Wednesday, 14 April 2021

WEDNESDAY, 14 APRIL 2021

WEDNESDAY, 14 APRIL 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

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.

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

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

SPEAKER: A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of James Hilford, requesting that the House treat workplace bullying as a health and safety issue and create a formal jurisdiction where bullying complaints can be heard, as well as training professional and independent investigators.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

A paper has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Government Response to the Report of the Māori Affairs Committee Inquiry into Health Inequities for Māori.

SPEAKER: That paper is published under the authority of the House.

Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the petition of Hugh Ryan

report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the petition of James Lochead-Macmillan

report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the petition of Andrew Body

reports of the Health Committee on:

the petitions of Erica Kelly, Karla Knowles, and Louisa Gommans

the report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill

the report of the Ombudsman, An investigation into the Ministry of Health’s collection, use, and reporting of information about the deaths of people with intellectual disabilities

the report of the Ombudsman on the inspections of mental health facilities under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989

the report of the Ombudsman on an unannounced follow-up inspection of Te Whare o Matairangi Mental Health Inpatient Unit, Wellington Hospital, under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989, and

the report of the Ombudsman on an unannounced inspection of the mental health in-patient unit, Waitakere Hospital, under Crime of Torture Act 1989

reports of the Justice Committee on:

the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill, and

the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill and petitions of Anna Coervers and the Hon Clare Curran

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) 2021.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second readings. The report of the Regulations Review Committee and the reports of the Ombudsman are set down for consideration.

The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes—in particular, our recent announcement that the Construction Skills Action Plan has delivered early on its overall target of supporting an additional 4,000 people into construction-related education and employment. Since the plan was launched in 2018, more than 9,300 people have taken up education or employment opportunities in the construction sector through cross-Government initiatives. While there is no one thing that is going to fix the issues we’re facing in the housing market, this combines with a series of initiatives we’re rolling out to tackle the barriers to the construction of new homes, including the $3.8 billion fund to accelerate housing supply, repealing and replacing the Resource Management Act, implementing a National Policy Statement on Urban Development, improving access through first-home grants and loans, incentivising investment in new-build homes through exemption to brightline tests—the list goes on.

Hon Judith Collins: So what are the criteria for councils to access the $3.8 billion housing infrastructure funding that she’s just referred to?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What we’ve already talked about publicly is the fact that whilst it will be a contestable fund, it will be on the basis that the local authority is adding to current infrastructure intentions—so we want to see some additionality. There will need to be explicit commitments from third parties. It will require additional housing supply and, of course, will prioritise project readiness and pace, including capability and capacity to deliver and the speed of commencement. It’s also fair to say we’re working closely with both local government and iwi to make sure the final criteria are fit for purpose, and we will be wanting to see in the second half of 2021 that fund being accessed.

Hon Judith Collins: So what is the decision-making process for calculating how much funding each council will receive?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ve already given a bit of a sense of the criteria that we were using for projects—that’s what we put into the public domain. We’re refining that alongside local government, and we’ll be bringing that to Cabinet with a view in the second half of 2021 to put money out. What I can say is unlike the member’s proposals, where they have created a calculation per home—there are issues with delivering in that way as well. The idea that you would pay after a home—and I see that there are two different responses. I think Mr Bayly has said it would be after there’s a code of compliance issue; the legislation I see that’s proposed says something else. But essentially, either way what is being suggested is that it would be paid out to councils after the house is delivered on. The barrier for many councils is right up front, and so we based our proposal on the issues councils have raised with us, and I again, unfortunately, believe that the proposal the member has made won’t solve the problem.

Hon Judith Collins: So how many new houses, if any, will the policy she’s announced enable to be built over the next 12 months?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Whilst I don’t believe we’ve put a time frame around the estimate that’s been provided, the estimate that has been provided has been between 80,000 and 130,000 houses. Again, I would just make the point that the acceleration fund is very much targeted at dealing with an issue council have raised with us. I fear what the member opposite has put up is akin to their first attempt in the Housing Infrastructure Fund, where they put up loans when councils already had hit their debt ceilings. Once again, the proposal the member has put—if, for instance, you saw Auckland’s threshold reached of 13,000 houses, it would only allow for $82 million worth of investment in Auckland. So what I would say to the member is we agree infrastructure’s a problem; I do not believe what you’ve put forward is the answer.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is the Prime Minister aware that officials are unable to tell us how many houses were actually ever completed through housing infrastructure funding because there was no explicit link between housing and infrastructure in that loan scheme?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, so not only did councils raise the concern that they’d already hit their debt ceilings; there also wasn’t that explicit link. We have learnt much from observing what the National Government did, and we have made sure we haven’t repeated those mistakes. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Can the two Christchurch members just cut it out.

David Seymour: Would the Prime Minister instead consider implementing ACT’s four-year-old alternative of sharing half the GST on new builds with the council, which Auckland mayor Phil Goff, at the time, welcomed?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, that has not been part of our plans.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she stand by her statement two months ago that “The Ministry of Health has the ability to get an insight into whether or not border testing is taking place and to troubleshoot if it’s not.”; if so, why was case B, the managed isolation and quarantine security guard who caught COVID-19, able to go more than four months without a test?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As the member will know, one of the issues we identified at that time was that private sector employers, who are covered by the requirement to have their employees tested, were not compulsorily covered by the requirement to be part of our national register of testing. That is why the Minister undertook to change that requirement. He has done so. The order comes into force from 27 April.

Hon Judith Collins: So why hasn’t that been done earlier, since we’ve had COVID-19 in New Zealand over the last 12 months?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: One of the things I would point out is actually the number of people that are covered by a private sector arrangement—so, outside of our core employment—actually over time has been reducing. Not everyone has maintained their own register. There have been some who have been linked. But we identified the issue, orders were drafted, they’ve been signed, and that comes into force from 27 April. The second point that I would make is that the legal obligation to be tested existed. It already existed—and, of course, that not only existed; the employer had obligations as well. Now our departments are undergoing work to see what the follow-up will be on the fact that there was a clear breach here around the testing requirements. And I would point out that it is obviously quite difficult when an individual, as we’ve been advised, has lied about being tested.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she stand by the statement of her COVID-19 response Minister, Chris Hipkins, from October last year, that the Government was “now getting comprehensive reporting” on border testing; if so, how did border worker case B go untested since November last year?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I stated in my last answer, we have been advised by the employer of an issue with the accuracy of the information that was being provided to them. Secondly, we identified at that time the difference in the way that private contractors and their employees were being covered by the testing register. We looked to rectify that, and that has now been done.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The BNZ/Seek Employment Report released yesterday showed a 10.6 percent jump in job ads last month, which was the best since July last year. The BNZ says that this strong rebound in job advertising was also encouraging, given that, for the first six days of the month, Auckland was still in alert level 3. The regions are also leading the charge, with job advertisements up 21 percent, month-on-month, in both the Bay of Plenty and West Coast.

Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on how businesses are viewing New Zealand’s economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The latest New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion shows an improvement in general business confidence. It finds that firms are continuing to plan for an increase in staff numbers and investment, with a net 8 percent of firms increasing staff numbers in the March quarter, and a net 18 percent planning to hire in the next quarter. Firms are also feeling more confident about investment, particularly in plant and machinery. As we continue our path to recovery, there is going to be continued volatility, particularly as businesses work through supply chain disruptions and some labour shortages. However, overall, the indicators for the economy are positive, particularly in a global context.

Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on the international context for the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It is timely to remember that as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and take lives overseas, we in New Zealand are still enjoying a relatively normal way of life. The global economy is in a fragile state; however, New Zealand tends to track well in comparison. We are investing to aid the recovery while also keeping debt down. The IMF has recently updated its projections using their comparable method of international debt, which forecasts Government net debt in New Zealand to peak at 28 percent of GDP in 2024. This compares to an advanced economy average of 94.8 percent of GDP, or 101.5 percent in the United Kingdom, 111 percent in the United States, and 55 percent in Australia.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, in particular our recent announcements around climate change—and I do want to acknowledge the work of Minister Shaw—that New Zealand’s become the first country in the world to introduce a law that requires the financial sector to disclose the impacts of climate change on their business and explain how they will manage climate-related risk and opportunities through the Financial Sector (Climate-related Disclosures and Other Matters) Amendment Bill that has been recently introduced to the House. And, of course, that the Government is rolling out its plan for a carbon-neutral public sector by 2025 by committing funding to a range of clean-energy projects, including coal boiler replacements, fossil fuel boiler replacements, and projects that’ll achieve a total saving of around 26,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the next 10 years.

David Seymour: Does she stand by Grant Robertson writing to the chair of Air New Zealand asking that they, among other things, support economic development, maintain a comprehensive domestic route network, engage in the development of new aviation fuels for New Zealand, enhance its role as a leader for best-practice workplace relations, continue acting as a responsible corporate citizen, and achieve these objectives while operating as a commercially sustainable and capital-efficient business, ending with a note that the Minister would like to get involved in renewal of the board?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister understand that the Companies Act requires those directors to act in what they see as the best interest of the company, and they have been put in an impossible position by this letter from the Minister of Finance?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: To answer the first half of the question, yes.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by her Cabinet commissioning and then releasing this report, He Puapua, and releasing it only in a highly redacted form.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I, of course, would need to go back and see the degree of redaction, but I stand by the decisions of my Cabinet colleagues and Cabinet.

David Seymour: Why hasn’t the Government done as the report suggests and made a major public announcement of its plan to bring New Zealand into what the report calls “Declaration compliance”, a reference to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Look, I’d say to the member, for the level of specificity that the member is asking for, I would just encourage the member to put a question on notice, and I would be happy to give a fulsome response.

David Seymour: So will the Government rule out, as the report calls for, a “Treaty-based constitution”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not quite entirely sure it sits at the core of the member’s question here. We have obligations to report on New Zealand’s compliance with a number of declarations that we have historically been involved in beyond just this term of office. If the member is trying to imply that there is anything other than us complying with our obligations there, he’d be most welcome to state that clearly and frankly, because I really question what it is he is implying with this line of questioning.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Can the Prime Minister confirm that the previous National Government under the then previous Minister of Māori Affairs, Dr Pita Sharples, actually went to sign up to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and can the Prime Minister also clarify the basis upon which the next steps towards working through a national plan of action might well be a positive progression?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I can confirm that, and with great fanfare, and that then falls upon future Governments to ensure, following that, that in real terms we act upon our obligations as signatories.

David Seymour: Why, then, does the Prime Minister suppose the previous Government led by Helen Clark refused to sign the UN declaration?

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I don’t have a responsibility.

SPEAKER: It’s a question of responsibility.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Surely, if the previous question was in order in relation to a previous Government, then a question relating to the one previous to that is in order.

SPEAKER: No. Well, the line that I took on that was that the action of the previous Government caused an issue for this Government to have to deal with, and therefore was something for which the Government was responsible. If a previous Government, two back, doesn’t do something and it causes no obligation on the current Government to do anything, then I can’t see where the ministerial responsibility sits.

Chris Bishop: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Is it a fresh point of order, or is it the same thing being re-argued?

Chris Bishop: Well, it’s just a clarification, sir, because that—

SPEAKER: Well, there’s no such thing as a point of clarification, and the member knows that.

Chris Bishop: Well, point of order.

SPEAKER: A point of order, Chris Bishop.

Chris Bishop: Is it the case now that if, in your opinion, something done by a previous Government has an implication for a future Government, that brings questions within scope?

SPEAKER: I think the member should have a look at Speakers’ rulings, probably around page 167, where he will find that where an action is required of the current Government—if it was caused by the previous Government, it comes in. If it’s not, if there’s no—if nothing flows that the current Government is responsible for, then the question is out of order.

David Seymour: Will the Government rule out establishing a Māori Parliament, as called for by the report He Puapua?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, we have no intention of making such a constitutional change. However, we do commit ourselves to making sure that we are upholding our obligations as Treaty partners by making sure that, for instance, we have the same ability for Māori to be housed, to have job opportunities, to have decent health outcomes—all of which, we have a long way to go. And I would hope that the member would see those as responsibilities that this Parliament, collectively, needs to act on.

David Seymour: Why, then, did her Government close kura hourua, a policy designed to help with Māori educational achievement endorsed by the Iwi Chairs Forum?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve had a long-held view on charter schools, and the member is aware of that.

David Seymour: How should New Zealanders reading He Puapua understand which parts of it the Government intends to implement and which parts it doesn’t?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: This has not been a Government that’s shied away from having frank conversations over the fact that, to date, we have not reached the point that we are obliged to in terms of seeing equity for Māori in the outcomes that I have just outlined: housing, employment, health. We should be open to discussing ways that we can get there, and fulfil the obligations that we place on ourselves, but, equally, ones that the United Nations is encouraging too. But you see in our formal Government responses those that we pick up and take forward, and those that we don’t.

David Seymour: Will the Government, then, rule out “significantly increased return of Crown lands and waters” to Māori ownership, in addition to Treaty settlements?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not going to get into a hypothetical back and forth here, but, of course, we do have a Treaty process that this House has, broadly, collectively stood by and continues to do so. Māori have, rightly, raised issues around water allocation and the fact that our system today has acted on a “first in, first served” basis, and for undeveloped Māori land, that has led to inequality and unfairness that needs to be resolved. But those are all issues successive Governments have faced. We’re quite committed to try to find resolution to them.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Housing: Does she stand by the Minister of Finance’s statement that delivering $3.8 billion of grants to councils to pay for housing infrastructure is, as councils have told him, “the most important thing we can do to help them add to supply”, and when will councils start to receive these grants?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Yes, in the context that it was made. Councils have told us that helping to fund infrastructure is the most important thing that we can do to help them add to housing supply. We know that dealing with an infrastructure investment deficit that has been decades in the making is critical. Under-investment in infrastructure has limited both the amount of new land that can be used for residential development and limited the intensification potential of existing urban areas. The intent of the $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund is to increase supply by creating build-ready land for housing via our large-scale programmes, land the Government already owns, private development projects, and iwi and Māori-led projects. I’ll be taking the final design and criteria for the fund to Cabinet by the end of June, and the Housing Acceleration Fund will start making investments in the second half of the year.

Andrew Bayly: How much of the $3.8 billion will be allocated in the next 12 months?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As we’ve talked about on many occasions, that will depend on final designs and I will be taking a paper to Cabinet by the end of June.

Andrew Bayly: Which agency will allocate the grants, and will there be independent experts involved directly in how those grants are allocated to new developments?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I will be taking a paper to Cabinet by the end of June, and further announcements will be made following that.

Andrew Bayly: What processes will councils and developers have to use or adopt to apply for grants?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: One process that we’ll be looking for is building some houses, which will be in stark contrast to previous infrastructure funds that have been put in place. So if I have a look at the Housing Infrastructure Fund that the previous Government put in place—and we are having to deal with the consequences of—you cannot really point to any houses, because the previous Government did not put a necessity on those loans to be tied to housing. That is critical. We are a Government that is making a generational investment in infrastructure because in order to get houses, that has to be done.

Andrew Bayly: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m surprised because you are very keen to follow these questions. My question to the Minister was: “What is the process councils and developers will have to adopt or use to apply for grants?” I don’t think the Minister answered that question at all.

SPEAKER: Well, I think about the first half-dozen words answered it. I should probably have stopped it at that point because it went on for far too long.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Will the Government be prioritising infrastructure that supports more new homes within existing urban areas, which will enable lower carbon and more affordable transport options for the people living in those homes?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes. As I indicated in the answer to the primary question, the Housing Acceleration Fund will concentrate on both brownfields and greenfields developments. What we want to do is maximise the intensification potential within our urban areas.

Hon Julie Anne Genter: Has she seen analysis from Auckland Council and the OECD that new homes in greenfields areas have an associated infrastructure cost of $140,000 per home, as well as higher greenhouse gas emissions associated with them?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I have seen lots of reports that point for the need to build climate resilient cities that require brownfields development and urban intensification, and that is precisely why the fund is looking at both.

Andrew Bayly: How is it acceptable to announce a $3.8 billion grant scheme without first determining how it will operate?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We’ve been over this many times in this House. Principal decisions have been made around the fund and they’ve been outlined recently by the Prime Minister in her primary question. One, we will be looking for partnerships with councils. We will be looking for additionality. We will be looking for projects that wouldn’t otherwise happen. We have also said that it will be contestable. But what we also know is that if this fund is going to work, now that we have made the budget allocation, we have to work with our partners. We have to work with local councils and we have to work with iwi Māori. Look, New Zealand has been waiting for this fund for decades and I am proud that our Government is delivering it.

Hon Grant Robertson: Has she, the Minister, seen any examples of people advocating to stop adding to the supply of housing?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, just as recently as today. I understand that on the day that National released its housing policy, its own deputy leader is actively campaigning against a development in Whangārei that would bring in much-needed houses in an area identified as having a pressing need for new houses. The National Party can’t have it both ways. Either it supports the provision of new housing across the country or it doesn’t.

Question No. 5—Energy and Resources

5. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: How will the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund support businesses to transition away from using fossil fuels?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): Last week, I announced the first round of co-funding from the Government Investment in Decarbonising Industry Fund for 14 projects across our primary sectors and spread around the country, which will receive a total of $23 million. Modelling shows that this first round of co-funding will enable emissions reductions of 149,924 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to taking 49,000 cars off the road.

Glen Bennett: What effect, if any, will these investments have on emissions reductions?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Fuel used in manufacturing and production generates about 8 percent of New Zealand’s emissions, and it’s the second-largest source of energy-related emissions for transport. The fund will help deliver up to 10 percent of the gross emissions reductions required from the commission’s first draft carbon budget for the period 2022 to 2025, at an abatement cost of between $20 and $30 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Glen Bennett: What are some examples of projects that have received co-funding?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Woolworks in Timaru is the single largest wool handler in the world, and by replacing its coal boiler it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around nearly 12,000 tonnes each year and make the wool scouring industry in New Zealand coal free. McCain Foods in Timaru will reduce carbon emissions by nearly 34,000 tonnes each year through the installation of a new biomass boiler and by utilising fryer heat recovery technology.

Question No. 6—COVID-19 Response

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What does the COVID-19 vaccine: Illustration of volumes and timing of vaccination roll-out graph on the Government’s website say is the number of doses that were due to be administered to date, and is he satisfied with the Government’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Today, I released a region-by-region breakdown of the numbers that DHBs are expected to reach over the next 2½ months, and this includes actuals through to the beginning of April—and I’m happy to table those. The graph that the member has referenced was an illustrative model of the expected delivery and uptake of the vaccine so that New Zealanders could see the overall sequencing and scale up for the entire year, and it didn’t include specific numbers. In response to the second part of the member’s question, I am broadly satisfied with the roll-out to date. I expect the number of daily doses administered to increase as part of the scale up. And I expect that releasing these numbers today will help district health boards to ensure that they are meeting their forecasts.

Chris Bishop: How does one generate a line graph, which is designed to be illustrative and published to the general public, without using data?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The graph was designed to show the scale up. The actual numbers have been the subject of discussion with district health boards to ensure that when we published those, the district health boards were prepared for those and confident that they could deliver them. The numbers that I’ve released today certainly meet that description.

Chris Bishop: Why is it that when COVID-19 vaccinations were identified last year as being critical to the recovery from COVID, the Government is urgently seeking a programme coordinator, two service design advisers, and several sequencing managers for the COVID-19 vaccination programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Recruitment through different phases of the vaccination campaign has been ongoing. But if the member wants to talk about public sector capability—and the woeful state of public sector capability in health inherited by the current Government, because it was run down over nine years by the last Government—I’m happy to engage in that debate.

David Seymour: What details of remuneration for performing vaccinations were offered to pharmacies, and how many pharmacies so far have signed up to operate as vaccination centres?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We’re not expecting pharmacies to be operating as vaccination centres until the second half of the year. The funding model for primary care, which includes pharmacies and GP practices, has been a topic of discussion between the Ministry of Health and primary-care providers to ensure that the funding is fair and appropriate. Those talks have been ongoing.

David Seymour: What should New Zealanders think of a Government that couldn’t organise a vaccination in a pharmacy?

SPEAKER: No, no, no, no.

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

SPEAKER: You’re having us on, David.

Chris Bishop: Why is New Zealand ranked just 121st in the world for the number of COVID-19 vaccinations administered per 100 people, and second bottom in the OECD, when he said that we’d be at the front of the queue?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I’ve indicated to the member before, we made a conscious decision to switch our vaccination campaign earlier in the year from using a portfolio of vaccines to using a predominantly Pfizer campaign. That did mean that the overall balance of vaccinations required in the second half of the year increased. In terms of the overall scale up, we have been taking our time to make sure that we are getting this right. We have a far lower wastage rate to other countries that we’re being compared to. The other point that I would make is we are continuing to operate our health system in terms of its business-as-usual practices. Some of those other countries that have a much higher rate of vaccination are able to do that because their health system stopped doing anything else.

