Wednesday, 6 November 2019

WEDNESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2019

WEDNESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2019

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

Motions

Guru Nanak Dev Ji, 550th Birthday Anniversary—Leave Not Put

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to move a motion without notice and debate to congratulate the Sikh community on the 550th birthday anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji.

SPEAKER: Sorry, can I just check that that has the normal whips’ approval—that it’s been around the House for agreement?

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: No.

SPEAKER: Has it been asked for and rejected?

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI: Yes.

SPEAKER: I mean, I want to be very careful here, because it’s clearly a cultural issue for the member concerned, but we have well-established processes in this House, after a series of disorderly approaches of this type in the past. I can’t remember if it was in the time of my predecessor or the predecessor before that: the House came to an agreement that members who wished to seek to debate notices of motion would, before they sought approval, consult with the whips of other parties in order for it not to be put in a position like this.

Now, that is a convention of the House. It is not a Standing Order, but it is a convention that is very important to, in my opinion, stop the level of disorder which can disrupt the House. Some members will remember on one occasion dozens of members sought to have such a point of order. Now, having said that, I am going to put it to the House, because I believe it is the right, in the end, for any member to seek leave, even to breach a convention.

Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi: Mr Speaker, if that’s the case, I’m happy to withdraw it.

SPEAKER: OK.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular, I acknowledge today information that the unemployment rate sits at 4.2 percent, the third-lowest in a decade and below, I note, the 4.7 percent we inherited. That shows employment growth at 6,000 in the last quarter. It also, of course, captures that the underutilisation rate is at 10.4 percent, down from 11 percent, and the lowest since June 2008. This is a Government focused on making sure that everyone who wants and is able to be is earning, learning, caring, and volunteering, and making sure we’re making the most of everyone’s potential.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does she accept that Government policy should include a time limit on the dole for those under the age of 25?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: You’ll find under this Government that we’re focusing on getting every young person into training, education, and work. In fact, you can see that in what we’ve been doing with Mana in Mahi: 2,000 places made available to incentivise employers to take on young people and get them into apprenticeships. We’ve got to make sure that those opportunities are available—that we remove the barriers to training and education through policies like fees-free. These are all things that make a difference to young people getting into work and training. The member, on the other hand, is using tired old policies that haven’t worked in the past.

SPEAKER: Before the member asks, I have received quite a lot of criticism for the volume of interjection in the House, particularly from the Opposition. But I do want to say to Government Ministers, including especially the finance Minister, that he should not encourage the Opposition by assisting the Prime Minister with his comments.

Hon Simon Bridges: Does her Government have a target for getting people off a benefit and, if so, what is it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This Government doesn’t want anyone who is able to be working to be on a benefit. That has to be everyone’s goal to get them into meaningful employment. Of course, we have to recognise two factors with any country that has a safety net, and that is that some people will not be able to find available work that they can do and others just won’t be able to work through reasons of mental health issues or physical disability, but this Government has a goal of getting everyone who is able to into work. That is why we have employed an extra 263 front-line staff to ensure that we are case-managing and working alongside those on benefits. That last Government decreased and did not increase the number of people working alongside those on benefits.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Does she believe that encouraging young people into vocational education and training is going to give them better prospects—

Hon Nikki Kaye: More money in.

Hon Chris Hipkins: —for the future than labelling them “pretty damned hopeless”, as the last Government did?

SPEAKER: No, no. Before the Prime Minister goes, which member interjected then? [Interruption] Thank you. Right. Carry on, Prime Minister.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely, and that is why we’ve not only done things like remove barriers to training and education; we have also added those incentives so that employers have the extra support, both financial and pastoral, to take on people as apprentices, because, of course, we have a skills gap. We need those young people to be training. We need them to be earning and learning.

Hon Simon Bridges: Are her Government’s social welfare policies working?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why then are there 22,000 more on unemployment benefits today than when she started as Prime Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That member well knows that in the areas where we have seen impacts in terms of downturn—our manufacturing sector in particular has felt the effects of what is a global downturn—they are the areas where, traditionally, you will see those who are on Government support moving on and off. So that’s an area where we will see the effects of global headwinds.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is it acceptable to her that the number and proportion of Māori on the unemployment benefit continues to go up so that there are now more Māori on the benefit than at the height of the global financial crisis?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: One thing you’ll find with this Government is that rather than labelling people, we are actually doing something about it. Everyone who finds themselves in need of Government support also deserves opportunities, support, and assistance to get into work. That not only means creating jobs—and, of course, we’ve had 81,000 created since we took office—it also means having work brokers there to help train and support people. Twenty-five thousand people on benefits last year were upskilled and trained by this Government. That’s something that we’re proud of, and we’ve invested $26 million to support into employment people with disabilities or health conditions. Rather than label people, we actually get on with supporting people.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why is unemployment today up?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I note that while it’s at 4.2 percent, we actually inherited a rate of 4.7 percent. So if that member wants to claim that that’s high, he might want to—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Stop whining.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —reflect on his own record.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is it Government policy that if a New Zealander can work, they should work?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We want everyone who is able to be working to be working. You need to acknowledge it is social security. It’s a net that exists also for people who are unable to work—those with physical disabilities; increasingly, we do see people with mental health issues through our support systems. All of them should be supported to meet their full potential.

Hon Simon Bridges: Why then, in light of her earlier answer about the many more staff at the Ministry of Social Development (MSD), has MSD recently reported it’s spending much more time on hardship grants today than on getting people on unemployment benefits into work?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The audacity. That Government stripped back the number of people who are able to be working on case-managing people who are unemployed. They reduced front-line support. Secondly, we are a Government who pledged to get people out of cars, to stop children having to read by torchlight because they didn’t have housing, and to make sure that families got the support they needed. That is what Work and Income is for. So, yes, we will have case managers helping people who are in financial distress, because that’s what the system is there for.

Hon Simon Bridges: Is she proud that she has overseen 22,000 more on the unemployment benefit, including many thousands more Māori, and that today unemployment is up and job growth is significantly down?

SPEAKER: Any one of the four.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Unemployment is lower than when we inherited it under that Government, and I’m proud of the fact that we are actively working to get people into work and 81,000 jobs have been created.

Question No. 2—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, in the context in which they were made and implemented.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can he stand by his economic policies when today’s labour market statistics show the job growth boom his Government inherited has slowed dramatically, along with the economy generally?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I can certainly say that when I look at the statistics today, they show that unemployment is down 12,000 since we came into office, and on every category—overall unemployment, unemployment for men, unemployment for women, unemployment for Māori, and unemployment for young people—all are down since we came into office.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is it true that during his two years in Government, new jobs have been created at well less than half the rate they were created under the last two years of the National Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I do know is true is that there are 81,000 more jobs since we got into Government, 6,000 in the last quarter, and the underutilisation rate is down. The member is just so negative. He can see the negative in everything and not the positive signs that are going on in the economy.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why does he think there are an additional 22,000 people on job seeker benefits after two years of his Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This has been covered a number of times in the House. To start with, there are more people. We are in a different part of the economic cycle. But the bottom line is that the unemployment rate that we see in New Zealand today is the third-lowest in a decade. The other two lowest were also under this Government.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he surprised that the number of Kiwi young people not in education, employment, and training has gone up, despite the tens of millions of dollars that Willie Jackson has spent on programmes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, interestingly, when you look at the rates of NEETs, of people not in employment, education, or training, the area that Mr Jackson’s targeting—15- to 19-year-olds—that’s gone down.

Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Can the Minister confirm that underutilisation is at an 11-year low and that wage growth is at a 10-year high, which means that people are not only getting into work; they’re getting into full-time work and getting paid well for it?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Indeed, I can. That is an excellent summary of the underutilisation rate sitting at 10.4 percent, down from 11 percent—the lowest since June 2008—and on wage growth, absolutely: up 4.2 percent. That means about $83 a week extra in earnings in the pockets of New Zealanders since the Government took office.

Question No. 3—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Today, Stats New Zealand released labour market statistics showing that unemployment continues near historical lows and that employment and wages continue to grow. The unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is the third-lowest in the last decade—slightly up from the 11-year low of 3.9 percent last quarter, but below the 4.7 percent unemployment rate that we inherited from the previous Government. Today’s data showed 81,000 more people are employed under this Government and the number of unemployed people has dropped by 12,000 since we came into office. This is a good result, showing the New Zealand economy remaining strong amid the global headwinds.

Kiritapu Allan: What reports has he seen on wage growth in the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Good news worth repeating. The average ordinary time hourly earnings continued to grow above 4 percent over the past year, with growth of 4.2 percent. By another measure, the labour cost index, Stats New Zealand said wages were rising at their fastest rate in a decade. The data today shows average ordinary time earnings up by $83 a week since the coalition Government took office. This means that working New Zealanders are getting more money in their back pockets and employers are investing in their workers under the coalition Government’s economic plan.

Kiritapu Allan: What reactions has he seen to the unemployment figures?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Reactions from economists noted that the 4.2 percent unemployment rate indicated near to full employment in the economy and acknowledged that the rate will move around, quarter to quarter. Westpac economist Michael Gordon said today’s low unemployment rate would be a modestly positive surprise for the Reserve Bank, which had forecast 4.4 percent. He said that the unemployment rate remained low and that over the last year, it had flattened off instead of rising, as some had expected. I am proud to be part of a Government that is keeping our unemployment rate near historical lows at a time when the global headwinds are getting stronger and uncertainty is increasing due to the US-China trade war and Brexit. The New Zealand economy is in good shape.

Question No. 4—Social Development

4. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development: Does she stand by all her policies and actions?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): Yes, particularly this Government’s policies to provide more support for low and middle income families through our $5.5 billion Families Package, invest nearly $50 million into Mana in Mahi to support our young people into sustainable work, index main benefit rates to increases in average wages, remove a harmful sanction that penalises sole parents and their children, increase benefit abatement thresholds, and deliver a programme of culture change that ensures people are treated with dignity and respect and are able to access their full and correct entitlements.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the number of young people stuck on benefit for more than 12 months increased by 25 percent as a result of her policies?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: This Government has been working very proactively to ensure that we are effectively working with young people that come into contact with the benefit system, with the welfare system. What we have seen is a trend downwards with respect to the youth payment and the young parent payment. Where there are increases overall in the welfare system with respect to benefit numbers, then we of course see that come into effect for that particular age group as well. Keeping the numbers in perspective, as we’ve heard today, the unemployment rate is at 4.2 percent. I think that that’s something that this Government can be proud of.

Hon Louise Upston: Why have a smaller proportion of people stayed off benefit for six months compared to last year?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I do think that the member might be referring to the annual report and impact indicators, and if the member is, then on pages 30 and 31 of that particular annual report, where the impact indicators are discussed, there’s also a footnote that says that the result reported against each year refers to the calculation relating to two years previously—i.e., the 2018-19 result refers to spending in 2016 and 2017. So we do need to be cautious that there is a lag time with respect to the actual positive results that we can see from some of the policies that we might be implementing, and some of the negative results that that member is referring to could, in fact, be because of the previous Government’s decisions and policies.

Hon Louise Upston: Why has the proportion of people who stay off benefit having completed an intervention fallen every year even though it was increasing under National?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As I said, the impact indicators that the member is talking about—there is a footnote on that particular page that says that there can be a lag effect and that we do need to take into consideration the policies of two years previously. What I’m really proud of is that if we look at the overall picture with regards to what’s happening with unemployment in this country, what we are seeing is that, actually, the unemployment rate is the third-lowest that it’s been in over a decade, and all of the three lows that have been hit have been hit by this side of the House, not the previous Government.

Hon Louise Upston: Of the 22,000 extra people on the job seeker benefit, why are there fewer getting into work and on the path to independence under her watch?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: This Government is really focused on upskilling and training. When you look at the low unemployment rate that we are facing as a country, the reality is that what we do have are employers who are looking for more skilled workers. So with respect to filling those workforce demands in terms of meeting the employers expectations, we as a Government need to be focused on upskilling and training to ensure that our people are well-equipped to go into the jobs that exist. So I’m really proud of the work that this side of the House has been doing with respect to our focus on education and training, not just through the Ministry of Social Development but, of course, through our education system. It’s important that we continue that work, and I think that we’re on the right path.

Question No. 5—Climate Change

5. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green) to the Minister for Climate Change: How has the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill been amended since its introduction?

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thanks to the Environment Committee and around 10,000 people and organisations who submitted on the bill, the zero carbon bill has a number of improvements. These include stronger consultation requirements so that all New Zealanders can be involved in decisions as we transition to a low-emissions economy, more consideration of the costs and benefits of technological change, and a stronger focus on reducing our impact on the climate in New Zealand, rather than relying on overseas carbon credits.

Marama Davidson: How will the bill reflect Te Tiriti o Waitangi and strengthen Crown-Māori relationships?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Not only does the bill specifically require the Crown to invite nominations for the Climate Change Commission from iwi Māori and to appoint people to the commission who have experience and expertise relating to Te Tiriti o Waitangi; it now also requires the commission itself to consider the Crown-Māori relationship, Te Ao Māori, and specific effects on iwi and Māori when performing its duties and functions. The tools already exist to help us to avoid a climate crisis, and many of these tools have roots in kaitiakitanga. Tangata whenua have been leaders in climate change response, and it is time that the Crown meets the wero and sets to work.

Gareth Hughes: How has the bill changed to reflect the concerns of people who don’t want to see forestry offsets used as an excuse to not actually reduce emissions?

Hon JAMES SHAW: The select committee and the Government have heard these concerns and we’re acting on them, and they may be of particular interest to the Hon Nathan Guy. The commission will be able to recommend limits on the amounts that trees can be used to offset emissions. These will help to ensure that the transport and energy sectors are actually reducing emissions, not just offsetting them. At the same time, we will support our rural communities to transition to lower-emissions food production and ensure that forestry contributes to a productive, sustainable, and inclusive rural economy.

Jan Logie: How would the bill help ensure a just transition for working people in rural communities?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Emissions reductions plans prepared under the bill will need to include strategies to mitigate the impacts that reducing emissions and increasing forestry removals could have on employees and employers, regions, iwi and Māori, and wider communities. I am pleased that the bill now also includes a specific requirement for the commission to consider impacts of the low-emissions transition on rural communities. Our Government is committed to a just transition, working alongside New Zealanders in our cities and in our regions. We are all in this together, and our approach to a just transition extends beyond the zero carbon bill to things like the new clean-energy research centre that we’re setting up in Taranaki to boost jobs in clean energy.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does he support the recommendation from the select committee for increased parliamentary scrutiny through cross-party consultation and debate on the emissions budgets?

Hon JAMES SHAW: The bill requires cross-party consultation before emissions budgets are set, and I very much support that. I welcome the select committee’s recommendation about parliamentary debate, but I understand the select committee also said that this is not the kind of thing that would necessarily be provided for in the legislation itself. I look forward to the outcome of any Standing Orders Committee discussions on potential parliamentary debates on emissions budgets. As a principle, I agree that it’s important that all political parties and, indeed, all New Zealanders are involved in planning and achieving our transition to a low-emissions economy.

Golriz Ghahraman: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the bill allow decision makers to opt out from considering emission reduction targets and emission budgets when making decisions?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Members may recall that on introduction, the bill contained a clause stating that a failure to take the targets or emissions budgets into account when exercising or performing a public duty or function or power conferred upon them by law could not invalidate that decision. Well, that clause is gone. Members of the public who believe that emissions reductions targets and emissions budgets have not been adequately taken into account will be able to test this in the courts.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: How has the bill changed regarding the importance of adapting to climate change that is already happening?

Hon JAMES SHAW: Our actions have already changed the climate, and so the bill requires Governments to produce national climate change risk assessments and adaptation plans. So it’s only fitting that the bill’s purpose statement now includes allowing New Zealand to prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change, in addition to the purpose of reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. For example, we know it’s irresponsible to be building new houses in areas that will become prone to flooding or subsidence. To create a climate-safe future, we must plan for both emissions reductions and climate adaptation.

Question No. 6—Forestry

6. TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty) to the Minister of Forestry: Does he share the concerns of his officials outlined in paragraph 17 of the 1 April 2019 paper titled “One Billion Trees Fund and the risk of ‘whole farm’ conversion”, and how does he intend to manage these issues going forward?

Hon SHANE JONES (Minister of Forestry): I thank the member for his question. Of course, the paragraph he’s quoting from has been characteristically distorted, and I do agree that whole-farm conversions are not the objective of the billion trees fund.

Todd Muller: The Government has a strategy of Right tree, right place, right purpose; so, as forestry Minister assessing the land-use change to forestry occurring around the country at the moment, is he seeing any examples of wrong tree, wrong place, wrong purpose?

Hon SHANE JONES: I would remind the member that land-use decisions are the province of local government, and one of the great virtues of owning land in New Zealand is having the flexibility to change the purpose for which that land might be used. The point, also, I would add is that, yes, there is some concern about the amount of capital being dedicated towards forestry, but those concerns are vastly exaggerated and worsened by misinformation from the Opposition members in the House.

Todd Muller: In the same 1 April paper, it was noted by officials that the high carbon price is a key driver for whole-farm conversions; if that’s the case now at $25 a tonne, does the Minister have any concern over land-use change to forestry when the price substantially lifts?

Hon SHANE JONES: Well, obviously, the current position is that $25 is our cap, but thank you very much for voting for Mr Shaw’s bill.

Todd Muller: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked a very straight, clear question, and I believe that—

SPEAKER: Yeah, I will get the member to repeat the question.

Todd Muller: Thank you. In the same 1 April paper, it was noted by officials that the high carbon price is a key driver of whole-farm conversions; if that’s the case now at $25 a tonne, does the Minister have any concern over land-use change to forestry when the price substantially lifts?

Hon SHANE JONES: I shall elaborate. The apparatus governing the price of carbon relates to legislation currently in the House that you’ve reflected great enthusiasm for voting for. Secondly, there is no ambition at the moment to change the cap. The cap reflects settled Government policy, just as there is no settled policy to import dodgy Ukrainian credits, which blighted the emissions trading scheme (ETS) under the regime of the John Key - Mr English Government. And, once again, sir, thank you very much for voting for Mr Shaw’s bill.

Todd Muller: Supplementary to the Minister—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: What a plonker.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Who said that?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I did.

SPEAKER: The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And he’s lucky.

Todd Muller: Is he aware that the legislation that we’re about to debate—the zero carbon bill—precisely assumes that the cap comes off?

Hon SHANE JONES: What the legislation allows for is for a future Government to address how many units and what level of carbon price should persist. But the bill that the member is voting for—a Government bill—will bring, hopefully, unanimity and we’ll see an end to the other side of the House trying to denigrate and destroy the ETS.

Todd Muller: Extraordinary—

SPEAKER: There was an answer in there, right in the middle.

Todd Muller: Sorry?

SPEAKER: Yeah, sorry, I thought the member was going to take a point of order.

Todd Muller: Oh well, I was, on that encouragement!

SPEAKER: No, no, I’m discouraging the member. I think very deep in it was an attempt to address the question.

Todd Muller: Is the Minister concerned with the increasing over-reliance on forestry offsetting in the Government’s current climate change policies?

Hon SHANE JONES: Obviously, there are some challenges as we go through a reset of how land is being used in New Zealand, and I’d be the first to admit that there have been anxieties in Wairoa. But I say to the people of Wairoa: only a mere 8,300 hectares, as a consequence of the primrose path in the overseas investment regime, have been converted to forestry. I am advised that that’s less than one thousandth of the sheep and beef land in New Zealand. I look forward, in the event that there is a smattering of protesters arriving on 14 November, to bringing them into the world of factual information, not misinformation from the other side of the House.

Todd Muller: Will the Minister support our Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to the zero carbon bill that asks specifically of the Climate Change Commission to reflect on the ongoing use of forestry offsets and advise future Parliaments if changes are needed?

Hon SHANE JONES: In looking at any SOPs, I will place great accent on the fulsome support given by the Farming Leaders Group of New Zealand for the Prime Minister and not on indulging these whimsical attempts by the Opposition to undermine farming leadership yet again.

Question No. 7—Health

7. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister of Health: What steps, if any, have been taken to recognise and maintain the high professional standards of key front-line health workers?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): More good news. Yesterday I visited Wellington Free Ambulance’s headquarters to announce the Government’s decision to regulate paramedics under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. Paramedic leaders have been pushing for this formal recognition of their status for years. I supported them as a Labour Opposition MP, so I’m particularly pleased to now deliver on our pledge to make this happen. Paramedics are usually the first on the scene when we suffer a medical emergency, and they do great work saving thousands of lives every year. By placing them under the same regulatory framework as doctors and nurses, we are recognising the importance of their work. These long-overdue changes will ensure the high professional standards to which they currently work will be maintained and enhanced into the future.

Dr Liz Craig: So who will pay for this, and will there be any additional costs for paramedics such as registration?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I expect registration of paramedics to start occurring later next year. Regulating paramedics under the Act will cost about $1.4 million in the first year, decreasing to $1.2 million in subsequent years. In the first year, this cost is being met within baselines by the Ministry of Health, ACC, and service providers, meaning the costs of annual practising certificates will not be carried by the workforce. This Government invests $203 million every year in road ambulance services, including communications, and that investment aligns with a four-year funding track agreed by the previous Government and welcomed by St John Ambulance. However, the Government has chosen to make additional investment in these important services beyond that agreed funding track. In this year’s Budget, for example, we committed $25 million over two years to relieve immediate pressures on St John Ambulance and Wellington Free Ambulance. We believe this was necessary to support these services while they work with the Ministry of Health and ACC on their long-term sustainability. This is on top of an extra $17.2 million over four years in increased operational funding as part of Budget 2019.

Dr Liz Craig: So how does this step forward for our paramedic workforce fit with the Government’s plan to ensure New Zealanders in need receive high-quality emergency medical care?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Our recognition of paramedics’ role as front-line health professionals and the codifying of their responsibilities is important as we move toward double-crewing ambulances. Just over 1,000 paramedics currently work for the two emergency ambulance providers: St John Ambulance and Wellington Free Ambulance. That workforce is expected to grow to 1,400 by 2021 as double-crewing is standardised around the country. I have no doubt that double-crewing will mean better care in emergency situations. The move to strengthen our paramedic workforce comes not long after we acted to modernise our air ambulance fleet with an investment in twin-engine helicopters to ensure that people are safely treated on their way back to hospital. That was another investment from this Government in Budget 2018, of $83 million. We are reinvesting in our health workforce and in our assets to ensure that we have a modern, fit for purpose health service that will mean New Zealanders get the care they expect and deserve.

Question No. 8—Health

8. Dr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei) to the Associate Minister of Health: What communications, if any, were there from the World Health Organization to the Government this year regarding the emergence of measles in New Zealand?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Health): I am advised that there have been two letters received from the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as two receipts—acknowledgments—of communications from our Ministry of Health about the measles outbreaks in New Zealand. For the benefit of the member, I will table these letters forthwith. I seek leave to table correspondence from the World Health Organization to the Government received on 9 April 2019 and 2 May 2019.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There appears to be none. They will be tabled.

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

Dr Shane Reti: Does she stand by her answer to written questions that she will not release the contents of the letter from the WHO in April warning of measles because it is not in the public interest?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, I just tabled the contents of those letters here in the House today, but I do stand by the answer, which said it was not in the public interest due to the administrative work required to answer the over 400 written parliamentary questions that I’ve received from that member in just the last few months.

Dr Shane Reti: Do contents of the letter from the WHO that were not in the public interest contain any recommendations to counter measles outbreaks that were not taken up by the Government at the time?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: No.

Dr Shane Reti: Did the WHO letter recommend preparing for extra measles vaccines?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The member will be able to read the letter because I’ve just tabled it, and the details of it are nine recommendations from the World Health Organization that the ministry absolutely responded to—in fact, we were already in the midst of carrying out before the letter was received.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think it would be a bit odd if the House was to accept that a Minister can answer a question by tabling a letter minutes or seconds, in this case, before the answer and saying that that provides the answer. Surely, the question should stand as it has been considered for the last three hours?

SPEAKER: OK, OK. The Minister is, of course, able to do that; we take into account the disadvantage that it places Dr Shane Reti in as a result of that in allowing some flexibility in his questions. While he is disadvantaged, he is generally pretty nimble, and I’m certain that he will adjust his question line from now on in order to take into account the fact that the letter’s been tabled—in fact, I think that after the first supplementary, he did.

Dr Shane Reti: What part of the letter did she think was not in the public interest to release?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: As I said earlier, given the over 400 written parliamentary questions that I’ve received in the last few months from the member, I did not consider it in the public interest, and it’s not standard practice to release the contents of letters through questions for written answers. That’s why I’ve tabled the letters, in full, here in the House, so members can see them.

Question No. 9—Transport

9. CHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South) to the Associate Minister of Transport: How many used cars mentioned on page 44 of the Government’s discussion document titled “Moving the light vehicle fleet to low-emissions: discussion paper on a Clean Car Standard and Clean Car Discount” have one- and two-star used-car safety ratings?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport): The vehicles on page 44 of this document are only an illustrative snapshot of used vehicles available in 2019. The table was intended to illustrate the range of vehicles available today, their average cost, and emissions profile. So it says right here that they’re not indicative of the vehicles that will receive the clean-car discount, if and when that policy is implemented. I’m also advised that the vehicle safety ratings differ depending on the model variant, and, therefore, it is actually not possible to identify a safety rating based on model alone.

SPEAKER: Order!

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, no—you don’t need one. It was actually a very simple question. I did hear what the member said at the end, but I would be very surprised if, with a relatively small number of cars and all of the resources that are available to the Minister, someone couldn’t count.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Mr Speaker, the advice I’ve received from the Ministry of Transport is that one cannot determine the star rating based on just the model alone, even though there is a range of vehicles—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry, sorry. That was Mr Woodhouse, who, of all people, should know better.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I did ask the ministry, and this is the answer that they gave me.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We’re in difficult territory here. The Government has a website called the Rightcar website—it’s a Government website. It has a whole list of used-car types rated by star rating. All I’ve asked the Minister to do is tell us how many, on page 44 of the Government’s Clean Car Discount document, of these cars—there’s about 30 there—are rated one star or two stars. It would take anyone 20 minutes to figure it out.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Speaking to the point of order, the issue is that if we look up one of these models, there can be several star ratings, depending on other factors related to the car. You cannot give a one-star rating.

SPEAKER: Right. OK. Well, I think, you know, as unsatisfactory as the member might think it is, we have to accept the Minister’s answer because that’s the advice that she’s been given.

Chris Bishop: Has the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) raised with her the desire to not apply the “feebate” for electric cars to one- and two-star - rated cars; if so, why is the Government proposing to do so?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Like that member, I have a great passion for safety. The Government has quite a wide-ranging work programme related to ensuring that the cars coming into the country are safe. At the same time, we’re working on a policy to ensure that it’s easier for people to access low-emissions cars. What I can assure the member of is that all throughout the work on the clean-car discount, we’ve also been certain that we’re progressing the work on safety standards. So, for example, there are some new used-vehicle safety standards that will be in force from March 2020, which means that should this policy be implemented, that every single car that’s imported will have to meet that standard.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. That did not answer the question. I asked: has the New Zealand Transport Agency raised with her the desire to not apply the “feebate” for electric cars to one- and two-star - rated cars. We got a long list of things that she’s interested in—

SPEAKER: Well, I would have thought it was pretty clear that if you can’t import it, it’s not going to be applied.

Chris Bishop: No, no, the question was about the Transport Agency raising with her their desire to not apply the “feebate”. There was literally no—

SPEAKER: OK. Was that raised with the Minister?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: No.

Chris Bishop: Why does the New Zealand Transport Agency’s 23 August board minutes say that they raised that matter with the Minister?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The specific matter that has been raised is whether or not there is a conflict between applying safety standards to cars and promoting low-emissions vehicles, and what the Government has determined is that the star rating is not the appropriate regulation for safety standards. We have the electronic stability control coming in in early 2020, and that will apply to all vehicles that are imported, all used cars that are imported, from 2020.

Chris Bishop: Is she saying that the 23 August NZTA board minutes, which note that they have raised with Ministers the desire to not apply the “feebate” for electric cars to one- and two-star - rated cars, are wrong?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: What I would say to that member is that the issues around ensuring we have safe and low-emissions vehicles have been considered by NZTA and the Ministry of Transport. We’re working very hard on delivering both, and, to reassure that member, it is entirely possible to have safe low-emissions vehicles.

