Thursday, 11 March 2021

THURSDAY, 11 MARCH 2021

THURSDAY, 11 MARCH 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom, justice, mercy, and humility for the welfare and peace of New Zealand. Amen.

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Legislation to be considered next week will include the first readings of the Commerce Amendment Bill and the Appropriation (2019/20 Confirmation and Validation) Bill and further stages of the Child Support Amendment Bill, the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill, the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill, the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill, and the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Can I just ask the Leader of the House whether or not it is the Government’s intention to soon make progress on item 21 on Government orders of the day, which is the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Of course, as I’ve just set out for the member, we’ve got a very busy legislative programme over the next few weeks, but that remains on the Order Paper, and it remains something that the Government is looking to advance.

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

Petitions, Papers, Select Committee Reports, and Introduction of Bills

SPEAKER: No select committee reports have been presented. A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Todd Muller requesting that the House urgently review the proposed ban on fishing the Astrolabe Reef and pass legislation to ensure that the Ministry of Fisheries has primacy over protecting coastal fish stocks.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

Ministers have delivered papers—quite a few.

CLERK:

Annual reports for 2019-20 of the Auckland, Bay of Plenty, Lakes District, MidCentral, Nelson Marlborough, Northland, Tairāwhiti, Taranaki, Wairarapa, Waitematā, West Coast, and Whanganui District Health Boards

annual plans for 2020-21, incorporating 2020-21 statement of performance expectations, for the Bay of Plenty, Lakes District, Taranaki, Wairarapa, and Whanganui District Health Boards

annual plans for 2020-21, incorporating 2019-20 to 2022-23 statements of intent and 2020-21 statements of performance expectations, for the Auckland, Northland, and Waitematā District Health Boards

statements of intent for 2020-21 to 2023-24, incorporating statements of performance expectations 2020-21, for Tairāwhiti District Health Board

statements of performance expectations for 2020-21 for the MidCentral District Health Board, Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, and West Coast District Health Board.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.

CLERK:

Appropriation (2019/20 Confirmation and Validation) Bill, introduction

Sunscreen (Product Safety Standard) Bill, introduction

Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill, introduction

Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: Those bills are set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The underlying strength of the New Zealand economy continues to exceed expectations. Statistics New Zealand figures show that manufacturing sales volumes rose in the December 2020 quarter after falling earlier in the year due to COVID-19. Total manufacturing sales volumes rose to $26.8 billion, up 0.5 percent from the previous quarter. Volumes are also slightly above levels seen before COVID-19 hit in early 2020. The growth in sales was led by gains in electrical and machinery manufacturing, mainly in the electronic and electrical equipment subindustry. While particular sectors in regions in New Zealand will continue to suffer the effects from COVID-19, this is good news for our manufacturing sector, which has benefited in response to COVID-19 by a buoyant construction industry and other demands.

Ingrid Leary: What further reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The latest ANZ Bank monthly Truckometer report indicates ongoing momentum for our transport sector—

Chris Bishop: Truckometer!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —one of the most accurate, Mr Bishop, the Truckometer—with both the light traffic index and heavy traffic index up on a year earlier. The ANZ notes that the levels of activity are roughly back on trend after the interruption of the initial lockdown to successfully combat the escalating pandemic last year. While the vaccination roll-out continues both here in New Zealand and around the rest of the world and the rate of COVID-19 infections eases in many countries, the report also notes that there are still risks and uncertainties in the economy, but the good news is that ANZ says New Zealand’s economy is in much better shape than most.

Ingrid Leary: What reports has he seen on support that is available to business to mitigate the risks to the economy from COVID-19?

Hon Grant Robertson: I thought members may want a further update on the numbers that I gave at the start of the week. The Resurgence Support Payment, which kicked in for both the alert level changes on 14 February and 28 February, has received over 55,000 applications, and has so far paid out $128.06 million to businesses and traders. This payment, as we know, is intended to help businesses with their fixed costs, such as rent, and is still open for applications for both recent alert level changes. The wage subsidy scheme, which opened at the beginning of this week, has had 35,886 applications approved, with $107.55 million being paid out.

Question No. 2—Police

2. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister of Police: Does she agree that the New Zealand Police are racially profiling Māori, given that police are photographing Māori youth and using tactical pain against Māori more than any other ethnicity?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti) on behalf of the Minister of Police: I do not support any form of racial profiling by any Government department or agency. I do have a clear expectation that police officers act within the parameters of the law and that in the application of the law, there are no biases or inconsistencies.

Rawiri Waititi: Given that Māori are overrepresented in the groups targeted in Operation Tauwhiro, does the Minister have concerns that Operation Tauwhiro is another example of the police targeting and racially profiling Māori?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: On behalf of the Minister of Police, as I said in the answer to the first question, I have a clear expectation that officers act within the parameters of the law and that in the application of the law there are no biases or inconsistencies.

Rawiri Waititi: Can the Minister assure te ao Māori that racial bias, which is clearly evident within the police, will not influence the treatment of Māori who come to the attention of the police?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Yes, and that’s why—on behalf of the Minister—I am continuing to work with the police commissioner on tackling all forms of overrepresentation of Māori in the criminal justice system.

Rawiri Waititi: What strategies do the police have in place to protect iwi Māori from racial profiling?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, as I’ve said, the Minister doesn’t agree with or support any form of racial profiling of any group of people in Aotearoa from any agency or department.

Rawiri Waititi: Point of order. I don’t think that particular question has been answered, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I think it’s been addressed, though, which is the requirement.

Rawiri Waititi: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I don’t think it has.

Teanau Tuiono: Is the Minister concerned that the police’s commitment to repair the relationship with Māori communities has been put at risk by the news that police officers are taking photos of rangatahi without appropriate permission?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, again, I refer everyone back to the first and second answers, that the Minister has a clear expectation that officers act within the parameters of the law and that in the application of the law there are no biases or inconsistencies. [Rawiri Waititi stands to seek call]

SPEAKER: No, the member will resume his seat.

Rawiri Waititi: Supplementary question.

SPEAKER: The member’s not going to have another supplementary question. While he did have one left, he chipped me after I made a previous ruling and he lost it.

Rawiri Waititi: We get four, and then we’re not—

SPEAKER: That’s right, because you don’t argue with the Speaker after he’s made a ruling. The member should know that by now.

Question No. 3—COVID-19 Response

3. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: When will the coronavirus vaccine be available to everyone in New Zealand, and does he have confidence in the infrastructure required for the roll-out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday, I released the Government’s sequencing framework that provides greater clarity to New Zealanders about the national immunisation programme for COVID-19, which will be the biggest in the country’s history. Within that strategy, we’ve got a targeted roll-out over the next three to four months focusing on those who are most at risk of harm if they get the virus and those who live and work in places where they are most likely to pick up COVID-19. Our plan is that the rest of the population will start to have access to the vaccine from July onwards. With regard to the second part of the question, there is an element of building the plane whilst we’re flying it, here. I do have confidence in the processes that have been put in place to ensure that the infrastructure required for the roll-out is there when it is needed, but some of that work is still continuing.

Dr Shane Reti: Is he concerned it has taken until March to produce a roll-out plan that will now collide with the flu vaccine, which is due in one month’s time in similar priority groups and can’t be given within two weeks of the Pfizer vaccine?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No, the roll-out of the regular flu vaccine has been part of the planning around this to make sure that we allow for that and to make sure that there isn’t the conflict that the member has just alluded to. It is a different sort of vaccination programme, though. With the flu vaccine, for example, we do not centrally record who has had the flu vaccine and who hasn’t. It is a single dose vaccine, whereas the COVID19 vaccine requires two doses, three weeks apart, and we are recording exactly who has had it and when they have had it. That is quite an important distinction and, therefore, it requires a different degree of infrastructure for the roll-out.

Dr Shane Reti: Why is obesity not a relevant underlying health condition for prioritised coronavirus vaccination, given the Government’s answer to parliamentary question 4922 stating obesity to be one of the three most common disorders associated with poor outcomes?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Ultimately, wherever the Government drew the line in terms of the different groups in each sequence, there were going to be some who were in and some who were out. There is no absolute perfect exact way of doing this. The sequencing framework is, on balance, in our view, the fairest way of doing it, the most equitable way of doing it, but also the way that will provide the greatest protection, for New Zealanders, against risk.

Dr Shane Reti: Does he not think one of the top three conditions associated with poor outcomes should be prioritised?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I agree that the framework that we have released is the right sequence of priorities in terms of the vaccine roll-out.

Dr Shane Reti: Can GPs now download coronavirus vaccination information into patient files, given two weeks ago, the Government wrote in written questions that this capability would be available in two weeks, which is now?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I don’t have the latest information on that as of today. I do know that that is one of the capabilities that they are attempting to build into the system. One of the things that the member should bear in mind is that different GP practices use different patient-management systems. And so one of the challenges here is to make sure that whatever they do is interoperable with all of them.

Dr Shane Reti: Hasn’t there been enough time to develop interoperability with GP practices and the coronavirus vaccination programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That work is ongoing. I do want to note, though, that there is some complexity here. The different IT solutions—and there are several of them being developed—do different things. So there’s a different system for inventory management, there is a central record of who has been vaccinated, and there’s a booking system being developed. All three of those systems need to link to each other, and there’s also a need to link them to other systems, such as those operated by primary healthcare providers. That’s quite a complex system. It’s important that they get it right. We don’t want this to be—and to some extent, you know, adding to it as it is being used is one of the ways that we can avoid it becoming a Novopay-like situation where the perfect system was supposedly developed, switched on, and didn’t work.

Dr Shane Reti: What proportion of the New Zealand population receiving the vaccine will be the threshold for relaxing New Zealand’s travel restrictions?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: To be clear, the Government has not set a target around that. Our goal is to ensure that as many New Zealanders as possible are vaccinated. As we get into the second part of the year, we will firm up a little bit more around what reopening might look like and what the prerequisites for that might be. I do want to be clear here, and I’ve said this all along, that’s likely to be a progressive process rather than something all happening at once.

Question No. 4—COVID-19 Response

4. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What progress has the Government made in securing a strong vaccine portfolio for all New Zealanders?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I am very happy to say that the Government has guaranteed that every New Zealander will have access the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine after securing an additional 8.5 million doses, on top of the 1.5 million doses that we had already purchased. This brings our total order to 10 million doses, enough for every New Zealander to get the two shots they need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. It’s a significant addition to our COVID-19 vaccine portfolio, and it is a sign of our confidence in the vaccine and its effectiveness. It also reinforces our top priority of making sure that all New Zealanders get free, fair, and equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr Tracey McLellan: How is the vaccination of our border workers progressing?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news. As of this morning, I can report that 19,313 have received their first doses of the vaccine. We now have 989 health professionals—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to stop the Minister here now. I’ve reflected on the supplementary question and I’m ruling that it does not flow from the original one, which was the obtaining of the vaccines. The use and the obtaining are quite different. If the member wanted to ask that supplementary question, she would have better phrased the original one.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What updates can he provide on when other people can expect to receive the vaccine from that strong vaccine portfolio?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yesterday, as I have already indicated, I released the Government’s sequencing framework that provides clarity to New Zealanders around when they can expect to receive the vaccine. Over 2 million New Zealanders are in line to start receiving the vaccine over the next four months, with a focus on protecting those most at risk of getting COVID-19, or being harmed by it.

Question No. 5—Tourism

5. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Tourism: Does he view a trans-Tasman bubble as a priority for the tourism sector, and by what date does he expect a trans-Tasman bubble to be in place?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response) on behalf of the Minister of Tourism: Yes, but also for the reasons of reuniting friends and family. We’ve always maintained that we will commence safe travel with Australia when it is safe to do so. Cabinet has yet to agree a specific implementation date.

Hon Todd McClay: What does he say to Scenic Hotel Group managing director, Brendan Taylor, who said on the radio this morning, and I quote, “The Minister of Tourism went down to the West Coast, saying until we get 70 percent herd immunity with the vaccine, then borders are not going to open, not even to Australia.”, and he predicted that wouldn’t happen until January of next year if we are lucky?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m not sure that that’s exactly what the Minister of Tourism said, and so I can’t comment on that. But we have always been clear that we will open a trans-Tasman bubble with Australia when we’re in a position to do that.

Hon Todd McClay: Is he concerned that the comments he made recently in a public meeting at Franz Josef on the trans-Tasman bubble have led to the managing director of Scenic Circle hotels announcing they would close four of their hotels?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: People will make business decisions based on a whole variety of different factors. I do want to acknowledge that the New Zealand tourism industry is experiencing quite a lot of difficulty as a result of the closure of the border at the moment. I do want to note, however, that a removal of restrictions on the New Zealand side without a corresponding removal of restrictions on the Australian side may result in an export of tourism dollars away from New Zealand to Australia, not necessarily tourism dollars flowing the other way.

Hon Todd McClay: Is he aware that Tourism New Zealand have estimated a trans-Tasman bubble with Australia would allow tourism revenue to recover to 70 percent of pre-COVID levels; and, if so, doesn’t this mean that Scenic hotels and many other tourism businesses wouldn’t be closing?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I am sure that that estimate is based on a full reopening and removal of restrictions on both sides of the Tasman. It is important to note that, as of today, only two Australian states are allowing New Zealanders to arrive in Australia without there being any restrictions in place and, further, that any Australian wanting to travel to New Zealand for tourism purposes needs to get a visa from the Australian Government in order to do so.

Hon Todd McClay: How many other hotels and tourism businesses will close before the Government opens the border to Australia, as Australia did for New Zealanders in October of last year?

SPEAKER: Order! That’s not something the Minister has responsibility for.

Hon Todd McClay: Point of order, Mr Speaker. So to the Minister of Tourism, how many tourism businesses will close—surely that’s within his ambit when the primary is—

SPEAKER: Well, if he’d asked about reports that he had seen or information that he had received. He does not have responsibility for the closure.

