Tuesday, 22 October 2019

TUESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2019

TUESDAY, 22 OCTOBER 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Speaker’s Rulings

Parliament TV—Use of Official Footage for Political Advertising

SPEAKER: Members, last Tuesday, I made a ruling in relation to supplementary questions available to the Leader of the Opposition. I want to thank the staff of the leader’s office for their intensive work ensuring takedowns occurred so Standing Orders were complied with. In light of substantial compliance with my ruling by 5 p.m. last Friday, and subsequent full compliance, I have decided to rescind the limitations which were to apply this week.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The latest BNZ-Business New Zealand Performance of Services Index was released late last week. It showed that the New Zealand services sector continued to expand in September, with a reading of 54.4—higher than Australia, Japan, the US, the UK, China, and the eurozone. New Zealand’s reading was boosted by a strong new reading of new orders and new business at 59.3, its highest level since January. With the New Zealand services sector making up about two-thirds of the economy, this result shows services businesses remain strong and highlights the solid fundamentals of the New Zealand economy.

Dr Deborah Russell: What reports has he seen on the outlook for the dairy sector of the economy?

SPEAKER: Before the member answers, I’m going to ask Dr Woods to shift her offending red—[Hon Dr Megan Woods removes file box] Thank you.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today, Fonterra announced it has increased its 2019-20 forecast farm-gate milk price range by 30c, from the $6.25 to $7.25 range per kilo to the $6.55 to $7.55 per kilo range. Fonterra said that this is due to firm demand for whole-milk powder, while global production is down year to date and is expected to decrease through the remainder of the year. CEO Miles Hurrell said that while there are positive signals for milk prices, there are a number of factors to keep an eye on, including global trade tensions and political instability.

Dr Deborah Russell: What reports has he seen on New Zealand exports?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, more good news. The 2019 Export New Zealand DHL Export Barometer released yesterday showed that 50 percent of Kiwi exporters experienced an increase in export orders over the year. Although this is down on the 52 percent and 55 percent increases in 2018 and 2017, expectations remain positive, with 61 percent expecting an increase in 2020. This remains a solid result for our exporters, despite the challenging global context that they are operating in, and it demonstrates that the New Zealand economy remains in good shape.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly our Government’s efforts to encourage more young New Zealanders to take up a trade to help close the skills gap. Just yesterday, we announced that from next year there’ll be 2,000 more trades academy places and up to 2,000 more places for Gateway. This follows on from the Government establishing the Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Awards, which will be rolling out at school assemblies and prize-givings coming very, very shortly, on top of work on micro-credentially reforming vocational education. This is about supporting young people into decent work.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will construction of light rail down Dominion Road be completed by 2021, as she has previously said?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: One thing I can tell you: it’ll be a lot faster than under that last Government, who didn’t believe in expediting light rail to the airport. In 2017, we had one proposal; now we have two. They are substantively different. NZ Infra is a proposal that would mean that every journey would be contributing to New Zealand’s superannuation. It deserves to be properly looked at, and that is exactly what we are doing.

Hon Simon Bridges: When will construction of her light rail project start?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We will have details of the proposals back before Cabinet in February. That’ll be the point at which further decisions then will be able to be made. I do note, though, that the member asking the question was once a transport Minister, and the member asking the question once, too, agreed that light rail to the airport should be progressed. He just happened to be of the view that it should take a very, very long time. The majority of Aucklanders disagree. This project has the potential to take 11,000 commuters off our roads within every hour of peak traffic. That is why we are committed to progressing the project.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she know when construction will start?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, as I’ve said, once we’ve finished the analysis of the proposals. This is a significant project. The member may like to trivialise this, but this has the ability to dramatically change the congestion issues that Aucklanders are facing. Now, if the member wants to continue with his old proposals, which were building ghost roads or roads that, predominantly, most New Zealanders did not use, that is that member’s prerogative. This Government wants to make sure that Auckland is a world-class city and deals with congestion.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Can I ask the Prime Minister, on the matter of transport, as to whether she’s going ahead with the Silicon Valley company described as “MZ will be transformative in its application to transport, logistics, online advertising markets, health (patient care), energy, retail, and a range of other markets.”—this is in October 2016 when Mr Bridges, then Minister of Transport, said that and it turned out to be a giant con?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have seen those reports, just as I’ve seen reports that the member asking questions about light rail used to support it. I don’t know what has changed other than purely his role as leader. It’s disappointing, to say the least.

Hon Simon Bridges: Will she consider it a broken promise by the Government if construction hasn’t started by the next election on light rail?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve set out many, many times, the choice sat before us to simply ignore the fact that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund was putting before the Government a public-public partnership unlike anything that we’ve seen before, in partnership with operators with good experience in Montreal and a design that was substantively different than what the New Zealand Transport Agency had proposed. I think we owed it to taxpayers and to Aucklanders to properly consider both proposals, particularly putting emphasis on reducing the time it takes for those in the central business district to move to South Auckland. We have to make sure that we are reducing congestion—

Hon Paula Bennett: You’re the one that made the promise.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —in the city.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Paula Bennett: What?

SPEAKER: Well, the member knows what.

Hon Simon Bridges: How much will the light rail project cost?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, the tender process is under way, and once that’s complete we’ll be able to talk about those details.

Hon Simon Bridges: What proportion of the NZ Infra bid she’s talked about is proposed to be owned by the Canadian pension fund?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, I’m not going to give away what is commercially sensitive information during a process, and I’m sorry, but the idea of calling it a secret agenda—either the member knows what a tender process involves or he doesn’t. Of course we’re not going to reveal information at this stage that needs to be properly considered by our agencies.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she agree with the Rt Hon Winston Peters, who has said “It made no sense to sell a monopoly and highly sound business to a group of foreign investors.”, and why, then, is she considering selling light rail to the Canadian pension fund?

SPEAKER: Order! I want an assurance that that was made by the Deputy Prime Minister.

Hon Simon Bridges: It was made by the Rt Hon Winston Peters.

SPEAKER: Was it made by the Deputy Prime Minister?

Hon Simon Bridges: It doesn’t need to be.

SPEAKER: I beg your pardon! I’m trying to work out whether there’s ministerial responsibility for the question. Was it made in the current term of Parliament or in a previous period when the member was a Minister?

Hon Simon Bridges: Point of order.

SPEAKER: No, I’m asking the member a question. Can he tell me the answer to my question.

Hon Simon Bridges: He was Deputy Prime Minister, but under a different Government.

SPEAKER: That’s all right. The member may answer the question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, obviously, I’m going to reference quotes that are made by the Deputy Prime Minister in his role in this Government rather than hypotheticals. The member is also misrepresenting this. This is a public-public partnership.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: As a matter of sound business practice, does one determine what the fiscals might be after the tender process or before?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously after.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she concerned that NZ First Minister Shane Jones says he’s horrified by projections of costings for light rail?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, as I’ve already said, we have no final costings. We’re still in the middle of a process. All I think, though, that people in Auckland will be hearing is that the National Party has no new ideas on how to reduce congestion and get up to 11,000 commuters off our roads. This is a Government that’s getting on with those solutions while that member continues to be negative with no new solutions or ideas.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she concerned that Winston Peters, as Minister responsible for KiwiRail, said last night, “Obviously, the connection to the airport will be heavy rail.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is heavy rail, or what some call the Puhinui option, a possibility for the Government rather than the light rail project?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, we’ve already got a process under way, and we’ll be making decisions in future. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Is the member finished? Yes. Question No. 3, the Hon Paul Goldsmith. [Interruption] Question No. 4, Jan Tinetti. [Interruption] No—well, I called question No. 3 and no one took a call.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member would like to go back?

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Yes.

SPEAKER: The Hon Paul Goldsmith.

Question No. 3—Finance

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

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

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Regarding his statement in the Budget 2018 speech, “We cannot continue to rely on merely increasing our population”, is it not the case that after two years of his Government, our economy is deeply reliant on population growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No. Our economy is reliant on people working hard right across New Zealand to lift their productivity, to employ more people—the 92,000 extra jobs that have been created under this Government—and to be lifting their spending on R & D. They’re the things that the economy is reliant upon. I have said from the very beginning that it’ll take a long time to deal with nine years of neglect, but we’re getting on with the job.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he accept that over the past year, three-quarters of total economic growth was because of population growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I would need to check the member’s statistics on that matter. What I do know is that we have an economic plan to transition this country to being more productive, more sustainable, and more inclusive. Looking firmly in the rear-view mirror with a glass-half-empty mentality, as that member does, is not going to turn around the New Zealand economy.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Does he think Grant Robertson’s 2017 description of an “economy … built on a sandcastle of population growth” is more applicable now than ever?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No, I do not. What I think is that this is a Government that is getting on with shifting the economy to a more productive, more sustainable basis. Every single initiative that we’ve done there, with the R & D tax incentive, with lifting our skills and training performance, with developing new venture capital markets—all of those things are things that the National Party opposes. They’re against everything. On this side of the House, we’re focused on a positive agenda for the economy.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: What does it mean for the average New Zealand family when their economy is delivering 0.5 percent per person growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What the average New Zealand family is looking at is a Government that came into office and said, “Our priority is to lift the incomes of low and middle income families.”—that’s what we did. We turned around the tax cuts of that Government and delivered $5.5 billion into the pockets of those low and middle income families. On this side of the House, our focus is on making sure our growth is more productive, we are more sustainable, and we are more inclusive.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So is he content with 0.5 percent per person growth?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I will always be looking to see those growth rates increase. I do note that on a per capita basis, we inherited a position, I think, of about 30th in the OECD, and we’ve increased that to 23rd.

Question No. 4—Education

4. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: How is the Government investing to give more young New Zealanders the opportunity to take up a trade?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yesterday, the Prime Minister and I announced 2,000 more trades academy places. Trades academies allow secondary school students to take on full-time study that combines school, tertiary, and/or work-based learning. They’ve been effective in increasing the number of young people who attain NCEA level 2 or the equivalent, and this is the latest step in the Government’s comprehensive plan to boost trades training and tackle skill shortages. It sits alongside the Prime Minister’s Vocational Excellence Awards, the introduction of micro-credentials, and the Government’s wider work to reform vocational education and training. Our Government sees real value in vocational education and training, and we’re committed to raising the profile of vocational education in schools and in communities around New Zealand.

Jan Tinetti: What other investments, if any, is the Government making to give more senior secondary students exposure to trades occupations?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news: we’ll also be funding up to 2,000 more places for the Gateway programme, the first increase in Gateway programmes since Labour and New Zealand First were last in Government. An evaluation of Gateway—which is a programme that links students into work experience—shows that employers really enjoy it: 70 percent of employers reported several benefits from their involvement with Gateway, and 81 percent of students reported that their involvement with Gateways helps with their future plans. These types of programmes—Gateway and trades academies—have contributed to young people getting higher qualifications and more students getting jobs when they leave school.

Jan Tinetti: Why did he consider it important to make these investments?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the things we hear as a Government on a near daily basis from the business community and from employers is that skills shortages are holding them and the country back. They regularly raise this issue with us, and they want to see the Government doing more to ensure that we are training our own to fill the skill shortages that we have. We want to see people in careers like building, plumbing, and agriculture, and we want to see them reviewing those jobs as an attractive first option when they leave school so that we can close the persistent skills gaps that we’ve been facing as a country.

Jan Tinetti: How do initiatives like Gateway and trades academies link with the Government’s wider work to reform the delivery of vocational education and training?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the things that the wider reform of vocational education and training is designed to do is break down the barriers between off-the-job training delivered by institutions like polytechs and private training establishments and the on-the-job training that is primarily delivered by employers. In an environment where we have a very strong labour market, where the pull into work is very strong for young New Zealanders who are leaving school, we need to ensure that we’re doing more to provide them with earning and learning opportunities so that they can train while they are on the job. Gateway and trades academies open the door to more of that, and the reform of vocational education and training is designed to ensure that it’s better supported.

Question No. 5—Transport

5. JAMI-LEE ROSS (MP—Botany) to the Minister of Transport: What planning work has been undertaken to provide for park-and-ride facilities in Botany to service the AMETI Eastern Busway and airport to Botany rapid transit projects?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): It’s great to see a member from across the aisle wanting to get things done for his electorate. I’m advised that Auckland Transport, as the lead agency, is currently investigating park-and-ride facilities as one of the options to complement a future interchange at Botany. This will be determined as part of the airport to Botany detailed business case, which Auckland Transport aims to complete in early 2020.

Jami-Lee Ross: What benefits will public transport users in Botany see from the Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (AMETI) eastern busway and the Botany to airport project once completed, and will a park-and-ride facility in Botany improve those benefits?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Well, as the member well knows, I think, the south-east of Auckland is one of the poorest-served areas in the Auckland region for public transport. The AMETI busway and the proposed rapid transit connection between the airport and Botany, up to AMETI, will significantly improve public transport services, it will increase the frequency of bus services, and it will ease congestion.

Jami-Lee Ross: Given he still believes that east Auckland is one of the worst-served parts of Auckland for public transport, would a park-and-ride facility at Botany station encourage greater uptake of these new public transport services?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I believe it would encourage greater public transport use. Park-and-ride is one of a number of options currently being considered for enabling better transport choices in Botany. Auckland Transport is developing the business case for facilities in Botany as part of the wider work on the AMETI busway, which is now under construction.

Question No. 6—Housing

6. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura) to the Minister of Housing: How many houses has the Government purchased under the KiwiBuild programme?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): The Government has purchased 100 houses since the beginning of the KiwiBuild programme. Fifty-two of those houses have subsequently been sold and settled; a further seven have unconditional sales contracts. Of the 100 houses, 22 were purchased via the underwrite for a value of $9.9 million, and 78 were purchased by outright purchase agreements for a value of $35 million.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she believe it is an effective use of taxpayer money if $43 million has been spent purchasing houses for KiwiBuild when only a third of those houses have been onsold?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Of the homes purchased—as I said, 100 have been purchased—52 have been sold. $45,202,229 has been spent; and returned, recycled, to the Crown—as the KiwiBuild programme was always designed to work—has been $24,163,758.

Hon Judith Collins: What are the overheads that have been incurred in order to bring about that recycling?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The holding costs of those properties is $162,000. I can break that down for the member: $130,000 in bodies corporate and rates, $25,000 in marketing, and $7,000, including electricity, in utilities.

Hon Judith Collins: Is she confident that the 859 more KiwiBuild homes that are underwritten but not yet announced will sell to KiwiBuild buyers within the underwrite period?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Of those that we have contracted, we are currently going through them looking at where we believe there is high first-buyer demand. We clearly laid out mechanisms in the KiwiBuild reset for what would happen if that wasn’t the case. But what I will also remind that member is we’re not prepared to sit around doing nothing, as that Government did for nine long years.

Hon Judith Collins: Why has the Government signed taxpayers up to $43 million of outright purchases and underwrites when they’ve only been able to sell around 100 KiwiBuild settled sales?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think the member is confused; in terms of the homes sold to eligible KiwiBuild buyers, 271 have been sold. I do remind that member, that’s a further 132 since we did the KiwiBuild reset. Maybe she needs to put in some more written parliamentary questions and bring herself up to date.

Hon Judith Collins: Now, what date will she be releasing the monthly KiwiBuild programme housing dashboard that she announced in September this year?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Imminently.

Question No. 7—Social Development

7. MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she agree with the Child Poverty Action Group that “We need to increase the benefit levels for a start and if another crisis occurs for a family, Work and Income should have the capacity to forgive impossible debt.”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): This Government is committed to making sure we have a welfare system that is fair and accessible for all New Zealanders. This is reflected in our 2018, $5.5 billion Families Package investment and our 2019 Budget announcements to index main benefit rates to increases in average wages, remove a harmful sanction that penalises sole parents, and increase abatement thresholds in line with minimum wage increases. On top of that, we’ve already started to address concerns around debt through the changes to the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act to better provide protection for families from irresponsible lending and harmful mobile trading practices. The Ministry for Social Development (MSD) is also ensuring that people are paying debt back at lower rates, which is the fair and just thing to do, while still upholding the integrity of the welfare system. Is there more to do to address income adequacy in the welfare system and the impact of debt? Yes.

Marama Davidson: Is she satisfied that hardship grants are the best tool to meet people’s immediate needs when there has been a significant increase in hardship grants in the last quarter, especially for food?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: It’s never satisfying to see people who need to come to MSD for hardship grants, especially for food. I am heartened, though, that people know that when they need the support of MSD, they are able to access that. It is important to note that hardship grants are up in areas where there are housing pressures—we cannot ignore that part of the picture—and I’m relieved that with this Government’s actions, we’ve seen a significant increase in public housing and that our target is on track. It’s important to understand that hardship grants are not the only tool we use to support people in hardship. MSD also funds building financial capability providers to work in the community with people in hardship. We also now have the building financial capability champions in Work and Income sites, available for clients who might need their assistance. We also have increased proactive messaging in client letters, and have enhanced information on the MSD website. And MSD also have improved the information exchange between Inland Revenue, MSD, and the Ministry of Justice to support better management of debt, including helping to prevent unnecessary overpayments and providing visibility of common debtors.

Marama Davidson: Does she agree with the Welfare Expert Advisory Group that “This cycle of inadequate payments, requiring one-off assistance top-ups and resulting in debt, further limits the ability of benefit recipients to sustain themselves and increases stress”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We know that changes across the whole system are required to ensure people in hardship are better off. It is important to note that food grants are a non-recoverable needs grant that can be accessed through MSD, and so does not add to the additional hardship or debt incurred by MSD clients. We are unapologetic about making the system more responsive to those that need support from MSD. And alongside stabilising people’s financial situations and addressing the hardship that they are experiencing, we have also put a significant amount of investment into work focus in supporting people, where able, to be earning, learning, volunteering, or caring.

Marama Davidson: What is MSD doing to ensure people’s needs are the primary consideration when deciding whether to provide a grant that must be repaid or a grant that does not need to be repaid?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Accessing any type of grant, whether recoverable or non-recoverable, requires MSD to have a good understanding of a client’s situation. MSD’s approach has always been to prevent debt wherever possible. That means dong things like looking at whether the client can be supported through other means—for instance, the low- or no-interest loans through Good Shepherd—in ensuring that a client is, in the first instance, receiving their full and correct entitlement. Where assistance is recoverable, MSD will look at the ability of the person to repay debt and ensure repayments are manageable. MSD accepts and I accept there is more to do in this space, but I think that we are heading in the right direction.

Marama Davidson: Is she open to reconsidering MSD’s powers and policies in relation to debt to ensure these are consistent with Government wellbeing priorities?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I will continue to consider advice received that ensures we have a welfare system that is fair and accessible for all New Zealanders. I have signalled in my April Cabinet paper on the welfare overhaul that MSD is already focusing on ways to minimise debt creation and ensure debt repayments are sustainable, as outlined in the recommendations. We’ve also initiated cross-Government work to address managing debt to Government agencies.

Hon Louise Upston: Can the Minister confirm her answer to written question No. 34006 that “the Ministry of Social Development expects to recover all debts owed by current or former clients”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Can she repeat that question, sorry?

Hon Louise Upston: Can the Minister confirm her answer to written parliamentary question—

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Oh, a supplementary—sorry.

Hon Louise Upston: Do you want me to repeat it again?

SPEAKER: Right, let’s start again. I called a supplementary question.

Hon Louise Upston: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can the Minister confirm her answer to written question No. 34006 that “the Ministry of Social Development expects to recover all debts owed by current or former clients”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The legislation in the Social Security Act is very clear that where MSD is at fault for a debt being incurred, then MSD is able to write off that debt. But where the debt has been incurred by the client through no fault of MSD, then the expectation is that the debt will be recovered.

Question No. 8—Social Development

8. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Is she satisfied with the increase in hardship assistance as published in the September 2019 MSD fact sheets?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): We said, coming into Government, that we would provide assistance to those who need it, and this increase partially demonstrates that. We also cannot ignore the correlation between hardship assistance and housing pressures. So I am relieved to be part of a Government that is responding to a housing crisis that was ignored for nine years previously and to see that we have already seen an increase in public housing of around 2,400 and we are well on track to meet our target of 6,400. The need that we see through the welfare system with regard to hardship grants was there when we came into Government, but, under us, people are willing to come forward because they know that they won’t be turned away. I have been clear with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) that people should be able to access their full and legal entitlements, and that’s what you’re seeing here. Qualification and criteria for hardship grants have not changed under us. People who are receiving hardship grants are eligible to receive them.

Hon Louise Upston: Can the Minister confirm that the number of people receiving hardship grants for food this last quarter is almost twice as many as this time last year?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I can confirm that, actually, there was already an increase occurring under the previous Government in access to hardship grants, and that trajectory has continued.

Hon Louise Upston: Does she agree with the Prime Minister, who yesterday said that the numbers accessing food grants represented those able to access support and not those who are in need coming forward?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I don’t know the context of what the Prime Minister has said or whether those were the exact words, but I don’t see those two things as mutually exclusive. We need to keep in context here that hardship grants are up where there are housing pressures. I think I said in the House previously that, actually, if the previous Government had built public housing at the same rate that we are currently doing, they would’ve had 14,500 public houses and we wouldn’t have anyone on the housing register at all.

Hon Louise Upston: Given that she believes the increase in hardship grants is a positive thing, would she like to see the numbers go up even further with the next set of statistics?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I reject the premise of that question. What I do think is a positive thing is that when there are New Zealanders experiencing hardship, they have a Government and Government agencies that respond to that need. We are not only responding to the hardship needs of New Zealanders but we’re investing in areas that were under-invested in under the previous Government, including that focus on work and work-focused support through the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). We saw that with things like the additional 263 work-focused case managers that were funded or budgeted for in the 2019 Budget. We’re not going to apologise for helping New Zealanders in hardship, but I will say on record that we are doing both and the Government prior to us was doing neither.

Rt Hon Winston Peters: Is the Minister saying that this Government does believe in helping people facing serious hardship and not the Darwinian principle of dog-eat-dog?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Absolutely, and we also understand the importance of supporting people with regards to stabilising their financial situations before we can actually support them into meaningful and sustainable work. So when New Zealanders are in need, the MSD agency, the welfare system, is there to support them, and at the same time we’re going to continue to invest in upskilling and training and getting New Zealanders into meaningful and sustainable work.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Question No. 9, Chris Bishop. Sorry, I apologise. I did see the member earlier. Priyanca Radhakrishnan, a supplementary question.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Thank you, Mr Speaker. So what is the Government doing to reduce hardship for New Zealanders?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We’ve implemented a number of changes to improve financial support for people in the welfare system. These changes are estimated to have a positive impact on 339,000 people accessing our welfare system. For the first time in New Zealand’s history, we’ve indexed main benefits to average wage increases, to ensure rates of main benefits do not fall further behind average wages. We’ve increased the abatement threshold for main benefits to help low-income families keep more of what they earn. We passed legislation to repeal the harmful sanction that penalised sole parents and their children. On top of that, this Government has raised the minimum wage to $17.70 and will continue to increase this to $20 by 2021. We have increased the number of public housing placements by 2,380 since we came in—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Sometimes the member makes me sort of regret my soft heart.

Question No. 9—Transport

9. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by all his statements and policies?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister of Transport): Yes, in the context they were made or given.

Chris Bishop: Who is right about the cost projections for light rail: he, who said yesterday to Newshub that there is no cost blowout; or Winston Peters, who said that “The costings seem to have changed … in a way that is demanding serious investigation as to whether those forward projections are factual or not.”?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I repeat what I said yesterday: there is no cost blowout, because the twin track procurement process includes fundamental design and engineering decisions, so a final cost has not been settled on for either option yet.

Chris Bishop: What was the New Zealand Transport Agency’s (NZTA) assessment of NZ Infra’s light rail proposal using standard Treasury methodology?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: The New Zealand Transport Agency didn’t complete an assessment of it, and that’s why Cabinet mandated Treasury and the Ministry of Transport to run a new assessment process that includes a consideration of the public-public proposal (PPP) being put forward by the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and their Canadian partners, alongside the NZTA-led option, which would include a PPP option or a design and build.

Chris Bishop: Is it correct that the relationship between the New Zealand Transport Agency and NZ Infra is so broken that NZ Infra had to use the Official Information Act to get information from the New Zealand Transport Agency, causing months of delays to the light rail project?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: I reject the assertion in the first part of the member’s question, but I would note that Sir Brian Roche, the new chair of the board of the transport agency, said on radio this morning that NZTA had dropped the ball, and that’s why Cabinet mandated Treasury and the Ministry of Transport to undertake a new assessment process of both options. The Government’s doing that because we believe that it’s extremely important that we invest in a 21st century transit system for our country’s biggest city, which is grinding to a halt because of the failure of the last Government to invest in rapid transit and public transport.

Chris Bishop: Does he stand by his statement that no one on the New Zealand Transport Agency board asked to stay on?

Hon PHIL TWYFORD: Yes, I do.

Question No. 10—Health

10. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made about mental health facilities in Waikato?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Improving and maintaining New Zealanders’ mental health and wellbeing is one of the long-term challenges that this Government is taking seriously. Having the right facilities to support people’s treatment and recovery is a key part of our plan. That’s why I was pleased to have joined the Prime Minister in Hamilton last week to announce that the Government has approved $100 million in funding for a new acute mental health facility which will provide better care and support to people with mental health and addiction issues. This announcement gives Waikato DHB the certainty to push ahead with the required planning and development to ensure this facility is constructed and completed in a timely fashion.

Jamie Strange: Why do the New Zealanders cared for by Waikato DHB need this new facility?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: The current Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre is no longer fit for purpose. It’s outdated and does not provide the right environment to support a focus on recovery and mental wellbeing for patients, despite hard work by dedicated staff. A new purpose-built facility will provide a modern environment with patient- and whānau-centred spaces. In addition, over the last nine years, there’s been a 72 percent increase in people seen by Waikato DHB’s mental health and addiction services. Each month, there are nearly 100 admissions to the Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre, which has 53 beds. The new facility is expected to have a capacity for an extra 10 to 20 more beds, and that will make a real difference.

Jamie Strange: How does this announcement fit with the Government’s plan for fixing up our health infrastructure?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: This Government is committed to strengthening our public health services and rebuilding our hospitals. Since Budget 2018, funding has been confirmed for projects up and down New Zealand, including the redevelopment of Taranaki Base Hospital, including a new east wing to house a range of critical and acute services; a new elective surgery unit at North Shore Hospital; $80 million for four projects at Counties Manukau, including recladding of the Kidz First building; a new in-patient mental health and addiction unit at Hauora Tairāwhiti Gisborne Hospital; new specialist mental health facilities at Canterbury DHB’s Hillmorton campus; $275 million for Auckland DHB to address significant infrastructure challenges; $45 million for the new Wellington Children’s Hospital; $30 million for a new integrated stroke unit at Auckland DHB; $24 million for new endoscopy and cardiac care capacity at Northland DHB’s Whangarei Hospital; and a new Buller Hospital integrated family unit. In addition, I’m delighted to report the good progress that’s been made on the Dunedin Hospital rebuild project, and Budget 2019 included a ring-fenced contingency to fund the work. We’ve set aside $2.45 billion in our first two Budgets for investments in hospitals—twice as much as the previous Government invested in nine long years.

Question No. 11—Police

11. BRETT HUDSON (National) to the Minister of Police: Does he stand by his statement, “we’re on track to deliver 1,800 new police next month”, and, if so, by how much will the headcount of sworn officers have increased since he took office to meet that target?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Yes, and around 10 percent.

Brett Hudson: Does he stand by his answer to parliamentary written question No. 29951 where he said that the headcount of sworn officers on 1 November 2017 was 9,016?

Hon STUART NASH: It was a long time ago. One thing I will say is that we’re delivering nearly 1,000 more police than would have been delivered under that Government, and I suspect that that member is the only constituent in Ōhāriu that’s complaining.

Brett Hudson: Was the Prime Minister correct last week when she said that there are now 9,723 sworn officers?

Hon STUART NASH: The Prime Minister was correct—of course she was correct—but she was also correct in saying we’re going to meet our obligation in just over two years.

Brett Hudson: Can he confirm that the difference between those two numbers is 707, meaning that there are only 707 additional sworn police officers in New Zealand today?

Hon STUART NASH: No, what I can tell you is as of today, there are 1,685 new recruits, which is a headcount of 893. If you ask me this question on Thursday afternoon, there’d be 1,744 new police, which would equal 952—yet another graduation this Thursday.

Brett Hudson: Is 707 or even, perhaps, 850, greater or less than 1,800?

Hon STUART NASH: I can tell you what 893 is; it’s more than 880. We’ve delivered that in under two years and that Government promised that in four years.

Question No. 12—Health

12. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Associate Minister of Health: Does she stand by all her statements around vaccination and the spread of measles?

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

Dr Shane Reti: When she said yesterday that tax cuts come at the expense of measles vaccines, does she think it’s satisfactory that some taxpayers right now are unable to be vaccinated due to a vaccine shortage?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I didn’t say that.

Dr Shane Reti: Further to written questions, is she concerned that 20 DHB staff have contracted measles this year, given expectations that public health sector staff will be vaccinated?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Of course we’re concerned, and we are doing everything we can to respond to the measles outbreak. And I’d like to thank all of the hard-working clinicians who’ve been focused on responding to this outbreak on the ground, and now we’re seeing declining numbers of measles.

Dr Shane Reti: When she says it is important we do everything we can to ensure the measles outbreak doesn’t spread further, what actions did she take in March when the national measles laboratory reported that measles was being spread in Canterbury hospitals?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I was not responsible for immunisation in March, but I can say that during that period, in the first half of this year, more than 50 percent more vaccines were distributed compared to previous years. And in this year alone, we have administered more measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccines than any year when National was in Government.