Chris Bishop: Did the New Zealand Transport Agency raise with her as Minister the desire to not apply the “feebate” for electric cars to one- and two-star - rated cars?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: That was not—if that issue was raised with me, and I can’t confirm that it was, the issue of how we regulate the safety of vehicles and ensure that they are low-emissions vehicles was raised, and we are absolutely addressing that.

Chris Bishop: Did the New Zealand Transport Agency raise with her the desire to not apply the “feebate” for electric cars to one- and two-star safety - rated cars?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Just as I said, if that did occur—and I can’t say that it did—the answer is that we are applying safety standards to all vehicles that are imported, and therefore low-emissions vehicles that will benefit from the clean-car discount will also be safe.

Question No. 10—Employment

10. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Minister of Employment: What initiatives, if any, is the Government undertaking to improve employment outcomes for New Zealanders?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister of Employment): As part of the employment strategy launched in August, we announced a series of initiatives that will support this Government’s focus on ensuring the labour market is productive, sustainable, and inclusive. Part of our overall strategy is ensuring that we are investing in upskilling Kiwis, particularly those who historically have had poor outcomes. Programmes such as Mana in Mahi, Pae Aronui, and He Poutama Rangatahi are making a real difference in creating pathways for our young people into employment.

Marja Lubeck: What difference is the employment initiative He Poutama Rangatahi making?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I’m happy to share with the House that He Poutama Rangatahi is making a difference in regions ignored by previous Governments—

Hon Simon Bridges: But things are getting worse.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —areas like Te Tai Tokerau, Tai Rāwhiti, Eastern Bay of Plenty, and Hawke’s Bay. In fact, 2,132 rangatahi—that’s young people, Mr Bridges—who are classified as not earning or learning are now engaged in employment or training pathways. What I’m particularly proud of in this initiative is the fact that 38 percent of all participants had previously been expelled from school. This programme has given those rangatahi a chance at a very different future.

Marja Lubeck: What difference is the employment initiative Mana in Mahi making?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Mana in Mahi is an employment initiative that is creating real employment opportunities for many of our young people. Forty-two percent of all participants had already been on a benefit for 12 months or more. By working with our employers, not only have we placed 363 young people into work but we’re also ensuring they are earning workplace qualifications that set them up for a lifetime of sustainable employment. Also, percentage-wise, Māori are doing much better under this Government in terms of not going on benefits compared to the previous Government. In September 2009, 29.7 percent of Māori were on benefits. In 2010, 30.7 percent of Māori were on benefits. Right now, 26.7 percent of Māori are on benefits—doing much better than the previous Government.

Marja Lubeck: Has the Minister seen any reports that indicate that these initiatives are improving employment outcomes?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Yes. The household labour force survey today—again, very good results for Māori—indicates that the employment market remains stable and strong, and I’m pleased to say that there are 6,000—6,000—more Māori in employment, more than this time last year. Mana in Mahi, Pae Aronui, He Poutama Rangatahi—kaupapa Māori initiatives all around the country are ensuring that Māori are doing well. More Māori are employed, and more Māori are off benefits than the previous Government could have ever dreamt of.

SPEAKER: Question No. 11, Nicola Willis. Oh, sorry—Stuart Smith. [Interruption] All right, well, I’m getting pretty confused, but when members call I tend to sort of believe them. Nicola Willis.

Question No. 11—Transport

NICOLA WILLIS (National): My question is to the Associate Minister of Transport. When she wrote to the Minister of Transport stating her view that work on rapid transit should be prioritised ahead of a second Mount Victoria tunnel, had she sought any analysis or advice from transport officials about the impact that would have on access to the east for Wellingtonians; if so, on what date did she receive that advice?

SPEAKER: Now, I am going to ask the member to read the question again.

11. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Transport: When she wrote to the Minister of Transport stating her view that work on rapid transit should be prioritised ahead of a second Mount Victoria tunnel, had she sought any advice from transport officials about the impact that would have on congestion, travel times, and bus services for Wellingtonians; if so, on what date did she receive that advice?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Associate Minister of Transport): To answer the first part of this question, yes, I’m advised that Minister Twyford and I received advice applicable to the sequencing of the projects from the Ministry of Transport on 26 March 2019 and on 5 April 2019. I’m advised we also received nine briefings from the New Zealand Transport Agency relating to this matter between 21 February 2018 and 23 September 2019. I’m confident that both my position and the Government’s final position on Let’s Get Wellington Moving is well supported by the available evidence.

Nicola Willis: Well, does she agree with the advice that she’s just quoted, provided to Minister Twyford from the Ministry of Transport, that delaying the second Mount Victoria tunnel would increase congestion and result in unreliable general traffic times for Wellingtonians travelling to the east?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I also agree that if we don’t have good public transport and rapid transit, there would be subsequent congestion from the construction of a Mount Vic tunnel. But the advice also says, from a mode-shift perspective, it is important for rapid transit, other public transport, walking, and cycling investments to be built ahead of extra road capacity.

Nicola Willis: So is it the case that she received no written advice prior to sending her letter that supported delay and construction of the Mount Victoria tunnel?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I received a number of briefings from the New Zealand Transport Agency on this matter, on all the relative costs and benefits of different projects and the sequencing of the projects. For example, in this briefing from 3 October 2018, we received information that the benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) are likely to be highest for the early improvements—walking and cycling; public transport improvements north and central; mass transit, especially the section from the station to Newtown—and all of those BCRs are higher than the highway projects.

Nicola Willis: Does she agree with advice provided to Minister Twyford from the Ministry of Transport that delaying the second Mount Vic tunnel would increase congestion and result in unreliable general traffic times, or does she think her opinion is more important than that of the advice from her officials?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: My opinion is based on advice from officials, and the officials provided a range of assessments of benefits and costs of different sequencing and different projects. We have agreed to the sequencing that is going to deliver the greatest benefits to Wellingtonians in terms of improving the ability of people to get around through walking, cycling, and public transport, and that will deliver the greatest benefits to motorists.

Question No. 12—Immigration

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Immigration. Can he confirm that the majority of applications for 13 out of 14 of the most common visa categories listed on the Immigration New Zealand website are currently being processed—

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to get the member to start again and read the question.

12. STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura) to the Minister of Immigration: Can he confirm that the majority of the applications for 13 out of 14 of the visa categories listed on the Immigration New Zealand website are currently being processed slower than they were as at 1 November 2017, and does he expect delays to get worse in the near future?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Minister of Immigration): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In answer to the first part of the member’s question, yes. Visa processing times have consistently been getting worse, year after year, since 2014. Unlike the previous Government, who let that happen unchecked, I am taking this matter seriously. I raised it formally with the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the head of Immigration New Zealand back in May. They have been reporting to me every week on what Immigration New Zealand is doing to turn it around and what progress they are making on visa processing times. My expectations are clear that Immigration New Zealand should be fully focused on bringing processing times down, and I’m pleased to say they’re making good progress. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, timeliness in the future will of course be affected by volumes, and, right now, more people are applying to come to New Zealand than ever before because of our strong economy and our welcoming community. Nevertheless, I expect Immigration New Zealand to be fully focused on making timely decisions.

Stuart Smith: When there was an $11.7 million funding boost to Immigration New Zealand for the sole purpose of improving visa processing times, why is there still such a significant delay in visa processing times?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: To put it shortly, I inherited a mess, and that is why this Government has invested so heavily in turning around the declining visa processing times that were occurring under the previous Government. So we’ve reversed some of the decisions that were made under National: the Henderson branch is staying open, the Manila branch is staying open, 177 additional staff have been employed, and—as the member rightly points out—more money is going into Immigration New Zealand, and I’m pleased to report that they are making good progress.

Stuart Smith: Why did his office not respond to a request from me questioning inaccuracies in the data he provided me on visa processing times, and then waited until it was in the media before correcting the information?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Unfortunately, Immigration New Zealand did provide me with inaccurate information and they have apologised—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! This is quite a serious matter when a Minister has been provided with bad information, and I think it ill behoves members to shout him down when he is trying to indicate what he did about it.

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: So Immigration New Zealand did, unfortunately, provide me with inaccurate information and they have apologised to me for doing so. I became aware that the information was inaccurate on Saturday afternoon. The information was corrected. Immigration staff rallied, got themselves into the office on a Saturday, and sorted out the mistake. However, it being on the weekend and the fact that the question would not be able to be corrected in a formal sense until a working day, I didn’t see much point in getting parliamentary staff into work as well.

Kieran McAnulty: What recent feedback has he received from business on visa processing?

Hon IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Well, I have to say that if I’d been getting these questions 12 months or even six months ago, I would have had to say the feedback was pretty negative. But, actually, as I’ve been going around the country, I can report that the mood is improving. Just this morning—[Interruption] Members opposite will want to hear this. Just this morning, Kirk Hope from Business New Zealand told me that efficient visa processing and access to skilled overseas workers is important to New Zealand businesses. While there is always room for improvement, Business New Zealand is pleased with the reduction in essential skills visa processing and acknowledges Immigration New Zealand’s engagement with our member organisations.

Point of Order—Answers to Primary Questions

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I know that you have an ongoing quest to try and make question time better. When we ask questions from the Opposition, particularly on notice, there are constraints around what may be put in that question. I just ask that you have a look at, particularly today, several questions that were answered by Ministers that were highly inflammatory in much of the content of those answers, including the last one, quite frankly, and Julie Anne Genter’s one earlier in the afternoon. I think it’s reasonable that once we get into a supplementary question and answer, there might be a greater traversing into those sorts of general political flicks, but surely not in a response to a question that is on notice. I just ask that you have a look at that—

SPEAKER: I will have a look at that, although I will warn the member that, you know, he can’t totally take the politics out of Parliament. Especially, I think we need to take a little bit of care when we have, sometimes, some pretty political supplementaries. I think when that occurs, then there’s likely to be a political response. But I do agree with the member that those political responses to straight primary questions are not desirable, and I will watch out for that.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

This past couple of weeks, we’ve seen the reaction around the world to the Prime Minister’s video where she has gone through the achievements of this Government. Now, the Prime Minister had just over two minutes to do that. I have five minutes today, so I am not even going to attempt to get near that list because the Prime Minister took three minutes, and we all know that there were many things on that list that she could not fit in.

On this side of the House, we know that we are addressing the long-term issues that are facing this country—the nine years of neglect that were left to this Government to clean up. We are making a great start on that and, today, we saw that more than ever with the release of the household labour force survey that showed that the wages of New Zealanders, the average hourly earnings of New Zealanders, are up by $86 a week since this Government came into office. That is money in the pockets of New Zealanders who are finally getting to share in the benefits of growth.

When the Prime Minister’s video goes around the world, people hear that 284,000 families are $75 a week better off. They hear about the Best Start payment. They hear about the winter energy payment. They hear about the extension of paid parental leave, of child poverty being reduced, and of nurses in schools. These are the achievements of a Government that cares, that is focused on the big, long-term issues. New Zealanders know it won’t all be solved overnight, but, finally, there is a Government that is taking a positive attitude to our future, that is firmly looking forward for future generations.

Our work has had an unlikely supporter who, in an unusual moment of clarity on Radio Hauraki on Friday last week, said—when Mr Bridges was asked by the host there about what had been happening—“Talking about the Government, you know, they’ve achieved a lot in the last couple of years.” So, finally, Mr Bridges sees it. Finally, he gets it, because, normally, it’s negative National.

Christopher Luxon has arrived in Botany, or “Grabaseat”, as we now call it, and he’s a much more positive character than what we normally see over there. He was very keen to let us know that he wasn’t parachuted in. He actually just walked on to the plane and found there was no pilot. That’s what happened when he got there. The only person he found was Judith Collins gently pushing people towards the emergency exit.

But other than that, there was absolutely no one in charge, and Mr Bridges should always remember “Your exit may be behind you.” That’s naughty, Mr Speaker. But to be honest, the National Party is a little bit like an airline meal: way too much packaging, not enough substance, a little bit salty, and made up of small bits that don’t really go together. So when Christopher Luxon arrives, he is going to discover that the airline that he’s arrived in isn’t exactly Air New Zealand, a modern airline. He’s going to discover it’s a bit like Pan Am or some kind of airline of the 1970s: focused on ignoring climate change and focused on rehashing tired old beneficiary-bashing kinds of policies.

The difference between the two sides of this House could not be clearer at the moment: a Government on this side of the House this week passing legislation to help New Zealanders deal with climate change, a Government that’s improving the wages of New Zealanders, that’s focused on the future of work, and a desperate, divided Opposition on the other side of the House. That is what we are seeing.

Simon Bridges has taken to saying that he’s “being Susie-ed”. Well, actually, he’s “being Simon-ed”. What’s happened there? The dictionary definition of “being Simon-ed” is to have self-inflicted wounds caused by incoherent yet relentless negativity. That is the dictionary definition of “being Simon-ed”, and week after week, day after day, members opposite and members on this side of the House have to be put through the Leader of the Opposition “being Simon-ed”, while the reality is there’s now a new person on the block. Mr Luxon’s flown in, and Mark Mitchell and all of those people on the other side of the House—who Simon Bridges said are in a queue to change the leader, I heard on the radio this morning—have now got a competitor.

We’re going to enjoy watching the spectacle on this side of the House while we get on with solving the problems left to us by nine years of neglect and ensuring that every New Zealander gets to enjoy economic growth. The wages are up. There’s more people getting into work. This is a country in good shape, and I’m proud of our Jacinda Ardern - led Government.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): We’ve heard that speaker, Grant Robertson, crow about the Prime Minister’s video about the two years of delivery. Well, let’s just do a bit of fact-checking. Actually, no, the New Zealand Herald have done that. Let us talk about the bits that they don’t want you to hear.

They don’t want to hear 22,000 extra people on the jobseeker benefit—on the dole. Rents are up $50 a week. The number of hardship grants is higher than it’s ever been before because more and more Kiwis are doing it tough. In the three months to September, benefit advances—in most cases, people have to pay them back—were over 200,000 in a three-month period. The number of young people is, tragically, up 25 percent since they took office—that’s young people on the dole. Electricity and gas hardship payments are up 5,000 on the year despite supposedly having a winter energy payment. The number on the social housing register is over 13,000 people, and they’re waiting far longer than they’ve ever waited before. The one that is tragic, though, is the number of children in benefit-dependent homes has increased by over 4,000 in just three months.

So those are not the figures and the facts that the Prime Minister will be crowing about. She wants to hide those figures because this is the truth of how hard some of our Kiwis are doing it under the Labour, New Zealand First, and Greens Government.

Instead, on this side of the House, we’ve been doing the work. We’re looking for solutions that actually break the cycle of benefit dependency and support individuals and families getting into work. The previous National Government raised benefits in 2016, for the first time in over 30 years. All this Government’s done is to actually lift the cost of living. So we know on this side that, when people are in need, what we need to do is provide them with the ability to get back up on their own two feet and to give them a hand up, and we do believe that Kiwis should always and must always have a safety net in their times of need.

So our social services discussion document focuses on giving Kiwis targeted and tailored solutions that will help make the biggest difference in their lives, and, yes, we want to measure that success through targets, because, actually, we know that’s what makes the biggest difference. That’s what channels the efforts of the thousands of Government department employees who are tasked with improving the lives of New Zealanders, and targets support them working together to achieve that. So targets—for example, reducing the number of children who live in benefit-dependent homes, because we know 60 percent of the children living in material hardship live in benefit-dependent homes. This side makes absolutely zero apologies for focusing on those kids and their needs. So that’s why we are reintroducing the social investment approach, because that is about changing lives: making sure there are fewer children in benefit-dependent homes and making sure that gang members and their associates cannot access welfare if they are already deriving illegal incomes.

We’ll partner with community housing providers and continue to support Housing First, which, of course, has been incredibly successful in supporting those who are homeless. But we’re also committing to increasing post-natal care so that every mum for every birth gets at least a three-day stay in a facility of their choosing, because this side of the House knows and supports the evidence that says the first thousand days of a child’s life set the direction and the path for the rest of their lives.

We also want to make sure that parents can take paid parental leave at the same time—thanks to my colleague the Hon Amy Adams—we also want to make sure that superannuation is no less than 66 percent of the average wage, and we want to also provide a nationwide action plan to help communities with parenting support and resources, because there’s not a week that goes by when Kiwis don’t say the thing that would make a difference for them is parenting. We know on this side of the House it’s not kind or caring to pile on extra taxes and costs on Kiwis, and that’s exactly what Labour, New Zealand First, and the Greens are doing.

More and more Kiwis are struggling to put food on the table and a roof over their house. We’ll fix it.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU (Deputy Leader—NZ First): That was the most miserable contribution from the Opposition I’ve heard in a very long time in this House, and not even a single show of support from her colleagues on the other side of the House. Imagine if that member Louise Upston’s dream and vision came true where she represented her party in that contribution when she said “Let’s just take all beneficiaries off the benefit.” Imagine how wonderful the statistics would be for the National Government to report back to the nation if the solution was “Well, let’s just take the benefit away.” How can she possibly talk about helping solo mums or families when their vision is to make it harder and more difficult for families who need the help at that time in their lives to get ahead and make a difference?

Actually, this brings to mind a wonderful contrast between this Government and that former Government on that side of the House. The previous contributor spoke about gangs. Let me explore that in just a little bit of detail.

Let’s explore gangs, because for nine years the National Government—what did they do, Mr Mark Mitchell? They underfunded the police force and forced the police to shut down their stations across the country. They underfunded schools, they underfunded teachers, they did everything they could to take people off the benefit, and, quite frankly—we know now, from our experience—they neglected the provinces.

On those days that they cut those figures in the Budget—on those days—they saved the country a dollar. But today we see the effect of those 1980s bean counter decisions, where they say they’re saving a dollar in the Budget but actually they’re doing it at the cost of human lives, and they’re doing it at the cost of today’s taxpayer, who’s having to fix these issues now so that we can get rid of gang members—so that we can get rid of that scourge on our society.

Hon Mark Mitchell: You’ve got more. You’ve got more gang members.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: And I’ll tell you what, Mr Mitchell. We’re investing forward to do that. Think of a society which this Government is working towards: economic growth for all New Zealanders, where we will be and are investing in our provinces—for example, in the Hawke’s Bay, where the gang problem is growing almost exponentially. Why is that? It is because that party over there neglected it for nine years and we’re having to invest in it now. The Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) is doing that, for example, and I’m incredibly proud of the work that the PGF is doing.

Minister Jackson and Te Ara Mahi programme and the work that’s being done there: there’s so much work going on in a forward investment mentality where we are saying, “How do we give these people a hand up? How do we make work and self-pride the option for our young Māori in particular? How do we make that the vision for our youth rather than gangs?” They had no choice under the previous Government and it’s absolutely farcical that we be attacked for doing the good work that we are on this side of the House.

On a lighter note, I just have to give credit—as I, unfortunately, often do with the finance Minister’s contribution—about Mr Luxon and the airplane metaphors that he used. My contribution and observation aren’t as eloquent as that except to say it’s not so much Luxon himself; it’s the observation and the furore that was created in the media. Here’s the new leadership. Here’s the vision, the future of National, and he’s not even a member of Parliament yet. What that, unfortunately, says to the New Zealand public is: “Where are the options now? Where’s the leadership now?”

I tell you what, when I was in Opposition, we didn’t really notice the lack of depth there when you had the Rt Hon Sir John Key and his kitchen cabinet, because that was a tight, skilled crew—I have to give them credit—and that’s what you saw out in the public.

Hon Members: All gone.

FLETCHER TABUTEAU: All gone—it’s all gone. It’s all gone. So we have Mr Simon Bridges with a queue—a queue—of his fellow party caucus members getting closer and closer to his back, getting closer and closer to his back, and I think they might be all shuffling Luxon forward as they get closer to 2023.

Hon ALFRED NGARO (National): That was a speech from the official deputy leader of New Zealand First, but the true deputy leader of New Zealand First is the “Tāne Māhuta of the North”. That’s right—that’s Shane Jones. When he stands up, he’s making a declaration. There’s a crack happening inside the coalition Government. No longer do they talk about the coalition Government. But what does he say? He says this: “I am a New Zealand First member of Parliament. I speak for New Zealand First.” And what does Iain Lees-Galloway say? He says, “I have no ministerial responsibility for Mr Jones.” What does the Prime Minister say? “I do not agree with his statements.” Why? Because, for all of the brand of this wellbeing Government, there are no cute and cuddlies any more that will try and mend this brokenness. There is a crack, there is a shift that’s happening, there’s an ideological change that’s happening, and it’s happening right on the other side. You’ll see it.

They talk about the Mana in Mahi programme 2018. When it first started off, 150 people is what they said would benefit from this programme. They realised they needed to ramp it up. They put another 4,000 there—that’s what they said in 2018. But what they don’t talk about is the drop-out rate at 32 percent. That’s right—those who’ve dropped out of that programme, who unsuccessfully even completed the programme. It’s not the success they talk about. But here’s the bit that nobody else there in “Voterland” knows about, because on the New Zealand First side what they wanted to talk about is, basically, pay for the dole—that’s right—or work for the dole, that those who are on the dole would work for it. Under the Mana in Mahi programme, if you look clearly in the detail, they’ve extended the criteria so that those who are on the dole will have to work as well. It’s this sneaking in of New Zealand First; that’s what it is.

This Wellbeing Budget that this Government’s talked about is a sham. It’s not happening. How do we know that? I go back to the State of the Nation Report that was written by the Salvation Army and here’s what they said: “This is [this Government’s] attempt to mark out a different pathway for New Zealand”—one that in most quarters is talking about the Wellbeing Budget. But here’s the part that I think is critically important that we look at to judge this Government by. One of the big problems with the wellbeing focus is understanding and agreeing on what we mean by wellbeing. As you get into the idea, it can quickly become vague and complex. As a big idea to arrange public policy around, it is at a risk of losing public appeal because of this vagueness and of this complexity. Those are the true words.

You can talk about being warm and cuddly; you could talk about wellbeing, but how do you wrap it around the policies of Government and of ministries? So, therefore, what’s the telling of the tale? Well, the telling of the tale are the results that would come out of there. Already, this Government and this Prime Minister have talked about poverty and the reduction of poverty for children, and yet already, under the child poverty indicators, seven of the nine indicators have shown an increase of those children who are actually in poverty.

In fact, the percentage of children in households with incomes under 50 percent of median after housing costs, in June of 2018, the increase was 27,000—that’s 2.3 percent—and yet under National, it was consistently dropping along the way. The percentage of children in households with income under 50 percent of median income after housing costs, again, in June of 2018, was an increase of another 7,000 children. Seven of those indicators show this: that you can be wellbeing and you can be well-intentioned, but if you don’t know how to wrap it around the policies, you don’t have the evidence to make it work—the results show it’s just not working.

So let’s talk about the hardship grants that are over there, and I’m sure that the Hon Carmel Sepuloni will get up and she’ll debate these, but you can’t debate the facts. You can’t debate the facts. Let’s look at the hardship assistance grants. September 2019, in that quarter: 573,588 grants for special needs grants; more than double of that in 2014—double of that in 2014. It’s an increase of 47.3 percent. When we look at emergency housing, this is the bit that’s got to really hurt them, because already KiwiBuild has failed. They’ve not been able to put anything in place. Again, being well-intentioned and wellbeing does not mean you have the evidence or know how to change this. In other words, there’s a lack of competence. Why? In emergency housing alone, in 2018, there were 14,000 grants that were granted, at a cost of $16 million. In 2019, there were 29,266 grants, at $41 million—an increase of 161 percent.

I have to say, you can be wellbeing and well-intentioned, but what it goes to show is there’s a crack in the coalition. There’s an inability to have confidence to be able to deliver the things that matter most to New Zealanders and to Kiwis.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development): That member said I’d probably get up and debate the points that he made, and I probably will because this is the general debate and that’s what we do in a general debate. We heard from the member that just spoke about alleged cracks in the coalition. I do need to remind that member that he was the one thinking of splitting off and starting his own party, so we do have to ask: which party is Alfred Ngaro with this week? We have also heard rumours that already badges are in the making saying “Luxon 2023”, but who knows? It could be Alfred Ngaro and Christopher Luxon in their own party. So let’s think about that before we talk about cracks on this side of the House. We are a very, very happy coalition Government, can I say, who have a very happy confidence and supply partner as well.

There have been lots of assertions made from the other side of the House, not just in the general debate but actually during question time also. It is really important that we take the time to put numbers into perspective, as was spoken about by our Minister of Finance and our Prime Minister today: 4.2 percent is the unemployment rate—4.2 percent.

Hon Mark Mitchell: It’s gone up.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Yes, it’s up from 3.9 percent. However, the three lowest unemployment rates that we’ve had in the last 11 years have been under this Government, not that Government. In fact, it was 4.7 percent when we came into power and now it is 4.2 percent. So we’re very proud of that.

We hear a lot from the other side of the House about beneficiary numbers, and I do need to make the point that currently it sits just under 300,000. I think two years consecutively it was up over 350,000 under the previous Government. So they do need to reflect a little bit on their time whilst in Government, and make sure that we are being transparent and honest with the public, with respect to the numbers. We really are focused on making sure that we provide opportunities for New Zealanders who enter the welfare system to get the upskilling and training that they need to take up the jobs that are actually available and are going to be available moving forward. That is why we have put that investment into Mana in Mahi and other programmes targeted towards those who come through the welfare system.

We’ve heard a lot from the other side of the House and its tired, it’s old, its déjà vu. It shows that National have no new ideas and they still want to continue to run with policies that don’t work. We’ve heard a lot about their social policies, and for every reason I’ve just mentioned we won’t dwell too much on that. But what I will say is it’s really interesting that in their narrative, they like to talk about this very small proportion of New Zealanders who are on benefits and who are in gangs—and it is a very small proportion—rather than focus on the 52 percent of New Zealanders who are on benefits and who have health conditions or disabilities, or who are caring for people with health conditions and disabilities. Now, you would think that anyone who had an effective social policy would want to focus on the majority of New Zealanders in the welfare system, most of whom want to work but need a little bit of support to get into work and need a little bit of support from a Government to break down the barriers to getting into employment. But did we hear anything about that particular group—the majority of New Zealanders that are in the welfare system—in the social policies that were announced by the Opposition? No.

Now, why would that be? Why would that be? You know, I hate to be cynical—I really do hate to be cynical—but I do have to think, you know, that rather than come up with any effective social policy, they would take the political opportunity to put the boot in again and continue stigmatising people on the benefit because it works in their favour to try and draw the worst out of New Zealanders, with respect to judgment and stigma in the way they might think about people in the welfare system. Now, that would be cynical of me to think that, but I can’t help but head down that pathway.

Anyway, I’m really proud of the track that we are on as a Government and the fact that we are changing the narrative about people in the welfare system, that we aren’t like the previous Government, who thought that young people were pretty damned hopeless. In fact, we think they have a lot of potential and deserve the very best of support that they can get from any Government, and that’s what we’re focused on doing.

So, with respect to the social development portfolio, it isn’t just about me. It’s about all the good work our Minister of Education is doing, it’s about the massive investment that we put into mental health, it’s about the massive investment we put into public housing. We are all focused on the most vulnerable New Zealanders on this side of the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): What an extraordinary contribution from that member, the supposed Minister for Social Development, who, in the last five seconds of her speech, started to turn to her portfolio, ran out of ideas with three seconds to go, and decided to talk about the education portfolio. It’s an exact example of a Government that has absolutely nothing to do. In fact, she talked about being cynical about the discussion document that National put out, but I actually think she’s probably more jealous. There are more ideas and suggestions in that document than anything we’ve seen from this Government, and then, to add absolute insult to injury, if we go back in the Hansard, the Minister’s talking about how proud and happy she is.

How can she be proud with more people on the unemployment benefit? More young people looking for work? How is she proud of the almost 14,000 New Zealand households looking for a State house? How on earth can anyone be proud? After that cackling contribution, it’s funny how, as I point this out, the other side has gone quiet, because you cannot be proud of those statistics.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I’m falling asleep.

SPEAKER: Order! It would be inappropriate for members to do that in the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR: Thank you, Mr Speaker. How they can be proud of those figures, I don’t know.