Chris Bishop: Is he saying, therefore, that the Government has made an explicit and conscious decision to slow the vaccination programme down from what it decided to do earlier?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: When we made the decision to switch to the predominantly Pfizer-led campaign, it did mean that our second-quarter vaccination numbers went down and our third- and fourth-quarter numbers went up based on the fact that some of the other vaccines that we were anticipating introducing earlier are no longer going to be introduced into the vaccination campaign.

Question No. 7—COVID-19 Response

7. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What progress has been made on the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccine programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Up to today, we’ve delivered 135,585 doses of the Pfizer vaccine across the country. In the last 24 hours, we’ve delivered 7,695 vaccinations, bringing the weekly total to 34,378. Forty-three percent of all of those vaccinations have been delivered in Auckland, with 19 percent of them going to Māori and Pasifika populations. A large-scale vaccination centre is opening up today in Mount Wellington, which is our second large vaccination centre capable of delivering vaccines to at least a thousand people a day when operating at full capacity. Vaccines will be initially used to vaccinate St John Ambulance staff and police. It’ll operate by appointment only to those people who are based in predominantly Mount Wellington.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What forecasts has he seen on the ongoing roll-out of the vaccine programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I released earlier today the breakdown of the numbers the DHBs are expected to reach over the next 2½ months. As it stands, they are on track to deliver more than one million Pfizer doses to New Zealanders in our priority groups by the end of June. That’s based on what DHBs have indicated they are confident they will be able to deliver on. It’s being published online today and it will be updated weekly on the Ministry of Health website so people can track progress. It shows the planned vaccinations each week.

Dr Tracey McLellan: Is he confident that the planned roll-out of the vaccination programme to the end of June is achievable?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. As I indicated, we’ve been working with each DHB on their individual vaccination plan, to result in the forecast numbers that we’ve released today. What we’ve asked of DHBs in putting these forecasts together is that they be upfront and realistic about what they will be able to achieve in that time frame. That means that we can ensure that any resources can be targeted to those areas that need additional resources in order to meet the goals set in the plan. These are forecasts and not targets. They are a floor, not a ceiling.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What is being done to ensure the roll-out of the vaccine programme is being carried out in an equitable manner?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We know that Māori and Pacific peoples face persistent and pervasive health inequalities in New Zealand. Existing immunisation programmes have not always delivered equitable outcomes for them, and, therefore, tailored approaches are the most effective way to promote uptake in those communities. The ministry and district health boards are partnering together with Māori and Pacific health providers to deliver vaccinations to their local communities and to meet demand beyond their enrolled populations. Over the last week, for example, Manurewa Marae has established the first marae-based vaccination centre, and is offering information and support to people in their community so that they can make informed decisions in a whānau-centred way.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What is the Minister going to do to increase the uptake, including a tailor-made position of Māori vaccination levels, given that Māori have the lowest vaccination level of any group so far despite being the most at risk?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I just indicated, I think I just gave the member an example of what I hope to see a lot more of in the coming weeks, which is vaccination approaches that are as close to the communities that we need to increase vaccination rates within as possible. So in terms of Māori, I would expect to see more marae-based vaccination. In terms of smaller, local communities where we know a number of Māori live, they are a priority to get into those communities as quickly as we can so we’d be looking to scale those up. The whānau-based approach that we’ll be taking will ensure that whilst the sequencing framework will guide decisions about the overall order of that, people will not be turned away. So if a whānau show up, for example, with a number of people who meet the criteria and some people who don’t, the whānau will still be vaccinated. It is important that we’re pragmatic in our decisions about making sure that people get vaccinated.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: When can whānau expect to be contacted to be up-taking this vaccination offer?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Some of that has already happened. So if they’re front-line border workers, for example, or the families and whānau of front-line border workers, key workers, we have been actively in the process of contacting them now. That’s predominantly being led by those administering the vaccine, so the primary health organisations, their GP practice, and so on. We will have very proactive outreach programmes to reach those communities that have otherwise proven hard to reach. We know with other vaccination and immunisation campaigns that our Māori and Pacific communities have often been more difficult to reach with those campaigns, so we are very, very focused on making sure that’ve got a lot of resource targeted to make sure that we are really reaching into those communities.

Question No. 8—Environment

8. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister for the Environment: Does he agree with the Reserve Bank’s statement that “land use restrictions impede the ability of the market to increase the supply of houses when demand for houses increases. As a result, house prices tend to increase more than otherwise”; if so, what specific steps is he taking to reduce those restrictions in the next 12 months?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Yes, which is why the Government’s already introduced a number of measures to free up land supply. We’ve updated the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPSUD), requiring councils to make more building opportunities available up and out; we’re actively considering measures to bring forward plan changes to comply with the NPSUD; we’re already using the streamlined planning process to help councils rezone land; we’re well under way in developing the replacement for the Resource Management Act (RMA); we’re removing interest deductibility for existing rental properties while incentivising investment in new builds; we’ve had Minister Woods’ announcement of the $3.8 billion infrastructure fund to unlock a mix of private sector and Government-led developments; we’re progressing more fast-track consent processes under the COVID recovery Act; and, for example, just this week I put forward a housing development of 1,000 houses south of Christchurch for fast-track consideration.

Nicola Willis: How many of the 30 or so projects listed for fast-tracking under the COVID recovery Act have actually been approved?

Hon DAVID PARKER: A minority of them, because the main delay is the delay by applicants filing their applications once they’ve been given approval to use the process. There have been no undue delays in consideration by any of the panels in respect of applications that have been filed by applicants, and, indeed, there are statutory time frames that guide those processes.

Nicola Willis: Can he confirm his reported statement that his programme of RMA reform is unlikely to affect the housing market until possibly 2024 or 2025?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m not sure that those were my words. The point I was making was that we can’t wait upon RMA reform—that’s not going to be finished for a couple of years—to respond to the current crisis. That’s why we’ve done all those other measures that I listed in the answer to the primary question, which have been enabled under existing legislation plus amendments that we’ve made, including the fast-track consenting model. In respect of that, I would note that there are mixed views within society and, indeed, I’ve received representations—as have other members of Parliament—from the member’s colleagues in the Opposition, opposing the use of the fast-track processes.

Nicola Willis: Why won’t he act with urgency and legislate interim measures to reduce the RMA delays he describes, and to release new homes for development that are so desperately needed right now?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well it’s not correct to say that we haven’t. I’ve actually listed some of the legislative interventions—

Hon Member: You haven’t!

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, the member should have listened because I have, including the fast-tracked consenting that I mentioned. I think the best approach for the Opposition would be, instead of opposing things like the urban development legislation that they voted against, to back the Government’s programme and other legislative interventions that we will bring in due course.

Question No. 9—Agriculture

9. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: What advice, if any, has he received on the economic impacts of international markets rejecting New Zealand products due to glyphosate residues?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): Kia ora. I received advice in February that Japan had implemented 100 percent testing for glyphosate in all honey from New Zealand. Any consignment that does not pass the test on arrival in Japan must either be reshipped or destroyed. I understand that a very small number of consignments of honey had been directly affected as a result. Since 21 January, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has introduced new requirements for glyphosate testing here prior to export to Japan. If the test results do not comply, MPI will not issue export certification for that consignment of honey. I have not had such advice relating to any other international markets.

Teanau Tuiono: Is he concerned that the continued use of Roundup and other glyphosate products in New Zealand is causing economic and reputational damage to our growing $425 million honey industry, following these rejections of exports by Japanese authorities?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I take New Zealand’s reputation as a healthy, ethical food producer very, very seriously. It’s important to note that in regards to residues of glyphosate, it’s not considered a food safety issue, but we are aware that internationally there’s much discussion on this. But can we reassure people about residue levels. For example, a five-year-old child who was consuming honey with 0.1 milligrams per kilogram of glyphosate residues, which is the default maximum residue level in New Zealand, would need to eat roughly 230 kilograms of honey every day for the rest of their life to reach the World Health Organization acceptable daily intake for glyphosate. I’m just saying that we recognise it is an issue but it’s not a food safety issue.

Teanau Tuiono: Is he concerned that New Zealand is falling behind international practice, given markets we export to, including Japan and the European Union, have stronger standards regulating glyphosate in honey than we do?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: I’m aware that we do use glyphosate across our agricultural sectors. We don’t at the same levels that they use in countries where there are genetically modified organism crops that allow the widespread use of glyphosate on food crops. We don’t allow that. So we have a far lower rate of utilisation, usually for weed control. Regarding honey, it is difficult to know exactly where the bees fly, and I think the challenge for the apiculture industry is to try and ensure that they don’t end up with residues from sprayed areas, like alongside the roadsides, that end up in the honey. That’s why we are testing prior to any export.

Teanau Tuiono: Following his February statement relating to mānuka honey that we need to “ensure it’s made to the high standards that international customers expect”, is he concerned that international customers will stop buying New Zealand primary products if we continue to allow the use of glyphosate; if not, why not?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Most countries around the world do use glyphosate. We’re aware of the European approach to this that is still working its way through. We’re aware of Japan’s sensitivities to it. We will test any products that we think may be contaminated or have a maximum residue limit level that is above any level that might be considered safe.

Teanau Tuiono: Will he consider placing new restrictions on the use of glyphosate to protect the international future of New Zealand’s primary sector producers?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: At this stage, we have no proposals to restrict it other than to encourage farmers to use it carefully, to make sure they don’t spray in the wind so that there’s a flow-on effect to any neighbour, to make sure that—we’re cautious with the use of any chemical in this country. We have robust regimes. We must keep them and ensure that we can claim—and rightfully support the science that says—that we’re the best producers of food in the world.

Question No. 10—Police

10. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) to the Minister of Police: What recent reports has she seen regarding Operation Tauwhiro?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): I’ve received a report from police advising that in just the first seven weeks of Operation Tauwhiro—police’s major operation to disrupt and prevent organised crime—police have seized 237 firearms, seized $1.8 million in cash and assets, seized 4,712 grams of meth, and charged 202 people. I’m sure all members of this House will join me in congratulating our police on their fantastic work keeping our community safe.

Willow-Jean Prime: Has the Minister seen any other reports on police disrupting the illicit drugs trade in New Zealand?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Yes. I’ve seen reports that police and customs have intercepted a package at the international mail centre in Auckland that was found to contain up to 1.5 kilograms of liquid cocaine. Police then executed a search warrant at the Christchurch address, where cocaine and a significant amount of cash were located. I’ve also seen reports from Waikato, where police have intercepted the transport of half a kilogram of methamphetamine and $10,000 in cash by organised crime groups.

Willow-Jean Prime: How has the Government supported police to disrupt and prevent organised crime?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: We’ve supported police, investing $450 million since we came to office, by putting more officers on the beat—2,500 new constables, 1,400 new fulltime-equivalents, 700 alone will be focused on organised crime. We’ve banned military-style semi-automatic weapons, magazines, and parts; taken 62,000 prohibited firearms out of circulation; and passed the Arms Legislation Bill.

Rawiri Waititi: What is the Minister doing to stop racial profiling of Māori in the New Zealand Police, including in Operation Tauwhiro and the latest example of officers unlawfully photographing Māori?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: While it’s distressing to know that there are instances where the photographing of people is not happening according to what I would expect and what police know to be within the law, what I am confident about is that police are addressing areas of bias within the police, looking at processes and persons of interest in that regard, and they’re working very hard to do this.

Rawiri Waititi: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was quite clear around racial profiling. It was not about unconscious bias. What does unconscious bias mean? Does that mean bias whilst asleep?

Question No. 11—Health

11. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Had only $67.4 million been spent by 28 February 2021 of the $145.3 million allocated in 2019 for years 1 and 2 for the new Expanding Access and Choice of Primary Mental Health and Addiction Support service, and, for the same period, had only $8.4 million of $20.1 million been spent on the Preventing Suicide and Supporting People Bereaved by Suicide initiative?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I can’t confirm that those figures for that period are correct. What I can confirm is that in relation to the access and choice programme, as at 31 March this year, $102 million has been committed in contract down to 30 June this year, and in relation to suicide prevention activities, roughly $10 million has been committed in contract. I’ve been advised that there are a number of procurement processes that are either under way or recently completed which will see additional funding committed and spent this financial year.

Matt Doocey: Why can’t the Minister confirm those numbers are correct, when they were his answers to written parliamentary questions to me?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The member is confusing, I think, when the Ministry of Health enters into a contract that they’re legally obliged to follow through down to the 30 June period, and somehow thinking that its obligation to continue to pay, for example, monthly payments invoiced to it for the access and choice programme somehow doesn’t exist or is not an obligation on them. If he is going to use the $145 million 30 June figure, then the correct comparison to make is the commitments the Ministry of Health has actually entered into, which, as at this point, are $102 million down to that period.

Matt Doocey: Why has the promoting wellbeing in primary and intermediate schools programme announced in Budget 2019, that was to have spent $1.4 million in its first two years, spent no money 21 months after the announcement was made?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: That figure is correct, but as the member will see, out of a total programme of $455 million over four years, that is a small amount of spending. Other spending and commitments have been made in our schools and for young people, and those announcements have been made over the last few months.

Matt Doocey: Why has the Government, across 15 mental health initiatives announced in Budget 2019, as of March this year only spent $126.7 million of the allocated spend—after two years—of $247.7 million?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I can’t confirm the accuracy of those figures. What I can say is that this is a Government that inherited a mental health service across this country that had been neglected for nine years, had been run down, and had left people desperate. This Government had the gumption to step up, take a stocktake, and in 2019 committed $1.9 billion, an unprecedented amount of money, into an area that desperately needed it. I stand here proud, along with former colleagues, former Ministers of Health of this Government, of the commitment that we have made to seriously address the gaps in mental health that have been left by that previous Government.

Matt Doocey: How can New Zealanders have confidence in this Government when promised mental health funding is underspent, while reported wait times are increasing?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The member will know that this programme of reform, a four- to five-year programme of reform, started in July 2019. It was heavily disrupted last year because of COVID, to the point where we had service providers who had entered into contracts ask for the implementation dates or the start dates of their services to be delayed because they couldn’t recruit people and they couldn’t commence their services. So it is not surprising that there has been some delay in getting the full volume of services expected to be in place by now. But that’s what happens when you inherit nine years of neglect in a service and you have to step up and do something really serious about it.

Matt Doocey: Supplementary?

SPEAKER: Sorry—no, no, the member’s run out. I think the member knows that, doesn’t he? Question No. 12—Steph Lewis. Nice try.

Question No. 12—Agriculture

12. STEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui) to the Minister of Agriculture: What announcement has he made about live animal exports?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Minister of Agriculture): This morning, I announced that the export of livestock by sea will cease, following a transition period of up to two years. The export of livestock from New Zealand has been a feature of our farming systems for a long time, but concerns about the risks to New Zealand’s reputation from this trade have been steadily increasing, which is why in 2019 we began a review of livestock exports. The tragic sinking of the Gulf Livestock 1 ship in 2020 with the loss of 40 lives and many thousands of livestock brought those dangers to a head, and we introduced a temporary ban on livestock exports while the Heron review recommended improvements to our system. Although many of these have been implemented, there remains an ongoing level of concern with the welfare of these animals while at sea for up to three weeks. This Government had to act and it has done.

Steph Lewis: Why is the Government banning the export of livestock by sea?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Over recent years, we’ve seen some of the reports from these ships, many of which—about 80 percent of which—are not designed for live exports, where conditions on board have led to many adverse animal welfare outcomes. While I acknowledge that this trade has been able to generate additional revenue for some farmers, ultimately, we aren’t able to guarantee the welfare of these animals once they’re at sea, and that is an unacceptable risk to New Zealand’s reputation. New Zealand must stay ahead of the curve in a world where animal welfare is under increasing scrutiny if we truly want to be the most ethical producers of the finest food in the world.

Steph Lewis: Why has the Government allowed a two-year transition period?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: The transition period of up to two years will allow affected businesses both in New Zealand and around the world the time to wind down the trade and adjust their operations. This is a complex process to unwind due to factors such as existing contracts, business planning, and breeding cycles, so the final exact length of the transition period will be determined pending further advice that I’ll receive from the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). In the meantime, I’ve also asked MPI to provide advice on possible improvements to animal welfare on the ships during the transition period.

Questions to Members

Question No. 1—Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill

1. CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi) to the Member in charge of the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill: What reports has he seen on his Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Member in charge of the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill): I have seen a report from the shadow Attorney-General on my bill that concludes that its passage would ensure our Electoral Act complies with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. This report is consistent with the report I have also seen from Professor Geiringer of Victoria University, New Zealand’s renowned expert on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, that the 2018 law changes breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act in respect of freedom of speech and freedom of association.

Chris Penk: Has the member seen any other reports on the bill that raise concerns about the effect of the law on New Zealand’s democracy?

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, I have. I have seen a report on my bill by 23 legal academics from five law faculties, four departments of politics—

SPEAKER: Order! [Interruption] Order! I just want an assurance from the member that this is not a submission on the bill—that it is a report.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Yes, it is a submission from those 23 legal academics, and—

SPEAKER: Well, thank you.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —Mr Speaker, I’d be delighted if both yourself and the House would read that submission. It shows how important my bill is.

SPEAKER: Well, I think the fact that I recognised it might have meant that I have. That concludes oral questions—

Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek the leave of the House to table the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report on the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill by the shadow Attorney-General.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There’s none. It will be tabled.

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

Urgent Debates Declined

COVID-19—Evidence Given to Health Committee

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from David Seymour seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the letter of expectation sent by the Minister of Finance to the chairperson of Air New Zealand. I have also received a letter from Chris Bishop seeking to debate evidence given to the Health Committee that case B in the most recent series of COVID-19 cases was not tested for COVID-19 between November 2020 and 8 April 2021. Mr Bishop’s application relates to a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The COVID-19 testing regime and border controls are important matters which deserve the attention of the House. Ordinarily, I could very well accept this application; however, there is a means of debating it in the House today. The debate on the Budget Policy Statement relates to the statement itself and the Finance and Expenditure Committee’s report on it. While Speaker’s ruling 132/4 points out that the debate is not as wide-ranging as a Budget debate, I think the statement and the report canvass COVID-19-related issues sufficiently to permit the House to address the matters raised in the urgent debate application.

Urgent Debates

Air New Zealand—Minister of Finance’s Letter of Expectation

SPEAKER: The subject of David Seymour’s letter is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Air New Zealand is a significant company and any significant change in the Government’s relationship with it is important. The matter deserves the attention of the House and there is no other opportunity to do this for about three weeks. Therefore, I call on David Seymour to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

Debate interrupted.

Points of Order

Urgent Debates—Grounds for Acceptance

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I apologise to David Seymour for slightly interrupting his kicking off this debate. My point of order is not to do with that. It is do with the ruling that you made on Mr Bishop’s application.

Whilst I understand you’ve ruled that the debate should not be held today, and I understand your reasons for doing so, your indication that in a different set of circumstances a debate might be held raises some concern in that Mr Bishop’s application relates to a particular individual. There are issues of natural justice when Parliament is being asked to scrutinise the actions of one individual member of the public, and I’d ask you to re-think whether such an application in the future would be treated consistently with the ruling that you had indicated it might do in a different set of circumstances.

That individual would not be part of the debate. They would not have the ability to—the very issue of the statements they have made are ultimately going to be a large part of the subject of the debate, and there are other investigations ongoing, including whether or not the person concerned may be subject to other forms of sanction for those actions. Therefore, that would seem to me to be quite unwise for the Parliament to, effectively, be acting as judge and jury regarding that particular individual.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Speaking to the point of order—

SPEAKER: If the member thinks he can add to it, yep.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I was going to make the point that my application is quite specific around the contextual circumstances to do with case B. It is not a litigation of what happened with case B. And the second point I’d make is that the Prime Minister, under privilege in question time, accused case B of lying. So, if there is anyone litigating exactly what case B did or didn’t do, it is the Government itself.

Urgent Debates

Air New Zealand—Minister of Finance’s Letter of Expectation

Debate resumed.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

That matter is a letter sent by Grant Robertson on behalf of the Government to Dame Therese Walsh, the chair of Air New Zealand. This letter has been described by Fran O’Sullivan, one of our most senior journalists and respected business journalists, in the New Zealand Herald as a “shocker.” And she does not use that term lightly, because that’s exactly what this letter is. It is a letter sent to the business, a commercial airline that has achieved enormous success and many international awards along with an exceptional reputation amongst New Zealanders. It’s been sent to that business and it set out a series of mutually competing and, in some cases, contradictory expectations that, in my view, put the directors of that company in an impossible position. The implications are not just for Air New Zealand, they are for all of New Zealand, because what this letter means is that good people who sign up to be directors on companies to aid New Zealand by offering their skills may find themselves put in positions where they simply cannot discharge their legal obligations with the political pressure that surrounds them.