Dr Shane Reti: Did she say yesterday that anyone campaigning on tax cuts is basically promising that we’ll run down public services in the future?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yes, and I stand by that statement.

Dr Shane Reti: Was it a missed red flag for the spread of measles when nosocomial infection was occurring in Canterbury hospitals back in March?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: What I will say is that all during the response to this outbreak, we have been guided by the expert advisory group and expert clinicians. I don’t think it’s up to politicians to make decisions on this. It’s up to politicians to support our public health system and listen to the advice of experts, which is what we have done.

Dr Shane Reti: I seek leave to table an Official Information Act request from the measles and rubella laboratory, confirming the transmission of nosocomial infection in Canterbury hospitals.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that document being tabled? There appears to be none.

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

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I seek leave to table the last 10 years of MMR events that have been extracted from the national immunisation record, which show that significantly—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to ask the member to put it again without an interjection from Michael Woodhouse.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I seek leave to table the last 10 years of MMR events or vaccines that have been delivered that has been extracted from the national immunisation record, and it shows a significant increase in MMR immunisations in the last two years. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Was that Mr Bennett this time? Who was the person who made the noise? Was it Mr Bennett?

Hon David Bennett: No, I was gesturing. I was saying, “Why should they not?”

SPEAKER: OK. Who was the member who was interjecting? Can I seek an assurance from the member that the information available in that document is not otherwise publicly available?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: It is my understanding that it is not.

SPEAKER: I’ll put the leave for that. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

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

Ministerial Statements

Fire and Emergency Services—SkyCity Auckland Fire

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): I seek leave of the House to move a motion without notice and without debate to acknowledge the efforts of fire and emergency workers in Auckland at SkyCity. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No, the member has a right to make a ministerial statement. She has chosen to seek leave to move a motion without notice and debate. Is there any objection to that?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): Hang on a minute. Can we please—I think it’s quite reasonable that we know a little bit more about this. Is this a ministerial statement or not?

SPEAKER: Can the member give a brief explanation, because some of us are maybe not quite as up with the news as the Minister is.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Sorry, Mr Speaker. I apologise. At the moment, there is a large fire at SkyCity in Auckland. There are 23 trucks on site, an aerial appliance on site, and they are fighting high winds as well as major fire.

SPEAKER: OK, I am going to interrupt and suggest that we not put leave but the Minister do what is her right, and that is to make a ministerial statement. I think it will have the same effect. It will have the possibility of an ability of other parties to respond, but I think in this circumstance, they should have the right to respond, if they so wish. The Hon Tracey Martin—ministerial statement.

Hon Paula Bennett: This is a new rule.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN (Minister of Internal Affairs): Thank you, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Order! Can I just say that having an ongoing commentary from the Hon Paula Bennett on my decisions when I’ve just made a significant decision which advantages her party’s ability to respond is just not good enough.

Hon TRACEY MARTIN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I don’t want to take up too much time of the House, but I do want to acknowledge the incredible efforts going on at the moment in Auckland by the fire and emergency services: 23 trucks, an aerial appliance—they are fighting winds of up to 70 kilometres an hour. People have been asked to stay away from the central business district of Auckland while the firefighters go in and seek to contain this blaze. I wanted to make sure that the House was able to acknowledge their efforts. Kia ora.

Hon NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central): Look, just on behalf of the Opposition, to acknowledge all of the workers on site, their families, but also all of the firefighters that have been battling the blaze. I know that many members of this House will be concerned for those people and, obviously, have extraordinary respect for our firefighters across New Zealand. Some of us are getting updates as they come to hand. At the moment, as I understand it, they have got people off site, but we will wait to have further information. This is devastating, and our thoughts are with everybody affected by this.

Motions

Women Winning the Right to Stand for Parliament—Centenary

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Minister for Women): I move, That this House celebrate the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to stand in parliamentary elections and the immense contribution that women MPs have made to Parliament and to Aotearoa New Zealand.

Members of this House, I rise to acknowledge that it is 100 years since the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act was passed and women were able to stand for Parliament in Aotearoa New Zealand. I begin today by quoting the member for Grey Lynn, Mr John Payne, in the debate on the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act in 1919: “There was a time when women had not a soul to call her own. Her very property passed to her husband on her marriage. We have done away with that, and have gradually come to recognize that woman is equal to man in being a thinking, capable being. We have ceased to treat her as a chattel in very many things pertaining to her civil life, and we now recognise that the time has come when women should stand on an equality with men, not only in regard to entering the professions, but also in representing their sex and families by directly having seats in this House and in the Upper Chamber.”

Today, I want to salute the many women who have changed our history in Parliament and ultimately for women and girls in New Zealand. I salute three women who stood for Parliament unsuccessfully in 1919: Rosetta Baume, Aileen Cooke, and Ellen Melville. Although they didn’t at first succeed, they paved the way for our first woman member of Parliament, Elizabeth McCombs in 1933. When she was elected, the “No Women Permitted” sign over Bellamy’s dining room came down. The wording of the swearing-in ceremony was altered and the Governor-General had to refer to “members” rather than “gentlemen” in the Speech from the Throne. McCombs was still not allowed into the inner sanctum of Bellamy’s bar.

I salute the first woman member of Parliament to be a Cabinet Minister, Hon Mabel Howard, in 1947. She was also the first woman to serve as a Cabinet Minister in any Commonwealth country. I salute Iriaka Rātana, our first wahine Māori MP and also the first elected MP to become a mother. Iriaka was a passionate advocate for the welfare of her people. After giving birth to her seventh child in December 1949, she entered Parliament in 1950 and campaigned to improve the lives of her constituents.

I salute Hon Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, our first Māori Cabinet Minister in 1972. Whetu was also our first sitting MP to give birth, in 1970. She was back at work in Parliament two weeks after giving birth, bringing her baby with her, and also had her second child while in Parliament. I salute Hon Pansy Wong, our first Asian woman MP, in 1996. She was also New Zealand’s first Asian Cabinet Minister. I salute Hon Luamanuvao Winnie Laban, our first Pacific MP, in 1999, and our first Pacific woman Cabinet Minister. And who could forget Georgina Beyer, elected in 1999, our first transgender woman elected to Parliament—not only in New Zealand but in the world. In 2003, we also had the first mother and daughter serve together in Parliament with Janet Mackey and Moana Mackey. That year also saw Hon Margaret Wilson become our first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Today, we need to honour those who have led our legislative processes. I salute our three women Governor-Generals: Dame Catherine Tizard, Dame Silvia Cartwright, and Dame Patsy Reddy. I also particularly salute our three women Prime Ministers: Rt Hon Dame Jenny Shipley, Rt Hon Helen Clark, and Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, our first Prime Minister to become a mother in office and only the second world leader to become a mother in office.

History has taught us that more women in the political process leads to better outcomes for women. Better outcomes for women are better for families and communities and, ultimately, better for our democracy. I salute members of this House today for championing better opportunities for women, for championing issues such as equal pay and women’s safety from violence.

I see that the Rt Hon Helen Clark was the 17th woman MP and we now have our 150th woman MP in this House. We can see that we have made rapid progress. We now have 48 women members of Parliament: 40 percent—

SPEAKER: Order! Can the member wind up?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —yes—and the highest level of representation for women ever. We must continue to push for more diversity in our Parliament and also at local government level. I may need to say to my own son as he grows up, “Yes, men can be Prime Minister, too. We had some several years back.” Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou katoa.

Hon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Mr Speaker, thank you for giving me the call and can I please thank the Minister for Women, Julie-Anne Genter, for that and for those nice memories, actually, of some of those women who I’ve had the great fortune to serve with and some of those that we do remember, acknowledge, and respect for all that has gone before us.

I couldn’t help having a little smile, as you were speaking. Someone said to me yesterday that her daughter is studying New Zealand history in school, and then she was kind of horrified to hear that it was in the 1980s. Ha, ha! So I’m kind of pleased that this is a bit further back, and we’re really looking genuinely at our history again, to Elizabeth McCombs in 1933—of course, she won in a by-election when her husband died—and then in 1942 with Mary Grigg, who was our first National Party woman MP. But, to the House, she, too, became selected in a by-election when her husband unfortunately died. I did wonder if a few women were looking at their husbands slightly differently at that time and thinking it might be a pathway.

Hey, I am going to indulge slightly. I want to acknowledge National’s Dame Hilda Ross. She is a woman that we hold in high regard. She was someone who gave so much service. Of course, her seat was in Hamilton. She’d served on a local body. She’d served on the hospital board, I think it was at that time, in about 1941. She had done such a lot as far as her service—her service started, actually, in the influenza outbreak in 1918, I think it was. What she did during that time of genuinely in the 1931 earthquakes in Napier—she was someone that actually rushed to that place and was handing out parcels. It was all about service to women, to children, to families, and to the disadvantaged. She then saw a path to actually serve back, which was via Parliament, and to get herself selected. She’s a woman that we hold in particularly high regard, to the point where we have the Dame Hilda Ross trust. I did think it’s an opportunity for us to think about what we do in giving back.

One thing that we often say is that the words are all good, but unless we are genuinely making it easier for other women, in particular who want to get into Parliament, then it’s all nice sentiment but we’re not actually getting on with it. So we thought we’d get good and practical, as National women. And I think we started it, Louise Upston, about five years ago from memory, and we decided we really genuinely would get stuck in. So what we did was we kind of took over the Dame Hilda Ross trust through the National Party. We started raising funds and having fundraisers and a variety of different ways that we did that. Now, what we realised is that for women today, it’s actually the path into Parliament.

I often say to people that in Parliament itself, I believe that we’re treated pretty evenly. We get the same pay, we get the same conditions, and we get the same respect and disrespect at times for the way that we act. We’re probably as badly behaved. You can get a bit caught in the gendered language. But, quite frankly, I think some men in this place are treated pretty appallingly for how they look or speak or dress or do, on all sides of the House, by the way. So I’m not sure that is gendered any more. But I do think the path here is still a bit more difficult for women, so we wanted to recognise that.

In our party now, when a woman is putting their hand up to be a candidate, we actually genuinely mentor them. We help them go through speechwriting. We put money into training for them for the fundraising that we’ve done. We recently have had a conference that we called WIN—Women Influencing National—and we invited them here and we had a range of speakers. Then we talked about how they can influence our policy that we would be taking in next year.

Also, as I say with those candidates, once they get pre-selected, we recognise that it’s a really difficult time. You’re needing babysitters all of a sudden, if you’re not used to being out at night trying to meet delegates. You’re having to get a brochure printed. You may need a new outfit so that you feel good when you’re standing in front of a crowd asking them to vote for you. So we give them a donation of $500 and say, “Spend it however you like.”, and when they get here, we then now try to wrap around how we can do things differently.

I do look at some of my new colleagues, because when they came in, we said, “Right, well, we did a bit for you. What can we do next?” I reckon that’s the lesson for us, from those women that have been before: what is our role as women parliamentarians to do practical things for the next girls and women that might want to step up and be counted?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I think this is going to be one of those extraordinary debates where we hear tributes being paid to those who have paved the way for many of us in this place. I want to acknowledge both of the speakers who have gone before me in acknowledging that, and our Minister for Women, the Hon Julie Anne Genter, in particular, for the very practical way she is role modelling that as a mother herself in this place and becoming a mother as Minister for Women.

I stand here proudly as the 99th woman to enter into this place, and I have to say that seems astounding to me: a hundred years and I’m number 99. You know, you’d think that those numbers might be higher, and yet at the same time I think of how far we have travelled in that period of time. Those women, when you showcase their profiles, when you talk about who they were when they came into this place, it’s almost hard to fathom what it would have been like when they ran. But they were ordinary women who did extraordinary things. They were women who not only in some cases were championing the right for women to vote, they then decided actually from the beginning that it wouldn’t be enough to simply have the right to vote; there were issues that mattered such that they needed a seat at the table as well, but it took time.

You know, it was 1893 when we were talking about getting the right for women to vote. It wasn’t until 29 October 1919 that the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act passed through Parliament, and that gave women in that election seven weeks from the time that Act passed—seven weeks—to then run and try to win. I know how difficult a seven-week election campaign can be. Sadly, for those women—and I pay tribute to them as well: Rosetta, Aileen, and Ellen—they were all unsuccessful, but they stood up and they led the charge for women to have a place here in Parliament.

Ten more women tried and failed in that intervening period and it wasn’t until 14 years later—14 years—that Elizabeth McCombs was able to successfully be elected here. It took another 14 years before Mabel Howard came into Cabinet and it wasn’t until 1949 that we saw our first Māori wahine, Iriaka Rātana, successfully make it into this place as well. But what’s the story behind each of those women? Elizabeth McCombs was not just a parliamentarian; she was a mother of two, and she also is described as having raised two orphans. She was elected to Christchurch City Council, where she convinced the council to build a creche, and continued to be a huge advocate for women in here. Mabel Howard: before she was a Cabinet Minister, she was the first woman to become a secretary of a predominantly male union. Iriaka Rātana: she held her seat for 20 years in this place, and she was a mother of nine. Like, I can’t even fathom one of those on its own, let alone the combination of the two. Iriaka was concerned with the welfare issues of Māori. She believed they could be solved—it’s so described—through a caring Department of Māori Affairs, with Māori welfare officers and a focus on things like the Māori Women’s Welfare League.

I also want to pay tribute to Dame Annette King, the longest serving member in this place, the one who had the ability to endure for the longest period of time—as a woman, Mr Speaker—as a woman in this place. That is no easy feat. Even now, it is no easy feat, and she did so while sticking to her values and maintaining her sense of humour and maintaining the role as a mentor.

In all of these cases—and there are many more examples the Minister herself mentioned—these were ordinary women who have done extraordinary things. And when I look around this House, on both sides of this House, I see the same still represented in the women who are here today. My hope is that those women continue on being extraordinary but that they will also continue on with their multiple roles. They are often sisters, partners, mothers, and aunties. They are often counsellors, teachers, and advocates. As with the women that have gone before, they are never just one thing in this place. They are many things to many people.

My hope is that the leaders that we have out there right now, our young girls and our young women, they look in this place and they see a little bit of themselves and they know that this is an absolutely attainable place where they can be who they want to be—the exact kind of leader they want to be—here in this place, and they can also be, if they choose, a mother. They can be a good carer, a good partner, a good sister, a good auntie, or a good advocate. And, if they choose, boys can maybe be Prime Minister, too. This is my hope for the next generation of women. I pay tribute to those who have gone before us. Nō reira, tēnā koutou katoa.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. It is an absolute honour today, where history joins us in the present, and it is a privilege to speak on behalf of New Zealand First—my caucus has given me that honour today—and on behalf of the leader of the women’s caucus of New Zealand First, the Hon Tracey Martin. As the deputy leader of the women’s caucus of New Zealand First—the deputy leader by default, I might add—I am totally thrilled to speak to this, the centenary of women winning the right to stand for Parliament.

I’d like to begin my contribution with a whakataukī: “Ākona a Tama, he ringa hāpai parāoa. Ākona e Hine, tū mai te whare tangata. He āhuru, he ora.”—teaching a boy to uphold courage and the determination of the sperm whale; teaching a girl establishes the sacred house of humanity with warmth and life.

My great-great-grandmother was a suffragist, Edith Marcroft. Now, Edith, at the tender age of 19, boarded the Matilda Wattenbach and headed to New Zealand. She headed to a place called Albertland in 1863. On board the boat Matilda Wattenbach there was a group of people, and they were Nonconformists—Nonconformists in a religious sense, but I think that’s where I got to learn how to swim against the current. Edith and her husband, Edwin, they both supported the temperance cause that swept the nation.

In 1893, they signed the petition to give women the vote, and the petition read: “The petition of the undersigned Women, of the age of 21 years and upwards, resident in the Colony of New Zealand, humbly sheweth:—That large numbers of Women in the Colony have for several years petitioned Parliament to extend the franchise to them.” Including my great-great-grandmother, 32,000 women signed that petition. Why did they sign that petition? Because it was time to give voice to women.

Now, my great-grandmother died in 1937, but she saw women not only getting the vote but the first woman entering Parliament. I give pause sometimes, and I think: did my great-great-grandmother Edith think about any of her descendants—would they ever become members of Parliament; would there be a girl in the family at some point in history that would become a member of Parliament? I’m her descendant now, and I think back and wonder what she was thinking when she signed that petition to give women the vote.

We have, in 2017, elected the largest cohort of Māori women to Parliament. We have increased our overall diversity. MMP has allowed this to happen. We have created pathways to get more women into Parliament, and that is something to celebrate. We have party leadership today, we have senior MPs in this House, who have supported to get women into Parliament. And it is through their support that I stand here today. So I acknowledge my leadership and the support I have had from my senior MPs.

I won’t traverse the numbers of who came first. That has been spoken of already by those before me. But I would just like, on this the 100th year of women entering Parliament, to make a couple of comments. We can see how women are transforming our country. We are owning our voices. We are claiming our power like never before. But, like the collective power of our forbearers, the suffragists, we are bringing to the fore unique possibilities, new ways of doing politics.

The female voice is needed for a balanced contribution to this House, to this country. The power of our own stories, the power of our own values, and the power of our own vision will shape our future. Now, until 100 years ago, the female voice was silent in this place. A hundred years ago, though, we were given legal permission to exercise our right to be a member of Parliament and to stand in our own power. What is it that we have to say? It is not enough that women are in the boardroom, that women are heads of State, and that women are in politics, if we’re just going to mimic patriarchal nonsense that has kept us down before we got here. We need to stand in our own power and use our voice so that we can challenge the status quo, and we are doing that.

On this historic day, I honour all my sisters who stand and bring their voice to this House of Representatives. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today we celebrate 100 years of women winning—or earning, I should say—the right to stand for Parliament. It was, of course, 1919, and, unfortunately, it was many years after that, 1933, before the first female MP was elected. But I do want to just put on record my thanks to the National Council of Women of New Zealand—campaigners of merit back in the day, and also incredible campaigners to this very day who continue to push for issues that women are interested in and are fighting for.

But I thought I would bring a bit of a flavour from the Waikato into this debate, and actually read some of what was the Waikato Times in the passing, actually, of the earlier bill, which was lost in the Legislative Council. This was a speech from the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon WF Massey: “I am sure that women mentally are the equals of men, and very often are the superiors, as men have good reason to know”, and that’s what the Prime Minister said in the passing of the bill immediately before that. Massey went on to say, “I believe that the appearance in Parliament of a number of competent women would have a very good influence.”

That’s why I guess it’s unfortunate that it wasn’t until 1933 that the first female MP was elected. Actually, several of the first, like Elizabeth McCombs, actually replaced their husbands who had been in office and they replaced them. That was the same for, as others have mentioned, the first Māori woman MP, and also, as the Hon Paula Bennett mentioned, Dame Hilda Ross, who was, of course, the first Waikato-based female MP.

I wanted to pay tribute to the other fantastic women parliamentarians who have actually represented the equivalent seat of Taupō. It started, actually, in 1963, when Rona Stevenson was elected as the MP for Taupō, and in 1975, when Marilyn Waring was elected as the MP for Waipā—which, of course, is the northern part of my electorate. There have been a number of occasions, including on Suffrage Day, when I had the opportunity as the Minister for Women to invite Marilyn Waring to speak in Parliament, and she’s had an incredible influence, not just on me but I’m sure on many female members of Parliament who are represented today. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s actually passing the baton. It is the women members of Parliament who have been before us that have had a significant influence on those of us that are here.

As my colleague mentioned, actually it’s about the opportunity and the responsibility to make sure that we are nurturing the next group of women MPs who will come in. In 1984, Katherine O’Regan was then the MP for Waipā. So I do feel particularly privileged to follow a strong line-up of women in the seat that is now known as Taupō. And it’s hard to imagine, actually, what it was like for the women MPs in their days. And I do think that women in this place have been a positive influence. If I go back to the quote of Prime Minister Massey, I think, actually, that it’s a role and responsibility of every single one of the members of Parliament here to make sure it is a place that we can contribute, do contribute, and actually enjoy being here.

I thought I would comment, though, on the comment when the 1918 legislation was passed. It was seen to be quite futuristic, actually, in the passing of the bill—or actually the query that the Upper House might reject the bill by the council, which, of course, it had already denied other rights in the House. And the comment that it would be another nail in the coffin of the two-Chamber system. So it’s somewhat ironic that, actually, the end of that system—they didn’t support women MPs in the start. The new electoral system that we have today and have had now since the 90s—mixed-member proportional—has been a significant contributor to the number of women we have in this Parliament and our opportunity to contribute to improving the quality of lives of all New Zealanders. Long may it last and may every woman in this place support another 10 to get here.

Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Although the Electoral Act of 1893 accorded women the right to vote, we weren’t allowed to stand for Parliament—it’s hard to imagine that in this day and age. This finally became possible when the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Act was passed in 1919. It’s appropriate that 100 years on we reflect on our progress and our future challenges. I am very proud to be a woman member in the New Zealand Parliament and I’m very well aware of the footsteps in which many of us now tread.

I want to particularly recognise Elizabeth McCombs: the first woman elected to Parliament. She was elected to represent Lyttelton in 1933—that’s the electorate I was elected to represent in 1993, just 60 years later. Elizabeth was also the first out vegetarian in our Parliament, and, as a fellow vegetarian, I want to acknowledge that we’re less in the closet these days. She was elected following the death of her husband, James. Despite her credentials as a city councillor, as chair of the city’s electricity committee, as a North Canterbury Hospital member, as a member of the Christchurch tramway board, and she was a justice of the peace, it was still feared by her party—and I’m sorry to admit it was our party: Labour. Labour hesitated to confirm her as their candidate because they couldn’t imagine that a woman would be able to hold the seat, particularly given that it had such a shaky majority under her husband: just a 32-vote majority. But their concerns were not warranted.

Her opponent, who was an independent Labour candidate, said at one meeting, “I believe the difficulties of the country are too great for women to grapple with.” The Press, our esteemed daily paper, noted that the handicap of being a woman would likely count more against her than any special feminist support that she might receive. A woman, probably from Ilam electorate, wrote to the paper and said, “We shall not see anything better in our Parliament because a woman is there. For all the good or harm any woman in Parliament will … do, she would be a thousand times better engaged in attending to her natural domestic duties.” As it turned out, Elizabeth McCombs was an effective Opposition MP, frequently speaking out in support of women’s rights and reforms to help the unemployed.

Again, back to our esteemed daily paper. With the election of Elizabeth as New Zealand’s first woman MP, it was time for important questions to be asked. “Will she wear a hat or will she not?” The Press earnestly inquired. “Will the Governor-General in the speech from the throne address the House as ‘Honourable Lady and Gentlemen’ or will he compromise with ‘Honourable Members’?” Well, Parliament was never the same again. The “Ladies Not Admitted” sign had to be removed from the restaurant and billiard room at Bellamy’s, and, on her first day, an unaccompanied sight of bouquets brightened the debating chamber.

As well as Elizabeth, I also want to acknowledge another woman from my electorate, Gladys Boyd, who was one of the first two women elected to the council in 1947. We have some pensioner cottages named after her: the Boyd Cottages in Lyttleton. At the reopening ceremony for them recently after their post-quake repairs were completed, her family member told a story of Gladys’ husband walking back from the waterfront where he worked, and his mate yelled out from across the road: “So where’s Gladys tonight?” And he said, “I don’t know. She’s on every board except the blimmin ironing board.”

Lots of progress has been made on issues for equality in New Zealand, but we have big challenges ahead. The two most pressing, from my perspective, are addressing the scourge of domestic violence and sexual abuse in our country, and the second is pay equity—equal pay for work of equal value. It doesn’t feel like a big ask, but we’re not there yet. I was only the 37th woman elected to our Parliament. I’m delighted to see the change that has occurred during my short 26-year tenure, so that our Parliament is increasingly a House of Representatives. It needs more, but I think we’ve come a long way and I’m really enjoying hearing the contribution of other women members of Parliament in this debate. Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker.

Hon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Well, as No. 37 resumes her seat, No. 110 stands to her feet to support this motion today. I am very glad it’s given the title that it is, actually, because I think this is about winning the vote; it was not given to women. There used to be a lot of discussion about how women sat about, genteelly almost, and were handed on a plate—a silver plate, probably—the right to vote, the right to stand for Parliament. This was not the case. It was a big fight, it was a close-fought fight, and it took a very long time.

I thought it would be useful to recap on some of the really stellar moments that have led us to the historic place that we are at today in the House, with around 40 percent of all representatives being of the “feminine persuasion”, as it used to be called. We are women and we are proud to be in this House, and there have been in my time a lot of changes, not so much since 2011, but from the time I was first around this Chamber when I was part of the press gallery in the late 1980s. It was in my position as the first woman presenter of Morning Report, actually, that I encountered a lot of flak, and there was a lot of discussion among male colleagues in journalism about why on earth you would want a woman in the job—a New Zealand woman in any job—with a twangy accent. So I came from an environment in the media where I was not unused to some unusual, sexist, strange, old attitudes.

But I found it here in the House as well, when I came over here. I remember when Ruth Richardson dared to breastfeed in the Chamber. In fact, it was just out in the lobby I think that the first event occurred. And now—Willow-Jean Prime nods—it’s very commonplace for this to occur, and even on occasion for the Speaker to snatch up an unsuspecting child and bear that child off to the Speaker’s Chair. This is a child-friendly place now, and so it ought to be, but it was not always the case. So, on a day like today, when we recognise people like Mabel Howard, who was the first woman Cabinet Minister—she served from 1943 to 1969. It is for what she did in 1954 that really, perhaps, consolidated her position in history, because, as a flamboyant individual, she held aloft two pairs of her own bloomers. We understand they were both clean and respectable, but they were vast, and they were vastly different from each other. And her point in an otherwise, from what we can gather, moribund debate was that not all sizes were created equal; there needed to be some standardisation. I believe she won the day not only because of the strength of her arguments but because of the size of her bloomers. I’m not sure how we could replicate that in the modern political arena; I don’t think we would want to.

It took till 1996 for an Asian woman to come into Parliament—Pansy Wong. We had Winnie Laban. She and I were at school together, and I remember the great pride many of us felt at the time when she came into Parliament in 1999 as not only the first Pasifika woman but then one who went into Cabinet as well. So there has been much to celebrate, but there’s still a long way to go.

Dame Hilda Ross was somebody who my colleague the Hon Paula Bennett referred to earlier. Hilda Ross is something of a touchstone to National Party women. She is somebody who has inspired and, through the trust that we’ve set up, does help enable future generations of women to crash through that large barrier and to become a member of Parliament. It’s not an easy thing to do. Others have mentioned how hard it is just to get into this place, never mind about staying here.

When I was elected in 2011 on the North Shore, I was the first woman candidate for National to be even selected, never mind elected. I was told by several of the dowagers of the good parish of the North Shore that that good place was not really for a woman member yet, and that I’d better wait my time and my turn.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Or were they just not ready for Maggie Barry?

Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Yes, possibly they were not ready for Maggie Barry; that could have been the subtext of what she was saying. In fact, there were a lot of individuals who felt that the time was not necessarily right for a woman to take over. I don’t know when they thought it might occur, but what I have noted is that a lot of women knock a lot of other women. So your worst critics can actually come from within your own gender, and that’s always been something of a mystery to me. The men have a certain predictability about them—obviously males in this Chamber notwithstanding—but, certainly, the women have taken it to a whole new vicious level. And what Hilda Ross and others have shown us, very eloquently—and Dame Jenny Shipley as New Zealand’s first woman Prime Minister—is that you’ve just got to do it. You’ve just got to get out there and make a difference; believe in yourself and back yourself, and that is why I am very proud today to stand as number 110 in Parliament to support the motion about women winning their place. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): It’s an honour for me to stand in this debate too, to pay tribute to those that fought for the right for women to stand for Parliament in New Zealand. And, at the same time, I also pay tribute to those who fought for the right for women to vote in New Zealand. I am number 107; I was the second Pacific woman in the New Zealand Parliament, and I want to start by acknowledging all of the Pacific women that have graced this place. Already, who has been mentioned? Minister Luamanuvao Winnie Laban; myself; then Asenati Lole-Taylor with New Zealand First; Poto Williams, our member of Parliament for Christchurch East; Jenny Salesa, our member of Parliament for Manukau East; Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, list MP; and Agnes Loheni, list MP. I don’t know, whether back in 1999, when Luamanuvao Dame Winnie Laban became the first Pacific member of Parliament, that she would have envisaged that in 20 years’ time there would have been seven Pacific women that have been in this place. At the moment, we have four of those seven here at this very time—four? Five—five, I think.

Can I acknowledge the Pacific women that have been here, and I want to do that because of the fact that representation is important; representation of women, but representation of diverse women. We know that in New Zealand, Pacific and Māori women remain under-represented in many of the areas where women, in general, are making progress. Some of those areas have been touched on, but I need to point out that, despite the good work that this Government is doing, Māori and Pacific women still, for example, experience more of a pay gap than others, there is a higher percentage in lower-skilled work, and there are still major issues that disproportionately affect Māori and Pacific women, including family and sexual violence. That is why representation is so important. As a Pacific woman, we don’t just look at our New Zealand Parliament and want to move forward with making sure that we do get to the 50-50 percent representation—we’re at 40 percent at the moment—but we look across our Pacific region. Many of the Māori and Pacific women in this room have been working hard to try and support Pacific countries with also lifting representation, keeping in mind that the average across the Pacific region, when you exclude New Zealand and Australia, is only around eight percent representation for women.

