes, those people that have disabilities, some of our elderly people, some people that are on low incomes and are stretched out—the State is there to provide that security, that safety net, for people in need.

This is something that this Government—in fact, even in Opposition, last term, in New Zealand First and Labour we were all talking about the issue when the State sell-off was happening right under our very noses. We thought, “We need to put an end to this.” The State’s absolute sole responsibility is to ensure wellbeing—not the wellbeing of profits, of directors, of shareholders, and of large organisations but the wellbeing of the ratepayers and the taxpayers of this country. [Interruption] This is about ensuring their wellbeing into the future, and that’s what we are doing right here, Mr Bennett. I know he’ll be up speaking very shortly. I can’t wait to hear his contribution.

But stopping the State housing sell-off is a very, very good thing. Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities is about creating safer communities to raise our families—a place where we can take families that are currently living in cars out of their cars, put them into a warm, safe, dry home—not a moist, cold, damp home that’s unsafe or unsecure—that’s very secure, where they can actually grow up in a community, do their homework, learn, and be part of a society that they feel part of.

If you think about the houses that have been built in the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s, right now, currently, we’re actually building more homes than we did even through that boom time of houses. But it’s about affordable homes. The private sector do a fantastic job in certain sectors, particularly around opening up parcels of land and building homes for a group of people that generally are more well off than others. But the State has a responsibility to ensure that we supply enough affordable homes so that New Zealanders who aren’t on higher salaries, who don’t have the jobs that can support that sort of monthly cost of rents or even, dare I say, mortgages, so that they can actually have a place of their own. New Zealand has always prided itself on being one of the best home-owning democracies in the world, and that’s something, over the last previous nine years of the previous Government, we have slipped behind and gone backwards on.

Now, we are absolutely committed to work with the private sector on this, and the collaboration that has gone on with the construction sector to ensure that they are working and on board with the Government is surely a good thing. Certainly, if I was in the private sector in the construction arena, I would love to have a responsible partner like the Government who will pay on time rather than some of the other trading partners that could otherwise be out there. So I think the feeling and the response from the private sector is very, very positive.

Looking at ways that we can get people into these affordable homes through rent-to-buy schemes or shared equity is another great opportunity for this Government to explore more and ensure that we can open up those parcels of land.

In fact, I remember John Key proudly said that he grew up, as a young man, in a State home, and many people in this House, in fact, probably grew up in a very similar state—and not ashamed, actually very proud to think that the Government actually had the foresight and the planning. Even under a National Government and a Labour Government of old, they made sure that those facilities and the availability of those homes were there for those people. We are just bringing back good, solid values and ethics and morals that New Zealand can count on, that this country, this Government—

Hon David Bennett: Morals! We don’t want morals coming out of New Zealand First.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: Great morals, great values, heading in the right direction—

Hon David Bennett: Tell us about Jonesy’s morals.

CLAYTON MITCHELL: —because it’s very important, Mr Bennett. Really, I hope you stand up and take a call, mate.

So ladies and gentlemen, New Zealand First, along with this Government, are very, very proud to put the weight and support behind the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. It’s a step in the right direction.

I have to say, we have had—I think it was in Australia, actually. In Australia, they went through a change a number of years ago where they enabled first-home owners. They gave them a $7,000 grant to try and stimulate their economy when it was having a bit of a downturn and enabled first-home owners that right to put a deposit down on a home. That was a good initiative by a Government—again, it was through a tough time in the global financial crisis; I think it was about 2008 or 2009—that saw them in good stead moving forward, and this Government now has its own policy to deliver on some of those ideas of homeownership and moving into areas that are going to be good for all New Zealanders.

Disestablishing Housing New Zealand and HLC is a good step. I know that Mr Simpson talked about KiwiBuild being in there as well, but it’s actually a very simple thing. We are disestablishing Housing New Zealand. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the State provides affordable homes that are warm and dry, not moist and cold, and we commend this bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Wow, New Zealand First have come alive, haven’t they? Mr Clayton Mitchell spoke with such passion about this new plan that’s going to deliver us to the promised land—this bill with, apparently, magic functions that we don’t know about. Mr Mitchell really has taken a leaf out of the Prime Minister’s book with his fluff-speak. He used it to great effect in his speech, which was mostly waffle, where he talked about values, ethics, and morals. All this bill does is rearrange the deckchairs, and let’s not forget that one of those deckchairs actually completely collapsed—it’s completely broken. Phil Twyford sat in it and it collapsed. That’s the KiwiBuild deckchair. Mr Mitchell, at the end, did note that this is a step in the right direction. Well, I tell you what, it’s more of a shuffle to the left than any move forward.

I’m not going to take too long on my speech today because what needs to be said has already been well canvassed by speakers before me, so I’ll keep my contribution succinct and to the point. As my colleagues have pointed out and we’ve touched on in previous speeches, all this bill does is merge Housing New Zealand, HLC, and the KiwiBuild unit, an unusual and a weak sort of cocktail mix of failures and one good performer. As Mr Scott Simpson mentioned in his speech before me—

Hon Scott Simpson: Very good speech.