Question No. 6—Arts, Culture and Heritage

6. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage: What action is the Government taking to help inspire students in schools and kura to get creative and be involved in the arts?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): Today, the Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, and I announced the second round of Creatives in Schools. Today’s announcement will see 143 schools, including 10 kura and one New Zealand Sign Language school supported to utilise the skills and knowledge of local creatives to deliver creative projects and experiences. These learning experiences stimulate students’ creativity, enhance their wellbeing, and inspire young people to explore careers in the arts and creative sectors. This Government values the arts and is committed to supporting career pathways into creative industries.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: How will schools and the creative communities benefit from the programme?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Creatives in Schools programme enables schools to further build on their local arts programme and explore other art forms that they may not have tried before. The programme is just as valuable for the artists as it is for schools who participate, and it is a win-win for students and the creative people who work with them. COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the cultural and creative sector. That is why this programme received a $4 million boost through the COVID-19 recovery funding alongside the wider $374 million investment to support the cultural and creative sector to survive, adapt, and thrive.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: How does the programme benefit disabled people?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In my capacity as Minister for Disability Issues, it’s particularly pleasing to see Ko Taku Reo Deaf Education New Zealand receiving funding to support their youth theatre project included in the second round of Creatives in Schools. This project will encourage Deaf students to work collaboratively with their peers using New Zealand Sign Language. It will enable them to confidently express and celebrate their unique Deaf culture and strengthen their sense of identity and belonging in the arts and creative spaces. Round one of the programme also included projects at Wellington High School and Waitākere College’s Inclusion Support Centre for students with a range of abilities. Creatives in Schools has a wide reach within both the learning and creative spheres and supports everyone to participate in the arts.

Question No. 7—Housing (Public Housing)

7. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Why has the State house waiting list increased from 5,844 in September 2017 to 22,521 in December 2020, and by what date will it reduce back to 2017 levels?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Housing (Māori Housing)) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): The waiting list reflects the need for public housing in our community because this Government has placed a strong emphasis on people coming forward and telling us if they need housing support. This has not always been the case prior to September 2017. I will not be committing to a specific date; instead, the Government is ensuring that we bring on more supply through the largest public housing build programme in a generation. Eighteen thousand additional public and transitional homes will be delivered by 2024.

Nicola Willis: Well, how does he reconcile that answer with his answer—

SPEAKER: “She”.

Nicola Willis: —with her answer to parliamentary written question No. 17664, which shows that nothing substantive has changed in the criteria the Ministry of Social Development used to assess whether someone is eligible for a State house or not?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, we’ve made it clear that for people who need additional support for housing—and, in particular, in a time like we’ve seen over the past 12 months through COVID-19, the need for us to support people who have been homeless into transitional and temporary housing has actually seen us support more people, which is why we encourage them to come forward. That has had an impact on the list, and we accept that there’s a challenge in front of us, which is why we have announced that 18,000 homes by the year 2024 is our target.

Nicola Willis: Does she think that escalating house prices, up $50,000 in one month alone, are having an impact on the State house waiting list?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, we will all accept that such a steep increase in house prices has had a significant impact on the housing market.

Nicola Willis: Does the Minister think that escalating rents, up $110 a week under Labour, has contributed to the State house waiting list?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, we’ve made it clear that with particular reference to rents, we are making our best efforts to ensure that renters are supported in renting in houses. Unlike the last Government, who made it even harder for renters to get into houses, we’ve made sure we support them through a number of mechanisms such as legislation.

Nicola Willis: Can she confirm the waiting list is now growing five times as fast as the Government is building houses, and is this as good as it gets under Labour?

Hon PEENI HENARE: On behalf of the Minister, it’s easy to get better given the low standard that the National-led Government had set for housing. We’ve already said, and I’ll repeat it: 18,000 homes by the year 2024.

Nicola Willis: Can she confirm the Government is now spending $1 million a day putting people up in motels, and when will that Minister see that number reduced?

SPEAKER: Order! That doesn’t relate to the primary question. Question No. 8, Mark Cameron.

Nicola Willis: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The primary question was about the State house waiting list. People on the State house waiting list have to live somewhere and so the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing) has responsibility for that. They’re living in motels.

SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. It was a relatively easy question to relate to the primary question; the member didn’t.

Question No. 8—Land Information

8. MARK CAMERON (ACT) to the Minister for Land Information: Does he stand by his statement on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill, made before his appointment to the Land Information portfolio that “My primary focus has been to ensure the bill recognises that Crown pastoral lands supports a prosperous high country pastoral farming industry and I’m confident that this new regime proposed by the Minister will ensure that sustainable pastoral farming on Crown land will continue to thrive”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for Land Information: Yes.

Mark Cameron: Will this bill impose higher costs on high country farmers?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, what the bill seeks to do is to ensure a good, responsible partnership between the landowner, the Crown, and leaseholders to ensure good management of the land and good outcomes for all of New Zealand.

Mark Cameron: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was “Will this bill impose higher costs on high country farmers?” I don’t believe that was answered.

SPEAKER: I don’t think it was even addressed, so the Minister can have another go.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, the purpose of the bill is not to impose costs on leaseholders, but it is to ensure a partnership between a responsible landowner, the Crown, and responsible leaseholders to ensure that land is managed in the best interests of all parties, including all of New Zealand.

Mark Cameron: Does the Minister agree with the submission from Federated Farmers that states the bill “unnecessarily adds additional layers of consenting, with associated increases in costs and delays on both leaseholders and the taxpayer, for no greater environmental or pastoral outcomes.”; if not, why not?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, no.

Hon Jacqui Dean: Does he agree that developing environmental farm management plans would be a better management tool on Crown pastoral leases than doubling down on regulation, red tape, and infringement regimes?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, the bill does not double down on regulation and red tape of management of Crown land.

Hon Jacqui Dean: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Jacqui Dean. I’ve called the member. Well, that was a waste of a supplementary, wasn’t it?

Mark Cameron: How does he respond to the statement from Federated Farmers that “proposals within the Bill threaten the future viability of high country farming for Crown Pastoral leaseholders.”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, my response is to invite Federated Farmers to work constructively with both their members who are high country farmers and the Government to ensure we have responsible management of Crown land.

Question No. 9—Health (Māori Health)

9. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health): What recent announcement has he made about the sequencing of the COVID-19 vaccination programme for Māori?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Yesterday, alongside my colleague the Hon Chris Hipkins, the Minister for COVID-19 Response, we announced the timing and sequencing of the COVID vaccine programme and how the programme has a strong focus on protecting our Māori whānau. I also announced an initial funding package of approximately $39 million to ensure Māori communities and providers are prepared and ready for the roll-out of the programme; $24.5 million for the development of community-based vaccine support services that will support Māori health providers; $11 million to be provided directly to Māori health providers to help build provider infrastructure and workforce capability; $2 million for iwi to deliver dedicated and tailored communication campaigns to their whānau; and $1.5 million for workforce development. In addition to the funding, an additional 40,000 courses of the COVID-19 vaccine will be provided specifically for Māori and Pasifika health providers. Together with my colleague the Hon Aupito William Sio, we believe in giving our providers the flexibility to best meet the health needs of their whānau, aiga, and communities.

Arena Williams: How is the Government ensuring that Māori are prioritised in the COVID-19 sequencing framework?

Hon PEENI HENARE: Whānau Māori are more likely to be worse off from the effects of COVID-19, which is why the needs of Māori are at the forefront of this Government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme. Te Tiriti o Waitangi and equity have been central, from planning to implementation of the programme. Māori have been involved in all levels of decision making, from Government to technical advisory groups, and right to on-the-ground working with our communities. As we know, older Māori and Pacific peoples are more likely to live with whānau rather than in an aged-care facility. That is why 40,000 vaccine courses will be allocated to Māori and Pacific health providers to target vaccinations within the communities they service in order to reach these older people. This is just the starting point. The initial funding of approximately $39 million will ensure Māori communities and providers are prepared for the roll-out of the COVID19 programme in their communities.

Arena Williams: Is he confident that this COVID-19 vaccination programme will deliver for Māori?

Hon PEENI HENARE: We take a by Māori, for Māori approach and putting our whānau in the centre of everything we do. Our communities expect leadership, and this is what leadership looks like. Leading from behind: ka tika a mua; ka tika a muri. [If things go well up front, things will go well out back.] It is about protecting our whānau, hapū, iwi, and our whakapapa, and we are ensuring that those most at risk of getting sick from the virus are getting the vaccine as early as possible. Over the last 24 hours, we have heard from providers who are pleased that their calls have been heard and that Government is listening—for example, Manukau Urban Māori Authority chairperson, Bernie O’Donnell, and I quote: “Light at the end of the tunnel. … Rangatira are applauding the Government and urging our South Auckland community to be proactive.” I’m pleased to say that the next phases of the COVID-19 vaccination programme is taking a strong stand for equity and has a focus on the protection of Māori whānau.

Rawiri Waititi: Supplementary question?

SPEAKER: No, the member has none left.

Question No. 10—Immigration

10. ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays) to the Minister of Immigration: On what date did he first become aware of the anomaly between migrant nurses who arrived in New Zealand before our borders closed being unable to bring their families to New Zealand and nurses who arrived after our borders closed being able to do so, and what steps, if any, has he taken to address this disparity?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): The Government has been aware of issues that were caused by our border closure since it happened on 19 March of last year. The Government closed the border to keep COVID-19 out and to keep New Zealanders safe. While unprecedented, it has been one of our most effective measures. We were, at the time, aware that this decision would impact and cause disruptions to many people, including temporary work visa holders such as the nurses that the member speaks of. Around the specific issue of split families, I’m advised that I first received a formal briefing on 14 December last year. I acknowledge the difficulties for families that have been affected by the border closure, and I have sought guidance on how many temporary visa holders would be eligible if we were to open a pathway for them to bring in family in the same way other critical workers can.

Erica Stanford: Why has it taken eight months and three 6 o’clock news stories for him to finally request advice specifically on the migrant nurse anomaly?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Well, I would disagree about the assertion about the 6 o’clock news stories, but as I’ve said, the border issues we were well aware of back when we closed the borders in March of last year, as the member will know, as well as giving visas to critical workers. Another issue is the capacity of our managed isolation. New Zealanders know that the border has been one of our best measures to keep COVID-19 out, and they expect the Government to continue its vigilance.

Erica Stanford: Does the Minister agree that it makes more sense to keep the nurses we have here rather than replace them with new migrant nurses and their families who will be out of the workforce for up to three months undertaking their nursing registration courses?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: We acknowledge the work that all the critical health workers are doing to keep us safe at the moment, but, I guess, we also acknowledge the importance of keeping the vigilance of the border settings that have been the most effective tool to keep us safe.

Erica Stanford: Is he concerned that his inaction is causing these nurses to leave at a time when New Zealand needs an additional 2,000 healthcare workers to give COVID vaccines?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I’m aware of and acknowledge the difficulties that those workers are facing.

Erica Stanford: What does the Minister say to Jeslin Thampy, an ICU nurse at Dunedin Hospital, whose three-year-old daughter cries each night on their video calls because she hasn’t seen her mother in 13 months?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Again, I acknowledge the difficulty that it may have for some families that have been separated from their families for a long time. I also want to acknowledge the rather extreme, unprecedented closing of the borders and, again, the expectation that New Zealanders have that we maintain our vigilance to maintain our relatively good position with COVID-19 to the rest of the world.

Erica Stanford: Why does the Minister need to wait for further advice, when the obvious solution is simply to allow these nurses already in New Zealand to bring their families here, just as he has done for the 500 who arrived since the borders were closed?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Because it’s not as obvious as that. It’s also about making sure—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon David Bennett: Even the rest of the Labour Party agrees.

SPEAKER: Mr Bennett, stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon David Bennett: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: As well as potentially opening up a new line of visa holders to be able to bring their families, that also causes us to consider a decision around managed isolation capacity. Many members in this House will know just how much demand there is on managed isolation when there are New Zealanders who are also facing delays coming into managed isolation and who have priority to come through managed isolation.

Erica Stanford: Does the Minister understand that if these migrant nurses leave, we will need to bring in more migrant nurses to take their places, using more managed isolation spaces, because we have a critical healthcare shortage in this country?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I’ve been briefed of the issues.

Question No. 11—Pacific Peoples

11. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister for Pacific Peoples: What is the Government doing to support opportunities in Pacific housing?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Pacific Peoples): This Government has invested $41 million into initiatives that are specifically targeted towards supporting Pacific housing aspirations. It was recently announced that the Government has taken a key step in supporting Pacific housing opportunities with the opening of the Pacific financial capability fund, which aims to support Pacific organisations to deliver financial capability to Pacific households. I’ve also announced the Pacific community housing provider registration programme, which aims to enable Pacific organisations to become registered community housing providers. Achieving Pacific housing aspirations is a key component of this Government’s Pacific wellbeing approach.

Tangi Utikere: How will the Pacific financial capability fund improve Pacific housing?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The fund will be available for eligible organisations to deliver financial capability initiatives to 1,200 Pacific families over the next four years. This will enable locally designed, innovative initiatives, such as financial literacy training, financial support programmes, financial tools, and resources. This will support Pacific families and communities to have the tools and knowledge to cope with financial changes and establish financial plans, aimed at reducing household debt levels and saving towards owning their own home.

Tangi Utikere: In what way will the Pacific community housing provider registration programme support Pacific housing?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The Pacific community housing provider registration programme is looking for a provider to support Pacific organisations to become successfully registered community housing providers over the next two years. This programme aims to lift the capability of Pacific organisations to achieve community housing provider registration through organisational capability building, training, and support. Improving Pacific capability in the community housing sector brings tailored and culturally appropriate support to Pacific peoples in the community housing space.