I want to particularly focus on the social housing area. It’s one of my three portfolios. What’s been really striking in social housing is just the stark numbers. The last quarterly report has come out: just under 14,000 Kiwi households are now waiting for a State house. When we left Government, that was just shy of 6,000. I’ve said many times in this House that it was not something to be proud of, but from 6,000 to, now, almost 14,000 families waiting, it is getting absolutely worse under this Government.

The Government makes a big claim about all the houses they’re building. One has to make two observations about that. A good number of those houses being built are the ones started and consented by National. Secondly, if all these amazing houses have been built, why is it that things are increasing so badly? In just the last year, we’ve seen almost a 50 percent increase. It’s almost doubled in itself in a year, of people waiting for State houses, and about 90 percent of that number—90 percent of those 14,000 houses—are priority A. These are people in absolute, dire need.

We on this side want to find solutions, and if you read the discussion document and the contributions I’ve made, for me, it’s fundamentally important that we engage into the public sector and in particular the community housing providers. Why I put that out there is because the other side of the House—the Government—was obsessed with the opportunities to do it themselves. The bungled, failed mess of KiwiBuild—an absolute disaster. An array of legislation they’ve put through which has absolutely cooled the market and undermined those who provide private rentals, again contributing to the problem that we have, and an array of rhetoric which has achieved nothing—absolutely nothing. A Prime Minister who came out a couple of years ago, talking a big game that “There’ll be no more homelessness in New Zealand. No one will have to be in cars.” In fact, even in her very limited contribution in the House today, she talked about not wanting kids with torchlights in cars. Well, we all aspire to that, but for all her talk, it’s got worse.

It has got so much worse under this Labour Government. In fact, the number of people in motels is now over 3,000. It’s got hugely, hugely—with 3,000 families in motels. Phil Twyford, one of the former Ministers of Housing, promised that no one—no one—would have to be in motels. In fact, two winters ago, the Government also promised that no one—no one—would be homeless this winter. The funny thing is and the tragic thing is that more people are homeless. More people are waiting for a State house. More people are waiting in cars.

Marja Lubeck: It’s not very funny. It’s not funny, Simon.

SIMON O’CONNOR: It’s got worse. All that happens—and someone says, “It’s not funny.” That’s the whole point, having been making light humour of this. It’s Labour’s new interjector, trying to remind her colleagues that she’s there. The thing is that we’ve got—I suppose that wasn’t actually humorous. That was probably just—anyway, that’s not the point. The point is it isn’t funny, and that’s why we have put this discussion document together. I welcome New Zealand’s contributions. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real honour to be talking in this general debate. Look, I’ve been inspired over the last week or so attending school prize-givings. I have most of the secondary schools in Wellington City in the Rongotai electorate.

Matt Doocey: Did you get any awards? What’d you win?

PAUL EAGLE: I did. I got lots of awards, and those awards were saying how well the coalition Government was going. That’s the award. That’s the award I got—the overwhelming and just overt “Congratulations, what a great job you’re doing.” These are schools that I would say weren’t traditional Labour schools, but can I say there’s no shame—there’s no shame—in them coming up. Mums, dads, caregivers, the senior students, the principals—everyone’s on the waka saying what a wonderful job this coalition Government is doing.

When I look over the last two years—because it has been that—people had literally been crying out for change, and the big changes that this Government has taken on have been well wanted. Look, can I say, when they talked to me, they said, “We want a Government who starts tackling the long-term challenges we face.” That’s things like we’ve just heard: the housing crisis—we called it a crisis because we weren’t ashamed of that; they denied it on that side of the House; child poverty—that’s right, child poverty; and climate change. I’ll come back to that in a minute, because I know that the Prime Minister and the whole Government, the coalition—we are not too afraid. We are not too cynical to avoid tackling the big, long-term issues facing New Zealand. We’re looking ahead 30 years, not three, and, astoundingly—well, not really—people are saying, “Yay! That’s what we want. We want a plan for Aotearoa New Zealand.”—the long game that unpicks years of denial or entrenchment. That’s what that side of the House was doing for their nine years in Government.

But this Government is delivering a landmark action on climate change this week. I’m really proud of that. The biggest challenge facing our international community and New Zealand. We’ve young—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Move on. We have that legislation coming up soon. It’s not to be discussed now.

PAUL EAGLE: Sure—fine. So we know that that is coming. Happy to move on, because I’ll talk about my favourite subject, and that’s housing, because we are tackling the long-term challenges in housing. That’s on the agenda too, but can I say we are undertaking the biggest public housing and social housing building programme. I know when I look around the Rongotai electorate, there are lots of examples where houses were boarded up, houses were pulled down. This Government is rebuilding those and putting housing back on there.

So I’m a little bit miffed when I hear things from the previous speaker, Simon O’Connor, that talked about how nothing was happening, because what was really going on on that side of the House was they were preparing to undertake the biggest asset sale ever. They keep talking about this community housing sector. They keep talking about this market, these other people who are going to suddenly save us, build all these houses and resolve the housing crisis—which in their language wasn’t a crisis. But what struck me was I remember clearly that even the head of the Salvation Army was miffed himself when he said, “Well, I didn’t know that we were going to buy all these social housing units off the then Government.” He had no idea. No one knew. They had no housing Minister on that side of the House, no one knew what was going on, but we did because we knew that they were going to undertake the biggest asset sell-off ever. We saw it. We saw tinkering with all sorts of State-owned assets. That’s what was going on.

We are undertaking the biggest rebuild programme. I know when I visit Fife Lane in Miramar, the site of the first State house, and not only there but at the prize-giving at my old school at St Patrick’s, people were saying that it was good to see those empty blocks of land with housing being built on them. That’s a direct result of this Government. That’s a result of a housing Minister and a housing team of Ministers who have come together saying “We must do this quickly.”, and that’s what we’re doing. That’s an example of some of the long-term change being rectified in our mere two years.

Can I say, I got this in the mail myself. [Holds up campaign flyer]—“Making progress on what matters”—this was brought to two of the three prize-givings I went to. Isn’t it great when people bring along the material that we sent out and say “You’re doing a great job.”?

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It is refreshing to hear someone from that side of the House actually talk about the policy they’re delivering, because it seems to be that, in the general debate, the Government benches seem to spend most of their time criticising the Opposition, and maybe that is, as has been suggested, a little bit of jealousy over there.

I want to focus my contribution today on this wonderful new discussion document that has been launched this week. We are calling this our social services discussion document, and it goes to demonstrate that, while we have been in Opposition, we have not been sitting on the couch with our feet on the desk. We have actually been working. We have been talking to the people who are affected by social policy, from our social housing providers, our NGOs, our community service groups, Government departments, and volunteers. They have all helped us get this document to where it is today.

There are some commitments that we’re making in this document about our direction of travel for social services. There are some proposals that we’re seeking feedback on, but there are also some questions, and we’re expecting some very honest answers from the people who contribute back in their feedback, because we do want to hear their responses. We, as we’ve heard today, do believe that the Kiwis in this country do deserve a safety net, but at the same time, we have to remember that to have social welfare at all relies on the hard work of New Zealanders who get up, who go to work, and who pay their taxes. We also know and recognise that the very best form of welfare is the family. So, in helping families, we recognise that we are helping all Kiwis, and we’re helping them to live better lives.

At the heart of our thinking in this document is our social investment approach. That means investing early and breaking those cycles of dependency but also making sure that we grow the best population that we possibly can. We’ve used science, we’ve used data and facts, to support our direction of travel, and we know that the very best interventions are the earliest ones. So I’m very pleased to have contributed to the document, and my contribution was investing heavily in the first thousand days of a child’s life from conception. We know that not all mums and dads are prepared for life with a new baby and becoming parents, and not everyone has the support of a fully functioning family behind them to support them. So we’re proposing a whole new range of ways that we can support people to become great parents. We’re going to introduce our former target of having 90 percent of pregnant women registered with a lead carer in their first trimester—a target that was removed by the current Government when they removed the Better Public Services targets because, I guess, if you don’t measure it, then you can’t be held to account. We’re not afraid to be held to account. We want to grow healthy babies and we want to help pregnant mums understand how their lifestyle and their diet impacts on their growing baby, and that is a very big first step.

Already announced by the Hon Louise Upston is a three-day stay, helping new mums to get the care and support they need if they so wish. For those that don’t wish to stay for three days, we are ring-fencing that funding so that DHBs cannot spend it elsewhere, and that means that if mums choose to go home early, then those that need a bit more support and need a few more days can actually use those credited days. The paid parental leave of 26 weeks—we’re also proposing in this document that parents can split that and share it so that they can spend that time at home together with their new baby if they so wish.

I believe that investing in the first thousand days of a child’s life is the best investment that we can make as a country. We’ve used specialist information and specialists to help guide us in this development because we know that those who are nurtured survive the best. We are looking for solutions that break the cycles of poverty and tackle the root causes, and not just looking to the symptoms. Thank you, sir.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): It’s a pleasure to stand and take a call in this general debate. It’s a great week to be in Parliament. We have inherited a mess, and the people of New Zealand finally know it. Too many issues have been ignored, and we’ve been paying the price. We’ve been paying the price for nine long years.

One of the most interesting things that we’ve been hearing this week—and even though the members have all been getting up and speaking about this big policy that they have, what the community has been hearing is that they are at it again—is that they’re bashing the beneficiaries again. We’ve heard from the Hon Simon Bridges this week, talking about taking benefits off people who are not going to immunise their children. Hey, I’ve been a single parent. I defy that man to come to us and tell us that people who are not on benefits are not immunising their kids. This is just a perfect example of saying “Hey, you know what? We can get you because you’re vulnerable.”

The other part of that as well is I heard—now, I love this saying—“Mr Grabaseat” is also talking about Working for Families members being penalised as well. What we know is that there are a whole group of people who choose not to immunise their children. Let’s look at those people and try and encourage them to do so. Let’s not punish their children for their decisions.

But, actually, today I want to talk about something that’s very close to my heart. This has been a great week to be in the House, to talk about our nuclear-free moment of this decade and about the 170,000 people who marched around climate change. I want to talk about this because this is one of those periods of time when we will look back, on this side of the House, and absolutely be proud to say that we were there—we were there and we were doing it.

I attended the climate change marches, and I got asked directly what do I do—what do I do as a person to help save the world from climate change? Well, I do the KeepCups and the reusable drink bottles and the metal straws and the Bee’s Wraps and the compost and worm farming, and I’ve just recently switched to a slow-fashion challenge, which means that I won’t be buying anything new for the next year. I look at the state of the seas and I look at the way that the environment is happening at the moment, and I think about the sea level rise impacting us soon and our water table will shift and we will have massive infrastructure issues, and I think about the acidification of our oceans and soil erosion. I think about these things and I worry—I worry—and I heard many, many people, when we talked around the zero carbon bill, talk about their worry and their anxiety.

So I thought that I would do something—probably not as well as our fabulous leader, Jacinda Ardern. But I thought that I would do a list of the things that we, on this side of the House, are doing to support the environment. So I’m going to give it a go—and I’ve only got a minute but I’ll give it a crack.

OK, we’ve banned new offshore oil and gas permits; we’ve protected indigenous fish; we’re overhauling New Zealand’s Resource Management Act, as it’s unacceptable for this cornerstone law to be underperforming in a country that values protection in environment; we’ve toiled for months and listened to hundreds of people talk about the zero carbon bill; we’ve brought in reform legislation about the emissions trading scheme; we’ve banned single-use plastic bags; we’ve made it easier for New Zealanders to choose active transport and choose cleaner cars with a “feebate” scheme for low-emissions vehicles; we’re building a National New Energy Development Centre in Taranaki; we’re building a 100-megawatt wind farm; we’ve established an interim climate change committee; we have given the most funding to the Department of Conservation since 2002—I’ve got so much, but I couldn’t do it. Jacinda did it so much better.

It is a pleasure—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

AGNES LOHENI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take part in today’s general debate. I’m sorry that I interrupted that list.

We are about seven weeks out from Christmas, but clearly, and sadly, many New Zealand families are not going to be having much Christmas cheer this time round. We’ve heard already today and this week, through Ministry of Social Development data, that food grants have doubled. What an indication that is. That is quite a significant indication that things are on the decline for New Zealand families. These are the same families that have faced rents going up and fuel going up. The price of electricity has gone up as well.

The other quite sad fact under this Government—and it has been noted here already by my colleagues—is that number around the jobseeker benefit. I know members on the other side of the House have stood there and tried to point their finger at us and say that we are bashing beneficiaries, that we’re stigmatising, but, actually, this works in the Government’s favour, because actually victimhood is your currency. [Interruption] Yeah, that’s right. Growing greater dependency of New Zealand—

SPEAKER: Order!

AGNES LOHENI: Oh, yeah, it’s hurting, but more people, more New Zealanders, are on benefits. You love it. You’re creating victims and you love it. I’ll say it again—[Interruption] Oh, I’ll say it again: under this Government, victimhood is your currency.

SPEAKER: Order!

AGNES LOHENI: So, for anyone under 25 who is not working, what an indictment. This Government should be going flat tack to get young people into jobs, and you’ve just quoted Mana in Mahi I don’t know how many times. If Mana in Mahi was working, that number of young people on benefits would not be going up. So that’s not working.

It is about jobs, because they are opportunities. It’s about a path, a pathway to a prosperous life. It’s about a pathway where you can learn resilience and learn some life skills and personal responsibility, and it’s building character, giving them some purpose to get on to a better path for themselves and for their families. For the Labour Government to put out a two-minute video listing so-called achievements that anyone else would call creative accounting—I’ll list off some things for you. I’ve got a list as well.

SPEAKER: Order! Not me, not me—repeatedly.

AGNES LOHENI: I’ve got a list for the members—not for you, Mr Speaker. So here’s a list—yeah, here we go. Oh hang on, first off: KiwiBuild—how about that. KiwiBuild did nothing and couldn’t meet the targets.

Broke the no new taxes promise; instead, introduced seven new taxes. Broke the 1,800 new police promise. Gang members up—gang members up 26 percent. Petrol prices have gone up. Rent has gone up. State housing wait-lists are through the roof—so you can’t deliver on housing. Oh hang on, I’ve got some more: triple the number of people are living in motels; increased young people on the benefit, at a five-year high; no new roads—that’s right; no new roads—failed to attract any new students in your fees-fee policy. Oh, and delivered an oil and gas ban that will actually increase emissions, and also delivered record low business confidence.

So let’s pick up on that last one. What makes it worse—the situation I’ve listed off—is that our economy is stalling. We’ve had economist Cameron Bagrie saying that businesses do not trust this Government. They are actually really nervous. So, with all indicators saying that we should be roaring, our economy is not roaring. Businesses are nervous. They’re not going to put their hands in their pockets to invest, and that is clearly because they don’t trust this Government. They trust this Government to actually tax them more, to interfere more in their businesses, and to destroy relationships between business owners and employees. That’s what businesses know under a Labour Government. That’s why they’re not confident, they’re not going to spend, and our economy is going to continue to stall.

GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, kia ora. This morning, I was out at Epuni School in Lower Hutt talking about energy and the environment. I love talking to students about those issues, because they get it, right? They understand the environment is the heart of our future. They know it’s important. They know we need to do things differently.

I was at the school with the Minister of Education because that school was a particular leader. They’ve changed out their lightbulbs to efficient LEDs. They’ve saved now 80 percent on their lighting bill and are now spending that money on the kids. I was there with Chris Hipkins because under the confidence and supply agreement, we are launching a new energy efficient schools package. This new $16 million injection is going to see LED lightbulbs rolled out across 500 schools in New Zealand in a new contestable fund to support energy efficiency, and solar schools replacing coal-fired boilers. It’s a really good policy because what it means is the schools are actually saving money on their power bills and they get to spend that money on their kids—you know, on teacher-aides and on musical equipment, sports equipment, and books. It’s great, and because of this we’re going to be reducing pollution and power bills for decades and decades and decades.

I’ve visited lots of schools across New Zealand to find out what the exciting, innovative stuff they’re doing with energy is—I think of Blueskin Bay School in Otago, I think of Trident High School in Whakatāne—but what I love talking about to kids is the science of where this solar power comes from, because 150 million kilometres away, at the centre of the sun, hydrogen atoms are fused into helium under nuclear fusion and this releases energetic gamma rays. Now, what happens is it takes 10,000 to 170,000 years for that sunlight—that photon—to finally reach the surface. It then travels at the speed of light—8.3 minutes—and if it hits a solar panel, free, cheap, clean electricity is produced. It’s an amazing thing.

Now, contrast that with the previous vision, which is: let’s dig up the muck and dig coal—something that took 300 million years, these primordial swamps and plants, to finally dig up as an energy source. We still have 230 schools in New Zealand burning coal for energy that we need to replace. Coal is so old-fashioned. It’s 300 million years old, but other parties still support it.

I think, for me, this is the energy choice we face as a country: fossil fuels or renewables; more dirty old coal, or do we embrace clean, cheap energy; dig up the prehistoric muck, or use the power of the wind and the waves and the sun; subsidise oil companies to look for more oil we can’t afford to drill, or halt offshore oil permits; power companies’ super profits while people shiver at home in energy poverty, or helping people with an energy hardship; cold, damp, unhealthy, and uninsulated homes, or insulating homes and bringing in rental standards. These are the choices we face, and I believe in a cleaner, cheaper, smarter energy future. The kids know it. The economists know it. Even the Marsden oil refinery knows it, and today they announced the country’s largest ever solar farm is going to be built at Marsden.

Now, today, 11,000 scientists from 153 nations made a statement in the journal BioScience. They said—and I quote—“We declare unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. This will entail major transformations in the way our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.”

This Government is building the foundations and the supports for a low-carbon country, but we need to go further. We need to listen to the children and the scientists, and say “No new coal mines, no new oil rigs off our beaches, no new fracking wells. We’re in a climate emergency—no new fossil fuels for generations ever again.”

We can’t keep cramming more cows on paddocks and more tourists in Fiordland. We’re already seeing the impacts on our environment. We need a clean, just transition to grow those new jobs. We need to see solar panels on our schools, on our State houses, on our KiwiBuilds, on our marae, on our hospitals, on our prisons, and on our universities. To decarbonise our industry and our transport networks, New Zealand needs to do in 15 years what has taken us 100 years to get to this point and build a new, modern electricity grid, and then do it cheaper and cleaner than before. This is going to take hands-on Government leadership, and our communities need to be empowered to produce their own energy.

Now, thinking about those kids at Epuni School, there’s a famous saying which people will know, which is that some people say that children should be seen and not heard. Well, I’ve seen those children on the streets—the tens of thousands of them—with the climate strikes, and in the Green Party, we will listen.

KANWALJIT SINGH BAKSHI (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak to mark the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, founder of the Sikh religion. The Sikh religion was founded in 1469. It is the fifth-largest religion in the world, and the youngest. Today, we have about 27 million followers all over the globe. Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s teachings were simple: be kind, work hard, do good, and treat everyone equally, no matter what their religion, caste, skin colour, or gender.

In medieval India, women had to face very significant hardship and discrimination due to their gender. They were treated as slaves. At times, they were also sold into child marriage, condemned to miserable widowhood if they escaped suttee immolation, and were regarded unfit for religious instruction. But Guru Nanak Dev Ji had the rare courage to stand up to clear the divide and discriminatory behaviour to equate women and men.

So kyon mandaa aakhiaijit jameh raajaanm. Guru Ji said, “Why call them inferior when they gave birth to all human beings, including the kings?” It fills me with great pride that our beloved country, New Zealand, gave the right to women to vote first in the world.

There are three main tenets of Sikhism which Guru Nanak Dev Ji gave to us, and Sikhism is based on: Naam Japu, which is meditating on God’s name with the purpose to eliminate evil, greed, attachment, anger, and lust, for our personality; Kirit Karo refers to earning an honest, pure, and dedicated living by exercising one’s skill, ability, and talent; Wand Chakou, share what you have and to consume together as a community—this could be wealth, food, or anything that we are able to share.

I will not dwell further on biological details of Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Rather, I will share the learnings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji that remain as relevant today as they were when he first manifested them. The first words Guru Nanak Dev Ji uttered after his enlightenment were: “Ik-Onkar Sat Naam Karta Purakh Nirbhau Nirvair Akaal Murat Ajuni Saibhan Gur Prasaadh.” The concept of God is reflected in the prologue of Guru Granth Sahib, which in English could be described: one universe, creator God, the name is the truth, creator being personified, no fear, no hatred, an image of undying, beyond birth and self-existent. Guru Nanak Dev Ji further said that God is universal; he does not belong to any race or any nation. Why search for God outside, when he is within all of us? The eight words, along with the ninth, “Gur Prasaadh”, are the blessings of true teacher from the essence of Sikhism.

Anyone who understands and follows these founding hymns of Sikhism in their very basic forms will not be able to, or cannot, discriminate against anyone on this earth.

I would like to reiterate that what the Hon Shane Jones is trying to do is the opposite of the message of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, and I think that he needs to understand that Indians have gained their mana by the hard work of our ancestors as well as with the education we have gained. Also, we have got the Prime Minister, who is advocating against racism and hate speech, whereas we have a Cabinet Minister who is doing the opposite of that and making derogatory remarks against the Indian community. I think that that is totally—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I seek leave for all parts to be tabled as one debate, with the questions taken separately.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Leave has been sought. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 to 3

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Yeah, thank you, Mr Chair. I thought I’d just start off the committee of the whole House process by thanking members for their support through the entire process to this point. The end is within sight, and I think the stage that we’re about to enter into is extremely important because we get to really address some of the, I guess, unaddressed concerns that have been raised during the passage of the bill into and through the House.

Just very briefly, Part 1 of the bill inserts the main content of the bill, which is related to the Climate Change Commission and emissions reductions and adaptation. The purpose of the bill is to provide a framework by which New Zealand can develop and implement clear and stable climate change policies that contribute to the global effort under the Paris Agreement to limit the global average temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels to allow New Zealand to prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change. The intent of the bill is to help to keep our planet safe for future generations.

To achieve this purpose, the bill includes four key elements. First of all, a Climate Change Commission will be established to provide independent advice and to monitor progress. Second of all, a target for 2050, set in the legislation, which gives certainty about how much New Zealand’s emissions must reduce by. Third, a system of emissions budgets and emissions reductions plans to act as stepping stones to the target and to provide a framework for planning. And fourth, adaptation measures to assess and address the risks from a changing climate.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m pleased to take a call at the committee stage of the zero carbon bill. I’d just like to start by saying that I’m going to be talking about one particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) amendment today.

But before I do so, I just want to give a little bit of background to some of the Supplementary Order Papers that we’ll be debating today. For the most part—and I think the Minister in the chair, James Shaw, will agree—there was very good cross-party consultation that went on between Mr Todd Muller and the Hon James Shaw for the most part of a year. I think even the Minister will agree that it was unfortunate that there was a period of silence before the bill was introduced to the House, and I know that the Minister apologised for that. Notwithstanding, it did mean that there were some things in the bill that were unexpected, that we hadn’t discussed, and that we weren’t ready for.

I think it would also be fair to say that in the Environment Committee, National Party members were in disagreement with some parts of the bill. There were changes we wanted to make but, obviously, we didn’t have the numbers and we weren’t able to do that.

So here we are at the committee stage, and we have a number of Supplementary Order Papers that we will be speaking to today.

The first one that I want to talk about, SOP 404, is in the name of Todd Muller. In clause 8, after new section 5ZI, we insert “5ZIA Review of … forestry assets”. This amendment comes from the many submissions that we had around the rapid buy up of farmland and whole-of-farm conversion to forestry.

I want to talk about one particular submission that relates to this SOP that I’m going to be debating, and it was from 50 Shades of Green. They had a concern around monocrop planting of pine trees on fertile land. They talked about the 30,000 hectares that have been planted in pine alone this year on the East Coast. They spoke about the Overseas Investment Office changes which have been smoothing the pathway for overseas companies to purchase land for forestry.

We’ve all seen reports in the media of the amount of farms that have been purchased by overseas companies and turned into pine forests. He spoke of farms in his area that were completely locked by forestry. He spoke about a tipping point in rural communities, where there are only 20 to 30 kids left in schools, which means that closures are potentially imminent and the nearest school is 50 to 60 kilometres away. He spoke about the decimating of rural communities, the pressure on farmers, and the attractiveness of the price that farmers were being offered—up to 25 percent above normal market value—and sales to what they call “carbon cowboys”, which has led to sales of tens of thousands of hectares now planted in pine.

He spoke specifically—and this is the bit where he was very emotional and cracked up—and said that they had recently lost 15 families in Pongaroa. That’s massive for a small community. With this in mind, our amendment—section 5ZIA(2)(a)—talks to the monitoring of the commission. And we would like to see that the commission must consider “the social, economic, cultural, and environmental impact of activities undertaken for the purposes of generating offsets from removals from land use, land use change, and the forestry sector;”. And given Shane Jones’ answers in the House today, and the complete, I would say, misunderstanding of how the rising price of carbon credits will affect the increase of whole-farm conversions, this amendment is very important.

Moving on to section 5ZIA(2)(b), we heard from many submitters about the monoterpenes that are released from pine trees. I have to say I’m not a scientist, but we did hear this from many submitters, and they talked about how this gas interacts with methane in the atmosphere and potentially makes the warming effect of methane far greater. Subsection 2(b) would require the Climate Commission to consider scientific and technical research into the warming and cooling impact of pine forests. So given the amount of submitters that we had who were concerned about that, we wanted to insert that into the new section.

And finally, in section 5ZIA(2)(c) the commission must consider the degree to which offsets from land use change and the planting of pine forests reduce any incentives created by the 2050 target for the New Zealand economy to transition away from fossil fuels. Now, this is a very big and important point. I mentioned in my speech yesterday one of the comments from the submitters. One of the comments in particular stayed with me from one of the submitters. She said, “Why should the polluters continue to pollute and transfer their dirty problem to the agricultural sector by having rural communities destroyed by the mass planting of pine trees?”

The National Party position is that we are concerned about the level of planting required and what that will mean for dirty polluters to actually change their behaviour and not just continue to offset that with planting. And as the Minister knows, I’m sure the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment shared our concerns and he prepared a number of papers that I’m sure the Minister has read. But he noted that it was a key concern for him—that is, the absolute absence of any effective mechanism for managing the risks of forestry and, in particular, that they may be overused at the expense of achieving reductions in gross emissions. And the risk of the relative impermanence means they will not actually provide the climate mitigation hoped for. He went on to say that, in his opinion, these risks were serious and would fundamentally compromise the purpose of the framework.

Now, we heard from a lot of submitters in this area. We share their concerns. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment shares our concern as well, which is why we believe that this section 5ZIA(2)(c)—the amendment—is so very important in that the commission must consider the degree to which these offsets are going to potentially not change the behaviour of our big emitters. As I said earlier, many of them were saying, especially the farmers, it is not fair for companies to continue to pollute, continue to emit and just transfer that problem to the rural sector. And so that is why we’ve popped that provision in there.

I’ve got a number of other Supplementary Order Papers that I will speak to. But I’ll leave that one there so that my colleague, Mr Scott Simpson, I think, can have a go.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Mr Chair. The National Party has made it clear throughout the progress of this legislation that, in fact, what has occurred is an attempt—an honest attempt, I think—on this side of the House to engage with the Government in terms of a true bipartisan, cross-party process. Having said that, notwithstanding the negotiations that I and my predecessor Todd Muller have had with the Minister for Climate Change and others in the Government, there are still some outstanding issues that we seek to resolve at this stage of the legislative process—the committee of the whole House—by way of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs).

It is not the intention of the Opposition to filibuster, to load this debate up with a myriad of SOPs that achieve little but time-wasting. What we have sought to do is to bring to the committee, by way of SOPs, five thoughtful, considered changes that we think will not only add value to the bill but add comfort and security to the wider New Zealand public, to businesses, and to communities. One of those areas that is of great concern to us is the establishment and setting of the methane targets in the bill. We accept and acknowledge the wisdom of a split-gas approach and we’re very happy with that, but what we do have difficulty with is the 24 to 47 percent target for 2050 reductions.

It’s been our view right from the outset that the best way to handle this is actually to use the advice that is available and will be accessible to the Minister in making recommendations about targets and will be available from the newly established expert-led panel of commissioners that we are about to appoint if this bill is successful and makes its way through the House. So we think that at the first opportunity that the Climate Change Commission has, they should actually apply their minds and their thinking to the 2050 methane target and then make a recommendation to the Minister, who should then consider it and adopt it. We think that it’s the science-based, independent, expert-led commission that actually is in the best position to provide an analysis of what the methane target should be for 2050, which, of course, is a long way out.