I want to acknowledge the fact that progress needs to continue to be made. We aren’t at 50 percent yet, and there are areas where women are still disproportionately disadvantaged to a certain extent. And I want to acknowledge the Speaker and his role that he has played in making this place more family friendly. There are younger members of Parliament in the New Zealand Parliament now. There are more women members of Parliament, and, as a consequence, there are more children of parliamentarians. In fact, when we got into Government I remember the Crown car drivers saying that they had to go out and do an urgent shop for car seats because they’d never experienced this many children of Ministers before. I think that’s a very strong signal that not only are we increasing the representation of women but we have a younger representation in this place as well.

I want to point out to the House that, not only for women but for parents in general, being an MP, being a Minister, being a Prime Minister, is not a part-time job. It is more than a full-time job. If anything, all of us that have children—and I have two; when I first came in my eldest was 10, when I came in the second time I had an 18-month-old baby because I thought I’d be productive during that three-year sabbatical. We understand coming into this place that this job is demanding, and that if anything is going to be part-time it is our parenting that is reduced to part-time, actually. So we are reliant on our grandparents, on our extended family members, on our partners to pick up the slack there in respect of supporting the raising of our children. So, I wanted to make that point: this is not a part-time job for anyone in here.

I’ll end with some words from a very popular Labour Party karaoke song for Labour women; I won’t sing it, I’ll just do the words:

[We are] woman, hear [us] roar

In numbers too big to ignore

And [we] know too much to go back and pretend

‘Cause I’ve heard it all before

And I’ve been down … on the floor

No one’s ever gonna keep me down again

JO HAYES (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is my pleasure to stand and voice my support for the 100th year of a woman’s right to stand for election in New Zealand’s House of Representatives. Although it’s not possible for us to do this on 29 October, it was on 29 October 1919 that this law was passed in this House, and I want to say that it is an honour for me to stand here and to pay tribute to the brave women of our past.

I want to focus my contribution today on the journey of Māori women into politics. And so I start with the suffragist, Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia, nō Te Rarawa, who stood in the Māori Parliament on 18 May 1893, where she requested that not only should women be given the right to participate in the selection of members, but Māori women should be given the right to vote and be eligible to sit in the Māori Parliament, thus going a step further, in that time, than the contemporary aims of the European suffrage movement. Her argument was based on the premise that many Māori women owned and administered their own lands, either because they had no male relatives or because the women were more competent. She claimed that although the chiefs had appealed to Queen Victoria over Māori problems, she felt that Māori women would have been received much better by the Queen because they got things done.

While her drive for Māori women in politics seemed to fade after her speech in the Māori Parliament, her legacy has continued on today, and I just need to look around this House and see—and I was reminded by the legacy that she left for us all those years ago. For our Māori women, our journey into Parliament began in 1949, over 30 years after women were able to stand for Parliament, and 56 years after women won the right to vote. Iriaka Rātana, we have heard her name placed in this House today, won the Western Maori seat from her husband who passed away—along with many other women who stood in this Parliament as MPs, taking over the role of their husbands—and she did it in her own right, but that’s how she came in here.

Today, we have come a long way with our very first Māori woman Deputy Prime Minister in the Hon Paula Bennett, and the very first Māori political woman to establish the first independent Māori political party and lead it to victory, the Hon Dame Tariana Turia. Written, along with all of this, are the many Māori women leaders who have come in and have made their mark; that have paved the way for people like myself and a number of other Māori women MPs, to stand for Parliament. These women are Dame Te Atairangikaahu, who held the mantle of the Māori Queen; Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi, for a strong voice for kōhanga reo; Dame Naida Glavish, who greeted a caller with the words “Kia ora”, and was a fighter for Māori health, and so it goes on.

The history of political women leaders is not confined to Parliament, as we can see. We have Māori women leaders across all facets of our lives. Just recently, we have had the voting in of the new Ngāpuhi chair, Mere Mangu, who is another woman who has stepped up into the leadership role, and Lisa Tūmahai from Ngāi Tahu.

Yes, there have been a number of Māori women leaders who have started their leadership styles in iwi and in hapū, and that has led them here today. They have taken the voice of their people into this Parliament, and they are the ones that have set the pathway for our rangatahi wāhine to come here and represent their people and their agenda. These are all the women that we celebrate here today.

There are many, many more I could have mentioned, but I’d be still standing here tomorrow and the next day, so I will conclude my contribution. I look forward to what the next 100 years of this Parliament has to offer up for women, and I too would like to see more women represented in this House to give women a voice that balances out the debate in this House. So, without any further ado, I close my contribution with a whakataukī, and it goes like this: “Poipoia te kākano kia puāwai”—nurture the seed and it will blossom. Kia ora, Mr Speaker.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Today is the day that we remember our parliamentary and country’s history. On 3 October 1919, Sir Frances Bell moved the third reading of the Women’s Parliamentary Rights Bill in the Legislative Council. The vote was won by 19 to three, and on 29 October 1919, women were allowed to stand for our Parliament.

I want to reiterate the introduction of this debate by Minister Genter, when she said we won the right to stand for Parliament, and we actually did win the right. We won the right to vote in 1893, and what many of us now know is that in addition to getting the vote, we were explicitly excluded from being able to stand. That right was taken out at the third reading of the bill. The people of the time thought that with it in there, we weren’t going to win the vote, but if you look back at history, there were a lot of shenanigans that were being played out behind the scenes. Even our ability to stand in 1919 was actually a vote by the Legislative Council, and if you look at the debate at that time, the Legislative Council did not want women to be appointed by the Governor-General, and that was one of the amendments that was made for the Legislative Council to vote for that particular bill.

So, throughout our history, we have had to fight every step of the way to be allowed to vote and to be allowed to stand and, actually, for the selections within our respective parties, to be quite frank. Like many of us here, I am the first woman who’s ever been the member of Parliament for Manurewa, so I really want to take the opportunity to highlight that it was through the collective action of women that these opportunities were created.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union movement later morphed into the National Council of Women, and also there were the debates that we did have in the Te Kotahitanga Parliament. I want to quote something from Premier Seddon’s biographer at the time, Tom Brooking, with regard to us being able to stand for Parliament in 1919. He wrote—and I quote—“No Government promoting itself liberal, advanced and progressive could afford to swim against such a democratic tide.” So we were allowed to stand because, as a post - World War I assessment of women, we had proved our worth. We had kept the home fires burning, and the feminists of the time essentially shamed the Government for failing to keep up with international developments.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the tuākana that we have in the House. They are No. 37, the Hon Ruth Dyson; No. 56, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta; No. 74, the Deputy Speaker, the Hon Anne Tolley; and No. 78, the Hon Judith Collins. They are the ones in this House who have been here the longest and who I look up to as our tuākana. I think about that concept because when I look outside of this House, it’s people like Marilyn Waring, who’s our external tuakana. She’s No. 15, and can I also note that she was No. 1 in terms of LGBTIQ members of Parliament, and there have been 16 of us.

I also want to acknowledge our Prime Ministers: No. 28, Dame Jenny Shipley; No. 17, Helen Clark; and No. 99 Jacinda Ardern. I also want to acknowledge No. 76, the Hon Margaret Wilson. An amazing woman, and the first ever female Speaker, who, in 2007, advocated for a code of conduct for MPs. So, 12 years later, thanks to Mr Speaker and the Francis review, we have the Hon Anne Tolley, who is leading that kaupapa for us in the House today.

So when I think about where we have come from and where we’re going, it is on the shoulders of these amazing champions, and for my last minute, I want to highlight that 20 of us have passed—20 of the 150 have passed. Overall, we’ve been about 10.5 percent, and when I think about the statistics between 1935 and 1975, there were 312 MPs and 14 were women—4.5 percent—and in the House today, we’re 48, and we’re 40 percent. But we have lost Elizabeth McCombs, Stewart, Dreaver, Grigg, Howard, Ross, Ratana, McMillan, Tombleson, Stevenson, Tirikatene-Sullivan, Batchelor, Jelicich, and Dewe. We have also lost No. 19, Margaret Shields; No. 25, Katherine O’Regan; No. 26, Sonja Davies; No. 33, Gail McIntosh; No. 54, Alamein Kopu; and No. 65, Helen Duncan. I want to acknowledge those amazing women, those pioneers who came before us. Kia ora.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in the privileged position, being the last speaker in this debate, and I’d like to acknowledge all my sisterhood who have arisen to speak on this topic. I feel extremely honoured and privileged to be woman MP No. 105, and I have this little camellia to prove so. It has No. 105 on it, and it was gifted to us as members of Parliament, being women members of Parliament in this Chamber.

I’d like to begin my contribution by quoting one of the maiden speeches that I have become aware of, by the fifth woman MP on the National side, Colleen Dewe. It was given in 1976, when she said—and I quote—“My hope is that I am merely a forerunner of many professionally qualified women who will realise that the surest way of encouraging women to involve themselves in public life and to ensure that opportunities for women in commerce and industry are available is to become a member of this House.” It is to get involved. She also said that “It must be the right of every woman, just as it is the right of every man, to choose her career in life.”

We are privileged in the House, in New Zealand, to be given the right to become a member of Parliament—an equal right—unlike many people around the world.

I come from a country where the common word for women who make a fuss at home and at school is ajummas waving their skirts around—their ajumma power. They say it in a derogatory way in Korea, when mothers get involved in the issues of their children at school. They look down upon those women who fight for the rights of their children by calling them, in a derogatory way, ajumma power. We should be very proud of the ajumma power that women feel when they feel strongly enough to get up and to get involved.

In this House, sometimes I’m a little bit jealous of my colleague Amy Adams for the letters “AA”. Amy Adams gave her number—No. 98, I believe—and I am only No. 105 because I’m Melissa Lee.

But it is really wonderful. The first Asian woman to become a member of Parliament in this House was back in 1996: the Hon Pansy Wong. She was the first Asian woman. After more than a hundred years of Asian people living in this country, she was the first. She was a great role model for me, and she was part-way responsible for my path to actually come to this House. She encouraged me. I wasn’t so sure if I actually wanted to have a public life, having seen people being criticised.

Often, Asian people don’t like the sorts of challenges that happen in the House and the combative nature of public life, and I think, often, that is one of the reasons why a lot of ethnic women do not put themselves forward. So I’d like to acknowledge my ethnic Asian MPs who are currently here. Golriz Ghahraman is here, Dr Parmjeet Parmar is here, and Priyanca Radhakrishnan is here, and they are the only women apart from Pansy Wong who have been in this House. There aren’t that many Asian women, and I hope that there will be more Asian women who actually put themselves forward. I put the challenge out so that they will actually come into this House, because they have so much to actually contribute to this House in public service, and I think they will do an extremely great job. I’d also like to quote the words of—oh, gosh—Esme Tombleson, MP for Gisborne in 1961, where she also said that more women are needed in every sphere of endeavour. Parliament is one of those. She also quoted that we need more women in science as well. I’d like to hope that I stand on the shoulders of my forebears, who have actually come before me, and I hope that the future generation will stand on my shoulders to represent the womenfolk in this country.

I don’t have a lot of time left, but I’d like to call upon my sisterhood to rise in celebration with a waiata, if you would actually give us permission.

SPEAKER: I have.

MELISSA LEE: Very good. We’re going to be singing “Ka Waiata”.

Ka waiata ki a Maria

Hine i whakaae

Whakameatia mai

Te whare tangata.

Hine pūrotu

Hine ngākau

Hine rangimārie

Ko te whaea

Ko te whaea

O te ao

Ko te whaea

Ko te whaea

O te ao

Kia ora, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Let us sing to Mary

She who said yes

Let something happen

She allowed that she would carry.

A beautiful girl

A strong-hearted girl

A humble girl

The mother

The mother

of the whole world

The mother

The mother

of the whole world

Thank you one and all.]

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Corrections Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): I move, That the Corrections Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Before I do that, please, can I take time to acknowledge the previous debate, celebrating the centenary of women winning the right to stand for Parliament, and I would like to acknowledge the 150 women who have served in this House, who are currently serving, and the many thousands who will follow in their footsteps, and I thank you all for your service to the country.

Moving on to the Corrections Amendment Bill, we are a Government determined to address the long-term challenges facing our country. We have a goal of safely reducing the prison population by 30 percent over the next 15 years. We have a plan that ensures public safety remains the priority, while delivering real rehabilitation, mental health treatment, and transitional services to reduce reoffending. The previous Government sat back and watched the problem grow. Their only plan was to build more American-style mega-prisons, which just churn out hardened criminals and lead to escalating costs for the taxpayer, with no reduction of reoffending and no social improvement. But our Government is focused on taking a smarter approach to reduce reoffending and giving people inside our prisons every opportunity to turn their lives around. We know we cannot fix everything overnight, but we are getting started on it, and we’ve made a fantastic start.

Already, we’ve made changes to the way Corrections operates by introducing Hōkai Rangi, the new Corrections strategy, which aims to humanise and heal people so that there is less chance that they will reoffend. We’re focused on wellbeing. That’s why we’re providing a huge boost to mental health and addiction services for offenders, which will support thousands of additional people per year. Instead of building a mega-prison at Waikeria, as planned by the previous Government, we’re building a smaller facility alongside a 100-bed mental health unit that will be the first of its kind in New Zealand.

We have safely reduced the prison population by 8 percent since March of last year, where it peaked at 10,820, by speeding up access to justice outcomes and targeting blockages to make the system more effective. We’ve invested $98 million on the creation of new Māori pathways at two prisons, to be co-designed and implemented by Māori with Corrections, Whānau Ora, and the Ministry of Social Development, working together in partnership with hapū and iwi. The Corrections Amendment Bill continues this good work by improving prison security and ensuring the fair, safe, and humane treatment of people in prison, while upholding public safety.

This bill makes business-as-usual changes to the Corrections Act and serves three important purposes: first, it ensures that Te Ara Poutama Aotearoa—the Department of Corrections—has the ability to manage people in prison humanely and in line with their individual needs; second, it improves the processes that enhance the safety of people in prison, victims, and staff; third, it ensures the fair treatment of people in prison by clarifying what their obligations are while in custody.

During the committee of the whole House, I tabled a Supplementary Order Paper that made a number of changes to the bill. At the second reading of the bill, I spoke about a number of these changes, as they were suggestions made and subsequently not accepted during the select committee process. I now wish to take this opportunity to talk about changes that were made after the select committee, specifically to prison mail provisions.

To begin with, I want to acknowledge the distress caused to those impacted by the tragic events of 15 March and the events involving mail that should have been withheld. We know from overseas experience that people in prison who hold hostile views towards particular groups may seek to communicate their views in an attempt to influence and potentially radicalise others, both in prison and in the community. These individuals can also become a focal point for sympathetic individuals and groups in the community who may seek to draw attention to and to amplify their hostile views.

Corrections is currently managing a significant number of people with views that might be considered extreme, including around 100 people with white supremacist views. Given that, and the fact that around 15,000 items of mail go through our prison system every week, I consider it important that the legislation regarding prison mail is as clear and as explicit as possible. Today, we are one step closer to ensuring this and guaranteeing that Corrections has strengthened powers to prevent the dissemination of correspondence that revictimises those who have previously been subject to harm, or attempts to radicalise or influence people, and/or promotes violence or hostility against people, particularly those that are vulnerable. I wish to thank members for the cooperation in supporting the Supplementary Order Paper to ensure the bill is fit for purpose.

Earlier this year, I announced Hōkai Rangi, Ara Poutama Aotearoa’s new strategy that will underpin the transformational system change required to break the intergenerational cycle of reoffending and re-imprisonment. Many provisions in the bill support this strategy, and I would like to take this opportunity to mention a few examples.

Removing mandatory strip-search requirements and introducing a comprehensive framework for the management and care of people vulnerable to self-harm will humanise the experience for people in prison and is indicative of Corrections’ intention to treat those under its care with dignity and respect. This will mean that the most vulnerable people in prison—and we know that people in prison are four times more likely than the general population to have attempted suicide—will be treated with greater care to ensure that their time in prison does not cause further harm and re-traumatisation.

The second example I want to highlight is that the bill introduces a requirement that upon reception, all information provided to people in prison must be in a form that is accessible and appropriate to their ability and preferred language. This provides another opportunity to humanise the prison experience, given that research indicates that people in prison tend to have a high level of educational disparity compared with the general population and that for many people in prison, English is their second language. In practice, this will mean that people in prison will have the option to receive information in their native language and in different forms such as written, oral, or visual.

Finally, I want to highlight the changes that are being made to improve the mothers with babies regime currently operating in prison. I consider that one of the most upsetting aspects of prison is that families, particularly mothers and tamariki, are separated. Under current settings, only a small number of applications to place a child with its mother in prison are declined after consultation with Plunket, the Ministry of Health, and Oranga Tamariki. These decisions, however, are final. The bill gives mothers the statutory right to appeal the decision and introduces a review process. Corrections will also be required to tell mothers the reasons why an application to have a child placed in their custody has been declined, and the process available to have a decision reconsidered. In practice, this will mean that mothers in prison, as well as their whānau, will have a greater understanding of the opportunities available to have decisions about placement of tamariki reconsidered.

The changes this bill makes to the legislative framework of the corrections system will improve prison discipline and security and will ensure the fair, safe, and humane treatment of people in prison. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Following the Minister Kelvin Davis, I’d just like to acknowledge the many women that have served in this Parliament, and have done such a fantastic job—and we’re sure there’ll be many more to come in future generations of leadership and at the highest levels of our country. So congratulations to all those women MPs and to the role models that you have provided and also to the future generations of MPs that will come forward and, no doubt, deliver great results for our country going forward. So congratulations, and our best wishes, on this very special day for women MPs.

It was very interesting in that speech from the Minister that he focused on a lot of things that weren’t in the bill and he talked about very few things that were actually in the bill. I know that the Speaker is looking at me darkly, but the reality is that—

SPEAKER: Order! The member won’t comment either on my rulings or the method by which I’m looking at him—even if the member is accurate in his description.

Chris Penk: It’s getting darker.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: It’s not as dark as some over there.

But the Minister did mention one or two of the provisions in the bill, and one of them was in regard to prison mail provisions. Now, that’s a late addition to this bill, that wasn’t in the original bill, and that went through the committee stage. It’s a result of what happened in the terrible tragedy earlier this year. Our thoughts are with all of those victims and their families at this very time. The pain that those families felt, they had to relive through the Corrections department’s failures to actively engage and do their job under the law that they already had. The Minister made it very clear, at the time when those letters were released, that there was sufficient legal basis for the department to stop those kinds of letters going out.

Then, why do we need more legislative change now? This legislative change doesn’t stop that situation. The very bill that we’re talking about here today is another attempt by this Minister to cover up for the failings of himself and his department. The reality is that the Department of Corrections failed New Zealanders at that time—and especially failed the victims of that terrible tragedy in Christchurch.

The Minister may have said sorry at that time, but he didn’t take responsibility for what actually happened. Because the Minister had the control over his department, the Minister should have engaged with his department from day one, saying that “I don’t want to have any mistakes here.” The Minister from day one should have got his departmental heads in and said, “This will not happen under my watch” and that “I will not put the Prime Minister in a position where she has to defend me and my department.” The Minister should have taken action from day one, when that prisoner went into the prison system, because he is the most high profile prisoner in the New Zealand system. The Minister did none of those things. The Minister sat there and just hoped it wouldn’t happen—or he didn’t even think it would happen; just didn’t even think at all. That’s the reality of what happened in that situation. The Minister didn’t go and get sufficient updates from his department. The Minister didn’t go out there and actually take advantage of the rules that he already had in legislation.

Now, the Minister is attempting, through an amendment to this bill, to show that he is doing something. Well, he’s not doing anything more than what he had the power to do then. This doesn’t give him any more rules or ability or power than what he had in the past in practice. He failed to do his job at that time. The Minister cannot fail to do his job and then try and cover it up a few months later through legislation that doesn’t actually assist him or his department in any meaningful way.

That’s why this legislation is a farce. It’s a meaningless attempt to cover the tracks and to say “Oh, we couldn’t have done anything at that point in time” and that we need to have this legislation now. I asked the Minister what, within this legislation, would stop those letters going out at that time. Nothing—he had exactly the same powers at that time, he didn’t use them, and he knows that. He should have taken responsibility from that, rather than make the Prime Minister take responsibility at that time.

Raymond Huo: What are you talking about?

Hon DAVID BENNETT: The members don’t even understand what I’m talking about. We’re talking about the release of letters, that came from the terrorist in Christchurch, that the Minister’s department let go around the world. We don’t know where the recordings went for the phone calls from that member of the prison system, who made numerous phone calls. They were recorded, weren’t they, Minister? Oh, the Minister doesn’t even know where the phone calls have gone. In his written questions, he’s even answered, saying that they were recorded. So there were recorded phone calls that have gone around the world. There were other letters from that member of the prison system that have gone around the world as well—presumably, because the Minister won’t release those details. If he was clear and he was open and transparent about it, as the Government were supposed to be, then he would release all details of all correspondence from that prisoner, instead of coming here a few months later trying to pass legislation to cover himself. And that’s what we’re doing here today, and that’s why the National Party is not supporting it.

Another big part of the bill, that the Minister failed to talk about in his speech, is around cell sharing. Now, I remember that for this Minister, when we were in Government and he was in Opposition, double-bunking was so terrible, it couldn’t happen, it’s an abuse of the rights of prisoners—it just couldn’t happen—and now he’s legislating to allow it to happen. He’s actually making it legal, in any form or context, to have double-bunking. So why didn’t the Minister talk about that in his speech? Did the Minister come out and be open and transparent about that in his speech? No, he very conveniently didn’t mention it at all. That’s openness and transparency from this Minister!

And then we go to the new strategy for prisoners. The line the Minister used was “to humanise the prison experience.” Well, first of all, it’s not an experience. Being in prison is not an experience that someone goes through as part of a lifetime journey; being in prison is because that person has offended against the laws of this country and against the people of this country, and deserves punishment. It’s not some kind of experience, and it’s not to be humanised in the way that that Minister wants to. He doesn’t actually believe that anybody should be in prison. He said that at the start of the year, on TV; he said that “I don’t believe anybody should be in prison.” He is just trying to make it a humanised experience—that’s what the plan of this Minister has been.

Hon Kelvin Davis: You’re making stuff up.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: No, I’m not. I can show you the TV documentary, and the exact question, and that was his exact answer.

Hon Kelvin Davis: Those who should be in prison will be in prison.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: “Those who should be in prison will be in prison.”—well, that’s his other line, isn’t it? “Those that should be in prison will be in prison.” And then he’s so proud, saying, “Oh, we’ve reduced the prison population.” Well, the prison population has only been reduced, in theory, because they’ve moved people out of the prison system into the community—that is what they have done. They have actually put more people into the community through earlier bail, more community service—

Hon Kelvin Davis: The judges do that.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: “The judges do it”—they say, “The judges do it.” We just had an example of a judge making a judgment on the weekend around drugs, and the—

SPEAKER: Order! Can I invite both members—the Minister not to invite irrelevant comment by irrelevant interjections, and the member to spend his last minute getting back to the bill.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, it’s a very important part of the bill—

SPEAKER: The judgment at the weekend is not part of the bill. Carry on.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, it is, because the Minister’s talked about how they’ve reduced the prison population. One thing to reduce the prison population he could have done is rehabilitation, which is a key part of this original legislation, which he took out. The whole bill was around rehabilitation, when Louise Upston, the former Minister, set this bill up—and all those clauses were taken out. The only bit that was really relevant, they’ve taken out, and then they’ve filled it in with other things to try and cover their mistakes.

So this Minister has had the opportunity to do some real things in justice and in the corrections system, and he has failed. We have a bill here today that is an attempt to make it look like they’re doing something in a system, where the reality is that he doesn’t believe anyone should be in prison. He thinks it’s an experience that should be humanised. He doesn’t actually take on the role seriously and he doesn’t look after those victims out there, as we have seen with the victims of Christchurch. That is the disappointing part of this Minister and what we’re seeing in this legislation. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It was a totally lost-in-translation type of contribution from the Hon David Bennett; most of the points in his speech were irrelevant. Instead of barking at every passing car, I think the National Opposition should have really acknowledged and congratulated the Minister on his achievements and leadership in this very important area of law. The Corrections Amendment Bill was one of the 23 or so bills that the extraordinarily busy Justice Committee had considered. At the bill’s third reading, I think it’s fitting for me as former chair of the Justice Committee to acknowledge and thank our officials, advisers, and submitters for their contributions. I’d like to congratulate, again, the Minister of Corrections, the Hon Kelvin Davis, on his achievements and leadership in this very important portfolio area. Corrections legislation is not only about New Zealand prisoners or about our Department of Corrections; it’s more about rehabilitation, public safety, and social wellbeing. The key words of this bill are “rehabilitation”, “improvements”, and “social wellbeing”.

The bill makes a number of changes to improve the Corrections Act 2004 in order to ensure the ability of the Department of Corrections to safely and humanely manage prisoners, to improve prisoner discipline, and to ensure the fair treatment of prisoners.

For too long, the reoffending rate of New Zealand prisoners has been too high. It has been historical and it has been a particular problem among Māori prisoners.

I’m very proud of the achievements made by this Government—congratulations again to the Minister. We are focused on doing things differently to reduce reoffending and give the people within the prison—

SPEAKER: Specific things from the bill, please.

RAYMOND HUO: —every opportunity to turn their life around. Therefore, rehabilitation is our focus.

Hon David Bennett: It’s not in the bill, though.

RAYMOND HUO: We chose not to build a mega-prison, as the speaker has duly reminded us—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m trying to sort it out. I don’t need David Bennett’s help.

RAYMOND HUO: Thank you very much.

SPEAKER: The member will return to the bill.

RAYMOND HUO: We choose not to build a mega-prison at Waikeria. [Interruption] Well, that’s one of the most important provisions in this bill—

Hon David Bennett: What provision is it in, then? What number? What clause?

RAYMOND HUO: Well, look at the provision yourself, because we chose not to build the mega-prison as planned by the previous Government—as planned by the previous Government. Instead, we’re building a smaller 500-bed facility along with the 100-bed—

SPEAKER: We’ve now got a second warning to the member to speak to the provisions of the bill. There is no obligation to speak for the full 10 minutes. I know it’s a relatively narrow bill, but the member will have to speak to it.

RAYMOND HUO: Thank you very much. Coming back to the bill, specifically, the bill made some specific changes. I can spell them out: (a) making it a disciplinary offence regarding the prisoner tattooing; (b) amending the definition of a drug to align with the Psychoactive Substances Act 2013, so people in prison can be tested for a wider range of drugs, including synthetic cannabis, and be charged with a disciplinary offence in the event of a positive test; and (c) allowing for use of imaging technology like a body scanner, as the Minister just outlined, to more effectively detect contraband, including drugs and weapons, and reduce reliance on rub-down or strip searches; and, finally, removing the mandatory requirements to strip search those who have returned to prison from an escorted outing.

But back to the rationale behind the bill, as the Minister just outlined, we chose to do things differently because after the Justice Committee had heard from many submitters and from officials, especially when considering stats and facts, we decided not to build a mega-prison. Instead, we have to build a mental health facility as part of the rehabilitation process because—

Tim van de Molen: Which clause is that?

RAYMOND HUO: It’s because we’re talking about the corrections bill, because the reoffending rate has been too high; it has been historical.

As we can witness, the Opposition has been very loud, especially talking about one particular provision which we have removed from the bill. And that provision was with regard to the police jails. That provision in the original bill was removed because we have successfully reduced the prison rate and reduced it by 8 percent after it had peaked—

Hon David Bennett: How much?

RAYMOND HUO: 8 percent after it had peaked at—

Hon David Bennett: 80.

RAYMOND HUO: 8 percent after it peaked at 1,820 as at March 2018. So, therefore, the Justice Committee has considered the stats and facts, and that’s the reason why we removed that particular provision from the original bill.

The Hon David Bennett also touched upon one particular clause regarding the prison mail laws. Again, I’d like to acknowledge the Minister for his leadership because following the terror attack in Christchurch and the subsequent Christchurch Call, the Minister introduced Supplementary Order Paper 392 to make a number of changes, including significantly strengthening the prison mail laws.

Those changes, together with other provisions, are designed to ensure the Corrections Act 2004 is fit for purpose. But, again, I remind the Opposition they should really congratulate the Minister and the Government on our achievements, on our track record, and instead of barking at every passing car, they should really choose to side with the people of New Zealand, and let’s do it together to reduce the reoffending rates, especially among Māori prisoners. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I very quickly, too, just make mention of and acknowledge the last motion, the centenary of women winning the right to stand for Parliament. Can I acknowledge the women that I serve with in this Parliament across all our parties, but, especially, can I just very quickly acknowledge the Hon Amy Adams, who will be leaving at the end of this term. I was her Associate Minister in the justice portfolio. She provided enormous leadership in that portfolio and was a great mentor to me, and I just wanted to take the opportunity to acknowledge her.

Can I acknowledge the Minister who took a call on this, the third reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. I have no doubt that the Minister of Corrections, Kelvin Davis, is driven by the right intent in terms of what he’s trying to achieve inside our corrections system. He’s been a strong advocate and has spoken up about these issues both in Opposition and also now as the Minister. But as we discussed in the committee stage, we think that the policies are misguided, and, in particular, with this bill, we think that there’s been a real missed opportunity. And as we’ve said in our minority view, we would have liked to have seen a lot stronger focus in the legislation around rehabilitation. I want to acknowledge the Hon Louise Upston, who began this work, and I know for a fact that she had a very strong focus on making sure prisoners, especially those that were coming into our corrections system as remand prisoners, were also going to have rehabilitation programmes delivered to them. I think that was a good initiative. It’s a missed opportunity. We spoke about this during the committee of the whole House stage, we spoke about this on the Justice Committee, and we said that we could strengthen this bill and make a real difference by having a much stronger focus around rehabilitation.