ERICA STANFORD: —very good speech—the National Party is not fundamentally opposed to the creation of an urban development authority, but what we are not sold on is the idea of somehow merging these entities together, especially given the spectacular failure of KiwiBuild and the fact that the overwhelming majority of housing is developed by the private sector. The Labour-led Government took seven years to develop the failed KiwiBuild policy that they completely botched. They’ve pushed social housing wait-lists to record highs; they’ve failed to build houses that are in the right place, that are needed; and they’ve kicked the can down the road for Resource Management Act (RMA) reform. Where Labour could be delivering meaningful reform in this area, with this bill, all they’re doing is putting a fancy new bow around a few different agencies and giving it a new name. As Mr Scott Simpson mentioned, it’s a cheap $2 present and it’s not actually achieving much.

What we would suggest as a credible alternative is seriously tackling the RMA, which we all acknowledge needs overhauling. We need an RMA that brings building costs down, that has more effective and accessible planning rules, and, very importantly, that contains the right environmental protections. In contrast, this bill is just the same window dressing we’ve seen that’s typical from this Government, just like polytechnics—bundle it all together and give it a new name, take the assets out of the stand-out performers, and, hopefully, that will magically, sort of, fix the weak ones. I am very pleased to oppose this bill.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. The previous speaker, Erica Stanford, seemed to infer that the people talking about values in this debate were somehow negative. She was disparaging the use of values in Parliament. Now, I decry that, because I think we need more values in this House. Actually, when it comes to housing, the values this Government has—which is that housing is a right for Kiwis; that people deserve to live in warm, dry homes—that’s not waffle; that’s core Kiwi values, and that’s why I’m proud to be here voting in support of legislation in support of those values. If National wants to campaign against values in politics, go right ahead.

What this legislation is is housing leadership. What it’s doing is setting the institutional framework, the foundation, of resolving the housing crisis that National left the country with. This is the foundation on which we can build the solutions, because while National was getting on with cynicism, you know, negative politics—not actually proposing any solutions, mind you—and spent nine years actually denying there was a problem, blaming other people for the problem, and then not actually addressing the problem, this Government’s getting on and doing it. So this legislation is housing leadership. It’s setting up the new entity Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities, which is not only going to build homes for Kiwis; it’s going to house Kiwis in the State sector as well.

So this new Crown entity, made up of Housing New Zealand, HLC, and parts of KiwiBuild, is going to set the leadership framework. With the Government policy statement embedded in the process to achieve it, it’s going to get the Government working in a coordinated, collaborative fashion with private interests, with iwi, hapū, with community providers. Look, it’s going to take the Government, working with councils, iwi, hapū, and private businesses, to actually—

Hon David Bennett: The Green excuses.

GARETH HUGHES: It’s somewhat ironic for the member Bennett to be talking about Green excuses, because what the Green Party’s actually doing is getting on with the business of building homes, in conjunction with our Government partners. Something we’re incredibly proud of is the work when it comes to rent-to-own. The $400 million package recently announced is going to make a real difference to Kiwis, because those Kiwis who don’t have the money for expensive deposits are going to be able to work with the Government to develop the equity in the House through their rent. So we’re incredibly proud. We’re not making any Green Party excuses, Mr Bennett.

What we’re going to see later on this term is legislation around urban development. What I’m really particularly interested in is the role for the Housing New Zealand tenants. We know thousands of Kiwis are homed in State homes. Now, the previous Government, of course, I think sold off, was it, 6,000—Mr Bennett? I’m sure you can remind us—in the midst of a housing crisis. Now, the new social approach this Government’s taking, the social mandate, is making a real difference. I chair the Social Services and Community Committee, and earlier this year we saw the legislation to remove letting fees making a real difference for tenants in rental properties. There’s legislation and processes supporting tenants. Now, what we saw under the previous Government was an absolute waste of taxpayer and private money when it came to that meth scandal. So this legislation is about housing Kiwis and getting on with the process of building houses for Kiwis in terms of planning consent, in terms of land, in terms of infrastructure and community services.

Now, something the Green Party has been pushing incredibly strongly as well is not only the rent-to-own scheme but the importance of energy efficiency and sustainability in housing developments in New Zealand, not only State but council and private. Now, I know Minister Twyford’s talked about Homestar 6, which is a wonderful development. We need to be ramping up those energy efficiency standards because not only is it going to save money in the long term—in the short term as well—but also it’s about protecting our environment, utilising our resources more efficiently.

Something the Green Party is going to continue to push for is ramping up private rental standards. Gee, it was nearly 10 years ago when I drafted the first legislation to set a minimum standard for rental properties. I toured some of the houses, the private rentals, in Auckland and Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch. Some of the worst I saw, of course, were in Dunedin, which I think were houses that should have been condemned but were rented out for profit by private landlords. So we’re going to continue to push for that.