One of the things I suspect we know as legislators is that anything, any number, that we legislate in this bill this year, come 2050, that number is almost certainly going to be different from the number that enters the legislation today or this year. So my Supplementary Order Paper 405 provides an opportunity to make some changes that would allow for the provision of the commission to set a recommended methane target for 2050 and that the Minister could then consider it and adopt it. We note that in new section 5P(1)(b), inserted by clause 8, there is an opportunity for the Minister at any other time to request a review. Now, the problem with that provision is that by setting a review, the Minister then would have to come back to change the target by way of legislation. So what my SOP does is provide an opportunity, should a situation like that occur, for legislation not needing to be amended but actually for a change to be put in place by Order in Council. We think that would be a suitable, adequate, and efficient mechanism for achieving the objectives of SOP 405 in my name.

During the course of this debate, my colleagues will speak to the other SOPs that we have, but we want to emphasise again that these are not political point-scoring SOPs. They are the kinds of SOPs that we think add value to the bill, and we put them forward on the basis of genuine good faith, but we also hope that the Government will take notice of our clear intent in producing and preparing these SOPs. It’s likely that if the SOPs that we put forward are not accepted by the Government, then the potential for change at a future date remains high, and I’m sure that’s not the purpose of the Minister’s intent in trying to get cross-party support. So on that basis I will finish this call here and allow my colleagues and the Minister to respond.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I rise to commend to the committee Supplementary Order Paper 406, a really simple amendment in my name but, I will try and persuade the committee, quite an important one. It replaces new section 5W set out in clause 8 in this bill, and just to give background, new section 5W currently says that as far as possible, reductions in overall carbon emissions must be met from New Zealand credits or removals. It says “as far as possible”, with no question as to what the cost might be. Now, actually, it’s difficult to conceive of a scenario where it is not possible to remove or reduce emissions from New Zealand; it’s just a question of what price or sacrifice New Zealanders are prepared to make. So what we have in this bill is a requirement that New Zealanders are prepared to pay any price to ensure that they reduce or remove carbon emissions from domestic sources.

One of the impacts of that—we’ve already heard from Erica Stanford—is that we might get land-use change that wasn’t really an intention of this bill. We might see whole areas of New Zealand planted out in a monoculture of forestry that is actually environmentally damaging. But a more likely outcome is that New Zealanders pay more than their international competitors, perhaps in the same industry. So an ironic outcome of requiring the use of New Zealand carbon credits and New Zealand reductions is actually carbon leakage. What does that mean? It means that, actually, emitting activities that emit carbon dioxide or equivalents end up getting done outside New Zealand because the requirement to use New Zealand credits makes it more expensive to do here, in so far as carbon credits are an important cost, than doing it overseas.

There’s another principle at stake here, I would have thought. The objective of this bill should be for New Zealanders to be able to meet their obligations to reduce their contribution to the climate at the lowest possible cost, or, put another way, for a given financial cost New Zealanders are prepared to pay, they should be able to make a maximum reduction in their contribution to carbon dioxide - equivalent emissions. That sounds like a good goal. Given that this is a global issue—because last time I checked, the sky is all connected all the way around the world—surely it makes no difference if the reduction in emissions occurs in New Zealand or elsewhere, because if things get a little bit unbalanced, maybe the wind will blow. It seems to me that we are shooting ourselves in the foot with this bill by requiring New Zealand reductions only.

So what does this amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 406 do? Well, it says that emissions are to be met through domestic emissions reductions and domestic removals or offshore mitigation. The next thing people say is—and we heard it in the House from Shane Jones at question time; he said there might be “dodgy Ukrainian credits”. First, he goes after the Indians, now the Ukrainians. Where will he stop? Well, the fact of the matter is we should be focusing on the quality of the credits, not where they come from. So I’ve said in this amendment that the Government, by Order in Council, can stipulate what a quality credit is, but it must be neutral in its origin. That’s the kind of values I would expect the Green Party and the Labour Party, even if not New Zealand First, to stand for—that it’s not your origin or your nationality that matters, but, actually, the quality of the credits.

So I hope that the committee will support my amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 406 to make this scheme more efficient, to make it less discriminatory, to make New Zealand economically competitive, and to ensure that New Zealanders can meet their climate change policy obligations at the least cost, or meet them as well as possible for a given cost. And if it was to be done, then who knows? With a few more amendments, the ACT Party might even support this bill. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Health): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s my privilege to speak in support of this bill in the committee stage, and I want to briefly outline the principles in the bill as I see them and why I think that they are themselves the perfect rebuttal to Mr Seymour and Mr Simpson’s contributions and their Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). I do think that whilst they are intended to be constructive contributions, and I don’t doubt that for a second, the fundamental principles in the bill itself will lead us to the answer that says, actually, the bill as it is drafted is indeed preferable.

The Government is here today delivering on a major commitment by passing the zero carbon bill, taking us with a framework that will get us to net zero carbon by 2050. We all know in this House, I think—those of us who are responsible—that we need to reduce our emissions. We need to have a sustainable future so that our kids and grandkids can have a future on this planet. That part of it is not rocket science, and I hope that everyone in this House can appreciate that we only have one planet. As Mr Seymour said, it is the same atmosphere everywhere. If we don’t do our part in this part of the world, we are polluting that same planet for everybody’s kids and grandkids all around the world.

This legislation is important because it belongs to New Zealand. It is the result of dozens and dozens of submissions—thousands of submissions, I’m advised—from across the country, from parents, students, environmentalists, farmers, scientists. We have a programme as a Government to work with farmers to make sure that they too are supported in the efforts to reduce emissions, and there are plenty of good-practice examples out there that we can all learn from. We understand, of course, many New Zealanders are calling for faster action on climate change and want further action. Once this legislation comes into force, the climate commission will be able to suggest stronger action without political bias, and that very point starts to speak to Mr Simpson’s SOP 405, which recommends, effectively, as I understand it, that the actual target for methane be set by regulation rather than as a part of the more robust process. I think we can’t afford to have such a significant issue sent off to secondary regulation. We actually need to make sure that the Climate Change Commission, that the process we’re putting in place with carbon budgets, is robust and stands on its own two feet.

It’s clear, of course, that we’ve had to act for quite some time. Where we got to with this bill is something that should have been in place a long time ago. I had the privilege of working for a former Minister of climate change, the Hon David Parker, in the previous Labour-led Government, and even in that time, we had mapped out a path to sustainability that involved biofuels sales obligations, a preference for renewable energy, and so on. That is why it’s so critical that we put in place legislation now—because we didn’t act then, because it was repealed in a large part. Agriculture was taken out of the scheme, effectively, and another number of changes were made that diluted progress.

David Seymour: I’m not hearing any rebuttal to my speech here. Just a long history lesson.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: That is why it’s so important that we move now.

To get to Mr Seymour—he would like to hear, in respect of SOP 406, some of the challenges that I have with it. One, of course, is that the economics of this stuff have been well canvassed before, and I think Mr Seymour knows that well. In 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern wrote the 700-page report addressing the fundamental economics of climate change, and that report, way back then—he was chair of just about everything back then in the UK that had to do with economics—showed that the economics are always much simpler if you act sooner, you act decisively. Not only is it good for your country, because it puts you in an economically smarter position, but it’s also good for the planet, because the costs of mitigation further down the track are way more expensive. I think Mr Seymour really understands that. So I think, given that fact, we can discount a little his SOP right from the start.

Of course, in this bill, the climate commission is one of the critical things that we’re doing, and that independent advice, the ability to monitor for progress towards the climate target, is absolutely critical, and the emissions budgets that will be set and the fact that they’re independent.

I want to talk a little about the Environment Committee recommendations and the nature of the Minister’s response to those, because I think that they speak—[Time expired]

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to take my first call in the committee stage of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill and echo, if I may, the sentiments expressed by my colleague Scott Simpson, who, I think, framed up our perspective extremely well. We all know in this House that often when we get to the committee of the whole House stage, there are times when Oppositions put Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) on the Table more for political posturing, regardless of the colour of the Opposition of the time, and it’s all part of the process that we follow. I think it is fundamentally different with respect to this bill.

I covered off the National Party’s perspective with regards to this last night in the second reading of the bill: that this whole conversation is anchored on a premise that bipartisanship is critical for the enduring nature of legislation of this sort. We don’t need to traverse all the ups and downs of the process to date, but it has been very much, as Scott Simpson said, in the spirit of adding to the legislative framework that is being considered that our SOPs appear in front of us this afternoon. I’d like to quickly step through those and urge particularly the Minister for Climate Change to reflect deeply on the merits of them in terms of adding to the quality of the legislation that, it has to be acknowledged, has been worked on now for many, many months.

Firstly, SOP 401, reflecting on the additions we would like to do to the purpose statement. There will be an argument that says, “Well, we if append the Paris Agreement to the legislation, then somehow the intent that is sought by this SOP gets covered.” We disagree with that. The purpose plays a significant part in terms of the legislative hierarchy that this bill establishes. It understandably focuses on the importance of keeping New Zealand’s contribution to climate change constrained to match the collective world view of trying to keep under 2 degrees, and ideally 1.5 degrees.

But the language of the Paris Agreement is very explicit. It has ambition with respect to constraining temperature rise but also quite explicitly outlines that that should be done in a manner that doesn’t threaten food production. This is a very critical addition in the context of the New Zealand economy. We feed 43 million people from our exports. Having that purpose statement in the bill expanded to reflect the global expectation of action with respect to climate change, we think, makes sense. So we have SOP 401 that specifically aligns the purpose to the detail of the Paris Agreement, which we and over 180 other countries are signatories to. Again, as Mr Simpson has said, we see that as adding to the strength of this bill, not detracting from it.

SOP 402, again, we think is a very useful addition, because there is a conversation that has not been had in New Zealand with respect to climate change action, which is the tough conversation which suggests that even if we put our shoulder to the wheel, as we each imagine ourselves doing, it is highly likely on current trajectories that the 1.5 degree ambition will be overshot in relatively short order by the cumulative emissions from the world, and it will push on to 2 degrees. What we want is the ability for the commission to be able to reflect on what is actually happening in the world both in terms of emissions, temperature impacts, and making a decision as to what then makes sense from a New Zealand economic response—essentially, calibrating it to what is actually happening in the real world. That is the point of this SOP. Again, we think it adds to the strength of this bill, asking the commission to be conscious, as they reflect on our required journey to decarbonise over time, of, essentially, what the rest of the world is doing.

The next SOP I would like to pass some comment on, SOP 405, of course, relates to the target. This is a very critical area. There’s a significant amount of science that is out there around what makes sense in terms of a target for methane reduction by 2050. In fact, the Minister himself is on the record as saying it’s a very mixed bag, and because of that mixed bag, he chose a particular reference point on a particular Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. We won’t have time, no doubt, to debate the ins and outs of that particular decision, but the fact is that a range was picked.

It has had significant debate, not only within the agriculture sector but particularly within the science community of New Zealand. So the question then, we think, needs to be answered: why then have a range? Why not ask the commission to provide for us the advice with respect to what the methane target should be? Now, the previous speaker, David Clark, referenced the fact that this is somehow inappropriate, that it should be fixed now and we not leave it to the commission. I suggest you should read the bill. There is significant expectation in this legislation of the commission to be able to check, recheck, and adjust its expectation both in terms of budget and, indeed, targets if certain conditions are met. So it is entirely consistent with how this legislation has been framed up and the expectation we as Parliament have of that commission to ask of them to provide to us a target range for biogenic methane by 2050. Again, as my colleague Scott Simpson has said, this is not partisan rhetoric. These are very deeply considered additions to what is a complex but, we think, you know, pretty well-crafted bill that sits in front of us.

In terms of SOP 404—which essentially relates to review of use of forestry assets and an insertion we would like in clause 8—we have had significant debate over the last few weeks, and I sense more is coming, around the appropriate use of forestry assets to offset the challenge of actually reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The emissions trading scheme is designed in such a way that carbon is priced and if you can’t meet your obligations, you look for units to offset your emissions. Increasingly, because of the lack of availability of international units, our domestic emitters are turning to forestry.

What we are seeking is, rather than the sort of passing reference that we accept—and the Minister mentioned this earlier in the committee, that there is some opportunity for the commission to reflect on this issue in the legislation as it stands—we want to ask specifically for the commission to reflect deeply on this issue on our behalf and report to a future Parliament. Again, we think that adds a huge amount to this. We are expecting the same of them in other areas. In fact, the Minister talked about the expectation he has on the commission to look at airline emissions in particular, and there is a specific request on the commission to look at that and report back. We think that if you are explicitly asking a commission to look at how we would treat airline emissions in the context of our response to climate change, we think it is absolutely appropriate to then ask that same commission to reflect on the use of forestry as offsets for our domestic emissions.

Finally, our last SOP—403—relates to a more technical amendment which is, essentially, asking that each emissions budget state the total emissions that will be permitted but expressed both in terms of biogenic methane and carbon dioxide. Because we have agreed that, actually, a split-gas approach is appropriate in terms of how we measure, manage, and over time drive the budget response to it, it makes sense that we are consistent in keeping those gases split in terms of how we report from a Climate Change Commission to, ultimately, ourselves as Parliament.

So I repeat the key message that we have put on the Table from this side. When you consider the 18 months’ gestation of this bill, the work that has gone on in a bipartisan manner to develop the detail of it, firstly, by myself and, more recently, by my colleague Scott Simpson, and the various permutations that we’ve had through that journey, we now get it to the point where we think this bill is in a reasonable state, but there are these five SOPs that we believe genuinely add to the strength of the commission in terms of enabling it to do its job for us and the wider community. It’s in the spirit of that—it’s in the spirit of the Minister’s original reach out to us on the other side for bipartisan commitment to creating legislation that endures—that we put these SOPs on the Table. We ask for the Minister and the Government to, in good faith, reflect on what we have put in front of them.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Thank you, Mr Chair. I was part of the Environment Committee that started doing some of the background work and started considering this bill, and then, through the usual permutations in Parliament, I moved on to a different committee. It was exciting to work on this legislation and, in particular, it was exciting to work fairly intensively but cooperatively with the Opposition members of that committee in trying to get it right and trying to understand what was going on. I would like to pay a particular tribute to the Minister for Climate Change, Mr James Shaw, on the way that he worked in that bipartisan manner as well through that process.

It’s in that spirit of bipartisanship that I do wish to address the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that have been raised by the Opposition today and to try to address some of the points they’ve made. I’m going to start with Mr David Seymour’s SOP 406, in which he really advocates that we should be able to use overseas mitigation efforts as well as what we do here in New Zealand in order to meet our targets. He says it’s one world and so why shouldn’t we use carbon credits that are generated overseas. There’s a plausible simplicity to that, but it is too simple—it is too simple. It misses the point.

It misses the point because it misses where our emissions come from in New Zealand. They come primarily from two major sources. They come from transport and they come from agriculture. Transport is irremediably linked here in New Zealand. It’s us getting from Bluff up to Kaitāia. Transport is located here. The emissions are generated here. There is no leakage with those transport emissions unless it’s in the cost of building vehicles, but there is no significant leakage around that.

The agricultural emissions are generated here. They do not leak overseas. They are generated here by us. It is us who needs to take responsibility for them. So I agree that in a sense we should have some access to overseas credits, that we do need to have that at the margins, but, primarily, we need to take responsibility for our emissions here in this country. That is why it is so important that it is New Zealand carbon credits that are available to be used in the context of accounting for carbon and accounting for greenhouse gases in this country.

To me, it’s an interesting SOP from the ACT Party, because all along they’ve been quite keen on free-riding on the efforts of the rest of the world, saying that New Zealand’s emissions are so insignificant we really shouldn’t worry about what we do here; we should just sort of let the rest of the world deal with the problem. But the very spirit of this bill is that we deal with our own problems here, that we do stand up and take responsibility for ourselves, and that is why it is so important, not just in terms of where our emissions come from but in terms of the ethos behind this bill, that we are doing our share towards ensuring that this world does not end up in a terrible mess from greenhouse gases.

Moving on from that, I just want to address some of the thoughts that are lying behind some of the SOPs from the National Party. I accept that they are intended in a spirit of compromise, but I think they’re on the wrong track. So looking at SOP 401, Mr Muller raised a couple of issues in respect of that, and in particular he said that what they want to do is for us to engage in efforts that do not threaten food production. Mr Muller said that we feed, I think, 43 million people worldwide. It is a significant number of people that we feed.

I’m not sure that we have a responsibility to feed as many people as possible. We certainly want to ensure that we produce food—it’s one of the things that we export—but it’s not clear to me that we need to continue producing food at that level. We do want to take our part in the world, we do want to contribute to the world, but not at any cost. So I’m just going to suggest that in terms of threatening food production, I think that is a misplaced concern. We do not need to feed only ourselves, but we can have a long and serious think about the extent to which we need to create as much as possible here for export if it comes at that cost of greater carbon. We are facing an existential crisis here, and we need to weigh those concerns up very, very carefully.

It’s a curious thing to me, because in terms of that “threatening food production”, on the one hand this SOP is saying that we have a responsibility to the world, but, on the other hand, in this very SOP we have a call to have that temperature limit set at something well below 2 degrees. So in the legislation as introduced, the temperature that we are going to try to limit our increase to is 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Now, that’s based on the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data. But the Opposition would have us set that target something well below 2 degrees. So on the one hand, when they say we shouldn’t threaten food production, they are saying we should be right involved in the world; on the other hand, in that very same SOP, they are saying we should retreat from the world. It’s a mixed-up, messed-up SOP, because it sends two messages there and they are contradictory messages.

What I want to suggest is that the appropriate message we should be sending to ourselves, and this links back to Mr Seymour’s SOP, is that we will do our part, but it is our part, not everyone else’s part as well. That is the point of ensuring that we use our carbon credits, that we use domestic carbon credits. It’s really important that we do that. That’s why we will do our part to get to that 1.5 degrees, because that is what we need. I just wanted to reflect on those two things.

I want to move on to another of the SOPs, the review of forestry assets. This is SOP 404, Mr Todd Muller’s SOP. What it’s calling for is a review of the use of forestry assets. Again, it sounds plausible, that we must always think about these forestry assets. Now, my reading of the bill as it’s come out of the select committee—and it is a shame that I wasn’t there to be part of it because I was enjoying that process—was that in actual fact these sorts of provisions are already in the bill. There is no need for this explicit clause on it. So, in clause 8, new sections 5Q(1)(c), 5Q(1)(d), and 5Z(2)(b)(ixa)—goodness, we get a long way on that—are going to meet in large part this review that’s suggested in this SOP. In particular, new section 5Z(2)(b)(ixa)—goodness, the people on that committee did work a long way down those numbers, didn’t they—was a recognition of the importance of land-use decisions for rural communities, that those concerns have been taken into account in this bill.

There is an important point around forestry, and we do need to think very, very hard not just about soaking up emissions by increased planting of trees—we can do that at the margins—but in actual fact we do actually need to reduce our emissions. We need to reduce the emissions from transport. We need to reduce the emissions from agriculture. Yes, with the use of forestry we can soak up some of the rest, some of the leftovers, by using forestry, but may I suggest that if we are to be serious about doing our part in the world for climate change, putting our shoulder to the wheel, doing our work, standing on our own two feet, then our target must be reduction, not just forestry, and if we take that seriously on board—I don’t think the forestry problems will melt away, but they will become much less significant.

This is an excellent bill and I commend it to the committee.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Chairman. I am pleased to be joining my National colleagues in supporting this important climate change bill. I want to give it a bit of a historic perspective in terms of the steps that it’s taking forward, want to touch a couple of areas where I’m concerned about the bill, and also want to strongly commend the work of colleague Todd Muller and, more recently, Scott Simpson.

When I had responsibility for this area of policy in the last Government, every single climate change bill was opposed by the Opposition—even bills that would make progress. I actually think the scale and the challenges of climate change are that as much as possible we should try and work across the House and as much as possible we should ensure that each Government is making steps that take New Zealand forward on this issue.

In our very first National Budget, we went out and set a policy of insulating 500,000 homes, because that was just a no-brainer in terms of making progress on climate change. In July 2010, we became the first country outside of Europe to impose a price on carbon, by introducing the emissions trading scheme. We followed that up with road-user charge exemptions for electric cars. We were big players internationally in securing the Paris Agreement, and I’m also particularly proud of the Kigali agreement around the very intense refrigerant-type gases and of initiatives like the cycleways. And, if there’s anything of which I’m proud of in contrast to previous Governments, it’s that for 30 years we’d had our emissions from the electricity sector growing, and in those Key-English years, we were actually able to increase the proportion of renewables from 65 percent to 85 percent.

Now, in 2016, I was quite taken back in meeting Lord Deben, or John Gummer, at an OECD meeting of environment Ministers and invited him to come out to New Zealand because I believed that a climate change commission was the next logical step for New Zealand to take. I commend the Minister in the chair, the Hon James Shaw, for picking that up, and the large parts of this bill are about putting the architecture of a climate change commission in place.

The reason I feel very strongly that it’s a good step forward for New Zealand to take is a level of frustration—as a parliamentarian who was present at the signing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, back in Rio in 1992, during my first term in Parliament—that too much of the conversation around climate change is around setting the targets; too little of it is about the hard change. The reason, both in the world and in New Zealand, if you look historically at big bold targets being set and then them not being met, is actually because people haven’t been prepared to have the honest conversation about the costs and the impacts. It is my view that a climate change commission is not some magic answer, but it is a useful step forward in setting budgets and getting a more detailed and honest conversation about the changes New Zealand needs to make to reduce emissions.

There are a couple of areas where I do want to express some concern about the bill. Yes, I’m a nerdy scientist. It’s my view that the more honest we are as legislators, the more scientifically informed our farmers, our car drivers and everybody is about the challenge, the more likely we’re going to be able to carry the arguments to make the change.

I do not support this bill being called a zero carbon bill. It is scientifically and factually wrong. If there’s a frustration I have with the Green Party, it’s this idea of jumping with slogans. The problem is not carbon; the problem is greenhouse gases. Some people may say, “Well, what’s the difference?” Actually, the only reason planet Earth is so generously embodied with life is because of the existence of carbon. Carbon is a magnificent element. It’s what makes life possible. When you label a bill a zero carbon bill, you create the impression that somehow carbon is the problem. Carbon is not the problem; the problem is greenhouse gases.

Yes, the most important of those greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide—not carbon—but many of the greenhouse gases have no carbon in them at all. One of New Zealand’s big greenhouse gases is nitrous oxide. I say to members opposite: where is the carbon in nitrous oxide? Some of the most damaging greenhouse gases are gases like sulphur hexafluoride. Where is the carbon in that particular gas? The reason I would much prefer that bills were named honestly and informed the science is, in my view, we’re far more likely to make sensible progress.

I know why the Government’s called it the zero carbon bill. They want to create this impression that if we magically pass this legislation, wonderfully, the climate change problem has gone away. That’s a gross overstatement of what this bill will achieve. This bill will set up a good framework. It will help us make better decisions on this challenging journey of getting our greenhouse gases down. But, by calling it a zero carbon bill, in my view, it does not help inform the science. It does not help the public understand.

I get farmers talking to me and saying, “Well, why don’t we count the carbon dioxide that’s absorbed when the grass grows? Why is it that we’re so focused on methane?” Now, if you talk through the science, the reason is because methane—and when carbon is in that particular organic form—is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than if it is in the form of carbon dioxide. And, actually, if it’s in the form of plain carbon, it has absolutely nothing to do with climate change. So I make a plea that this would far more sensibly be called a “reduction in greenhouse gases Bill” or a “Climate Change Commission bill”, but to call it “zero carbon” is scientifically illiterate and does not help the debate.

I also want to support my colleagues around setting targets, and I will inform the committee of some of my debate that I’ve experienced around the setting of climate change targets. I remember at a previous election that one party said, “Look, you know, we’re going to aim for 30 percent reduction in emissions by 2030.”—the target that New Zealand adopted and we’re committed to through the Paris Agreement. And there were parties like members opposite that said 30 percent wasn’t nearly ambitious enough; it should be 50 percent. The biggest irony for me was the New Zealand First spokesperson said that 50 percent by 2030 wasn’t nearly embarrassing enough either; they were going to do 80 percent. And most members of this House would know: does that really match up with the level of change? Somehow, the bigger, the bolder the target, the more genuine you are about wanting to make progress on this genuine and challenging issue of climate change.

I think we need to be a bit more sophisticated than that. I do think it is really easy for this Parliament or some UN assembly to set big bold targets for generations miles ahead that won’t have any impact on them. I look, for instance, at the previous Labour Government. The Clark Government set a target of carbon neutrality. Actually, emissions went up by 12 percent during the last Clark Government. We did better during the Key-English Government, where emissions were down by 1 percent over those nine years—actually, a considerable achievement given the economic growth and the 15 percent growth in population over those nine years.

I’m more interested in the policies that are actually going to get those emissions down than us each having a contest about who can set the bigger target at some future date when we are unlikely to be here. I believe the amendments that have been moved by my colleague Scott Simpson show that we’re putting the cart before the horse. If we’re actually going to set targets in a more informed way, if we’re actually going to learn the lessons of what’s occurred internationally at repeated climate change conventions and in the political debate that’s occurred in New Zealand around targets, rather than just pulling numbers out of thin air—a billion trees; 100,000 homes; a 50 percent reduction in emissions; whatever it might be—let’s get an intelligent, scientifically, economically well-resourced organisation to be able to back up those targets. That’s where the sorts of amendments from my colleague Scott Simpson in my view would actually show that we’re learning from history, we’re actually improving how we deal with climate change, and, before we pull out big, bold numbers, that we actually back them up with some good science.

That is why National is supporting the Climate Change Commission. And we believe if we are going to set robust, cross-party targets, having set up the commission—and I must compliment the Minister on his choice of chair for that commission. That gives it the right sort of frame, in my view, and having entrusted that sort of intellect into the Climate Change Commission, we should use their expertise and we should help them set those longer-term targets, and that will be a far more robust way not just to get cross-party sign-up, but to actually give New Zealanders the confidence that we’re not just picking targets out of thin air, but have done the homework, done the budget, and have the policies that will actually enable New Zealand to make progress on this issue.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Mr Chair. I just thought I would respond to a couple of the points that the Hon Nick Smith was making just now, which were around the name. He has raised this before and it may not surprise people there was actually a heated debate about the name of the bill, because we actually recognise that not only is it inaccurate to say “zero carbon” because, of course, carbon is only part of the equation—it’s carbon dioxide—but the issue was and, ultimately, we went with the name of the bill that was being promoted by the youth organisation Generation Zero. That was sort of the inspiration for the bill in many ways. We did play around with a number of other alternatives, but they became unwieldy and didn’t really communicate terribly effectively. So I take Dr Smith’s point that it doesn’t wholly or adequately describe what it is that the bill is intended to do. But I just wanted to reassure him that because it is an amendment bill, it will, of course, be placed within the Climate Change Response Act 2002, the name of which is not currently due to change.

Now, I will just turn my attention to one of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that he referred to. The Opposition have raised a number of SOPs and, obviously, during the course of the debate I would like to address each of them fulsomely. But I thought, given, I guess, the level of attention that the Opposition has on the methane component of the target, it would be worth just addressing that one first, because I know that you’re most vexed about that particular component.

So this relates to SOP 405—and there are a few things. First of all, you know, we actually did receive from the Opposition last year, when designing the bill in advance of introducing it into the House, a request that the Climate Change Commission actually consider the target. And so that is actually currently written into the bill. It says in new section 5P(1) inserted by clause 8, that the commission must, when setting the next emissions budgets from 2036, review the target. And so that is literally the request to kick it to the commission. So actually it is required to do that in the existing clause that’s there. And that is in there at the specific request of the Opposition.

Now, I know that for, you know, a lot of people the timing of that, which is early 2024—that it must report by early 2024—there is a concern that that there is too long, that it, essentially, extends a period of uncertainty in which people don’t know quite what the definitive number is going to be for 2050, particularly when it comes to biogenic methane. And so I just wanted to say something about that, which is that the next part of that section, which is section 5P(1)(b) also says that the commission must review the target “at any time the Minister requests a review.” And so I just wanted to note that if 2024 was felt as being too late, actually it can happen under the existing legislation earlier than that.