The other issue, the other missed opportunity on this, is around the use of police cells, and although that’s not ideal—and I’m the first one to admit that, sometimes, actually, police cells do have to be used—we’d much rather see it spelt out very clearly in this bill—

SPEAKER: OK, I’m now going to interrupt the member and say he’s had two minutes. He’s telling us quite a lot about what’s not in the bill, and he will now talk about what is in the bill, because the third reading is the debate on the bill as it emerges from the committee stages.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Mr Speaker, absolutely. If you give me a little bit of leeway, because I am responding to the Minister’s comments, too.

SPEAKER: I have. I have, and I’m going to remind the member that the member on his left thought I was being too soft.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: OK. All right. Thank you. I hear you, Mr Speaker. So I’m not taking, actually, a long call on this either.

I’ll finish up by quite simply saying this: we believe that it’s misguided, throwing the doors open and letting prisoners out. All you’re doing is transferring the risk from the Government, the Corrections department, back into the community. It’s not the right way to go, and what needs to happen is actually strong policies that will address the real issue of the pipeline into the Corrections department. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It’s hard not to go past the real reason why the National Party aren’t supporting this—it’s because they need to be tough on crime. That’s why they’re not supporting this bill. But the problem with asking any 12 National Party members what “tough on crime” means: they’re going to have 13 different answers. Well, there’s no definition of what tough on crime is, but they’ve got to hold up this rhetoric, you see—they’ve got to hold this rhetoric. I’ll tell you why I say that: it’s because they stand up and they start complaining about everything, and in fact, they agree with most of what was in this bill. [Interruption] They agreed with most of what was in this bill.

SPEAKER: Order! Mr Bennett, one more time and you’ll be out.

DARROCH BALL: I’ll try and make that happen. They agreed with, actually, most of what’s in this bill, and they get up and they say that, and then they start talking about the fact that rehabilitation is not in the bill. But I didn’t see one Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) come across the table, or even discussions in the Justice Committee about making any amendments—about making any amendments—to this bill.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Yes, there was.

DARROCH BALL: No, there wasn’t. The Justice Committee did not come to any consensus whatsoever, and especially from the National Party, about making any amendments to this bill. So where’s the proactive nature of wanting to ensure that our corrections system is working correctly, just like, apparently, it was under the National Party?

Hon Kris Faafoi: All kōrero, no mahi.

DARROCH BALL: All kōrero, no mahi.

SPEAKER: OK. Right. I’m now being harder on the member than I was on Mr Mitchell. He’s had a minute and a half to get to what’s in the bill as it emerges from the committee stages of the House. That’s what he’s going to talk about, not a general policy discussion about corrections, justice or anything similar. I’ll reiterate the comment that I’ve made to members previously: if they don’t think there’s a 10-minute speech in the bill, sit down well before then.

DARROCH BALL: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think that as the bill came back from select committee, there were a number of obvious changes that needed to be—

SPEAKER: No, the committee of the whole, all right?

DARROCH BALL: Sorry—yeah, sorry. It’s come back from the committee of the whole House, and I think one of the things that that highlighted for me is the fact that there were no SOPs or amendments from the National Party. All they did was stand up and complain about it—all they did was stand up and complain about it. But I think the fact that the majority of the changes that were made to the legislation that came through from the committee of the whole House was to ensure that legislation was fit for purpose—

Hon Mark Mitchell: You can do this, mate.

DARROCH BALL: —to ensure that the legislation was fit for purpose. Well, what we can do, Mr Mitchell, on this side of the House, is make sure the prisoner numbers go down. You see, on TV the other week, that member over there said on Newshub Nation, I believe it was, that they’re focused on the prison numbers—they’re focused on the prison numbers. What happened under National for the nine years that they were in there? Oh, they focused on them, all right—they went up. The prison numbers went up under that party, and now they’re complaining of the fact that on this side, it’s going down.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): And just because there’s a new Speaker in the seat is not a licence to go away from the bill.

Hon Mark Mitchell: That’s right.

DARROCH BALL: No, you’re right. You’re right, Mr Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): And I don’t need any help, Mr Mitchell.

DARROCH BALL: Thank you, Mr Speaker. One of the main changes that was brought in— and it’s been mentioned by both the previous speakers of the National Party—was the strengthening of the prisoner mail laws. One of the interesting things that Mr Bennett said, actually, made it quite clear that he hadn’t actually been understanding what the legislative changes here were in regards to the prison mail laws, because if he did, he would understand that the law regarding what the prisoner can send out, what was the content of it, and who they can send out to has been strengthened by this legislation—has been strengthened by this legislation.

I’ll say something else. I want to point out something else, too, about what happened during the committee of the whole House. The National Party voted for the SOP that changed the prisoner mail laws. Go look it up—go look it up. That party over there is standing up and bagging the very law that they voted for—the very amendment that they voted for in the last stage of this House. Go and look it up. Oh, you see, he’s smiling. He doesn’t want to say anything now, eh, Mr Mitchell? Where was Mr Bennett? Where was Mr Bennett? Where was Mr Bennett? Oh, see, now that member doesn’t even know what the previous two National Party members have been speaking about. You voted for it. Anyway, I digress.

So, see, what this legislation is doing is it’s added an explicit provision—right, Mr Mitchell?—that allows for the withholding of prisoner mail that promotes or encourages hostility towards any group of people. You see? So it does make changes in the favour—and the National Party should know about it because they voted for it in the past stage of this House.

But I’d like to mention also—this provision was mentioned by Mr Mitchell—the use of police jail cells in extreme circumstances where there was an overflow of numbers in the prisons, right? That’s what it used to be, because they needed it, the National Party, because the prison population under National was overflowing and they needed to utilise the police jail cells, which when—

Hon Mark Mitchell: That’s right.

DARROCH BALL: They knew it. See, they’re saying they knew it, but they also must have known at that point that the police jail cells were not suitable for holding prisoners. So, you see, I’d like to—I was actually going to say this at the start of my speech, but what this piece of legislation highlights for me is the transition of a Government that used to—that used to—be Government of being reactive to issues. And see, they’re proving me right again. They’re being reactive to legislation—reactive. But we’ve got a transition from being reactive to proactive—being proactive. This is what all of these provisions in here are doing—

Hon Mark Mitchell: Throw the doors open. Let them out.

DARROCH BALL: —because we’ve got a corrections system, Mr Mitchell, and under the National Government, there was no corrections about it. Who was it correcting—who was it correcting? You see, it’s about ensuring that we have the ability to ensure that the prisoners that are there don’t come back—don’t come back. That’s what we’re doing right now, and we have done in the last previous two years, because the prison population has gone down—not like the previous Government, when it’s gone up by 20 or 30 percent. That’s how they’re focusing on and reacting to the prison population.

A few other changes in the legislation that this bill does: it makes it a disciplinary offence for a person in prison to—around giving tattoos, giving consent to receive a prison tattoo, or tattooing themselves. I think it’s pretty important, because within the prison system, we all know that there’s an issue with gang membership and the recruitment of gangs, and that’s one way that those existing gang members in prisons actually assert their influence on others and bring them in—by forcing tattoos on others. Another one—also very important, and bringing it up to date and being fit for purpose—is ensuring that we amend the definition of a drug to align it with the Psychoactive Substances Act. That is very important because of, obviously, the scourge of synthetic cannabis on the streets and, obviously, being brought into the prison system, and ensuring that we can have a charge for a disciplinary offence on that.

Another couple is allowing for the use of imaging technology—obviously there will always be a need, but it reduces the need and reliance on rub-down and strip searches—and also another important one was removing the mandatory requirement for a strip search of those who have returned to prison when they’ve always been escorted the whole entire time. That just makes sense. So, in summary, obviously New Zealand First is supporting this piece of legislation because it’s a common-sense one. It brings in much-needed changes to ensure, for the most part, that the legislation is fit for purpose, and we commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): National is a party that is tough on crime. It’s tough on the causes of crime. It is focused on the safety of New Zealanders and on doing everything practical to rehabilitate those that are serving time. We are opposing this bill because it fails those tests and because it breaks the word that parties in Government gave to New Zealanders at the last election.

The most ironic part of this bill is that the Labour and Green parties campaigned for years against double-bunking and are now passing a bill that will make it much easier to double-bunk. The Minister responsible, Kelvin Davis, is directly contradicting hundreds of public statements that he made in Opposition. The most extraordinary part—and I challenge Marama Davidson in this House—is the Green Party specifically said in its policy that it would ban double-banking. It is now voting on a bill that deliberately makes it easy to double-bunk. National is old-fashioned. We believe that if you say one thing to voters in an election campaign you should not then be voting on a bill that specifically, in replacement clause 66, makes it easier for the Government to double-bunk. I challenge the Green Party to give some explanation to their supporters and to the people of New Zealand as to why you have ratted on your word. We believe in trust. By voting for this bill, the Green Party is doing exactly the opposite of what it said.

The second part that concerns us about this bill is the issue of rehabilitation. The original bill required an individual rehabilitation plan for every inmate. And here are the weasel words: members opposite say that we don’t need to put it in law. “We’ll just trust the officials.” This is Yes Minister stuff. They say they support National’s intent of every one of our prisoners having an individual rehabilitation plan; they just don’t want to put it in the law. What sort of weak policy is that? It really does show that members on this side of the House are serious about rehabilitation, where members opposite just want to have this blind faith that Government departments will deliver on their rehabilitation pleas.

Then, the third part of this bill that concerns members on this side of the House are the specific clauses as they relate to the writing of letters by prisoners. I have never been as embarrassed, as other New Zealanders were, when we had the most serious criminal ever to be held by our Corrections department—having allegedly committed the worst offence ever in terms of facing charges of murdering 51 people and facing charges for the serious assaults on another 50—and this Government allows them to write letters internationally to further the cause of terrorism and hate.

And what do we hear from the Government? “Oh, what about the rights of prisoners?” Well, sorry, forget it. I’m on the side of protecting New Zealanders—not just New Zealanders, but stopping those crimes of hate, internationally. It was an appalling failure by the Minister of Corrections and this Government to let that charged offender write those sorts of letters. My problem, and National’s problem, is that the provisions in this bill strengthening the protections of prisoners being able to write letters are not strong enough.

I, in the last month, had letters from constituents who had received inappropriate communications from people behind bars. Here’s the problem. Mr Davis the Minister and his Green Party mates are more interested in the rights of prisoners than they are in protecting New Zealanders from the sort of hate and the sort of victimisation that can occur from people that are behind bars.

So I make no apologies for National opposing this bill. We believe in parties being true to what they say. We are yet to hear an explanation from either the Green Party or the Labour Party as to why they are going back on their word on double-bunking. We are yet to hear an explanation as to why they will not support a legal requirement for rehabilitation of every prisoner, and we’re yet to hear an adequate provision that will ensure that never again are New Zealanders embarrassed by a failing Corrections department that lets, from behind bars, people continue to perpetrate their hate.

It’s a bad bill. We oppose it. It’s an embarrassment to the Government. It’s another broken promise and National will be holding this Government to account for the poor management of Corrections and this weak bill.

MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The way to keep communities safer is to focus on restorative and rehabilitative initiatives for inmates. It is not to expand prison populations. It is certainly not to focus on building mega-prisons and private prisons. We are pleased to support the positive changes in this, the Corrections Amendment Bill, because to uphold our entire nation’s humanity for the good of all of us, to uphold ourselves as to what we think is a civilized society, we need to ensure the humanity of all our people, including our people in prisons.

I’ll actually start by addressing that we see the positive steps in this bill. I want to be quite specific about including the ongoing assessment for risk of self-harm and the changes to the bill as introduced back, which recognises that prisoners at risk of harm—I think—would commit suicide at a rate four times more than the general population. I think that’s right there, Minister Davis?

Hon Kelvin Davis: Yes.

MARAMA DAVIDSON: So making sure that we have got proper assessments for risk of self-harm, and then the initial steps here in new section 61B—the initial steps and ongoing steps that prison managers and health centre managers must take in respect of at-risk prisoners—are positive.

I think about my uncle, who was an inmate and who died in prison—who was murdered in prison. He caused harm and, rightfully, was accountable to that harm that he caused. His sentence was not death. These sorts of assessments for prisoners at risk and then the follow-up actions—things like ensuring that registered health professionals visit prisons at least twice per day unless deemed not necessary—are the sorts of positive steps that will ensure that we have a strong, robust justice system, actually, and that we have a justice system that we can be proud of, which follows due process for all people involved, including victims. The weakening of our justice system, which includes the undermining of the humanity of people in prisons, does not help victims of crime, and does not help people in prisons either. Those are not trade-offs. They need to be upheld together.

I said at the start that to uphold our humanity as a nation, we have to uphold the humanity of all humans, including people in prison. We are clear, and the Minister himself has been very clear throughout this whole debate, that double-bunking in prisons is not ideal and that the pathway to reducing double-bunking is to reduce the prison population and the drivers of crime and to ensure that people have what they need to live good lives so that the circumstances of crime are reduced. That is the pathway to reducing double-bunking. We are pleased that to stop double-bunking the Minister has not chosen the pathway of building mega-prisons. We understand the current challenge facing us to reduce double-bunking, and we are clear that that continues to be an aspiration and that we must work towards ending double-bunking.

We know that right now we have to figure out a pathway to get there, and I welcome and am pleased with both Minister Little’s and Minister Davis’ pathway to reducing our prison population. That is what the Greens stand for. That is what will bring us to ending double-bunking. So we can stand proudly on supporting this bill, which has positive changes for upholding our country’s humanity, and for upholding our justice and prison systems. That is absolutely a direction that we need to head in. There is no rocket science here—there is no rocket science here.

So I think there is one last positive change, in regard to the clause 21 search powers, that I do want to focus on. We’re allowing prisons to use imaging technology to detect and deter the possession of contraband, which also, I understand—in the select committee discussions and the committee of the whole House debates and with the advisers—in that part of the bill overall, part of clause 21, that imaging technology use recognises too that many of our people in prison who have caused harm were harmed themselves. If we have any hope of truly wanting to keep our communities safe, then we do not want to be releasing unsafe humans from prisons. One way of helping to ensure that we are keeping a humanised system is by allowing the use of imaging technology to search. So I did want to talk about that particular part of the bill.

I also wanted to congratulate another positive step of the part of the bill relating to a child’s placement. Ideally, none of us wants any child to be in the environment of a prison. But allowing for babies with their mums, with their mothers, is really important for bonding. I have visited those types of units in several prisons in our country, and in the situation of babies and mums there is good work and good intent that the Minister’s reform programme also continues to support—and through this bill—around doing the best we can in some pretty rough circumstances to provide for a positive, nurturing relationship between mother and child and inmate and child. So really, again, this is why the Greens are supporting the positive steps in this legislation.

Finally, just to sum up, the various positive steps in this bill move us towards an approach that ultimately recognises that keeping communities safe is maintaining the humanity of people in prisons, because that also maintains the hope and humanity of their whānau and the very communities and families that they have to transition back into. And we are also looking at the drivers of crime and working to ensure that everyone in this country has enough of what they need to live good lives and that we move towards a restorative justice and rehabilitative approach. It’s very clear for us in the Green Party why we need to support this legislation. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora, sir. Thank you. Just before I turn my attention to this Corrections Amendment Bill, could I acknowledge the lovely debate that was held prior to this one, celebrating the centenary of women having won the right to stand for Parliament in New Zealand. I’m sure we all felt there were excellent contributions from those who spoke. There was plenty of humour, pathos, and fascinating reflections on changing social attitudes and opportunities over time. I’m sure that all male MPs would endorse the comments that were made by our female colleagues, including the hope that in future, it will not be seen as remarkable when women are successful in any fields of public life, employment, or whatever they may aspire to. And if I didn’t feel that way, I’m sure that my three sisters, two daughters, wife, and mother would all be quick to enlighten me as to the error of my ways.

Well, having enthusiastically supported that motion, I would also have wished to be able to stand here this afternoon to support this Corrections Amendment Bill, as a firm belief in effective rehabilitation measures for prisoners has been one of the political goals I have always advocated for most passionately prior to and throughout my political career. When we were last in Government, I was encouraged by and very supportive of the work our last Minister of Corrections, the Hon Louise Upston, and her officials were doing, much of which we hope to see continued in this bill. I accompanied the Hon Louise Upston to events and meetings in my Waikato region at which effective rehabilitation was promoted and celebrated.

I joined with her in acknowledging with pride former prisoners who were taking advantage of those programmes and turning their lives around. I supported the out-of-gate measures that her predecessor, the Hon Anne Tolley, had championed to provide the vital support that prisoners depend upon when being released, because that is a time, of course, when they are at their most vulnerable. I’ve been a strong supporter of PARS, the Prisoners’ Aid and Rehabilitation Service, in my city of Hamilton, and I place on record my admiration and gratitude to those who have provided that important compassionate and practical support to many families who have benefited from it. I’ve been equally supportive of the wonderful care and support provided by the prison care ministry’s team in my region over the past 15 years. I had the great honour of speaking at a service recently to acknowledge that work. I’ve supported many other similar services and initiatives, and many caring people, the length and breadth of this country, to find work, to assist prisoners and their whānau, and, in particular, to reduce recidivism.

So rehabilitation is a genuine passion of mine, and I am hugely disappointed that the current Government has largely removed that focus from the reforms that were under way at the time that Mr Peters changed the Government. The current Minister has announced a target to reduce the prison population by 30 percent, but his lofty goal is causing alarm, not hope, not admiration, in many New Zealand communities where violence and a lack of respect for law and order are growing concerns, because he’s got absolutely no plans for getting there. This bill doesn’t deliver them, and he stopped the previous Government’s work to ensure that an effective rehabilitation plan is delivered for every prisoner. Now, that would be a wonderful thing to do. That would make a difference. I can’t believe the Minister doesn’t support it.

Instead, as I’ve listened to Government speakers in this debate—in the hope that they would articulate some measures that will boost rehabilitation and increase public safety—I’ve been hugely disappointed, and so will all members of the public who have been following the debate.

So we on this side of the House can’t support this bill, as it’s another failure full of unexplained aspirations and empty promises from a Government that constantly fails to deliver and Ministers who are out of their depth and out of touch with the real concerns of New Zealanders.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call the Hon Willie Jackson.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): It’s a disgrace, what we’re hearing today from the National Party. I want to congratulate the Minister of Corrections for his great work. He’s without doubt been the most successful corrections Minister that Governments have seen in the last two decades. There’s no doubt about it, and Māoridom is proud of Minister Davis. No, absolutely—no doubt. Mark Mitchell and other MPs over there should hang their heads in shame, because Minister Davis has clearly focused on what’s been happening in the prisons—something National was never interested in, never interested in. We know, on this side of the House, the National Party policy: lock them up and throw the keys away—lock them up and throw the keys away.

Dr Duncan Webb: Abandon hope.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Abandon hope.

We are into everything that Marama Davidson and Minister Davis have talked about. Rehabilitation is something that we’re driven by. Restorative justice is something that we back. And, in terms of what Minister Davis was talking about, in terms of the Hōkai Rangi strategy—a brilliant strategy in terms of turning our people’s lives around.

I’m particularly supportive of what Minister Davis was talking about in terms of mental health. Mental health is something that is very dear to this Government. When you have the terrible statistic of prisoners wanting to commit suicide four times more than people on the outside, you have to do something drastic—you have to do something drastic. Minister Davis has come up with the right solutions.

We know about this kaupapa in the community. I know about this kaupapa. My mother was the longest serving Parole Board member in this country—20 years. She was, unfortunately, appointed by a National Government, but that’s by the by—that’s by the by. No, seriously, thanks to the National Government for appointing her. But over those 20 years, my mother told me this: she said that over 95 percent of prisoners could be rehabilitated—over 95 percent of prisoners could be rehabilitated. That’s what she knew. That’s what Minister Davis knows. They need opportunity and they need support, and this is what our Minister is trying to do here. My mother used to bring—sadly, we felt at the time—murderers, paedophiles, and rapists to our marae to turn their lives around. These were people who had done their time, and our whānau and our people worked with these groups of people. We worked with them because we wanted a better country. We didn’t want to just give up on them, like the National Party did. This is part of this Hōkai Rangi strategy. We can see what the Minister is saying.

So we’re not just investing in prisons; we’re investing in this country—we’re investing in this country. And we have results, with a reduced prison population of 8 percent, since it peaked at 10,820 in March 2018. This Minister is progressing, as well as that, investment in terms of $98 million being put aside, Whānau Ora being introduced, and the Ministry of Social Development working in partnership—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I wonder if the Minister can actually link all of those things to this bill, because so far you haven’t.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Absolutely. That’s all part of this amendment bill. This Corrections Amendment Bill is important because it improves prison security, ensures a much safer environment in terms of the treatment of people in prison, and upholds public safety.

But the goal, in terms of what Minister Davis wants to do—in terms of reducing our prison population by 30 percent—is a goal that we should all fix on over the next 15 years. We should aspire to those types of numbers so that we can have a society that we’re all proud of.

So I’m proud of this amendment bill because it’s a bill that addresses some of the problems that a lot of people don’t want to address. The Minister is nailing it, as far as we’re concerned. Māoridom are crying out for solutions; we’re on track with this bill. When half the prison population are Māori, it demands a response, and a courageous response. Minister Davis has come up with that in terms of what he wants to do in terms of the Hōkai Rangi strategy, which has the primary aim to treat prisoners with respect. That doesn’t take away the fact that we have much aroha for the victims, but we have to start somewhere different, and I mihi to the Minister for his innovative and original way of dealing with things. Kia ora tātou.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would, first of all, like to clarify that National is opposing this bill in the third reading. The previous speaker, the Hon Willie Jackson, was really passionate about rehabilitation. But this bill does nothing. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Louise Upston, our very strong woman leader from Waikato, who had that passion. She wanted to make sure that this bill included rehabilitation. The rehabilitation part is very important because when people in prison have completed their time, they should be integrated in the society. This bill, had it not regulated but legislated that rehabilitation path, would have been really good. The Minister spoke very passionately, but this bill does nothing. It’s very weak on that front. So I oppose this bill in the third reading.

Hon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you, Mr Speaker. There are fewer offenders in the community and in prison than there were two years ago: 30,000 two years ago; just over 29,000 today. So that’s the evidence, in fact. The National Party Opposition is not interested in actually talking about fact; they’re interested in rhetoric and dog-whistling.

This is a Government that is tackling the long-term problems facing this country. One of those problems is high numbers of people in our prisons, the disproportionate number of Māori in our prisons, the staggering number of prisoners with a diagnosis of mental health or substance abuse, and 91 percent of our prisoners with a diagnosis of mental health or substance abuse. These are the long-term problems that we need to address. But I’m afraid that Opposition is not interested—not interested. They’re interested in dog-whistling.

We support this bill because it and the Supplementary Order Paper tabled by the Minister strike the right balance between moving to humanise our prison system while ensuring that the community is safe post the 15 March attacks and that we make necessary changes to keep people safe.

It updates the Corrections Act 2004, and it’s about improving processes to enhance the safety of prisoners, victims, and staff, while Corrections can properly manage people in prison humanely and in line with their individual needs.

Really, how can you argue with that? Well, I’m afraid the National Party has argued with it, in what I consider to be a series of incoherent arguments. Let’s start with the first one, around double-bunking. I just want to refer to what the Minister said in the committee of the whole House stage on the shared cells practice. He said that the reality is—and this is where the facts come into play—that the previous Government knew that there was some legal ambiguity around the use of shared cells and that legal ambiguity, in a worst-case scenario—which is a challenge in court to current practice—could result in a court decision requiring the Department of Corrections to reduce the use of cell sharing, which would increase the pressure on available accommodation and impose substantial costs to the Crown.

So ultimately this is about cleaning up the mess of the previous Government—cleaning up the mess. Oh, but they don’t want to acknowledge that. Not only that, they knew for four years, under four Ministers of Corrections, and they did nothing. This Government is addressing it, but, oh no, what we get is clouded rhetoric, a lot of hot air and puffery, which is actually not acknowledging what the real situation was.

The second argument that they use for their opposition to this bill is that it doesn’t include rehabilitation. Well, let me tell you what the departmental report says about rehabilitation: “Corrections was instructed in 2015”—so that’s under the previous Government—“to include a provision in the bill that stated that prisoners are expected to participate in the development and implementation of their management plan and in any rehabilitation programmes that they’re requested to attend.” But during the drafting the Parliamentary Counsel Office—now, that is not the officials, that’s not the Department of Corrections; it was actually the people that draft the legislation—advised that an expectation clause would have no operative or legislative effect. I’ll say that again: no operative or legislative effect. Since such a provision would be unenforceable, PCO—that’s the Parliamentary Counsel Office, who draft the legislation—recommended that the provision not be included in the bill.

So that was from the instruction in 2015. Corrections also had concerns about the impact forcing unmotivated prisoners into treatment programmes would have on the effectiveness of those programmes for other prisoners. Research indicates that compulsory rehabilitation in prisons is generally ineffective. So unmotivated prisoners being forced to do rehabilitation, affecting other prisoners, and not being effective—that’s what’s called evidence. But, oh no, don’t let research and evidence get in the way of a good piece of rhetoric from Nick Smith; let’s not let that get in the way! Instead, let’s look at section 51 of the existing Corrections Act, subsection 4, which says that each prisoner must have a management plan for offending behaviour, to prevent reoffending, and for successful reintegration. It’s already in the Act. But what this Opposition is doing is that it’s using spurious arguments—which it does over and over again—to outline their opposition to a piece of legislation which is improving our system for managing prisoners in the prison, keeping the community more safe, and doing it in a way that is humane. Surely that’s something that the community should be getting behind.

This bill is sensible, it’s practical, and it goes a long way to providing an environment in which we can bring down the prison population, which is what this Government is committed to, and doing it in a way which is humane and effective. Unfortunately, the Opposition—if they ran a good argument, we could at least have a good debate. Unfortunately they haven’t. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the third and final reading of the Corrections Amendment Bill. It’s probably worth acknowledging for the sake of the record that there is some positive work reflected in this bill and, as such, we can support a certain amount of it, but other colleagues on this side of the House have outlined—as I intend also to outline, at least briefly—some other aspects of the bill which we feel unable to support and, therefore, will not be supporting the bill as a whole in that third and final reading.

On that note, it’s worth perhaps giving an example of something that I regard as a positive move: the regime to triage prisoners, which, of course, already does take place, has been amended to include an assessment of the risk of self-harm of a prisoner, and I think that’s something that I think I’m right in saying that at select committee and at all other stages there’s been little or no debate as to the merits of that on either side of the House. So it’s worth noting for the record that there is a positive aspect in that regard.

As for the letter writing provisions, that’s obviously a topic of some current political interest, given particular cases that we don’t need to necessarily traverse again, and I don’t feel moved to do so in the context of this bill. So we’ll move on, except to say that providing clarity in relation to the rules under which correspondence can be sent out of prison is a helpful thing to be done so that the department can administer those rules effectively. And, of course, the onus will be on them to do that administration properly, but at the very least, as a legislative body, we can provide those rules to the best of our ability.

What’s in and what’s not in the bill is, of course, of an interest. Much has been said already about the rehabilitation plan. On this side of the House, we’ve said that we would have preferred a faster and better evolution of the move towards rehabilitative practices—

Hon Clare Curran: It’s already in the bill.

CHRIS PENK: —but I won’t rehash that any more for fear of failing to live up to the Hon Clare Curran’s high expectations in terms of debate.

I will just close by noting in relation to police cells that we do believe that it’s possible that these may be needed in the future. Of course it would be better if that were not so, and in the context overall of justice sector reform that’s been somewhat lacking. What we actually need is faster processing times so that those who are accused of crimes are determined to be innocent or guilty more quickly, and therefore there is less demand for remand, so to speak. So on that note, I’ll conclude my remarks, and with that, I think, from this side of the House, noting overall that, for the reason we’ve all outlined, we are unable to support the bill at this, the third and final reading.

Greg O’Connor: Mr Speaker?

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Greg O’Connor.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Oh, Mr Speaker, I look up with some surprise to see yourself sitting in the Chair, and can I just say how well the crown of Speaker seems to be sitting upon your head—a very natural position to take. So I’m going to enjoy my next 10 minutes under your tutelage.

This bill is not a panacea for all ills that beset the justice system. This is something that is more of the manner in which this Government is now attacking the problem with crime, attacking the problem with the increased population in our prisons, and, more importantly, attacking the issue of rehabilitating people into our society. But, before we start on the detail, I think it’s important to think why we imprison people. There are four main reasons: we imprison them to punish them, we imprison them to deter others, we imprison them to protect society, and we imprison them to rehabilitate—they are the main reasons. So when we look at any legislation which is designed—which all legislation should be designed to do—to make New Zealand a better place, we run a test against that to see whether we are likely to help or assist, or whether any of the provisions in the bill are going to send us down that path. I think we can look at the provisions of this bill and think that while none of them are going to fix society overnight, what they will do in their own way is make society, or the things that they’re designed to address, that much better.

Just before I go into the details of the bill, I might say that as a younger man I worked as an undercover police officer. I used to hang around in pubs, bars, gang headquarters, and the most dangerous time for me was when someone came out of prison, because they came out of prison, and—whether they’d been away for a year, whether they’d been away for three years, five years—they came back and they expected to come back to exactly the same place that they had left. They expected to walk into a bar or to a gang headquarters and to see everybody sitting around exactly as it was when they left so they could resume their criminal career. Of course, if there was a new face there that hadn’t been there two or three years before when they left, they would immediately say, “Who’s that?” So that was actually something that I was probably too young to really understand what I was seeing, but what I actually was seeing was that people were coming out of prison with absolutely nothing having changed, and they were coming back to resume where they left off. So in the time and in the opportunities I have in this House, I would like to think that I can contribute to reducing that flow, and that what we do has to be about reducing that flow so that when people do walk out that prison gate, the chances of them going back in are reduced.