Question No. 12—Foreign Affairs

12. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs: What work is he doing with our Pacific neighbours through the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme to protect the ocean?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs): New Zealand joined all Pacific leaders endorsing a statement of our shared commitment to strong regional action on ocean issues and shared stewardship of the Pacific Ocean. As part of New Zealand’s wider support for Pacific Ocean issues, we partner with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) to deliver on a range of projects, many of which address ocean sustainability. In addition to core funding, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is supporting SPREP to become a member of Oil Spill Response Ltd, a non-governmental provider of oil spill readiness and response services, and to provide these services in the Pacific. The ministry also provides funding to SPREP to address ocean acidification, enabling SPREP to do a regional vulnerability analysis on ocean acidification, develop practical adaptation action, and build awareness and capacity in the region.

Teanau Tuiono: What actions is New Zealand taking to support its commitment to the Vemööre Declaration of November 2020, which specifies key environmental protection actions such as the expansion of Pacific marine protected areas?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: The high level of the Vemööre Declaration was drafted by the SPREP and the Government of New Caledonia and was adopted on 26 November 2020. The declaration describes regional priorities for biodiversity conservation and is intended to be drawn on to present a Pacific voice at significant international environmental events. It highlights the urgent need for transformative action and sets out commitments to address the root causes of biodiversity loss. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working with SPREP and the Pacific community to take such action in the Pacific region.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he support stopping New Zealand fishing companies bottom trawling in the international waters of the South Pacific?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I think the issues raised by the member fall outside my ministerial delegation, and I would need to put that in writing to the Minister responsible, which falls under the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he support a moratorium on seabed mining in the Pacific, as called for by States such as Vanuatu, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Again, the same question falls outside my delegation, and I invite the member to write to the responsible Minister.

Teanau Tuiono: During our national Seaweek, what can New Zealand learn from Pacific States, which have an historic record of strong protection of precious ecosystems, when New Zealand only protects 0.4 percent of our own ocean area?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: That’s a good question. And the Pacific is—[Interruption] It is a good question.

SPEAKER: No, no. Order! Order! I think there may have been a comment there, which is not an appropriate reflection on the member opposite. I don’t want to get into a debate about that, but I am going to ask people on both sides of the House to control their behaviour.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Because of their laughter, sir, can I ask the questioner to repeat his question?

SPEAKER: Sure.

Teanau Tuiono: During our national Seaweek, what can New Zealand learn from Pacific States which have a historic record of strong protection of precious ecosystems, when New Zealand only protects 0.4 percent of our own ocean area?

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I did say it’s a good question, because the role that we now play in the region becomes critical in amplifying the voices of the Pacific. Different Governments of the past did not have the same sight that we currently have into the Pacific, so we are learning from the Pacific. In terms of protecting ocean acidification, this Government has invested into the SPREP to make sure that we’re helping islands like Tokelau, Kiribati, and Fiji to provide the growth of mangroves that protect our environment, but also to restore reef confidence in those regions. The Pacific has all these long-term plans, but it requires resources, and I think the leadership role that New Zealand has played more recently is inviting Australia and other stakeholders to participate in putting resources in the region.

Teanau Tuiono: Would he support a parliamentary delegation to the Pacific made up of Pacific Island MPs, especially the multitudes of us outside of the Labour Party, to build capability, fa’amolemole e te Minita?

SPEAKER: I think that might be a question better addressed to me. The member can answer it. The answer to the question is yes, but—Aupito William Sio.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Can we ask him to repeat the question?

SPEAKER: No, I’m not. I think we’ve heard from—around the room, there is general support for a delegation to the Pacific at the appropriate time. We don’t—no, the member doesn’t need to answer the question.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: Mr Speaker, I—

SPEAKER: No. Unless the Minister is going to offer funding for it, it’s not his responsibility.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I was going to say, Mr Speaker, that you have sufficient funding to be able to.

SPEAKER: Right. OK. I think while there is a reasonable degree of humour in the House, I do want to reflect on a series of interjections that were made early in that question and during the previous one. I think some of them were—many of them were out of order. Some of them were verging on the unfortunate, and certainly not appropriate. I accept that some of the answers that the Minister gave were relatively long and he was reading them. I will say that some of the questions were also quite technical and called for specific facts and dates and were replied in that way, and therefore there was some flexibility. But what members—especially Mr Bennett, through his repeated interjections—have drawn to my attention is the report of the Standing Orders Committee from last year as to reading in the House, and I am going to now ask my—I will, myself, and my deputies, my deputy and my assistants, pay particular attention to any member who reads during the remainder of the sitting block.

Bills

Child Support Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for Youth) on behalf of the Minister of Revenue: I present a legislative statement on the Child Support Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and it can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN: I move, That the Child Support Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill was introduced in March 2020 and was considered by the Social Services and Community Committee, who I thank for their work on this bill, a committee that I was fortunate to be part of in the previous term. In the course of their consideration of the bill, the committee heard and read the submissions of a number of New Zealanders who either have personal firsthand experience of the child support scheme or who work with people in that scheme. I thank all those people who took the time and the effort to make a submission. I want to assure all those people who made a submission that we are making the scheme as fair and as simple as possible, and that is what this bill aims to do, but I also want to make it clear that this is not a bill that looks at the child support scheme in its entirety. Such an undertaking would take a great deal of time, which would delay the benefits that this bill provides.

The main purpose of the measures in this bill is to help prepare for child support to transition to Inland Revenue’s new technology platform. Members who have been keeping up with Inland Revenue’s Business Transformation will be aware that the Inland Revenue has been progressively shifting all its operations, in a managed sequence, over to its new technology platform. The final major area of the department’s responsibilities to shift to the new tech is child support, and this will complete the IRD’s transformation programme. The main measures in this bill aim to introduce fairer and more effective penalty rules, compulsory deductions of financial support from source deduction payments made by an employer for newly liable persons, a fairer definition of income used for child support purposes, and a four-year time bar on the reassessment of child support. I will provide a quick overview of some of the main features of the bill to refresh members’ memories.

Penalties: we want to encourage greater compliance and greater engagement from liable parents. One way to achieve this is by imposing penalties on parents who fail to meet their obligations. If a parent fails to pay their child support on time, penalties are imposed, and the bill contains improvements to when and how these are applied. The theory is that penalties provide an incentive for parents to meet their child support obligations, but it’s become clear that overly punitive penalties can cause liable parents to disengage from the scheme, meaning that child support remains unpaid. Imposing penalties becomes a delicate balancing act: too strict, and parents walk away from the debt and their obligations; too lenient, and they’re not incentivised to meet their obligations.

We want to be smarter with how and when we apply penalties. At the moment, if a parent fails to pay their child support on time, an initial late payment penalty is imposed. This is applied in two stages: immediately after the default at a rate of 2 percent, and then a follow-up penalty seven days later. The objective is not to penalise but to get the parent to pay. If Inland Revenue has time to work with that parent to get them back on track before a subsequent penalty is imposed, compliance improves. So we’re proposing to shift that second stage of the initial late payment penalty to 28 days after the due date, rather than the current seven days after the due date.

A further measure relating to the balancing act of penalties was added to this bill last year by a Supplementary Order Paper. The scheme currently imposes penalties when a parent fails to pay on time. There are further penalties known as incremental penalties, which are also added each month the payment remains outstanding. The net effect of the mounting debt is for parents to simply abdicate their responsibilities, so we propose to eliminate these incremental penalties. One other new addition to the bill are proposals to simplify the child support penalty write-off rules. Currently, there are a large number of write-off rules which govern when the IRD can write a penalty off. With the repeal of incremental penalties, we have the opportunity to make these rules simpler. We also feel that it’s important for new participants in the scheme to start off on the right foot. To that end, we’re proposing that newly liable parents have compulsory deductions made from their pay by way of employer. Many people already do have such arrangements with their employers.

The bill also proposes widening the definition of income to include interest and dividends for salary and wage earners. When calculating how much child support is payable, the incomes of both parents are used, but income from interest or dividends is not currently included in the calculation, simply because the amount of that income earned in a year is not known until the end of the tax year. The bill proposes introducing a four-year time bar for income reassessments, as currently exists for income tax. This would provide certainty for parents. The bill also includes a number of technical amendments, which will contribute to a better, more efficient child support scheme. These include proposals such as improvements to the estimation provisions to make them fairer.

In conclusion, this bill will improve the administration of the child support scheme and make it easier for parents to comply with the scheme. I recommend this bill to the House for its consideration. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on this Child Support Amendment Bill. The first thing I’d like to say is that we support this bill because it is a fundamental issue that we make sure that where we have broken homes, children are at the centre of how they are cared for and the arrangements that surround them as they grow into adulthood. This bill is part of a continuum of pieces of legislation over a series of Governments with a view to putting in place better and more robust arrangements for payment so that children do actually get the entitlement through their caring parents and so we end up with a more equitable outcome.

Of course, child support debt is a huge issue. There’s currently about $2.2 billion outstanding, and a lot of that has arisen—if you break down the numbers, roughly there’s about $500 million of core debt where one parent has not paid the caregiver appropriate support payment, and, of course, that means the children don’t get access to that money. But the remainder of that roughly $1.6 billion is actually made up of penalties. And as the Minister’s just explained, under the current arrangements there’s some issues around when the penalties start, and it’s a very short period of time after seven days that immediately an 8 percent penalty is incurred. I think that is leading to unnecessary penalties, of course, as they mount up and accumulate and are compounded in terms of the interest costs. That’s why they’ve got such a high outstanding penalty amount in that overall figure.

So what this bill is trying to do is recognise that it sometimes takes time for parents to work out what the arrangements are that they’ll put in place with respect to their children immediately following a breakup, particularly, and how that process works through, and in many cases it takes time. So I think the move to the 28-day test is a practical measure in terms of giving the parties sufficient time to actually work out what those arrangements are, and also for the person who’s making the payments to make sure that those payment arrangements—whether it’s done through their work or whatever—can be put in place. So I think that is a very crucial part of this piece of legislation.

Of course, we support it, and, of course, it’s underpinned now because the BTP programme, which is the Business Transformation programme that has been rolled out by the IRD—it was actually an initiative started under National and it was, obviously, pursued and continued, as it should have been and has been, by the current Government. We’re now nearing the end of that roll-out—it’s a major, major programme—and this is going to be one of the last modules that get put on to the system, so that means that these payments can be better tracked and better managed. And I think that simplifying the rules and moving to a situation where we’ve got an IT platform administered by the IRD to be able to do that is a very, very good initiative.

The thing I would just like to pick up on is there were a couple of concerns that we had, and the first one—and it was one I was particularly keen on—is around the definition of “income”. So there was quite a discussion in the Social Services and Community Committee about what constitutes income. Previously, it was a very narrow definition of income, which was basically what you earned under the PAYE system. Where this bill will take it is in terms of widening the definition of income. And I think, in the first instance, it’s quite right. It includes interest income and includes dividends. Where we had a differing perspective, and it’s something we took up with the officials, is how parents, if they choose to be obstructive or not reveal all their income—how they actually deal with that can take various forms.

So one of the things is, in many instances, what people do with companies is they start paying themselves through shareholder advances. And they can use that mechanism as a way to pay themselves income which will not traditionally be captured under the definition of income. I’m not suggesting for a moment that it’s an illegal practice—it’s a very standard form of payment that shareholders use, whether in their company or a personal situation, but I think this bill hasn’t reflected some of that sophistication. But I do welcome the move towards incorporating interest and dividends, because that’s pretty clear cut. In terms of the shareholder advances, I think that’s something that officials, in time, might turn their mind to, because I think people always evolve, and as you put in a new piece of legislation, people then react to it, and we end up just going down a rabbit hole. So we could have been a bit more comprehensive on that issue.

The other thing I’d like to just note is that losses from prior periods is another way where people have incurred a loss in a previous year. Under the current arrangements, those losses could be taken into account. And what we want to try and do is make sure that parents pay a fair share based on their current income in the traditional sense that you understand current income. So there’s a change around that that I think’s a very good thing.

But I think the other aspect of this bill which we’ve noted—and we noted as a minority view into the report back to the House—is the continual use of businesses to act as the collecting agent for the IRD. We think that trend, which is relentless, is something that we need to question, and we did question during the process. We’ve noted it as an issue that we need to be aware of, because there seems to be a view in Government and Government departments that businesses are there to collect money on their behalf. I think we need to be careful about that, because nothing comes without a cost. And in this case it’s the cost of the HR departments or the one partner of a business owner doing payroll late at night, or whatever it might be, to actually now have regard for collecting money in the instances where payments are collected and paid to the supporting parent. I think this relentless move towards just assuming that businesses can do that—and I think underlying there is this premise that all businesses have dedicated people and this is all fine and dandy. Actually, most of our smaller businesses—and we have about 320,000 operating small businesses—are very small. They are only one or two people - type businesses. And this is a cost, and it is a cost in terms of time, but also in terms of resources. I think this is an issue, and I just want to raise it, and I’m looking across to officials—they know our view on this—that this is something we will continue to have regard for, particularly from our perspective from National, because there is a view, as I said before, that this is leading to a trend that we need to actually arrest over time.

But I think most of the other issues in this bill are very good; we fully endorse them. It’s about fairness and equity and making sure that we achieve the right outcomes for children, particularly when they’re living in a vulnerable situation where one of the parents has left the home and they’re having to cope with new relationships and it’s a very difficult time for young children. We want to make sure that they get the best start in New Zealand, because if we don’t, obviously it leads to greater problems over time. Thank you very much.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Child Support Amendment Bill. It’s a pleasure to stand here today. This bill is an administrative bill, essentially, that makes changes to the child support scheme. It does a number of things but before I come to that I’d like to thank the submitters in this process. We heard—including up to some secret evidence. That secret evidence will not be known to this House but we heard a number of stories from people, so we want to thank those submitters and the officials for their good and sound advice. It’s been well covered, but this bill does a few things and one of the things I think is particularly good is the repeal of the incremental penalties. The incremental penalties have been found to be a barrier to paying child support for a very small percentage of people who pay.