The second thing that I know that the Opposition has raised real concerns about is the provisional range of 24 to 47 percent, which was drawn from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 1.5 degree report last year, that that is the wrong range, or it’s too high, or, you know, it doesn’t meet with some of the science that the Opposition members have been referring to. It’s worth noting that in the legislation, when the commission is required to or can review the target, there is no requirement in the legislation for it to stick with that range. So if the Opposition is correct—that actually the science is that it should be a different number that’s outside the range that we put into the legislation, then it can do so completely unfettered. And so I wanted to say all of that for the sake of saying that we’ve actually heard those concerns and we have actually already built them into the legislation as it stands.

In terms of the specific SOP 406 that the Opposition’s put in there, I wanted to just say that I don’t think it’s appropriate to move it into regulations because it is so significant. One of the things that we are doing with this is that for the first time, we’re actually placing the emissions reduction target in primary legislation, and so to have half the target—essentially, the long-term gases target—placed in primary legislation but then the methane emissions reduction target placed in regulations is both inconsistent and we actually think it’s important enough that it should go into the primary legislation. Also, I wanted to say that in new section 5Q(2)(a)(ii) the commission can actually already recommend a change to the target if significant changes have occurred in the “scientific understanding of climate change:”.

So I’m just saying all of these things for the sake of saying that we’ve actually received those concerns and we feel that we’ve actually addressed them in the legislation and in changes that have come through as a result of the select committee process.

SARAH DOWIE (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Chair, for this opportunity to take a call on this Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill, after that contribution about the name in this committee of the whole House. And it’s very poignant that I take a call at this point, having just come out of a meeting with the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters. This bill has significant ramifications for the province of Southland. We are already seeing the significant ramifications of this Government on the province of Southland, and they are extremely uncertain times for the people that I represent.

So, while I commend and rise in support of the contribution of all of my colleagues, and especially the Hon Dr Nick Smith, that it was a National-led Government that signed us up to the Paris Agreement, that it was a National-led Government that moved us forward with regards to reducing our greenhouse gases in this country, I do support the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) of my colleague, the Hon Scott Simpson, that we have a Climate Change Commission that is expert-led and that is empowered to set targets based on good research, good science, and understanding the technologies that are available to us with respect to industries, with respect to agriculture moving forward, and that we do this moving to reduce our emissions and offset the greenhouse gas profile at a pace that is fair, that is reasonable.

Just to recap, with respect to the uncertainty that is going on in Southland: a thousand jobs at Tīwai Point, two thousand indirect, 6.5 percent of Southland’s GDP, producing some of the cleanest aluminium in the world. And yet it seems at this point, especially throughout the select committee process, that this Government wants to pick winners and losers right now. And I don’t believe that is fair. I would rather be exporting clean aluminium than exporting jobs and livelihoods offshore.

I think it is prudent that the commission is tasked with looking at technologies that are currently available, that the modelling has to acknowledge what technologies are currently available, and that this way of life—our livelihoods in Southland—needs to be at least protected for a time until sufficient R & D is put in place to make sure that we can reduce emissions in that field; like I say, at a pace that will protect jobs and livelihoods. It’s a very uncertain time for Southland at the moment, and this bill adds to that uncertainty if it truly is not going to be a fair and just transition.

That brings me on to Mr Muller’s SOP 404, which is with respect to the review and use of forestry offsets. And, certainly, what was raised throughout the Environment Committee process was that that really is the panacea among what we’ve got to reduce our emissions profile—to offset it. I want to support Mr Muller’s SOP, in particular that the commission must review the use of removals from land use and land use change in the forestry sector. It must consider the social, economic, cultural, and environmental impact of activities undertaken for the purpose of generating offsets. My contribution in the second reading very much focused around this. It very much focused around this drive to plant our arable land in pines so as to meet these targets that are in the primary legislation—1.7 million hectares to be planted prior to 2050 and an extra 1.7 million before 2070 to attempt to maintain carbon zero. The social effect of this, as we looked at in the modelling, was to plant out the size of the province of Otago in pine trees.

The Paris Agreement, obviously, talks about the protection of food production. Again, there needs to be absolute consideration given to land-use change, to putting caps on forestation, and thinking about communities moving forward. As I said in my contribution last night, not everybody wants to live in cities. Not everybody wants to live in high-rise buildings. There are people that want to live off the land. There are people that want to live in the provinces and enjoy their way of life, but, equally, they should be given the opportunity to create jobs and livelihoods for their families. I mean, if we look at the agricultural sector: $45 billion worth of export revenue for this country; a significant industry and employing over 350,000 individuals. That’s significant, and it is a way of life. New Zealand is known as a reputable food producer; we are a safe food producer, and, interestingly, not all of us want to be vegan either. Sheep and beef, dairy—they still will be part of our future. I deny that it is a sunset industry, and I think that our farmers need to be applauded for the environmental efforts that they’ve put in place already.

So I think that we need to add in this SOP of Mr Muller to the primary legislation. I think that we need to make sure that there are clear guidelines that the commission must follow with respect to the offsets that are available at the moment through forestry, with respect to the technology available at the moment, and make it clear that the social, economic, cultural, and environmental impacts of the activity are taken clearly into account, using good science and measuring it in an appropriate and critical way. So while we supported the bill at second reading and we support a commission and this architecture framework that looks to lead us forward with a robust group of experts looking at the science, this bill does need to be strengthened by adopting the Hon Scott Simpson’s SOPs and Mr Muller’s SOP to make sure that it is robust and to make sure that many New Zealanders’ way of life is still secured moving forward, that food production is secured, moving forward, and that the so-called just transition is, in fact, just, moving forward.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to thank Sarah Dowie for her contribution then; she is a staunch advocate for the people of Southland. On the point about the aluminium smelter—she raises some very good points about the impact on that industry, that particular plant, and, by extension, other plants around the country, like the steel mill and so on out the south of Auckland. And one of the things that she said was that she is worried about politicians picking winners and losers. Of course, the way that we’ve designed the architecture—well before I got here—was that the way to move to a low-emissions economy without politicians picking winners and losers was actually via the emissions trading scheme (ETS), and to ensure that the settings of that produced a price that companies would adjust to, and that would provide an incentive to avoid the price shift. Remember that the whole point of the emissions trading scheme or any scheme that puts a price on emissions, whether it’s a carbon tax or an ETS or anything else—the point isn’t to raise revenue, it’s actually to avoid paying the price, and the way that you avoid paying the price is by investing in low-emissions technology. And actually in the field of aluminium, right now, in Sweden and in Canada there is a hydrogen-based zero-emission form of smelting—

Sarah Dowie: Expensive.

Hon JAMES SHAW —that is expensive, but you can see that that technology is starting to arrive. And so what I’m suggesting to her is actually that the bill that I introduced yesterday, the emissions trading reform bill, is actually the place where questions around the impact of ETS unit price, free allocation, and so on, in relation to the smelter in her area, are more appropriate.

However, she also referred to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 404, which is around a requirement for the Climate Change Commission to undertake a review on the use of forestry, and what we mean by removals from land use. Now, I just wanted to say that in our view, it’s unnecessary and, in fact, possibly dangerous to have that in primary legislation. And there are, actually, already provisions in the bill on forestry offsets versus actual reduction. This is one of those very rare areas where environmentalists and farmers are actually speaking with one voice, and we saw that reflected in the submissions that came through, which is about the concern that, essentially, industrial or transport emissions will be offset using forestry rather than being reduced; the sort of “get out of jail free card” for those industries and those sources of emissions.

The Environment Committee recommended changes which the Government has adopted, so I just wanted to point these out: there’s a new section 5Q(1)(c), which allows the commission to recommend changes to the target relating to greenhouse gases, emissions, and removals to which the 2050 target or part of the target applies. So removals in that context in New Zealand, right now, specifically means emissions sequestered from forestry. So the commission actually already has the ability to do what this is SOP is asking to do.

There’s also a new section 5Q(1)(d), which allows the commission to recommend how the target or part of the target may be met, including limits on removals or offshore mitigation. This was actually one of the points that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommended, which is to say, well, if the commission is looking at placing limits on offshore mitigation, it makes just as much sense for it to be able to provide recommendations on limits to onshore offsets, i.e., forestry. So that’s been written in, in new section 5Q(1)(d), inserted by clause 8. Also, there’s a new clause 5Z(2)(b)(ixa), which requires the Minister, when setting emissions budgets, to have regard to “the implications, or potential implications, of land-use … for communities”, and she spent much of her speech referring to the impacts or the potential impacts of land-use change on communities.

Now, I wanted to just mention that, yes, there has been afforestation recently, and just for some numbers: in 2018, approximately 9,000 hectares of new forest were planted. We think that in 2019, it’ll be something in the vicinity of 10,000, maybe up to 30,000 but more likely at the lower end of that thousand hectares—

Hon Nathan Guy: What was that? 10 to 13?

Hon JAMES SHAW: 10,000 to 30,000 hectares. I just wanted to point out that over the past decade, 70,000 hectares was deforested primarily for conversion to dairy. So we’ve had 10 years where 70,000 hectares was cut down and converted to other land uses. That is actually one of the reasons why our net emissions have gone up, because we have deforested large areas of the land, and so we’ve removed that sequestration potential to convert it to food production, essentially. You have to remember also, I mean, if you’re speaking historically, that there was colossal deforestation after colonisation, right? Almost the entire country went from being forested to unforested over the course of 120 years. So land-use change has always taken place in New Zealand. Now, we understand that when it takes place, that does have an impact on communities and on the economy, both in terms of exports and the domestic economy and so on, which is why these new clauses were written into the bill, particularly this one about the importance of land-use decisions for rural communities.

The other thing that I wanted to say is that we don’t think that it’s appropriate to set hard limits on forestry offsets now in primary legislation without policy work to determine what those limits should be. To Ms Dowie’s point, if you immediately remove forestry as an offset option for industrial emitters, that actually will drive up the ETS unit price for the aluminium smelter, because it’ll have fewer options on where to go to offset its emissions. So there is a significant impact in the other direction for the rest of the economy of doing it that way, and so we think it’s important that the commission, as the Opposition have said, takes the time and is able to consider all these matters more fulsomely than during this particular process, where, obviously, we haven’t had the opportunity to do that.

Now, I do want to say that we did draw heavily on the advice from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. Our understanding is that he does support the changes that were made by the Environment Committee and introduced into the legislation. Just in relation to Supplementary Order Paper 404, again, we actually do hear the concerns, and we believe that we have addressed those concerns in the amendments that have come through the select committee process.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just popped up, didn’t I?

Kieran McAnulty: She’s delighted.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: I am delighted. Look, I want to talk on a couple of matters—

Kieran McAnulty: Go, Angie!

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Thank you—I will go, Kieran McAnulty. The first is the Supplementary Order Paper 404 in the name of Todd Muller. I appreciate the Minister for Climate Change’s explanation about the 70,000 hectares, did you say, sir, that has been deforested versus the 10,000 to 30,000 hectares potentially being planted. It’s a really interesting point and a perfect example, I believe, of why we have created this piece of legislation in the way that we have. You see, the way that we’ve created this legislation is to enable science, to enable changes, to enable the reality of the day-to-day lived experience of people to be built into this piece of legislation.

We—and I said this in my second reading speech—don’t know what the future will hold and what technology is available and what things may come into play. As a consequence, we had a very detailed conversation, a very detailed conversation, because we heard lots of people concerned about afforestation and what impact that was having. So we had this very detailed conversation about: should we put some hard-and-fast rules in this legislation? Should we do that? Should we ensure that we don’t want an adverse or unintended consequence to occur? We came to the conclusion that the experts should do that. We came to the conclusion that, actually, there is a whole pile of things coming at us that are exciting and interesting, but they are not necessarily things that we should put in primary legislation.

I note in here that in new section 5ZIA(2)(b)(i), he’s talking about—oh, I’ll say (b) and then I’ll go to point (i): “scientific and technical research into the warming and cooling impact of radiata pine forests and any other relevant forest species, including but not limited to—(i) changes to the earth’s albedo”. Now, these are very specific things that he is asking for, and the reality around that is that we don’t want to lock this legislation down in this way. We don’t want to have this legislation at the point that we’re asking for specific things, because technology is shifting and changing all the time. We heard some really interesting science around terpenes. We heard some really interesting science around pine trees and the nature of pine needles. We heard regenerative farming methods. We heard all about different options. We decided absolutely not to put that stuff into primary legislation because our experts, our commission, will take into account those things.

So that is why I do not agree with the Supplementary Order Paper 404 in the name of Todd Muller. Again, I acknowledge that, genuinely, he has wanted to make a very good contribution, but, unfortunately, he missed the detailed and thorough conversations that we had about this in the Environment Committee as to why we got to where we got to. But I do thank him nevertheless for his participation.

The second matter that I wanted to talk to is Supplementary Order Paper 401 in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson. He has put in an amendment that, essentially, talks around that this should not occur in order to threaten food production. I wanted to just bring a little balance to the conversation. The member Dr Deborah Russell had said quite clearly that perhaps we don’t need to continue to create as much food or produce as much food. I take a different view on that, and my view is this: 40 percent of all food produced in this world goes to waste. It goes to landfill.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise to speak on the zero carbon bill, and in this contribution I want to particularly highlight some of the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that National has put forward. I do so in the context of what previous speakers have acknowledged has been an 18-month process, where parties across the House, and in particular National, Labour, and the Greens, have come together, recognising that an independent, expert-led Climate Change Commission is a good idea, that having some enduring targets for how we reach our Paris Agreement obligations is a good idea, that having an enduring framework for addressing climate change and for considering the economic impacts of the actions we take—all of these are good things, and in the spirit of agreement over those objectives, we’ve come together to work on this bill.

But it is still a bill that could be improved further, and I want to draw the members of this House’s attention to SOP 401, which relates to the purpose clause of the zero carbon bill. In doing so, I first want to quote from the Paris Agreement, because that’s where all of this starts. When we signed up to the Paris Agreement in 2016, we were signing up to an agreement that explicitly says that in being parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and being a party to the Paris Agreement, we would recognise—and I quote—“the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger”. We also acknowledge “that climate change is a common concern of humankind, [and] parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children,” and so on.

The relevance of these clauses in the Paris Agreement, and what this SOP wants to do, is to emphasise that in meeting our goals under Paris, we should do so in a way that takes into account and in a manner that does not threaten food production. The reason for that—

Dr Duncan Webb: That’s not what it says.

NICOLA WILLIS —is actually very practical, Dr Webb, because the reason for that is that we will not make the maximum contribution we can to climate change if we simply reduce how much food we produce here so that countries elsewhere in the world produce it in a more intensive-emissions way, or if we do it in a way that results in increased global hunger and, therefore, a reluctance by developing countries to make any contribution to climate change at all. If we want this to genuinely be an enduring and sustainable piece of legislation, it needs to be practical and it needs to ensure that New Zealand truly maximises its contribution.

I would argue, as an optimist, that if we think about our contribution to climate change in terms of doing things in a manner that doesn’t threaten food production, then that’s when we say, well, let’s emphasise the role we can play in agricultural R & D, in finding new ways of producing food that are less emission-intensive, of embracing technologies that allow food to be produced in a lower-emission way. So it is important that the bill reflects that principle in its purpose statement and that it is therefore interpreted in that way, and that is why this is an important SOP, because it fundamentally recognises the intrinsic relationship between the actions we take to reduce emissions and our contribution to feeding the world.

Look, before I move on from that SOP, I do want to quite explicitly ask the Minister in the chair who’s with us, James Shaw, and who has been answering questions as they’ve come up in this debate: why would we not? Why would we not include that commitment to food production in the purpose statement—given it sits right there in Paris, it’s not something that I think anyone contends with as something that New Zealand should contribute to. Why would we not include it there? I would ask, respectfully, that Minister Shaw address that.

The second SOP that I want to discuss in some detail is SOP 404. This relates to our desire to see a review of the use of forestry assets explicitly included in the bill. Other speakers have done a good job of talking about why that’s necessary, and some of the advice that the Environment Committee received about the potential impact of the bill on forestry incentives. But in particular, I want to draw members’ attention to proposed new section 5ZIA(2)(c) in this SOP, which says that we think that we should be considering “the degree to which the use of offsets generated from removals from land use, land use change, and the forestry sector”—[Time expired]

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. In my contribution, I’d like to focus on the 2050 targets, but also we’ve had a number of Supplementary Order Papers put up today which actually—what they’re aiming to do is actually already addressed by the bill as amended. So what I’d like to do is just point out some of those areas where the bill actually does what they’re hoping to achieve. I think the first one, looking at methane targets—we’ve already had a lot of submissions in this area, and some of them did indeed suggest caution; say, Fonterra, who were saying that the 2050 target for methane reduction is very ambitious and will be extremely challenging. They were supporting a 2050 methane target provisionally set at 24 percent.

But, equally, on the submissions, we had the other side. Many of our young people were advocating for much more rapid action in terms of our methane targets. For example, Forest and Bird also was saying that, basically, we’ve wasted 30 years and it’s already too late to avoid some of the impacts of climate change. What they were talking about is stronger leadership. For them, what they were asking for is gross emissions of biogenic methane to be at least 20 percent less than 2017 emissions by 2030, and at least 40 percent less by 2040—so, on the other hand, saying we need to go much more quickly.

So the question is, coming back to the legislation as amended, what does it actually say? Basically, what it says is that the commission must review the 2050 target when preparing advice on setting emissions for the budget for the period beginning 2036. That is in 2024. So we do need to, and there’s a requirement to look at it then. But, then, looking at what recommendations they can make as a result of that review is actually incredibly broad. It allows that Climate Change Commission to make a number of recommendations: the time frame for achieving the 2050 target but also the level of emissions reductions required by the target; looking at greenhouse gases, emissions, and removals to which the target applies; and also how the 2050 target might be met, including limits on removals and offshore mitigation. So there are a lot of things there that they actually can provide some advice on in terms of how we could move forward.

But, then, looking further, it is allowing a lot of other scope for some safety valves in the legislation, because what it says also, in new section 5Q(2)(a) set out in clause 8, is that the commission may recommend a change to the 2050 target only if “significant change has occurred, or is likely to occur … in 1 or more of the following,” but the actual range of “1 or more of the following” is extremely broad. What it includes is global action—so how we are comparing in terms of our actions to what’s happening overseas, so that we’re actually making our contribution, but the impacts potentially on our economy if others aren’t. We can take that into account. It also takes into account scientific understanding of climate change and how that will move over time.

Incredibly important, too, is New Zealand’s economic and fiscal circumstances and also social, cultural, environmental, and ecological circumstances. What this is looking at is potential impacts on jobs, potential impacts on our economy, so these things can be taken into account when looking and moving forward in terms of our 2050 target—so, incredibly broad scope in terms of some of those things they can look at.

And so, as Environment Committee members on the Government side, we were happy with those targets as introduced, because, basically, that 2050 methane target was originally set with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report about staying within 1.5 degrees of warming. Also, these targets we’re wanting in primary legislation rather than in regulation, because we need to be able to provide clear signals about where we want to go in terms of emissions reduction goals and, in particular, providing that certainty not only for businesses but also for sectors—for the primary sector—needing to know that, actually, it is going to require some significant research and some significant thinking before we go and change that, because people make their settings based on what we’ve signalled. So it was really important for us to have that set in the primary legislation, but also, basically, there is the opportunity for that to be reviewed in 2024 and also at any other time the Minister requests.

We’ve also had some suggestions around restricting forestry offsets. This came up also in some of the submissions. Submitters were concerned that relying so heavily on forestry offsets was risky because, basically, we’ve got risks of fire, pests, other climate impacts, and what that might do to forestry. Also, some of the submitters pointed out the fact that, if we’re completely offsetting with trees, it allows us to go on and continue with our emissions profile. And so, basically, the sense was: should we limit it, because we need to make our contribution in terms of reducing emissions?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I hoped to have had a response to my earlier speech promoting the amendments on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 406. I’m not sure if the Minister in charge, the Hon James Shaw, may have had time to do that. I, unfortunately, couldn’t be here—if he had—and the reason was that Dr David Clark had attempted to rebut my speech. It was so bad—I hate to admit it to you, Madam Chair—that I briefly lost my faith in parliamentary democracy and I had to leave. But I’ve got considerable faith in the institution, so I’ve come back. What Dr David Clark seemed to say was that because the Stern report said that it was better to make emissions reductions earlier rather than later, there should be a restriction on New Zealanders purchasing emissions reductions from schemes offshore.

Now, not only is that a non sequitur but it reveals his misunderstanding of the Stern report. You see, I’ve followed this debate for a very long time, and one of the problems with the Stern report was its total failure to build in any kind of depreciation or any kind of allowance for the future value, the discounting that occurs as technology progresses and people have better ways of meeting their needs in the future. So, even if his response had engaged the points I made, which sadly it didn’t, then the premise he was using seemed to reveal a misunderstanding of the report that he was quoting. It seemed that he was just grasping at any issue that he could think of.

So, I hope that we get a slightly more considered response, because I think the amendments on SOP 406 are actually very sensible ones that would allow New Zealanders to meet their environmental goals for less cost or make a greater contribution to emissions reduction, or at least the concentration of carbon dioxide equivalents in the atmosphere for a given cost.

I also, being a hard-working and busy member, have tabled yet more amendments on my tabled SOP, at the time 5.07 p.m. So this is hot off the press! It very simply asks—

Hon Scott Simpson: Late off the press.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, it was such a simple thing that I didn’t quite get around to it, Mr Simpson, but it simply asks that those new sections 5ZD, ZE and ZF, set out in clause 8, be removed. It’s quite simple; people might—Deborah Russell is reaching to see which sections they are. Those are the sections, I can tell Deborah Russell, that actually—

Dr Deborah Russell: I can read for myself.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, I’m telling everybody, not just Deborah Russell. Those are the sections that are actually—

Dr Deborah Russell: Mansplaining.

DAVID SEYMOUR: And there we have the sexism. They’re accusing me of mansplaining. They would not accuse a woman of that, and I regard that as a sexist attack on me.

But, in any case, the fact of the matter is that those sections—5ZD, 5ZE, and 5ZF—provide for the Minister the power to publish strategies that affect how different sectors will combat climate change, and I think this is incredibly worrying. It introduces an unnecessary level of bureaucratisation and politicisation into the economy that this country, really, rejected 35 years ago when we got rid of the Economic Stabilisation Act. I see Nick Smith; he was almost here at the time. We got rid of the Economic Stabilisation Act because we didn’t want the executive, we didn’t want the Government, to be able to say what prices should be or how much of something a particular industry or sector should be allowed to do. We found that that overly politicised the economy, it led to absurdities, it led actually to borderline corruption as people tried to get politicians to do favours for their particular industry or stop them from making decisions that would prejudice their particular industry. Those sections asking a Minister to make such a strategy for emissions reduction could decide whether an industry lives or dies—a steel mill at Glenbrook, an aluminium smelter at Tīwai Point, for instance. The future survival of those could actually be defined by whether or not a Minister allowed them enough credits in his strategy.

I don’t think that we need to have that level of centralisation of power to achieve the goals. So this amendment would simply delete those sections. Of course, Parliament could still choose to legislate such things, and Parliament is the right place to do that; it shouldn’t be down to, frankly, the “King Henry VIII” powers of a Minister. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I thought, given that the member David Seymour has specifically asked for a response and I haven’t yet had a chance to do a response to his earlier Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 406, I’ll do that and then also just refer to his SOP 407 as well.

So, in relation to SOP 406, what he’s concerned about is that placing limits on the use of international units will drive up the cost of domestic emissions reduction. I just wanted to say that the existing legislation actually already has provisions for the commission to make recommendations considering the economic impact when it uses its emissions budgets and in making its recommendations about any limit to offshore units. So in clause 8, new section 5L, matters that the commission must consider, includes “(f) responses to climate change taken or planned by parties to the Paris Agreement”—so that’s a sense of what other countries are doing—but also, under (c), “the likely economic effects;”. And so that’s a mandatory consideration that it has to take in account. In addition, new section 5X provides—and I think this is the clause he was referring to—for the Climate Change Commission to advise the Minister on “(e) the appropriate limit on offshore mitigation that may be used to meet an emissions budget, and an explanation of the [unforeseen] circumstances that justify the use”.

So the point is to try and drive change in the domestic economy, and, in order to do that, you have to prioritise that in some way. But those clauses do actually provide for the kind of advice which would say that, actually, the use of offshore units should be different because we think that the—you know, he was sort of catastrophising about that, that it could be catastrophic. So I don’t think that SOP 406 is necessary. I think that the concern is provided for already in the legislation.

In relation to SOP 407, giving the Minister untold power to destroy industries one by one in New Zealand, I also read the Rodney Hide column in the National Business Review where he said that this bill would make me the most powerful person in New Zealand, with that kind of godlike ability. Frankly, I wish! But it just doesn’t do that. And so what he’s doing in suggesting that we remove those clauses is actually to gut probably the most important part of the bill, which is the plan to reduce emissions production. Without it, it’s just a target and a commission with no plan to actually reduce emissions. I would just invite the member to reflect on the UK legislation upon which this piece of legislation is modelled. Actually, it is the presence of the plan that has driven change in the UK economy. They have seen over a 40 percent reduction in emissions and, at the same time, their economy has grown faster than any G20 country. So the idea that having an emissions reduction plan will somehow destroy industries and so on, I think, is a real fallacy.

The other thing is that he is conflating having a plan with emissions trading scheme (ETS) unit supply. It is not the same thing. So, for example, if you look at the UK plans, the commission recommended early on in its first two emissions budgets that the kind of low-hanging fruit where the technology was available at lowest cost was to, essentially, get rid of the coal-fired power plants and replace them with renewables. They were going to get huge gains at the lowest cost in the economy; the Government then developed a plan to do that. They then did that. Emissions fell and the economy grew. Whereas what he was saying in his speech in relation to that SOP is that those clauses give the Minister the power to assign ETS units to particular industries or even particular companies. It doesn’t.

But I would invite the member to engage again, as thoughtfully as he has in this process, with the ETS reform amendment bill that we introduced into the House yesterday, because that does discuss ETS unit supply and how that could be set in the future, once that scheme has been reformed.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I apologise to Duncan Webb; I know he always has such useful things to say.

Dr Duncan Webb: Do you yield, Mr Seymour?

DAVID SEYMOUR: Well, I could, but I’ll let him into a secret: what I just said wasn’t sincere.

Thank you to the Minister for Climate Change for trying to answer my questions. I think he, in a way, has brought out some of the problems with his legislation. He started out by saying that we shouldn’t be concerned about the restrictions on the importation of foreign credits or using offshore mitigation measures because the legislation will allow it as much as it’s necessary.

It’s a case of trying to eat one’s cake and have it too. You know, either it is the case that the legislative instruments in his bill will allow people to freely use the most competitive possible units from around the world—in which case, he should support my amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 406 and just say, as that amendment says, people can use amendments from here or overseas so long as they are of sufficient quality; if that’s really his position, he should support the amendment—on the other hand, if the Minister in charge, James Shaw, believes that, really, the bill is going to achieve the other thing that he claimed, that, actually, these restrictions on using offshore credits will force people to absorb costs of using domestic credits so he can achieve other policy objectives, then, really, he may not want to support my amendment, but he has completely underlined the need for us to have it.

So he can’t have it both ways. Either New Zealanders are going to be forced to use New Zealand credits and emission reduction initiatives at higher costs—in which case, you know, that’s his position, he’s placing costs on people—or they’re not. If they’re not, then he should support my amendment; if they are, then he should be open about the fact that New Zealanders are going to pay more to achieve the same environmental outcome for, frankly, political reasons.

The second response from the Minister, I felt, suffered from the same difficulties. He rather mischievously attributed my position to Rodney Hide. Well, actually, I don’t think Rodney Hide’s written a column about this particular topic. He may have been referring to Bryce Wilkinson, an economist at The New Zealand Initiative—and I do think that they’ve done a very good analysis.

But, again, the claim by James Shaw was that, well, this bill won’t really give the Minister control over what industries do or how they behave. The evidence that he presents for that is that the UK has had its economy changed but, none the less, has grown. And then he says, “Actually, it’s really important that these clauses stay in the bill”—that they’re not removed, as my amendment would remove them—because he wants to have the power to control the economy. So, again, we’re left to ask ourselves: which one is it? Does the bill give him the power that he wants to keep or is he happy for my amendment to remove those sections that he says don’t give him the power? He can’t have it both ways, but, again, he’s attempting to eat his cake and have it too.