Now, there’s a great deal of innovation, and I know Minister Woods recently was at a prefabrication facility, noting the rapid cost reductions you can see from prefabrication. That’s going to be part of the solution. Obviously, tiny houses is a topical issue which has been gathering quite a lot of media attention, and I’ve seen some media reporting—actually, academic journals—that have said that New Zealanders have amongst some of the largest houses in the entire world. What I think is important is, actually, that we get the right size houses for Kiwis, and for some, smaller homes are not only more affordable, more sustainable, but more desirable too, because they can live in inner-city locations.

I was recently in the United Kingdom, where I met with officials from Exeter City Council. Now, there I was incredibly inspired because they’re building all of their council homes to a passive house standard. Now, passive houses are most identified with the German housing market. I believe they’re mandatory in Austria. I met some of the tenants in Exeter who were raving with happiness about the state of their passive houses, because triple-glazed windows meant there was zero condensation, they didn’t actually require any artificial heating, the mechanical ventilation meant that there was a constant clean airflow, the tenants were healthier, they were happier, the homes were quieter, and they were almost zero cost to heat. I think passive houses is something that’s gaining much more attention in the New Zealand housing market, and it’s a good example of how the State can not only use its power—and I know it’s happening with the procurement, and this legislation is going to advance that even further—but also in Exeter was stimulating private developers because they wanted to make sure they could match that great standard.

While I was there I also met with the former Welsh Minister that instituted the One Planet Development scheme. Now, there, with tight planning and urban - rural boundary rules, they instituted this law change called the Well-being of Future Generations Act, which actually meant, with the One Planet Development, that if people were self-building, were using sustainable materials, were able to track and demonstrate how they were reducing their carbon, as well as having a business on the property—so of course there was lots of horticulture, lots of agricultural enterprises—they were actually able to develop the properties, which was quite hard in rural Wales. For me, it was a good example of how we’re going to need more innovative solutions. National, for too long, sat on their hands.

Now, what we need is leadership, which we’re seeing in this legislation. What we need is innovation, which is what you’re seeing with this Government’s actions. What we need is more sustainable energy efficiency, and that’s what we’re seeing with this Government. So the Green Party is incredibly proud to be supporting this legislation. It’s a great step forward, a foundation on which to build on, and while there’s going to be a lot of legislation and action to come in the future, this is just the start. Kia ora koutou.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill.

National opposes this piece of legislation for a number of reasons but, first and foremost, because this is a piece of legislation which, simply, does nothing. Simply, it just rearranges the deckchairs; merges a few Government departments. It seems to be something which could have easily been put together by one of those working groups. They’ve got 300-and-something. It’s also bereft of any ambition. There is no ambition in this at all, and this is a Government which has failed on housing and has failed on its ambition.

They came into the election, saying they were going to build 100,000 houses. There’s no mention of 100,000 houses anywhere in this piece of legislation. Now they’ve said, “We’re not even going to have a target. We’re just going to build as many as we can.” Well, they’ve managed to build 286 in—how long?—two years since they came into office, and that’s simply a failure for the New Zealanders that they say they’ve got so much compassion for.

The other point is that this bill is half-baked. This bill actually requires a companion bill to be introduced later in 2019 to give this new mega-housing bureaucracy the ability to have some of the powers that I hope it’s going to have. Well, where is that piece of legislation? When’s it coming to the House? And what is it actually going to do for housing? This is a half-baked piece of legislation. They can’t even do their housing policy by putting it all in one piece of legislation and bringing it to this Parliament and asking Parliament to look at this issue as a whole.

The real issue that this Parliament needs to be addressing is the reform of the Resource Management Act, which this Government has simply kicked down the road with another working group, seeking to put that issue on the back-burner, when they should have come into Government and actually looked to address the issues they said they wanted to address. This is a Government without any vision, without any ambition, and it is failing to deliver for New Zealanders; whereas the private sector is out there building tens of thousands of houses every single year. This Government has run out of ideas within only two years of coming to office. We will not support this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. [Interruption] Order! This is a split call—five minutes, Kiritapu Allan.

KIRITAPU ALLAN (Labour): E Te Mana Whakawā, tuatahi, ka nui aku mihi ki a koe e te pā. Ki a rātou ngā uri o Ngāti Hinerangi kua haramai nei ki tēnei Whare mō te hōnore o te pānui tuatahi o ā rātou pire. Heoi anō, ka huri ake ki tēnei pire.

[Mr Speaker, firstly, I would like to acknowledge you, sir; and them, the descendants of Ngāti Hinerangi who have arrived here to this House for the honour of the first reading of their bill. However, I turn to this bill.]