Look, my time is short and I will take a further call in the final reading. But for now, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and, like my colleague Andrew Bayly, I do want to just put a few things on record. National is supporting the Child Support Amendment Bill in this second reading. But there were a number of issues that were raised in the select committee process that I think are worth just putting on the record. So while the intention, obviously, is to simplify the child support requirements and ensure a greater level of compliance with the requirements, I want to just put on record that many of the submissions we heard actually talked about some of the issues more generally around the child support system and the interaction with, or lack thereof, between the Family Court. And for those submitters that raised issues, some of them were particularly personal and challenging. I do want to say they were taken into consideration but were actually outside the scope of this piece of legislation, and I want to put on record that we do think this is a further area of work. Unfortunately, as noted by the National Council of Women of New Zealand, there actually isn’t a principle in this piece of legislation, although it is the Child Support Amendment Bill, that puts the interests of the child or the children at the heart of this legislation. It was raised by submitters, and I do think there is further work that needs to occur.

One of the areas that, as an electorate MP, unfortunately, you deal with is the child being used as a weapon between warring parents. And part of what they use is the financial support of the child support legislation. That is a grossly unfair thing to do but is the reality often of what happens. And one of the areas that deeply concerns me is parental alienation. So I do think it is important that any consideration of the Child Support Act is about how you support parents, how you ensure they comply with their requirements, and how you ensure you capture all income—and I think this bill makes a significant improvement in that area, because no one wants to see a parent who is liable hiding income that then really is a detriment to their own children.

The part that I don’t agree with is the compulsory collection of child support by an employer. What’s currently in legislation is that if there is a default, then there can be the compulsory collection from an employer through the payroll system, and I think that strikes the right balance. So National disagrees with the fact that this is another area of tax collection for a business. But it’s also important, I think, that it is a personal issue for an employee that has got nothing to do with their employer, and the fact that they have to disclose it—something that I think is quite personal to them and their family, I don’t think is relevant at all. If someone is complying, there should be zero need—zero need—for a business and employer to be privy to that information and part of the process.

There still are a few areas that submitters raised where they saw that there were some areas that weren’t fair. The challenge with the child support legislation is it will never be perfect. And the officials will attest to the fact that we challenged, in a number of different ways, to try and make it fairer, but the reality is it’s a significant improvement on what there is now, but it isn’t perfect. So constituent MPs, if you’re a new constituent MP in this House, welcome to the world of child support scraps. Hopefully, this legislation will mean there are fewer of them, because it is a complicated system, and for a family that is going through the process of separating, the large bulk of them want to comply. So making a system that’s easier for them to comply, I think, is really important and useful. Removing some of the penalties, I think, is also important.

I’ve been reassured by the discussions by Inland Revenue that there is more work going on at the front line to communicate and educate newly liable parents as well as new receiving parents about how the system works, and I think that’s a really positive step. I won’t, clearly, name names, but I think of one particular constituent who came into my office literally with a stack of unopened letters from Inland Revenue that were only about child support, and every time they saw an envelope they freaked out. It was so incredibly stressful. They just didn’t have the ability to comprehend how it all worked, and when they opened the first letter and the second letter and they were trying to read the summary, they got more and more bamboozled, and I don’t want to see any parent—because the impact of that will, highly likely, have an impact on their relationship with their child, and that’s definitely not what we want to see with the child support system.

We do want to make sure it’s enforceable and reflects modern families. As everybody in this House knows, modern families come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, and we need to have a child support system that reflects that, is easy for people to comply with, and is in the best interests, in my view, of the children that should be at the heart of any legislation that has child in its title. Thanks, Madam Speaker.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): The children of separated parents need both those parents to contribute to their financial wellbeing, and thus children need the State to run a collection agency for those contributions that is simple, certain, and fair. I commend this bill to the House because it is a step along the way to that goal. It is fairer because it accurately records the income that parents have, by taking into account interest and dividends. It is simpler because it gives parents who are newbies to the system a grace period within which they can be helped to understand. It does the same thing for defaulting parents—getting alongside rather than penalising them with undue penalties. It makes the system simpler by making payment as automatic as your student loan deductions. And, finally, it reduces uncertainty and it reduces the ability of some minority of parents to cause stress and uncertainty to their ex-partner by unrestrained demands for reassessment of income. It cuts those sorts of discussions off at four years. In summary, I commend this bill to the House because our kids need a child support system as short and sweet as this submission.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai, tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou te Whare. The Greens support this amendment bill, but we are a little bit gutted that there wasn’t the opportunity taken to amend what a few other submitters have spoken about, which is primarily the core focus of this Act—that is, that it talks about the parents but neglects the welfare of children. There’s been a lot of discussion about that transactional nature, and as this Act was actually passed in 1991, it’s probably worth noting that I’m probably one of the only members in the House who was a child whose parents were having to act and operate under this very piece of legislation in their divorce and separation.

Simplification is good, and the reasons for that have been outlined, as is, of course, the limitation on those retrospective reassessments, which can expose substantive liability, particularly for those who may be obliged to pay in lower socio-economic circumstances—especially when you take into account the requirement to pay potential interest. But I do, however, make note of the contribution made by Andrew Bayly, that on the other end of town, whilst it’s really important that we have made those amendments to how income is accounted for, particularly with regard to interest and dividends being included, the ability to wiggle out of this by having that income come through by other means, such as shareholder advances, does still propose a number of fish-hooks to which I hope we begin to pick up and deal with as we move forward in further simplifying and making more equitable this piece of law.

The Child Support Act 1991, as I just alluded to, completely neglects—completely neglects—the concept of the welfare of the child. Importantly, every other piece of legislation that is directly impacting on children includes that, the welfare of children, as one if its major goals. Instead, this Act emphasises the responsibilities and obligations, particularly of those non-custodial parents. It feels as though this framework is almost set up to enable, or to be the legal manifestation of, two parents in a room, arguing about separation or divorce, neglecting the will of their kid, of the tamariki who are in that room—the things that they want, and that they care about. I just hope, again, that as we talk about the development of law like this in the House in future, like was put forward in the submission from the Children’s Commissioner, we think about centring the voice of children moving forward.

With regard to the point that I made at the start of this contribution, the real lost opportunity here, alongside centring children’s voices, is the opportunity to actually address systematic inequality. So I refer to the Children’s Commissioner’s submission, which made it abundant that what happens in this amendment bill does not actually align with the stated child poverty reduction aims of this Government, both in last term and in this term. The way that it does this, or rather doesn’t do this, most particularly is by not taking up the recommendation of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendation 27. That recommendation was “Pass on all child support collected to receiving carers, including for recipients of Unsupported Child’s Benefit”. This may not be immediately apparent to those of us who sit within this House and have the privilege of being pretty distant from the experience of receiving a benefit or welfare support in this country, but I think it’s really important to spell out how the system currently works for parents who are recipients who are on the benefit.

Right now, if you are on a benefit and you are receiving child support, that child support is paid directly to the IRD. The IRD then holds that child support. If the child support is calculated as at an amount more than of the benefits that you are entitled to, as a sole parent, then only the difference over and above your entitlements ends up being paid out to you. The rest of that child support is used by the Ministry of Social Development to offset the costs of your benefit. That is a hangover from a time and place that I thought Aotearoa New Zealand had moved on from. It’s an incredibly punitive approach to our welfare and benefit system. And while some may decry that this is about making sure that people are accountable or whatever else, the fact of the matter is that it’s children who miss out here.

So if we’re to centre those children’s voices, the need of children, here, then we would make sure that the full amount of that child support was passed on, because those actions that are presently undertaken by the IRD as an intermediary actually exacerbate inequality. And that is outlined incredibly well by the submission of the Children’s Commissioner, who spoke to, in particular, the What Makes a Good Life? engagement from 2018. His submission, quoting from a young person from Whangārei, said “Sometimes you can’t afford what you need. Can’t afford experiences - camps and school trips, education, food - like if you have bad health because you can only afford the bad stuff, you’re never gonna get healthy.” This is the kind of reality that we’re grappling with here.

Again, it’s that missed opportunity that the Greens are gutted we didn’t remedy with the amendment bill as put forward in front of the Social Services and Community Committee. I note that those who were on that select committee have contributed, saying as much. But I hope that by putting it on the record today, we have an opportunity to address it moving forward. Because I’m sure, as we all well know in this place, when a spotlight is not shone on these issues, we can continue dusting them under the carpet and pretending that they do not exist. The Greens support this amendment bill because of those important changes that are made, but those changes are primarily administrative. We hope that, moving forward, there’s the opportunity to address the substance, which is growing inequality and inequity in Aotearoa New Zealand, and how that particularly has massive detriment to the children in this country. Kia ora.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. ACT will be supporting this bill, but I have to agree with previous speakers: there is more to be done. It’s great that we’ve managed to change the definition of “income” so that it’s more fair and the money is going towards the children that need it, but I was also a bit concerned that the welfare of the children was never mentioned within this bill. I think we need to be looking at the children’s best interests, and this seems to be forgotten within this bill.

We seem to have a lot of technical changes in this bill but nothing that actually—we had a lot of submitters that came to us and spoke about different issues that were outside of the scope of this bill, but you could see where the problems were. I think changing the late penalty regime so that you’re no longer getting incremental penalties will encourage parents to come forward and catch up with their payments if a deadline is missed, but I also think that—and I agree with National’s concerns—these payments shouldn’t be going to the Crown; they should be going to the parent that was disadvantaged so that it can help the children, which is what the money is meant to be for. I think preventing offsetting losses from previous years of income is fantastic, because this can be a way where a parent can hide money, and we don’t want the children missing out. It should be all about the child.

In saying that, apart from those concerns, my other concern was with small businesses having to take on the extra cost of having to take over collecting money for Inland Revenue. Businesses incur a lot of costs with administering many things, and this is just adding to small businesses. But everything else in this bill I am really happy with, and I hope that we can come back to the child support bill and make some changes where the submitters were concerned. Thank you.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Mālō, mālō e laumālie. It’s an honour for me to speak on the Child Support Amendment Bill, because I have been a person who never got child support by the partner. So I want to acknowledge the last speaker, Karen Chhour, but, actually, the Child Support Amendment Bill amends the actual Act, and in the actual Act, in section 4, “Objects”, it talks about—it affirms—the “right of children to be maintained by their parents”. I like the component of “compulsory”, of this bill, because when I was a person who separated from my previous partner, it took a long time for child support to arrive, and it actually never did arrive. So making it compulsory removes the opportunity for that stressful experience to be experienced by the parent who is left looking after the children. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take just a short call on the Child Support Amendment Bill. While I didn’t sit on the Social Services and Community Committee, I have been an electorate MP for coming on four years now and worked, indeed, in the electorate office before that for a number of years, and I can echo some of the speakers before to say that one of the most often brought cases to electorate offices are child support cases. They are difficult, they are emotional, and they are often very complex. So anything that we do to simplify this law to make it more easy to comply with and less stressful for parents going through what is a very difficult time in their lives is a good thing.

We support this bill. I want to talk specifically about the compounding debt that parents can accumulate. Of course you get parents on the one hand who are shirking their obligations, but then you do get a lot on the other hand, who have come through my doors, who have been through such an emotional and stressful and anxious time that they haven’t got on top of things as quickly as they should have, they didn’t understand what can be a quite complex and difficult to understand process, and they’ve ended up with significant debt. The bill simplifies that and pushes out the date that they will accrue some of that debt, and I think that is a very good thing, giving them more time to come to grips with their obligations and understand some of the complexities of those obligations.

I have to echo the speaker that went before, Louise Upston, on our concerns around making compulsory deductions from the start. I do have concerns around the fact that, as the Hon Louise Upston said, this is a matter in the first instance between the members of that family, and introducing the employer is not something that, in my opinion, is the right thing to do.

I also have read some of the submissions, and I can see that a lot of things that were brought up are very relevant, and there is a lot more work to do. A lot of those things that were mentioned are things that come through my office. But there are a lot of complaints and anxieties that people have around people who are shirking their obligations. There is more work to be done. This is a good first step. I commend the bill to the House, but I do look forward to more changes to this legislation in the future to ensure that children are getting what they are entitled to. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. The House appears to be at one on this bill, and for very good reason. It makes some much-needed improvements and adjustments. I just note the compulsory deduction regime which is proposed is one that really makes significant progress, not because it’s heavy-handed in any way, but simply because people are human and they have oversight and they have other priorities, and it just makes the decision for them and ensures that they comply, as in most cases they want to, with their obligation to provide the contribution to the parent primarily caring for the child. So it’s really just one of those things where it’s nudging people to make the right decision in a way which makes things a lot easier for them.

That’s just one of the many improvements in this bill, which in some ways is a tidy up of a whole lot of things across the Act to make it more simple, more administratively easy, and more workable. I commend the bill to the House.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): It’s an honour to take a short call on this Child Support Amendment Bill today. It was a good opportunity to review this particular part—i.e., the penalties and the four-year time bar—while Inland Revenue are working through their Business Transformation programme. This bill makes for a fairer penalty, in terms of rules, and simplifies the administrative process. And with that, I commend this bill to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, and I, too, will make a short contribution about this bill, but I just thought I would elaborate a little bit on the background behind it. This bill was developed first back in 1991, so it is quite outdated, but the administration system, of course, has been quite clunky over the last few years. And it’s because of the investment that was made by the former National Government that has enabled the technology now to introduce a lot more of these efficiencies into the IRD.

We’ve heard about the penalties that have accrued for some of the people who are liable parents and there is a huge amount of debt being carried in terms of these outstanding penalties: $2.2 billion is the figure that is currently outstanding. But of that, $1.7 billion is actually penalties that are owed to IRD. And, of course, what happens when a liable parent falls behind on payments is that the penalties keep accruing and so the ability to catch up gets further and further out of reach. In some cases—we heard through the submission process—some parents actually find it easier to escape and some even leave the country and don’t return, because the penalties make it so unworkable. So this new system is actually a lot more user-friendly and it is a lot kinder to liable parents in terms of the penalties.