And, of course, he says, “But the UK economy has grown faster compared with the rest of the G20.”; well, there’s a range of reasons for that. At best, he can claim that their carbon legislation hasn’t prevented them from growing—but, actually, there might be a good explanation for that. In comparison with New Zealand, if we look at the UK’s emissions and carbon dioxide equivalents per dollar of GDP, well, actually, they’ve declined, but no faster than New Zealand’s. So, again, he can’t have it both ways. Either the legislation gives him these powers but they’re ineffective or it doesn’t give him the powers—in which case, he should be happy to accept the amendments that I’ve put up.

The Minister would love to have it both ways, but he can’t. The safer thing for New Zealand is to support my amendments and not give any Minister the power—because, you never know, a less responsible one might come along.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you. I leapt to my feet on this occasion, because I did want to invite the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, to comment on the relationship between the provisions of the bill and the Paris Agreement. It strikes me—and it’s just disappeared from in front of me, which is timely—that the member Nicola Willis was citing from the preamble, whereas in respect of issues of food security, and, of course—

Kieran McAnulty: Is that as far as they got?

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —we understand—she may not have read any further than that, I don’t know—the importance of food security. But my understanding of the agreement is that food security is really about adaptation and the need to make sure that for particularly those low-lying nations facing the perils of climate change, that they’re assisted. Really, Article 2 of the agreement, which is in front of me—

Todd Muller: Paris Agreement. Read it all out.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —yes, I could if you want; if you can’t read, I’m happy to read it for you—really sets out, and the relevant clause is Article 2, 1(b), the objective, including: “Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that [doesn’t] threaten food production;”. Now, we understand that the agreement is going to become, ultimately, part of the legislation when we address the emissions trading part as well. I think it’s important to recognise the interrelationship between both the international framework and also what’s happening domestically. Now, obviously, it strikes me that in applying the legislation, the agreement itself should be taken into account. And in so doing, it appears to me that throughout the bill there’s an ability, particularly around the adaptation side, to take into account food security, notwithstanding the protestations from the other side.

So I would invite the Minister not only to address that food security question but also to address the issue of the exact relationship between these two documents, because, obviously, we’ve made clear our 1.5 degree ambition, whereas in the Paris Agreement, it’s less clear, it talks about 2 degrees but an ambition for 1.5.

The other point I would invite the Minister to reflect on in this Chamber—because there was a lot of discussion at the Environment Committee around the need for accountability in respect of budgets, and, obviously, there were discussions and submissions around them being binding, around the Climate Change Commission operating similar to the Reserve Bank—the Environment Committee, ultimately, thought it could be for this House to scrutinise particularly those budgets that the Minister would present. You may be aware that the Environment Committee wrote to the Standing Orders Committee to suggest, in fact, that that ought to be accommodated. I’d be interested in the Minister’s view of whether (a) that’s appropriate and he supports that, or (b) whether he think it’s going too far, because I do think accountability is important.

You’d be aware that there was quite some truncation of reporting periods, and a lot more tightness around when the various documents have to be tabled in Parliament, when they have to be notified and gazetted, and when they have to be responded to. We see not only the budgets themselves as important but the real transparency and accountability there.

So, in respect of that, I’d be interested in the Minister’s views on whether the kind of procedural machinations in the bill are satisfactory, whether they go far enough, whether indeed they’re too onerous—because we see what goes on in this House and the ability not only of select committees but of open and transparent debate in this House; they’re sometimes, Minister, challenging debates, whether it be from one side of the House or whomever’s in Government—and whether in fact that kind of scrutiny is something that the Minister would encourage.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It looked like you were looking somewhere else. I just wanted to pick up absolutely on—

Hon Scott Simpson: Desperately trying to spare us.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Whoops. Ha, ha!

Dr Deborah Russell: That wasn’t very nice.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: That wasn’t very nice, the Hon Scott Simpson—that wasn’t very nice at all. I’ll carry on. I just wanted to pick up on the member David Seymour’s recommendation—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Don’t do that.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: —around the removal of—or just in terms of refuting it, actually—new sections 5ZD, 5ZE, and 5ZF, set out in clause 8. Particularly, this is following on from the conversation from my colleague Dr Duncan Webb. It is around new section 5ZE, “Commission to advise on emissions reduction plans”. Now, this is keeping in mind that the member wanted to have this removed.

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

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK: Thank you, Madam Chair. So, before the break, I was just talking in regards to new sections 5ZD, 5ZE, and 5ZF. In particular, I want to just draw the committee’s attention and those who may be fascinated and listening at home to a part of the legislation that I think is particularly useful, and, in fact, counters some of the hysteria we have heard in this Chamber tonight about closing down industries and not taking into account people, really.

I’d just like to talk about new section 5ZD, the requirement for an emissions reduction plan. At subsection (3) of new section 5ZD, I will just read out this part, “The plan must include—(a) sector-specific policies to reduce emissions and increase removals; and (b) a multi-sector strategy to meet emissions budgets and improve the ability of those sectors to adapt to the effects of climate change; and”—and this is one that we had lots of debate on when we were coming to this piece of legislation; it specifically addresses the concerns that some industry may have—“(c) a strategy to mitigate the impacts that reducing emissions and increasing removals will have on workers, regions, iwi and Māori, and wider communities, including the funding for any mitigation action; and (d) any other policies or strategies that the Minister considers necessary.” We also included employers in that aspect so that the Minister is not only going to be looking at how to achieve these emission plans but also very clearly taking into account the needs of our people and our industries as we move forward. So I wanted to just address that. I do say to the member, David Seymour, by removing that clause in its entirety, we remove the ability to focus and look clearly at the impacts that the community may have.

Now, I’d also like to now come back to Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 401, which is around food production. In my last contribution I had begun to speak on food waste. It may surprise this committee to know that if food waste was an emissions country it would be the third largest in the world behind the USA and China. So food waste contributes a huge amount to methane, in particular. It is important that when we look at food production that we actually look across entire systems of food. So one of the things that I do think it’s important to say is that the Supplementary Order Paper 401 doesn’t address the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience. We have to lower greenhouse gas emissions but we have to do it in a way that doesn’t threaten food production. So when we have 40 percent of the food being wasted in this world then I think we have a little bit of room. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Chair. I think what I’d like to do now is just to run through the Opposition Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). I’ve spoken at some length to some of them. There are some that I haven’t addressed. I think it’d be useful if I just kind of ran through them in sequence just to give a response.

So SOP 401 is about replacing the purpose section. It actually does two things. Most of the speeches have been referencing the Paris Agreement on food production, the clause on food production, but the SOP also does something else, and that is that it references the 2 degrees upper limit in temperature and de-emphasises 1.5 degrees. That’s because when the Paris Agreement was written there was this kind of zone of uncertainty, really, between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, which was considered acceptable. Of course, one of the things that the Paris Agreement did was set up the process by which we got last year’s report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change on 1.5 degrees, which really clarified why it is that 1.5 degrees is actually the maximum level that we can shoot for. It was a watershed moment. I mean, it really did change the way that we thought about the temperature target. That was why we wrote 1.5 degrees into the legislation. Actually, you can compromise on a lot of things in this legislation. We actually have compromised on a lot of things in this legislation, but as long as the purpose remains to live within that envelope of 1.5 degrees, that really shapes everything else.

The other thing is that the Paris Agreement itself says that, you know, we aim for lower than 2 degrees and pursue efforts towards 1.5 degrees. And, of course, what we’re doing here is we’re writing a domestic law to reflect the Paris Agreement. What that means is if you’re pursuing efforts towards 1.5 degrees then your goal has to be 1.5 degrees, because if it’s kind of well below 2 degrees, but not 1.5 degrees, then you’re not actually aiming for 1.5 degrees. In other words, you’re not actually pursuing efforts towards 1.5 degrees. So that was why we wrote that the way that it is. It is to say we are pursuing efforts towards 1.5 degrees—that is the goal; that is what we are intending to shoot for.

The other thing that I just wanted to point out about this SOP, and Mr Muller actually raised this in his own speech, is that not through this bill but through the bill that we introduced yesterday, the emissions trading reform bill, we’re actually going to incorporate the entire Paris Agreement into the Climate Change Response Act alongside this bill. What that means is the reference to food production and the adaptation clause of the Paris Agreement becomes part of the canon of law inside the Climate Change Response Act. Now, that is significant because, of course, whether you’re, an absolute dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist or you’re a farmer who’s concerned about needing to maintain food production, or anybody else, frankly, there’s always been the suspicion that one side or the other is cherry-picking clauses or bits of language from the Paris Agreement to suit their own interests.

So, actually, to include the entire text of the Paris Agreement in whole in the Act just cuts all of that noise out. It says, “This becomes part of the law itself.” Therefore, any good lawyer can point to that to say, actually, the reference to adapting to the effects of climate change with a need to preserve food production—it is in there. It’s actually going to be in the Climate Change Response Act as a result, I admit, not of this bill but of the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Bill that comes in subsequently. So I want to say about SOP 401 that we agree with the intent of the SOP, or at least in part with the intent, and we believe that it is currently covered by the amendments that have been made either in the original legislation as it was introduced into the House or subsequently during the select committee process.

I’ll move on to SOP 402, which is about requiring the Climate Change Commission to review achievability of 1.5 degrees in 2024 and ensure that New Zealand efforts are in line with other developed countries. I haven’t addressed this yet, so Madam Chair—just looking at the clock—if you wouldn’t mind extending me the courtesy, I’ll just speak to this one as well. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. We actually do not agree with the intention of this one. Now, I think what the Opposition—they make a point about needing to track our climate action in line with a kind of comparison group of countries, trading partners, other OECD countries, and so on. That is fair enough; however, the effect of this is that, for example, if, say, a large North American country was to pull out of the Paris Agreement and go in the other direction, what this SOP would do would tie our action on climate change to their lack of action and then go in the other direction. In terms of the way the SOP is written, that is what it says that you have to do. So I accept the principle that, you know, you don’t necessarily need to be the first, right—the one country that is out in front. We do want to be in that group, however, and we do want to be in that group of countries who are, particularly OECD countries, a comparison group.

The other thing, of course, is that the Paris Agreement itself says that you actually can’t downgrade your ambition. You can only ratchet it up. That applies to every country in the Paris Agreement. It’s perhaps why the United States pulled out. So the effect of the SOP, the way it is written, actually would be contrary to the Paris Agreement itself. So I understand the intent. I see what’s trying to be done—

Hon Nathan Guy: Do you agree with the intent?

Hon JAMES SHAW: —but actually, the way that the SOP—well, actually, I do agree with the intent, and that is already in the legislation, because—[Interruption]—amongst the mandatory—no, I’m not kidding—considerations that the commission must pay attention to, global action is one of those considerations, and that phrase is literally there at the request of the former spokesperson on climate change, Todd Muller, who did talk about how we needed to coordinate our action with comparison countries and trading partners. So you’ve won that one. You’re already there. You’ve gotten over the line on that one.

Next up is SOP 403, which is about emissions budgets to be split gas. So again, the commission, in the existing legislation, has the ability to distinguish in its advice about how it sees the different gases playing out. The difficulty is, and this is an economic point, that if you develop separate emissions budgets for each gas, it’s sort of too defined and a level of inflexibility that could actually end up driving up costs in the economy. So you actually need budgets to be seen as a whole, but it is useful in terms of new section 5X(1)(d)—it does say “the proportions of an emissions budget that will be met by domestic emissions reductions and domestic removals, and the amount by which emissions of each greenhouse gas should be reduced to meet the … emissions budget and the 2050 target;”. So, again, I understand the point that you do want to be able to see what needs to happen within each gas group. The language is already in the bill, but you don’t want to introduce the level of inflexibility that that SOP provides for.

SOP 404, which is the requirement on the commission to undertake a review of forestry removals from land use—as I said more fulsomely before, we believe that this is unnecessary in the primary legislation and, actually, the three clauses that were added during the select committee process in response to both submissions and the submissions that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment (PCE) was putting in actually addressed these points, and also the importance of the new clause on the importance of land-use decisions for rural communities. So we agree with the intent, and, again, we think that the existing amendments that were introduced in the select committee process actually addressed that concern as it is.

SOP 405, which is for the commission to recommend the methane target with the overall framework to net zero by 2050, with the actual target being set by regulation—again, I’ve addressed this point more fulsomely. We don’t think that it’s a good idea to have that in regulation because then you end up with a target half in primary legislation and half in regulation. But like I said, the Minister can trigger a review of the target at any time—

Hon Nathan Guy: When are you thinking?

Hon JAMES SHAW: —so, in fact, that 2024 date—happy to have a conversation about that with the member later. Also, the range—recognising that that is a concern—isn’t fettered in any way by that, and there are mandatory considerations that they have to pay attention to.

So those are the five SOPs that we’ve received from the National Party. We also received 406 and 407 from the ACT Party. As I said in response to David Seymour before, we believe that the considerations he has about the economic impact of constraints on international units are actually taken care of in the existing legislation as a result of the mandatory considerations that the commission has. And 407, which was to remove the emissions reductions plans, frankly, is the most ridiculous provision, because what it says is that you can have a target but you can’t have a plan. In fact, the whole point of all of this is to have a plan. I think, actually, it might have been Mr Muller before who said—or one of the Opposition MPs was saying—you know, if you just spend all of your time setting targets—sorry, it was Dr Nick Smith. Dr Nick Smith was making the point that if you spend all of your time arguing about what the target should be and you have no provision for any plan to achieve that target, well, it is all just hot air. And that is, in fact—hot air—is what we’re arguing about.

So with that, I would just like to say that I do want to thank the Opposition—and I include, obviously, the ACT Party in this—for the thoughtful approach with which they have taken these. The SOPs that we have received are based on good advice, either from peak industry bodies in the agricultural sector, the PCE, or other sources. They are well thought through. My belief is that for almost all of them, we actually do agree with the intent in part or in whole, and the provisions that we have written in either when the bill was introduced or during the subsequent stages actually take care of those concerns. So with that, I would thank the Opposition for the way that they’ve engaged in this entire process and thank them for their contribution.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. In my brief contribution, I’d like to focus on international credits, because we’ve had a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) tonight where the intent of the SOP has actually been very much in line with where the bill’s going and most of what’s covered is actually covered already in the bill. But in this particular SOP, No. 406 from David Seymour, actually, it’s taking things in the other direction, because what he’s proposing is a new section 5W, talking about how emission budgets are to be met. What he’s suggesting is that emission budgets can be met through domestic emission reductions and domestic removals or offshore mitigation. What he’s suggesting is: “In considering how emissions budgets may realistically be met, the Minister must be neutral [on] whether emissions budgets [can be] met through domestic emission reductions … or offshore mitigation.”

A lot of the submissions that we got during the select committee process actually really wanted to go further in terms of not using international credits at all. Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association—their view was “We think that the Bill saying targets must be met as far as possible domestically is vague and unhelpful. We ask that the Bill be revised to include:—The prohibition of the use of international credits to promote long-term certainty and accountability.” It was their view that this is necessary to drive domestic action and innovation from communities. They were saying if we could just offset all the time by overseas credits, that would actually stymie our drive to domestic action, and, basically, also talking about then allowing us to pay other countries to do the work for us—and so that real sense that we should as a country be providing leadership in that.

So this is where, within the Environment Committee, we actually did go further in terms of some of the amendments that were recommended to actually strengthen that understanding that it was actually domestic action that needed to be happening. In clause 8, new section 5T(ab), it states that it requires the Minister to set a series of emissions budgets “in a way that allows those budgets to be met domestically;”. So when we’re thinking forward about where we’re going to be going, their whole intent is that that would be domestic action.

Then, in clause 8, new section 5W(1), it already said that “Emissions budgets must be met, as far as possible, through domestic emissions reductions and domestic removals.”, but we added some strengthening there to talk about offshore mitigation being used if there was a significant change in circumstance—so not as a routine but only if we needed it, if there was an unintended, unanticipated change in circumstance that affects the considerations on which the relevant emissions budgets were based and it affects the ability to meet the relevant budgets domestically. So it really was strengthening that and saying “We need to provide leadership as a country in terms of our emissions reductions.”, and that was incredibly important. So, for me, the sense is that this Supplementary Order Paper 406 by David Seymour would take that in the other direction, and we’re not wanting to support that.

One thing I would like the Minister for Climate Change just to comment on if he’s got the time is the international shipping and aviation, because that’s something that we haven’t talked about much in this committee stage. We received a lot of submissions on this, talking about international shipping and aviation and needing that to be added to the bill so that it accounted for those emissions that were produced by those purposes. Basically, again, one of the submissions said “The urgency of climate change and the need to bring all sectors into this—we think that the bill should include our share of international aviation and shipping emissions in the bill.” So what we did do as a select committee is recommend that a new section 5OA be included in the bill, and it says “The Commission must, no later than 31 December 2024, provide written advice to the Minister on whether the 2050 target should be amended to include emissions from international shipping and aviation (and, if so, how [that should happen]”.

The sense was, I think, that with what’s happening overseas at the moment, we weren’t quite there yet in terms of us being able to bring that into our own primary legislation and that further work needed to be done. But there was a real sense that we do need to consider that in 2024, at that point, because at the moment, while some countries are reporting this in their greenhouse gas inventories, they’re not actually including it in their totals. So it really was a matter of seeing where we get to in terms of what’s happening overseas. So with that, I’m happy to support some further discussion on that. Thank you, Madam Chair.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the member who has just resumed her seat, Dr Liz Craig. I thought it was an excellent summary of what the amendments on Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 406 would do. She’s right: they would require that people are allowed to meet their obligations to reduce emissions using either domestic or international credits or removals, and that the Minister should be neutral in deciding whether people would use domestic or neutral, so long as they were of a specified quality.

It was interesting that the member quoted the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association as an authority on the question, because they submitted to the Environment Committee saying they didn’t want to use international credits. Well, they don’t have to. But I would point out that if students at the university of Victoria are anything like students at every other university I know, they don’t apply the principle of using only domestic products in their own lives. If you go to a university and you said to them “You must get clothing, transport, and electronics using only domestic sources.”, they would say, “That’s nuts. We want to be able to get competitive inputs to our lives and we don’t care, generally, if they’re sourced from New Zealand or offshore.”

I’d say to the member—she’s respected, among other things, for being a doctor, for being a medical professional—that nobody in the New Zealand medical profession would ever say that it’s somehow wrong to take techniques and training and drugs and equipment for the medical profession from offshore. Of course, when we try to provide for our needs we use inputs from a whole range of different jurisdictions. What’s wrong with that? Why, if we’re prepared to trade with the rest of the world to provide for our needs and everything else, would we not be prepared to provide for our needs in terms of carbon credits and emission removals by doing deals with people in other countries?

There is nothing inherently wrong with doing that, and I didn’t hear the member explain exactly what is so wrong, inherently, with New Zealanders being able to meet their needs as efficiently as possible by sourcing reductions in carbon emissions from anywhere in the world, so long as those reductions meet a standard that my amendments would provide for the Minister to set. There is no argument against this that I’m hearing tonight. Actually, what’s being proposed is to restrict New Zealanders to a narrower range of options for reducing their emissions than others. That puts New Zealanders at a disadvantage, and that may also lead to greater carbon leakage—one of the things that the bill seeks to reduce.

I think it possibly gives an insight into the bill as well, and some of the motivations behind it, because it appears to be more about transformation of the New Zealand economy and the way we live than effectively reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide equivalents in the atmosphere, which of course is global. I think that’s a real problem.

Then the Minister in charge, the Hon James Shaw, said that my other amendment—which is not actually amendment 407. There is no 407. It’s a tabled amendment with the time stamp 5.07. He said that it was ridiculous. Well actually, what that amendment does is remove the power to set strategies by regulation. This House can still regulate a strategy any time it likes. Actually, the Minister knows something about the desirability of that, because if we go back to new section 5ZA(1), set out in clause 8, he’s put in place a provision that actually the Minister must consult with, but not actually debate, what’s in his strategy.

So the question for the Minister is: if he acknowledges the importance of democracy and he acknowledges the importance of consulting Parliament about what sort of strategies or plans are put in place by the Minister, well, why not do it properly and actually come to the House and have the debate properly about what the strategy should be? He’s halfway there, and if he was to support my tabled amendments at 7 past 5, then he’d actually be going all the way and giving truth to his proposition, or at least his apparent aspiration for these plans to be set democratically. I leave it to the two members to explain what possible remaining reasons they have for refusing to support, as the Minister himself has said, my very well-thought-out amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 406 and the amendment tabled at 5.07.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Madam Chair, and the member who just resumed his seat was talking about—

David Seymour: Ho, ho, ho!

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: David Seymour; yes, indeed—was talking about overseas credits, and it is fair to say that the use of overseas credits raised real concerns by many submitters. One of them probably was addressed by the member, and that is the danger that credits which are presented as legitimate are, in fact, the products of either flawed accounting or corrupt accounting. I think the argument of principle underlying the use of overseas credits is that carbon credits can only ever be a transition, because the fact of the matter is that if we think we can buy our way out of this dilemma, we are wrong.

We simply can’t plant enough forests in the long term to continually burn carbon which has the effect on the climate that we know it does. So no matter how much of Siberia or Africa or the Near East or the Far East is planted in forests, ultimately, someone has to pay the piper. And the Paris Agreement is very clear that the obligations on countries to step up are different depending on where they sit in the world. And, Minister Shaw, my suggestion is that this country, a developed and wealthy country, has a greater obligation to step up than others.

So whilst in the short term, if we are simply accountants, economists, or engineers, we might think we can buy our way out of this using overseas credits—

David Seymour: What about lawyers?

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Lawyers are entirely different, Mr Seymour. We see things from a principled, reasoned, and objective standpoint, unlike the economists, the engineers, and the accountants amongst us like yourself. So, Mr Seymour, the fact of the matter is that we are uniquely and ideally placed to make the technological leap, to make the social leap, to make the environmental leap, to say that we in this island nation are going to do things a little differently. You know what? We can move towards a genuine zero carbon economy, not one that seeks to offset its activities by planting trees. Now, we know that in terms of transitioning when true.

David Seymour: Then let’s buy credits from offshore then.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: You’re right—you’re right. We do need to do that in the short term. That is called a transition, but in the long term we cannot simply defer and move our obligations to developing nations who, in fact, need their arable land much more than we do. So we need—and we are uniquely placed to move into—a zero carbon economy where the activities we engage in are both economically profitable and environmentally sustainable, and we need to be brave enough to step into that and to understand that what might be a short-term investment is very much long-term gain. So in terms of overseas credits, it’s not that they’re necessarily corrupt or flawed—they might be—but the better reason is that they’re a bandaid, they’re a sticking plaster on a gaping carbon wound, and we need to address that now.

Look, the targets are not going to be set in stone. We know that we can address those. And look, the Environment Committee was very, very productive, and full credit to the Opposition for raising the arguments and drawing out from submitters some very good points about the effects on communities. I hope they recognise the significant shifts in the bill that were made at select committee. So in terms of amending that target, we noted, for example, that if there had been significant changes in social, cultural, environmental, or ecological circumstances, that warrants change—if there is a significant change, and that covers pretty much everything. So all of those concerns that the Opposition’s raised are covered simply in there, and that’s in new section 5Q, in clause 8. So we really do need to look ahead—yes, accept that we need to be nimble and prepared to change, but we need to make the big changes now.

The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon James Shaw to clause 8 be agreed to:

in clause 8, new section 5Q(2)(vii), replace “; and” with “:”

in clause 8, new section 5X(3)(b), replace “emission” with “emissions”

in clause 8, new section 5ZM(2), replace “5ZN and 5ZO” with “5KA and 5ZN”.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 401 in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson to clause 4 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 405 in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson to clause 8 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 402 in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson to clause 8 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 403 in the name of the Hon Scott Simpson to clause 8 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8. ACT New Zealand 1.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 406 in the name of David Seymour to clause 8 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 1

ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 119

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the following amendment in the name of David Seymour to clause 8 be agreed to:

in clause 8, delete the cross-heading above new section 5ZD and new sections 5ZD to 5ZF.

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

Ayes 1

ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 119

New Zealand National 55; New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; Ross.

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 404 in the name of Todd Muller to clause 8 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 57

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

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment presently.

Bills

Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill

In Committee

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): I seek leave for all provisions 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

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a real pleasure to rise and stand in support of this bill. Just having a look back over the Organ Donation New Zealand website over the last few days, it’s a real reminder about how an organ donation can transform people’s lives—just looking at the stories there of people who had had liver transplants, lung transplants, and kidney transplants. Just to quote from Suzanne, who’d had a transplant: she said, after her transplant, basically, “All of my energy used to be spent trying to stay alive. Now I have a full-time job, a relationship, and I can go out with friends—it’s everything I’ve ever dreamed of.”

But the reality is that, unfortunately, in New Zealand there’s many more people waiting for an organ transplant than there are organs available. On the Organ Donation NZ website, what they’re saying is there’s about 550 people still waiting for a transplant in New Zealand, and so what this bill does is it’s going to be making it much easier for people to become organ donors.

I want to focus, just in this intro call, on Part 1, which looks at the compensation for live donors. What it does is it expands the eligibility for earnings compensation to include those who return to work part-time during the first 12 weeks after surgery. Up until now, it was an all-or-nothing decision. Basically, at the point where you returned back to work you lost the eligibility for that compensation. There are a lot of reasons why somebody may want to return to work part-time. If you think about some of the things that are involved in, say, kidney donation or any other donation, it is sometimes quite major surgery that’s involved, and so you could understand why people may want to return to work but they may want to return to work at reduced hours. So what this bill does is it lets people return to work at those reduced hours and still claim compensation for that.

The bill, when it was introduced, defined usual hours as the average weekly hours of employment at the date of application. But the problem is that that was a bit vague, and particularly if you are thinking about people who were self-employed. As a select committee, we had some discussion around this, and we thought we needed to make that clearer. And so the suggested amendment there is defining usual hours as the donor’s hours per week, as specified in their employment agreement—fairly straightforward, except if you’re self-employed.

So then, if that doesn’t apply, what we are suggesting is that then you actually calculate usual hours based on what your earnings were in the 12 weeks prior to when you made the application. And so that gives a good reflection of what your usual hours are likely to be.

The other thing that Part 1 also looks at is allowing regulations to be made to approve oversees organ exchange programmes, because, in terms of making sure that we can get enough organs, it is useful to be able to be involved in international exchange programmes. Basically, what this bill does is for donors who participate in these approved programmes, it removes a requirement that the donor and the transplant surgery have to happen in New Zealand and that the recipient needs to be eligible for publicly funded services in New Zealand. So, basically, that allows exchanges to happen.

What we’ve added is a new Schedule 5, that’s included in Part 1, that, basically, creates a list of approved organ donation exchange programmes. The first one to be added to this list is the Australian and New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program, so that if you are engaged in an approved programme, then that means that some of those other requirements don’t need to apply.

The issue, though, was that there was some concern that we may have inadvertently allowed overseas-based donors to become eligible for earnings compensation when they were taking part in the exchange if they were already receiving funding in their own country, and so some proposed amendments were made in Part 2 to ensure that if you were eligible for compensation in your own country then that would apply, rather than us also needing to compensate people as well.

So Part 1 is really important in terms of just making it easier for people, for live donors, to make a donation but at the same time receive compensation, and allowing the flexibility for when they return to work. So it is an important section. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call in what I think will be a relatively brief committee of the whole House on the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill because, as is often the case—mostly the case, I think—the Health Committee was very strongly unified behind both the intent of the bill and the need for changes to it. I note the Minister hasn’t brought any amendments to the committee for consideration, and, indeed, the Opposition doesn’t have any anyway.

I want to endorse the comments of Dr Craig. It’s not for me to repeat them, and so I will confine my comments to Part 2. With your indulgence, Madam Chair, I want to actually talk about some suggested changes by submitters that, after careful consideration, neither the committee nor I—actually, as a matter of fact—would recommend for amendment in the committee of the whole House.

It relates to the functions of the new New Zealand Blood and Organ Service. Now, we had a number of submissions along the lines of the fact that the bill did not provide sufficient clarity about the roles and function of the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, which is what the name now is—or will be, when the bill is passed—thanks to the select committee’s recommended changes.