I quite enjoy this session. It’s the last sitting session in the afternoon at the end of the sitting week, and it’s always quite a vibrant feel in the House. The House gets a little vocal. I think that we are all a little vocal this afternoon, on this bill in particular, the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill, because this bill here is one critical step change in what this side of the House needs to do in order to fix up the nine long years of absolute mess that the previous Government left for this side of the House to go about fixing.

Now, before I turn to the substance of the bill, I want to acknowledge the Hon Phil Twyford. The Hon Phil Twyford has been the absolute architect of housing reform in New Zealand. The Hon Phil Twyford has stood sturdy amongst storms often conjured up by the Opposition on baseless claims, because the reality is that they have to deflect and detract for nine long years of absolute insufficient and inadequate action on absolutely anything.

In fact, what was their legacy in housing, if I may recall? Well, I can tell you that we all remember, for example, in my little area, the East Coast—what’s their legacy? Was it building homes, Mr Speaker? No, sir, it was not. It was selling down State houses—something that this side of the House thinks is an absolutely critical feature.

Now, as I turn to the bill, the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill, I want to acknowledge that this bill does many things, but, in particular, it brings together, or converges, three entities that are responsible for various components of housing here in New Zealand. So we are bringing together Housing New Zealand, which is the largest, I guess, landlord in the country, with the intention of it becoming the best landlord in the country, under this new Crown entity, Kāinga Ora. We’re also bringing in the KiwiBuild Unit and we’re also bringing in HLC Ltd.

As the Hon Phil Twyford has said in his previous remarks about the intentions for why we are bringing these three entities together under this new Crown entity, it is to ensure that we are lessening the duplication of the roles that have been—

Clayton Mitchell: The duplication—I agree.

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —exactly—played by multiple agencies. This side of the House is committed to efficiency. This side of the House is committed to doing the things that nobody else did for nine long years under the previous Government. We are tackling the long-term problems that this country faces here, and we’re doing that in this particular way by ensuring that those families—look, there are 68,000 State homes—68,000 homes—managed by Housing New Zealand at the moment. Now, there has been a somewhat troublesome—well, in my patch they actually do a blooming good job, but what the intention is here—

Hon David Bennett: What are you saying—what are you saying?

KIRITAPU ALLAN: —is to ensure—I’d love Mr Bennett to get up and have a good yarn, because I think that he’d like to really give us his views on housing in the Waikato, because it’s pretty miserable, as I understand, because of that lot and what they didn’t do.

But, look, in addition to establishing the Crown entities, this bill is also ensuring that there will be a Government policy statement on housing and urban development. Now, this is going to be a very powerful Crown entity, once it gets up on track. We know that this is the first piece of legislation that gives it the bones. The second piece of legislation that’s coming into the House this year will give it the substance, the meat on those bones. But we know that this is going be an incredibly powerful entity that will transform the face of housing here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Again, I must tip my hat to the Hon Phil Twyford for being steadfast in the face of adversity.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): We have heard a lot of rubbish in this House this afternoon from those lefties, around housing. The reality New Zealanders need to know about housing is that their own homes now are at risk because of the economy that they have created, that they will be losing equity in their homes from the day that left-wing Government got elected, and now they will be in a situation where they’re probably going to have a loss of their own home. That will be the legacy of the Labour Party in housing: thousands of New Zealanders that had owned their own home that lose their own home under a Labour - Greens - New Zealand First Government. That’s what the legacy will be from that member.

There is one member over there—he’s Mr Phil Twyford, who, you know, has been the face of housing for the Labour Party. He designed this great policy that they were going to have, called KiwiBuild. He became the Minister to implement it and he couldn’t do it—he couldn’t do it. He had to lose his job, and he’s going to lose his transport job in the next few months as well, because he can’t do that either.

He has to go sack the board of New Zealand Transport Agency because he can’t do it—he can’t build the trains that he was talking about. He’s a failure. He’s just a failure. And some people in life have just got to recognise that they’re a failure, and he is one and he should just resign. Let someone like Kiri have a go. I’m sure she’d be much better.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Mr Bennett, this bill is what’s on the Table. Speak to it.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, it is—it is, because this is his legacy: KiwiBuild, which is going to get merged. They’re going to merge something that doesn’t exist. There’s no KiwiBuild homes, so how can you merge it? It won’t need Commerce Commission approval, will it. Ha, ha! It’s so small.

This is just another example of Labour trying to cover their tracks for their own inefficiencies and failures. There’s nothing of substance in this bill. It’s just trying to rearrange and make it look like they’re entities and that housing has been dealt with under this Government, when it hasn’t. It is just a smokescreen for the New Zealand public and that’s all we get from this Government. It’s all soft politics. It’s all smokescreens. There’s no actual reality. There’s no actual delivery. There’s nothing that they actually can do. I want to see one of those members from the other side come up and say how many people in two years they have taken out of living on the streets and into housing.

Kiritapu Allan: Thousands!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: No, give me the number—give me the number. I don’t want “thousands”; I want actually to know the number—because the Prime Minister promised that, in her first winter, there would be nobody living on the street.