One of the things that was raised by submitters around those penalties going forward is that if there are penalties that a liable parent owes to the caring parent, the penalties actually need to go to the carer because they relate to the child, but, unfortunately, that was something that was outside of the scope of this bill. Other submitters talked to us about the shared-care arrangements, where there were 50:50 shared-care arrangements in place. So in that case, there were some strong arguments put forward that there should be no liable parent if the custody arrangements were shared 50:50—but, again, that was something that was outside of the scope of this bill.

The taxable income that is now going to be replaced with net income is, I think, a lot fairer too. We heard from several submitters about the ability for the liable parent to hide income in terms of that taxable income, which set the rate of the child payments. This bill fixes that discrepancy so that it’s not quite so easy to run yourself at a loss, or your business at a loss, so that you keep your child payments to the absolute minimum. As we’ve heard from many speakers this afternoon, the main focus is always the care of the children, to make sure that those children are taken care of. I guess, for me, the best way to avoid child support payments is contraception. And outside of that, there is a real obligation on parents to make their contribution to the upkeep and the raising of their own children.

I’d just like to talk a little bit about the penalty times as well. In the past, and in the current regime, we’ve got penalties that are paid. So there’s eight days of payment, and if they haven’t paid within eight days, then they have to pay 8 percent. But, of course, in eight days, there has been no time for IRD to make contact with a liable parent, and so between, you know, such a short amount of time—and even today to get New Zealand Post to deliver you a letter in eight days is doing really well. So those penalty times are also being adjusted and it’s stretching it out so that liable parents actually have enough time to make those arrangements. There’s also a new grace period for people who are new to making child payments. That grace period is now out to 60 days. There will be no penalties while they get their new payment arrangements in place. They work out the budgets and they get those under way.

One of the things that the National Party had concerns with in terms of implementing this bill was the fact that it was, again, asking employers to be the collector of this and manage the collection of funds to pass on to the IRD. We felt that that was an extra burden on business that was not warranted. But given the tax system and the technology that we have, it has been decided through the Social Services and Community Committee that this is the most efficient way of receiving those payments from liable parents and paying them over to the carer. So, my contribution today—I commend this bill to the House in its second reading and look forward to further progressing it. Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support the Child Support Amendment Bill in its second reading. I want to thank the Minister of Revenue, the Hon David Parker, and under-secretary Deborah Russell for their work in bringing this to the House; also to the members, of whom I am one, of the Social Services and Community Committee, from all across the floor, who got to be part of the debate, the conversation, and for being constructive through that. Also to our officials, thank you for guiding us and for your wisdom. Also, especially our submitters for sharing. For many of them, it was their personal stories, their painful stories—and I appreciate that, as did members of the select committee.

This bill is about improving the administration of the child support scheme and also helping it to fit into, obviously, Inland Revenue’s Business Transformation programme. I believe that this bill simplifies child support, makes it more accessible and also more gracious to people in terms of the penalties. Finally, I want to remember the 182,000 children who are impacted by families in separation, and we do tautoko and support them.

I support this bill and it going on to its next stage. Kia ora.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 25 February.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I rise in support of this bill, the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. It’s been some weeks now since the first part of the debate, so I’ll just very briefly, for people watching at home, outline what this bill is doing. It’s really just tidying up certain processes so that things can move a bit quicker in the transport space. One is providing for the creation of transport instruments. There’s a whole lot of regulations and rules that affect the transport sector, anything from the maximum penalty that you might be charged for when you park your car illegally and it gets towed, that type of stuff—there’s all sorts of things like that. At the moment, there isn’t the type of instrument that means that the officials can, kind of, just get on with it and make the sorts of updates that need to happen regularly over time, and everything has to go through a Government process. This allows for a more streamlined process which means that the Minister of Transport can delegate accountability for certain rules and regulations to lower-level authorities through the creation of transport instruments. I think what that will mean is just that our rules and regulations in transport can stay up to date and fit for purpose. Otherwise, it just gets, kind of, caught up in a massive process, which isn’t always necessary for small changes.

It also makes some changes to the powers of exemption from regulations and rules made under the land and maritime Acts. It increases the board size of the transport agency, Waka Kotahi. Also, some of the other organisations like the Civil Aviation Authority and Maritime New Zealand can have the ability of having more people appointed to their board. I think that’s a particularly good thing in the case of Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, which has nearly 2,000 staff and an incredible mandate, huge amount of responsibility, right across the country. In order to have effective governance for an organisation that is that large, you really do need more than the current number of board members. This is only making a slight change from at least six to more than eight to at least seven and no more than nine. Then there’s some changes to maximum fines allowed in regulations made under the Maritime Transport Act, increasing the time period a vehicle can be impounded to collect evidence after a serious crash or incident, and making the Chatham Islands Council a regional council under Part 3A of the Maritime Transport Act.

All of this sounds like—I guess it’s a little bit difficult to relate this bill, necessarily, to people’s everyday lives, but I did during this debate just want to take the opportunity to respond to some of the arguments that were put forward earlier in the debate by Michael Woodhouse, the spokesperson for transport for the National Party. I think that there’s a whole lot of misconceptions, particularly from the National Party, on what effective transport investment is in the 21st century, and I can really understand their confusion about it. They’ve long been advocates for significant investment in very short, very expensive bits of highway. You know, it is understandable that people would think, “Oh, if we have these really expensive highway connections, it’s going to make it easier to drive from point A to point B.” Unfortunately, the overwhelming evidence from the second half of the 20th century, where we did a lot of highway building, is that it doesn’t reduce congestion and make it easier for people to get around. It does have a lot of negative unintended side effects, which have to do with the way that land use is influenced. When you build a highway, you very briefly reduce congestion, maybe up to the first five years—but, of course, the design life of the road itself should be more like 20 to 40 years—but after about five years, there’s overwhelming evidence from North American cities and also from here in New Zealand that within about five years there’s no reduction in congestion because the highway—

Simon Court: Waterview Tunnel’s fantastic.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, it’s not quite been open five years, has it, Mr Court? The thing is that when you make it easier for more people to drive at peak time, what happens is more businesses and households make decisions to live further away and then they rely more on their cars, and then after about five years, the congestion comes back because you get an increase in VKT—vehicle kilometres travelled.

Simon Court: Tell that to the tradies of West Auckland.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I mean, one would think that the ACT Party would understand markets, and what I’m hearing right now from their resident engineer is that engineers actually don’t understand markets. They’ve been planning around more cars coming no matter what the price—

Simon Court: My turn next, and we’ll let the voters be the judge.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —no matter what the cost is. This is just empirical; it’s not a matter of opinion, Mr Court. If you look at the papers, The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion done by the Toronto University Department of Economics, that looks at data from 50 cities, it really overwhelmingly concludes that every time we spend billions and billions of dollars investing in a small number of cars to be able to get on the network, it results in more congestion, a more car-dependent land use pattern, which actually reduces people’s choice, it reduces their ability to get around. Not everybody can afford a car; not everyone can drive. We have unintentionally created towns and cities where our youngest residents—you know, children aged 12—are no longer able to independently get around. They’re forced to be driven by their parents from place to place.

Simon Court: Nothing to do with motorways.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: So whether it’s motorways, the reality is that there’s an opportunity for a much more efficient transport system, and this means investing in the modes that have been under-invested in. When we start to reduce the unintentional subsidies that exist for single-occupant vehicle trips—that’s one person driving alone in a car at peak time, which is, of course, the average vehicle occupancy at peak time in all of our major cities is 1.1. By unintentionally planning everything around one person, one car, we have made it difficult, if not impossible, for people to do anything but use a car, so we have unintentionally taken away those choices from people. The whole system will work more efficiently when we invest in those missing alternatives, like safe cycling for short trips; like frequent, reliable, affordable public transport. The more we invest in it, the more we put it out there, the more people take it, and the less congestion there is on our roads. Then, of course, the people who need to use the road network in their cars and trucks are better off if parents don’t have to take their kids to school, if they can get on their bikes and walk and scoot safely. The tradies are better off, because they are a minority of cars on the network. They’re better off when you invest in the alternatives.

I guess what really reigns here for the right—it’s really clear from the interjections from the ACT Party here—is they’re not interested in empirical evidence, they’re not interested in efficient solutions; they’re interested in a culture war that says we should build stuff for cars no matter how ineffective it is at helping people get around our towns and cities.

Simon Court: We’re interested in relieving congestion.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: The way that you can reduce congestion—yes, you can do it through congestion pricing, Mr Court, and there are five to seven cities in the world that have implemented congestion charging. There are some commonalities amongst those cities—so Singapore, the City of London, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Milan; all of them had much higher investment in public transport before they went to congestion charging, so when they went to congestion charging, that infrastructure was already there and people could switch to it.

Simon Court: Let’s have both.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: They also had much higher prices—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Mr Court.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —and smaller supply of parking. So, you know, we’ve still got room to go here in New Zealand, but the reality is that the number one priority, if we want to make it easier for people and goods to move around this country, the best way to do that is to invest in rapid transit in our cities, in frequent rail between our cities, and improving the options for coastal shipping and rail to move goods. That actually costs less than putting the next car or truck on the road.

The beauty of investing in green alternatives to the roading network is that they free up the roading network itself. Those investments help the people who use the roads. The roading network is there; of course it should be made safer, and that’s something I worked on quite a lot in the last term of Government. It’s not made safer through mega-projects that cost billions of dollars for 3 to 5 kilometres; it’s made safer through things like median barriers, through slight widening, through safer passing lanes on thousands of kilometres of roading network that we have across the country, and through safer speeds, where that’s appropriate.

So the Green Party will still be here talking about a sensible transport investment. We invite our colleagues to the right, in the ACT Party and the National Party, to come on board, because this should not be a political football. New Zealand has so much to gain from a rational, sensible investment in transport from this day forward.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you. The ACT Party does support this bill, because it provides the opportunity to introduce better instruments at the behest of the Minister, which will specify how to comply with rules or regulations. But the underlying issue is that some of the rules and regulations are still unfit for purpose. Now, we’ve heard from other members of the House about why they think this is such a good idea to give the Minister of Transport more powers. But ACT does have significant reservations, and these reservations have also been raised by submitters.

Some of the submitters were concerned that the ability for the Minister to grant the power to organisations like the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) to create their own regulatory instruments would lead to excessive prescription of how organisations that make things and build things such as buses and coaches, the thousands of trucks and trailers that are constructed and modified every year—that the specifications for these would end up being written by a Government department in Wellington, rather than trusting those businesses which know exactly what type of logging truck or freight truck they want and are prepared to pay an engineer and a fabricator to build them exactly what they want and then to have it certified as safe. And some of those concerns were that giving these additional powers to the Minister, and thereby to allow him through his agencies, to make these rules was overly prescriptive.

We know that some of the things in this bill are important. For example, in a maritime sense, it might be entirely worthy to require certain types of vessels to carry lifejackets and for people to wear them, and that’s entirely worthy. But what we see here is a risk, and that risk is that agencies like Te Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency have, in the past, demonstrated an inability to keep the roads safe and actually to fulfil the regulatory responsibilities that they already have.

We know that NZTA has failed in its duties to check on trucks and other things that they were required to check on and certify, and that over many years these issues went unidentified and unresolved. And when they finally were brought to the attention of the NZTA, following serious injuries and fatalities when some poorly constructed trailers and other components failed, NZTA, rather than looking at its own obligations as a regulator and whether they had fulfilled those obligations, appear to have gone on a witch hunt after certain people in the industry for failing to fulfil their obligations. It is very, very important—and ACT would want to make the point—that people who are making things, manufacturing things, must do so safely, but those Government organisations responsible for auditing and checking, they have to do their job as well. That’s why we vote them budgets and that’s what the people of New Zealand expect them to do.

We have heard concerns from different stakeholders, not just through the select committee process but also through the media organisations, who were so afraid of the repercussions of speaking out against NZTA and some of the behaviours that they’d witnessed and been subjected to that they resorted to using a burner phone to communicate with Radio New Zealand journalists to raise their concerns about the performance of NZTA and the likely implications of some of these reforms. That must be almost unheard of, in terms of New Zealand Government agencies creating such a culture of fear amongst those who they are intending and have a responsibility to regulate.

Some of the submitters who were prepared to put their views on record pointed out something that seems very obvious to many of us, that where you have designers designing components and manufacturers making them—say, for trucks and trailers, and coaches and buses which might be used as school buses or in public transport—it is very, very important that the designers are competent and that they follow best practice. And in order to demonstrate that they are competent, those designers must have sufficient professional development and training and certification of their own. Some of the submitters pointed out that in NZTA’s current approach and in their practice, they have completely ignored the requirements for a professional practice aspect around certification of trucks and trailers and buses and other mechanical equipment, and instead chosen to, essentially, give a certain group of certifiers powers over others, and these certifiers are often people who are getting towards the end of their career. They may have learnt on the job. They may know what good welding and good technique looks like in the factory, but they haven’t had the benefit of professional engineering oversight of their careers, and they haven’t had the benefit of professional development.

So what the submitters proposed and what we haven’t heard yet from the Minister is whether a professional practice, essentially like a mechanical engineering or a civil engineering discipline, could be created around the certification process. Because if there are going to be thousands of trucks and buses and trailers and log trucks and bulk trucks on our roads, and those being manufactured new and being adapted and modified every year, then we would want to know that the people certifying them aren’t just people who’ve come from the factory floor or from the shop but they are actually people who understand engineering design processes, safety in design—all of those things that we’ve learnt how important they are through the Christchurch earthquakes, Pike River, and other disasters which have shone a very bright light on the role of professional engineers’ training and continuing professional development, as well as the regulatory auditing function.