I recognise the narrowness of this debate, but it is worth acknowledging some of the storied history that got us here. Not so long ago, in some people’s lives at least, we had a Prime Minister who was also the Minister of Finance and ruled and micro-managed with an iron fist. Rob Muldoon went over to the UK and agreed that the National Airways Corporation, or Air New Zealand, would use Rolls-Royce jet engines instead of General Electric, even though Air New Zealand was not set up to service Rolls-Royce engines. So the people trying to run the business went through the machinations of trying to actually figure out how to land and take off on time and serve their customers and run an effective airline while dealing with the most unconscionable political interference. The reasons that we have an State-owned enterprise (SOE) model, the reasons that Air New Zealand and many other SOEs are operating as private businesses with an objective to their shareholders, is actually to avoid that kind of micro-managing interference that makes it impossible for the directors and management of a company to deliver a useful service to their customers.

And this letter says, given the critical role Air New Zealand plays in the success of New Zealand, both socially and economically, the Government’s enduring expectations for Air New Zealand are to be a “national airline”, and it must continue to operate to support economic development, including access to international markets for our exporters and international tourism linkages once international borders reopen.

Now, if the directors are to take the letter—which has come from someone who’s the Deputy Prime Minister and the major shareholder—seriously, then they’ve got to do that. But they’ve also got to maintain comprehensive domestic route networks that allow people and goods to move across New Zealand in a timely fashion at a reasonable cost. Well, to what extent should the directors put weight on that particular matter? And then they have to demonstrate their commitment to environmental sustainability, despite being an airline whose primary business is blasting large vehicles through the air. And they have to also engage with the development of new aviation fuels for New Zealand. So, so far, they’ve got to be a network for exporting and connecting with the rest of the world, maintain a domestic network that’s comprehensive—whatever that means—at a reasonable cost, and deliver goods and people across New Zealand in a timely manner, but they’ve also got to try and save the planet by engaging in the development of new aviation fuels.

But wait, there’s more. You might think that Air New Zealand would have to lean quite hard on its employees in order to get them to deliver what is starting to sound like a monumental task, but, actually, they also have to be a leader in best practice workplace relations, given it is one of New Zealand’s largest employers. So they not only have a role as an airline delivering things around the world and New Zealand, not only do they have to help invent new fuels, but they also—according to this letter from the Deputy Prime Minister, from their chief shareholder—have to actually make sure that they’re a world leader in workplace relations. And then they have to continue acting as a responsible corporate citizen.

Now, I have to assume that that was put in as a bit of filler. But anyway, that’s another thing that they have to do. If the board are going to discharge their duties in good conscience, then they also have to do that. And then, here’s the kicker—here’s the kicker—they have to achieve these objectives while operating as a commercially sustainable and capital efficient business. So not only do they have multiple, and at times conflicting, objectives put on them by the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, they also have to do it while making good use of capital and actually be commercially sustainable.

These are not all the objectives that the directors will have. The directors also have an objective, which is in the Companies Act, section 131 if I remember correctly, that they must act in accordance with what they see as the best interests of the company. Now, if you are a director, somebody of serious calibre, in that sort of position, who has options, who is invited to be on a range of different boards—in some cases in New Zealand but in many cases, for our top directors in New Zealand, across the Ditch and further afield as well—what has just happened to the attractiveness of serving our national carrier, of being on the board of Air New Zealand? Well, you are put in a nearly impossible position where you may not be able to achieve all of the conflicting objectives you have, including those recently given to you in a rather aggressive letter by the Deputy Prime Minister of the country.

And then—here’s the kicker—here’s what comes next: see, that is a difficult situation but some people might say, “You’re taking it too seriously. Maybe it doesn’t really have the kind of weight and gravity that’s been made out by people like Fran O’Sullivan in the New Zealand Herald.” Well, here’s what it says next, the letter says—menacingly, I would say—“I would like to be involved in the renewal of the board.” Now, these are smart people, they can read on the line and between the lines, and they know what it means. It means: “If you don’t fulfil my fantasy as a shareholder, then I am going to find other employment for you; actually, I won’t—I’ll just make sure that you’re not reappointed on this board.”

But this is not just a shame because of the damage it does to Air New Zealand. Yes, it is true: it is wrong, it will harm the quality of people who want to be on and remain on the Air New Zealand board, and it will affect the value of the company and its operation. All of those things are true. But it is worth remembering that the SOE model is applied to Air New Zealand amongst a number of organisations, and there is quite a range of them. There are some very important businesses in the electricity generation space. Now, we have a major issue with electricity generation right now. There is a shortage of electricity. Prices are high. It is threatening the deindustrialisation of New Zealand. We need quality governance in the generation and “gen-tailer” space if we are going to have a competitive energy market that is also going to achieve the objectives of more environmentally friendly electricity. Those were some of the big SOEs.

What message does this letter—and they’ve all read about it, I can guarantee you; there won’t be a single corporate director in this country who is not aware of what is going on here. What affect does it have on the people on those boards? And it is a few others. It is organisations that are SOEs that hold data for the weather and actually do all sorts of useful services. Well, they are all going to be tarred with the same brush that Grant Robertson has tarred Air New Zealand with. That means that we are going to have a decline in the quality of governance.

Some people might say, “Well, this is just one instance. We’re on new ground here.” Actually, I think it is important that public policy is evidence-based. We, over the last 40 years, have had the benefit of enormous evidence of over $2 trillion of privatisations, and there have been studies—there have been studies of those studies—there have been people like Phil Barry, the economist here in Wellington, who have played a role in evaluation the effects of shifting Government enterprises from public ownership to private. And guess what! Private and privatised entities, in the long run, on average, over time, outperform public entities like for like in terms of productivity.

So not only is it, on the face of it, wrong what the Minister has done to Air New Zealand’s board, we actually have good reasoning and good evidence and good data built up over many decades which tells us that this action by the Minister is going to make us all poorer. And that leads you to the question: what can we do about it? Because anybody can point out what is wrong, but the next thing we need to do is actually figure out how we can have some honest conversations about uniting New Zealanders behind good ideas that will make us more prosperous.

What the Minister could do is a little bit like what another Minister did just before question time. Stuart Nash rang up Nicole McKee and said, “Sorry, I called you a nutter”, and Nicole McKee very graciously accepted that apology. I think we saw the true colours of both politicians. Well, Grant Robertson has the opportunity to show his true colours and say, “I’ve made a mistake here. It is wrong what I have done. I’m actually prepared to go and say that this is not a good way to operate. This is not a good way for a shareholder to operate a company. If you want a company to achieve certain objectives, then, actually, you’ve got to allow them the freedom to actually pursue those objectives, otherwise, if I know what they should be doing, then maybe I don’t need a board anyway. Instead of what I’ve done, I’m going to rescind the letter.”

Grant Robertson should rescind the letter that he has sent to the board, and send a signal to governance organisations and particularly SOEs up and down New Zealand that this Government does not engage in wanton interference in commercial affairs, and that it respects the people that have been appointed to governance positions and it is going to uphold the best practices that attract the best people to govern the organisations that we need to be well governed in this country.

That is the opportunity that the Minister of Finance has, and if he is not prepared to do it for Air New Zealand or for those in governance roles or for the wider country and the future of SOEs, here is another reason why he might do it. What does he think the long-term effect—other things being equal, you know, without the current monetary policy conditions—on the share value of Air New Zealand is going to be for all of those New Zealanders who have KiwiSaver interests in Air New Zealand? What does he think it is going to be in the long term? Does he really think that Air New Zealand is going to be a more profitable company for those investors in the long term, and on average, with him sticking his ore in and interfering in its governance?

And if the Minister wants to get up and tell all of those New Zealanders that their investment is better with him running it, then that is a very interesting claim for him to make. I will be interested to see if he does. But what would be far better is if he apologised to those investors, apologised to Dame Therese Walsh, apologised to those in governance positions in Air New Zealand and SOEs up and down New Zealand, and affirmed his Government’s commitment to trusting people that have been appointed to do the job, and let them get on with it without political interference. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government, on behalf of New Zealand, exercises a 52 percent shareholding in Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand is a company that has served New Zealanders incredibly well over recent times. It was a very challenging period for every airline in the world when COVID-19 hit. And one of the things that happened when COVID-19 hit was that Air New Zealand—like other airlines, it has a very extensive programme of investments already put out for the future, it also has a very expensive day-to-day running cost. And in that situation, and in that moment, the Government of New Zealand, on behalf of the people of New Zealand, made sure that the airline did not become insolvent. That was the prospect facing New Zealand and Air New Zealand. So a $900 million loan facility was announced. That is a good example of the way in which a Government-backed airline can not only provide terrific services to its people and to people who want to come here but also represent a particularly sound investment option where it is the situation we have in New Zealand, where it is 52 percent owned by the Government and 48 percent owned by other shareholders.

To answer part of Mr Seymour’s question: he will be pleased to know that the share price for Air New Zealand is around about $1.77 today. It is up 74 percent from last year, up from last month, and with a great deal of confidence that an airline—and think about this: this is an industry that has been put on its knees by COVID-19, and Air New Zealand is up from a year ago, in part because of the confidence that has been built up by the fact that this is an airline with a majority shareholder who cares about making sure that the business works and cares about making sure that we have an airline that will service all New Zealanders.

The other problem for Mr Seymour is that it is quite clear he’s never served in a role in Government where you’re required to work with a State-owned enterprise, because, Mr Seymour, they all get letters of expectation—all of them. So Mr Seymour was very, very worried, for example, about weather forecasting before. He was very concerned there, I presume, about the MetService. All of them get letters of expectation—that’s what we do. It’s the way we express the Government’s expectation. But Mr Seymour hasn’t been there, so he doesn’t know that. When it comes to Air New Zealand, the way in which the Crown—the Government; the 52 percent shareholder—is expressing its expectations is exactly what a majority shareholder would do in the private sector as well; that’s exactly the way it plays out. We make clear our expectations as the majority shareholder.

Now, nothing in the letter than was sent to Dame Therese Walsh is a surprise to Air New Zealand. It is the subject of the conversations that we have been having with Air New Zealand over the course of the last year in the wake of COVID-19. Absolutely everything written in that letter has been the subject of what we as a Government have discussed with them.

It is important to note, as the member did, that the objectives of Air New Zealand remain to be commercially sustainable and a capital-efficient business—that’s important. That’s one of the ways in which New Zealand will be well-served by having a sustainable airline that’s able to go about its business. But as the 52 percent shareholder, the Crown, on behalf of the people of New Zealand, is rightly expressing the other things that we want from our ownership stake. And the first of those is the concept of a national airline. And nothing has been more important during the COVID-19 period than having a national airline. The ability for the Government to be able to support airlines to be able to fly in and out of New Zealand, to make sure that our exports continue to fly when airlines around the world were shutting their services down—that would have shut New Zealand’s exporters out from the world—having a national airline, one that we 52 percent own, allowed us to be able to continue to support those exporters. So, actually, this is why we do this.

Now, Mr Seymour has an ideological objection to public ownership; I get that. That’s fair enough. If that’s how he feels about it, that’s fine. But what COVID-19 has demonstrated is that it matters to New Zealand that there is a public stake in this airline and it’s part of why that is in here.

The second element of the letter that Mr Seymour chose to highlight was the idea that there was some outrageous proposition that the Government, as the 52 percent shareholder, might ask Air New Zealand to maintain a comprehensive domestic route around New Zealand. Now, under Mr Seymour’s vision of the way Air New Zealand would operate, with the Government completely disinterested, not part of it at all, we wouldn’t be flying into Hokitika, we wouldn’t be flying into Kerikeri, we wouldn’t be flying all around New Zealand, and that’s the question that Mr Seymour and Mr Bayly—who I know is worried about this as well—have to answer when Mark Mitchell says, “I want to get to Kerikeri.”, and they say, “Sorry. No need for a comprehensive domestic route around New Zealand. No need for the airline to be able to get people from place to place.” And I know there are members opposite who’ve lobbied very, very hard to make sure that Air New Zealand flies to their particular destination, their place in the world, and that wouldn’t be in Mr Seymour’s vision.

So the idea that there would be a comprehensive domestic network is clearly important in our reason for having an airline. The corporate citizen role, the workplace relations role—these are all basic elements of being a good corporate citizen in the world, and one that we would expect of all New Zealand companies and ones with public ownership.

On the matter of environmental sustainability, again, here Mr Seymour’s showing his inexperience again. This is a conversation with Air New Zealand. They want this. They know that the future profitability of any airline in the world relies upon adjusting to the carbon-constrained world that we’re living in. Every airline in the world that wants to continue is working on this. So the idea that they would be engaging in the development of new aviation fuels is actually what will make them commercially sustainable into the future. Mr Seymour might deny climate change, but, happily enough, the aviation sector actually gets it, and they want to be a part of this.

When it comes to the question of board membership, again, I don’t know if Mr Seymour has worked this out, but a 52 percent shareholder in any company of any description is going to have a say in who’s on the board—it’s how it works. And so the paper outlines the fact that we have that expectation. Of course we have that expectation. On behalf of New Zealanders, if we were to take the approach that Mr Seymour is proposing, we would be letting New Zealanders down. We’d have a 52 percent stake and we’d be washing our hands of it and saying it doesn’t matter—that hasn’t worked for New Zealand when it comes to an airline in the past, and that is why that is in there.

And then, as indeed the member who moved the motion noted, we’ve gone on to say that, actually, all of the duties those directors have still apply. They know that—they know that they can manage this business. It’s only Mr Seymour and a handful of people with ideological reasons for opposing public ownership who have any problem whatsoever with a Government actually expressing why it is that we own an airline. And when we look at the future of Air New Zealand, what we have outlined in our letter of expectations makes very clear to them what we as the 52 percent shareholder expect.

For minority shareholders in a company like Air New Zealand, one of the things that they get confidence from is the fact that when there is a public ownership of that other 52 percent—when it is owned by the Government—they know the Government’s not going to let that airline fail. We demonstrated that in COVID-19. We stepped in to make sure that it didn’t. There is, in fact, a premium for those minority shareholders in knowing that the majority shareholder will never let it go, and that is what has happened here. We know that as a Government we are committed to ownership of Air New Zealand. Quite clearly, if David Seymour was involved in the Government, you couldn’t guarantee that—it’s open slather. The people of the regions of New Zealand would have to be wondering if they’d have an air service.

And here’s a challenge for Andrew Bayly when he gets up next. If he one day—decades into the future—ends up in a Government with David Seymour, is he going to stand up for regional New Zealand? Is he going to make sure that regional New Zealand is served by Air New Zealand? Because that’s what David Seymour just told us: no domestic route required. You don’t have to guarantee anything. People all around New Zealand now know that David Seymour doesn’t care whether or not they get serviced by Air New Zealand. So Andrew Bayly needs to tell us that.

Of course, one thing I would say about all of this is that it probably does push up Christopher Luxon’s chances of running the National Party. If there’s that much obsession on that side of the House about running airlines, then I imagine that that would be probably now right at the top of their list.

As a Government, we’ve taken very seriously our role in making sure that the State-owned enterprises that we continue to manage and run on behalf of New Zealanders, the Crown-owned companies, and indeed the mixed-ownership model companies, have continued to be able to run in such a way as they balance their responsibilities. They are listed companies in the case of Air New Zealand in those mixed-ownership model companies—the directors operate in that way. But as a majority shareholder, on behalf of the Government and on behalf of New Zealanders, I would be letting New Zealanders down if I simply stood back, washed my hands, and said, “Let the market rule in this situation.” That’s not why we own an airline. That’s not the reason we do it. We have a majority stake in an airline because it’s a critical part of our infrastructure, of our economic development, of our tourism offering—all of those things are important. And if we as a Government were to step back and do as Mr Seymour would have it, then we would not be acting in the best interests of New Zealand.

He is also, I think, taking a very limited view of the capability of corporate governance in New Zealand. All of the people that we look to appoint to Air New Zealand, and indeed the people who are on the Air New Zealand board understand that when they are in Air New Zealand they’re part of something with a massive legacy to New Zealand. They’re part of something that matters to people in communities all over New Zealand. They’re part of something that matters to our economic development. They’re proud to serve on that Air New Zealand board and they know that it’s a board where there is majority public ownership—they knew that going in.

This letter is writing down, putting on paper, the expectations of us as the Crown on behalf of New Zealanders for what we’re looking for from our airline. It will continue to be commercially viable because it is a good airline with a great reputation, but it’s also an airline in the middle of the worst global crisis for airlines that we have ever seen. And like other countries around the world, all of those Government-owned airlines and, indeed, private-owned airlines are taking another look at their business model. They’re taking a look at what the future looks like when tourism won’t return in the way that it has been for some time. They’re taking a look at it in the context of climate change. All of that is about making sure we’ve got a modern airline that is focused on serving the needs of all its shareholders, and at the same time doing the right thing as a national airline.

If there are people who are ideologically opposed to us having that, playing that role, that is for them to decide. But on this side of the House, we are committed to ensuring New Zealanders and New Zealand exporters have access to that kind of airline. And we have not seen, I don’t believe, in this period of COVID, any diminution of the duty of Air New Zealand directors as both corporate directors and on the role they play in making sure that that national airline operates.

I am extremely proud of Air New Zealand. I think it is an airline that has served New Zealand well. It’s had its ups and downs. Many of those downs, Mr Seymour, is when the Government did exit from it, and then what happened? Michael Cullen had to come in and rescue it because it had gone wrong. Mr Seymour has this absolutely blind ideological view that if the private sector’s running it, it’ll be brilliant, and if the public sector’s running it it won’t work. Well, that didn’t happen in Air New Zealand, Mr Seymour, and the Government had to step in and sort it out.

The Government stepped in again under COVID-19 and sorted it out, and now we’re going to continue to work with Air New Zealand to make sure that they, yes, are a commercially successful airline, but they are also able to achieve these objectives on behalf of their majority shareholder. There is a reason why we own Air New Zealand, and it is to make sure that we achieve the objectives that are in this letter. There is no doubt in my mind that any Government who went through COVID-19 in the way that our Government did would end up writing a letter like this to put down on paper why a national airline matters.

I am pleased to have written the letter. I know that Air New Zealand will continue working with us to make sure our people, our exporters, and our communities are well-served, despite the ideological views opposite.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, I’d just like to acknowledge the leader of ACT, to demonstrate he’s a good follower of the news. I note that he seemed to repeatedly refer to Fran O’Sullivan’s article but yesterday Hamish Rutherford wrote an article which is headed, and I quote, “… Air New Zealand letter put airline board in ‘invidious position:’ ’’—that was the heading. Also, he must have been following the radio this morning, because, of course, Mike Hosking picked it up as an item of importance. So I’m glad that Mr Seymour is following our lead, which is very good.

I think this whole issue is about whether or not Mr Robertson is the new reincarnation of Mr Muldoon. I say that because when I took over the job as shadow Treasurer late last year, I called on Mr Robertson to act in terms of section 68B of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, and he called me the reincarnation of Mr Muldoon but subsequently followed my advice. This is another example of the Minister of Finance acting as someone who does not understand the current situation, and I’ve got to say I found the speech from Mr Robertson rather troubling, because I don’t think he has a proper appreciation of the dynamic in which his letter has landed.

I thought it would be useful just to give a little bit of background. The first thing is that the Government, quite rightly, offered to advance the company last year $900 million at a rate of 9 percent, which at the time was an incredibly high interest rate. The company has taken up roughly about $350 million of that loan. That loan of $900 million was offered without any letter of expectation. The troubling bit about this change is that very recently the Minister offered another $600 million, which took the total offer to Air New Zealand to 1.5 and reduced the interest rate from 9 percent to 5.3 percent. Bearing in mind that the company’s only taken up $350 million, the most troubling thing is why the Minister took it upon himself with this second tranche of lending to the company to then write this letter dated 8 April. So that’s the first issue: why would you in the first instance—and he talked about it before; trying to support the business. He did that in a manner free of interference from the company but the second tranche came with significant conditions.

I think it’s also worthwhile pointing out that it is well understood in the market that the Minister has had quite a significant involvement on the timing of the possible capital-raise of the company. Of course, the capital-raise, raising new funds, would have dealt with some of the funding issues that Mr Robertson sought to address with the second tranche of $600 million. So whether in fact it’s appropriate and to what extent the Minister has been involved in director negotiations—and it is well understood by the market that the capital-raise has been delayed on a number of occasions and particularly from March, and everyone in the market is expecting that the next capital-raise will be completed by the end of September depending on whether or not Mr Robertson will agree to it.