Hon Phil Twyford: No, that’s not what she said.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: What did she say, then?

Hon Phil Twyford: No one needs to be living on the streets.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: “Nobody needs”—OK. “Nobody needs to be living”—that is the smoke and mirrors. This is what this legislation is—“Nobody needs”. Well, do something about it. You’ve had all that time and done nothing—done absolutely nothing. Tell me the number. If you’ve done something, tell me the number. You won’t be able to give me a number. I bet you, the next speaker comes up and says, “Nobody needs to be living on the street,” and “There were thousands of people looked after.” But give me a number—give the New Zealand public a number for what you’ve done in two years. You can’t, because there is no number, because you’ve been a failure, just like this bill.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Six thousand State houses were sold under National. If you do the maths—if you do the maths—he wants a number, so I’ll give him numbers. Nine years of National: 6,000 State houses sold. That’s 365 days a year. You do the maths: 6,000 divided by 9; then you divide that by 365—1.82 houses a day, State housing, that was sold by that Government, sold by the National Party. One—almost two—State house a day was sold by that Government. I want to actually give another set of numbers: 2,206 State houses have been built by this Government. Yesterday was the 82nd anniversary of the first State house, built by a Labour Government, by the Hon Joseph Savage. My mother was born in 1936. She was a year old when they built the first State house at 12 Fife Lane.

The reason why I go to numbers is because what we are proposing is a solution to solve what National have left us, which is a mess—to solve the mess that National has left us. Let’s do the maths—let’s do the maths—82 years ago, the first State house was built; in the two years that this coalition Government has been in place, we have built 2,203 State houses. What does that work out to? That works out to almost 2½ State houses a day that we’ve built since we’ve come into Government. What did National build? Well, they sold 6,000 State houses. How many State houses did they actually build in the nine years? It was 338. In nine years, National built only 338 State houses—338, that is.

Hon Clare Curran: Shame!

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: Shame! Shame on them.

If they want numbers, we’ll give them numbers: 800 families were affected by the P decisions that that side of the House made—a sniff of P and what they did was dislocate 800 families. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge Ngāti Hinerangi, who were here earlier this afternoon. It’s over a hundred years or so that they have been fighting the fight to get to this House to talk about what rightfully should be theirs, and we are giving it to them in fractions. Last nine years of the National Government, 800—800—families were affected, dislocated, became homeless. I don’t know how many years that will affect them, and there is no settlement for that to happen, for those 800 families to receive some sort of apology from that side of the House. That’s what we call no-heart leadership—no, National, no plans.

I want to take this opportunity. I’m wearing a camellia in my right ear. This is from a place not far from here. It’s 126 years since women got the vote here in this country, and I want to acknowledge all those women that have fought the good battle for us to be here, and we are now at our third woman Prime Minister. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the leadership of the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern in terms of being the Prime Minister for this time, for this era—this era when we are building warm, dry homes.

Let me come back to Kāinga Ora. I want to acknowledge the Minister, the Hon Phil Twyford, in terms of Kāinga Ora. The naming of this bill actually is the principal beginning—that door that opens up on how we are doing things differently. Kāinga Ora, when I read it as a Tongan, I read it as thinking about everybody who lives in the House, outside the House, and in this motu. Kāinga Ora is about that.

I want to quote the Hon Phil Twyford, from the speech he gave earlier this afternoon, because I think it describes what this is—it’s about a vision. It is about a vision on how we’re going forward, not just for the next 30 years but beyond that. I quote: “For the first time, we will have a strategic direction … an overarching plan for housing [in New Zealand], and set out expectations and priorities for the whole sector, from local authorities to community housing providers, the private sector, Kāinga Ora itself, and iwi.” If that is the beginning, the vision of this bill, then everything else that falls under it comes in with a good spirit and a good heart.

I want to talk about what this bill will actually deliver. The bill delivers on the Government’s new approach to State housing. I’ve said before, we’ve built over 2,000, but we’re building more houses, and I’ll come back and, maybe next year, know more numbers on what we’ve been building in warm housing. So what this bill will do is legislate for Housing New Zealand to aim to sustain tenancies, provide warm houses, dry housing, treat tenants with respect, and social objectives.

There is a word that we use in this House all the time. People in this House use the word “vulnerable” all the time. There is one thing that we share with every other human being on this planet, and that is that, when we lay our head down to sleep at night, when we close our eyes we are all vulnerable.

But for members of this House, we know that we’ll wake up tomorrow, that we’ve slept in a warm, dry room that’s in a warm, dry home. Many in the nine years of National couldn’t say that, because, where I live—I live in Manurewa in South Auckland—and it was becoming, in the nine years of National, normal to lay your head to rest on the pavement of the footpath of shopping centres outside takeaways. That was what National has left them. What Kāinga Ora will do is work in partnership with everybody in the sector to build something that every New Zealander, when they go to sleep at night, will not be vulnerable, because we are building warm, dry homes.