So what ACT would propose is that while we do support this bill, the Minister and the agencies that Minister is responsible for focus their efforts not just on compliance, not just on auditing, not just on enforcement, but on identifying those skills gaps and those opportunities to increase the level of knowledge in the industry and actually to set out a pathway for those people who are working on the shop floor, who are working in the factories, making these trucks and buses and trailers and so forth—that they can actually have a pathway to a vocation. Because currently there is no vocational qualification for somebody who’s an expert welder to go on to become an expert certifier. It’s simply something that they achieve when NZTA, for example, issues them a letter.

So what ACT would advocate for is better education and, for the agencies involved in certification, to identify where those gaps are in education and training, and to propose better vocational education qualifications if that’s necessary, and also a process to review the practice of these designers and fabricators so that they can receive the benefit of continuing professional development as they go about their vitally important work. And it is vitally important work, because not only do we need this equipment to be safe, but we also need more trucks on the road to cart more quarry products and aggregates from those quarries to cement plants, and then the concrete to the house building sites and to the roads and even to the railways that our colleagues in the Green Party and previous and current Labour Ministers are so fond of—those railways, which will consume hundreds of thousands, if not millions of tonnes of concrete and other products; this year, expected to run to 4 million cubic metres or 10 million tonnes of concrete coming from batching plants in trucks on the roads. And you can’t make concrete without getting the rock from the quarry to the batching plant and the cement from the cement kiln to the batching plant.

So it’s vitally important not just for safety, but for our economy to get this right. So the ACT party does support this bill, but with reservations and with a laser focus on improving it for safety, but also for the purposes of delivering the economic benefits that trucks and buses on the road and, dare I say, even trains on the tracks can offer to New Zealand. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill, and I’ll take a very short call. I thought I’d contribute some additional material rather than repeat it. I think the first thing to comment on is, really, the significance of something like transport instruments in freeing up the Minister to be able to do what is very necessarily done at this point. I think that the select committee has done some very good amending in terms of making that a much more careful process, so there are checks and balances in that system. There will be specified people that the authority is delegated to, and the matter will be one that can be subject to the scrutiny of the Regulations Review Committee. That is true too of exemptions. Those are important changes, but one of the ones I’m most proud of that’s changed is that there is now going to be long-term funding for the seafarers board. That lets our sailors, who have been out there in COVID, absolutely disconnected, allowed to have access to the internet in a long-term way, and that’s a very good thing, and I’m very proud of it. It was an election promise. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call Chris Penk.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you, Madam Speaker. These are a few of my favourite things, as someone once remarked. We’ve heard of seafarers’ welfare and, even more importantly, the Regulations Review Committee so far in this debate, so it’s a good day for New Zealand. The Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill is good, as far as it goes. There have been some debates that I might venture—much broader in nature, obviously, than the bill. And that’s been very interesting to hear—our colleagues of the ACT and Green Party exchanging views on the validity of, among other things, highways.

The bill itself, though, is pretty mode-neutral. If I were feeling lazy at this time of the sitting week, I would spend my whole time contributing merely by reading out all the different number of Acts that are amended. It is an omnibus bill. I will spare everyone that pleasure, but I will note that transport, civil aviation, port, and even submarine modes of transport are covered. But I’m being a bit cheeky and getting overexcited, probably by the mention of the Regulations Review Committee, because—submarine cables, in fact, and pipelines, so a form of transport, but only very technically, in the underwater environment.

So we’ve got in this legislation an attempt to add efficiency and effectiveness to the transport regulatory system, arguing, really, that we’ve got a way of ensuring that the regime is able to achieve what it does and in a more timely, perhaps less costly, manner. Certainly that’s the aim, and, of course, it’s a worthy aim. I’ll just, in my remaining time, touch on a couple of aspects that I thought were interesting about the way that it goes about doing that. I wasn’t a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that considered the bill, so I have due circumspection in saying that I didn’t hear all the submissions or indeed advice regarding the particular provision that I’m about to speak to.

But it’s about the right of appeal that’s not to apply to class exemptions. So what we’ve got in the bill is a situation where if an exemption is applied to a class, we are saying in this legislation that there won’t be a right of appeal to the District Court for anyone who’s dissatisfied with that decision to exempt a whole class. The bill rightly notes that doing so would need to be understanding that there’s a high cost—is the phrase that it used—to appealing to the District Court, and then it notes that there are a couple of other avenues that someone could pursue if they were dissatisfied with a class exemption having been granted. One is judicial review. Well, of course, that’s an application to the High Court, and that, of course, in itself is very expensive.

They do, however, note that the Regulations Review Committee would be available to scrutinise class instruments.

Rachel Brooking: Excellent.

CHRIS PENK: Exactly. I have a couple of colleagues from that worthy committee with us in the House. I note that we’re going to have more work coming our way, so I’m ambivalent about that, but nevertheless, it is at least an avenue that is available and will remain available, of course, for anyone who believes that the class exemption that’s going to be allowed for under this, albeit that they can’t make an appeal to the District Court, they do at least have that opportunity. The commencement date, I note with interest, actually, was originally going to be 1 July 2020. It’s been kicked down the road a little bit, and that’s obviously appropriate.

So I’ll just finish, I think—

Dr Duncan Webb: Go on. You can do it.

CHRIS PENK: Well, actually, I’ve been encouraged by the other side to continue going. I’m seeing if the whips want me to continue to do so, so I’ll keep an eye on that. I will just note, by way of punishment, that the exemptions to powers made under the regulations and rules—the director of the relevant transport agency may but is not required to include expiry dates. That was a bit surprising to me. Speaking of expiry dates, I’ve got 24 more seconds. So maximum fines can be increased—well, that’s probably reasonably obvious at face value. I thought the other interesting aspect was that the Chatham Islands Council can be a regional council under Part 3A of the Maritime Transport Act. So for lovers of that fine piece of real estate in New Zealand, that’s very interesting indeed.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai. I stand to take this opportunity to speak, where the Māori Party had chosen not to take a call on this bill. I share the member opposite’s enthusiasm for regulatory progress in this space. The objective of this bill is to maintain the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulation system created by our legislative system in transport, and I am enthusiastic about that because of the renewed focus on safety that this affords. I think that there has been a focus by the previous Government, the National Government, and it was single-minded, as members have noted already in this debate, about building more roads and that being the focus of transport. But there is a very real and very important need for our transport bodies to have a focus on safety and regulation in this space, and I believe this bill gives the Minister the kind of flexibility that he needs to encourage active regulation, which means that New Zealanders will be better served by their regulatory bodies. Kia ora.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. First, can I just mihi to the member Julie Anne Genter—ka pai tō kōrero—and also Arena Williams. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this, the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. I’m sure we can all agree, in entirety and across this House, that the safety of all New Zealanders on our roads is important. And that is why the amendments of this bill are so important, because the safety of all New Zealanders is at the heart of this bill. The modernisation and the amendments in this bill ensure we continue to keep safety as a top transport priority, by fixing the gaps, the errors, and the inconsistencies so that it is more efficient and effective, as the member Arena Williams talked about. This bill fixes the regulatory system, it ensures the safety of all New Zealanders on our roads, and therefore I commend this bill to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to begin by referring back to Julie Anne Genter, the Green Party’s spokesperson’s speech, who mentioned a lot about getting people out of cars and rethinking the way we do our transport system. I thought it was quite ironic, really, because very shortly we’re all about to head off to the airport—those of us who don’t live in Wellington—and we’ll get a reminder of how well Green Party transport policy works when we’re stuck in traffic on the way out to the airport. I think Let’s Get Wellington Moving is a great thing that should be done; it’s a great National Party policy. Unfortunately, it’s only necessary because the Green Party mucked the whole thing up and have caused this chaos in Wellington. And it’s a shame in a capital city in New Zealand you can’t get around—

Hon Member: Greg O’Connor agrees. He’s nodding.

STUART SMITH: Even Greg agrees. He knows very well that’s not a good thing, don’t you?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member won’t bring the Speaker into the debate.

STUART SMITH: Certainly, Madam Speaker. There is quite a lot of talk about safety, and I think absolutely there should be a focus on safety and I note that Waka Kotahi have spent quite a bit of time—particularly, I note, in my electorate, are now proposing to put a “cheese wire” barrier up a two-lane road, a divided highway in an area where there’ll be grape harvesters certainly going up that road at about 30 kilometres an hour. Nothing will be able to get past them. The unsafe design that they are proposing in the name of safety is unbelievable, actually. It would be quite funny if it wasn’t so serious, and I think they’ve really got to go back and think about what they’re doing and actually put the user at the front of their particular design work rather than going off on some random, I think ideological-driven, thought—and no pun intended, by the way—in their designs. Because it’s actually making things much worse and causing frustration that leads to accidents. And I note that lowering the speed limit in the Hundalees on State Highway 1 down to 60 kilometres an hour, the local fire chief was asked to comment on that, and they said, “Wouldn’t that lower accidents?”, and he said, “Well, no, it’ll cause more because all of the accidents are on 45-kilometre-an-hour corners.” So they’ve got to think about the roads that they design in the first place. Off camber corners, non-geometric corners that get tighter as people drive around them, they cause roll overs. That’s what the issues are. We’ve got to spend the money on those things first. And this is on State highways that we get all our freight going down. We’ve got other modes of transport, of course, with rail and so on, but unfortunately that’s not the option for most of our freight.

I think the tow bar debacle and certification that Simon Court from the ACT Party mentioned before, that was a big issue just a while ago when all of the tow bars on trailers that were, in the Ministry of Transport’s view, not adequately certified. And that caused a lot of chaos. Now, we have to really get that right, and that’s going right back to the beginning and making sure the people that are doing the welding, doing the designing, are adequately trained and adequately certified. But a lot of these tow bars had been in service for quite some time. So if they were dangerous, they weren’t just dangerous on the day they decided to go and review all of this and pull all those trucks and trailers off the road, they’d been unsafe for years, in some cases. So we owe it, in the name of safety, to get these things right, right from the beginning instead of leaving it way until after the fact when it could’ve actually caused quite serious issues. Same thing with buses and bus designs, as the member mentioned earlier.

So we do support this bill. It’s good to have the right things in place to deal with these issues, but the agency that actually administers this has to—[Interruption] I’m getting signals—actually get on and do the job with the legislative framework that they have. I think it’s actually relatively simple stuff; unfortunately, it often gets lost in the translation. They need to do their job properly, and so I commend the bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Madam Speaker, it’s good to see you in the House—

Hon Members: What a greaser!

SHANAN HALBERT: —and rise to speak this afternoon, amongst lots of noise, on the Regulatory Systems (Transport) Amendment Bill. We support this bill because safety is our top transport priority and, as a proud Aucklander, we’re very passionate about the investment of this Government and the commitment to transport. This bill will help modernise our regulations to continue to keep people safe. The bill will maintain the effectiveness and efficiency of the regulatory system established by transport legislation, and reduce the chance of regulatory failure. It will also help our police do their job by increasing the time period a vehicle can be impounded to collect evidence after a serious accident or incident. This will help give police inspectors the time to properly examine and process the evidence. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 9 March.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It gives me great pleasure to stand and speak on this bill. One of the important parts of this bill is the remedial matters bill, and one of the remedial matters which will be of most interest to New Zealanders concerns the forgotten and missing money. So many institutions in New Zealand have money sitting in their accounts with no owner. They’ve been unable to trace the owners. Sometimes that money can sit around for 25 years before they’re able to do anything about it. What this will allow is to expedite the passage of that money through to the IRD. The IRD will be able to use their systems to track down the owners; the banks get it off their books, where it is costly to administer; the owners of the money in many cases will get money that they probably had forgotten about, or perhaps the family had forgotten about. It is a win-win situation, and it’s one of many measures in this bill which makes much sense and it will make many people much happier than they were before the passing of the bill. I commend it to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Madam Speaker, tēnā koe. I rise to speak on the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill. In an earlier contribution in this debate, my colleague Andrew Bayly commended the Minister for his passion on this subject and I take a slightly different view. I’m very wary of passion in a revenue Minister because I don’t want any revenue Ministers passionately taking more money from New Zealanders than they absolutely need to do. This bill is the first tax bill that I have had the pleasure of considering as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and while it has some positive things in it, it also has many things which speak to a Government who likes to, wherever it can, take more tax and I want to take you through some of the measures in this bill that the National Party takes issue with.

The first issue that we see is that in setting the rates in this bill and confirming the rates of taxation, we can see immediately the effects of bracket creep continuing for another year. Other speakers in the debate have outlined how this occurs but, of course, this is the fact that there is inflation occurring each year. Wages do increase and what we see is that the tax levels still cut in at the same level of income. And the impact of that is that more and more people find themselves in higher tax brackets every year and so the overall amount of taxation being taken from them increases. It has been National’s policy position that we think this kind of tax grab by stealth should not be allowed to continue and that these levels should be indexed to inflation. This bill is a missed opportunity in that it doesn’t do that and it is grabbing a lot more tax as a consequence.

The second area that this bill deals with is deductibility of feasibility expenditure. And while we acknowledge it’s a positive step forward to be allowing for more of this, this is a very narrow, narrow version of what people were expecting to see with this tax treatment, and it’s particularly relevant in a time when we have businesses who are trying to pivot because of COVID, because of the global pandemic, and many of them are investing in other entities or other ventures. For example, you’ve got restaurants who have decided that really they’re going to focus on a takeaway arm or you’ve got businesses that have really pivoted to do a different range of online things. And the way that this bill constructs deductibility for feasibility expenditure, those sorts of activities won’t be able to get the tax treatment that would allow more businesses and investors to have confidence about innovating and pivoting in these COVID times.