I want to specifically talk about the submission by Kidney Health New Zealand—some fantastic advocates for the role of increasing organ donation in New Zealand and the support of those with chronic renal disease who are either waiting for or have had transplants. I think the most pertinent part of their submission for me, in support of their case that our bill should more closely mirror the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority Act, which was implemented by the Australian Parliament in 2008, is the graph that showed what was a marked difference in organ donation rates following the introduction and passage of that legislation. They were attributing that change to the strengthened powers that that authority had compared with what was being proposed in this bill.

They went on to talk about the issues of clinical governance, and also the concern that the blood and organ donation service is relatively limited in its degree of influence over the many other agencies and actors in the organ donation space. Both the Health Committee, during the select committee process, and also I afterwards having been approached by a couple of submitters, thought very carefully about this, and it seems to me that the answer may lie both somewhere in the middle of where the bill is now and where the Australian legislation is. But that does not necessarily mean that the bill should be strengthened. My preference actually is not for the legislation to be as prescriptive as the Australian legislation. I think there is merit in allowing the blood and organ service to articulate and carry out its functions with a little more freedom than was being proposed. But I should say this—and as one that aspires to be the Minister of Health in 10 months’ time, I will be watching this very closely—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: I didn’t think it was that funny. It’s what we would call in Government an aspirational goal in National’s year of delivery, which will be 2020.

But I think it’s really important that—we all agree what the goal of this organisation is. The question is: what resources will they need? What clear mandate do they have and how will they interact with the other participants in increasing organ donation in New Zealand? We changed the bill, actually, to increase the role of clinical governance. I think that was an important step, but we weren’t then very prescriptive in what that meant and how they would interact. I think the submitters had valid points in their submissions about whether or not the role should be strengthened legislatively. But I’m relaxed that we both have the right balance but also the right oversight to make sure that they are given the tools that they need to deliver what we all want to see, and that is an increase in the rate of organ donation in New Zealand. And I wish them all the best in that endeavour.

LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure as the chair of the Health Committee to speak at this committee stage debate. But probably not so much debate; it’s really clarification on this Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill about the consensus reached within the committee to enhance the bill. And so I want to acknowledge colleague Michael Woodhouse for his earlier comments about how we engage in a collegial process, and this is another indication, from my perspective, of how we do that.

I, firstly, want to acknowledge the New Zealand Blood Service. The New Zealand Blood Service was formed in 1998, and their responsibility is to develop an integrated national blood transfusion process. And the reason I highlight that is in our deliberations, and as now encapsulated in Part 2, it’s very clear what the New Zealand Blood Service does. It’s very prescriptive. Their job is to gather the blood and then disseminate the blood to people who need it. So the rationale for us, essentially, adding “organ” to the current title—that is, the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service—was to actually just clarify that we have enhanced the remit from collecting and distributing blood to people who need it, to now collecting organs and distributing those to people who need them, and it’s a very simple explanation for the committee’s recommendation to the House.

I say that within the context of an area of need where, essentially, 550 New Zealanders are on a waiting list. Those people are waiting for hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, and pancreases. And I’m sure there are eyes and other parts of the body that other New Zealanders need, but, essentially, in terms of the organs that we’re talking about, those are the essential ones. And so we have a current process of finding donors, and they are people who, essentially, are dying, and those people who are dying are in intensive care units on ventilators. It’s a pretty traumatic and horrific experience for families, and so we’ve had to rely on our clinicians and our medical personnel talking to families in that circumstance. And that’s about 1 percent of the deaths in New Zealand to find the organs for the 550 New Zealanders who’ve needed them.

What this bill is doing is it is now saying that live donors provide another vehicle, another option, for us to be able to provide these organs to New Zealanders who are on that wait-list. I want to particularly acknowledge now Dr Liz Craig’s very good summary of Part 1 of the bill, because, essentially, that is and was the main focus of this piece of legislation. It was to ensure that people who were giving organs to their loved ones, to their friends, to their family, or even philanthropically were compensated for their lost wages. And so the whole regime was about being very clear about who was eligible and then, based on their eligibility, what we were going to compensate them for, and compensation just by definition is a recognition of the loss of wages, in that people in doing that philanthropic act were now going to be reimbursed, for all intents and purposes, by the Crown.

And I want to highlight that, because I think the development and evolution of this particular type of giving, and the twinning process that will now be funded, now enables people who do not match the person that they want to give their organ to—it enables now a trans-Tasman coalition, which is called a twinning operation, where if I need an organ, I find a donor—it may be a member of my family. We don’t match, but then we find others in the system who will then be able to provide the person that I want to give to with their organ, and I will give to somebody else. People in New Zealand who do that—and now, based on this piece of legislation, we’re specifically recognising the Australian and New Zealand Paired Kidney Exchange Program—will qualify under this piece of legislation for that compensation that I just highlighted before. It’s the least we can do, I believe, as a country to recognise the philanthropy associated with donating organs, and it adds value to the current process that we’re engaged in.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): First, can I just thank the members for their contributions this evening. All of the members who contributed, and others who did not, worked collaboratively and really quite well during the Health Committee stage to ensure that this bill presents as it does this evening. So I want to acknowledge that, if I can.

There were a couple of things mentioned by Mr Woodhouse with regard to this bill, and I think they are worth just touching on very briefly in my contribution. He is right; this isn’t an overly controversial bill. It is a good bill that came through a strong process. He talked about the fear or the need to not overprescribe a particular pathway forward for the organisation, and I want to touch on that, because I think that’s an important part to allow this organisation, the New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, to carve its path to strategise as it moves forward. We know that joining the two services—it was a good fit in that it helps with efficiencies and economies in terms of the administration of both services.

And I want to touch on another thing, too. While I know a lot of the focus in the bill is on the need to increase organ donation—in fact, donations right across the board, as blood, plasma and individuals joining the bone marrow register are needed as well—I hope and I’m optimistic that the relationship that I’ve had to date with both services will allow us to have a good strategy moving forward; one that is better aligned with the increasing deceased organ donation national strategy 2017, a strategy that came out that actually initiated quite a significant part of this bill.

I’m really excited, in particular, as a Māori, and for our Pacific Island peoples, as to what the opportunities are in this space for organ donation and for blood and plasma donation. We know that those communities are high users in this space, but low donors. And one of the challenges—touching on the point raised by Mr Woodhouse about being over-prescriptive in this process or at least in the pathway forward, I’m really looking for some innovation in how we are able to increase those numbers, how we’re able to encourage more people—in particular, Māori and Pacific peoples—to consider themselves for this great cause, a cause greater than themselves.

I don’t wish to delay the progress of this bill too much longer but, once again, I endorse my thanks to the committee, also to those who currently donate, also to those who have donated in the past, and a big thank you to those who will, hopefully, through this legislation and the pathway forward for this service, consider donation into the future. This is a good bill and I’m really proud, in my short time as a Minister, to be the lucky recipient of such a solid bill to help progress it through the House. I look forward to it passing through seamlessly and then getting on with the work with the new service. Kia ora tātou.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Chair. So just in my next brief contribution I’d like to just talk about Part 2 and expanding the function of the New Zealand Blood Service, because as I was talking about previously, in New Zealand, there’s many, many more people waiting for a transplant than there are organs available.

Matt Doocey: In the old days, the Ministers used to come down to filibuster; even they can’t be bothered now. They’ve given up—it’s back to the backbenchers to fill it up.

Brett Hudson: Mr Faafoi’s keen for his bill.

Dr LIZ CRAIG: And so what the national strategy for increasing organ donation and transplant aims to do is to make—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Mr Doocey and Mr Hudson, can you be a little more respectful of the speaker?

Dr LIZ CRAIG: —it much easier for New Zealanders to make their organ donation wishes known to their family. And, basically, what it’s also about is making sure that those decisions can happen appropriately in the health context, because some of the people that submitted to the Health Committee were talking about the fact that, in the context where decisions were being made about whether somebody was going to make a donation and talking to the family about it, it was the training of those health professionals in ICU at that point that was incredibly important in terms of helping families to have an informed decision about what their loved one’s wishes were. So there was a sense that having this overarching strategy and basically talking about how we actually improve the donation rates, and also the sense that there was a need for a national agency to oversee the strategy—because what the point of the strategy was was to raise the profile of organ donation and to support that effective clinical governance, and then just to work with the health sector to coordinate the whole process and provide that clinical support. So the New Zealand Blood Service was seen as the agency that was most appropriate, in terms of Crown entities, for overseeing this function because of the work they already did in terms of looking after blood donations within the sector.

So very simple—Part 2, what it does is expand the functions of New Zealand Blood Service to include oversight in clinical governance of the organ donation system and to support the transplant system. So making sure that we’ve got an entity that can coordinate that in terms of making sure that those donations are happening and that we’ve got a broader strategic view in terms of training staff and thinking about how we can ensure that people make their wishes known. Once enacted, this part of the bill, though, won’t come into force for two years after Royal assent, unless you get an earlier date fixed by Order in Council, because there is a certain amount of work that needs to be done to set up the new New Zealand Blood and Organ Service, which is going to be the new name of the new entity to perform those functions. So I won’t talk too much further, but just to say that this is a really good bill, a very simple bill, but I think it will make a big difference to many people’s lives. Thank you, Madam Chair.

JENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this in the committee stage. I really just want to take a short call; firstly, acknowledging the way in which the Health Committee worked together on this type of legislation in such a positive manner and the amount of positive input, along with the expertise, that many of the committee members bring—and their interest and heart—into these discussions. It is greatly appreciated.

Although the Minister in the chair, the Hon Peeni Henare, has touched on it, I am actually interested in teasing out a little bit more, because one of the questions that I have regarding this is in terms of donations of organs for Māori and Pacific. As we know, our whānau are very hesitant to actually make a donation of an organ, and, with the tapu surrounding that, we know that that’s something that we’re going to have to work through to get those organ donation rates up—whether being a recipient is an issue, or is it being a donor that’s the issue? I’m very interested in the concept of when a donor has gifted an organ.

What has been talked about in the past or could be a future way of moving forward through getting over the barrier of not wanting to be a donor or not wanting to receive an organ—a concept that has been discussed is that when the person who’s received the organ, when they live a longer life and eventually pass away, then that organ is then removed from the body and returned back to the whenua with the person—if it was a deceased donor, back into the whenua with them in their urupā. So is that something that needs more fleshing out in terms of how we get more people in the Māori community to get over the barrier of what is tapu, in terms of what we do with our organs. That is of great concern, particularly with our rates of diabetes and those sorts of things. How can we move our community forward so that it is considered a taonga that we’re gifting? So I just would be interested to hear a little bit more of the thinking of where the Minister would see this going.

And the other question I have relates to the retaining of the current clinical expertise: what is the plan in terms of how existing Organ Donation New Zealand services will transition into the new function within the New Zealand Blood Service? And will the current clinical expertise be retained? And how, also, will it be boosted, as well, to ensure that we have a service which is fit for purpose? As we want to increase our donation rates, we also will need to increase the service that will be providing that. So those are just a couple of questions. I’d appreciate some comment from the Minister. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Look, I will just close off on some of the good points that were raised by the members. To the member Jenny Marcroft: as I already mentioned earlier—with fear of prescribing a pathway forward and not allowing the new entity to innovate and think and strategise about how they might do that—I do share your concern about how we do increase Māori and Pacific people’s donations. One of the arguments that was brought to me as this bill was being developed was around the tikanga aspects and the tapu aspect, and I recall the response being quite simple: would you do it for your grandchild? And the answer was: yes. Look, I’m not saying that’s the answer, but you do raise a good point. Now’s the time for a solid debate, and I think that that debate can inform the strategising that the new entity can do.

You also talked about the ability to maintain the clinical expertise with regard to the transition, and I want to acknowledge the staff from both entities as they come together. Transition and change are not easy for most organisations or most individuals, and I’m confident that the Ministry of Health and the other players that are supporting them through the transition are making sure that those aspects are covered off. In fact, I’m reassured that they are, but we will continue to keep a close eye to make sure that, while the transition is happening, (1) the lights still stay on and that people can have confidence in the service that’s still available to them, and (2) that that transition happens as seamlessly as possible. Perhaps in the near future we can come back and, as a collective, given the strong work done by the Health Committee, share exactly where we’re going to head with it. But other than that, I think that’s really—we’ve fleshed this out well enough and I look forward to this bill continuing.

Parts 1 and 2, the Schedule, and clauses 1 and 2 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

Bills

Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one debate.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Ruth Dyson): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? The question is that clauses 1 to 6 stand part.

Clauses 1 to 6

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I think I will try and kick off the debate on this. I was unable to be in the House last night for its second reading, and I understand it was quite a boisterous and riveting debate, and not being one to miss out on that, I thought I’d start by thanking the Transport and Infrastructure Committee for its deliberations. I understand there were seven submitters, some from the sector that is going to be affected itself, so I thank the members of that select committee for their adjudication over that.

There were three changes to the bill as it was introduced, and for the benefit of the committee, which may pre-empt some questions that may come, I thought I’d just use this time to run through some of those and, again, thank officials and the select committee for making those. At the bill’s introduction, the select committee did take the opportunity to clarify that the bill doesn’t apply to parking places that are controlled by enforcement authorities. As it stood in the bill as introduced, it did not include roads controlled by road-controlling authorities such as a local council or the police. However, the select committee saw fit to make a change to clarify that the requirements would not apply to parking places that are controlled by enforcement authorities who can issue infringement notices for parking offences.

There’s also a change within the bill that the select committee made around provisions relating to the disputes tribunal. This bill caps the limit at which an operator can enforce an infringement for the potential parking offence and the removal of the wheel clamp at $100. It does give the ability for the owner of the vehicle to remove that, and if any damage was done to the clamp in that, the damages may exceed $100. So there is a clarifying amendment made in the bill that if the wheel-clamping operator had damage done to the clamp beyond $100, if they went to the disputes tribunal, the limit wouldn’t be at $100 for any damages done.

Also, there’s a new regulation-making power which the committee has recommended, which would require regulations, if any are made, when considering whether an operator had acted reasonably in terms of being available to remove the clamp. It’s not envisioned that the regulations would be made immediately after the passing of this bill, but only if there’s evidence of a problem.

So they are the three issues that the select committee thought it fair to make amendments to this bill. I believe it’s a good bill. After many years of sitting on that side of the House and reading the front page of the New Zealand Herald about a number of either people who could least afford it or felt that they were hard done by by reckless wheel-clamping operators, predominantly in Auckland, charging excessive amounts, exorbitant amounts, of money to remove wheel clamps from vehicles, I think they will now have a great deal of protection, that those exorbitant fees will no longer be able to be charged.

So, with that, I look forward to any questions that may come from the committee.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Madam Chair. It’s a pleasure, of sorts, to speak on this bill—not an incredibly long bill, I might say. The point I do want to raise on this rather short bill is it actually would’ve taken officials longer to type up this short bill than the Minister in the chair, Kris Faafoi, and the Government gave them to research the reasons and facts behind the policy in the first place, which is adequately shown in the regulatory impact statement. Thank you.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Noting that short contribution from the member Brett Hudson, as I said towards the end of my initial contribution, there were quite a lot of years that I sat on that side of the House, some of it—and you’ll get used to it—as the consumer affairs spokesperson, where the Government at the time did not see fit to intervene into this space. Now, I’m not going to use the “neglect” word, but in a simple sense, this is one of the issues where the previous Government didn’t necessarily see it as a big enough issue to help elderly ladies who were getting their cars clamped from being preyed upon by people who were acting at the edge of commerce. So I’m quite happy to take criticism from the Opposition. If they don’t think this piece of legislation is worthy of their votes and they’re not willing to back 72-year-old women who can’t afford a $700 fine to get a clamp removed from their car, and back those who put on clamps for people who have lawfully parked in a car park, then fine by me.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Mr Chair, thank you for the opportunity to make a substantial contribution to this piece of legislation here tonight. After nine years of neglect in parking, we have a Government who are taking a stand on one of the important issues. We’ve heard from a number of people, and I know members heard this when the current Government members were in Opposition. They did hear from a lot of people out there about this aspect around fairness in the issue of wheel clamping, and I’m proud to be part of a Government who are addressing this through well-balanced, thoughtful regulation in this area.

My first question to the Minister in the chair, Kris Faafoi, and an aspect I’d just like to explore here and sort of tease out, is around the $100 fee. In the debate last night, we heard from members on both sides of the House that the $100 fee, according to some people, is too low; according to some, too high. Now, I was on the Transport and Infrastructure Committee who looked at this bill, and I’d just like to highlight one of the submissions from the Automobile Association (AA). The AA mentioned here that they support the intent of the legislation and “welcome the move to impose a maximum penalty fee to be paid by a driver for the removal of an immobilising device.” However, their main recommendation was that the proposed maximum penalty fee be revised down to $50, and there were other submitters who also wanted the fee reduced down to $50. The AA also suggested that the bill impose a 10-minute grace period before any such penalty can be applied.

So my question for the Minister is if he could just expand a little bit around the $100 mark—how he and the officials settled on that $100 mark. Was it due to some jurisdictions like the UK and Australia, who, as we heard in the select committee, have a figure around that mark? Now, some people wanted the figure higher, and some of those who wanted it higher were those in the business world, who told us on the select committee that the maximum fee they can charge being $100 would put undue strain on the profit that they’re able to accrue in terms of business and around their business models. So I think the crux of this bill is the $100 amount. Most people would agree that we do need regulation in this area. There’s no doubt that people have been charged up to $400, $500, which is obscene in anyone’s language, but the $100 dollar fee—just to elaborate on that.

The second aspect I’d like to highlight is an issue that was raised a little bit, and I wonder if the Minister would at least comment on it briefly, and that was around signage—it was also mentioned in the debate by Tim van de Molen last night—and the aspect around clear and accurate signage within the parking areas. If someone parks somewhere and they can’t see signage which says you must remain here for a period of time, then it is very difficult to put blame on them for parking there, if the signage is not clear—if it’s not clear, if it’s not accurate, and if it’s not visible. So the signage is certainly an important component of this.

The bill—and the Minister mentioned it before—is effective on private property. He said that public areas were excluded, and I’m interested in aspects particularly around council. So, for example, if someone is visiting a local theatre or a local sports event and they are parking in an area there which may be designated for emergency services or some particular services where it’s important that no one else parks because that area needs to be accessible to look after the wellbeing of people. However, this bill does exclude that. So what sort of regulation and what sorts of powers are available to the council and to other agencies if someone does park in those areas, particularly around, like I said, those emergency services, which often can be a case of life and death. We certainly don’t want people feeling like they can park in areas of that nature.

So just to summarise: the $100 fee, the signage, and the aspects around council and government. I’ll end my contribution there and let others contribute. Thank you.

BRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. The previous speaker, Jamie Strange, talked about nine years of a previous Government. Well, I’d contend with his particular point there, but—

Hon Dr David Clark: Not nine years of neglect?

BRETT HUDSON: —none the less, Dr Clark, that is no excuse for this Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs giving his officials about nine minutes to do the research on the policy behind this bill.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): This committee stage may take a little longer than we first thought if the Opposition is going to continue in that fashion, but, look, obviously, Mr Hudson has made the point twice now, and maybe—

Brett Hudson: Read the RIS.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Well, I’ve read the regulatory impact statement.

Brett Hudson: They threw you under a bus, Mr Faafoi.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: No, no. Well, maybe we should remove the clamp from that bus. If Mr Hudson would like to know some of the nexus of the policy decision made by this Government—because I believe this is something that the previous Government probably wished it had done in its nine years, where it didn’t actually do much—I could point him to the internet, for example, again, as I said in my initial contribution, about the endless number of stories from the media where people who are least able to pay a fine were being charged exorbitant amounts of money to remove a clamp.

Now, I’ve just found one example in the nine minutes that Mr Hudson has been bobbing up and down in this Chamber trying to make the point while still supporting this piece of legislation. There was one instance covered by the New Zealand Herald on 28 May last year where it followed a particular clamper in a west Auckland mall. It was an elderly lady who was charged $200 for parking for 20 minutes in a 120-minute car park. Now, there was also another lady who didn’t get clamped, but I’d like to use the quote that she made to the New Zealand Herald: “I started freaking out. I’m a young mum, I don’t have $200 to pay for a b******t clamping fine. … They’re just targeting older women”—

Nicola Willis: She sounds lovely.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: —“and people they can intimidate.”—well, these are the people you didn’t help, Nicola Willis—“This warden just clamped people after half an hour. I feel really bad for the elderly widow who had to wrongly fork out $200 on the spot.” Now, if that side of the House doesn’t want to address that issue, that’s fine by me. I’m looking forward to that on the election campaign trail. But when asked by the reporter as to why he was clamping it, he said, “It’s not illegal (what we’re doing).” Well, we’re going to make sure that that is dealt with in this bill, because charging $200 or $500 or $700 for clamping someone’s car and then demanding, on the spot, $700 we think, on this side of the House, is not a really good idea.

So if someone over there disagrees with it, or if Nicola Willis disagrees with it, as she just said before—

Nicola Willis: I don’t disagree with it—I did not!

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Oh—“I did not!” Oh, yes, you did—oh, yes, you did. You had plenty to say about two minutes ago.

So take a call. If you disagree with it, then vote against it, but we don’t on this side of the House back rogues who charge people who can least afford it $700. So that’s why we’re here with this legislation. It may not have taken very long for us to get to the policy decision, because we think it was the right thing to do, and it shouldn’t take so long to protect consumers from that kind of behaviour. So if on that side of the House they don’t agree with it, vote against it; it’s going to pass anyway, because we think it’s the right thing to do, and the voters will thank us for it.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’d just like to thank the “Minister of Fairness”, because that’s what Minister Faafoi is. He’s the “Minister of Fairness” because once again he’s leading a bill that’s about fairness, and I applaud him for that. What a wonderful testimony he’s just given us. I mean, he’d do well at the Mormon church I was at the other day talking about fairness, but can I focus on this because he raises some good points. You only need to look—you know, we’ve been talking about this nine long years of neglect, and, boy, is it real!

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! If I hear that one more time at the beginning of a speech, I’ll give you a second warning and I’ll terminate your speech.

PAUL EAGLE: Well, look, let me—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): No, you get to the point. This debate is about the bill, OK? You can have your political statements, but make sure they’re referenced to the bill.

PAUL EAGLE: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, let’s refocus on the committee stage of this bill. I just want to reflect on a few things, and one of those things is that I wonder if the Minister could reflect on the voluntary code of conduct there and talk about why that was such a success—or not, as the case is—because I know, and there’s a story there and I want to add this to what I’ve just said. That was an article around why unregulated wheel-clamping is still a lucrative hobby. That was a story that talked about $760 for half an hour of illicit car-parking. Not only that but the car-parking company was hiding in plain sight as a second-hand shop—Bashford Antiques, they were called—and maybe the Minister could elaborate on that and why this voluntary code, dare I say it, led by the current Leader of the Opposition, Simon Bridges, who in October 2017 had media questioning behind that. So, Mr Chair, that’s one aspect.

But can I just say that there are many, many more things, and being a member of the select committee and talking through some of the detail around this, I think we all agreed that if we could, we would, in terms of saying that, you know, there’s not an intention to put people out of business, but certainly the $100 fee cap raised some issues. The officials certainly brought back to us several examples from across the globe as to where it had worked, why it had worked, and maybe the Minister there could also just clarify for us a bit further regarding that $100 fee and why it will not drive operators out of business and whether it’s a reasonable reflection of the business cost in terms of the operator.

So, there are three questions there that I think the Minister will do well at. As you know, I’ve called him the “Minister of Fairness” because I expect his responses to come up with results that will tell us that this is long overdue, that this piece of work was well thought through. It took a long time through the select committee, and although there may have been some issues, particularly around what that fine limit should be or could be, I think what we came up with, Mr Chair, was a reasonable approach because it put people first in terms of what they could afford to pay. We’ve given some examples around what the impact of the current or the existing law or lack of does to normal people.

I just want to finish by reflecting on some of the early research around this bill, where it was interesting to note that in places where wheel clampers were most prolific were the same people that had red vans going around their communities, where the same, I guess, victimisation of those most vulnerable—were also the same people who were being targeted by these wheel clamp operators. So, actually, this has a bigger picture around the wellbeing of people, particularly those who can’t afford it most. Sure, there may have been some issues around their parking—where, how, whether it was illegal or not, but I certainly think this is going to make things a whole lot more fair.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Mr Chair. A couple of colleagues have asked some questions which I think I want to address. First of all, Jamie Strange asked around the issue of signage, which, I believe, was raised during the select committee process, as I hope the officials may have pointed out to him and to those submitters who submitted on the issue of signage. There are already regulation-making powers within the Fair Trading Act which can allow regulations to be made which set a standard for signage to be displayed at car parks, without needing to amend the legislation. So this could be something that could be looked into in the future if we don’t necessarily get the results that we want entirely from this piece of legislation.

Also, my good friend Paul Eagle raised the business model of some of these wheel-clamping operators, which will obviously have to change somewhat if they have been charging exorbitant fees for the removal of wheel clamps off vehicles in some of the car parks that are affected under this bill. Some may be operating in a manner which is fair and offering the removal at a fair price. For some of those who have not operated in that fashion, this bill will somewhat change their business model and, we hope, change the customer outcome.

Now, we tried to strike the right balance in this piece of legislation. There are obviously some in the parking or towing industry who aren’t happy with this piece of legislation. There are also some people on the consumer side who aren’t entirely happy with this legislation because they would have preferred to have seen a complete ban on wheel clamping altogether. There have been representations from small-business owners who are worried about people who genuinely infringed and were either parking incorrectly or parking too long in their car parks, and giving them the ability to continue to wheel clamp legitimately was something that we wanted to make sure and maintain that they could do if there was a legitimate infringement. So that’s why we haven’t gone down the track of removing that property right from the likes of small businesses to do that if people incorrectly park, but also we didn’t want to let continue some of the behaviour that we’ve seen being done by some of these operators who are charging exorbitant prices.

So, hopefully, that will kind of meet the requirements of some of the questions there in terms of why we’re continuing to allow wheel clamping to continue, why we came to the $100 mark, and also around the signage concerns that may have been raised during the select committee stage.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Civil Defence): Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, they are all great contributions to this bill to add some clarity for our constituents out there. For those who think that our constituents aren’t following this debate, I received a message from a constituent who raises a case about a particular parking situation they found themselves in in Tāmaki-makau-rau.

What it was, they had a trailer and, as that trailer took up two car parks, they paid for a car park. However, it was the trailer that was clamped. The constituent of course put up a fight and said, “The trailer is part of this vehicle. We have actually paid for the ability to park here.” And it was their understanding because there was no median barrier that separated what wasn’t, according to them, clearly two identified car parks. They parked across two and paid for the parking for their car. However, it was the trailer that was clamped, and because of the ensuing argument and debate with, what I’ve heard, at least in the debate this evening, a cowboy or a rogue operator who wouldn’t enter into a communication with the person, with the constituent, the trailer ended up being towed. In the end, it cost the constituent a significant amount of money because of the towing costs for the trailer, because of the retrieval for the trailer, and, of course, the fee that goes with it.

Like I say, most of the contributions have been good. This might be one of those unique, one-off situations but isn’t uncommon in my electorate given the demand for parking in a place like Tāmaki-makau-rau. I dare say Wellington City is similar, and other places around the country with strong urban growth. When a constituent who raises this case ended up—and I quote from their message to me—“It cost thousands to get the trailer back.” Now, I don’t think that that’s fair, but I wonder if, in my question to the Minister, in this bill we are happy that for instances like that, and I dare say this isn’t an isolated incident—some vehicles in particular in places of high urban density. And I’ve mentioned Tāmaki-makau-rau. I don’t have the biggest vehicle, but it still looks like I park across two because of the tight spaces that are afforded to users of said car park.