So let’s just have a look at some of the things that this is designed to do. Certainly, interestingly enough, I see some of the debate has been around double-bunking. Well, it may interest those opposite to know that one of the advantages of double-bunking is it actually reduces suicide levels in prison, because if there are two people in the cell and one of them tends to try to commit suicide, there’s someone there to stop them. So it’s just important to understand that there are broad issues around all these things. So often, and I see it in the speakers on the Opposition, all one is looking for is the pill you can take that’s going to fix this. Everything is integrated. The whole prison system, in and out, corrections system, justice, probation, police—everything is integrated. It’s important that we understand that, and that when we’re standing up making speeches around any aspect of this, we understand that there are other things we’d have to consider.

Just in so far as that double-bunking goes, it’s also important that the reason this has been addressed here is that—my colleague Clare Curran has touched on this—as it currently exists, a legal ambiguity puts the New Zealand taxpayer and the correctional system at some risk, and it has to be fixed. This bill is actually fixing that. So, again, to those who may have been watching, that have been a little scared by the rhetoric of the Opposition: don’t worry about it; this is actually fixing something and actually will make things better, at the end of the day.

Also, the rehabilitation plans—now, “rehabilitation” is a word that’s thrown around. Isn’t it an easy word? Yes. We’re going to put “rehabilitation” into the bill, and that’s all we need to do. Unfortunately, it’s one of those tick-the-box exercises. I call it “counting the paperclips”, because we’ve done that. We’ve put that in the bill; we don’t need to think about it any more, because we put “rehabilitation” into the bill. Well, can I just say, if you look at section 51 of the Act, we talk about management plans. Now, management plans are incredibly important, because what they do is that when you try to force people into rehabilitation—“rehabilitation” is a word; “Oh! What are you doing? It’s a soft option. It’s just something I’ll do to get out.” Actually, a management plan is very different—that which is in the Act. A management plan means you have to do certain things or you will not be considered for parole. You have to do certain things or you’ll actually not get yourself into the pathway that will see you come out of prison. So that’s why just throwing—and I have to say, when I was on the select committee it was a little bit strange that we were taking the word “rehabilitation” out. Then I understood it meant nothing. It was a meaningless expression that was in there. So, again, anyone watching can see the fact that the word meant nothing—a tick-the-box exercise.

Do you know why the evidence is that it meant nothing? I heard the Hon Tim Macindoe speaking about all the wonderful things that were being done in the last regime—well, he must have ticked some boxes, but it actually didn’t stop the prison population getting to 11,000. So, obviously, I’d hate to think how high it would have been if those things perhaps hadn’t been done. But what we have currently, of course, is the Minister, who not only has reduced through his actions the number of people in prison but, actually, the number of offenders in the community has reduced, as well. So you might have thought, “Ah! All they’ve done is push them out into the community.” Actually, no. The number of people in the community has actually reduced, as well. So what we have is working because there are less offenders, and that’s what we are trying to achieve here. I go back to the broad picture.

Also, I’m going back to the changes in the mail system. Again, the Hon Dr Nick Smith being outraged—I continue to be impressed by his ability to be outraged about everything that he stands up to speak on. Quite impressive. It does remind me a little of the boy who cried wolf, but that’s perhaps for another time. But, again, the mail system—I just listened. I thought somehow the Minister had written that letter, the way he was going—the terrible, terrible Minister had somehow gone to prison and had written this letter that found its way into the system. A terrible, terrible thing, Minister—but then I did listen, and no, no, no: he was actually, through the rhetoric, apparently blaming everyone else.

No, what did need to happen was that we needed to ensure that, currently, when a letter goes out, it’s the harm that was “likely” to occur—that’s the word at the moment—and that’s quite broad. What really needs to happen is that harm “may” occur, so much more broad criteria are able to be used now to ensure that not only will it go to an individual—because what tended to be the case is that when a letter went out, it was going to an individual, perhaps someone who had been a victim, a family member who may be threatened by it; what this bill does now, and what needed to be tidied up, to ensure that the criteria can be used to ensure that it can’t go to a friendly person—a friendly person who gets the letter and then turns it into an offensive letter, which is obviously what’s happened. So just broadening that criteria—again, an excellent piece of this bill. Also, it’s a question of whether harm may occur directly or indirectly.

So going back to this bill—again, it is not a panacea. It is not going to cure everything from the common cold through to leprosy. But what it will do is, again, it will increase the chances that when that pathway of people come out of prison, that opportunity now exists to actually get them on the right path.

One thing it doesn’t address, and I’ll say this, is the gang situation, because, again, there’s been some talk about it—I was at the Police Association conference just last week, hearing about just how bad our gang situation is. Of course, that’s manifesting itself in prison as well. So what we also will need to do, and these things will feed into other provisions that are going to be required to depower our gangs—because we can do what we like in prison: we bring them out determined to break the cycle, but they go back into the community and the gang has been looking after their family while they were in. Well, they’re not going to go anywhere else; they’ve got nowhere else to go. So, again, I can’t reiterate it more: none of these provisions by themselves are going to be the panacea. As part of a range of provisions, it has to address gang offending, it has to address drug treatment, it has to address mental health. But as long as these things—these Acts, these bills, this legislation that goes through—are against a criteria, against a template, that we can measure it against: is this going to make New Zealand a safer place? Then I, as the last speaker, thoroughly recommend this bill to the House. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Corrections Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Legislation Bill

Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill

Third Readings

Hon JENNY SALESA (Minister for Building and Construction) on behalf of the Attorney-General: I move, That the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill be now read a third time.

May I, on behalf of the Hon David Parker, because this seems like a somewhat dry and technical measure, explain, first of all, why this bill is important. Later, I would like to acknowledge the people and organisations that have had a hand in bringing it to this point.

Parliament is New Zealand’s supreme lawmaker. However, because of the complexity of modern society and the demands on parliamentary time, a lot more technical and detailed legislation must be delegated to the executive or specialised bodies inside and outside Government. This creates a risk that the ability of democratically elected and accountable members of Parliament to control the content of the law be sacrificed to administrative expediency. That risk has grown significantly since the 20th century, and it is mitigated by a number of measures such as enacting empowering clauses that state the specific purposes for which regulations can be made, the establishment of the regulatory review committee, with its mandate to scrutinise delegated legislation, and the development of a disallowance procedure to enable regulations to be amended or revoked by resolution of the House.

The Legislation Bill builds on, and significantly extends, these safeguards. It tackles one of the key outstanding problems of New Zealand’s legislative framework, which concerns a question as basic as: what is New Zealand’s legislation? The situation, with respect to traditional regulations, now called legislative instruments, is tolerably clear. They are mainly made by the Governor-General in Council, are drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office, and are published on New Zealand’s legislation website. However, over time, Parliament has delegated lawmaking power to scores of other persons or bodies. These instruments, which have been called deemed regulations or tertiary legislation—now, perhaps, best identified in the catchy terminology of the Regulations Review Committee as DINLIs: disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments—are drafted by over 100 agencies of Government and published in accordance with requirements prescribed separately in hundreds of provisions across the statute book. What is more, they are often not explicitly stated to be legislation, but include a catch-all category of instruments with significant legislative effect. This makes them hard to distinguish from the thousands of other administrative instruments generated by Government each year. As a consequence, there is a large and probably growing category of law that is made under Parliament’s authority that isn’t necessarily visible to Parliament.

The definition of secondary legislation in clause 5 of the bill sweeps away the existing confusion of definitions of legislative instruments and disallowable instruments and replaces them with a simple single definition of secondary legislation, which clause 5 covers. The thrust of it is that an instrument that is secondary legislation, if it is called secondary legislation by an Act, while seemingly circular, has the merit of requiring an express statement, in each case, where Parliament has delegated power to make law. In the near future, the Government will introduce a large bill of amendments—the secondary legislation bill—to add those amendments to all Acts that delegate lawmaking powers. It is likely to be about three hundred pages. When the House considers the secondary legislation bill, it will have the opportunity to delineate, for the first time, where it has conferred a power to make law, and the requirements as to the publication and oversight of the instruments in question will be determined by the bill before us. The reforms to the framework for secondary legislation in this bill will deliver three broad benefits—first, establishing for the first time a clear category of instruments that are secondary legislation and removing the confusion. Second, stating explicitly in law for the first time the category of instruments over which the House has oversight through the disallowance process. And third, laying the foundation for gradually improving access to the whole body of secondary legislation.

The bill, of course, does a number of other useful things. It re-enacts the Interpretation Act 1999 and the Legislation Act of 2012 with a number of technical improvements. By bringing these two Acts together, it implements the last outstanding recommendation of the Law Commission’s 2008 report on the Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law.

Disclosure requirements are enacted in Part 4; they support more informed parliamentary and public scrutiny of that legislation by ensuring that key information about Government-initiated legislation is provided. This will ensure the quality of legislation and also contribute to delivering on this Government’s commitment to open Government. At an administrative level, disclosure statements have been required for bills since 2013. Making this a legislative requirement represents a stronger and more enduring commitment to disclosure, and gives assurance to the House of Representatives that we will continue to be consulted about proposed changes to the form and content of the disclosures that are required. The new requirements may also be extended to some secondary legislation, specified by a ministerial notice that is approved by the House.

Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the people who were instrumental in bringing these bills to fruition. The legislation was introduced by the Hon Chris Finlayson in the last Government. I know that he was really passionate about this legislation, and I acknowledge him for his work in the previous Government. It resulted from an inquiry to the Regulations Review Committee in 2014. That committee has provided its advice on many occasions throughout the development of these bills, and the secondary legislation bill, which Cabinet has considered. I thank the various chairs, deputy chairs, and the members of the committee for their input. As I mentioned earlier, the Law Commission recommended that the Interpretation Act and the Legislation Act be brought together. The Justice Committee considered the bill and made very helpful recommendations, particularly about the transition to centralised publication of secondary legislation. I also want to thank the Law Society, Local Government New Zealand, and members of the public who made submissions on this bill to the Justice Committee. And I’d like, of course, to thank the Hon David Parker. I commend the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call on this Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill. Can I acknowledge the Minister, and thank her for talking with such great passion to bills that are highly technical. But, of course, it is a piece of National Party legislation, and could I also acknowledge her in the comments that she made around the Hon Chris Finlayson, because as we all know he has a huge legal mind and brain, and I personally miss his wit and humour in the House; so can I acknowledge him.

This is another piece of—like I said, another very good piece of National Party legislation. I’m just wondering and, with bated breath, every day and every sitting week, I wait for the Hon Willie Jackson to bring some of his legislation into the House. So, you know, I don’t know if that’ll happen before the end of the year. We’ll have to wait and see.

Hon Willie Jackson: I need a promotion.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Can I just say—what was that? Needs a promotion? Well, it was a front-bench speech, I have to say. His earlier speech was a front-bench speech without a doubt.

This is a bill that will make it easier to find and access secondary legislation by requiring it to be published on the New Zealand Legislation website alongside Acts of Parliament, creating a single official public source for New Zealand legislation. This is a very good bill. The bill actually concludes the Government’s implementation of the recommendations made by the Law Commission in 2008, regarding the Presentation of New Zealand Statute Law. It does make it easier. I’m very happy to stand and take a call in support of these bills. Thank you.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. This is one of the 23 or so bills that the Justice Committee had considered. As a former chair of the Justice Committee, I want to once again thank and acknowledge the officials, advisers, and submitters. I’d like to particularly acknowledge the former Attorney-General, Christopher Finlayson, and also the current Attorney-General, David Parker, for their leadership in this very important portfolio area, and also acknowledge the Minister Jenny Salesa, for her contributions earlier at the bills’ third reading. As my former Justice Committee member, the Hon Mark Mitchell, acknowledged, this is technical, bipartisan legislation that was conceived under the previous Government. In a similar vein, I think, the Justice Committee did enjoy a strong sense of collegiality, and we did enjoy a strong sense of collegiality before the arrival of one particular National Opposition MP. That Opposition MP should be very proud of himself, and enjoy himself, because the end result was he finally got rid of me as the chair of the Justice Committee by resorting to racial profiling.

Now, back to these bills. These are technically driven bills, and the committee did—[Interruption] Well, if you have no idea about that, calm down, just review some history, or your colleagues could help you to enlighten whatever may be missing from that member’s knowledge.

Now, back to this bill. These are technically driven bills, and at the Justice Committee, we did—

Tim van de Molen: What’s this? What’s going on here?

RAYMOND HUO: Well, if you really want to know what’s going on, just check with your colleague, because he leaked the internal voting process to the public and made up all these stories, fabricated stories, and sabotaged the Justice Committee’s process.

Hon Member: Oh!

RAYMOND HUO: Well, he should be very proud of himself.

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. There are some outrageous accusations being made by that member in this House, which is totally out of line and brings this House into disrepute.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. The member—

Kieran McAnulty: It is entirely within both the Standing Orders and the Speakers’ rulings for a speaker to respond to interjections from the other side, which I believe the speaker is doing. He made a number of attempts to get back to the bill, and then responded to interjections that were made.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): The member can speak to factual moments from the select committee, but he will come back to the content of the bill.

RAYMOND HUO: Thank you very much for your help, Mr Speaker. Back to this bill—

Tim van de Molen: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Respectfully, the member was making accusations that members on this side of the House were misleading, lying, and making false accusations which bring this House into disrepute. Those accusations need to be withdrawn and he should apologise.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I have taken this into account and brought the member back to factual recollections and factual statements at select committee, and that’s where it will rest at this point.

RAYMOND HUO: Thank you very much. This bill—at the very centre of this bill—is about secondary legislation. As Minister Jenny Salesa, in her earlier contribution, has explained, secondary legislation is very important because this is a new term in the Legislation Bill for all legislation made under lawmaking powers dedicated by Parliament or made under the royal prerogative. There are thousands of these kinds of secondary legislation made under different names and made by different organisations—for example, regulations, rules, orders, and notices. I recall that at the Justice Committee, we considered quite a number of factors in the submissions talking about how to define secondary legislation under different names, in different contexts, and made by different organisations.

Back to this legislation’s history, it was introduced in June 2017 and it received its first reading in December that year. The legislation rewrites and replaces the Legislation Act 2012 to bring together the law relating to legislation and to ensure that New Zealand law is easy to find, use, and understand. It will, for the first time in New Zealand law, identify clearly what secondary legislation is and, therefore, what this House’s oversight is through the disallowance process.

The secondary legislation that is drafted by the Parliamentary Counsel Office is easy to identify and is published on the New Zealand Legislation website, along with Acts of Parliament. However, secondary legislation drafted by over a hundred other agencies is often not easy to identify as legislation and it is published in a wide variety of other places. This impedes Parliament’s ability to supervise the exercise of powers it has dedicated, as well as New Zealand’s ability to identify the law that applies to them.

Without further ado, I commend these bills to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. The member who just spoke made a quite offensive remark accusing myself of racial profiling, something that I find deeply offensive. The issue at stake is with respect to an incident that occurred in the Justice Committee. I seek the leave of the House to table the minutes of the Justice Committee in respect of the controversial decision that was made to block the submission that was sought by Anne-Marie Brady from the University of Canterbury. So I’m seeking leave to table the minutes of the Justice Committee on the issue to which Mr Huo was referring.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): We’ll deal with two matters here: first of all, the allegation that a member may have brought the House into disrepute. I have discussed it with the Clerk and I agree. I will ask the member Raymond Huo to stand, withdraw, and apologise for the allegations he made coming from select committee. The member will withdraw and apologise.

Raymond Huo: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. This is not allegation. It’s been fully recorded, and it’s been debated publicly.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I have made a decision.

Raymond Huo: Yes.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): You’ve withdrawn and apologised. That matter is finished.

To draw to the second matter, you wish to table the minutes?

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I seek the leave of the House to table the minutes of the Justice Committee in respect of the decision of the committee to decline the opportunity for the Canterbury University academic to be able to make a submission to the electoral law inquiry, which subsequently led to the resignation of the Justice Committee chair.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Dr Shane Reti): Thank you. I’ll take advice from the Clerk. The advice is that the minutes may still be confidential, but we’re happy to put the leave to the House and leave it to the House. Leave is sought for the minutes of the select committee to be tabled in the House. Is there any objection? There is an objection. Leave is not given. Thank you. We’ll continue.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to speak on the Legislation Bill, a law about the law. We’ve got an exercise in front of us of improving access to the law, seeking to make it more open and transparent. Admittedly, the phrase “open and transparent” has lost a lot of “Curran, C”—that much is “Clare”. However, we can, nevertheless, observe that it’s a worthwhile endeavour to ensure that those who are subject to the law have an opportunity to find it and understand it. So that much is a worthy aim, and it’s no surprise to the House, therefore, that we on this side have been supporting it, as my colleague the Hon Mark Mitchell has already made very clear.

Accessibility to the law is a key aspect of the rule of law. This has been traversed somewhat at length already at previous stages and readings of the legislation, so I don’t intend to go back there in much detail, except to note that enabling compliance with the law facilitates its enforcement. The obvious corollary of members of the public being able to know how the law applies to them means that we can say that they must obey it, or else suffer the consequences as set out in that law.

Another worthy aim of this piece of legislation is that it folds into its arms the Interpretation Act. Given that finding the law and understanding it are, effectively, two acts of the same play, it is worth doing those two different things together in the same space, and that is exactly what we are doing here today.

Also I’d just note, as I prepare to draw to a close, that the website legislation.govt.nz is an excellent resource. We are in the pursuit of making it even more excellent, even more worthy, and even more worthwhile, indeed. So I bring to a close my contribution by just acknowledging all those involved across a couple of Governments: Christopher Finlayson QC, among others previously, and now the current Government’s had the good sense and taste to pick up that work and continue with it, such that now—through the Justice Committee and with the Regulations Review Committee also having had a look at it, and now the whole House—we move towards passing it. So it’s a pleasure to join with others on this side of the House in doing exactly that.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of the Legislation Bill and the Legislation (Repeals and Amendments) Bill. As has been mentioned, these are quite technical bills and they are somewhat dry, but it’s has been my experience in this House that the more technical and dry bills are often the most important. They are often the most important.

However, I don’t intend to traverse all of the changes in these bills, because they are quite numerous, although they are important. They have been detailed by the Minister and other speakers in this House, and it’s obviously a bipartisan piece of legislation, which is always good to see, but not always as fun to debate in the House. None the less, I’d just like to thank the Minister for bringing this bill to the House, and also the hard-working select committee that had to traverse through the details of this bill and make any of the recommendations that they did and bring them to the House, which we are debating at the moment.

First of all, just in brief, what this legislation does is it brings together law relating to legislation to ensure New Zealand’s laws are easy to find, which is obviously one of the most important aspects of this legislation. There is no logic in having the law there for the public of New Zealand if it’s hard for them to find, first of all, but also hard for them to understand. It’s to ensure that the legislation itself is of high quality, so it brings it up to speed and fixes up any issues in that regard.

It rewrites and replaces the Legislation Act 2012 and re-enacts the Interpretation Act 1999, combining the two into one Act. So, as has been mentioned, for the first time New Zealand law identifies clearly what secondary legislation is and, therefore, what this House has oversight over. It provides for improved access of legislation and absorbs the Interpretation Act 1999 with a small number of technical improvements.

The reforms of the framework for secondary legislation in these bills will deliver three broad benefits. The first is establishing for the first time a clear category of instruments that are secondary legislation; secondly, stating explicitly in law for the first time the category of instruments over which this House has oversight; and, third, laying the foundation for gradually improving access to the whole body of secondary legislation.

As I said in my opening comments, it’s important in a robust democracy to ensure that the legislation that the people of this country have access to is up to date, is easy to use, and is easy to access. Although these are technical bills and dry bills and perhaps not the most fun to debate, they are very important, and that’s why New Zealand First will be commending these bills to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): These legislative bills are just another example of the strong, practical reforms that the former National Government developed that is now progressing through its legislative changes. I want to particularly acknowledge Chris Finlayson. Not only was Chris a superb lawyer but he had a very practical sense of the importance of making sure that our laws and regulations were as accessible and as understandable to the public as possible.

All the time, we are passing laws and regulations, almost like a factory, and it is so useful to have a systematic approach to making sure that we’re not just piling laws upon laws but we actually are continuously tidying up the law books and making it as accessible as possible. I’m particularly delighted by the provisions in these bills that are going to enable the full set of not just Acts of Parliament—the primary legislation—but, actually, the regulations that have the greatest effect on everyday New Zealanders to be made so much more accessible, and it’s also really important for our role as legislators to see that full book of law to inform our process of reform.

If there is a fair and valid criticism of this Parliament, it is that we spend heaps of time passing new laws without actually looking at the old laws, old regulations, that need to be repealed. The provisions in these bills that provide for a far more systematic approach to managing the overall law book of both primary legislation and secondary regulations is not the sort of law that’s going to make the front page of the newspaper. It’s not going to get constituents super-excited, but it is about the practical improvements to our lawmaking system that is good for New Zealanders and, actually, equally important for New Zealand businesses.

I commend the legislation to the House. It’s a good bit of work. It’s about making our legal system more accessible for the average member of the public, and it is going to result in a whole lot of practical elements that make our system of law work better for this country.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of these bills. As others have said, they may not be super-fun bills to debate, but it is exciting, I think, for us all as lawmakers, and for me as a once-practising lawyer, to know that Parliament is keeping an eye on how accessible and knowable the law is for the general population.

It might be surprising for members of the public to know that we haven’t thus far had a consistent, coherent definition of what is secondary legislation. Secondary legislation—being effectively regulations that affect our lives at that level where we live, where higher-level legislation may not reach—hasn’t until now been well defined. It has been defined across different pieces of legislation. It has, as the Law Commission has pointed out, included disallowable pieces of secondary legislation that make it harder for the public to know their rights, to know the mechanisms by which their lives are being regulated, and standards that have been set.

This is an exciting piece of law. It consolidates the definition of secondary legislation and the way by which it can be interpreted. It makes that body of law that is actually really significant in affecting people’s everyday lives more accessible by requiring that it be also published online. Again, I think it’s surprising to note that that wasn’t already being done. We do have a really good, accessible online archive of primary legislation, but of course primary legislation sits sort of above everything and its interpretation is done by the courts. It’s not often clear enough, the way that it actually affects our everyday lives, without that access to secondary legislation which is allowed to be made pursuant to the primary legislation.

Making regulations both in definition knowable and in content and substance knowable to members of the public is really, really important, especially in the current context of our sort of information highway. Making these laws actually accessible online, where people do also essentially live, without having to go and access them in some lofty building elsewhere—and how would people even know? The fact that our law is becoming clearer, it’s being modernised, and it’s becoming far more accessible to members of the public is exciting and it means that we are closer to providing a rule of law system that is truly democratic as well. I commend the bills to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): As previous speakers have acknowledged, these are very practical bills. What they do, in part, is increase the public’s access to what regulations exist in New Zealand. I sit on the Regulations Review Committee, and what has been astounding, I think, not only to me on the committee but other members of that committee is that, actually, in New Zealand right now we don’t know how many regulations we have. The Regulations Review Committee has been on an exercise of overseeing an audit across all Government departments of how many regulations there are so that they can all be kept in one place as these bills envisage.

It’s really important that as lawmakers, we ensure that New Zealanders have access to the law, that the law is transparent, and that it is clear. Of course, on this side of the House, we are also of the view that having a careful approach to regulation and ensuring it doesn’t get in the way of business and innovation is particularly important, and that starts with having clarity and transparency about what regulations there are. I commend these bills to the House.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great opportunity to speak in the third and the final reading of the Legislation Bill. As a committee member on the committee which considered this, it’s been good to see this bill through the entire process through the House. It’s good also to see that we have support on a bill that is one of those bills that just makes our legislative processes tidier and also is more about transparency and enabling New Zealanders to easily access pieces of information or pieces of legislation that are available.

So the main piece of work—and it’s a significant piece of work that officials have been working on—is to really bring together a large body of secondary legislation. And can I just say how important that it is to have access to that.

So, “secondary legislation” is actually a new term in terms of legislation that’s not made within this House. So it’s made under powers delegated by Parliament, and that’s held in many different places, and it could be in terms of local council rules and regulations. It’s a significant task by those officials to try and bring together the significant body of regulation in one place and have that available online, as we do now with primary legislation. And that’s important if you are a local member of the public who’s impacted on by a local regulation or some order or applying for a permit. It’s important that people understand what is being delegated by Parliament and how it applies to them.

So there are rules, notices, orders, regulations, and so on. So I take my hat off to those officials that have undertaken the mammoth task of going through all of those different areas to bring together that piece of work.

So, really, what gave rise to this bill—and I’ll just briefly touched on this—is interesting in the fact that it responds to the recommendations of the Regulations Review Committee. That’s already been mentioned earlier. Back in 2014, there was an inquiry into the oversight of disallowable instruments—no, not just disallowable instruments but disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments. And in that report, the committee highlighted the difficulties in facing identifying a disallowable instrument. These difficulties arise partly because of the category of disallowable instruments. It includes not only instruments made under an empowering provision but also that they are disallowing, and that’s specified in section 39 of the Legislation Act—so, clarifying where that sits.

The scope for legitimate divergences on whether an instrument does or does not have a significant legislative effect makes the boundaries of the category contestable and introduces a level of uncertainty in terms of which instruments are subject to the disallowance procedure. So having clarification in this area, knowing where the line is drawn in between primary legislation and secondary legislation is an important piece of work for New Zealand to carry out. So it makes it clearer in terms of where those areas are and also for making that more transparent for members of the public.

So the bill brings together the law relating to legislation to ensure New Zealand’s law is easy to find, it’s easy to use, and it’s easy to understand. But above all those things, it’s also to ensure that it is of high quality. In places it will rewrite and replace the Legislation Act 2012 and update and re-enact the Interpretation Act 1999, combining the two into one Act. And so it tidies up and brings together and consolidates all of that area.

For the first time in New Zealand law, it will identify clearly what secondary legislation is, and, therefore, what the House has oversight over through the disallowances process that I’ve already outlined.

It will also provide for improved access to that legislation, as I’ve already indicated, through having those available online where currently they are not. And it will absorb the Interpretation Act 1999 with a small number of technical improvements.

And, finally, it will enact legislative disclosure requirements to make key information about development and the content of new legislation available to support legislative scrutiny.

This is an excellent bill that really cleans up legislation for New Zealand, and I commend it to the House.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand in support of the third reading of this Legislation Bill. I would like to acknowledge the Hon Chris Finlayson, who introduced this bill and had a vision and was on the track on how to reduce the red-tapeism.

This bill enables it so that all secondary legislation is brought together on one website where individuals and businesses can access that legislation so that there is no confusion anywhere. So it makes it easier and more efficient for the authorities to enforce the regulatory regime also, because everything is all together. The changes will modernise the requirement for publishing and presenting secondary legislation to the House of Parliament’s examination, enabling better legislative schemes to be delivered in the long term.

So with these words I commend this bill to the House.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): On Radio New Zealand, on Friday afternoons, there’s a programme called Critter of the Week, in which they choose some ugly little animal and make it their critter of the week. I think of that when I’m looking at this piece of legislation. I think it’s had a bit of a bad rap in this House, as everyone who stood up, sort of said, “This is a little bit of legislation, it’s a hard piece of legislation, and it’s a complicated piece of legislation.” Well, I’m going to call this “my legislation of the week”, because it’s actually quite an important little piece of legislation.

As someone who has been on the hard-working Justice Committee, one of only two survivors, to date; the previous one just having—oh, I don’t think I’m allowed to mention she’s left. But Ginny Andersen is the other member of this. You can tell by our scars. I’m really only 35 years old, such is the effect of time on the Justice Committee. I think by some of the presentations and speeches you’ve heard today, you can understand why it’s been such an ageing process. Oh, and speaking of the ageing process, I see we have the Speaker—thank you, welcome back, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I think I’ll just push the time bell!

GREG O’CONNOR: Anyway, before I get myself in any more trouble, can I go straight to the Legislation Bill. I could start again, but I’m sure that you don’t need some explanation about what a beautiful piece of legislation this is.

I love it when new words enter our lexicon. When this bill came to the House, who knew what a “disallowable instrument” was? But by the time we’d heard from experts and by the time we’d heard from various submitters on the bill, we knew exactly what one of those was.

But in all seriousness, what this really did, the understanding of this is that in virtually everything we do in New Zealand, there is some sort of regulatory or legislative basis to it. Every time we step outside our door, every time we engage in any sort of business—whether it be Government, and, as it turns out, even in private industry—there’s a regulation somewhere, a piece of legislation somewhere, which governs it. As previous speakers have said, we haven’t, simply, known where a lot of that regulation was, where a lot of that secondary legislation was.

It came to a little bit of a head during, you’ll remember, the milk powder inquiry in China, when there was an inquiry being conducted into that, and those conducting the inquiry actually went looking for the regulations, the legislation, under which they were operating to do the inquiry, and suddenly found that they couldn’t find it, and much of the secondary legislation, these disallowable instruments, had actually been passed and no one had ever recorded it—and that brought to a head the necessity to make sure that we do. Particularly where we’re going offshore with this legislation, we know just how vulnerable we are. There’s now a piece of work, that others have mentioned, to ensure that there is going to be a place where we can actually go and find those regulations under which we’ve enacted, under which we’re operating our daily lives

I guess in understanding that, we go to the places where there’s going to be some exemptions from publication of this legislation. On the select committee, there was actually a recommendation that we would have three exemptions to this. In our deliberations, long and hard into the night, we actually brought that down; there was a recommendation there would actually only be two exemptions to the legislation, the first one being where the secondary legislation contains information that cannot be publicly disclosed. Generally, that would be something around market sensitivity not only within New Zealand but, of course, internationally as well, but, of course, again, as we move our goods to the harbour, as we move our goods to the wharf, and move them offshore, again, the closer we get to export, the more important it is that there is a regulatory body under which we’re operating and we know where that legislation is. However, what we do want to make sure is that the legislation and the information that is enclosed there doesn’t become an advantage to our competitors. So there will actually be a situation where it doesn’t need to be publicly disclosed. Also, of course, naturally, where it relates to national security, under the agencies operating, that won’t, obviously, need to be disclosed there as well.