So the issue is—and what has been raised—whether the letter is the appropriate instrument to adopt. The Minister was very clear to say that “as a minority shareholder I can do what I like,” and he made the point that many State-owned enterprises (SOEs) receive letters of expectation from the Minister. I would say to you that that is correct—if you are on the board of KiwiRail you get a letter of expectation from the Minister—but the difference with this one is that this a listed company. All the others SOEs, other than the electricity companies, are not listed. And in the sense that they’re not listed and don’t have to operate under the stock exchange rules, then issuing a letter of expectation is perfectly appropriate and takes place regularly.

The issue is that the Minister wrote a letter to a company that’s listed on the stock exchange, and the worst part about the letter was the nature and tone of the letter. If the letter had been advisory, that would have been OK. If the Minister had made clear his views around his expectation in an advisory sense, that would have been OK. But the letter is not written in that tone. The letter is very specific about requirements that Air New Zealand has to achieve. It talks about the continuing operation of the business, continuing to maintain a comprehensive domestic network, continuing to demonstrate its commitment to environmental sustainability, and demonstrating a commitment to best-practice work places.

That’s fine as a general principle and in terms of advice, but the issue this strikes at is that as a listed company board member you are operating in a totally different framework. And that is you are subject to the listing requirements, and you have to operate, under company law, in the best interests of the company. The issue with this letter of expectation is that what it says is, “This is what you shall do.” The issue is if you are running Air New Zealand you need to be, if you’re a director, free to operate that company in the best interests of the company and its shareholders—and that means all shareholders. And there will be times, and I would think that in difficult times right now, the company may take a decision to reduce certain domestic linkages. It may choose to do other things with industrial relations because its first priority is to protect the company, and this is where the Minister has overstepped the mark. He has overstepped the mark in the sense that he has given a direction to the company.

The second thing is that one of the most fundamental principles—and I’ve mentioned this before—is this requirement under the Companies Act to act in the best interests of the company. That really underpins all directorships, and when you overlay that with a clear statement that the Government wishes to be actively involved in the reshaping of the board, that gives rise to a potential conflict of interest and, I think, an implied threat. And I think this is where the Minister has been ill-advised and has shown poor judgment in writing a letter of this nature to this company, which is a listed company.

I think this is a real issue, because in terms of the proposed capital-raise, one of the issues—and I’ve been speaking to investment banks that may or may not be involved in the process but certainly have a view on it—is whether or not this level of interference that the Minister has shown that he is prepared to make will in fact lead to certain investors who might have otherwise invested, taking a second look at this and perhaps not investing in the company. If there are fewer investors, it will mean that the capital-raise will have to take place at a lower price, which means that the value of Air New Zealand is lower, and this is the point that Mr Seymour was making well before. This intervention has the potential to be a chilling impact on investors, and I think, again, that this is where the Minister has shown particularly poor judgment. That’s what I was talking about before—this tendency to throw the weight around in circumstances that are not appropriate.

The last point I want to make, which is the fourth point, is that in the letter he clearly refers to the issues around what is expected of executives of the company. It is clear that directors run the company and set the policy. Executives implement the policy of the board. This reference to executives in the letter is a fourth transgression of that letter, and, again, the Minister has shown absolutely poor judgment in writing a letter that’s ill-advised and trying to cut across or assert the requirements of directors and the responsibilities of directors. I think we’re wondering now whether Mr Robertson is—

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

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I really couldn’t disagree more with the previous speaker, Andrew Bayly, and Mr David Seymour in their speeches. On behalf of the Green Party, I rise to, if anything, criticise the Government for not having stricter requirements of Air New Zealand—in terms of the money that taxpayers are putting forward to Air New Zealand, that they do more in terms of climate change. I have no doubt that the company is interested in that, and that the Government, as the largest shareholder, is interested in taking action on climate change.

Really, what’s at the heart of the criticism from the National Party and the ACT Party is a kind of ideological belief—a religion—that really permeated economics departments from the 1980s and 1990s. Despite Mr Seymour’s claim for the evidence to be on his side, it actually really isn’t, and I refer Mr Seymour to papers by the IMF and others who have talked about where the ideology around neoliberalism actually went too far and has resulted in less economic growth and has resulted in less efficiency. Perfect examples of this are the privatised trains in Britain, which require heavier subsidies than they did when they were publicly run; the privatised health system in the United States, which delivers healthcare at a far higher cost than countries that have public health systems.

When it comes to things that are public goods—and transport is one of those things where it’s very difficult to commercialise the full benefits, and the impacts of transport infrastructure and transport vehicles are far beyond the individual people using them. Airplanes have an impact on the climate, they have an impact on the people who live near the airports, they have a benefit for the people who are flying on the airplanes, but they also have external impacts. It is entirely appropriate in this day and age, where we’ve seen—post the global financial crisis, post-COVID—in the age of needing to respond urgently to climate change, that that failed ideology of the 1980s and 1990s, which is still well and alive in the most right-wing parties in our Parliament—has been proven wrong. We cannot rely on individual organisations focusing on maximising their own private monetary profit to deliver better outcomes for the whole world. It’s just not going to. That should be obvious.

So when we think about a company’s shareholders being required to think of the best interests of the company, it’s got to be beyond the best interest in terms of financial return to shareholders. Because the company exists on planet Earth and it exists in relationship with other people. If planet Earth is overheating and we’re being hit by massive storms that make it impossible for people to travel, then that’s going to negatively impact the company. So we’re thinking about the company as more than just an individual organisation that is looking to make the most money possible. Because they can do that by externalising their pollution costs, they can do that by abusing their staff and underpaying them, they can do that in all means of unethical ways, and it actually hasn’t worked. One more example, for the right of the House: large oil companies that deliberately hid information and ran campaigns against scientists to confuse Governments, confuse people, about the reality of climate change until now when it’s almost too late, and we almost don’t have enough time to act. They did that so they could sell as much oil as possible—

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Come on, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: It has run pretty wide, right from the beginning, but I think we’ve now got well beyond State-owned enterprises and Government companies.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well, Mr Speaker, it is absolutely relevant to my argument. It is impossible for me to respond to Mr Seymour’s debate without referring to the evidence that rebuts what he said in his speech—that private organisations are always more efficient than public organisations, that letting private organisations pursue private profit for shareholders is better for everyone. It is simply not true. We have evidence of decades of environmental devastation, of biodiversity loss, and that is relevant. It is relevant to our view in the Green Party—and, I think, shared by the Government—

SPEAKER: If that was a point of order, the member’s won, keep going.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —that the Government has a responsibility on behalf of its citizens and the environment in which they live to use its collective power to get better outcomes for all of us.

It’s entirely appropriate to send a letter of expectation such as this to a State-owned enterprise or a mixed ownership model company like Air New Zealand expressing the values that we would like to see the company operate with. If anything, we need more of that, because in order to face the challenges that we are collectively facing, we need greater accountability. The requirement or legal responsibility of company directors to pursue the best interests of the company in this narrowly defined idea of maximising the return for shareholders has cost us.

But, actually, this is entirely consistent with the best interests of the company, because the company—Air New Zealand—is going to be better off in a world where climate change is not an existential threat. Air New Zealand is going to be better off as a company in a world by training its employees well and being a best-practice employer, which it has been. Indeed, I think this is entirely consistent, these expectations are actually consistent, with how Air New Zealand has operated and why it has such a good reputation, and why it had such good staff retention for a very long time. Absolutely, it’s appropriate for the people of New Zealand to say, “We have a stake in this airline, and we want to make sure that it’s meeting our needs as a country, our needs for our people to get around.”

Now, of course, one of the other points that I would make is that what we’ve seen in Europe is that where there’s been extensive investment in passenger rail, now countries are actually shutting down flights where passenger rail services exist. This is something that is beyond this particular debate, but we are actually limited in New Zealand because the privatisation of our railways for many decades means that we’re not in a position to have really great passenger services. We’re in a position of playing catch-up, and that limits New Zealanders’ ability to be able to get around the country while reducing emissions. So, obviously, that’s more than Air New Zealand could address, but being able to look into sustainable fuels is certainly something that they will have to do, and they would be aware that they have to do anyway, to be able to be successful as a company in the future.

So I see no problem with this letter. I think it’s appropriate and, if anything, it could have gone further in terms of expectations around the environment and climate change, but I am still hopeful that Air New Zealand will be thinking about those issues for other reasons. To the right side of the House, I say wake up. It’s not 1988 anymore. We have decades of evidence about what is actually going to be better for our people and our planet, and it is not the maximising of private profit at the expense of everyone else.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): I rise to speak into this debate, and the point that I do want to make at the outset is that Minister Robertson has set out a very clear letter with very clear expectations to Air New Zealand, and the point that he made in his contribution, which I would underline, is that those expectations have been discussed with the airline for at least a year. What Mr Robertson has done, in putting these down in writing, is make sure that they are crystal clear for everyone. If anybody here believes in markets and the value of markets and the value of information to markets, they will be celebrating—they will be celebrating—the value of having these things laid out clearly for all other shareholders and all other stakeholders to understand. It seems very unfortunate that that is not the view that came across with the person who called for this debate.

I want to say a few things in relation to Mr Bayly’s comments reported in the media and engaged with in this House. But before I do that, I do want to reiterate the fact that it’s a 52 percent shareholding that Mr Robertson holds on behalf of the people of New Zealand. As the Minister of the Crown responsible for the interests of the people of New Zealand, it is incumbent upon him to make sure that our national carrier is doing well through a very difficult time—a COVID time. The Government stepped in with that $900 million loan facility to make sure the airline could continue to operate, to support our economy, to support New Zealand’s interests. We are all proud of Air New Zealand for the way it continues to operate, and I think New Zealanders would expect that the Minister responsible for the majority of the airline would be clear with them what his expectations on them were on behalf of all New Zealanders and their interests in that airline.

So we’ve got that clear ideological opposition opposite. We heard the challenge from Minister Robertson to the Opposition to outline which airports they would see cut in a situation where they weren’t having an eye to the wider economic benefits in New Zealand, and there was no response. There was no engagement on that question. They simply ducked and dived and had no response on that issue.

The other thing I really want to dig into early on in my contribution is Mr Bayly’s comments, reported in the media, that there may be occasions where the board has to operate in an absolutely commercial focus, and that might differ from the Minister’s letter of expectations, he says. However, he lays out no compelling case for that, and I think if we go through the letter, it’s very difficult to imagine how that might be the case. It simply is not something he’s addressed. It’s not something he’s chosen to address in his comments here. I think he is wanting to outline an ideological view for which he can find no practical outlet.

The expectations outlined by Minister Robertson include that which has always been traditionally outlined for every State-owned enterprise (SOE): it must be a “commercially sustainable and capital efficient business”. I think everyone in this House will support that. It is what SOEs are required to do. It has “To be a ‘national airline’ continuing in operation to support economic development, including access to international markets for our exporters and international tourism linkages, once international borders re-open”. Who in this House wants to call that into question, and how would they think that that stood against the objectives that we would want to have for Air New Zealand?

The expectations include that they “maintain a comprehensive domestic route network that allows people and goods to move across New Zealand in a timely fashion at a reasonable cost”—and again, Mr Robertson has there outlined the expectation at a level; it is up to Air New Zealand to operationalise that. So there is the classic division between the directorship and the operation, and that is preserved. Now, Mr Bayly may wish for that not to be true. Certainly the ACT Party have been champions of letting things fall over. If Hokitika loses their airport, well, boo hoo—that’s the ACT Party view of the world. Kerikeri, Gisborne—whoever loses their airport, that’s the end of it, and it should be a commercial decision, pure and simple. Well, I think the population of New Zealand would beg to differ, and the exporters in those regions, the people engaged in tourism, the international economy, would beg to differ as to whether that was really in the interests either of Air New Zealand or of our international situation.

They include committing to environmental sustainability—“demonstrate its commitment to environmental sustainability, including engaging with the development of new aviation fuels for New Zealand”. Now, I think that that, as Mr Robertson outlined—and I won’t go into this too much because I think he did a pretty clear explanation of why that is so important in the current world. Any airline that wishes to sustain itself into the future is engaged in making sure it lowers its carbon footprint. That is a fundamental point for airlines in terms of their future sustainability, their financial viability. Good on Air New Zealand for being involved with that.

They include having the best workplace relations, given it’s one of New Zealand’s largest employers—again, that has stood Air New Zealand in good stead over the years. It has meant that they have retained high-quality employees. It has meant that they have attracted talent.

Expectations also include, “To continue acting as a responsible corporate citizen”—for goodness’ sake, none of these things are going to likely bring commercial sustainability and capital-efficient business matters into any type of difficulty. That is where Mr Bayly fails to make his point, because he has simply not outlined any case for those things coming into conflict. So even the premise of his criticism does not stack up. It is simple ideological claptrap.

Dr Duncan Webb: Bunkum.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Bunkum, as my colleague says. Air New Zealand, of course, knows these expectations were coming. They have been the matter of conversation, as we have heard.

Now, their share price has been up. I think that is reflective of the fact that Air New Zealand are doing very well in these trying times—of the fact that the Government has stepped in, on behalf of the interests of the majority shareholder and of all New Zealanders, to ensure that it is supported with that $900 million loan facility. The share price is up 74 percent. I think that in itself is something that gives us pause for thought.

So they have been talking about it for a long time. It makes crystal clear what the expectations are. That is good information for other stakeholders. It is good information for management. The divide between management and directorship is preserved. I think Mr Robertson’s letter is an exemplar of what a good letter should look like to an SOE, and as the Minister of SOEs I have studied this letter previously, because, of course, I am in the process of sending out similar ones to SOEs, as has been done for decades. The SOEs have been required to have letters of expectation. That has been done by Ministers of all stripes. There is nothing new here, other than laying out a slightly clearer agenda, as Minister Robertson has done, to make sure that the majority shareholders’ interests are clearly presented and represented on behalf of all New Zealanders.

So I want to challenge the Opposition, once again, to try and come up with any kind of practical conflict, to really come up with any kind of justification for the ideological view that they have laid out, because it simply doesn’t stand scrutiny. Minister Robertson is right to lay those things out, and the Opposition needs to put up or be quiet.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I pick up that gauntlet laid down by Dr Clark, and I don’t think 10 minutes is enough, but I’ll do my best in the time I have. I probably was the first person to raise the Muldoon-esque nature of this Government by describing the Prime Minister as Muldoon with slogans and kindness, and that got quite a bit of pushback. But now we’re seeing that from somebody who actually looks a lot more like Rob Muldoon than the Prime Minister does, and that is Grant Robertson.

Now, here is the number one point, Dr Clark, and it may well be that the Ministers have not read their own briefings, because the briefings to the incoming Ministers from Treasury around Crown entities and State-owned enterprises is very clear. Page 10 of Treasury’s briefing dated December 2020—

Hon Dr David Clark: Chapter and verse number?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Page 10, last line, and listen up, Dr Clark, says, “Shareholding Ministers have no powers to direct the listed companies.” Shareholding Ministers have no powers to direct the listed companies, and Rob Muldoon wouldn’t have cared.

Hon David Parker: Read the letter.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Grant Robertson doesn’t, either. Oh, “Read the letter.”—certainly, Mr Parker. “I am writing … to convey the Government’s expectations”. The Government—

Hon Member: Yeah, it’s not a direction, is it?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Oh, so now we’re dancing on the head of a definitional pin. These aren’t expectations, these aren’t directions; they’re guidelines. They’re ideas. “We’re just riffing. We don’t really mean it.”—so that’s their excuse.

It’s not a form of direction; it’s just a think piece. It’s a thought piece. I doubt it, and guess what? The institutional shareholders of Air New Zealand will certainly doubt it, and I don’t know how many times Mr Robertson used—

Dr Duncan Webb: We’re all buying the shares, though—look at the share price.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Ah, thank you, Dr Webb. I will, because I have, and I’m thinking about Mark Twain’s “lies, damned lies and statistics” when both Dr Clark and the Minister of Finance talk about how great the share price is—how it’s gone up. Ha! Actually, in COVID, it dropped 78 percent, and, yes, it did recover, a bit. From $3.10, it went down to 89c, and now it’s up to something like $1.80. But guess what’s happened since this letter was written—did it go up or down?

Damien Smith: Down.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: It went down—exactly. It’s gone down. So any suggestion that share price is somehow an endorsement of this approach is the worst kind of straw man argument.

But I want to come back to the comment that Mr Robertson kept making about majority shareholders, because they’re in the majority, as if this was an all or nothing—“We have 52 percent, so we can do what we like.”—and the binary response to Mr Seymour’s intervention, that, somehow, because he made a reference to new aviation fuels, now he’s a climate change denier because he thinks that’s a bad thing. Well, firstly, he didn’t say that, and, secondly, he said that there shouldn’t be that level of direction. I agree with him.

Air New Zealand is subject to the emissions trading scheme (ETS). If the Government isn’t happy with the manner in which Air New Zealand or any other company that relies on stationary fuels like aviation fuel to carry out its business, change the ETS. Don’t inflict on the minority shareholders the will of the majority.

I thought the Labour Party stood up for the little guy, stood up for the minorities.

Hon Louise Upston: Not any more.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Not in this case—not in the case of the minority interests not only of institutional investors but of mum and dad investors, of ACC, of KiwiSaver funds. Yes, there are overseas investors, and I can tell the House that when the mixed-ownership model was being followed and Air New Zealand was looking for purchasers of the proportion of the company that went from—what was that, Mr O’Connor? Is there a problem with your nose? That looked like a very interesting action, and it’s a pity we can’t put it on the Hansard. That went down from 75 percent to 51 percent, and the effort that needed to go in to get institutional investors over the fact that the company would still be majority-owned was a considerable mountain to climb. They were nervous. They were nervous because of the very kind of intervention that is articulated in this so-called thought piece.

This is nothing but a direction letter, in my view, in very direct breach of the advice that was given by Treasury to the Ministers in December last year. I’ve also got no doubt that those nervous investors will take flight, and that won’t be bad—[Interruption] they scoff—just for those shareholders; it will be bad for New Zealanders, who are the shareholders, and the value of this company will go back down, again.

It is true that a majority shareholder will have a significant degree of influence over the appointment of directors, but there is a process. In a publicly listed company, there is usually a nomination process and a selection process that is actually at something of arm’s length from the shareholders, majority or otherwise, that is then voted on at an annual general meeting. What the Minister of Finance has said is “Forget about”—

Hon David Parker: By whom?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: By the shareholders. That’s what I’m saying—that there is a degree of influence. That was my prefacing comment, Mr Parker.

But there is no doubt that what is inferred in here—if it’s so obvious, why put it in the letter? The reason is the Minister of Finance wants to do something different from other listed companies. Otherwise, he’d just sit back and say, “OK, bring me your nominations and I’ll vote at the AGM in the way that I can.”, but no. He will influence who goes on this board, and I have to say, without naming names, he may well have influenced who has been on this board in the past and who is no longer on the board, because I can think of a very highly qualified, competent director that is no longer a member of the Air New Zealand board, and I can only speculate on the degree to which there was some political interference in that process. My question is: will it get better or will it get worse?

Now, the Minister talks about the loan facility, and both Mr Mitchell and I are still completely flummoxed. I don’t want to steal Mr Mitchell’s thunder, because he may well introduce this in his speech, but I have no idea why Air New Zealand had to take a loan facility from the Government of up to $900 million at rates of interest that by comparisons with the aviation lending market at the moment are completely eye-watering. It begs the question of whether or not Air New Zealand is being milked for interest, for Crown revenue, and that this was an opportunistic action by Air New Zealand.

When we compare Air New Zealand’s loan facilities with that of our trans-Tasman neighbours in Qantas, I think, from memory, Qantas were paying something like 2.75 percent. We’re paying about three times that in a market with a strong balance sheet. Yes, there was a significant hit last year and a trading hole, but I can’t understand—in fact, frankly, the chairperson of Air New Zealand could not answer the question in the Transport and Infrastructure Committee—why that loan facility was required and not one on the open market. Well, I think this is a stalking horse for nationalising it.

Hon David Parker: Ha!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: “Oh,” he says, “couldn’t possibly do that.”, because they’ve only done it several times before, and if the Hon Julie Anne Genter’s speech is anything to go by, they will have them cheering in the Green Party benches for that action.

It’s not only that. Why, if every organisation, and including this one, that holds itself up as a very, very high-quality employer with no labour disputes, is it necessary to ask Air New Zealand to enhance its role as a best-practice workplace relations company? Or if it was practising sustainability—as I know it is—to then further “enhance”? But, of course, it’s only a thought piece—it’s only suggestions. They’re not being directed, according to members on the other side, and the comprehensive domestic route network is the ultimate level of operational interference.