Chris Bishop: How’s homelessness going for you?

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: Mr Speaker—I can’t hear what that person is saying, but what I want to—

Chris Bishop: Tell us about the motels.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: —know is—I heard the member Chris Bishop saying, “Tell us about motels”—motels that were created by their Government, motels that they were having people—those were their policies. I don’t know why they’re pointing fingers at us, when, actually, that’s their legacy that they left. The legacy that they left was they had no plans. I’ve said, many times, that people think the National Party can add, but they can’t. Why? Let me quantify that statement. If you’re selling State houses—6,000 State houses—and if you’re not helping other community providers build houses, people are being born in this country, people are coming into this country, people are living longer; what does that add up to? It adds up to the population, actually, over—the National Party didn’t have a plan for the population growth, for poorer New Zealanders who couldn’t afford to do that. So I just want to do that. They could not do maths, because they were thinking with their pockets and not their hearts.

Anyway, let me get back to Kāinga Ora. I am moved to hear the story of Mohi that talks about the collective group that helped him into a home in Hamilton. I am moved by that story, and that is the sort of story New Zealanders want to tell—that when they’re down, someone there is able to help them. When they’re down and they’re sleeping on the streets, and they feel like nobody’s there, that’s the role of Government: to provide warm, dry homes for its population. If you can’t do that, then I actually don’t know what that is.

I want to end my speech today by acknowledging all the women who are standing in the local elections. The voting papers are out today. I want to acknowledge the legacy: that 126 years that women have had the vote in New Zealand. I went to urge every woman out there to get out there and support every other woman that’s standing, and vote—vote, because that was fought for 126 years ago today. On that note, I commend this excellent, excellent bill to the House. Mālō.

Hon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Well, that was a fascinating contribution from that member. It sounded like a general debate speech, and she was imploring people to get out in the local body elections and vote. This is a rather interesting bill; the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill. It went through the Environment Committee, and I’m now sitting on the Environment Committee, and it’s a very interesting committee. But when I came onto the committee, this bill had gone through. So I’ve done a little bit of research for the House, so that those members over the other side that have been given speaking notes from the Labour research unit actually know what they’re talking about.

Now, this bill creates a Crown entity. It received about 86 submissions, so it’s not a big bill. It’s, really, a nothing bill; 44 submitters were heard in person, and a lot of the community organisations who are providing that very important community housing were concerned about this bill, that it was going to deal to them. But they learnt, in the select committee, it’s not. So they left thinking, “What is, really, the purpose of this bill?” Well, the purpose of this bill, the nub of the issue, allows the Government to get hold of Housing New Zealand’s balance sheet, to use it so that they can expand the portfolio. What we’ve heard this afternoon is they’ve bagged the National Party, “The National Government didn’t do enough in housing”, and they’ve gone on and built I think it’s about 2,000-odd State houses in the last couple of years. A lot of those were started under the National Government.

Of course, what you don’t hear from the other side of the House this afternoon, this two-word phrase; you don’t hear KiwiBuild mentioned at all. Of course, when Labour campaigned, they campaigned saying they were going to build—all their heads go down—100,000 homes. Of course, we know that that hasn’t occurred at all. Last count: 286 houses have been built under the Labour coalition Government. So over the last two years, just under 300 houses have been built under the banner of KiwiBuild, which is now termed “KiwiFail”. So what you haven’t heard this afternoon from the Government benches is anyone talking about KiwiBuild, because it’s such an embarrassment and disaster.

I have heard a contribution this afternoon about the Government’s vision for reforming the Resource Management Act (RMA). Well, actually, we did quite a bit in our nine years of Government—

Hon Andrew Little: Ha, ha! Rubbish—absolute rubbish.

Hon NATHAN GUY: And Andrew Little pipes up. I was waiting for him to take the bait. Thank you, Minister, for taking the bait. What Andrew Little is not aware of is that we reformed the RMA, particularly to call in projects of national significance to a board of inquiry, for that process to occur within nine months. For those people in my electorate who are commuting out of Wellington this evening through to the wonderful Kāpiti coast, they’ll be driving on the Kāpiti Expressway; a project that was called in through the reform of the RMA, and that went through a consenting process of nine months. My commuters—

Hon Andrew Little: It had to be resealed twice.

Hon NATHAN GUY: —Mr Little—will be delighted to drive on Transmission Gully, which will open next year as part of the reforms that the National Government did to the RMA. What do we hear from the other side, from the Government? Well, they’re going to reform the RMA. But hold on, it’s a working group—it’s a working group. We wait for No. 312 working group to report back, and that won’t occur until 2021.