The second exemption is not so much sensitivity but it’s where it will still need to be made available to the public in a way other than just being on their website.

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

GREG O’CONNOR: I just remind members that we’ve renamed this legislation the “Critter of the Week” or “Legislation of the Week” legislation, and I think the now-retired ex - Attorney-General Christopher Finlayson would be very happy to have himself described as the author or the creator of something that has been so named. He’s a very creative sort of a personality.

So, coming back to the legislation, we were talking when I was interrupted about the disallowable instruments—terminology that for those hardworking members of the Justice Committee became part of our lexicon from a word that none of us have heard of. In fact, indeed, secondary legislation—what is secondary legislation? And as we were talking about it, it’s something that underlies everything that we do in New Zealand. In everything we do, there’s generally either a Government, a Parliament, or a local body sitting behind that activity. In fact, there are in excess of 100 Government agencies that are empowered to draft and make secondary legislation.

So when we are considering it, there’s also quite a large number of local bodies as well. Seventy local bodies are actually able to make secondary legislation, so a very wise decision was made to, essentially, leave them out so they can continue to make that legislation. No doubt, there will be the need for a catch-up at some stage, just again, so that in one place, New Zealanders, whether for reason of doing an inquiry to test their legality, will just know the basis on which they are carrying out their activity and, indeed, are able to go and ensure that they are, in fact, keeping within that legislation.

I think it is something of a surprise to realise just how almost—I would stop short of saying the blind leading the blind in relation to this legislation, but certainly it was a surprise to see how little was known about this. I mentioned before about the inquiry into the export of milk powder that was required to be investigated and not knowing, actually, the legislation on which it was acting.

So, although this was quite an exciting piece of legislation—one that has taxed the intellect of the Justice Committee—even I am struggling to actually find anything else that will be of interest to you, Mr Speaker, so at this stage, I will resume my seat and recommend this legislation.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I want to congratulate Mr O’Connor on his call of two halves; although he did promise that he would complete it, he hasn’t quite managed to do that. I much preferred the first half, I have to say, and I’m quite sure that my very good friend the Hon Christopher Finlayson would be delighted to have been referred to as the creator and I’ll make sure that he gets that passed on.

I’m the final National Party speaker in the third reading on what is a very dry and technical measure—certainly, a very important measure. I don’t in any way mean to demean it, but I feel that my colleagues have said all that needs to be said. These are bills that enjoy cross-party support, and I therefore have no wish to detain the House any further, and I look forward to seeing them passed into law.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with some surprise and disappointment that I hear my friends say that this is dry legislation or there’s nothing here. And I’m sure our assistants in the Parliamentary Counsel Office would be appalled and would abhor to hear that, because this, you know—I might have a facetious tone, but there’s an important point to be made here, and that is that this legislation is actually really important for access to justice, because this is, in fact, the doorway to the law. I know we can read this hefty legislation and, perhaps, find it a little dry, but the fact of the matter is that the ability to know what the law is is critical to a citizen’s rights, and that is one of the key things that this legislation does.

I was dealing with a matter to do with Ministry of Social Development for a constituent, and to find out the position, I had to navigate the primary legislation, an executive order that was a regulation, then rules promulgated by the department, and then a policy promulgated by the department, and then guidelines. So that’s five layers of rules and the question is: where there’s conflict, which prevail? Which ones are binding and which ones are someone’s opinion of what might be the best way to do it? What this piece of legislation does is it says we are going to draw a brightline so that anything above this line is delegated legislation, it is subject to the scrutiny of this House, and it is made under the authority of Parliament. And things below that line, which might be called rules or policies or guidelines, will not be delegated legislation, they won’t have the same force, and they won’t be subject to the same scrutiny.

And there’s more, and it is really important because at the moment—I mean, if you are an ordinary citizen, to navigate that kind of labyrinth is pretty much impossible. So part of this project—and it’s only the first step in a much larger project, but part of this project—embedded in this Act is saying, “We will find the law in one place.” and the joys of the internet are that we have an easily accessible repository for it. It’s not the case anymore—perhaps the romantic lawyers amongst us, if that isn’t an oxymoron, would love to go down to the law library and the dusty books, but the fact of the matter is that those days are gone. The legislation website will be the repository for all delegated legislation, so that anyone can go to this legislation and say, “Ah, now I understand what the layers of legislation are. And what’s more, I can go and find it.” So we won’t have the ridiculous situation we had not long ago when we had the Fonterra melamine scandal where an inquiry couldn’t be sure whether they’d found all the law or not. I mean, that is absolutely unacceptable in a country that prides itself on being subject to the rule of law.

So here we have a piece of legislation that addresses that and it makes it clear what the scrutiny is. I feel for some departments when they pass things that are probably legislative instruments and are expected to table them in the House, but they don’t even know that—so even the departments themselves can be confused. So here again, we have a piece of legislation which says it’s a legislative instrument, provides a definition for what a legislative instrument is, has clear legislative effect, and therefore it must be presented in the House. And that’s important because, you know, my friends who—I’m not sure I can see a colleague from the Regulations Review Committee in the House at the moment. Yes, I can: Willow-Jean Prime.

You know, that’s a really important check. Now, it’s one that’s used rarely but its existence is important. So the fact is that any regulation is disallowable. It’s set out here and that is an important part of parliamentary scrutiny. And increasingly, we know that the executive is given regulation-making powers because the law is complicated, things change very rapidly, and all those other reasons that are given for regulating regulation-making powers, but it must absolutely be subject to the scrutiny of this House. The Regulations Review Committee is a committee of this House and, I must say, it does a great job and one of the joys of coming here is seeing the very good job that it does do and the seriousness with which it takes citizens’ complaints about regulations.

I guess the other really important aspect of this legislation is the Interpretation Act. As the Law Commission suggested, recommended, it’s no good having, kind of, the way the law works, the way legislation interacts with each other, itself spread across many different pieces of legislation. Of itself, the irony is not lost on me that the law about legislation is not well drafted. So the Interpretation Act comes in here, and that’s actually a really important tool as well, because we know that when people approach legislation, it can be difficult. There are words in there, even words that look simple: a month—is it a calendar month or is it four weeks? A week—is it a working week? A day—is it a working day? All those kinds of things, those kinds of things which are spread across the Act, as well as the general approach to interpretation—I mean, despite what many people would think, we don’t take a pettifogging approach to interpretation. We approach it in a purposive way. The first question is: what was this legislation intended to achieve? What is the purpose of the legislation and its intended effect? Those kinds of things are all set out in the interpretation sections of the Act, and, again, it’s a great thing to do.

So this is the first step on a much longer project. Can I also, from, again, my position on the Regulations Review Committee, which had some oversight of this project, congratulate parliamentary counsel, who have been leading it and who now have a very large task ahead of them, which is, once the next piece of legislation is passed and we have identified everything which is a regulation, finding it and putting it up on Legislation Online so that any citizen can find it. They’ve done a great job so far. It’s a very long-term project, one that has crossed a number of Parliaments, but it is actually really important.

I want to end where I started, which is to say that this is about access to justice. This is about saying that the law should be accessible to anyone. It shouldn’t require higher education or a law degree to access it. It should be easy to find, easy to read, and easy to apply. This is a fantastic step forward for Parliament and for our law. I commend these bills to the House.

Bills read a third time.

Bills

Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Justice): I move, That the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill be now read a second time.

I’d like to acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee in deliberating on this bill and coming back to the House with an interesting conclusion they reached, which was that they were unable to recommend that it be passed, but they have recommended a number of amendments in the report. So I want to say that the amendments that they’ve arrived at are very helpful, and I’ll address those as I address the House in the next few minutes.

This bill establishes the Criminal Cases Review Commission. This is about enhancing and improving the process that we have to deal with miscarriages of justice. It is not the same as any other appeal. It is to deal with those cases where somebody who has been convicted and, often, has served a sentence considers that they have been wrongfully convicted, often because they haven’t committed the crime that they’ve been accused of and convicted of. Therefore, this provides just that extra important safety valve that goes beyond the ordinary appeals system to allow that act of justice, where it is called upon, to take place.

The commission will replace the function currently carried out under the royal prerogative of mercy provisions, which are in section 406 of the Crimes Act. The Governor-General, who currently exercises that royal prerogative, will, however, continue to exercise the power in relation to pardons, and I expect once the commission is up and running that it will be the Criminal Cases Review Commission that will assist the Governor-General in conducting the appropriate inquiries into the exercise of a pardon. The significance there is that somebody who has died pending any determination of a claimed miscarriage of justice ordinarily cannot continue that, but there may be a claim for a pardon, and ordinarily we allow posthumous pardons, and they therefore need to be investigated. So there will be some residual power left with the Governor-General. I know she would be reassured about that.

Presently, if a person considers they have a miscarriage of justice, they apply to the Governor-General. By convention, the Governor-General acts on the formal advice of the Minister of Justice. Work on the prerogative of mercy applications is, in fact, undertaken, as you would expect, by lawyers in the Ministry of Justice. Now, occasionally they may brief that out to Senior Counsel, but otherwise it is a matter controlled by the ministry. One of the points that is often made is that there is potentially a conflict of interest between the lawyers employed by the ministry, who are also there to ensure that the court system and the judiciary are supported in the conduct of their role, but an application for the royal prerogative of mercy is, in effect, a challenge to the determinations by the judiciary—not necessarily a single judge—through the peer process, and therefore it does not sit comfortably with some people that it is lawyers in the Ministry of Justice who are charged with making the investigations and the inquiries.

There is something else about this as well, and that is that the powers that the Ministry of Justice have—in particular, lawyers in the ministry have—and, indeed, those briefed out to conduct investigations to acquire relevant information to the investigation into a miscarriage of justice are those, in effect, that any citizen has. What this bill does for the Criminal Cases Review Commission is to provide additional powers to ensure that all the relevant information that there could be to bear upon—somebody who has claimed a miscarriage of justice can get that information, and therefore a good determination can be made, either that there is no miscarriage of justice or that there potentially is one, and so it then gets referred back to the Court of Appeal, as is the case with a successful application under the royal prerogative of mercy process.

Now, the existing process has worked reasonably well—there’s no question about that—and there are people who have had that determination of a miscarriage of justice. It is equally true to say that those who have seen the greatest success of the exercise of that process are, typically, people who have champions in the community. People, often on a voluntary basis but with a bit of wealth behind them and a bit of energy and momentum, can bring some energy to bear on a claim for and a case for miscarriage of justice, and that should not be the case. It should not be dependent on the luck of the draw that somebody else in the community is so interested in your case—or, often, a lawyer is so interested in your case—that it requires their personal commitment to see it through. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is a standing body that is there for anybody who claims a miscarriage of justice. There’ll be an appropriate triaging process, as you’d expect there to be, and if the particular claim meets a threshold, then an investigation will take place.

Now, we know that Māori and Pacific people are imprisoned in this country disproportionately to their presence in the general population. They make up 60 percent of the prison population, and yet the rates of implication for the royal prerogative of mercy from these populations is estimated at somewhere between 11 and 16 percent. That seems also discordant with the way things are. If you’re 60 percent of the prison population, you might expect a higher incidence of claim of miscarriage of justice. So a standing Criminal Cases Review Commission has the ability to reach out to those communities, and I’ve seen it happen that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission actively goes into prisons and says, “This is who we are. This is where we are. This is what we do. If you consider you have a miscarriage of justice, here is a process you can embark upon, and you can seek justice or the next stage of justice through that sort of means.” So this is an opportunity to improve the process that we have at the moment. As I’ve said, a number of jurisdictions have already established bodies like this. I mentioned Scotland; there’s also England—that also covers Wales and Northern Ireland—and Norway has one as well.

Some of the changes that the Justice Committee have recommended—many of them I agree to. But the committee received 32 submissions, all of which were given very careful consideration, and I know the Law Society and the Criminal Bar Association and others made submissions and, I think, made some very helpful suggestions.

So two of the committee’s recommendations I turn to now. The first is a change to the composition of the commission’s proposed membership. As an independent Crown entity, the commission will be led by a board of between three and seven commissioners. The commissioners will make strategic decisions about the commission—for example, about the development of its operational procedures—and with the support of its staff and its specialist staff, including investigators, the commissioners will decide which cases will be referred back to the court. So the ultimate decision of referral back following an investigation will be by the commissioners who are appointed to that task. At the moment, clause 9 of the bill requires at least one-third of the commissioners to be legally qualified and, in addition, at least two-thirds of the commissioners must have experience of working in the criminal justice system or have other knowledge or expertise relevant to the commission’s functions and duties. These requirements mirror those for equivalent commissions established in other jurisdictions. They’re designed to ensure that there is an appropriate balance of skills: legal skills, obviously; investigatory skills; and community knowledge and presence and understanding as well.

The committee has recommended that in addition to the legal and criminal justice requirements, the commission must also have at least one commissioner who has knowledge or understanding of Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori. I agree with that recommendation. The bill as introduced required the Minister to take into account the desirability of the commission being able to draw on knowledge of Te Ao Māori, and this proposed change in the recommendation that the committee has come up with will achieve that.

The second change that I want to talk about, too, is the power for the commission to apply for a court order to disallow claimant privilege. Now, this is a very potentially controversial area. The bill as introduced didn’t provide the commission with the ability to access information that’s protected by privilege or confidentiality. Unlike the royal prerogative process, which relies on an applicant presenting the necessary information and the Ministry of Justice officials gaining access to information by cooperation and agreement, this bill provides the commission with valuable information-gathering powers. The bill details that cooperation and consent should be the preferred means of obtaining relevant information. However, there are circumstances where stronger powers may be necessary in order to get the relevant information, and the committee has recommended that information-gathering provisions be amended to allow the commission to be able to apply for a court order to disallow a claim of privilege in certain circumstances and assess a claim of confidentiality. I think that’s a very important recommendation, too.

I’m coming to the end of my time. I just wanted to address one point that was raised by members of the National Party on the committee, which was their well-established concern about the place and role of victims. The point that they made in their minority report refers to those with criminal convictions causing further disquiet for victims of crime. The point about this is that if the criminal conviction is one that should never have happened in the first place, it is an injustice upon injustice that they should not get access to a process that allows them to address that. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for this opportunity to lead on the National side in terms of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. I think our starting point should be to acknowledge the seriousness of the possibility and, indeed, reality, on occasion, of miscarriages of justice. When a miscarriage of justice does occur, that is an offence against the individual himself or herself who might have had liberty deprived or have otherwise been unfairly punished; another perpetrator, if it’s a case of mistaken identity, will not have been held to account; and, of course, society as a whole will lose out in confidence in the system. It is no trivial matter—the system’s ability to produce miscarriages of justice—so let me start by acknowledging on this side of the House that we do understand and recognise that, before going on to our philosophy in relation to this particular proposal that has been put forward by the Government.

I’d also like to address a comment that the Minister made in relation to the select committee process. The National Party understands and recognises that the bill is likely—indeed, certain—to pass. The Government parties do support it. So with that inevitability, it seems to us as responsible lawmakers that we should support changes that will improve the bill as it comes through select committee and beyond, so there is no good reason for us not to be part of that process, recognising the very practical suggestions being made by various submitters in support of the bill. A couple of those changes that the Minister’s outlined, and, indeed, I think some others of a more minor and technical nature, we were happy to support to be produced by the select committee as a whole.

Notwithstanding that, as you will no doubt be aware—or, if not, you are now—we still feel unable to support the bill on this side of the House. The reason for that I’d like to step through in what I hope will be a pretty logical sort of fashion, starting with the other possible priorities for reforming our criminal justice system as a whole to reduce the incidence of miscarriages of justice and possible miscarriages of justice, also then looking a little bit at the detail of the set-up of the commission, and then, finally, sort of wrapping up as best as time allows at that point.

So our starting point was to consider whether there could be reforms to the criminal justice system such that there would be a reduction in the number of miscarriages of justice in the first instance. Recognising that prevention is better than cure, we would prefer to see the Government turn its collective mind, at least in the first instance, to ensuring the safety of the system such that unsafe convictions are less likely to arise in the first place.

The next possibility—adopting a pretty logical approach, I hope—is to then consider whether it might be possible to reform existing structures. There are some points that Minister Little has made about ways in which the current system of appeal and safeguards—I suppose we could broadly say—is potentially inadequate, and we think that there is potential for reforming those as an alternative to setting up this other system. I’ll go through those very shortly.

In fact, first of all, to note the obvious, there are appeal rights through the existing court system, notwithstanding limitations in terms of access to those, but also, for the sake of completeness, I will note, with the royal prerogative of mercy currently executed—that’s the word I want—through the office of the Governor-General but based on the advice in the Ministry of Justice office. There is no good reason that the Government shouldn’t consider providing additional resources or powers to that team within the Ministry of Justice. I note Minister Little’s objection that it doesn’t currently have those resources and powers currently, notwithstanding that it carries out that function. So that’s a possibility that we’re somewhat concerned doesn’t appear to have been considered.

So we’re not even ending up in a situation where there’s a reform in the real sense of the word whereby the existing structure would be set aside and replaced with this new body, but, in fact, we’d have an extra layer. We would have this new beast called the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but we’d still also have that somewhat anomalous situation whereby the Governor-General would be available to issue pardons. So neither fish nor fowl is the new entrant into the field of criminal justice, and we think that it’s somewhat of a half-measure that the Government’s proposing to go about it this way.

I note the very real and, I think, reasonable concerns of the Minister of Justice regarding access to the structures—for example, the appeals. He is right to acknowledge that there are some groups in society who are less able and, historically, the statistics indicate have accessed these structures and these avenues less frequently. That might be for reasons financial, cultural—perhaps relating to the acceptance of authority by some ethnic groups more readily than others—language and/or education barriers, or, in particular, by persons who are determined to be criminals. Often times, there’s a link between disadvantage of a more general kind and a person’s likelihood of ending up in the criminal justice system, or it might be a personal disadvantage, I suppose, in the manner of perhaps an injury or a learning difficulty, or some other limitation in engaging with the system and knowing that one has the ability to appeal and say “Sir/Ma’am, I didn’t do this thing of which I’ve been convicted and I’d like to have a crack at overturning it.”

Society shouldn’t rely on the champions, as Minister Little has called them, or white knights, as we might also refer to them—using somewhat archaic language—and so it is that we should take seriously the lack of access to justice, but all of those obstacles are not insurmountable by other means, and, again, it seems as though the Government has preferred this shiny new object that is this new commission, rather than considering means of publicising the availability of different kinds of recourse, or perhaps reforming the court structures themselves to enable a faster and less expensive process. Again, all these things appear not to have been considered, and we would have preferred that in the first instance.

As to the other key function of the commission as set out in the bill, we’ve dealt with the primary function as it’s known, but the secondary function—if we can call it that—is thematic inquiries, where the commission will be tasked to look into patterns and trends of miscarriages of justice. I would point out, again, on the theme, really, of emphasising that this is an exercise somewhat in redundancy that all branches of Government have at least some sort of role in that. Obviously, the judiciary is pretty constrained in its ability to be able to see patterns as a whole and recommend. Naturally, we want our courts to continue to focus on one case at the time, but the executive branch of Government, through the Law Commission, the Ministry of Justice, the legislative programme of the Government of the day, has avenues of identifying and enacting upon these trends that become perceptible from time to time.

We have the legislative branch of Government—this Parliament and its select committees—which, of course, can hold thematic inquiries as well, and it is worth bearing in mind as well, of course, the legal academy. That is to say that legal scholars who take an interest in these things—quite rightly—should and, I would say, certainly do already notice trends in these areas and can make very serious recommendations. So too the fourth estate, and I think it’s worth acknowledging the popular role—and I mean that in both senses of the word “popular”—of podcasts, particularly of true crime stories and unravellings of history, if we can sort of glibly call it that. So there are lots of opportunities already for uncovering miscarriages and possible miscarriages of justice, and I think that we should not discount those so readily as it appears that we’re in danger of doing.

Turning as my final category to the detail, we’ve talked about changes that we’ve been happy to accept, but a couple are worth noting. One is that, as the Minister has acknowledged, we have said in our National Party minority view within the select committee report that we’d like to have some explicit acknowledgment of the effect on victims of a crime such that if a person is in danger of being revictimised by having their case, essentially, reopened, albeit by the Criminal Cases Review Commission rather than a court proper, then there’ll be an element of them being retraumatised and potentially having to go through all that and relive that again, which is unfortunate, if it should be the case that the crime had in fact occurred, as has already been the case.

Darroch Ball: It’s a ridiculous statement to make.

CHRIS PENK: This is why we have an appeals process, Mr Ball, and this is why we have these structures and these avenues already.

Finally, it’s unfortunate the membership of the commission doesn’t guarantee that there’s a New Zealand - trained and experienced criminal lawyer, because that would be an absolute minimum requirement. For all these reasons, we are unable to support the bill at this stage and beyond. Thank you.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I have to admit, being a member of the Justice Committee, that considered this, that I did approach it with some scepticism. This has become something of an industry over the years. We would often say, “There’s the conviction; now wait for the book.” Usually before the book came, there would be several articles in a magazine, there’d be claims that it was a miscarriage of justice, and the matters that were going to be considered would generally be played out in the media, generally one-sided. Anyone who’s ever been involved in the justice system knows that it’s not a justice system that’s made up of sound bites. It’s not a justice system that is made up of, at the last minute, someone discovering—on the dock, the person who looked like a credible witness all of a sudden breaking down and confessing. That’s not the way the justice system works.

What it is is a painstaking building of evidence. Detectives are trained—I actually trained detectives myself—and what it is is reconstructing all the time what has happened at a certain time at a certain place, and ensuring that every new piece of evidence that is discovered is interrogated to the nth degree to see what has been learnt. So when a piece of evidence is discovered, a good detective will wait and see until that piece of evidence and everything known about it then will be interrogated to see how that fits into the reconstruction. That case will then go to a court where, once again, painstakingly, everything relating to that case will be played out.

However, that’s not the world in which we live in. The world in which we live is one where we’re brought up on a diet of one-hour crime shows where, often, at the start of the show there’ll be a horrific crime. There’ll be someone who will probably be a suspect and it’ll be quite obvious—“How are we going to fill in this hour?”—and somewhere about five minutes before the end, the real truth will emerge, because someone who was the Miss Marple special will discover that, in fact, it was this other person who did it.

So, with that scepticism, I did look at the legislation as it came through, but then I reconsidered, because actually what’s happened is that we do, de facto, have a criminal cases review commission. It’s just North and South, it’s just Metro magazine, and it’s just, now, podcasts on television. So what that has necessitated is a forum where those cases, I have to say, normally are high-profile. Almost invariably, they are murders and, almost invariably, the offender is a male European. That seems to be the case.

I’m certainly not standing here saying I don’t believe there are people in prison that shouldn’t be there, or people that are innocent. They tend to be much further down the food chain of offending. They are probably from a minority race and are probably there because they have confessed because the gang or someone standing over them has told them to confess. So the evidence that the court has used to convict them has been evidence that the court has had to take into account because it was before them. That’s more likely. But those are not the cases that tend to attract the popular cases—they tend not to be the cases that in the past that have attracted the money, if you like, the journalists, and various others.

So for that very reason, I have come to the conclusion that this is actually quite a good idea to have this Criminal Cases Review Commission, simply to have a forum where the doubts that have been tested, usually, often beyond the appeals system, beyond the court system itself—with the net effect that the public of New Zealand lose faith in the justice system. That is the real threat here in this current environment—that the public of New Zealand lose the faith because of the inability, particularly in the modern media, to see the whole case and to see everything from start to finish. The sound bite world, the five-minute sounding of the changing headlines, is the reality of the modern world. Because of that, the real threat is that New Zealanders will lose faith in their justice system.

Now, there have been some very high-profile cases, particularly overseas, from jurisdictions where, I have to say, the investigators in the jurisdictions are not as professional as they are in our part of the world, where their expectations are not—and there have been some quite horrific cases in New Zealand. There have been cases that have been shown—I mention the Teina Pora case, a case which, I have to say, at some risk to my last position, I called an inquiry into, such was my disquiet at the conviction of Mr Pora, and I think it’s great to see. It’s a shame that it took so long for Mr Pora’s case to come. Some of those attributes that I mentioned before that prevent it becoming a very popular case were perhaps not present, but they were, so, certainly, things have happened in New Zealand. But I think we have a far more professional investigation and a far more professional justice system in New Zealand. However, saying that, as I’ve said before, there are books written and there are articles written, so there is a need to ensure that New Zealanders are able to have the faith they need.

I turn then to actually what it is that the commissioner will be considering: the functions of this commission that may ensure that we actually are able to have that faith in the justice system of New Zealand. It’s also important to remember that this does not replace the royal prerogative of mercy; it is actually more complementary to it.

Any eligible person can apply to the commission. The commission will be made up—and I see that the previous speaker talked about the need to make sure we have lawyers. Yes, it’s good to have someone with a legal background, but it’s also very important to have people on these commissions too that know how to do an investigation. In my experience, being a lawyer does not train you in how to do an investigation. Investigation, as I say, is a painstaking piece of work, where you start with one starting place—whether that be a body, or whether it be a crime committed—and you work up and reproduce that. It’s important that people understand the starting point.

Where there have been poor investigations—and I have seen them—it’s often where some of those basic rules of investigation have actually been ignored or overlooked, or someone has tried to take a short cut. So it’s very important, and it’s good to see at the moment the police have changed a lot about what they do. What they do is they bring a senior police officer in at some stage of what we call a whodunit inquiry, where it looks like the investigation is going to go on for some time, to make sure it is overseen and to make sure that the blinkers haven’t gone on and that the inquiry hasn’t gone down a bad path, a wrong path, and that’s important. But, again, I’d certainly believe that when we do get the inevitable cases and they become popularised, where they’ll have a very highly articulate, probably popular, and probably well-off champion who will bring these things to the fore, then it is important that we do have that somewhere that we can sort these things out.

I think, looking through, again, what is going to important for this review commission is that they don’t just sit there and read the books and they don’t sit there and read the newspaper articles, but they actually are forced to go and sit down and look at how the conviction was arrived at and they ask the question: how did that person become the suspect in the first place? They ask these sorts of questions, and it should never be—and I’m satisfied, when I look through the criteria here—a way of satisfying a demanding public who have been placed into a frenzy, as they can do over some of these cases, on the basis of the small bits that they are exposed to, the small bits that they read, and the small bits that, inevitably, happen in those five-minute headlines.

So then, going back to the bill, the functions are that, ultimately, “The Minister of Justice may ask the Commission to provide an opinion on any matter arising out of relation”—I’m also interested that this commission is actually going to have some considerable powers. It can decide to take no action. It can also compel people to actually come and give evidence before it. It has general powers of investigation, it may require a person to provide information, in Part 2, Subpart 6, clause 32, and it may require a person to give evidence on oath or affirmation. That is actually a power that will bring to light information that often the courts will not have had available to them. It has the potential to bring to light information that the investigators may not have had to them, because neither of those institutions will have actually had the ability to force anyone to give that same sort of evidence.

So, actually, properly done, this could actually ensure—particularly given that these cases are more likely to happen some time afterwards—people’s positions change, relationships change, and people’s preparedness to actually give evidence may change, as well.

There’s a prohibition on the commission members and staff disclosing information unless authorised, as well. So, in that case, it also means that the information that comes can actually not be made public, which, again, will encourage people who will not be keen on the fact they’ve given evidence to be known publicly—to actually give that sort of anonymity—which will, again, improve the protection.

So, while this must always be complementary and it cannot be an alternative, I commend it.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Kia ora e Te Mana Whakawā. Tēnā koutou e Te Whare. The Justice Committee is one of the busier select committees, and we often operate in a very collegial way. We sometimes have some colourful moments. I feel that every time I’ve taken a call on a justice measure in the last three months, I’ve begun with the same thing, which is to say that I wasn’t on the committee at the time that the committee actually dealt with this bill and heard from submitters, and, sadly, that remains the case today.

I’ve also acknowledged on previous occasions the previous chair, Raymond Huo, who was, I think, regarded as a very fair chairman. He’s no longer with us, but he will no doubt be taking a call later, and he’ll be able to tell us what I missed as far as the submissions go.

I joined the committee after my appointment as shadow Attorney-General at the time that the committee was deliberating on the bill, so I was part of the discussion and managed to pick up a little bit about what had gone on. I’d like to pick up on the contribution of my very scholarly and erudite colleague Chris Penk, the National Party spokesperson for courts—who’s given a very good outline, I think, of some of the key principles of the bill—not only to acknowledge his work but also our colleagues the Hon Mark Mitchell, our justice spokesperson, and the Hon Nick Smith, who makes many colourful contributions to the work of our Justice Committee.

I point out that although this is a bill that the National Party isn’t supporting, I actually think that it is something that we have had a very sensible and intelligent exchange on. I was encouraged to hear that the Minister, in his second reading speech earlier tonight, described all of the amendments that the committee has put forward as being very sensible. I’m not sure if he went as far as saying that meant that he will be introducing Supplementary Order Papers during the committee stage to implement those, but if he does so, I believe that this is a bill that probably would be greatly improved. So I do want to commend the committee for the work that they have done.