Yes, we get grumpy when routes, because they are not sustainable, because they are not supported by those communities, are actually having to be ceased. But I actually sense that we’ll see some of these loss-making routes come back, and if Julie Anne Genter compares Air New Zealand to KiwiRail, goodness knows what it’s going to look like in a few years’ time, because KiwiRail is a money pit. Three-quarters of a billion to a billion dollars is poured into that organisation every year, and under this Government—

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

Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): I’ve been here about 20 years. I’ve spoken in a lot of these urgent debates. I’ve got to say it’s not often that I get up to respond to such a lot of old cobblers compared with the last speaker, Michael Woodhouse. What a load of twaddle! He is completely wrong. It is nonsense.

I’ve been a director of many companies. I’ve been a chief executive of many companies—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yeah, not very successful.

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, he says, “Not very successful.” That’s actually not true. Some of the companies I helped found include A2 milk, which has done not too bad. But in my experience as either a chief executive or a director, it’s nonsense to think that a 52 percent shareholder wouldn’t make their expectations of the company known. They own 52 percent; they expect to be able to tell the directors as to what their priorities are as a shareholder. That’s what a letter of expectations does. That’s what any shareholder does, really, in the private sector, even at a shareholding substantially lower than 52 percent. There is nothing wrong with it. It’s a pity the last Government didn’t pay a bit more attention to their letter of expectations for Solid Energy before they ground that into the ground and caused a billion-dollar loss to taxpayers. What a load of twaddle that a responsible Government wouldn’t set out their expectations to a company.

Now, I want to go through some of these. I’ve been involved as Associate Minister of Finance helping the Minister of Finance with these very issues, so I’m happy to disabuse some of the members opposite in respect of their ignorant assertions in the House so far today. Air New Zealand hasn’t been required to take one cent of the loan facility that has been provided by the Crown. If they can get cheaper money anywhere else, they’re welcome to it. We made that point in those very negotiations. How was the rate struck? I was intimately involved in that. It was struck by Treasury on advice from Goldman Sachs, who were the investment bankers who were advising the Government, and it was struck on the basis of average rates that were market rates out of the United States and elsewhere in the world at the very point at which that rate was struck.

So it’s a market rate, and if Air New Zealand could have got money cheaper from anywhere else, they could have taken it and they still can. That rate has been restruck more recently—and it’s true that it’s dropped because the market rate has dropped since the parlous times when it was struck first at the time when COVID struck, when, I can tell you what, lending rates for airlines that didn’t have passengers were pretty expensive because lenders thought there was a lot of risk attached to the loan.

Dr Duncan Webb: And there was.

Hon DAVID PARKER: And there was.

The next point is about maintaining a domestic network. Now, New Zealand is more reliant on having a national carrier than most countries because of our isolation. In truth, when Air New Zealand gets into trouble it’s because their international routes close down or become unprofitable. They lost money in Ansett. When they lose big sums of money, it’s on their international route, not their domestic route.

When we interrogated this issue, we found that the capital expenditure and operating costs of the marginal routes on the regional network are a mere bagatelle to the performance of Air New Zealand. We’re not expecting them to run unprofitable routes, but where a route is close to their return on capital, we think that they should be running those routes and we told them that. And so other investors in the company now know that and when they recapitalise, other investors will be aware that the Government wants them to maintain not unprofitable routes but not just routes that are the most highly profitable routes. We want them to maintain a regional network and as a shareholder of the country, we should tell them that and Air New Zealand will do that willingly and other shareholders will know that also.

In respect of the biofuels issue, that arose because Greg Foran came to us and said, “Look, we recognise that we need to do our bit by reducing our climate-changing emissions.” They want to be one of the first airlines in the world that are using electric planes. That will happen on domestic routes. It will happen on domestic routes; internationally, they’re reliant on fuel substitution. They want to make progress in that regard. They want our support to do so. We express our support to do so and, you know, we’re willing to talk.

The other thing is having responsible workplace relations. The National Party wouldn’t object to us saying, “We want you to get a good return on capital.”, but they object to us saying, “We want you to have decent labour relations.” What a load of old twaddle! This is an absolutely proper letter of expectation put out there transparently. In terms of directorships, of course, the shareholder will show an interest, and the idea that the company should feed directors to us that we then appoint so that they’re in control of themselves, without regard to shareholder wishes, is another example of rubbish theory from Mr Woodhouse, who spoke just previously.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just want to start by saying that in his speech to the House the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, said that he was very kindly going to keep the Air New Zealand route to Kerikeri open for me. But I don’t think he realises that Kerikeri is three hours away from my house, so I don’t know if it’s really going to be that useful for me. Maybe a service out of Dairy Flat would be better.

When I first read this letter, I thought it was an April Fool’s letter, and I started to go through it. It opened with a profound statement. It said: “I recognise that the last 12 months has been an incredibly challenging time for Air New Zealand,”. Well, I’m pretty sure they understand that, when their revenue went almost to zero overnight when we were hit as a country with COVID. It then went on to say, “The Crown has provided significant support to Air New Zealand through this period in a variety of ways, including provision of the Crown Standby Loan Facility.” That is true, and I’m going to come back to that point and to the comment that one of the Cabinet Ministers made to me today around it.

But then I go on to more of the bullet points: “To be a ‘national airline’ continuing in operation to support economic development, including access to international markets for our exporters and international tourism”. That’s great, coming from a Government that had a Cabinet Minister turn around and say that our tourism sector was cocky. Now, all of a sudden, they want to support them, through the letter to Air New Zealand. “To maintain a comprehensive domestic … network that allows people and goods to move across New Zealand in a timely fashion and at a reasonable cost;”. Well, I’ll tell you what. If the Minister of Finance wants to send a letter to the board and the chair of Air New Zealand, then maybe they should start delivering some of their projects in a timely fashion and at a reasonable cost. “To demonstrate [its] … commitment to environmental sustainability, including engaging with the development of new aviation fuels for New Zealand;” This is from a Government that’s delivered five electric cars and is returning us to coal, telling Air New Zealand to make that investment. Then we go to “To enhance its role as a leader for best practice workplace relations, given that it’s one of New Zealand’s largest employers.” This, again, from a Government that just had a union come out and talk about taking a vote of no confidence in a senior Cabinet Minister.

To me, sending a letter like this to Air New Zealand—not only, as it’s been laid out very seriously by my colleagues Michael Woodhouse and Andrew Bayly, they want to have a look at themselves and, first of all, be able to deliver this for the country themselves before they start sending letters laid out like this to our national carrier. I want to come back to the provision of the Crown standby loan facility, because one of their Cabinet Ministers today told me, “You know what? There’s no better time for us as the Government to be borrowing money because capital is so cheap—it’s so cheap.” That’s true. Capital is very cheap.

But I want to come now to a very serious point, and that was the fact that Air New Zealand appeared in front of the select committee this year, in February, and we had the new chief executive officer, Greg Foran and Dame Therese Walsh. I wanted to acknowledge them and thank them for the front-line services that Air New Zealand do provide us as a country, and I asked them this question: “There’s a couple of things I want to explore around the loan facility that’s been set up by the Government between … [them] and the Government, understanding that they are … [a] major shareholder. … I just wanted to seek some clarity around the fact that, at the onset of COVID-19, you secured a $900 million loan facility from the Government at 7 percent to 9 percent interest rate. That was in two tranches, the first being 600k at 7 percent, and the second 300k at 8 … [and] with both rates increasing to 1 percent, or a 1 percent increase if the facility remained after 12 months. Around the same time, Qantas secured financing in Australia of a bit over a billion dollars [that’s] in Australian dollars, at [a rate of] 2.75 percent for up to 10 years.” And when you convert that into salaries and wages, that’s $50 million that we could have saved if we had entered into an agreement like that with the New Zealand Government.

Dame Therese Walsh was very interesting. She said this: “So, look, I think the context needs to be put around this, and that is that we were in a trading halt, [they were in a full trading halt] in an extreme situation where our revenue was going from 100 percent to close to zero …. So I think that context is important. We’d made a decision that we needed to approach the Government for a lifeline … There was a discussion and negotiation around the interest rates that you’ve referred to. And, obviously, as a company, we wish to pay the lowest cost of lending and funding that we can, but the Government also had to take its position and view on that matter. As I’ve said before, it wasn’t the most significant item at that moment. And I agree with you that it’s certainly money … we would prefer to keep; however, it was part of the negotiation at … [that] time.”

Why has the Government—

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

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Mr Mitchell probably isn’t used to doing an urgent debate that his party hasn’t called, because he really was struggling for material there, reading from a transcript of the Air New Zealand examination. But look, you know what?

Hon Peeni Henare: Written by Chris Luxon!

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I want to hit the very foundation of this. You’re right, Mr Henare! I want to hit the absolute foundation of this question, because, for some bizarre reason, on that side of the House they don’t seem to know any company law. So the question is: what is in the interests of a company? And you know what? It appears, bizarrely, that that side of the House thinks that it’s not in the best interests of a company to take notice of climate change. They think it’s in the best interests of a company to burn aviation fuel till the cows come home, and not take any notice of the fact that the world is changing. Julie Anne Genter touched on that at length, and she’s right. But, you know, she’s not alone. Chapman Tripp, that very well-respected law firm, had a sustainable finance forum in 2019. Do you know what they said? They said it would be a breach of the duties of a director not to take climate change into account. So when we think about it, companies need to be prepared for the future. It is absolutely responsible for them to do that.

Hon Mark Mitchell: So how can they do that with a 9 percent interest rate on a facility?

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: This is found in section 131 of the Companies Act.

Hon Mark Mitchell: They won’t draw down on it.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: It’s the law. You have to read it, Mr Mitchell.

Hon Mark Mitchell: They won’t draw down on it.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: So why don’t you go and open a book? You must be reading now: your lips are moving!

Now, look, we need to go back and look at the Companies Act. What the Act says is that a director must act in the best interests of a company. What does that mean? Does it mean they’ve got to improve profits at all costs or does it mean that they can be a responsible citizen, look after their communities, look after their environment, look after their people, and at the same time run a profitable business? Well, it’s not hard, is it? The days of the neo-liberal “money at all costs” are gone. The sun has set, thank goodness for that. We now expect all of our corporate citizens to act responsibly.

Of course it’s appropriate for the Minister to set out to Air New Zealand those things that he sees as responsible corporate citizenship. So to be a national airline—to the people of New Zealand, you and I are the key shareholders, and it is entirely appropriate for it to be a proper airline that offers full services that don’t just serve me in Christchurch, Helen White in Auckland, but even people in Kerikeri, in Gore, in Invercargill, Hawke’s Bay—the list goes on and on.

Look, as Grant Robertson said—fantastic Minister of Finance, with great stewardship of this company and the nation’s assets—this is a critical part of our infrastructure. New Zealand needs a national airline to connect each other and to connect us to the world. It is absolutely critical that the shareholders in that company, through Grant Robertson, let the company know that. To simply ask that it has comprehensive domestic routes so that people can be connected, so that people who want to can come to this place and make their views be known, because everyone’s views are important—that is entirely appropriate and makes that company a good corporate citizen.

So we do need to look at the Companies Act and recognise that when it says “the interests of the company”, it doesn’t just mean maximising the profits of the company. It’s really important to note that in that Act and elsewhere, it is very clear that that is an open definition. When we ask what’s in the interest of you or I, it’s not making more money or having more money in the bank. It’s no good having money in the bank if we’re depressed and sick. We want a company that is healthy in every respect.

So the letter from the Minister is absolutely on all fours with this. And section 131 of the Companies Act itself sets out situations when the company can properly act in the interests of other parties. Here’s an interesting fact: if the company is a subsidiary owned 51 percent or more by another party, it can act in the interests of its holding company. Now, that’s not a million miles from a situation where the holding company is the people of New Zealand. Entirely appropriate to say, “Look, you’re not simply a widely held company. You’ve got a majority shareholding and, of course, the majority shareholder wants to have a say.”

I’m quite flummoxed by the floundering around of the Opposition. They don’t seem to understand—

Kieran McAnulty: They don’t know what “flummoxed” means!

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: They don’t know what “flummoxed” means, Mr McAnulty! They don’t know what company law means. They don’t know what best interests means. They don’t even know what leadership means. So here we are, asking them to be a leader in good workplace relations. We know that a workplace with happy employees, employees that are well looked after and well paid, is a good company, a strong company.

Look, the fact of the matter is that all this can be done whilst maintaining a good bottom-line, as indeed the Minister makes very clear in the letter, which Mr Mitchell basically read out. So we know that to do this is nothing more than what would be expected. So we absolutely, as a country, need to get away from the suggestion that the interests of a company are simply the interests of making more money and maximising the bottom line whilst at the same time the environmental bottom-line is degraded; the human resources, the human capital bottom-line is degraded; the structure of New Zealand, the transport infrastructure of New Zealand, is degraded. That just goes to show the narrow, short-term thinking of the Opposition and of the ACT Party in bringing this urgent debate to the House.

The fact of the matter is that this letter showed that this Government is committed to long-term thinking. Aviation is a big emitter of climate emissions, and we need to address that, but at the same time we know we need to stay connected with the world. We know that this is an important part of our infrastructure. So we’re saying, as you look forward—

Hon Simon Bridges: You guys have shut up shop.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —not just two years, Mr Bridges, not just to the election, but look forward 10 years and 30 years for the prosperity of New Zealand, it’s appropriate to absolutely look at the climate profile of aviation and the wider transport industry. We want to be leaders. So yes, go ahead and investigate alternate fuels. Can we use biofuel as an aviation fuel? Why don’t you look at that? What other low-emission alternatives are out there? What other kinds of fuel in aviation exist? Can we have electric planes? Let’s explore all of those options. If we lead the world in this, this will be one of the best airlines in the world—even better than it is already, and we all know how good Air New Zealand is.

Absolutely, we want this to be done sustainably—sustainably in an environmental sense and sustainably in a commercial sense—so it’s entirely appropriate that the Government supported Air New Zealand by funding it through one of the most troubling and traumatic periods that could be imagined. And we were right there. At the time, if I remember rightly, so was the other side. There wasn’t a whisper. They did not demur that we should be funding Air New Zealand. They probably weren’t looking—who knows? So there you go. At the time, they were entirely behind us, and now they’re changing their mind—divided, distracted, and not really knowing the right hand from the left.

Members on the other side of the House have repeatedly called for Air New Zealand to fly to their own part of the country. Nathan Guy—now, he was a good guy, wasn’t he? He wanted them to fly to Kāpiti if I remember rightly. But, you know—so here he was standing up in the House, and now, when we have it here, they’re saying, “No, no. Don’t advocate for regional New Zealand.” Well, we will advocate for regional New Zealand, because we are the party that cares for all New Zealanders—in cities, in the regions, and across the board.

So what this letter shows, this letter of instruction or of recommendation from Grant Robertson, is that he’s a responsible Minister, a Minister who takes a long-term view and has the interests of all New Zealanders at heart and the interests of Air New Zealand as a fantastic company. Well done, Minister Robertson.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

Debate on Budget Policy Statement

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Chairperson of the Finance and Expenditure Committee): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2021.

What a pleasure it is to rise after the last speaker—I must say he was outstanding. I’m not sure I could better him, but I’ll give it a go. I must retract somewhat from my previous pugnacious approach, because my role as chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee is a little less partisan. My role is to perhaps bring to the House the proceedings of the Finance and Expenditure Committee—a great committee, a committee which tries its hardest to work together across the board. I must say, the hearing into the Budget Policy Statement was one where, I think, both Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, and the Secretary to the Treasury were fulsome in their replies. I think members from the other side had a pretty good effort at probing and inquiring into the Government’s finances.

Of course, we then took submissions. We had 58 submissions in total and we heard from quite some number of people on the Budget Policy Statement. I must say that they came from across the board. CCS Disability Action, obviously, came with a particular perspective about the need to have a Budget policy that looks after their community. Caritas, the Catholic aid agency, talked about foreign aid. The Child Poverty Action Group, that great friend of the Labour Party—you know, they do a lot of good work, but they absolutely let their views be known that child poverty should be a focus, as it is. And, of course, others from, perhaps, different areas. The rural sector was well represented. Federated Farmers gave a submission, the National Council of Women, the Salvation Army—and that is just a short selection.

But I do want to say that they were pretty much all useful submissions. There were some that were perhaps a little challenging, suggesting that we should defund the police or perhaps, you know, do away with military spending. I just want to say that I certainly recognise that those parts of the Public Service are really important, and, across the House, I’m sure we all agree that we need to fund them adequately to do the very important role that they do. Whilst not particularly mentioned in the Budget Policy Statement, that was one theme in the submissions that I wanted to touch on.

But, importantly, the focus: the fantastic wellbeing approach—the world-leading wellbeing approach—that Grant Robertson launched in New Zealand. Quite rightly, the world is looking to New Zealand to see how we are implementing this and to see the improvements that can be made. Now, I know even the National Party accept that it is a really important question to say that when we invest taxpayer funds, Government funds, into any initiative, we want to make sure we’re getting the best return for them across the board, not just whether we have a particular output, whether we can tick a box, but how do we measure all of those other ripple effects that we might have? All of those things that make lives better—or, perhaps tragically, to make them not as worse as they otherwise would have been, you know? So when we are putting money into childcare or into Oranga Tamariki, things like that, how do we measure not only that we’ve spent some money on supporting a family but also those effects that that child might go to school, that child might in turn have a family which is stronger and more resilient than the one they came from, and have better life prospects? That is what wellness is: not just looking at how we spend our money in a kind of appropriation and audit sense but looking at it in a far more textured and contextual way. That is world-leading.

I’m not saying it is without its challenges. Quite rightly, in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, we are having an ongoing conversation across the board with a lot of agencies about how we measure those outcomes. I welcome that, and I know Treasury welcomes that as well. This Budget Policy Statement really reiterates that the wellbeing approach remains the right approach.

We absolutely want to ensure that the outcomes aimed at are being achieved. One of the really important things in doing that is a collaborative approach, a cross-agency approach, and a collective responsibility—the idea that even though the appropriation might go to justice or to police or to corrections, those agencies need to be cooperating with each other, need to be talking with each other, and need to be connecting with each other to make sure that it is not simply the case that, “Well, this is a question for the courts. This is an issue for sentencing. You deal with it over there. Don’t worry what corrections outcome it has. Don’t worry what housing outcome it has.” We absolutely need to have an approach which isn’t siloed. And that is a challenge, right? Because for anyone in any job, to broaden their horizons outside of their own department, their own immediate circle of influence, is a challenge. That’s the challenge that we’ve got to get out there: that we need to have agencies and agencies are only individuals, so that means people talking with each other, talking not simply to people in their own department but across agencies.

Of course, one of the real questions is measurement. Again, the Minister was very useful, very knowledgeable, and articulate when he talked through the Living Standards Framework, the fact that across all of those domains—whether it be the environment, whether it be human capital, whether it be infrastructure, or whether it simply be the economy—there are multiple measures that we can look at to determine. Again, the joy of being world-leading and the difficulty with being world-leading is that we are developing this as we go. But do you know what that means? It is getting better. It is getting better and better and better. So the Living Standards Framework is something that we are really going to be working on.

I do want to touch, though, on the COVID response. The Minister and the secretary were very clear that wellbeing took a step backwards. I just want to recognise that for a lot of people, COVID hit them hard. People have lost their jobs—not as many as Treasury had predicted. But in terms of maintaining and enhancing wellbeing, our COVID response is really important. Absolutely part of the Budget Policy Statement—its main thrust, really—is saying that we’ve got to maintain our COVID response; first of all, maintaining the protection of the health of our people, because that is part of our wellbeing, right? And a critical part. But the really interesting lesson from the past year or so has been that our health response, having a healthy population, a population that can go about its business, has benefited us economically beyond compare. We are the envy of the world, not only because we can sit close to each other, chat, socialise, and do all the things that we usually do but also because we have an economy which is still thriving. Now, it took a step back.

I think the other thing that came out clearly in the Budget Policy Statement, in the debates and so on, in the examinations, was that we have uncertain times ahead, that it is not absolutely clear that we are on a flat, upward trajectory. We’ve had some outrageous growth periods. The September quarter was, I think, 13.9 percent growth—unprecedented. And then the next quarter, we went back 1 percent. That kind of up and down may well last a while, so we need not be alarmed. We do have a predicted steady growth, and we need to be aware of that. But let’s be very clear: just because it appears the worst is over, this Minister of Finance won’t be embarking on any austerity measures. We are not going to start tightening the belt and paying back the loans simply because we look like we are through the worst of the woods. No, there is a clear plan in place. The projections are that we will be back to surplus in 2027. It would be utterly counter-productive and quite harmful not only to the economy but to ordinary people, to mum and dad New Zealanders, if we were to start slashing Government spending now. We didn’t spend all of the COVID response fund; there’s a good amount left. That is not there simply to be spent, but we absolutely need to be prepared for anything that is ahead. So that is sitting there in the kitty for the rainy day. And what that means is that we are in a lot better—wildly better—position than we thought we would have been.