So, in summary, this is really a nothing bill. It is confusing, it’s going to create a Crown entity, it’s not going to do much, and the big issue for New Zealand is to ensure that houses are built. This isn’t going to deliver any more houses, because the private sector are calling out to the Government to make some changes, particularly to the RMA, and we’re going to get into the election campaign—here’s my bet—in the next sort of eight or nine months, and nothing will have happened under this Government to the RMA. They won’t have reached out to Judith Collins, who’s leading the charge for us. She smashed Phil Twyford on KiwiBuild. We’re doing all the work so that we’re not going to be in the position in 2020, if we get there in 2020, where we wouldn’t have done the homework. It wouldn’t be nine years of doing nothing, and not supporting our changes on the RMA. They’ve been there two years and done nothing. This is a nothing bill, and we don’t support it.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, unlike that other member, I’m actually proud to be part of a Government that’s tackling the long-term challenges facing our country, and one of the biggest challenges we’ve got is the huge mess in housing that was left by the previous Government. Certainly, down in Invercargill, where I live, we’ve got lots and lots of people that are struggling to find decent housing, and, in particular, we’ve got this acute shortage of State and social housing because of the huge number of sell-offs by the previous Government.

So what this bill does is it does two key things: the first thing it does is it becomes a world-class public housing landlord, and then the second thing it’s going to be doing is becoming the leading coordination of urban development projects. What we need is decent coordination in terms of housing and urban development, and we need a decent standard of rental housing to address this housing crisis.

What I want to do today is just focus, first of all, on the role of a world-class public housing landlord, because I think for anybody that’s ever been a tenant—like myself—what you really realise is that you’re incredibly reliant on the decisions that are made by your landlord. The decisions about insulation, the decisions about whether you fix up those leaks and whether you do the maintenance—all those basic, basic decisions. Do you put a heat pump in or not—because the problem is that if you live in a crappy, cold, damp house, you live with those decisions every single day. You live with them when you put your child to bed at night and you live with them when you get up, freezing, in the morning and send them off to school, and that has huge consequences for kids for their health and for their wellbeing.

So, thankfully, our Government has put some decent rental housing standards in place that will put a bottom line in for many of those areas, and that’s incredibly important.

Chris Bishop: That was our bill, thanks very much.

Dr LIZ CRAIG: You put in the insulation, but our standards also include things like dampness, and they include things like thinking about what your clean-heat source is, so you can afford to turn on the heater. Over the next couple of years, a lot of the living standards of many, many tenants will be significantly improved, and so this is where the Government needs to be leading and setting the standard in terms of decent, quality housing for those people, for us—for all of us. I think the thing we’ve got, though, is that what this bill does is it legislates. So some of those social housing objectives that were recently introduced into Housing New Zealand—what it is doing is it’s legislating for those and putting those into law. Things like providing decent housing, being a fair and compassionate landlord, and helping to sustain tenancies—those are some of the principles.

So what this bill does is it talks about the operating principles that will be underpinning Kāinga Ora, and those operating principles are what the Kāinga Ora board will have to enforce. The first one of those is very, very simple: providing good quality, warm, dry, and healthy rental housing, a thing that many, many kids—a whole generation of kids—over the last decade, have missed out on.

What I used to see in my old job was we used to see thousands of kids coming into hospital every year with respiratory infections, and many of those were from the poorer parts of town, where rental homes were substandard. What we were seeing was kids coming in with bronchiolitis, pneumonia, and bronchiectasis, which is permanent lung scarring. What these rental standards are doing, and what Kāinga Ora becoming a world-class landlord and providing warm, dry, healthy homes is doing, is that they will have a huge impact on many of those families.

Some of the other underlying operating principles include supporting tenants to be well-connected with their communities and to lead lives with dignity and the greatest degree of independence possible, and to sustain tenancies, so that you’re not worrying about having to change houses all the time and changing schools for your kids, and the impact that that has—so, some of those basic operating principles to underpin what we’re doing.

But the other thing is thinking about ensuring that we’ve got housing supply and that it meets demand, and so some of those other principles that this bill introduces is managing our housing stock prudently, including upgrading and managing it to ensure it remains fit for purpose. That’s where the ball got dropped under the previous Government as well. So, many of our State houses got rundown, and so then we couldn’t be proud as a Government, as a landlord, because of the state of those rental houses—but also ensuring that housing developed is appropriately mixed, so you have communities, so you can have public, affordable, and market housing mixed together and creating the communities that people want to live in. So it’s incredibly important to have these operating principles embedded into law.

One of the other things, I think, and this is where the zero carbon bill—and we’ve heard a lot of conversations about climate change over the last year. So what this talks about is operating in a manner that recognises the need to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change. It also talks about that in the Government policy statement (GPS), which is also introduced by this bill, because what this bill does is it requires a strategic direction to be set out in terms of where we’re going in housing and urban development.