The other sneaky tax grab in here is the charging of GST on outbound and overseas mobile roaming calls. This is something that is not required in terms of other jurisdictions doing it. It’s something that has not been the practice in New Zealand to date. It seems to us that it’s a revenue grab and that it will create unnecessary compliance for many people. So watch out, Kiwis, you’ll be paying more tax when and if—if and when—you’re travelling again. And I suspect that if we were in a time with open borders, which we all hope to be in again, there would be much more attention on this issue because this does affect people who are making phone calls overseas.

Finally, the issue of purchase price allocation. I do want to commend my fellow members of the committee on this aspect of the bill, because this is something National members had a lot of concerns about—we continue to have concerns about. But that is reflected in the decision of the committee to have an immediate review of this section. The committee has recommended to put these new obligations under review within six to 12 months. And that’s because of the very real risk that they will increase the compliance burden on taxpayers, that they will be unworkable, they could even result in some small-business owners and unsophisticated investors being at risk of breaking tax laws without any knowledge of how these laws are meant to work. So for people without lawyers, this is going to be a very difficult piece of law and we are very pleased that it will be reviewed in six to 12 months.

Overall, National opposes this bill. It’s got lots of tax grabs by stealth and is yet another impost of obligations on New Zealanders that we think may be very difficult indeed.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 75

New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 73, Noes 45.

Bills

Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Local Government: I present a legislative statement on the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill. I move, That the Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Māori land is taonga tuku iho and it is fundamental to the cultural and economic wellbeing of Māori. The approach to the rating of Māori land has resulted in barriers for landowners to achieve their cultural and economic aspirations. There are also significant inequities in the current ratings system as it applies to Māori land. As the Minister, the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, said when she introduced the bill to the House, this bill implements measures to remove rates as an impediment to the use and development of Māori land by its owners.

The legislative changes to the rating of whenua Māori is part of a wider programme to support Māori land owners, trustees, and whānau to realise their aspirations for Māori. It works in conjunction with other Government initiatives, such as Te Ture Whenua Maori (Succession, Dispute Resolution, and Related Matters) Amendment Act, which we passed in the previous Parliament and that will simplify some of the legal process requirements that Māori land owners face—also, the investment of $56.1 million in Budget 2019, enabling the establishment of regional, on-the-ground advisory services in Te Tai Tokerau, Waiariki, and Te Tai Rāwhiti; also, the creation of a whenua knowledge hub and the Tupu New Zealand website that the Minister launched in February last year; and also new and enhanced services for the Māori Land Court and the modernisation of the Māori Land Court information systems that the Minister worked with the former Minister of Justice on as well; and also the provision of feasibility and investment funds for Māori land owners, through the Whenua Māori Fund; and, finally, $100 million set aside from the Provincial Growth Fund for the development of whenua Māori.

I’d like to thank the Māori Affairs Committee for its work on this bill. The committee has made a number of helpful suggestions that will improve the operation of the bill once passed by this House. I also wanted to thank the local authorities for their positive response to this bill. It’s notable that local authorities’ submissions support the bill and recognise the need to modernise legislation in this matter. Most importantly, I want to acknowledge all the submissions on the bill, from whānau, hapū, and iwi throughout New Zealand.

Rates are a difficult issue for Māori, since the payment of rates has been a factor in the alienation of their whenua. However, submissions from Māori acknowledged this bill is a step in the right direction. This bill will eliminate the problem of rates arrears accumulating on land that the owners derive no economic benefit from. The bill will also make non-rateable Māori land that is subject to Ngā Whenua Rāhui kawenata—this is Māori land that is, effectively, part of the national conservation estate, protecting our biodiversity. By reducing the burden of rates arrears, the bill will enable owners of Māori land to discuss development opportunities with their council without the fear that they’ll first be asked to pay rates arrears. The bill will enable homeowners to choose to be rated individually, simplifying rates payment and collection. This will also enable low-income homeowners to access rates rebates where there are multiple homes on one plot and remove institutional discrimination against those homeowners. The bill will stop any further alienation of Māori land that was arbitrarily reclassified as general land in and around 1967, without either the consent or knowledge of the owners. The bill will provide owners of Māori land with a statutory right to seek rates remissions to support development on their land. All of these things bring the ratings situation for Māori land closer to our expectations of what a healthy relationship between the Crown, local authorities, and Māori should be.

It’s important to acknowledge that the objectives of this bill are more important now as we consider the economic impacts of COVID-19 on Māori employment and economic opportunities. The aim of this bill is to support the use and development of Māori land according to the wishes of its owners. Enabling owners of Māori land to use and develop their land will support the economic recovery from COVID-19 and will help employment in the regions, where Māori land is concentrated, such as Te Tai Tokerau, Tai Rāwhiti, Waiariki, and elsewhere in New Zealand. Enabling more homes on Māori land will help address our housing challenges and enable Māori to contribute solutions to these problems.

Finally, I just want to note for the House that this is the third bill this Government has brought before the House in recent times that address rating powers—the other two being the Urban Development Act 2020 and the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act 2020. I’ve tabled a Supplementary Order Paper to be considered at the committee stage of the bill’s consideration. These proposed amendments are to ensure consistency across all three Acts in their application to Māori land. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): It’s my real pleasure to stand and take a call and to speak to this bill, and I do want to say from the beginning of the call that National will continue to oppose this bill. I do want to actually outline the reasons why we’re opposing, because when you actually look at this bill, there looks initially to be some merit in it, but upon closer examination, when you start to unpack the component parts of it, there really isn’t that much in it at all.

The reality is that we fundamentally need a much better and a much more comprehensive piece of legislation to help us realise the goal of greater utilisation and productivity of Māori freehold land. We fundamentally believe that’s a great goal. We buy that logic incredibly well here in the National Party. But I want to talk about those two stated goals that the Minister alerted us to before, which is really that this bill is supposed to be about the facilitation and the development and to encourage greater utilisation and, ultimately, occupation of Māori land, and it’s also modernising some rating legislation in how it affects Māori land. If I can just take both those goals, I’ll actually start to unpack them a little.

As I said, the goal of improving the utilisation of Māori land and improving its productivity is something that the National Party totally supports. We really buy into that. But on this side of the House, we know not just in the Māori economy, but in the general New Zealand economy, that this country for the last 30 years has been suffering from a productivity disease. We are deeply interested in that, and we care deeply about that, because we know that improving productivity is the single biggest thing that we can do to raise our collective standard of living. When you look at the facts across New Zealand—outside the Māori economy, just for a moment—we are one-third lower than the OECD average in terms of labour productivity and that’s been steadily declining, and that’s a big problem. So we have to work smarter. We have to work much harder and realise those productivity gains to get our standard of living up to the standard of services that we want to be able to support going forward.

Getting back to Māori land as a component of our broader economy. In that broader economy, we know there’s 1.4 million, or 5 percent of this land that’s tied up in Māori freehold land. We know it’s often isolated, we know it’s often lower quality, we know it’s underutilised, but we do believe there is much more potential for them to realise from the ownership of this land. We do agree with the broad intention of the bill, as I’ve said earlier, about utilising better ways of using that land, because if we could turn it into crops, if we could turn it into honey or forestry or housing, that will in turn strengthen whānau and actually strengthen the productivity and the value of those communities.

Disappointingly in this bill, there has been no examination of the impact that this bill will have on general land owners as well. I think that’s a shame, because if we’re all signed up to that collective challenge of improving New Zealand’s productivity and the ability for us to generate enough cash to fund the lifestyles that we all want to live in, that’s a big problem. So we think we should all want to help improve the productivity of general land, not just Māori land, as well. That desire of wanting to improve it for all of New Zealand is important.

It’s not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land. It’s not just Māori land owners who own land collectively or may benefit from rates remissions, as the Minister just outlined. For example, if you think about it, there are many landowners—general land owners—across New Zealand who have, under the guidance of the Government’s stalled National Policy Statement for Indigenous Biodiversity, actually planted out huge tracts of land in indigenous biodiversity, which is then rendered unused and unproductive under the significant natural areas. Equally, under our freshwater rules that have been recently implemented, there are massive swathes of farmland that have been put aside around riverways that actually become unproductive for farmers as well.

If you think about it, there are plenty of property owners—general property owners—across the country who have planted out trees as part of an environmental initiative. They don’t get to enjoy the reductions in rates that we’re talking about and proposing here. There are plenty of general land owners who have large families who would like multiple dwellings on their property being treated as one single dwelling too, as we’re seeing in line with this bill here. So, as I said earlier, it’s not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land, who own land collectively, or who may benefit from rates remission. We just simply ask: why not allow all New Zealand land owners to benefit from the same flexibility? Why only apply it to Māori freehold land?

Now, if I can move to the second goal, which is really the discussion around ratings remission, and, really, in this bill, that is the central thesis: that if we can remit rates and write off rates, we’ll be able to unlock the productivity or realise productivity gains with this land. There are some really positive things in it. There are some good minor changes—things like getting clarity on the origins of Māori land; making sure there is no inadvertent sale of Māori land, which was classified from Māori land to general land under the 1967 legislation; enabling councils to do a rates remission at the beginning of a development so that there’s certainty around financial planning and consenting; and Māori land that’s tied up in the emissions trading scheme being exempted from rates as a result.

So those are some of the minor sort of tidy-up stuff, which is sensible, and it seems quite worthy and common-sense sort of stuff. The two major bits are fundamentally the ability to be able to take multiple land blocks and be able to treat it as one large block, or, likewise, to take one large block and to be able to separate it out into separate blocks. The reason for that is that it ends up lowering the rates, it ends up lowering the uniform charges, and it ultimately ends up being able to help people access rates rebates. That’s a good thing, because rates rebates have actually been not fully accessed across New Zealand.

The second thing that this bill does under the ratings remission bit is it really gives blanket authority and powers to the local council CEO to be able to write off those rates as they see to. I guess that’s the issue that I did want to talk a little bit about, because the issue here is: “What problem are we actually trying to solve?”, because under the existing legislation today, councils across New Zealand can, in fact, write off rates as that stands. We’ve only got to look at our former parliamentary colleague, the former Mayor of Hastings, Lawrence Yule, who actually spoke about this piece of legislation in the first reading. I wanted to quote what he said. He said, “I’ve been a mayor where I’ve remitted those rates, so I know it can be done. I’ve been a mayor when we have put the uniform charges together on several properties, so the rates per property have been reduced. It can be done.”

That same point I think was really made well in one of the submissions from the Auckland Council, Maungakiekie-Tāmaki Local Board. In their submission, they said, “Nearly all the changes proposed are already delivered by Auckland Council through its rating policy and Māori land rates remission and postponement policy.” So, as I said, there’s a real issue there. Under existing legislation, you can deliver rates remission today. There’s nothing stopping councils, and councils are doing it. There’s creative solutions being developed in the Far North in terms of how councils are dealing with arrears of rates and incentivising the right behaviour going forward for rates payment.

As an aside, I’d just say that there’s been no financial impact, that I’ve been able to read, around this bill to say what the actual costs of writing off these rates will be for local government or central government. I think it’s important to just log that when you start writing off costs and revenue, you narrow the rating base, and ultimately you’re shifting the cost burden to other ratepayers to pay. I just don’t think we’ve, fundamentally, had that conversation to address it.

So I guess the bottom line, fundamentally, is that the ability to write off rates is already available currently, in the current law. I’m actually struggling to understand what is so fundamentally revolutionary about this bill and what it is expecting to fix. I think when you strip it down and you actually look at it really closely, it’s very narrow. It’s doing very little and not comprehensively solving the problem or realising the opportunity. The thesis of the bill is flimsy. It’s basically just saying that Māori land productivity can be improved solely through a rates write-off, which actually can be done today under current legislation. So the problem isn’t actually being solved, and I think it’s a very junk food - like sort of bill, when actually what we really want is a substantive, proper, high-quality meal, and that’s what we kind of need.

I just want to say, you know, don’t worry about the incremental tinkering. We don’t despair, because here in National, we have the answer, and the answer, for us, is a fundamental repeal and replace of Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. I want to commend to the other side of the House this great member’s bill from Chris Finlayson. Chris Finlayson was the colossus of Treaty settlements, who actually believed in helping Māori realise their potential and got a lot of things done. He drafted a great member’s bill here, and my colleague Gerry Brownlee is taking it forward from here. But that’s the bill that we really need here. That’s the bill that fundamentally gets into the other components around this issue.

If you want to solve the issue and you want to activate and unlock and accelerate Māori productivity on this land, you need to look at things like owner and descent relationships. There’s none of this conversation in that bill. There’s ownership interests of Māori. What about collective ownership? What about whānau trusts? The dispositions of Māori freehold land—none of that has been discussed in this bill that we’re talking about tonight. The amalgamation and partition of land; the sale, gift, exchange, and mortgages; governance arrangements; court jurisdictions; governance bodies; administration of assets—all these things. You need a comprehensive solution if you really want to deliver it. If we keep doing it in a lightweight way, we’re not solving the problem.

So I just want to say to the House that National is actually going to oppose this bill. We want to encourage the Government to join with us and be bolder and braver and fundamentally unlock and accelerate productivity.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, e te Māngai. Thank you for taking my call. The thesis of this bill is not, in fact, flimsy, as evidenced by the member opposite’s comments about why the Government should bring it into action and why, in fact, utilisation of Māori land is a good idea and is served by this bill. He asked, “How could we turn Māori land into crops, honey, and housing?” The answer is by enacting the provisions of this bill, which unlocks the potential of Māori land by shifting the dial in a sensible way to incentivise the governors of Māori land to create governance structures over Māori land so that their owners can benefit from it.

This is the bill which Māori land owners asked for, not the bill which is not before the House, which the member opposite has referred to. He also asked, “What problem are we trying to solve here? Some councils do remit the land rates arrears on Māori land.” However, that would ignore the countless litigation brought by Māori land owners to get to this point where councils remit those arrears—cases like the Mangatu Inc., which has land holdings the size of Auckland City, which has brought litigation over a period of 10 years to negotiate fair ratings systems with its council, which only applied to Māori land owners and was unfair.