Helen White: Wildly.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Wildly better, Helen, wildly better. And that is a good thing, but let’s not get complacent. We absolutely need to remain vigilant and remain ready to respond.

But, as chair of the select committee, it was a great discussion—great submissions—from members from all sides of the House, and I am looking forward to the constructive contribution from the other side. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Hey, well, thank you, Mr Speaker, and I do acknowledge the chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Dr Duncan Webb. I just wish I was wildly excited about that speech. Gee, I’ve got to say, you are no Mr Hon Grant Robertson. Oh, speak of—I was going to say the devil, but I can’t say that about Mr Robertson. I’m so glad he’s turned up—the new Mr Muldoon of New Zealand politics, Mr Grant Robertson. As we’ve all been debating just before, that letter to the board of Air New Zealand, Mr Robertson, was a particularly bad piece of judgment.

Anyway, let’s talk about the Budget. I think it’s worthwhile just reminding ourselves where we sit at the moment. So this year, we’re going to report a budget deficit of $23 billion. Over the next few years to 2027, we’re going to report another budget deficit, continual budget deficit in every year amounting to another $83 billion. Our current debt—we’ve blown $40 billion in the last year. So we’ve gone from $60 billion to $103 billion I think, and we will see it go up to close to $200 billion. And I think what people forget is yesterday we borrowed about $110 million. Today we’re going to borrow $110 million, and tomorrow we’re going to borrow $110 million.

Hon Simon Bridges: That’s a lot of Trelise Cooper!

ANDREW BAYLY: That is right, Mr Bridges, but I don’t buy Trelise Cooper—you may have other reasons. But I’ve got to say, this Government and the financial profile of where we sit at the moment—[Interruption] Oh, there’s someone who buys Trelise Cooper on the other side, well done. I’ve got to say, when you look at that financial profile, it’s a pretty ugly case, unfortunately. And I’m not saying we should not have spent that money, and I do acknowledge a lot of the spending has been worthwhile, and I’ll talk more about that shortly.

But I’ll tell you what else has happened over the last three years. We’ve seen house prices rise by about—

Hon Mark Mitchell: That’s right—47 percent.

ANDREW BAYLY: Yeah, 47 percent, and house stock is worth just under $1.4 trillion—$1.4 trillion. It has exploded under this Government over the last three years. And you can’t keep saying nine years of neglect when you’ve been in power for nearly four years.

Christopher Luxon: Four years of failure.

ANDREW BAYLY: Four years of failure, particularly on the housing market.

Then the other thing—and this is what’s really going to hurt people soon, and they’re just starting to hear it; they’re just starting to get this—is the cost of living. It’s the issue around the increase in rents. We know rents have gone up $120 a week. And for people who rent, they do not have discretionary income. That is everything that they have to pay, and when it goes up by $120, they can’t just take it from somewhere else. They have to pay it—it comes out of their salaries—they have little alternative. It means that they’re going to not be able to save for the deposit on their house, because they’re paying more money in rent. It’s a vicious circle.

Then we’re going to see the increasing avalanche of electricity prices, and it’s only just starting. And we’ve got a Minister of energy who really does not understand the energy market. I can guarantee you, and I’ll say this publicly: prices of electricity and energy in general are going to skyrocket under this Government over the next 2½ years, and we will watch with interest because, unfortunately, the most vulnerable New Zealanders are the ones that are going to be missing out.

But what else do you see when you look around? Well, I see growing levels of poverty. And unfortunately, the Government has not been able to match its wonderful words on reducing poverty, and I think that’s incredibly bad. The other thing is huge problems in health, and particularly in mental health. And I’ve got to acknowledge my colleague Matt Doocey, who has been prosecuting the case where they’re grand on announcements and little on delivery and, in fact, even worse than that, haven’t actually put the funding into where they said they would go.

Poor educational outcomes—big issues. When you compare us against the OECD, we are going backwards at a rate of knots that is most worrying. And the worst thing is the Ministry of Education claim that we’re going the other way, but the Programme for International Student Assessment scores show a different result.

Then we’ve got the issue around immigration and the broken families—the people that are living in New Zealand, hard-working people who’ve immigrated to New Zealand who haven’t seen their families for over 400 days, who are locked in New Zealand, just waiting for the Government to fix up the managed isolation and quarantine facilities and show a little bit of compassion.

So what are we seeing from the Government? What’s been the response? Well, the first thing Mr Robertson’s done is he’s shoved up the tax rate—39 percent. And even according to the Treasury expectations—which I think are overstated—the first year they’re going to raise $80 million. Well, in the day that it took us to debate that in urgency under the watch of Mr Robertson, we borrowed another $110 million. We went backwards that day—we went backwards that day.

Then we have the issue around tax deductibility of interest. Well, gee—well, gee, how that’s going to impact on future developments. I was just talking to an ex-partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers who was telling me how it was having a chilling effect even on new developments.

I’ve got to say, the issue around where we are as an economy—we’ve gone backwards last year. I note that the chair of the select committee only mentioned the last sort of couple of quarters. Well, actually, last year we went backwards by nearly 3 percent in terms of GDP growth, which actually put us behind Australia, which was about minus 2.5. We’re nearly 3 percent, and Ireland, who is another island nation who can control its borders well, had positive 2.5 percent. We’re 13th in the OECD list in terms of growth rates. And I know we hear those wonderful soothing words from the Minister of Finance, but the reality speaks a different thing. We’re middling in the order of growth rates.

And then when you talk about—well, I’ve got to acknowledge that Mr Robertson did a lot of good stuff through COVID to support New Zealand businesses and people. But I’ve got to say this to you, Mr Robertson: what you did was really not much different from every other developed country in the world. And I’ll give you the stats—I know you like numbers, Mr Robertson—93 percent of all OECD countries implemented a wage subsidy. Big tick, we did that too. Eighty-seven percent directly lent to small to medium sized enterprises. You did that. Good one. Sixty-two percent implemented some sort of debt moratorium. Good one. Forty-nine percent did training. You did that. Actually, what this is just showing, Mr Robertson, is you did everything that everyone else did. But the one thing you didn’t do that two-thirds of countries in the OECD did was they dealt with the issue of rents, and you should have dealt with the issue of rents, particularly for small and medium enterprises, because they put in rent aid, and you should have done it. It would have cost you $300 million a month—I did the numbers.

So I hope this forthcoming Budget is how we reset the economy, and I’m just hoping that in the forthcoming, we see some issues and some initiatives that encourage businesses to actually go out and employ people and do the stuff. But, unfortunately, your record talks differently. What have you done? You banned oil and gas. That’s not a big industry; it’s a little industry. Don’t worry about that; it’s a minor one! We’ve increased sick pay, we’ve reduced labour flexibility, we introduced a new extra public holiday—we don’t even know what the dates are because we’ve got to be able to work it out—we’ve made some changes to the Overseas Investment Office, but the reality is we’re still having trouble getting investors to come to New Zealand. We made minimum wage increases at a time that most companies are struggling for cash. What a beautiful sense of timing! We don’t disagree with the principle of increasing the minimum wage, but how rapidly you did it and what it means to the many hundreds of thousands of businesses who are already short on cash because you didn’t do the rent subsidy—they’re already struggling, and you just came and gave them a double whammy. And then we’ve got the issue of fair pay agreements coming up—wow.

All these things, we reckon it’s going to cost nearly $3 billion that you have taken and imposed on New Zealand businesses. And I love how you want to do these programmes of increasing minimum wage but, of course, who pays for it? Not you, Mr Robertson, not out of your Budget but out of the budgets of mums and dads who own businesses all around the country, working hard every day, and you’re just socking it to them, and, unfortunately, that’s a bad thing to do.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. The only person who enjoyed that speech more than me was Christopher Luxon, to be honest, because he was looking and thinking, “OK, as I’m putting the ticket together—me and Simon Bridges, my finance spokesperson and deputy—I can now do it without any concern or care in the world.” That speech was a little bit like those fridge magnets you get with a whole lot of different words and you just reorder them and then just read them out in any random order whatsoever.

I wasn’t here for all of the debate on Air New Zealand, but I would have enjoyed Mr Luxon’s contribution. He was crying out for the kind of letter that I wrote to Air New Zealand when he was chief executive so he would know for certain that he shouldn’t be shutting down all of those regional routes that he shut down when he was chief executive. He would have known for sure he shouldn’t shut down those regional routes. I look forward to hearing from Mr Luxon later in the debate.

The Budget Policy Statement this year was a unique document, not just because of its most excellent photography on the front cover, which cost the taxpayer zero dollars and was, I believe, an excellent way for the document to be put to the public, but it was also unique because this is the first time that the clause in the Public Finance Act was exercised that allowed the Government to de-link the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update from the Budget Policy Statement. The reason that we did that was because we are going through one of the most uncertain and volatile times that the New Zealand economy has ever—or has certainly seen in my lifetime, and has hardly ever seen before. We wanted to give ourselves the maximum amount of time to be able to put a Budget Policy Statement together that recognised the volatility that is in the global economy.

As we stand here today, it does bear pausing for a moment when we think about this Budget Policy Statement and the Budget that will come and flow from it—the position, the fortunate position, New Zealand finds itself in through the hard work of the team of 5 million. Just this morning, if you wanted to read the daily update of what’s happening with COVID around the world, you would see that in the Netherlands they’ve just reintroduced a night-time curfew, France has gone into another form of lockdown, Thailand’s increasing the restrictions that it has—all of these countries around the world who are struggling to get towards the form of normality that New Zealand has actually had for the vast bulk of the last year. So as we look at the world that we’re living in, the level of uncertainty and volatility that we have to put a Budget together in has never been higher.

So when I look at Budget 2021 and this Budget Policy Statement that leads into it, there are, essentially, three core elements to it, and they are the three themes that were given in the Speech from the Throne: to keep New Zealanders and continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19; to accelerate our economic recovery and rebuild; and to get on with addressing the major issues around child wellbeing, around housing, and around climate change. When we think about that issue of keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19, I was interested in Mr Bayly’s remark about how he compares where New Zealand is at in that regard. The IMF, Bloomberg, and the Lowy Institute have all ranked New Zealand’s response to COVID-19 among the best in the world, and that is because from day one, we took the approach that the best approach for the economy was also a strong public health approach. The two can’t be de-linked. Mr Bayly can talk about Ireland, but we know that Ireland has had deaths in huge amounts greater than New Zealand, and an economy that’s stopped and started and has locked itself down over time.

We have been able to have a consistent approach here in New Zealand, built on that strong public health approach, but also built on two core principles for business: that of cash flow and of confidence. Everything we have done in terms of the supports we have provided have been built around the idea of cash flow and confidence, and that will continue to be the way we approach achieving that theme of keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. We did it when we saw the resurgence in Auckland, and we were able to deploy the new resurgence support payment that we had there, as well as the wage subsidy scheme. We did that because we had been careful with our COVID response and recovery fund. We hadn’t done as we had been urged by those on the opposite side of the House, to just spend it all, just spend it all right now, not worry about that, not have money in the kitty. So we were able to do that and we will continue to do that.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, Mr Woodhouse, I debated your former finance spokesperson. I was the person who looked through the numbers in the alternative budget from the National Party to see that that money was being spent on other matters. This Government has taken the responsible approach of having money held back for COVID and for resurgences, and that has stood us in great stead and allows us to continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19.

But what the Budget also does—the Budget Policy Statement and the Budget that flows from it will do—is accelerate our economic recovery and rebuild. We’ve done that by our massive investment in infrastructure—over $40 billion over five years going into making sure that we have the infrastructure that we need for a modern New Zealand. That does not only do the job we want it to do to reduce congestion, to be able to build more houses, but it keeps people in work. One of the main goals of this Government has been to keep unemployment down during this COVID period, and we have succeeded. We now see unemployment under 5 percent, compared to the rest of the world—the OECD average of around 6.4 percent, even 6.9 percent, I believe, over in Australia. So we have here in New Zealand a record of making sure that our recovery actually builds jobs and takes people with us.

But now we begin the process of reconnecting with the world. The trans-Tasman bubble gives us that opportunity to see tourists come in, to make sure they’re there. All the while, we’ve connected with the world through our exports, which have continued to go out, supported by the Government’s support scheme for aviation services. But now we have that process building up of making sure that we will see our tourism sector start to move forward. Minister Stuart Nash—as indicated in the Budget Policy Statement, we know that there are sectors that will continue to need support, and that includes the tourism sector, and Minister Nash has already given an outline of where that will go. We’ve also had the housing package announced, which is a critical part of making sure we build that stock of housing that contributes so much to our wellbeing but also to our infrastructure and to job creation. So accelerating the recovery and rebuild is critical.

Then thirdly are the big issues of our time: how we make sure that we improve child wellbeing, how we make sure that we get on top of the housing crisis, and how we make sure that we have a response to climate change that is progressive and modern and puts us at the forefront of countries who are not only addressing the challenge that faces future generations but finding the opportunities within that for job creation, for investment in our regions. That will be a major focus of the Budget.

Backing up that are three major reform programmes that this Government has under way: the reform of our planning rules, the reform of water, and the reform of our health system. These are three critical underpinning aspects of what will make all of those major goals for the Government work. If you put that agenda together—around climate change, around child wellbeing, around housing affordability, around health, around water, and around planning—you have a massive, ambitious programme of work to make sure that New Zealand can thrive both socially and economically into the future. The Budget is going to be focused around building off all of those things.

For New Zealand, as we look to this Budget Policy Statement, we have to make sure that the balance—the careful balance—that we have struck around fiscal management continues throughout the next few years. I heard my colleague Duncan Webb, just as I was coming into the House, talk about the importance of not adopting austerity policies, because the thing that would take New Zealand backwards would be to believe that having saved for the rainy day and then used the money when the rainy day arrived—to suddenly think that we can click our fingers and go back to where we were and that that will not damage the social fabric of New Zealand is plain wrong, but it does seem to be what we’re hearing from the Opposition. So Andrew Bayly mimicking the bored cat—he wanted the borders open; he wanted the borders closed. He also wanted us to borrow more and borrow less at the same time. I invite National Party speakers, when they get up, to tell us: do they approve of the borrowing programme? And if they don’t, what goes? What’s not going to happen? What’s going to get cut in order to bring that debt level back down, right down to where it was before we went in?

Of course we will continue on a path of debt reduction. It is the right thing to do, and that path is laid out in the Budget Policy Statement. Of course we will make sure that we continue to work towards a sustainable surplus. We will do all of those things because that is the right thing to do, and that is the balance, but it has to be balanced against investment in our people, in public services, in education, in health and housing. So the National Party can’t have it both ways. Either we borrowed the money and it was the right thing to do, or they want to make sure we go back to austerity. They’re the two options in front of the National Party.

On this side of the House, we are absolutely convinced of the strategy that sits inside this Budget Policy Statement. It is a strategy of a balanced approach that invests in our infrastructure, that supports the core public services that we need, and that has a plan for making sure that we address climate change and gives our young people, our children, a future. I’m proud of the Budget Policy Statement, and I look forward to delivering the Budget in May.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): My colleagues were speculating on who would be the next Labour Minister of Finance, and the name that came out was Dr Duncan Webb. Frankly, he couldn’t do much worse a job than the one we’ve got now. That’s not my pick, I have to say. I think the next Labour finance Minister is sitting two seats behind him and could be the first female Minister of Finance. That’s Barbara Edmonds. She’s the rising star in an otherwise—well, interesting intake.

I have to say about the Budget Policy Statement (BPS), though, from the Minister of Finance, the only thing fiscally prudent about this is the photo on the front, and clearly they’ve saved a few hundred dollars in getting it done professionally. The Minister couldn’t even be parochial. It’s not an Otago shot, it’s not a Dunedin, it’s not Otago Peninsula, but it is probably a little less than the cost of what’s inside this.

Now, I want to take up the point that was made on page 19 of the Budget Policy Statement, because it’s simply not right. It says, “Before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Labour-led Government ran surpluses.” Well, actually, they didn’t. It should have a few more words at the end of that. They ran surpluses into the ground and in two years took fiscal projections of surpluses up to $8.5 billion by, I think, 2024 or 2025 and turned it into a deficit by 2019/20. Now, COVID needed spending, but the amount of financial licence that has been taken by this Government and the use of COVID as a cover for financial profligacy is, I think, something that we need to talk about, because if there’s one thing that Labour Governments do really well, it’s spending money, and the perfect storm is the conditions that enable them, that give them the licence to do that.

The Minister asked, challenged us, to say that we wouldn’t have to borrow it. I don’t agree. We would. We would’ve done many of the things that this Government has done, and we did do them in times of other crisis—the global financial crisis, where we made sure that not a single person had a benefit cut or was supported otherwise during those longer, much longer, straitened times. But the idea that if we were to spend less than this Government somehow things should have to be cut is a myth and it’s wrong and it needs to be put down and away. The reality is that growing the economy helps the Government, helps Crown revenue. Holding the economy stable and improving it is the best way to reduce borrowing. Returning back to surplus sooner than we otherwise might is the best way to reduce our debt.

Now, the Government’s done well in that regard. But you know what? Going into lockdown was the easiest part of COVID. Managing and controlling people’s lives and telling them what they can and cannot do and closing borders is actually quite easy. Moving from pandemic to endemic and safely opening borders and actually allowing international students in and allowing tourists in and the essential workers that we have so that fruit doesn’t rot on the ground in the Hawke’s Bay and Coromandel and Central Otago—that’s the tough stuff. And how much more are we going to have to borrow because of the loss of Crown revenue, because of the loss of profit, because of the decisions that have and have not been taken by this Government?

Treasury point out, and the BPS says, that there is significant uncertainty about the trajectory that we’re on, and one of the reasons for that uncertainty—and the biggest uncertainty, in my mind—is Crown revenue. Now, the numbers in this statement are frankly heroic, and they’re based on receipts that are cash, GST—so spending has been OK—provisional tax. But tax on profits eventually finally returned is going to be down—significantly down, I would suggest—on what this Budget Policy Statement is saying. It is a rose-tinted view of the revenue projections for the future.

And the degree of borrowing and the projections for future borrowing are going to be affected by interest rates. We know now from Air New Zealand that the Government lends at a pretty eye-wateringly high rate. The chances are it’s borrowing at something higher than some parts of the market would have, but there’s no doubt that when inflation hits, interest rates will go up. And inflation is coming. You can’t spend as much as we are spending and not have an inflationary environment. They’ve probably prevented deflation with the Reserve Bank policies that are being embarked upon. But we see from the housing market that if one pump primes $20 billion into a housing market that doesn’t have increased supply and prices will go up, the eventual effect of that on the rest of the economy is that inflation will occur across the economy, not just in the housing market.

But it’s the spending that’s the one thing the Government does control. And there’s no doubt that COVID has been used as a stalking horse for significant structural spending increases. If one looks at the trajectory, if it was COVID and COVID was finite, then the spending trajectory should then drop again, and it doesn’t. And it doesn’t because this Government has spent 3½ years doing things that don’t add to productivity: increasing wages in the Government sector well beyond that which has taken place in the private sector. I’m not saying that doctors, nurses, and schoolteachers don’t deserve it.

Helen White: Yes you are.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: No, I’m not.

Christopher Luxon: At the right time.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Exactly. And there has to be a quid pro quo. There has to be an expectation that services will improve. The irony of this Government talking about wellbeing Budgets is that the very metrics that they would use to measure wellbeing, they’ve dispensed with. They’ve dispensed with better Public Service targets, they’ve dispensed with national health targets, and they don’t want to talk about things like NCEA pass rates or reoffending, because they’re all going the wrong way. And they’re going the wrong way because they’re not being measured. The public sector is not being held to account in the way that they are used to being held to account under a National-led Government, and that means fewer kids are getting immunised, fewer houses are getting insulated by the State, cancer treatment is going longer, kids are failing at school, reoffending is high.

Christopher Luxon: Some people can’t get mental help.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, I’m going to come to mental health, Mr Luxon. It’s a very good segue, because the cornerstone of the 2019 Budget was $1.9 billion, according to the Government, of spending in mental health. Well, that was a myth, because $400 million of that was in pay equity settlements, another $400 million of that was in cost pressure increases that would’ve occurred regardless of who was in Government, and about $300 million of that was in housing support, not mental health. So the kindest thing you can say about that mental health announcement was that there was probably $800 million over four years, OK? Call it what it is. And that might’ve made an improvement if it was even spent. But my colleague Matt Doocey has been prosecuting the case that, actually, we’re still stuck at the start line. And the reason is this: announcements don’t improve mental health. Announcements don’t build houses.