Of course, as had been indicated, the point of the commission is to create an independent body that will review convictions and sentences where there is a suspected miscarriage of justice. People listening to this debate might think, “Well, that sounds very fair and reasonable.”, but the problem with it—well, there’s several problems with it, but the main problem—is that to some extent it duplicates things that are already in existence and which, in many respects, probably have more of a professional underpinning to them.

It wouldn’t be a body that would determine guilt or innocence, but, nevertheless, we are fearful that it would be likely to open the floodgates, because, as Mr Greg O’Connor was saying before, quite often you get the conviction, and then immediately you get the article and the TV series and the film and all the rest of the things and several stages of appeal. Having this particular commission, we fear, will open the floodgates in a system that is already under considerable pressure. For that reason, I hope very much that the Minister will be looking very carefully at the reservations that the committee had at the time that we failed to agree.

If people are listening and wondering “Well, how did that come about?”, it’s simply the fact that there’s a 4:4 split on the committee: four Labour members; four National members. So unless there is a numerical agreement, if we’re split 4:4, we can’t agree on anything. That doesn’t mean, therefore that we’re dysfunctional; it simply means that—

Lawrence Yule: Ha, ha!

Hon TIM MACINDOE: —Mr Yule obviously thinks we are dysfunctional—the mathematics mean that we can neither go forward nor backwards. But, nevertheless, we were able to report back.

Let me just return to some of the things that we think are particularly important. We are very concerned that the low threshold for referral back to a court could easily put more pressure on court timeliness. It’s that old saying—and I’d better get it right, because I once mocked a former colleague who memorably said that “Justice delayed is justice not done”. I think what he meant was “Justice delayed is justice denied”. The point is that we already have a lot of pressure on our court system, and this, unfortunately, we think is going to exacerbate that problem.

We are also very concerned that two-thirds of the commissioners will not be required to be legally qualified, making untrained and unaccountable commissioners extremely powerful in this aspect of the execution of justice, and the remaining one-third of the commissioners will not necessarily be required to have any experience in the criminal justice system. So, potentially, you could have people reviewing cases that are of high public interest in the criminal field, where few, if any, of them have any knowledge at all of the way the criminal justice system operates.

We believe that the status quo—which, effectively, means where the Governor-General, on advice from the Minister of Justice, determines that there’s a reasonable prospect that the court would uphold an appeal—is the appropriate and clearer way of dealing with it. So, effectively, we are saying stick with the status quo.

We are also concerned about the cost. This will be an incredibly expensive commission. There’s an estimated $2.3 million just to establish it and another nearly $4 million anticipated per year in operating expenditure.

Let me just turn in the next few minutes to a few more of our particular concerns. As the Minister noted—and I was pleased that he did—when he was speaking, one of the concerns that National members have is that there is a lack of consideration given in this particular bill to the rights of victims. Victims are frequently traumatised by their experience of passing through the criminal justice system. After all, they didn’t choose to be victims and many of them have suffered horrifically, and it’s not just the victims; it’s their family who suffer with them and sometimes suffer great loss. The potential for this commission to retraumatise them and open them up again yet to further distress is very real. We don’t feel that the bill makes any acknowledgment of the fact that adding appeal rights to convicted criminals does come at a cost to the victims, who may be forced, as I say, to undergo the ordeal of providing testimony on additional occasions. They have done what is required of them. They, obviously, hope that the courts will respond appropriately to their needs. We don’t want to see them having to suffer further distress.

We do think that the select committee’s consideration of the bill has been a useful exercise. As I say, there are a number of amendments—I haven’t really got time to cover them all—including to do with the commencement date, the desirability of a knowledge not only of Te Reo Māori but of Te Ao Māori and tikanga Māori so that the cultural aspects that often are thought to be lacking in the criminal justice system will be given greater emphasis—and I certainly applaud that—and then there’s a specific recommendation that clause 10(1) as it is written at the moment would allow the commission to appoint specialists to advise it in relation to scientific, technical, or other matters involving particular expertise. To avoid doubt, the committee is advising the amendment of clause 10(1) to specify cultural expertise. We’re also recommending, in relation to clause 11, which states the commission’s primary function, that investigation of a conviction or sentence should be an inherent element of the commission’s review function and that the bill should make this clear. We are therefore recommending the amendment of clause 11 to expressly recognise that the commission’s primary function would include investigation.

I have probably incurred the wrath of my whip, who told me not to speak for this long. So maybe in the committee stage I’ll have a chance to return to some of these matters, but it is a significant measure. I’m sure that some other members to follow will comment on some of the other amendments. While we are not supporting the bill, I respect the contribution that the Minister made before. I respect the work that all members of the committee have made on this bill. Let’s hope that it will be amended to become something a little bit better than it is at the moment.

DARROCH BALL (NZ First): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this, the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. One of the main reasons why we’re supporting it is because it’s part of the coalition agreement that we had with our coalition partners, the Labour Party. I’d just like to thank the Minister of Justice for bringing it forward. In fact, I think it was introduced to this House within the first year of the coalition, and I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for their hard work moving through it as well.

Before I get into the details of the bill, I’d just like to comment on the two speeches so far from the National Party. I tried my hardest to understand what they were saying and what their argument was, but, unfortunately, they didn’t talk to each other, because they had two different types of argument. The first thing that I heard that Mr Macindoe said was “We should stick with the status quo.” That’s what he said: “We should stick with the status quo.” But when I look back at my notes about what Mr Penk said, he said “We should be proactive about this instead of being reactive and amend the current legislation.”, instead of bringing in an independent commission.

So would we stick with the status quo, or would we do what Mr Penk said and make some amendments to the current legislation? That doesn’t make sense to me. That doesn’t make sense. That’s not coherent. That’s not a coherent argument, but, you see, the thing is that the very fundamental basis of this legislation is ensuring that we’ve got a robust justice system. So I’m not even sure why the National Party isn’t voting for it—well, I do know why they’re not voting for it. It’s only because it’s a Government bill and because, most importantly, it’s part of the coalition agreement with the Labour Party and New Zealand First—that’s why they’re doing it. I’m looking forward to the half-dozen other different arguments that the National Party’s going to stand up and try and give.

The other thing that is most important is that they harp on all the time about protecting the victims of crime, etc. The very fundamental issue with this is that there are victims of miscarriages of justice, and this is what this bill is trying to deal with in the first place. Because of the lack of access to the judicial system, the current status quo has caused so many problems, especially under that previous Government. One of the main reasons why it’s in the coalition agreement with the Labour Party of 2017 is because of the previous Government’s nine years of inaction and all of the high-profile cases of miscarriages of justice. But what does the National Party want to do? Status quo—don’t do anything. That’s the option that they’re giving the country at the moment.

Let’s put in an independent commission that, by the way—as has been mentioned by every speaker on this side of the House so far—is actually already occurring overseas. It is actually already occurring overseas. The types of independent commissions that we see in the UK and we see in the likes of Norway all, by the way, have good results and have positive results, and I’m sure that this was brought up and broached in the Justice Committee, but I wasn’t there, unfortunately. But the members of the National Party who are on that select committee would have known this.

What they also would have known is that this concept and the legislation that’s been brought before the House and introduced within the first year didn’t just come down in the previous shower. There was targeted consultation with investigative bodies before it got to the House, like the Independent Police Conduct Authority, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and all of the comments were positive in nature and supportive of this kind of independent commission. But I’d like to know which submitters they’re using and what evidence they’re using to stand up and not support this bill.

I’d just like to go into the bill in regards to the main reasons behind why New Zealand First is supporting this bill and why we introduced it within the first year. Actually, both sides of the House during the first reading identified the high-profile cases that we were dealing with at that time and the gross miscarriages of justice that they had been through. Unfortunately—and the Minister said it as well in his contribution in this reading—the fact was that a lot of those people were lucky, in fact. They were just lucky to have some high-profile people in the community—the champions in the community—to help them in a sort of ad hoc nature. Most importantly, also, they had the funding to be able to do it. If that’s what it comes down to in this country to ensure that those who have suffered gross miscarriages of justice actually get to see justice, then there’s something terribly wrong, and if Mr Macindoe wants to stand up and say let’s just stick with the status quo, I think he needs to take another re-evaluation of why they’re not supporting this bill.

Just very quickly, a few main things that this bill does which we are in support of are dealing with the issues of not only what I’ve just mentioned, of being lucky about having champions of the community to help them, but, actually, the timeliness, the quality, and the fairness of the current system for investigating suspected miscarriages of justice. So if this legislation doesn’t go through and if the members on that side of the House want to stick with the status quo or with just amending what they’ve got, then that won’t get over the massive hurdles of the timeliness, the quality, the fairness, and the independence of the current system. That just won’t occur, and that’s one of the major points—it is just making that this is an independent commission.

This model will also ensure that the framework, like I said, is independent from the Ministers and the courts. It’s already been through significant consultation with other countries that have the criminal case reviews just like this. This is not a shallow, sort of moralistic point of view or principled point of view; this is actually researched and it’s got the evidence and it’s got the backing of overseas jurisdictions that it works, and it is needed. But, most importantly, it will substantially improve our system for responding to those miscarriages of justice and it will take away from the burden of applicants who require assistance for their voices to be heard, and that’s the major point of this.

Again, I’d just like to thank the Minister for bringing it through as part of the coalition agreement between New Zealand First and the Labour Party. I’d like to thank the Justice Committee for their hard work on the bill, although their report couldn’t come with a recommendation to support it, but they had some recommendations that we’ll go through in great detail in the committee of the whole House stage. I’d like to hear some arguments from the National Party that actually make some sort of sense that’s based not only on fact and evidence but on what was submitted at the actual select committee, and hear why they’re not going to listen to the evidence from overseas, where it does work—why they are happy with the status quo, like Mr Macindoe said.

At this stage, we will be supporting this through to the next stage and we commend it to the House. Thank you.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to start by clarifying that National is opposing this bill, and, to the previous speaker, Darroch Ball, I would like to touch upon one point which I feel is most relevant, from my viewpoint. It is that this bill is ignoring the rights of the victims.

The victims are not at all being considered in this bill. They don’t have a right to appeal and they don’t have a right to object. So that is one of the main points on which I feel this bill is lacking, and we should be considering that at the committee stage. If the Minister of Justice can consider it, that would be really good.

The second thing is that as my friend the Hon Tim Macindoe, as well as Chris Penk, mentioned, one-third of the commissioners will be having a legal background and two-thirds won’t have any legal background. That is another point where there will be a challenge as to how that is going to resolve some of the really complex cases which we have in our judicial system.

Those are two things that come to my mind that should be addressed to improve this bill. I think everyone in this House is contributing to provide that the best laws are formed, so that the people get the benefit of them. From my point of view, these two issues, which are very important, need to be addressed, and I won’t be supporting this bill.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s with great pleasure that I rise to speak in support of this bill. I congratulate the Minister of Justice for bringing it to the House, and just want to stop and notice that New Zealand is a nation who’s proud of our history of upholding the rule of law and the right to fair trial, and that we are one of the few nations, actually, in the world who has also adopted and applies the right to appeal as one of our fundamental rights, recognised in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act under fair process rights and access to justice rights. The right to appeal is fundamentally important because, as anyone who’s worked in the criminal justice system knows, there are so many factors that can go to the entry of a wrongful conviction, and the repercussions are so serious for those who are wrongfully convicted, especially of serious crimes.

This bill proposes to establish an independent body to review criminal convictions and sentences and decide whether to refer them to an appeal court. The reason that’s something to be celebrated is—and I know this from the ground—that the sector has been calling for this for years and years. I had the privilege of being elected on to the executive committee of the New Zealand Criminal Bar Association for four years, and that body, which is made up of prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges, has found for years that we needed something more because our court system was increasingly falling short to deliver justice to everybody. In part, that’s because the courts are overworked, and in part that was because of the legal aid cuts and the restructure introduced by the National Government, that the New Zealand Court of Appeal found to be unlawful. Those members continued to apply this unlawful legal aid system under their watch, and now they stand up and say that perhaps we could reform it to make sure that miscarriages of justice don’t happen. Well, the sector knows that it was they who ruined the legal aid system, and now it is falling short.

Appeals are complex matters. A miscarriage of justice isn’t just that one jury could have could have found the person guilty or not guilty and another could have decided differently. It’s not just that the facts could have gone either way. It’s that something went so wrong either in the application of the law during a trial or in that there was no evidence at all to support one of the elements of the crime charged. So it needs senior lawyers and it needs resource. Somebody has to go through the entire trial transcripts. They have to look at all the decisions of trial judges and make sure that they were all right, and that we as a system and a society are not falling short.

So this commission puts together a bunch of experts, and they, in fact, take pressure off the courts. We make sure that everybody, whether they’re on legal aid or they have access to money, has the same access to the expertise that will tell them if a miscarriage of justice has happened in their case. That takes pressure off the courts, it takes pressure off the legal aid system, and it equalises appellants. It takes pressure off victims, and I think there’s a misunderstanding on that side of the House. Victims are not involved in this process, nor are the courts. This is an expert body that’s going to look at and analyse whether or not something went wrong so that a court then has to look at it. It will actually cut out superfluous appeals, because we know people are sometimes litigious, and so sometimes appeals are brought without real great cause. So it will cut down on those things.

Those of us in the Criminal Bar Association, who did endlessly call for some intervention there, knew that the courts weren’t well-equipped to deal with all of the appeals because they were underfunded and because we didn’t have enough judges. We don’t have enough legal aid lawyers that are at the level that they can take on these cases, especially with the cost-cutting in the unlawful legal aid policy that was adopted by the National Government.

I do actually want to stop and acknowledge past presidents and the present president of the Criminal Bar Association—Noel Sainsbury and our past president, Tony Bouchier, who fought with our committee against those legal aid cuts. I want to acknowledge the Court of Appeal for saying that they were unlawful, and that is what’s brought us to this place now. It’s brought us to a place where this Government, on this side of the House, is fighting for justice and is willing to invest in it. We’re taking pressure off the courts, we’re taking pressure off the legal aid system, and we’re making sure that everybody, whether they have money or not, has an equal access to their fundamental right of appeal.

We know that we don’t want to be a society where people are wrongfully imprisoned or convicted or sentenced to unduly lengthy sentences without the right to raise legal issues or factual mischaracterisations that have led to wrongful conviction. We know that in a democratic society, those rights exist and they are funded by the Government, and not defunded to the point that the courts have to intervene and call Government policy unlawful.

One of the things that I do also want to celebrate which comes under the mandate of the commission is that they will be able to initiate their own inquiries and issue reports on patterns that they see that are causing miscarriages of justice. So whether that’s patterns in practice by the courts, whether that’s misapplication of the law that’s happening repeatedly, we’ll be able to find that out, because there will be a consistent body of experts sitting and looking at appeals as they decide whether or not they should go forward. We’ll have this wealth of information to draw upon.

I was quite surprised, I must say, that a member on the opposite side—a lawyer—would actually say that the Government should, instead, rely on podcasts and popular culture to notice patterns in miscarriages of justice because, you know, of course, it’s only sensational cases we need to worry about, right? No—miscarriages of justice do happen in cases that the public may not need to hear about on podcasts. We still need to know that our justice system is working well and that there are not consistent errors being made that are leading to miscarriages of justice. So that is exciting.

Another change that’s come through is the inclusion of the recommendation from the committee that there be a tikanga Māori specialisation on the commission. We know that that’s important because our system of justice does disproportionately target Māori, and we know that we need to do something at every level, in this Government, and we’re committed to doing that. Whether that’s in terms of preventing crime, whether it’s in terms of police biases, or whether it’s in terms of the way that the law and the courts are applied, that’s actually part of our obligation as a Government—to honour and apply the Treaty of Waitangi.

So I do welcome the committee’s work, the Minister’s work, and a bill that’s come to the House that’s actually come about as a result of huge push over the years from the sector and that will enhance New Zealand’s ability to uphold the rule of law and a fair system of justice.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): One of the greatest challenges that a Parliament has, that parliaments from the earliest of times have grappled with, is how do we find and establish a system of criminal justice in which the guilty are appropriately punished and held to account, while in the same way ensuring that those that are innocent are not used and abused by the power of the State? It’s not an easy area, there will never be a perfect system, and what we have with the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is the latest attempt to try and provide some other mechanism for dealing with those exceptional cases where there is concern that there has been a miscarriage of justice.

The first point that National would want to make is that before we start creating ad hoc processes, the primary focus must be on making our existing criminal justice system work by making sure that the evidential rules, the systems by which trials are heard in the High Court, and appeals in the Court of Appeal and, ultimately, through the Supreme Court support a justice system that New Zealanders can have confidence in. The difficulty I have with this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is it seems to establish a system which will be wide open and an extra tier to our justice system, when it is my view that a more flexible response is more likely to be able to achieve the improvements we want in our justice system. There have been a number of occasions where Governments of different political persuasions have made a decision to have a royal commission of inquiry or another review of a case that is able to be quite specific to the concerns that exist around a particular case, rather than what is proposed with this bill with a permanent criminal cases review commission. I do ask the question: what is the difference between a criminal cases review commission as compared with establishing a further round of appeals?

I’m also worried that in all the discussion I hear from the Green Party and from Labour members is a focus on the offender. We need to be upfront as a Parliament. When you establish an additional process of appeal the uncertainty, the pain, and the additional trauma that you cause for those that are victims, what is lacking in this bill is an appreciation of the victims’ perspective in respect of trying to get that balance right in this Parliament of holding those that are accountable while ensuring also that the innocent are not wrongly convicted.

So we’ve made our views plain that we are doubters about the merits of this proposal. We think it’s got serious flaws. We think the historical approach where the Cabinet has been able to exercise the royal prerogative of mercy in exceptional cases has actually worked quite effectively, and—more importantly—if we actually are to refine and to improve our criminal justice system, the flexibility that goes with the discretion of creating inquiries or even royal commissions of inquiries is a better way forward than creating the new bureaucracy that is proposed with this bill. We don’t support it. We don’t think it, ultimately, will improve our justice system, and we also believe it does not get that balance that National would want to see between protecting the rights of victims while ensuring that this country does not have innocent people being convicted and held in prison.

RAYMOND HUO (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call to support this bill. At the bill’s second reading it’s very important for us to acknowledge and thank our advisers, officials, and, more importantly, submitters. The Justice Committee received 32 submissions and, after careful consideration and deliberation, made a number of recommendations. Those recommendations included, for instance, the composition of the commission, the consideration of tikanga Māori, and also recommendations with regard to the information-gathering provision and the court’s role in that regard. I listened very carefully to the contributions of the members, especially the National members. I do acknowledge the Hon Tim Macindoe and also Christopher Penk and Dr Nick Smith, and I also acknowledge the National Party’s minority view.

In the spirit of avoiding repetition, and after specifically reflecting on the points and issues addressed in National members’ contributions, I shall refrain from repeating the same points. Instead, I’d like to focus on one particular submission which I believe will address all the concerns and answer all the questions asked by the National members. Hopefully, this would meet with the Speaker’s approval. I’d like to read out the two most important paragraphs from that particular submission:

“In 2003, when a Member of Parliament myself, Katherine Rich and I organised a petition which urged the establishment of a Royal Commission to re-examine the conviction … of Peter Ellis … This petition attracted a very large number of signatures, including those of at least one person from every party in Parliament (including Winston Peters, Clem Simich, Judith Collins, Rodney Hide and David Parker), 11 law professors, 11 Queens Counsel, two former Prime Ministers (David Lange and Mike Moore), and many others (including Christopher Finlayson, …). And it attracted that strong support because of a very widespread view in the community that a serious injustice had been done.

“The Select Committee rejected the idea of a Royal Commission to consider the Peter Ellis case, but recommended instead the creation of a Criminal Cases Review Commission, modeled on the UK commission of the same name. That was in 2003, and nothing was done to create such a commission in the years since until the current Bill. I therefore strongly commend the Government for moving to create such a commission now.”

That submission was only a half A4 page long—succinct, but very powerful. That submission was from the former National Party leader Dr Don Brash. I thank Dr Brash for his passion, for his conviction, and for his views. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

LAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): When making decisions in this House and speaking to legislation, we need to be aware that what this Parliament does and how things are decided don’t give a perfect solution, and while this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill is an attempt to supposedly make a system easier to right some wrongs, there is actually no guarantee that it’ll be any better than the current system. The current system doesn’t always get it right, but there are mechanisms for appeal. I accept they are expensive and difficult to get to sometimes, but, generally, various Governments and various parties over the years have made the right call.

The National Party is opposed to this on the basis that the commission provides a mechanism for addressing miscarriages, and, in our view, it will simply open the floodgates for a whole lot of cases to go to court and through this commission process. It can refer cases back to the appeal court, but it does not determine guilt or innocence. The commission, in our view, will open the floodgates, and there is actually a relatively low threshold to take it back to the court. The commission’s decisions cannot be appealed, because to include a right of appeal would risk further complicating the constitutional relationships between the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the courts.

In our view, while this may appear to be a genuine attempt to help miscarriages of justice, this House is charged with making balanced decisions on behalf of all New Zealanders. It’s my conjecture that just as many miscarriages will be done under this proposal, but in a different way than they currently exist, and for that reason, I urge this House not to support this bill.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. It’s interesting just to quickly recap on some of the arguments tonight that I’ve been quite puzzled with as to why the National Party are not supporting this bill.

I’ve taken a few notes while I’ve been listening. One is that this would establish a new bureaucracy. Another argument has been that instead of having a criminal cases review authority, we should just simply have another layer of appeal or create another court. We’ve heard that there’s been concerns that this would potentially revictimise victims of crime. We’ve also heard from the members opposite that this would be too expensive—it would simply cost too much. Chris Penk thought that we should change maybe just a few things, Tim Macindoe favoured the status quo, and now we’ve just heard that this will open the floodgates.

Well, that one clear deduction that can be made from that is that the National Party simply didn’t have any key lines as to why they were opposing this bill. They just don’t like it, and that’s the problem. We over this side of the House are quite united as to why this forms a very good piece of legislation and why New Zealand, in fact, will be benefited quite substantially from a bill that will enhance justice processes and give New Zealand citizens better-quality justice.

So the policy content behind establishing the commission is to enhance the independence, the timeliness, the quality, and the fairness of investigations into miscarriages of justice. The commission is expected to achieve this objective because, amongst other things, as an independent Crown entity, the commission will be independent of Government policy and also ministerial decision-making, and that gives an added layer and a better sense of justice in New Zealand.

Dedicated resourcing and additional powers to access information will be likely to make it more efficient than the current process, so that speaks to the argument also of simply creating another layer of appeal. The specialist skill that will be available of the commissioners and the commission’s staff will ensure that investigations are of high quality and, also, less burden is being placed on the applicant, so that in itself will be of benefit for those going through the process. It is designed to be more accessible and more transparent than the current system—particularly for Māori and Pasifika communities—and that’s a point that’s been picked up by some of the changes that we saw go through from the select committee process.

The select committee was a really interesting time to hear from different submitters, and we received 32 different submissions from individuals and from organisations. Now, out of that pile, eight of those didn’t give a particular view, but I would like to say that none of them—none of those submissions—outright opposed or said that this new commission should not be set up. All submitters expressed a view in support of the intent of the bill and many submitters suggested some clarifications in terms of how things could be improved, but I think it’s a very important point to note that all those that we heard thought that the principle and the concept of doing this was a valid one and one that would enhance justice processes within New Zealand.

We heard changes that were recommended in terms of the size and the composition of the commission, and also the ability of whether the commission should be able to consider historical cases where the person convicted and sentenced is now deceased. We also heard whether the commission should be able to refer sentences back to the courts or not, and whether the information-gathering powers in the bill achieved the right balance between the need for secure information and sensitivity—including privileged and confidential information—and individual rights.

What the Justice Committee did in addition to the submissions that it received was that we also took the time to write back to the New Zealand Human Rights Commission to try and understand, and we asked for some further information. One of the areas that the committee particularly wanted additional information on, and received it, was also to know how often were there issues of structural discrimination, institutional bias, and overrepresentation of vulnerable communities in the criminal justice system. That was a particular area that the committee went back to the Human Rights Commission and received additional information on. Can I just say thank you to the Human Rights Commission, because they were so engaging, so willing, and so forthright and able to come and give additional information in quite a short period of time in order to allow the committee to get its work done.

It has been a really interesting process to be part of, and the concerns that have been raised in the past—and, let’s be frank, there have been some high-profile cases in New Zealand where there have been some really significant concerns regarding the miscarriage of justice. Instead of just maintaining the status quo, as some of those members opposite would have us do, this Government is taking the initiative to actually take action and to put into place a far more rigorous and a clearer way for people to have that right to justice, should they request that.

Concerns have been raised in the past about the timeliness, the quality, the fairness, and the independence of the current system for investigating suspected miscarriages of justice, and this bill replaces the royal prerogative of mercy by establishing the Criminal Cases Review Commission as an independent Crown entity to review convictions and sentences where there is that concern. By having those in place, the commission will substantially improve New Zealand’s system for responding to miscarriages of justice. We’ve seen times in the past where we’ve had to have additional inquiries, we’ve had ministerial involvement, there’s been speculation in the media, and there’s been ongoing issues. But by having a purpose-built commission set up to take this role, it gives certainty, gives transparency, and gives—I think—greater rigour to New Zealand’s justice system.

This is a great idea. I’m proud that this is a part of our coalition agreement with our partners, New Zealand First. It forms a really important part of strengthening our justice system in giving victims and offenders a strong sense of confidence that when people come before our courts and before our judicial system, it will be done with the confidence that it operates fairly. Thank you.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise in opposition to the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill at its second reading. I didn’t sit on the Justice Committee, but I am someone who does have a view on these matters, and my view is that this is the type of bill which seems to be where a Minister is scratching around for something to do, and he came across this great idea and decided to do this bill.

The bill establishes yet another Crown working group—no, sorry. It’s an agency which will cost an enormous amount of money and will, essentially, replace an already existing system which is already there with significant checks and balances. Need I say more? No, I don’t.

I oppose this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that was a display of ignorance, if anything. Having said that, there’s a—

Simeon Brown: Help us out. Give us some help.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: No, I’m really disappointed, Mr Brown, that you took no time, gave us no reasons, and couldn’t even tell us what it was. It’s a commission. It’s not an agency, it’s not a working group; it’s an independent Crown entity called a commission. So if you’re going to stand on your feet, at least make it accurate, Mr Brown.

Now, the National Party minority view does make a couple of points that I want to touch on: one which I find absolutely flabbergasting, and the other one has a germ of truth in it. The first is that the National Party says that they’d like to see the court system sort of fixed up a bit to address this problem. Now, all that shows to me is that there is a real lack of understanding on the part of the National Party about both the court system and the criminal defendants who find themselves in it.

The criminal justice system is incredibly complex and incredibly expensive, and if you are a person who is wrongfully convicted, languishing in prison, the idea that we can tweak the appeals system in some way to make it workable just beggars belief. I want to make the point that people who are wrongfully convicted are not all high-profile people. It’s not all the Sounds murders and David Bain and these glamorous books and articles. There are people in there who no one cares about, who really have no one fighting in their corner. If they haven’t got some gory murder or some salacious sex offence, they simply get left there, no matter how meritorious their appeal is. The fact of the matter is that our criminal justice system, right from the moment the 111 call is made through to the final appeal, has flaws. It has weaknesses. It has gaps. We’ve heard of the terrible cellmate confession problems that have existed.

Only two weeks ago, I was at a one-day conference on wrongful convictions, and one of the points that was made there was that whilst media can have a good part to play sometimes, the pressure that it puts our police under in terms of coming up with a defendant is intense. When they get to day three and there’s a dead young tourist, the public are baying for an offender, and the police feel that pressure. It may be bad policing, but we have to recognise that these flaws exist, and so the suggestion that this is just a problem with our court system is wrong.

What this does is this is a board of inquiry. It is something which has inquisitorial powers, and that is fundamentally different from a court process, which is adversarial and which is procedurally rigorous. So the benefit of this commission—the benefit which the Labour Party and its coalition partners recognise—is that it is active. It can actually inquire and investigate, and when something isn’t right, it can ask another question and another question. It can commission experts, and so on and so forth.

But the one germ of useful information in the minority view is something which I think bears noting and that is that the rights of victims do need to be taken into account, and, earlier on, Mr Huo referred to the Ellis case. The fact of the matter is that in many of these instances, wrongful conviction or not, there are still people who are victims. They have been deeply wronged, and we need to be very cautious because an appeal or a retrial does traverse the evidence again and often requires evidence to be given again, and that is very, very difficult indeed. Having said that, this commission is by far and away the better way to address that, by an inquiry which asks the first question of whether the threshold of the interests of justice is crossed or not, rather than having a full-blown appeal, which will hit the media headlines. So this is by far the better, more sensitive approach than simply running an appeal all over again.

So, look, this is an excellent piece of legislation. As was noted, it’s been wanted for some time. We’re following other well-established jurisdictions in doing it. It will be a robust and rigorous process, but, more importantly, it will be a genuine avenue for redress and justice for those who we know are indeed wrongfully convicted. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 63

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

Noes 57

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

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill (No 2)

In Committee

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): I seek the leave of the committee for all provisions in this bill, the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill (No 2), to be heard as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave has been sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be not.

Parts 1 to 14, Schedules 1 to 5, and clauses 1 and 2

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): Thank you, Mr Chairman. Let me just make some opening remarks to kick off this committee stage for this, the first of the three regulatory systems amendment No. 2 bills.