This bill seeks to address that structural unfairness for Māori, and I commend it to the House.

Debate interrupted.

Voting

Correction—Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I take the next member, during the vote on the second reading of the Taxation (Annual Rates for 2020-21, Feasibility Expenditure, and Remedial Matters) Bill, the vote for the Ayes was incorrectly recorded as 73 votes. The correct vote was 75 votes. The record will be corrected.

Bills

Local Government (Rating of Whenua Māori) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): You know there are some bills that come before this House where 10 minutes just isn’t enough time to talk about all of the issues and the things that need to be put on the table in relation to the law, and here is one of those bills, where I regret that I don’t have 20 minutes to really work through all of the things that are wrong with this bill. I will be moving—so that the Labour Party can think about this before—at the end of the speech for an extension of time of another 10 minutes, and so that is for them to decide.

There’s two basic points in relation to the specifics of this bill that I want to make. But there is also a broader point overall as it pertains to this bill that I want make.

The first point I want to make is in relation to—as Christopher Luxon has described it—the core. If there is any substance in this bill, and it’s not a huge amount and we’ll come to that, but to the extent that there is substance in this bill, the core of it around the non-rateable Māori land and the rates remissions in relation to Māori land, my point there is what the Government has done is hugely problematic. It is hugely problematic. It’s a bit like so much law we see in this Parliament from the Labour Party, where, as Chris Luxon, again, has pointed out, they just haven’t thought it through. They’ve got the visage, the frontage, but there is nothing behind it. The thought, the grunt, the intellectual rigour is not there.

I want to say two things. At one level—you know, they can’t both be right, but I’d suggest actually they quite possibly are here. On the one hand, what we’ve got is a law in relation to non-rateable Māori land and rates remissions that isn’t needed. It’s quite simply not needed. I think that’s the Lawrence Yule point that Chris—you can do it today. The Auckland Council is doing these things. We could argue about whether or not they should, and I’ll come to that, but it is a slogan here in a law that already any council in New Zealand today, anywhere, can do. So you just wonder why they would put this law in place when it’s window dressing. As Chris Luxon was saying to me earlier today about the entire Government, it’s the Disney frontage, and you walk through it and there’s nothing behind it. Minnie Mouse isn’t even there. I say Minnie Mouse is gone. She’s on a cigarette break. But there is a second—

Paul Eagle: Plenty of other mickey mouses on the other side.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well, don’t talk about “mickey” or “mouse”, OK? But there is a second point that’s problematic, and it’s quite simply this. If there was any reality to this bill, if there is actually something there—which I suspect is what the Labour Party says there has to be. I mean, I suspect they’re not going to get up and say—well, they haven’t actually said anything, really. But they’re not going to get up and say, “Well, this bill’s got nothing to it.” That would be shameful. They’re going to say, “No, no, there’s a real reason to it.”

To the extent there is, I say—and before they get the dog-whistling comments, I’m not dog-whistling. That’s not my game here. There is the appearance of different treatment for Māori land owners than for the rest of the landowners where the situation otherwise might be basically identical, right. It might be the same situation where they’ve got land locked up in multiple owners, etc., etc. The various issues that we have in Māori land might happen in relation to other Pākehā farmers and the like. So why is it that we would just do it for one side and not the other?

Maybe that’s something just—you know, call me radical. Call me Michael Bassett. Maybe that’s something that we kind of should be thinking about. I suspect the other side just isn’t. It’s not just Māori land owners who have unproductive land, who own land collectively, or who may benefit through a series of specific facts from rates remission.

I’d make this point as well—or I’ll stay with just this first point—and that is this: the Government is piling on other costs on landowners at the moment, whether it’s through the environmental stuff of David Parker or whether it’s through—

Christopher Luxon: National policy statements.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —policy statements up the wazoo. All of that stuff is adding cost on. Māori land owners are getting a break; other New Zealanders are not.

So this bill does things that aren’t really necessary. To the extent it does something real, I’d say it’s highly problematic when you get into the detail of it.

But, secondly—it’s my second point—it doesn’t do the hard things, the real reform that Māori actually need. It’s a poor excuse, I say to Meka Whaitiri, to the people in her electorate who need real change, actually—who need real reform in this area. And do you know what the tragedy really is? The reform is there; they just need to pick it up and pass it. It’s not difficult. It got a good way through in a couple of parliaments ago. I can tell you. I can tell you what happened there. I was the Leader of the House in not the last Parliament, but before that—

Hon Member: 51.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —in 51, 49; who’s counting?—and I could see that Te Ture Whenua Māori land reform law should be passed. It would be an intergenerational game-changer for Māori in New Zealand, and I’ll say something—I’m not sure it’s been put on the record before. I went to the Māori Party. In the end—it’s not what they say; it’s what I say—from the bullying of the Labour Party, when I offered them urgency to pass that law that would have made a substantive difference, they got scared out of it by the Labour Party Māori members of Parliament. In the end, they weren’t quite sure that they wanted to do it because they were getting all this gibe from the other side—at that stage, this side of the House—and so it didn’t pass, even though it should have.

What that bill would have done has been summed up very nicely by Chris Luxon. It would have allowed the utilisation of Māori land for wealth creation, for horticulture, for honey, for houses—for all the things that New Zealand does so well. It would have allowed, in Tauranga, in the King Country, in Northland—the areas where there’s multiple landowners, and we don’t even know where some of them are if you’re on some of these Māori trusts—the ability to free that up so that sensible governance and decisions could be made in relation to that land to create wealth for Māori in New Zealand.

That’s a real elephant, or moa, in the room, and I want to say let’s be straight talking about this. We have a situation in New Zealand today where the briefings to incoming Ministers for every department in the Government have “Treaty this”, “Treaty that” on every page—they, literally, do.

Ingrid Leary: I wonder why.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: But it’s window dressing—well, it’s window dressing, I say to the member over there. It’s window dressing if you’re not going to do the real things that make a difference. The poverty is getting worse. Inequality has got worse in the last year, probably, than it has in a couple of decades, and I accept COVID’s had a role. The rich have got richer; the poor have got poorer, relatively speaking, and that includes Māori. The statistics are getting worse, and here’s an area—probably one of the biggest single things we could do in relation to Māori and Māori land—and it’s not being done. It’s not being done.

We had Te Arawhiti in, in the Māori Affairs Committee, and they talked a nice game. Ultimately, all I could see was a department that is increasing its numbers by hundreds in terms of staff that is receiving, on average, well over a hundred grand a person a year for process, for Treaty talk, when one of the real things that could be done, that would go a long way, actually, over generations to do something about the poor Māori statistics we see, is here in this area. But not some silly little law that kind of does what’s already being done, and that’s problematic in its way, but it’s very small. It’s a slogan looking for some reality behind it.

How about this Parliament actually pass te ture whenua Māori land law reform bill? That would be something that makes a real difference for Māori, and—in my remaining three seconds—actually, Gerry Brownlee has it in the ballot and could make that difference.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Mr Bridges.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave for an extension of time to have another 10 minutes in this debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That is denied.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to stand and talk on this particular bill, although I wasn’t there in the last term as the Māori Affairs Committee were passing it through or listening to the submissions, but this is the appropriate time to thank all of those people that submitted into this bill to make their voice heard.

But this goes back a wee way longer than the last Parliament. In fact, I remember stories about one of the previous members for the Waiariki, the Hon Te Ururoa Flavell, doing meetings across the country, talking with various stakeholders, especially up North—people like John Carter, who really championed this. He brought local communities together, he brought Government together, and he made everybody sit up and listen to the problem, which was that there was so much pain in having undeveloped Māori land because of ratings issues that he felt like he wanted to do something. He was propelled into action, and so he brought that to Government. He brought that to the various people at the time. We’re still talking about this now, but, actually, it’s in the right place. It is where it is.

We’re on the second reading of this bill. As I understand it from the previous Māori Affairs Committee, they examined the bill, they made some recommendations that the Minister has indicated she is happy to support. This one, particularly around the rating of multiple land blocks, classifying the origin of Māori land blocks, establishing when a local authority may be satisfied, preventing the sale of Māori land that was converted to general land under the Maori Affairs Amendment Act 1967, the powers of the chief executive to write off rates, separate rating areas on Māori land, and registration in the emissions trading scheme as not a use of land—this is an example of Government actually doing its duty and actually working with Māori land owners to help them to achieve their aspirations.

Although we’re still learning about history in schools, I’ve learnt that Māori have had a very traumatic time, when we look back in the history books of New Zealand, and have been rated off their Māori land for many years. Much of New Zealand has been lost through this particular mechanism of rates.

So this is a very contentious issue, and Māori—they sit up when we start talking about rating on Māori land. But I know that there will be a lot of people out there that will be looking forward to us passing this because it will mean that Māori land trusts and incorporations will actually be able to look to the future, be able to unshackle themselves from the ratings which have held our people down for far too long, and be able to achieve the aspirations that our ancestors so rightfully wanted way back at the start. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. Tēnā koe e te Whare. Te Ture Whenua Maori Act 1993 was meant to facilitate the occupation, development, and utilisation of Māori land for the benefits of its owners. I have some sympathy with my colleagues from National because it does—the ture whenua needs so much work—and I also must acknowledge the disappointment that must have been felt when we thought that the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s member’s bill was pulled out. I was actually excited for that opportunity that we could engage properly with that, and when they realised they’d mixed up the numbers, we didn’t have that opportunity. So I hope that—even though of course the Greens will be supporting this—we have the opportunity to do a lot more work on it.

So we understand this bill will wipe out land rates arrears for pieces of landlocked land and unusable land that whānau have not been able to engage with. We’ve also heard that it’ll help make rates fair and equitable for Māori land owners. We still appreciate that it enables Māori Rāhui kawenata lands to be non-rateable, like other general conservation lands.

We know from working with our own council back home—with council and many of our other landowners—that one of the biggest problems is dealing with council. Now, this is on top of all the other problems we often have in dealing with councils to do with sewage, to do with treatment of mortuary waste, to do with the cleaning up of our streams because of particular businesses and companies not following the conditions of the remits that they’ve been given to do work in our rohe.

As someone who has yet to succeed to my father’s multiple shares in various Māori land blocks, only because I have not done all the paperwork since he passed, I’m aware of the problems that a lot of our whānau have with the fragmentation and a lot of people having tiny amounts of shares, that when they try and put them together, then they’re facing a massive rates bill. We’re pleased that this will be addressed, because that fragmentation is something that really stops our people coming together and doing something together with that land.

So for these reasons, and I’m sure many more, I would like to commend this to the House. Kia ora.

SIMON COURT (ACT): The ACT Party believes in natural rights, private property rights, and that these should be protected from undue interference by Government, and that includes the rights of Māori land owners. We also support the rights of landowners to build on their own land. We do believe also that property should be treated equally under the law and that the rates that fund local council and infrastructure, roading and drainage and waste water, all those other things which our communities depend on to keep the three waters safe—that it’s fair that everybody pays the same amount. They must pay their fair share.

Now, this bill would establish a rates remission regime favouring one group over another, and that’s unacceptable to the ACT Party. But turning unproductive land, Māori-owned land, into productive land is important. However, it’s just not up to the Government to provide that favourable tax treatment. There are other mechanisms available. So, to be clear, ACT does support the development of Māori land by its owners and we support the development of housing on Māori land. We also would support any legislation that truly modernised the rating rules which affect Māori land, but this bill does not propose to do that.

We know that there are many, many people around New Zealand, as well as people who are party to the ownership of Māori land, who have problems paying their rates. There are mechanisms, there are systems so that they can apply for remission or timed payment. In many cases—in Auckland, for example, where I live—we can pay our rates by instalment in the same way as we pay our water bills and our power and our phone bills, and it’s through instalment measures and other flexibility like that that it becomes possible to pay what would otherwise be a very large bill once a year. So there are opportunities for people and landowners to actually get back on track and pay their rates.

Now, in Auckland, where I live, we had an experience of a homeowner, a landowner, who didn’t pay their rates for many years. Auckland Council spent a lot of time trying to negotiate with that landowner to pay their rates. We know there are mechanisms already available to local government to seek to recover rates, to negotiate in good faith, and to give as much flexibility as is needed in order for that ratepayer to fulfil their obligations to the community that they live in.

In Auckland, there was a wonderful woman, an activist by the name of Penny Bright, who, while I might not have agreed with all of her political views, certainly had the best interests of Aucklanders at heart. One of the reasons that she refused to pay her rates was because she did not believe that she was adequately represented, and I know there are groups in the community who believe that they are not well represented at local government level yet. It remains to be seen if that condition will be remedied by other bills that have recently passed through the House; I highly doubt it.

But Penny Bright was an activist. She felt, because of her objections to paying rates, which were philosophical and went back many, many years, that she wouldn’t pay and that she shouldn’t pay and that no one was going to make her pay. Then, unfortunately for Penny, she became very ill and she has since passed away, and I think that’s a great loss to Auckland because she was a wonderful, independent voice. But Auckland Council, despite the fact they were dealing with somebody who had a very large reputation and a big following in her community and amongst her supporters, and somebody who was ill, actually continued to negotiate with Penny in order that she fulfil her obligations and pay her rates. It was only because she reached the very final stages of her life that they decided to forgive and forgo that rates bill that she had accumulated over many, many years. Otherwise, there’s no doubt that Auckland Council would’ve taken the same action to recover those outstanding rates as they do with others who are in default.

So these mechanisms exist. There is a high bar, but they are not to be dismissed. They’re there for a reason, and we know that in local government—despite the fact that many people feel they’re not well represented—the people who I know who are elected members and who work in local government generally do have a great deal of compassion for the people who live in their communities and want to see them achieve their potential. I think that’s where ACT differs greatly from the Government on this. Rather than just wanting to sweep this issue under the carpet, an issue which has existed for decades and decades and has developed, really, because of some fundamental issues around property ownership, access to capital—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 16 March 2021.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5 p.m.