David Seymour: Surely not!

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Well, apparently. We’ve come to know that now, Mr Seymour. Just talking about it doesn’t get it done. So I would support this spending and the envelope—I think it’s $10.2 billion in operating expenses and $8 billion in capital expenditure—if I could see any evidence that the roads that they announced, the shovel-ready projects, the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, Dunedin Hospital—Dunedin Hospital was announced by the previous Government four years ago this week. The indicative business case was approved, and, four years later, we’ve got a flat car park where we knocked over a building, and the detailed business case still hasn’t gone to Cabinet. Four years. If that’s an example of the performance and the output of this Government, we’re in big trouble.

The finance committee heard this morning from Treasury, and we’ve previously heard from the Auditor-General, who has reviewed the 2019/20 account, and they expressed significant concern about this very point that there is insignificant robust reporting on Government performance. “There should be reporting”—I’m quoting from Treasury. “There should be reporting on what services have been delivered and what has been achieved.” Under this Government, Treasury say too much reporting is widget focused. They’re not focusing on the right things. They talk about lovely wellbeing outcomes. That’s fine. They know how to announce things, but they don’t know how to get things done.

So we need a Budget that delivers quality spending, quality infrastructure, and we need a Government that actually follows up on what it says and makes sure that the people of New Zealand benefit from that, because the last three years are certainly evidence that they don’t have that capacity.

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

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Very pleased as a non-member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee to stand and take a call on this, because it’s incredibly important that those people that are listening to the debate right now understand that this Budget Policy Statement sets a framework for how we’re going to be able to deliver for our Māori and our Pacific communities. I felt it was important to bring that voice into this debate today as we’re talking about the Budget Policy Statement, because it needs to be said. It needs to be said that actually explicitly having an objective in the Wellbeing Budget for 2021 centred around the benefits of Māori and Pacific is huge—having it actually singled out there, making sure that we’re lifting Māori and Pacific incomes, making sure that we’re providing those skills and opportunities, and making sure that we’re looking after those communities as we work through the impacts of COVID-19.

These will be pleasing for our Māori and Pasifika communities to hear this, because one of the last things they might have heard was just how severe the unemployment rate for our communities was going to be. At one point, Treasury had it at about 26 percent—they were predicting. That had huge implications as a forecast. It definitely put the shock into our communities, thinking that the sky was going to fall in, that we would be doing it tough for a very long time. Where I come from in the Bay of Plenty, we only have to look at how the forestry sector was affected in the 1980s when the whole game changed. There was economic scarring left from that lack of investment into those small communities that is still felt these days. But we are in a different time. It’s a new Parliament. It’s a new day. And this Budget Policy Statement, I can assure you, is going to deliver for our Māori and our Pacific communities.

Now, some of the fears caught up in—especially last year after we had such a huge year, COVID definitely put everybody into a tailspin. Again, this was one of the pillars. Māori and Pacific was a pillar that we had last year as well, and look at the investment that we saw. We actually saw significant investment into things like jobs, making sure that we didn’t have a 26 percent Māori unemployment rate; making sure that we had things like the wage subsidy scheme, things like the income relief payment for Māori, but also workers, businesses to be able to stay the course and hold on to their jobs. That was an amazing initiative put forward by this Government to get everybody through what was an incredibly tough time.

In terms of the health of our people, the doubling of the winter energy payment in 2020 was significant. We were telling people to stay home. “Stay home.”—we said—“It’s winter, but stay home.” Well, that’s going to have a knock-on effect for people that can’t actually afford to stay home, that have been made to stay home. So we doubled the winter energy payment to make sure that whilst they were staying home, they were also staying warm, because, actually, we’ve had enough of hearing about how our damp, cold houses in New Zealand are affecting our people. We’re already moving to make some changes to turn that around. But one thing that we could do, which was immediate, was actually the doubling of the winter energy payment, and I look forward to more—well, actually, I look forward to that kicking off again this year. Many New Zealanders will be pleased to hear that the winter energy payment is kicking in again really soon, as the seasons change.

Finally, in my short contribution, I want to talk about the investment that we put into education—specifically, again, to lift our Māori and Pasifika communities up by implementing and expanding the free and healthy school lunch programme. We were able to expand that out to another 200,000 more students. Now, there’s an equity formula that underpins that that absolutely benefits Māori and Pasifika communities. Why? Because they need a bit of extra help. Actually, communities like that see this scheme—the school lunches scheme; the free school lunches scheme—as a game-changer, a game-changer for your own household budget. Suddenly there’s an expense that you don’t need to worry about. And also, from the teacher’s point of view, it is a game-changer in the classroom as well, where young learners are showing up to school, they’re being taken care of, but they’re also being fed at the same time. This improves their concentration level, it improves the amount of waste that schools produce, and it leads to happier learners.

So, if they were the pillars of our Budget in our policy statement last year, then this year I think that actually we’re going to do quite well out of it. We’re going to be making sure that our jobs are still secure for our communities, going to make sure that we’re providing in terms of health and in education as well. Kia ora.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to be able to take a call in support of the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). I’m going to focus my call on the wellbeing objective of lifting Māori and Pacific income, skills, and opportunities and combating the inequalities of COVID-19 with specific reference to Pacific peoples.

The Budget Policy Statement references the Speech from the Throne, and I quote: “We have more freedoms, are a more open economy, and have saved more lives than nearly every other country we normally compare ourselves to. We can rightfully be proud of our success to date as a nation, as team, but we cannot afford to be complacent nor stand still. We must keep going.” And for the sake of our Pacific population here in Aotearoa, we cannot stand still. The Lancet, a medical journal, noted that Māori, Pacific, and Asian peoples were at higher risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19 than any other population. However, we as Pacific peoples didn’t need a medical journal to tell us that. Our elders recall that with the influenza pandemic in 1918, where 22 percent of Samoa’s population was wiped out, and then more recently with the measles epidemic in 2019. Our wellbeing objective to lift Māori and Pacific incomes, skill, and opportunities is critical to New Zealand’s long-term success, and I repeat: it is critical. That’s why submissions on the BPS were overwhelmingly in support of this objective. So I acknowledge the Minister of Finance for recognising this and for making it clear in the Budget Policy Statement that we cannot stand still when it comes to improving outcomes for Māori and Pacific peoples.

The BPS also references that education, health, and housing outcomes in New Zealand vary significantly by socioeconomic background and ethnicity. We know the stats around Pacific people. The average material standard of living for Pacific people is around half lower, for Māori a third lower, than for the general population. Pacific people are typically more severely affected by wage scarring by recessions and are more likely to have poorer health outcomes. The ability for many Pacific and Māori people to achieve their aspirations is impeded when the health, education, housing, and social welfare systems do not address the multi-faceted intergenerational disadvantages. But you know what? Despite these inequalities in housing, income, and health, Treasury in their Pacific Economy report in 2018 found that Pacific peoples contribute $8 billion towards New Zealand’s GDP and over 27,000 hours of volunteering. The Minister of Finance at the launch of that report stated that there is massive opportunity to invest in the Pacific community, looking at the overall approach to wellbeing. These are Pacific values of family, culture, language, and heritage, and it’s clear in this BPS that the Minister is taking up this opportunity. That is why this Government for the last three years has made it a priority to improve the lives of Pacific peoples here in Aotearoa.

The BPS makes reference to previous investment. For Pacific people, this included Budget 2018, which laid the foundations for the future with $1.6 billion over four years for schools, early childhood education, 1,500 new teachers, and the Families Package, which many Pacific families were benefactors of. The 2019 Wellbeing Budget secured an unprecedented amount of new funding of over $113 million over four years to boost support for Pacific communities across Aotearoa to achieve their vision of confident, thriving, resilient, and prosperous Pacific Aotearoa people, and Pacific-led solutions in education, health, languages, and culture and community wellbeing. Budget 2020 secured $195 million for the Pacific package to support the recovery and rebuild of the Pacific community. We launched the Action Plan for Pacific Education. We extended the Tupu Aotearoa programme, and Mana in Mahi. These are the action plans and investments that underpin previous Budget Policy Statements. So I look forward to what investment comes from this Budget Policy Statement.

I finish my contribution today by acknowledging the thousands of students who are participating in the largest cultural music and dance festival in the world. Today is the opening day of Polyfest, which was cancelled last year due to COVID-19. We are able to hold this festival and festivals like Pasifika, events like the Relay for Life, the Pinkalicious Breakfast this weekend at Te Rauparaha Arena in Porirua because the Government put our people first. We knew that a health response was the best economic response. So I quote again from the BPS and the Speech from the Throne: “We can rightfully be proud of our success to date as a nation, as a team, but we cannot afford to be complacent, nor stand still. We must keep going.” There is more work to do, but this Government is not standing still. Fa’afetai tele lava.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS) in looking at what we should expect, and then I’m going to focus specifically on climate change and climate action, how this relates to what the Minister of Finance has laid a path down for, and what the Greens’ aspirations are in the economic transformation that is essential—that is essential—to an economy that can reduce our emissions in a way that makes sure that everyone has what they need to live good lives. That is the key to climate change: that it is actually system transformation, economic transformation, and that it is interconnected to all of the issues that I know we all care about.

So it is refreshing to see a Minister of Finance who is prepared to even use the words “climate change” in the Budget Policy Statement. We know that previous National finance Ministers seemed happy for Governments to sign up to international climate change targets, but didn’t put any backing behind reaching those targets, didn’t have a plan or resourcing to actually meet those targets. So this report from the select committee on the BPS is a refreshing change. It is also important to see that a just transition—and I think these are the very words—to a climate resilient, sustainable, and low-emissions economy is a specific objective in the Budget Policy Statement. Likewise, it is important to see that we have a whole section of the select committee report on the Budget Policy Statement on climate change.

It is about time. It is long past time, in fact, because scientists tell us that, actually, 2030 will be a tipping point, and 2030 is not that far away. If we don’t get our emissions under control, and if we don’t have an economic transformation that can reduce our emissions well before then, then we are actually going to lock in a high-emission climate future, where we have more violent storms, more extreme weather patterns, more devastating droughts, rising seas swamping our coastal communities in Aotearoa and in the Pacific.

David Seymour: It’s like the Bible!

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON: It’s not like the Bible; it’s happening right now. It is already happening. For those of us who understand the planning that is going to be required to actually protect our planet and her people, then we need the planning right now. So 2030, we have only eight harvest cycles left to change the way we farm, to change the way we use land, to change the way we grow and produce food. We only have eight winters to make sure that the way electricity and the way that we heat our homes is clean and from wind, solar, and hydro, not coal and gas. We have eight years, eight school years, to allow parents and whānau safe, clean, affordable alternatives to driving their children to school. This means that we must get serious about actual economic transformation, and the Minister for Climate Change is working across the Government to get these very things happening.

The urgency of the climate crisis means every part of Government—and I had some colleagues over here yelling out, “What about housing?” This is our point and this has always been our point. Every part of Government—the parts that are responsible for housing, the parts that are responsible for making sure everyone has enough to live, the parts that are responsible for our health system, the parts that are responsible for our water—needs to work together to ensure that we are addressing the climate crisis. The BPS report shows—and this is the important part—actually that the Crown’s books are in better shape than was expected, that the deficit and core Crown debt are less than what was expected, and that revenue is more than what was expected.

So we do continue to weather the COVID-19 storm, and the report on BPS shows that, right now, money is cheap. The Government’s borrowing costs are low right now and likely to stay low, so now is the time—now is the time—to invest in a just transition. A just transition is the transition that will ensure that we are not leaving people behind who are already struggling, living in poverty; that we are not leaving behind people who are struggling, living without a dignified, long-term, healthy, quality home. So that has always been the understanding and the position of the Green Party. Now is the time to invest in how we actually plan ahead. What if we connected homes and communities together with electric buses that come every 10 minutes and are free for kids to catch to school, lowering our emissions? What if we built thousands of State homes that have solar panels to be able to also lower the costs of people being able to heat their homes? What if we empowered community groups to grow gardens, feeding their communities locally and all around in the year? What if we invested in our people by raising incomes so that everyone has enough to live with dignity?

I think the Minister of Finance is already on this journey to the economic transformation that is needed for climate change. The question is, though, how big a step will Budget 2021 actually take on that journey? Now, I’d like to remind the House that it was, in fact, Jeanette Fitzsimons who said in this very House, many years ago, that our nation’s wellbeing is not a number on a GDP chart. She said GDP mainly measures the rate at which resources are turned into trash. The long-before visioning of the late Jeanette Fitzsimons is the vision that we still hold to today in the Green Party. We welcome the spirit of the Government’s wellbeing approach to Budgets, which is finally moving beyond the narrow restriction of what the GDP actually measures and starts to answer: what do we really value, is this enduring, and are we putting our investment where we have a long-term, enduring, sustainable plan to look after our planet and her people in a way that benefits everyone and not just a few, in a way that stops exploiting and pulling dirty fuels and dirty energy from our earth that contribute to the higher emissions of our current economic framework? This is what we are wanting to see in the upcoming Budget 2021 this year. So having a formal, organised way to look at the spending decisions that Government makes in terms of the impact on people, nature, and communities is a good thing. It is an essential thing.

We also welcome the development of He Ara Waiora as a way to supply and ensure that there is a Te Ao Māori lens to the wellbeing approach and the Treasury’s Living Standards Framework. And just before I start to wind down at the end of my time, I wanted to acknowledge the thousands of young people across the country who rallied for climate action to address the climate crisis. One of the signs—one of my favourite signs that was held that day, which is relevant to the economic transformation that we are seeing some hope for in the BPS—said, “Indigenous people must thrive for Papatūānuku to survive.” It is those very values that will return us to an economic framework that properly does want to look after the planet and our people for many generations to come, not just a short-term fiscal outlook that is going to continue to shovel the benefits mainly into the hands of the few on the back of exploiting the many. That is the vision and kaupapa of what the Green Party are proud to support, and that we are here in this Parliament to continue to pressure for that very economic transformation that must take place for the long-term enduring good of everyone, our planet, and nature. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. This Budget Policy Statement sets out again that the Government will have a wellbeing focus. It says that there’s going to be a just transition to new fuels. How’s that working out? Well, it turns out that we’re having a dress rehearsal of what this Government’s just transition looks like. By banning exploration for the most efficient, cleanest-burning fuel that could be used for a just transition, we find ourselves burning coal. That’s what the future is going to be like. There will be more coal in our future because this Government’s just transition is so myopic they have banned the one fuel that could be used for a transition.

And then they say that we’re going to have better child wellbeing. Well, there are some kids who go to King’s College—

Hon Willie Jackson: Very negative—very negative!

DAVID SEYMOUR: —and they get very good grades, and Willie Jackson can tell the House all about it in a moment. But then there are other kids at decile 1 schools. Do you know what the pass rate is for kids at decile 1 schools at university entrance? Oh, about 20 percent—you know, less than half of what it is for kids at decile 10 schools. Child wellbeing—has anybody heard about the performance of Oranga Tamariki? A scandal from start to finish.

And then we talk about physical and mental wellbeing. This from the Government where a Minister of the Crown calls other politicians a nutter in front of 400,000 people on Mike Hosking. That’s the Government. And is it any wonder, if that’s the attitude of senior Ministers of Cabinet in this Government, that we have school principals in the Epsom electorate, including where Chris Luxon’s daughters went to school, who are telling me just this week that they have serious difficulties with students getting into mental health services because COVID has pushed kids over the edge and the services for them are not scaling up to meet that demand?

This is the reality of this Government. They said it’s a wellbeing Government, a just transition, the future of work, Māori and Pasifika, child wellbeing, physical and mental wellbeing. Well, it’s not just the ACT Party which says that this is a triumph of spin over substance. We said that two years ago when they first started talking about a Wellbeing Budget. I was astonished, and I think it’s unusual for a social democrat Government to be lambasted in The Guardian.

Now, this is the newspaper that took over from the Red Star, and they are lambasting this Labour Party because, it says, this wellbeing Government, this Wellbeing Budget was supposedly world leading. “But”, it says, “the country still struggles with deep-seated social problems that seem incongruous … growing inequality; high rates of child poverty, the worst youth suicide rate in the developed world; [stifled] … progress on climate change. Its housing affordability crisis has become one of the worst in the world and has countless flow-on effects. The waiting list for public housing has hit an all-time high, with 20,000 families waiting for a home—four times what it was when Labour was elected in 2017.” That’s what the left-wing Guardian is saying about this Government’s Wellbeing Budget. That’s how the initiative is going three years in. It is a disaster by its own standards. The idea of a Wellbeing Budget cannot be taken seriously. There is no substance. It’s all spin. By the very measures that this Government set for itself, it is failing in education, in health, in mental health, and housing, and The Guardian, to its credit, is calling this Labour Government out for its failings.

But then there’s what we normally worry about in a Budget, and that is: how much money is the Government spending? I hate to seem old-fashioned, but Budgets are supposed to be about how much money is the Government spending and what results is it getting for that spending. Well, one of the things that potentially people should be concerned about when it comes to Government spending is actually the amount of debt that this Government is taking on.

We now have a projection that there’s going to be 48 percent of GDP debt at its peak, and, incredibly, the Minister of Finance is trying to say that this is a good thing because previously the estimate was 53 percent of GDP debt at the peak. Well, the truth is that the biggest problem that this country faces in the short to medium term is that the Government has borrowed so much money when interest rates are low, knowing that interest rates may not stay low. It’s easy to borrow a hundred billion bucks when the Reserve Bank is just printing it hand over fist. You know, some people say the Labour Party won the 2020 general election. I’d say Social Credit won it, because they’re the ones that are having their policies implemented, funding the Government by printing “funny money”. The only difficulty with that is that eventually you get inflation, as someone could have read in the Herald this morning from Richard Prebble, a fantastic former member of this House. If you increase the supply of money and the supply of goods and services stay the same, inflation is what happens and it’s happening in the housing market. That’s why the housing market’s gone up 22 percent in the last year.

It’s difficult to overstate how badly this Government has failed. They have managed to be elected to fix housing. In fact, Stuart Nash—he had a few clangers this morning on Hosking—said the Government has “fixed housing.”! I would hate to see this Labour Government screw something up if a 22 percent increase in house prices, and therefore a reduction in affordability, is this Government “fixing” something. Well, that’s a direct result of the monetary policy that has been used to subsidise the Government’s spending. Here’s the problem. Eventually it doesn’t work because people lose faith in the currency and interest rates have to rise back to the prices that people will actually loan the Government money. And when that happens, having borrowed on low interest rates, facing high interest rates, we are in a mess of trouble.

Then the Government’s Budget policy response says: “But we’ve done such a good job on the Government’s response to COVID-19.” Well, let’s just think about that for a moment. This Government had a less challenging job responding to an epidemic than any other country on Earth. And we know this is true, because I asked the Minister responsible: could he name a country that went into COVID-19 with greater isolation, with a more sophisticated civil society, with greater wealth, and that was in a better position to fight a pandemic? He could not name one because there isn’t one. And having had the easiest, least challenging job in the world, they have duffed it time after time after time.

Just this morning on the Health Committee, the officials admitted that case B at the Grand Millennium hadn’t been tested for the last four months. Now, this is not a new thing. This was litigated through the press in this Parliament all through the end of last year. The Government was asked: “Is the Government testing people who work at MIQ?” “Oh yes, we’re testing them now. We didn’t before, but we’re testing them now.” They’re still not testing them.

And then there’s vaccination. I remember a great word in New Zealand politics, and it’s time to bring it back: “omnishambles”. We are facing an omnishambles in vaccination, because, fundamentally, this Government cannot put in place the information systems to understand who’s vaccinating who with which vaccine and when. It’s going to be the gift that’s going to keep on giving for an Opposition, but a disaster for the rest of New Zealand.

So what should we want instead from our Government? It’s actually not particularly complex. What we should want from a Government in this Budget is an opportunity to grow out of our country’s challenges. It starts with honest conversations about the challenges this country is facing, about the debt, about the gaps in educational attainment, about the inability to produce urban land—land that is consented and connected to opportunity by infrastructure so the next generation can build homes like the boomers. If we have those honest conversations about the real challenges facing this country, perhaps we could also grow our productivity and be in a position to pay down the debt. But at this point, we have a Government that pursues a whole lot of objectives—airy fairy. It’s failed. Even The Guardian says so. It’s time for New Zealand to unite behind good ideas, and stop wasting money on the divisive spin over substance that is fast becoming the trademark of this Labour Government. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): It’s a privilege to rise and speak about the Budget Policy Statement, and I thought I might actually do it—we might actually talk about that right now. So the first thing that I want to talk about is the fact that I want to acknowledge that it’s been a really, really hard year for New Zealanders. It’s been very hard in Auckland Central, and it’s been very hard in my area of work prior to politics, which is that I represented both employers and employees. It’s been a tough year, and we are still weathering a crisis. It is not over.