So what the bill, in Part 2, talks about is “Ministers must issue a GPS on housing and urban development no later than”—it’s 2021. So we’ve got two years, from when this bill comes in, to have that Government policy statement which outlines our broader vision in terms of where we’re going in housing. Basically, that needs to be reviewed every three years to make sure it’s up to date. There’s a whole range of things that the legislation sets out in terms of what needs to be in that, but there’s one that says this must include a multi-decade outlook, because it’s incredibly important that we don’t just focus on what’s in front of us. We need that broader vision because a lot of the building programme, a lot of what we’re developing, will take time to bed in, and we need to know where we’re going in the bigger picture.

But it also talks about how Kāinga Ora will recognise the need to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change, because all around the country, what we’ve got are huge infrastructure assets that are within one or two metres of sea-level rise. I think about down where we are in Invercargill. Our airport is at a very low level of sea level, and we’ve got, around the country, many, many houses that while they may be higher than a couple of metres of sea-level rise, the roads that get to them aren’t. The sewage plants that actually are going to be looking after those housing developments—if they’re at sea level, we’ve got to be thinking about what we’re doing there. So what this bill does is it says that within the Government policy statement, the Government must think about that broader vision in terms of where we’re going in terms of mitigation and adaptation for climate change, which is incredibly important.

There’s a range of other things that must be included in terms of this Government policy statement, in terms of looking at the overall direction and talking about what the other Government agencies need to be doing in this area, because I think what’s really important is if you’ve got other agencies and other people thinking about where they’re going to be building their infrastructure, and what they’re doing, they need to have a very, very clear idea of where the Government’s going. I think that’s what was highlighted in some of the submissions that came in with the Environment Committee. What they were talking about is having that sense of: if we know where the Government policy statement is going, and the Government has laid out its direction, that means that developers and others can get a sense of that and then they can plan accordingly.

So I think this bill is incredibly important because, on the one hand, it sets out how we are going to be as a public landlord and the kind of principles that we want underpinning our role as a landlord. I think that had we had that over the past decade, the lives of many, many families would be significantly different, because we would’ve thought about how we can provide warm, dry housing, but we also could’ve thought about how we provide secure tenancies and how we can have those communities that kids want to grow up in and feel absolutely at home.

In that, we also need to know where we’re going as a country—what’s our broader strategic direction? This is where, again, I look at the struggle we’ve got with social housing down in Invercargill. Across all of Southland in the early 1990s, we had over 800 State houses, but just progressive sell-offs and we’re down to under 400 just before the last election. We’ve stopped the sell-offs and we’ve started to rebuild more, but I don’t know whether anybody actually thought about, consciously, what we were doing in that and then what would happen and the impact that would have on families.

And, certainly, it’s families that I meet now in my office, and all the agencies down in Invercargill also are actually working with. So it’s incredibly important that we have that broader strategic direction so that we know where we’re going and know what impact our policies are having and how they’ll impact on our families and our community. So I’m incredibly proud to be speaking on the third reading of this bill, because I think it’s going to have a huge impact for good in terms of our country, in terms of our strategic direction on housing, in terms of our strategic direction on urban infrastructure, and I’m very, very pleased to commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Kāinga Ora—Homes and Communities Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 17 September.

JAN TINETTI (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Oh, here we go again: the last speaker of this particular bill will be going at the time that the House will close tonight—never mind. I think this bill is an absolutely fabulous bill. As I said the other night, this bill might be a short bill, but it has huge positive implications for the sector—[Interruption] Actually, I want to address that, because we’ve got an Opposition that’s laughing over there, because I said “a short bill”. Actually, I wonder what their definition of a short bill is that they think that they have to laugh at that—that it’s two pages long, or what is it that they don’t actually understand about the fact that the bill is a short bill?

The fact is that they are actually opposing this bill on things that are actually out of the scope of this bill. I don’t think they actually understand the bill as it’s written at this moment. All of the previous speakers’ opposition to the bill in this debate was about stuff that’s actually not in the scope of this particular bill. I think the Opposition are actually very confused on this bill.

This particular bill is about the recovery of grants that are given to schools if they do unlawfully charge for donations to their parents. That is what this bill is about. It is not about the deciles that that Opposition is opposing this bill on. In fact, that is their main opposition: stuff that’s not out of scope. It is scaremongering, because we did hear in the Minister’s opening address on this third reading that this is only just the beginning. The deciles 1 to 7 part of the scheme itself, which isn’t in this bill, is just the beginning. The next part and the next phase will be to engage with the deciles 8 to 10 schools to have them included in this when funding allows. So it’s very interesting that we have an Opposition that is very confused about what is actually the content of this bill, even though we moved through it very, very clearly in select committee.

Now, I’ve actually really enjoyed engaging with principals around the country on this particular bill, both principals who are for it—and the majority are because we have 70 percent of our principals and our schools that are actually going to be eligible to go into it: 70 percent. Again, I’ll point that out to the Opposition that that’s higher than 50 percent when we hear the Opposition saying the majority are against it—70 percent.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but this debate is interrupted—[Interruption] Order! I’m on my feet. This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 24 September 2019.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.