So my question is pretty simple: with respect to trailers and perhaps any other thing that might be towed by a car in situations like—

Jenny Marcroft: Horse floats?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Horse floats—whatever it might be. What do these changes in this bill mean for those particular trailers or whatever it is that’s hitched to a vehicle, and how does that apply if it’s covering two car parks? Is this a case for those operators to charge two $100 fees? I’m not too sure. So I’ve just got, like I say, a direct instance where a constituent has raised a concern on a bill that, to them, is very relevant. So I just wanted, in my short contribution, to leave that on the table for the Minister to consider, and I hope that we can provide to my good constituent of Tāmaki-makau-rau some answers.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. You know, I came into the Chamber tonight to do my whip’s duty; I had no intention of speaking on this bill. But I have been absolutely motivated by the contributions tonight, because I didn’t realise, coming from Masterton, a town that doesn’t tend to have an issue with clamping, how much of an issue this was. I am appalled and outraged—not quite to Tim Macindoe - level outrage but I’m still outraged. No one does outrage like Tim Macindoe! But, nevertheless—nevertheless—I am shocked to hear of the stories that my colleagues have shared tonight of people that have been clamped and have faced exorbitant fines. I am shocked that it has taken this long, in 2019, to regulate this industry.

We had nine long years of overcharging, and finally we have a Minister in the Hon Kris Faafoi who is doing something about it. And I believe that the $100 that is proposed in this bill is fair, because, let’s not forget, often in the cases that we’re talking about, people are parking in places where they shouldn’t; we shouldn’t dismiss that. But we also shouldn’t take the line that the National Party appeared to take: that they are on the side of big business and they are on the side of scammers. Because they have had two contributions tonight; both of them were trivial. They don’t seem to care, but this side of the House does care.

The question that I have for the Minister tonight is: why are we stopping here? Why are we not looking to impose a system that licenses these operators? That’s what I want to know. Are we satisfied—not quite as satisfied as the other side of the House, who just want to have these cowboys running around clamping things left, right, and centre and charging any price that they can think of; some arbitrary rate, 300 bucks, 700 bucks—$2,000 for my friend and his constituent’s trailer. We have a lot of trailers in Masterton. I’d be absolutely appalled to see that, if someone who had a trailer, perhaps with a couple of sheep, perhaps they’ve been doing a bit of DIY, they’ve gone into Masterton to grab a pie and then they’ve come out, they’ve taken a couple of spaces there. Now, we’ve got big parking spaces in Masterton, but they’ve taken a couple of spaces and they come out and they’ve been clamped.

We tolerate that sort of behaviour, but I’m thinking about comrades in Auckland and Wellington and Christchurch and Dunedin where they have smaller car parks. It’s hard to fit a ute in a car park in Dunedin, I’ve tried—I studied there for four years, and it was difficult to park my ute. I would be horrified, after coming out of a cafe and getting a pie, to find that I’ve got a clamp on my wheel and that I’m facing an $800 fine. Now, if I had parked my ute in an area which I shouldn’t have—perhaps in front of the new hospital that this Government is funding—then, fair enough. But I would like to know that the Government has done something to regulate the fining system—and that is what this does here with $100.

What I want to know, though, is why we are not looking to make sure that the operators that do this clamping are licensed. I’m sure there’s a good reason for it, but for the spirit of this debate, the people listening at home—who are grateful for this side of the House actually contributing to this debate—want to know why and they want to have confidence that what’s proposed in this bill has been thought through, and I’m sure it has. I would be grateful to the Minister for taking this opportunity to actually give people that are listening at home some confidence that what’s in this bill is in their interest and has been well thought through.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Chair, for the opportunity to speak on this most important bill, this evening. Look, I think it’s important that we get the right balance, because it’s not OK to just park where you want to—you can’t do that—but it’s also important that people aren’t ripped off. So this bill strikes an incredibly good balance between protecting motorists and ensuring businesses have the right tools to prevent people parking where they shouldn’t do, like on footpaths or for too long or things like that.

We’ve all had a time when you come out of a shop or have been at an event, and whether it’s clamping or a ticket—the feeling of knowing that you have a substantive fee to pay for something that was not necessarily deliberately one’s own fault. That gets to the point where I have had constituents come to me, quite upset and quite irate, where they are trying to pay bills, where people are trying to make ends meet, and a substantive fee comes in that’s unexpected and needs to be paid within a short period of time, and that can cause a lot of strain on individuals and on families. So it is this Government that takes it in hand to say that that’s not fair and that that’s not OK for businesses to extort large sums of money from people when they can’t use their motor vehicle.

So for the opportunity to be able to challenge something and appeal when you have a ticket, there’s a process in place. But if you come out of the gym or a restaurant or taking your kids to school and you find that you’ve been clamped, there’s no way of getting out of that situation if you are needing your vehicle immediately. So you are at the mercy of the company that has clamped you. People see themselves in standover situations where they are being made to comply and made to immediately pay out significant amounts of money just in order to access their vehicle and get to the next point in time—which may be picking up children, or something really important.

In the regulatory impact statement that’s been developed by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, it really is quite clear in terms of articulating what this problem is. That leads on to what my question is to the Minister tonight.

The clear issues that have been outlined in this problem is that motorists face a multitude of gaps and regulation or are unclear in terms of where the laws stand in terms of this industry. There are four key areas that have been outlined that are the most concerning.

The first is unreasonable fees. I’ve already touched on that, the fact that quite large sums of money are particularly gouged in this area because people need to access their vehicle, and so they’re obliged to pay out on the spot sometimes.

The second one is unclear signage. This is a real concern. If you’re going to be potentially incurring a fee or a penalty, it’s only fair that you have forewarning that that may be a possibility. If there’s not clear notification to the general public that that is a possibility, then that is something that this bill addresses.

The third one is intimidating and unfair behaviour by wheel-clamp operators. It is companies who are making significant amounts of money by disabling vehicles and, really, using those standover tactics to extract money from people in order to access their cars.

The last one is the lack of opportunity for appeal or recourse prior to paying the release fee. As I’ve already mentioned, it’s quite different to a parking infringement fine where you can write in or challenge it.

So my question to the Minister, tonight, is in relation to the requirements for being reasonably available for the business operator. So in the bill, as it is introduced, there’s new section 98D(3) that states that an operator must reasonably be able to respond to a request for removal of the device. The bill has not given a specified outline to that in legislation, but left that to regulation. What I’m really interested to know is how we will reassure the general public that if they are standing beside a vehicle with a clamp on it, and there is a requirement for a response in a reasonable amount of time, that operator will be able to respond to the request for the removal of the device.

Jamie Strange: Mr Chair?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): It’s getting a bit repetitive. But, Jamie Strange, you might have something new.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour): Mr Chair, I certainly do have something new. I am a bit concerned as well that the Opposition aren’t taking calls on this bill; I thought that this was an issue that they would have heard about from their constituents. But I will focus on the bill, and we’ll leave the Opposition, hopefully, to take a call in terms of their side of it.

Now, the point I’d like to focus on—and it is a point that I haven’t heard debated tonight—is new section 98D(5)(b), which is around where the bill would protect a person in charge of a motor vehicle from civil or criminal liability for the removal of an immobilising device, provided the removal has caused as little damage to the device as reasonably possible. The intent of this is that the operator who claimed an amount for unnecessary or wilful damage to an immobilising device should not be limited by subsection (5). So, basically, what the bill is saying here is that if you park your car and an immobilising device is placed on your car and you feel that it’s unfair—and at times, I’ve heard stories of people actually being in the car while the device is being put on the car—you’re able to remove that device yourself, as I understand it, and if you remove it with little damage to the device, then you will be exempt from civil or criminal liability. Now, I’m not sure how you remove a device like this from a car, whether you need a screwdriver or a tool box—

Hon Tim Macindoe: Come on, we’re from Hamilton—of course you know!

JAMIE STRANGE: —or some sort of system—I wouldn’t know; others may have more experience in these matters.

But I guess the questions I have around this piece of information here are: first of all, how do we define “little damage”, and is that a little bit subjective, possibly? And if someone is in a situation where they’re absolutely desperate to get this immobilising device off their car—and it may be a very serious situation, like somebody is suffering from an illness, they need to get them to a hospital; or there might be some fairly dramatic issue—are they able to actually remove it quite forcefully? And if there is more damage than a little damage, then the bill says that they may be liable for criminal liability; however, what sort of leniency is there around this and the aspect around that term “little damage”?

I think that it’s important that this is in here, because if we do have a situation where someone’s absolutely desperate to use their car and they need it—it might be a case of life or death, it might be a case of illness—that they actually have to remove this thing; now, the question is: can they remove it? Now, I don’t know how difficult it is to remove one of these devices—

Hon Member: It’s pretty easy.

JAMIE STRANGE: —and I suppose it depends on—maybe people in Masterton might have more experience with that, but certainly up in Hamilton we don’t have as much. I don’t mean to make light of it, because the fact is, like I said, it could be quite a serious situation; it could be a situation that requires urgency. So I believe it is in the bill.

It’s good that it’s in here. It’s common sense. But we would not want to encourage vigilante behaviour where anybody feels that they could have it removed, they carry a little tool box with them, and have it removed at any sort of moment. So I am just a little bit concerned about that aspect of it, but I believe it is good in here. So the Minister might just want to clarify that aspect, particularly around that little damage. It just seems a little bit subjective to me around how much damage can be caused there.

And then the second point in my final minute here is around the bullying and standover tactics. Now, we have heard this reference but my question to the Minister is how does the bill stop the bullying and standover tactics? I mean the bill puts a maximum fine at $100 but there is still a possibility for the bullying and standover tactics, so how does the bill deal with that around intimidation, as my colleague has said.

So I just leave those two questions there for the Minister to respond, around removing the device with little damage and the bullying and standover tactics. Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): My colleagues have raised some excellent questions and issues during their contributions. So for the benefit of the Opposition—they may still be making up their mind as to whether they support this bill—I will try and address some of them.

Again, my friend Peeni Henare pointed out a real situation that a constituent of his in Tāmaki Makaurau had in regards to a trailer that was clamped, I understand. In that situation, Mr Henare, the best advice I can give to you and your constituent is that in no way, shape, or form when this bill becomes law will the clamper be able to charge more than $100 for the fine, as you know. But they would—for the fact that the trailer may have been clamped—if they wanted to dispute that, go to the disputes tribunal, which is an option open to them.

Kieran McAnulty also, in his very entertaining contribution, spoke of the dearth of clamping in the Wairarapa. But to my knowledge, actually, Mr McAnulty, I think I have seen some signage in your town where the clamping removal fee was $50. Now, obviously there is an issue there that under this piece of legislation they could actually increase the fees, but we don’t expect that to happen given the feedback that we heard during some of the select committee process and feedback we had from those who are interested.

Now, you also raised the issue of licensing. I would like to tell you that while the towing industry is licensed and while some clamping operators are licensed as security guards or private guards there is no legislation or licensing, obviously, around wheel clamping or immobilising at this stage. We wanted to deal directly with the issue, which is the exorbitant prices being charged, which is why this piece of legislation has been introduced.

There’s been a lot of focus on the $100 removal cap, but we hope that the deterrent of this bill doesn’t lie necessarily completely within the removal costs, but in the fines for those operators who, if they are individuals, will be fined $3,000, or companies $15,000, if they are found to be breaking this piece of legislation. So instead of an outbreak of clamping and people still being charged $100 I would hope that those operators would see that the deterrent of the $3,000 or $15,000 fine would act to change not just their business model but their mode of business.

Now, Ginny Andersen and Jamie Strange also wanted me to address some of that intimidating behaviour that some of the operators have been up to in this kind of business. Again, I would hope that they would self-regulate, but in the cases that have come before us at this stage it is the police that are usually called in to assist in matters when there is a dispute between a clamping operator and a motorist. That’s why the police are the authority within this piece of legislation to monitor this law. So not only will they have the ability to deal with some of the behaviour, but they will be able to tell some of the operators that $100 is the maximum that they are able to charge for the removal of the wheel clamp. So, hopefully, that has addressed most of the issues that some of my colleagues have raised. Thank you for your very interesting contributions.

Clauses 1 to 6 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment presently.

Bills

Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill

In Committee

Debate resumed from 5 November.

Parts 1 and 2, Schedules 1 and 2, and clauses 1 and 2 (continued)

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we turn now to the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. When we were last considering this bill, the committee had given leave for all provisions to be taken as one debate. At the end of the debate, I will put all questions separately. The Hon Tim Macindoe had the call and he has three minutes and 15 seconds remaining, should he wish to take them.

Hon TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West): Mr Chair, indeed I do, because I recall how utterly distraught all members were, but particularly members opposite, when I was interrupted in full flight when the House adjourned last night. So it is a great pleasure to resume.

But before I recap, I wonder if the committee would just indulge me for a moment as I send my best wishes to a young lady who I believe is listening to Parliament tonight on her radio in her hospital room in Auckland hospital. I would like to wish her well in her recovery and say “Get well soon, mum.” And if the previous debates did put you to sleep, well, that’s just fine too. But if you’re listening, we’re thinking of you.

I began my contribution last night on this Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill—which you’ve noted we are considering in one debate, so that makes it a little bit easier—just by recapping some of the National Party’s main concerns about the bill. I think, in all seriousness, it’s worth restating those at the outset just to ensure that the public understands why it is that the National Party is opposing the measure. I won’t go through all of them, but the key ones are the fact that we are very concerned that the commission is set to open the floodgates to anyone who believes they may have suffered a miscarriage of justice, because the standard for reviewing cases back to the court is so low. So I want to make it clear it’s not because we are indifferent to miscarriages of justice. I don’t believe there’d be any member of Parliament who’s indifferent to miscarriages of justice, but when the standard for reviewing the cases is very low, as it is in this bill, then there is a real danger that this is going to become an extremely expensive measure for the country, with the floodgates opening and leading, in many cases, to delays, which, of course, ultimately means denial of justice, and in particular puts additional pressure on victims.

We are concerned that the low threshold for referral back to court could see more pressure on court timelines. At the moment, there is already a problem with timeliness in the court system. It’s getting worse by the year. All members, I think, would acknowledge that. We should be looking to try to improve that situation, not exacerbate it. But we are concerned that this measure will have the effect of adding to the problem and will see other disputes having to wait longer for resolution, and that is in nobody’s interests whatsoever.

It will be an incredibly expensive commission. There’s a current estimation of $2.3 million to establish the commission and $3.9 million—virtually $4 million—per year in operating expenditure. So that is a significant factor.

We are also concerned, as was well articulated in the second reading of the debate, about the fact that two-thirds of commissioners will not be required to be legally qualified, making untrained and unaccountable commissioners extremely powerful. Even the remaining one-third of commissioners, who will be required to be legally qualified, may not have any criminal legal experience. Yet without a doubt, the vast majority of cases that are likely to be referred to the commission would be ones where there’s a criminal aspect to them.

So those are, as I say, some of the objections that we have, and—Mr Chair, I’m just a little bit puzzled by the fact that the clock’s going up rather than down. It has me slightly discombobulated. What should I read into that, Mr Chair, other than the fact I’m seeking another call?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The Hon Tim Macindoe.

Hon TIM MACINDOE: That is very, very kind of you. I just was thinking, well, this call’s going to go on and on and on. So let me turn now to the amendments, in my second call. I’m so pleased that members throughout the Chamber are enjoying this contribution as much as they were last night. It’s deeply satisfying, particularly given the great compliment that Mr McAnulty paid me when he was speaking on the earlier bill. I haven’t yet worked up to my finest state of outrage, but I will do my best to reach that in this call, because there’s plenty to get outraged about.

I want to note at the outset that the Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, in his Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 398, has introduced quite a number of minor and technical changes, which, presumably, because the Government has the numbers, will be carried through and adopted. They are, of course, consequential and consistency changes, which I know the Minister of Health, who is the Minister in the chair at the moment, has paid particular attention to. So I’d be grateful if the Minister could just enlighten the House a little bit as to the nature of these changes and why, in his view and the view of the Government, they will improve the bill. But more importantly, I’m asking the Minister to comment on why he or the Minister of Justice appears not to have consulted the Opposition about these particular changes. If I’m wrong about that, I apologise, but I understand that he hasn’t yet done that. Also, as I say—to enlighten the House as to how these changes will support the bill, but then to move on to why he isn’t willing to consider the very substantive measures that are being put forward by the Opposition.

I mentioned last night how impressed I was by the learned member for Helensville, who is the Opposition’s courts spokesman. He has done a very fine job, and I know he blushes when I mention this, but I am genuinely appreciative of the leadership he has shown in this area. He’s done a very fine job in putting forward some serious amendments, and I do want to stress to the committee that I hope that they will pay attention to them, because the common theme underpinning Mr Penk’s amendments is the rights of victims, and even though there’s been a bit of jocularity, I’m sure that members would appreciate the fact that the rights of victims should always be at the forefront when we deal with anything of this nature. In clause 4, in the interpretation clause, he is requesting that after the definition of “specialist adviser”, there should be an additional mention of “victims”, having the meaning given to it in section 4 of the Victims’ Rights Act 2002.

I would be very interested to know if members are willing to consider that SOP 399, but particularly I say to the New Zealand First member who was here this evening: will New Zealand First support this SOP to insert the rights and interests of victims into this bill, and if not, why not? New Zealand First frequently likes to parade as the party for law and order and all the rest of it. Well, here is an opportunity for them actually to put their money where their mouths are and to tell us if they are going to support this SOP. I hope that the Minister will tell us whether the Government will support the SOP as well, and whether the Government shares National’s concerns for the implications of this bill on victims.

In the little bit of time remaining, I’d also like to lend my support to Mr Penk’s SOP 400, which, again, is a very admirable suggestion. I genuinely believe that it would make a big difference to improving this bill. It seeks to amend Subpart 4 of the bill to recognise the rights and interests of victims—and this is where I could build up to my outrage, Mr McAnulty, because I am outraged that at the moment, the Government is showing no interest in supporting this SOP. I hope that they will. I strongly encourage and request that all MPs should support it. I again put a question to the Minister in the chair: would he please address the SOP here, because in clause 25 we are seeking to insert that “The Commission must, as soon as practicable after making a decision under this section, give written notice of the decision to investigate the conviction or sentence to any victim entitled to be notified”. Clause 26, again, refers to “any victim entitled to be notified”. Clause 27: “If the eligible person does consent, the Commission must, as soon as practicable, give written notice of its decision to investigate the conviction or sentence to any victim entitled to be notified”. So in other words, at various stages along the way, this commission will have wide powers. It will have the power both to initiate inquiries and also to respond to requests for them. Please ensure that the victims are notified and taken into full consideration.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I’m pleased to take a call at the committee stage of the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill as the chair of the Justice Committee. Can I just, first and foremost, for those members in the House—this establishes the Criminal Cases Review Commission, and the purpose of the commission is to review convictions and sentences and decide whether to refer them to the appeal court. This will replace the power exercised by the Governor-General under section 406 of the Crimes Act 1961, commonly known as the royal prerogative of mercy. The commission will be established as a new independent Crown entity with a membership of no fewer than three but no more than seven commissioners.

Can I just acknowledge the work of the select committee. I just remind members that the bill was referred to the committee on 25 October 2018, submissions closed on 7 January 2019, 33 submissions were received from groups and individuals, and eight submitters were heard orally. As the member that’s just resumed his seat—and can I just also send my best wishes to the honourable member’s mum in hospital, as we think of our mums, those who are fortunate enough to have their mums. But I do want to send my best wishes to the honourable member’s mum, mother.

So coming back to the bill and acknowledging that the select committee could not agree on the bill but did make some amendments, and that member that just resumed his seat raised a few. In the select committee report, though, that was received in the House, I just want to address a couple of the concerns that the Opposition have raised here in tonight’s debate. One was the victim’s rights, and the other concern that they had in their minority view was around the use of existing structures. It may be useful to the House to be reminded of what’s currently available under the existing structures around any person who is convicted of an offence who feels that they suffered a miscarriage of justice. The current process is that they apply to the Governor-General for the exercise of the royal prerogative of mercy. The royal prerogative of mercy can, among other things, be exercised to grant a free pardon or refer those convictions to the Court of Appeal.

The member that resumed his seat, Tim Macindoe, talked about—sorry, the Hon Tim Macindoe—the National Party’s opposition to this bill, because in parts they believed the existing structures that are around right now will meet the test of the appeal rights. However, in the information we received at the select committee, this is an independent body that we are talking about here: the establishment of a commission. In that independence—because, currently, the existing structure is that the lawyers of the Ministry of Justice have to take up the challenge on behalf of anyone that wants to appeal or apply for a miscarriage of justice. So the establishment of this commission will allow the independent, dedicated unit to thoroughly investigate the concerns that an individual may have around the miscarriage of justice. So I believe that the proposed position of the Opposition around current processes do not allow that level of independence, that level of due diligence, or that level of being able to justify that people have got a right to appeal.

Just to again alleviate some of the concerns of members in the House, it’s really clear, and the committee also received advice from overseas jurisdictions about what can be put up for review by the commission, to stop the so-called open gates or floodgates—that everybody’s going to come to the commission and want their particular cases appealed. So here are some of the principles as per the royal prerogative that the commission will adopt in their establishment. Essentially, “the courts should have [the] opportunity to [consider] a person’s conviction or sentence if a miscarriage of justice may have occurred:”—so this is what we’re trying to do with this commission. The “convicted persons are normally expected to exercise their rights to appeal against conviction or sentence before asking the Commission to intervene:”—so, clearly, we’ve got to exhaust the system now around an appeal before you put your case to the commission. Thirdly, “the referral process is not an opportunity to simply repeat arguments or re-examine evidence that has already been considered by the courts:”—so, again, if you didn’t get your way in the courts, you cannot just present to the commission and take that particular route.

The last fourth and fifth points are around the principles that will guide the commission. One is around ensuring that you’re producing new evidence. One of the considerations is that if it’s not new evidence, then obviously it’s not going to meet the test of the commission. Again, if it’s been previously examined by other courts, then it won’t be accepted by this commission. So those principles, as currently applied under the royal prerogative of mercy, simply will be transferred over to the commission. So the issue around existing structures—hopefully I’ve addressed the difference of what the Government’s proposing around the independence of a commission, and that the guidance currently in operation around what meets the prerogative of mercy will be transferred over to the commission.

The second point I just want to address in my second contribution is around victim rights. We have two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in the name of Chris Penk. I wanted to share with the members of the committee that currently the Victims’ Rights Act 2002 continues to be applied, so under SOP 399 this side of the House feels that those concerns are covered under that Victims’ Rights Act 2002. So we won’t be supporting SOP 399.

In terms of SOP 400, again, where it removes the commission’s discretion around timeliness of notifying victims, our concern on this side is if the appeal isn’t successful but we’ve told victims before they’ve made the determination that we are going to reopen the case, that could in itself re-victimise the victims, because there’ll be an expectation that we’re going to look at this case. But the commission may decide, for whatever its reasons, they’re not going to pursue the appeal process. So SOP 400, in terms of removing the discretion of the commissioner to make the timeliness of notifying victims, could, in our view, re-victimise the victims. So I just wanted to ensure that the member has had a response on this side about why we will be opposing particularly SOP 399 and SOP 400 for the facts that I’ve laid out, covered under the Victims’ Rights Act 2002. The discretion is a really important point to ensure that we are not re-victimising the victims in the case that appeal is not successful.

So, that’s my contribution. I know other members from the Justice Committee are dying to get up and make a contribution, and I might pick up some of the other points that may unfold as part of this debate, but I commend this bill and look forward to other people contributing to the debate.

CHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you, Mr Chair. I do acknowledge the chair of the Justice Committee, Meka Whaitiri. She’s made a good-faith effort to outline the views at least of the Labour members—I don’t know if they speak for all the Government parties. I suppose we’ll find that out in relation to New Zealand First soon enough.

I mention, particularly, the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name that I spoke on partly yesterday, which the Hon Tim Macindoe has picked up and run with tonight, so to speak, and which, as I say, the Hon Meka Whaitiri has also addressed, at least from the perspective of Labour MPs.

We’ve been consistent on this side of the House in relation to the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill. I feel that the reward for our consistency will be brevity. I don’t intend to traverse old ground except to the extent that that would be helpful within perhaps the current five-minute call that I’ve been awarded by you.

I point out, first, that our preference would be that the Government move to reform the criminal justice system, if there is a perceived difficulty with miscarriages of justice that aren’t able to be rectified within the current system—the existing avenues of appeal courts and the royal prerogative of mercy. Second, we would like to see that the Government, if concerned about access to justice issues which might reasonably be said to exist, has the opportunity, again, to do that under the existing structures and frameworks as opposed to creating a whole new body. Third, as the Hon Tim Macindoe has already mentioned, we have some issues with particular aspects of the design. We have discussed those in the select committee. Some of those have been addressed, and we acknowledge that that process is one that we’ve been able to contribute to, and we’ve supported the amendments made at select committee with the purpose of improving the bill, notwithstanding that we continue to oppose it for the reasons that I have outlined briefly now.

Turning to the SOPs in my name—I’ll let the Government speak to its own, if it feels the need to do so. We haven’t had the benefit of such explanations of their own proposed changes yet. We look forward to that, whether from the Minister in the chair or perhaps some other member of the executive who can speak to this authoritatively for the record. As far as the SOPs in my own name: the first requires that as a mandatory relevant consideration the commission take into account the potential impact on victims; second, that they be notified at every step of the process; and, third, and this is within SOP 400, which we’ve touched on previously but not this particular aspect, is a proposal in relation to legal aid.

The rationale for this is simple, but before I proceed to explain our thinking behind this, I’d like to acknowledge the advocacy of the Sensible Sentencing Trust on behalf of victims everywhere. They have made a very sensible suggestion which we’re happy to give voice to in this Chamber tonight, particularly around the fact that wherever a victim has been dragged into the criminal justice system, as we would say, by circumstances almost invariably beyond their control, they have a considerable cost already exacted upon them. That cost might be emotional, it might be physical, and in some cases—an obvious one might be an assault—it would be a physical cost, but there are other costs too.

One of those costs is financial. A financial cost unless covered by ACC, and even then to a limited extent, might extend to rehabilitation from injuries, whether physical or mental. The financial cost might also come in a reduced ability to perform one’s ordinary work as a victim, which is an aspect of unfairness that the State is not involved in creating. Of course, we’re not suggesting that, but the State should have a role to play, a constructive role, in at least seeking to mitigate or reduce that harm caused by financial costs as soon as possible.

So it is that we make a practical suggestion along these lines, which is simply to make available legal aid for victims who are re-entering the criminal justice system as required by the operation of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. We can see no good reason that a person who is placed in that situation, again by the acts of others that are by definition criminal, or at least are found to be criminal, notwithstanding any overturning that might be the case—so we put forward for that reason this suggestion. We hope that it will be supported by all Government parties.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 398 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Part 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Amendment agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 399 in the name of Chris Penk to clause 4 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 398 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little, and the following amendment in his name, to Part 2 be agreed to:

in clause 10(3), replace “sections 35 to 37” with “sections 35 and 36”.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Amendments agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 399 in the name of Chris Penk to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendment not agreed to.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 400 in the name of Chris Penk to Part 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Part 2 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Part 2 as amended agreed to.

The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 398 in the name of the Hon Andrew Little to Schedule 1 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 63

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

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Amendment agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 1 as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Schedule 1 as amended agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Chris Penk’s amendments to Schedule 2 set out on SOP 400 be agreed to. All those in favour say Aye, to the contrary No. The Noes have it. A party vote has been called for. The Clerk will conduct a party vote. [Party vote takes place] Can we just check with the Labour Party? Is it 46 votes in favour? The Ayes are 103; the Noes are 17. That amendment is agreed to.

Kieran McAnulty: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I’m so sorry but there appears to be a misunderstanding. If that was Chris Penk’s SOP, then we did not vote in favour of it. I was sure I said “Opposed” and I apologise for any misunderstanding.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): We’re going to take that vote again.

Matt Doocey: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Could you just repeat which amendment we are voting on?

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): I apologise.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 400 in the name of Chris Penk to Schedule 2 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Noes 63

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

Amendments not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Schedule 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 1 be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Clause 1 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 2 be agreed to.

Ayes 64

New Zealand Labour 46; New Zealand First 9; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 8; ACT New Zealand 1.

Noes 56

New Zealand National 55; Ross.

Clause 2 agreed to.

House resumed.

The Chairperson reported the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill with amendment, the Organ Donors and Related Matters Bill without amendment, Land Transport (Wheel Clamping) Amendment Bill without amendment, and the Criminal Cases Review Commission Bill with amendment.

Report adopted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Members, on this, the 26th anniversary of the election of the Hon Damien O’Connor and the Hon Ruth Dyson to this House, I adjourn the House until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 10.05 p.m.