The bill that we’re debating now makes amendments to 14 different Acts. Among these are the Companies Act 1993, the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act 2003, the Insolvency Act 2006, and the Trade Marks Act 2002. Of the 14 Acts in this bill, 13 fall within the commerce and consumer affairs portfolio, and the Continental Shelf Act 1964 falls within the energy and resources portfolio.

Let me just briefly mention two of the more significant amendments in this bill. The first is an extension to the offences listed in the Companies Act, which automatically prohibit a person from directing or managing a company for five years. The bill seeks to add two additional types of offence to this list—namely, evasions or similar offences under section 143A and 143B of the Tax Administration Act 1994 for evasion and similar actions, along with aiding, abetting, inciting, or conspiring with another person to commit such offences as set out in section 148 of that Act.

The second amendment is to the Insolvency Act. Currently that Act prohibits an undischarged bankrupt from either directly or indirectly managing or controlling a business, being employed by a relative, or being employed by an entity such as a company or a trust that is owned or controlled by a relative. Now, the purpose of this provision is to prevent a bankrupt from having significant control over the finances of a business during their bankruptcy. However, an undischarged bankrupt who works for a relative with no remuneration is not considered as employed under the existing law and can therefore avoid these restrictions. What this bill does is that it seeks to extend the restrictions on employment to include working for a relative without remuneration or for an entity owned or controlled by a relative.

Now, if I may, let me just speak to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 388 that is on the Table for this bill. The purpose of the SOP is to address two sets of issues that are identified in Part 8 of the bill, which contains amendments to the Insolvency Act. The issues are technical in nature and need to be addressed before the bill is enacted.

The first issue relates to clauses 55 and 56 of the bill, along with a related provision in Schedule 3. These clauses deal with any creditor of a bankrupt person that submits a claim form after the deadline imposed by the Official Assignee. Submitting a claim form allows creditors to receive a share of any distributions from the bankrupt’s assets made by the assignee. Currently, the Insolvency Act does not allow late claim forms to be admitted. Clause 56 in the SOP changes this by allowing late claim forms to be admitted and late creditors to benefit from distributions. Clause 55 and 12 in Schedule 3 make a related change. It’s important to provide for the flexibility to deal with late claims, because distributions from a bankrupt’s assets are often made much later than the deadline for submitting claim forms, and without this provision, late creditors would not be able to receive distributions that they are otherwise entitled to.

However, clause 56, as it currently stands, is potentially inconsistent with fundamental principles of insolvency law. There’s a lack of clarity about how distributions should be made to late creditors where distributions have already been made to other creditors. For example, it’s unclear from the current provisions in the bill whether the Official Assignee would be required to claw back money paid out to other creditors in order to pay a late creditor. It’s also unclear how two or more late claimants would be paid when there are insufficient funds to cover both of their claims, and where one late creditor submits a claim earlier than another late creditor.

These issues have implications for principles of insolvency law, such as pari passu, whereby all creditors of a same class are entitled to equal distributions in proportion to the debts they are owed. It’s important that any amendments to provisions affecting how creditors are treated are carefully considered to identify any unintended consequences and to avoid inconsistencies with these fundamental principles. For that reason, the SOP removes clauses 55 and 56, along with clause 12 in Schedule 3, and this is necessary so that further work can be carried out to address the inconsistencies that I’ve mentioned, and also to identify and mitigate any other unintended consequences. Once these issues have been resolved, I intend to introduce revised provisions into a future bill.

The second issue which the SOP seeks to address is in clause 78. This clause clarifies the consequences of a debtor being discharged at the end of a debt repayment order. It provides, among other things, that the debtor is not discharged from any debts that they incurred through fraud. The SOP introduces an additional provision into clause 78, clarifying that related parties are not released from their debts or liabilities when a debtor is discharged at the end of a debt repayment order. Examples of related parties are business partners, guarantors, or persons jointly holding debts with the debtor. There are equivalent existing provisions in the Insolvency Act for debtors who have been released from other insolvency processes such as bankruptcy. The new provisions provide greater clarity and also ensure greater consistency with other insolvency processes.

This SOP addresses technical issues in the bill and it provides some small but useful improvements to ensure that the Insolvency Act remains fit for purpose.

ALASTAIR SCOTT (National—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you to the Minister Phil Twyford for explaining, in quite a lot of detail, Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 388. But regarding that SOP—and he almost explained it in the way that it is the Minister’s intention to include some new updates in a future bill—my question is, obviously: when will that be and what other things might be in that bill that that we haven’t discussed today or that was not discussed in the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee? But otherwise, it seemed to me like a bit of a typo and it was caught at a late stage and, therefore, we are in this process of creating another bill at a future date. So there are a couple of questions there.

As the Minister said, this covers a lot of different bills. A lot of it has been described as repairs and maintenance of existing legislation—and, you know, we’ve got to do that from time to time. And, of course, the Acts evolve through a number of bills that come through this place. And as the Minister says, 14 bills are affected in this at this point.

I also note that the select committee did delete clause 7, which seemed to me sensible—or almost redundant, in a way.

The other thing that I was going to comment on was that this doesn’t seem to me to be a primary piece of legislation, doesn’t seem to be a piece of legislation that needs to be done. It doesn’t really create a lot of new policy, in a way. So my third question is: why is this in front of the House now? Is there not more important legislation for this Government to look at and to participate in? So those are my three questions. Thank you, Madam Chair.

ANDREW FALLOON (National—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Chair. I thought I’d take a call tonight. I was hoping that members opposite would jump up and contribute to the debate. But we’re here tonight discussing three bills, but I will keep my comments just to the one that we are discussing at the moment, which is the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill (No 2).

As my colleague Alastair Scott just mentioned, this is essentially a tidy-up bill. It amends 14 Acts. The one I particularly want to touch on is some amendments that are made to the Companies Act 1993. There are two changes in particular there which I think are very sensible, and it relates to clarifying what the rules are in terms of disqualification criteria for directors, where the court has prohibited a discharged bankrupt from becoming a director. And that makes entire sense. I mean, what we don’t want is a situation where people can, I guess, sneak in through the back door and become involved in companies, having been judged by the courts as perhaps not being entitled to do so. So it is a sensible change.

As I say, there are about 14 Acts that this bill amends, but I think the changes to the Companies Act in particular are very sensible. I commend the Minister for Economic Development for bringing it to the House.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 388 in the name of Hon Phil Twyford be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Parts 1 to 14, Schedules 1 to 5, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2)

In Committee

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): I seek the leave of the committee that all provisions be taken as one question in the debate of the Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2).

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 to 3 and clauses 1 and 2

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): So just to make an introductory comment on this, the Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2), in this bill I want to pick up on the changes that relate to the Parental Leave and Employment Protection Act. This bill addresses an obvious gap between the intent of the parental leave scheme and the legislation, whereby spouses or partners are treated differently to other types of primary carers in a similar situation—for example, adoptive parents.

The situation may arise if the working spouse or partner becomes primarily responsible for the care of the newborn and the biological mother is ineligible for or hasn’t applied for parental leave payments. This situation could arise, for example, if the biological mother dies or has a disability following an accident, and in that case the spouse or partner currently would not be entitled to parental leave payments.

I want to share the Prime Minister’s concern for families in these situations, particularly as they’re likely to be in great need after losing the support of a parent. This small fix will have minimal impact on the regulatory system overall. It will offer important benefits for these families.

Partners and spouses in these situations will be able to access parental leave payments, if otherwise eligible, that contribute to their family’s income stability and the health of the young child, and enable them to maintain a connection to the workforce.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s an absolute pleasure to take yet another call on this Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2). I spoke at length, last week, to this bill—in fact, I think I took three calls in one week; so this is just a little bonus for me.

Hon Member: Hero of the Chamber, very good.

MARJA LUBECK: Yes. What else can I add to what the Minister Phil Twyford has said and what I was mentioning last week about this part of the legislation fixing an obvious gap and addressing an unfairness when it comes to paid parental leave?

I guess when it comes to us tidying this kind of legislation up, ensuring that we don’t have any unnecessary compliance costs and double-ups, but in particular, in this aspect, making sure that those who are entitled—or should be entitled, as was the intention of the law—to those parental leave payments are receiving those, is exactly what this legislation does. There’s very little else I can add to it, so I would just like to commend this bill. Thank you very much.

DAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): Madam Chair, it’s a pleasure to speak in the committee of the whole House for the Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2). I spoke on this bill in the first reading, so I won’t hold up the committee’s time by labouring the same points, but just to note on the changes that came back from the Social Services and Community Committee—I absolutely agree with those changes. It seems fair that the partner and spouse in these circumstances should be entitled to those. So I think the law as we’ve written it—or the bill that we’ve written here—fixes up the anomalies, and I think it’ll be great for businesses to just have that clarification. So it’s really good to have this bill before the committee of the whole House and I commend this bill to the committee.

Parts 1 to 3 and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill (No 2)

In Committee

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): I seek leave for all provisions in this bill to be taken as one question.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.

Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2

Hon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Economic Development): So just some brief introductory comments to this debate on this bill. The Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill (No 2) has two parts to it. Part 1 serves to simplify the role of the Community Housing Regulatory Authority and reduces the administrative burden on registered community housing providers. Part 2 amends the Retirement Villages Act 2003 to clarify that the higher maximum fine will apply for breaches of the Act where an operator or promoter of retirement village did not take all the practicable steps to ensure an advertisement was not misleading or deceptive or where an operator of a retirement village contravenes their obligations relating to the code of practice for operating a retirement village.

The code of practice sets out the rights and obligations of retirement village operators and residents, and it’s important that the operators understand the consequences of breaching the code and that the registrar has clarity when detecting such breaches and offences under the Act. Both of these offences are considered to be of a serious nature and are similar to the other offences that currently receive the higher maximum fine.

Let me just also note the Social Services and Community Committee recommended amending clause 7 of the bill to remove the reference to section 26 in section 79(3) of the Retirement Villages Act so that the higher of the two existing maximum fines would apply. And, yes, the committee considered that the offence of misleading advertising was serious and of a similar nature to other offences listed in section 79(2) and considered that the fines should be consistent.

Andrew Bayly: Madam.

Priyanca Radhakrishnan: Madam Chair.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very happy to let the other speaker take a chance if she wants, but anyway, thank you to the Minister for Economic Development for providing a bit of a background on the Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill (No 2). I think, as we’ve seen with the previous two bills that have been progressing over the last half an hour to an hour or so, these are about tidying up certain aspects. This one obviously has aspects related to housing, but maybe less than what people might otherwise construe.

The first thing is I think it’s worthwhile just having a look at what it’s actually about. Amended section 172, set out in clause 4, is an issue about dealing with the level of disclosure about what is required from retirement homes, and I see here that the specific clause states that it “does not require the authority to include on the register information about a person whose membership on a provider’s governing body ended before the provider became a registered community housing provider, but the authority has discretion to include that information.” So there’s a little bit of a nuance around the nature of some of the information that’s required.

The second aspect relates to the issue of misleading advertising, and the Minister certainly covered that. So I think it’s worthwhile just to recap that. At the moment, there are certain fines if retirement villages “inadvertently”—and I say that in quoted marks—are sometimes misleading or deceptive in the way that they advertise. What this seeks to do is tighten up those provisions to make sure that people are not subject to deceptive or misleading advertising.

Of course, we have a very large and growing retiree population in New Zealand. It’s vital that we support them and make sure that if they are moving into a retirement home, in fact, they do get what they pay for—and nothing more, but certainly nothing less. So what this does is it deals with this by saying that there’ll be a fine for a person of not exceeding $15,000 or $50,000 for a body corporate, or, in fact, $5,000 or $10,000 for a body corporate, depending on the discretion or misdemeanour or the level of misleading or deceptive advertising. This is all covered in section 79 of the Act.

What the Social Services and Community Committee recommended was amending clause 7 of the bill to remove the reference to section 26 in section 79(3) of the Act. This would mean that the higher maximum fines would apply where an operator or promoter did not take all practical steps to ensure an advertisement was not misleading or deceptive. Now, I don’t think anyone in this House is going to debate that that’s not a good thing. We all believe it is.

The other thing I just note is the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 395 has a slight change in the title: “replace ‘Housing Restructuring and Tenancy Matters Act 1992’ ”—

Alastair Scott: Well spotted.

ANDREW BAYLY: Thank you, Mr Scott. It’s amended to use the title of “Public and Community Housing Management Act 1992”.

So I think this is a good amendment—not terribly significant in terms of legislative drafting, but it is significant in terms of making sure that our older people in our communities are well protected and looked after, and on that basis, I think that it’s inevitable that we’re all going to commend it to the committee.

PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to make a short contribution in support of this bill, the Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill (No 2), and I just wanted to pick up where the previous speaker, Andrew Bayly, left off, actually, because that’s absolutely right. It does two things, this particular bill. On one hand, it makes things a little bit easier for community housing providers. And the second part of it makes things fairer for our senior citizens who could be a little bit vulnerable at that point in time to some of the contravening bits or contraventions—not even sure if that’s a word, but anyway—that this bill deals with.

So as has been mentioned, it tidies up bits and pieces. It’s an omnibus bill. It clarifies and updates statutory provisions in the Act. So what that does, actually, is to make the purpose of the Act clearer. It addresses some of the duplications in the areas and the gaps as legislation has been tweaked over time, and also between different pieces of legislation—just sort of reduces some of those duplications as well. That just means that this tidying up, in effect, keeps our regulatory system up to date and relevant. In terms of Part 1, reducing the administrative burden for community housing providers, it also removes unnecessary, well, red tape, in a sense, but also compliance costs that are related to what they’re currently having to go through with the current legislation.

I just wanted to touch on one point that the previous speaker made, which was some of the information that regulators have to collect at the moment, particularly in terms of information about current and former board members. There’s not a time frame for that, which means that they could be required, under current legislation, to go back decades to find information about those that were on the governance bodies of the villages, the board members who were involved over many decades. That’s actually not necessary for the purposes that we’re talking about today. So that’s one of the things that will be cut out to ease the administrative burden as well.

The other bit that I wanted to touch on was the fact that these might seem like very simple tweaks, but when we’re talking about a population that is ageing, that is growing, and that could be quite vulnerable, some of the offences that are laid out in Part 2, and the changes that are proposed in this particular bill to increase the penalties of some of those offences around misleading—and I’ll just read this bit: where a retirement village operator or promoter hasn’t taken the practicable steps to ensure that an advertisement isn’t misleading or deceptive. Actually, if that isn’t tweaked, the ramifications for people who could be caught up in that could be quite severe. So as the Minister pointed out as well, these are actually serious offences, and we need to take them seriously, and that’s what this bill does. In addition to making things a little bit easier, it makes things fairer for people as well. So I’m really happy to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 395 in the name of the Hon Phil Twyford be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

Parts 1 and 2, Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 as amended agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Regulatory Systems (Economic Development) Amendment Bill (No 2) with amendment, the Regulatory Systems (Workforce) Amendment Bill (No 2) without amendment, and the Regulatory Systems (Housing) Amendment Bill (No 2) with amendment.

Report adopted.

Bills

Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 17 October.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to begin by recapping where I ended off previously, and I was talking to a submission that we received in the Health Committee, and it was from a group of students in Auckland, Macleans College. They were taking on this as a project for their level 3 social studies class. So they made some great recommendations to the select committee. In fact, they recommended that the committee consider substantial increases in funding towards the New Zealand Blood Service that will be dedicated to this new planned organ donation agency, and suggested that this funding would idealistically be specifically used towards public messaging around live and deceased organ donations in Aotearoa New Zealand. That’s a really great suggestion, because to get the awareness out there, to get those donation rates up, public messaging is a great way to go about that. They’ve also suggested this should include funding for further research and development in the area of organ donation. So it was good to have the submission from those students, and I’d like to make note of all those who submitted. It was great to receive their contributions to this bill.

New Zealand First, we support the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. It contains a number of improvements to our organ donation programme that really are long overdue, and I think we’d all agree with that in this House. You know, it actually will help to meet the needs of living people who donate an organ, and also for the families of deceased people who donate. It folds neatly and cost-effectively into the New Zealand Blood Service, which actually has the experience as well as the ability to manage the programme that will be coming to them, and to promote the service, ultimately, to get those donor numbers up. What is proposed is really sensible and it’s not unnecessarily coercive to get those numbers up.

This bill also will provide for those organ donors who are not currently eligible for compensation but who clearly deserve it. So those that need to take time to recover after they’ve made an organ donation, they will have that time and that compensation to go with it. So, for example, they will be eligible for earning compensations for 12 weeks immediately after surgery. Now, if they happen to need extra time, then they will be given that. So it’s important that we compensate them for that. Maybe they return to work inside that 12-week period and need to take time off again because of the effects of surgery—then they will receive adequate compensation for their time.

You know, we actually can’t pass a law to make people donate their organs. There’s no stick that can be used in this, but very carefully allocated carrots, and this bill will set about to do that. New Zealand First continues to support this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a shame that after an eight-minute speech, Jenny Marcroft, the member for New Zealand First, doesn’t actually appear to know what the bill does, because the law already states that those who donate—

Hon Clare Curran: So arrogant.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it’s just a statement of fact. I mean, she doesn’t know what the bill does. It is already the law that those who donate organs are entitled to compensation. The last Parliament passed that piece of legislation. In fact, it was a member’s bill in my name—which is why I’m so annoyed about it—that did that. So that is already the law, and it’s a shame that we have had an eight-minute speech now that, essentially, purports to enact a very useful change I agree with, which is to give compensation for those who are organ donors. Ms Marcroft is correct that it makes some useful, small clarificatory changes around that regime. That’s in Part 2 of the bill, to amend the Compensation for Live Organ Donors Act 2016, which amends the interpretation of “usual hours” in the bill, something that was missed when we did the initial bill, and so that’s a useful change.

The other thing that the bill does, which we agree with on this side of the House, is to give the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, essentially, oversight over organ donation and the transplantation system. I’ve got to say, this is something that has been in the works for many years, and it’s frustrating that it has taken until two years into this Government’s time in office that we have had the simple—[Interruption] Well, members opposite complain, but I mean, frankly, it’s not like a lot of useful stuff’s been done in the meantime. I mean, we’ve legislated for fees-free tertiary education—a public policy disaster. We’ve legislated for all sorts of other stupid ideas, and a very sensible change that the Government could have done months ago has taken until now to get on to the Order Paper. In fact, I know for a fact that the Minister of Health, David Clark, was actually looking at an omnibus bill around organ donation 18 months ago, and my question to members opposite is: where is that bill? Because this is a small, 20-clause bill—a small bill—and we know for a fact that there’s an omnibus bill in the works. Well, where is it?

Of course, the other thing to note is: where is the funding? Because, yep, we’re going to get the New Zealand Blood Service in charge of organ donation and transplantation. That’s all well and good, but I know for a fact that there is no increased funding for the New Zealand Blood Service out there to actually implement the changes that Parliament wants them to do. So where is the extra money? We’re not talking about a huge amount of money here; we’re talking about a few million dollars, and it just speaks to the total incompetence of the Minister of Health, David Clark, that he can’t extract a few extra million from the Minister of Finance in order to implement what is a very, very sensible piece of legislation.

I care deeply about this issue, because organ donation in New Zealand is something that we have neglected for too long. Organ donors are heroes. Frankly, the way in which they are encouraged in New Zealand could be a lot better. This is a sensible minor bill, but we need to do far more. We need to fund the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service properly. We need to equip them with the skills and the capability to encourage organ donation. But we do support the bill and I commend it to the House.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s always a pleasure to follow Chris Bishop in any debate, actually. But I wanted to start, because it did sort of rove into the partisan, with that last speech. I always find it amusing in the House when we’re sort of caught furiously agreeing with each other about something, and this appears to be one of those cases where we’ve got bipartisan support. I actually do want to acknowledge Mr Bishop for his original member’s bill, which we supported back in the previous Parliament, which we thought was excellent and, of course, has laid the foundation for this. His quibbles about timeliness of the amendments aside, I think that that was a good piece of work and I’m glad that we are in a position to be able to build with it now.

I note, as Mr Bishop said in his speech, that it is a small bill, a 20-clause bill. It’s not terribly complex. That in some ways was reflected in the low number of submissions. There were only 16 written submissions and, I think, five verbal submissions that the select committee had to hear. Not a great deal of amendments. Again, I think that suggests that we got the general direction of the legislation right and that people agree with it. It is generally the more contentious stuff, obviously, where you get huge numbers of submissions and people take that as an opportunity to try and lobby for a position. So I have some confidence that actually the low number of submissions isn’t a reflection of people’s disinterest but a sense that we’ve got it right and people are pretty happy with the direction of travel. So I am really pleased that we are in a position to be able to forward the legislation ahead.

I just wanted to reflect on a couple of the core pieces which Mr Bishop referred to, the first being the nature of, you know, trying to drive up the number of donors that we’ve got in the country by making sure that the compensatory regime that we’ve got in place actually encourages people to change behaviour, to become organ donors, or at the very least doesn’t stop them from doing that if they’re already doing it.

I just want to reference at this point, and this may be something that we want to examine later on, that in Europe, in the 27 countries in Europe, roughly half of the countries there have organ donation rates of about 25 percent and the other have organ donation rates of about 75 percent. If you try and work out which are the countries that have got low rates versus which countries have got high rates of organ donation, they are scattered east to west, north to south, high-income countries, low-income countries, different regulatory environments and so on. They have very little in common except for this: the countries that have got high donation rates of about 75 percent have opt-out regimes, and those that have low rates, about 25 percent, have opt-in regimes. That is the only difference between the two sets of countries in terms of organ donor rates that they have in the participation rates. So I think it would be worthwhile—and, obviously, it’s not within the scope in this, but I do suggest that it is an area that this Parliament should turn its attention to—the idea that we might actually want to consider amending this bill again in the future to encourage donation rates by making it an opt-out regime rather than opt-in regime as it is.

Having said that, what we’re doing here by changing the compensatory regime and setting up a national agency which is required to have a nationwide strategy—and if I just may suggest also, it was fantastic to hear Mr Bishop arguing for more health spending and greater calls on the Budget. It is completely inconsistent with his party’s requirements for lower taxation rates, nevertheless, but I think it was good to hear him suggesting and putting his shoulder to the wheel for this year’s Budget. But in doing these things, changing the compensation, setting up this national agency, it does provide a very good foundation for the future. And as that new agency does turn its head to its national strategy, perhaps one of the things that they may want to consider is whether we want to move towards an opt-out regime, because the evidence suggests that that would lead to significantly higher rates of organ donation in New Zealand.

Having said all of that, we find no fault with the work that the select committee have done with any of the submissions. We think it’s a good bill and I commend it to the House.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this very important bill, the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. I just want to touch on the work in the Health Committee—this is a second reading, of course—and talk about some of the amendments proposed and also some of what we heard from the submitters as well as what was canvassed in the House. There were only 14 submissions and five were heard orally. It is a small technical bill, but I must say it’s through the power of the select committee process and submitters getting involved that some very real amendments were made through this process, and it just goes to show that you don’t need thousands of submissions.

In one case, for clause 5 the intent of the bill was to not allow anyone living outside of New Zealand to be able to claim compensation for organ donation. But through what was advised through a submitter, it worked out that actually the wording would have allowed that. So the change to clause 5 actually closed down that provision and only allowed for the intent of the bill, which was New Zealand residents who might be donating an organ through a trans-Tasman programme to Australia and, quite rightly, New Zealand residents would get compensation for that.

There was also an amendment to clause 11, which from the submission—it is part of regulations, Order in Council, that there’ll be the required organ donor programmes to be part of this bill. But we do have one donor programme already, the trans-Tasman—I think it’s the liver or kidney programme. Here it is: the New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program, which is already well established. So this will be the first programme that will actually be covered by this bill and will be implemented in the bill. Also retrospectively, anyone who is in this programme now, before the bill gets its Royal assent, will be able to receive compensation retrospectively.

There was also a lot of discussion about ensuring that this bill is well funded. I think it’s very well-canvassed in the House that we need to increase our rate of organ transplants. Unfortunately, this bill won’t deliver that. It really is up to a Government to increase funding for public awareness and education. So I would encourage the Government of the day to do that.

Also, there was a call for the wider scope of compensation for donors, whether that be travel or further medical costs and accommodation costs. So what the advice was that we got back from the advisers was there is already an ability to get this covered, and we would encourage people to do that. So, look, with a short call, I think this bill needs to be passed tonight. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The next call is a split call. I call Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Thank you, Te Mana Whakawā. It’s a privilege to stand here to make a contribution to the second reading of the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. I know the previous two speakers spoke about what this Government should do, but I really think this bill fits in with the Government’s wider plan to fix New Zealand’s health system after nine long years of neglect.

Hon Members: What’s that?

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI: Anyway, let me get back to this bill—nine long years of neglect, if you didn’t hear me.

Right, let me get back to this bill. I was present in the House when the Minister spoke about how it would make it easier for Pacific and Māori to have conversations with their family about organ donors. As a Tongan and as a Pacific person living in New Zealand, the most sacred part of a Tongan’s life is birth and death. At death, the body is so sacred that when you’re talking about organ donation almost near death, that conversation usually doesn’t end up being a gift of organ donation.

But live donors—I myself am a donor, but I haven’t had that conversation with my family. But in terms of an approach to make it easier for live donors, in terms of a Tongan person, I agree with this bill. In terms of Part 1, making it easier for New Zealanders to provide live donations of organs, I actually agree with that perspective in terms of providing live donors and support for that to happen.

We support this bill because it makes it, as I said before, easier for organ donation. I support the increased compensation that the bill provides for live organ donors and also want to acknowledge the work of the New Zealand Blood Service. What this bill does is it actually extends the work of New Zealand Blood Service. It changes the name of New Zealand Blood Service to New Zealand Blood and Organ Service. This reflects the additional statutory functions that will create not a new statutory entity, but it actually changes the name of the New Zealand Blood Service to New Zealand Blood and Organ Service. The New Zealand Blood and Organ Service will be the same organisation as the New Zealand Blood Service.

I just want to reiterate in terms of making it easier to donate organs. As a Tongan New Zealander, I want to again repeat the fact that at death, the tūpāpaku, or the deceased, is sacred to the family. However, alive donations should be a focus in terms of the work of the new-named Blood Service—like I’ve spoken to before about the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service—the focus on how you can culturally, appropriately respond to the services of New Zealanders.

In terms of that culture, that’s why I keep making the point that birth and death are sacred to Tongans, but live donations in between that—we belong to our families and we can provide that service. When we talk about service in terms of providing health services anywhere in New Zealand, the people who are often spoken to in equality of service provided, often the two populations in New Zealand that come after that are Māori and Pacific people.

If we approached organ donation from the perspective of culturally appropriate education and conversation with these two sets of populations, I think the outcome would be different. So I want to commend the work of the select committee, thank the submitters, and also the work of the New Zealand Blood Service. I want to commend their work and their new service that they’re going to provide. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The second five-minute call—the Hon Michael Woodhouse.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It seems that there isn’t a speech from a Labour member that is complete unless it uses the words “nine years of neglect”. We heard that twice from the previous speaker, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. I found that rather uncharitable on a bill where there is widespread bipartisan support and a bill that achieved a great deal when it was firstly written by me and then taken through the member’s bill stage by Chris Bishop and improved significantly by him, and it had an immediate positive effect of a 500 percent increase in the number of live organ donations as a consequence of this.

We’re not saying that that was a bad bill, but it can be improved, and so the previous Minister, Dr Coleman, actually, in reviewing the organ donation strategy, made the very recommendations that this Government has picked up and carried on. So I’m not going to be so uncharitable as to say that it’s only the most ardent Labour supporter that even believes the nonsense about nine years of neglect, but I will say this, particularly about Mr Shaw’s contribution in respect of opt in and opt out. That was a discussion that was held by the submitters to the Health Committee and, indeed, it was acknowledged that those issues were outside of the scope of this bill, but it is clearly something that the Government could consider and, with the right public consultation, I think we could support.

The other issue was the matter of advanced directives—the fact that there were a number of submitters, one of whom I know very well, who believes that the Human Tissue Act already provides for the person’s wishes to prevail after the event of their brain death and therefore that the quite sensitive issue about family veto can actually be circumvented if the Human Tissue Act was interpreted in the way that he, an eminent lawyer, believed was in place. But, again, it was outside of the scope of this bill.

The point I’m making is that there are actually a number of very good initiatives that I think we can continue to pursue in order to improve the live organ donation rate and deceased organ donation rates, because we do considerably lag behind. Nevertheless, thanks to the improvements from the select committee and the submitters—I want to thank them for that—we’ve got a good bill in a better shape, and I think we’re going to see a great deal more opportunities for live organ donation, particularly with the trans-Tasman arrangements that have been put in place. I’ll leave that there. There are some other technical matters that I can talk about in the committee of the whole House, but I won’t slow this process down.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. With a very short amount of time, I take great pleasure in rising to talk to the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill. I was a member on the very hard-working Health Committee at the time that the bill was introduced, and I spoke on the first reading. I then moved from the select committee, but I did manage to hear some of the submissions. In fact, we had 16 written and five verbal submissions, so I did sit for some time hearing this bill.

I’d like to thank those people who did take the time to make the submissions for what they contributed. We had some small tweaks that happened, and then I came off the select committee at that point. I’m really pleased that our Minister David Clark saw fit to move this bill with its origins as a member’s bill, as we’ve heard in this House, into the legislative programme.

In my first speech, I talked of Wairangi Te Rupe, who is my daughter’s sister by another mother. So Wairangi Te Rupe at eight weeks old was diagnosed with biliary atresia, which is life-ending, essentially. She was able to get an organ—a liver. She’s now in her double digits and is living her best life and has been able to survive because of that. That liver, as I understand, was gifted to three people.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.