I was very proud of the statement that we had, because this is a statement that has a vision attached to it, something that I have not seen in almost anything from the Opposition today. We have a Budget Policy Statement that contains a vision that is the vision that I want for my children. Just transition is about economic transformation. So is the future of work, which is another commitment that has been made. This is a Budget that will look at things like innovation and decent work. It will raise wages. It is a Budget that looks at wellbeing. It looks at children’s wellbeing and the physical and mental wellbeing of our citizens. It looks at Māori and Pasifika and children who have been left behind. It is a vision for a decent future, and I’m proud of it.

The Living Standards Framework is not fluffy in the slightest. It is the kind of framework I want. It’s one that’s richer and deeper than a simple cost-benefit analysis, but it doesn’t shy away from that either. It looks at the four kinds of capital: human capital—skills and knowledge; natural capital—the environment; social capital, being communities and wellbeing; and the physical landscape we live in, which is also our capital. It builds these things back better.

The crisis we have faced has been one that the Labour Party has faced with its values, and that has led to success. We have unemployment that is at 4.9 percent, and the peak of it was 5.3 percent. That is way lower than was projected by Treasury, which optimistically predicted an 8.5 percent unemployment rate, and the OECD world, which peaked at 8.8. What went right was our values and our leadership. We have had the best health response, and that has been the best economic response. I hate to think what would have happened if, in fact, there had been a different Government leading this country during this time.

We have had a situation where we have built our Public Service. We have built our tracking and tracing. We have done that. I was reading recently a book by Mariana Mazzucato, where she talks about the mission economy and she talks about how that opportunity has been lost in her own country of the UK, whereas here we have built those things, and we have a richer, stronger bureaucracy and support structure in our Public Service as a consequence.

We have been putting working people first, and I was very, very proud to see that happen with regard to the wage subsidy. It was my experience in that time that I was advising employers and employees, and actually that subsidy and the way it rolled out so quickly and so responsively reassured so many people, and I am absolutely confident it is the reason why our unemployment rates were so low. Work is so important to people. It is so important to their wealth. It is so important to their mental health, wellbeing. It is an incredibly important thing, and I’m very proud of our Minister of Finance for having achieved that. We have had resurgence payments which have now targeted those who still need support, and I’m just proud of that as well.

It’s a very interesting contrast when you look at what happened in Australia over payments like the wage subsidy, which were held back. We had a much better response because we got them out the door. Do you know why that happened? It’s not an accident that that came from the Labour Party. It’s because the Labour Party knows about working people, it knows what working people need, and it is grounded, and so it actually produces those things that people need in a timely fashion.

There was a bounce. We had a credit rating adjustment recently that was an AA+ rating. It’s an incredibly good sign when we get that kind of bounce. It is a bounce that is about results that we have had in our economy. We have had an operating balance before gains and losses—the deficit has been $5 billion less than was forecast. We have a $3 billion higher than forecast core Crown revenue, and we have net core Crown debt of 27 percent instead of what was predicted in the Half Year Economic and Fiscal Update of 30 percent. That’s really just as important as paying back money fast, because we just don’t have to pay it back at all. It’s a good start, but it’s going to be a rocky road, and nobody is being complacent here. The secretary of Treasury said that they only predicted moderate growth and we’ll return to surplus in 2027.

I want to talk a little bit about the future of work, because that’s something that I have a really keen and practical interest in. There were a thousand places given in trade academies. There’s support for taking on apprentices—20 percent more in October 2020 from the year before. That’s actually a huge thing, because apprenticeships were just lost for so long—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! If members want to have conversations, can they please step out. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE: In that time, we lost so much opportunity to train our own people and give them good jobs. Actually, what I’ve heard from the Opposition today is that what they would like to do is return to the old style, where we actually just bring people into the country, where we bring in low-paid workers, where we return to low-paid industries. This is not the future of New Zealand. The future of New Zealand is high-wage work, it’s training our own people, and it’s making a difference which is sustainable.

I want to make a comment about Michael Woodhouse’s comment recently. He was just talking about how the money that had been set aside in mental health basically got frittered away in pay equity claims. The suggestion was that that was not a good use of money. I want to talk about that for just a minute and think about it, because there’s been that criticism, and the criticism of sick pay, and the criticism of the minimum wage. All these things are about paying people what they’re worth. This is about putting money absolutely into the right place, into our poorest people, into people who will then spend it in the economy. They will not invest it in other things or go overseas; they will put it right back here. These are the people that I want to work hard to make sure they have better lives. So this is absolutely what we should be doing. These are our most exploited workers and these are the people that we need to focus on in the Labour Party.

I want to talk about housing. Housing has been a hugely difficult issue—nobody is suggesting otherwise—but it is being attended to. Rather than being naysaying, it would be good to see the National Party see the situation with some degree of lack of interest in investors, because what actually has happened here is that investors have been tipped into the new build market, and that’s a very good thing, because that means that we’re going to increase stock. Otherwise, the behaviour that was going on, where they were simply buying houses, is actually simply rent-seeking. It produces nothing, and we need that money that is available from investors to go into something real, to something productive, that gives New Zealanders something back. So I am very, very proud of those recent announcements, and I look forward to some much more significant ones.

Nicola Willis: 4,000 kids in motels.

HELEN WHITE: The children in motels and the children that are actually housed, I am proud of, because it is a whole lot better than it was, Nicola Willis, when they lived in cars. I have been in Auckland Central and I have seen children living in cars, and I am much prouder that, actually, homeless people during the crisis and people who have been in those situations are actually now looked after. I am particularly proud of the humane response there has been, to get people into housing, and we will work at it. We will continue to work at it.

I’d just like to finish by saying I am extremely proud of this statement, and I am proud of the values that underpin it. I’m proud of Grant Robertson’s work in this area. I’m proud of the committee’s work. I’m proud of the submitters who came to us and talked to us about wellbeing. They did that because the door was opened by the vision that was shared with them, and so we heard from all sorts of people who may not necessarily have agreed or disagreed with everything we had to say but contributed at that level. We’ve changed the conversation in New Zealand, and I’m proud of that.

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

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Labour’s so-called wellbeing approach is a hoax, and it is completely proven by that last speech. Here we have a Budget Policy Statement that claims to be about child wellbeing, to be about reducing child poverty, to be about growing social capital, and yet what we have in front of us is a Minister who is overseeing the biggest number of children living in motels in this country that we have ever seen in our history. And that Minister knows, because I have read the advice that she’s been getting for two years—I’ve read the advice, Minister, I’ve got it under the Official Information Act, and you’ve been advised for more than two years that those children, those families, those New Zealanders living in motels are not being given the support they need. They’re not in stable accommodation. That Minister has been told by her officials that her department can’t ensure the quality or safety of the accommodation providers that she is letting thousands of children be raised in. And they’re not being raised in these motels for seven days or so, no, because now the average length of stay on Minister Sepuloni’s watch is when someone turns up to the Government and says, “I’m in desperate need, I need a house.” Minister Sepuloni says, “I’ll put you in that motel there, and, on average, you’ll spend 12½ weeks there.” But don’t worry, you could be one of the hundreds—the hundreds—of people that on Minister Sepuloni’s watch have spent months and months living in a motel.

But Minister Sepuloni came into Government promising that she had a solution for all of this, didn’t she? And we’ll see it continuing to be reported in here, and the solution was really simple in Opposition, wasn’t it, Minister? KiwiBuild. That’s right, New Zealanders were promised 100,000 KiwiBuild homes, and that was going to ensure that children weren’t living in disgusting circumstances. But, instead, what we have seen is that we are now in a situation where we are spending a million dollars a day putting kids up in a situation where, in questions I have asked that Minister, I have said to her, “What health and safety check do her officials do of these accommodation providers?” I have said to her, “What wraparound support”—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: I don’t think National did any on cars.

NICOLA WILLIS: You can keep defending it, Minister; it’s indefensible. That Minister knows that her officials have been advising her, not for months but for years they have been saying to her, “Minister, putting people up in motels at up to $450 a night is not only more expensive than building houses or putting them in transitional housing, it also doesn’t provide those people with the wraparound support and services they need to get back on their feet. And that Minister has received briefing after briefing, memo after memo that has said to her, “This Government must exit from the motels. It must build houses.”

And so they failed on KiwiBuild. So then what they like to say is, “Oh, well we’re going to build 18,000 houses.”—that’s what they like to say. So let’s actually analyse that, shall we? Because I think what that Minister also knows, because she’s been receiving these briefings too, is that they’re running well behind schedule on that, because it turns out they’re not actually that good at building things—12 progressive homeownership homes so far.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How many?

NICOLA WILLIS: Twelve—792 KiwiBuild homes when 100,000 were promised. It was a hoax—it’s a disgrace.

Now, I want to say to that Minister what New Zealanders have been saying to me. They’re saying, “If this Government actually cares about kids, if this Government actually cares about value for money, wellbeing, social capital, why don’t they take that million dollars a day that they’re prepared to spend on cheques for motels—take that money and get some houses built with it?” Minister, right where you live, VisionWest, the Salvation Army, they have begged me. They’ve said, “Just tell the Government to take that money they’re spending on cheques for motel rooms, invest it in us, the community housing sector; let us build homes for our people. Let us support them back on to their feet.” But no, this Government thinks it always knows best. You can’t just talk about wellbeing, you have to deliver. And when thousands of New Zealanders and 4,000 children are living in unsupported motels, it is not delivery.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! This debate is interrupted. The House is suspended until 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Tēnā rā tātou katoa. The House is resumed. Members, before the dinner break, we were debating the Budget Policy Statement 2021. We’re on call nine, which is a split call. I believe it’s the Māori Party’s call.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Kia ora. Tēnā koe. The wellbeing of our people and our w’enua should be at the heart of every decision a Government makes. So when this Government delivered its first Wellbeing Budget two years ago, it was a step in the right direction. It sent a strong signal that the strength of an economy can’t be measured by GDP alone but by the wellbeing of its people and our environment it serves. We have long known as tangata w’enua that GDP is not an accurate measure of the success, let alone the health, of our people, yet standing here today it is clear that the Government must do more to address decades of under-investment, deregulation, and liberalisation of the economy. So while it was a step forward, the Wellbeing Budget fell far short of the transformative policies our people need.

As we always have been, Māori are at the sharpest end of the disparities of our broken economic system. Pākehā have net worth almost five times higher than Māori. Non-Māori have 13 percent higher median wages. There has been no significant decrease in poverty for w’ānau Māori despite decreases for the general population. Homeownership is becoming completely unattainable for Māori. Māori homeownership rates have fallen since 1999. In the latest census, Māori individual homeownership fell to 26 percent, compared with 41 percent for non-Māori. Eleven thousand Māori are currently on the social housing register waiting list. Half of the entire waiting list are Māori, and for those who can get into social housing, it is still unaffordable. Current data indicates that 30 percent of Māori pay rent that is over 30 percent of their weekly income. Māori unemployment rose in the first quarter of 2020 to 9 percent, and the rate of young Māori not in employment, education, or training is at nearly 20 percent.

We continue to see our w’ānau disproportionately suffering complex social problems, including high rates of poverty and the worst youth suicide rate in the developed world. It should hardly be a surprise, then, that this remains the situation for our people when the so-called Wellbeing Budget only delivered 0.3 percent of its overall funding in targeted Māori funding. A true measure of Budget success is how many structural barriers were removed, how many of our people’s aspirations were advanced, because only then will we make a real difference for our w’ānau.

Te Paati Māori are very clear what our Budget priorities are and what we would be doing. We need to massively ramp up targeted Vote Māori funding and ensure resources get to our people on the ground. Our people have their own solutions. This includes increasing Whānau Ora funding and ensuring that it goes directly to the commissioning agencies; not lost in Government departments. We need to invest in what works and Whānau Ora has proven itself to be delivering life-changing outcomes for our w’ānau. We would ensure all Māori medium education is funded equal to its mainstream equivalents through equity-based funding models and establish a $200 million fund to drive w’ānau, hapū, and iwi education and training initiatives, including the establishment of new hapū-based wānanga.

Te Paati Māori would double baseline benefit and student allowance levels, individualise benefits, and cancel income support - related debt. We would intervene directly in the housing market to build thousands more homes and introduce a targeted Māori housing plan that includes specific financial support schemes for home loans. We would create business and employment opportunities for our people by ensuring 25 percent of all Government procurement contracts are given to Māori organisations. We would establish a Māori health funding authority with a budget of $5 billion to oversee purchasing, distribution, and operational delivery of the per capita Budget health entitlement for Māori. Te Paati Māori would listen to the pleas of our people and address inequities in cancer funding, reduce the screening age for Māori, and ensure the life-saving cancer drugs are subsidised by Pharmac.

The Government’s books are much healthier than expected. Interest rates are low. Now is the time for transformational investment across social services. Our people expect nothing less. In this Budget, I’m hoping to see a lot more than 0.3 percent of the total allocation targeting specific Māori disparities. We know how making positive impacts the wellbeing of Māori. We need a Budget that truly improves the quality of our lives for w’ānau through good jobs; high incomes; warm, affordable homes; and equitable access to health and education. This Government has an outright majority in this House; probably something we won’t see again in my lifetime. They have the mandate to truly uplift the quality of life for our people if they have the will to, and they are running out of time to use it. We ask that this Government prioritise its focus on our people and that both sides of the House stop scrapping and focus on our people once and for all. Kia ora rā.

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

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It’s been an interesting debate this afternoon, or two debates, actually. One of them was an urgent debate around Air New Zealand, and now, of course, we’re discussing the Budget Policy Statement. The two aren’t very much related. There’s just the mere fact that Air New Zealand is still flying, despite the doom and gloom on the other side of the House. Even as a comparative with Qantas, Air New Zealand continued to fly internationally, but Qantas was grounded and, for all intents and purposes, remains so, and that’s something of a metaphor for New Zealand. Air New Zealand became a metaphor for this country—it actually continued to fly.

Just to put in some context, again, if you sat and listened to some of the debate here, you’d think things were going to hell in a handcart. I’ve just been fortunate over the meal break to be at a function for Business New Zealand: Kirk Hope and his team, and a lot of small businesses in New Zealand, many of them from Auckland. I was privileged enough to be moving among those people with my ears open to hear what they’re really saying, and just the mere fact that their function was able to take place—the mere fact we were rubbing shoulders, the mere fact that we were able to cram into a room to hear the welcome from Business New Zealand—that too was a metaphor for the success in the context against which we are now speaking and which we are going into this next Budget round. For those listening at home, what we are now debating is the scene-setting for the next Budget, for the money that will be distributed to ensure that New Zealand grows, continues to grow, and thrives in the coming period.

I think it’s also really important that we just take a moment and sit and all think where we were this time last year, in the surreal world we were entering where the world was closing down. New Zealand was closing down.

Closing down meant different things to different countries. In New Zealand, closing down came to a choice: we could either concentrate on our people—as Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the previous speaker, has been talking about—or we could concentrate fully on the economy. Obviously, the two are not mutually exclusive, but in New Zealand, and, I would say people with a background like myself, who’s been quite reasonably heavily involved in business, the concept of shutting down an economy for four or five weeks was a very scary thought. No one knew what we would end up doing, and so, as a result, most countries weren’t as courageous as New Zealand was. Most countries didn’t go to the end and work backwards. Everyone in New Zealand knew what the rules were. As COVID cases started to grow—and it was interesting, just checking up—we didn’t quite get to a thousand cases. In mid-April, we were at just below a thousand.

We sat at home and we watched, and we wondered had we done the right thing, because our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, what she made a decision to do was to focus on the people, not on the economy. As a result—and you’ve heard people talk about it, and it’s been mentioned oft-times in this House—and as it turned out, the best economic approach was the health approach, the people-based approach.

As we moved through and as we had all the terrible doom and gloom, and you could see in the Budget Policy Statement the projections that were being made of unemployment at around 10 or 12 percent, an economy diving—nobody really knew. But what we did learn—and this is what I hope the uptake from this will be when we are faced with anything similar in the future—was that, actually, if you concentrate on the people, the rest will follow. I think many a time we hear he tangata, he tangata, he tangata—it is people, it is people, it is people.

So by doing that, what we saw—and many times people have talked about economies. Have a look at the economies overseas that actually just focused on the economy. You know, we had a “President of the Free World” who denied it and said that it would go away and that the economy was more important, and look at that—half a million. I haven’t seen the latest figures. I believe they’re up to nearly 600,000 dead now, with probably 400,000 or 500,000 of them unnecessarily, because that was a focus that just left people out of the whole decision-making.

The UK did the same thing. They caught up, but that was what they did. By focusing only on the economy and by not shutting down, they allowed it to seed.

Ireland was very interesting. People talk about Ireland. In Ireland, actually, it did seed. Ireland’s actually got pretty terrible. I’ve got a sister in Ireland who’s been locked down for months, and they still continue to do so. They’re only just looking at maybe opening the pubs. So these are the things that are happening around the world.

So go back, and I’d ask you to please look at this as we go into this next Budget, and you see what this Living Standards Framework is going to be about. It’s a continuation. What we’ll look at COVID as being is it will be a start. It’s the way the world will refocus, if we allow it to refocus.

Now look, I don’t blame the people across the floor. They’re doing what they’re here to do—you know, to destroy and to pull down. They don’t believe—most of them—what they’re saying, but that’s all right, I say to those at home, because they have to say it. What we have proven here—and this is the lesson, I hope, that will come out of this COVID—is that we should concentrate on the people.

Look at the building sector. Now, there’s a very interesting stat out there when we’re talking about housing. One of the most interesting stats around housing is we now have 21,000 more people involved in the construction industry than we did in 2018. Now, compare that with what happened during the GFC. There are many reasons why we have a housing issue, but one of the reasons is we simply don’t have enough people to build them, because in 2008, in the GFC, the first people to get laid off were the people we need now: the tradies. If a business closed down, anyone who had an apprentice shut down. All the money that went into apprentices, it shut down, and so nothing ever happens in isolation.

I know that when I left my last job, I said, “Don’t say that I’ll be a success until I’ve been gone for three or four years. If things are still doing well then, I will have been a success.”, and that’s the way we have to look at it. Nothing happens overnight. We live in this society these days where it’s instant—you know, just add water and stir. Unfortunately, that doesn’t allow for the long-term strategy we need.

So I go back to this Budget now, and what this Budget is about is people. This is a continuation. It isn’t new. This is a continuation of what we learn: if you concentrate on the people, then the rest will look after itself.

We come to this House from various experiences, and we’re challenged to sit down there and look at the formative experiences we’ve had. I know that from when I spoke here in my maiden speech about what I learnt. Basically, I was a middle-class, white farm boy from the South Island, and I then went and worked as an undercover police officer in the North, with communities I had only ever seen through one set of eyes before—I’d seen them through a police officer’s set of eyes. But it was what I was actually able to see, and do you know what? I came out of there seeing how much talent was in there. It was talent that if it was turned in the wrong direction, it meant they became very good drug-dealers, very good armed robbers, and good at all those things that they did. But, unfortunately, in the past, the only time that really captured that was, often, in the western desert, and places like that—they were the people who came through it.

But the talent that’s out there, if we can capture that talent, and, yes, we won’t capture it all—we won’t capture it all. There will be examples. But if we can get half the people that would otherwise have had lives that they weren’t satisfied with and no one around them was satisfied with, then we will have succeeded. You know, you don’t give up. There will be some, and we have to accept that there will be some, and there will always be a need for prisons—you know, those who will stand up.

In fact, it was quite interesting. One of the submitters we had when we were talking about the Budget Policy Statement, and I think Mr Webb might have mentioned it, was People Against Prisons Aotearoa—you know, defund the police. Well, as I pointed out to that particular individual, who looked like he was probably a fairly safe, liberal, from the leafy suburb he came from. So what I pointed out to him on the only statistics he had there—and this goes back to Māori victimisation—was that the vast majority of people who are victims of crime are Māori. So do you ignore the victims by actually ensuring that—yes—what we’ve got to make sure of is that as much as we stop Māori offending, we stop Māori victimisation? Nothing in isolation, and that’s why it’s important.

Again, I go back to this. Just some examples: the Living Standards Framework. Look, one of the most important things that came out of this when we look at the success of the last year is unemployment. OK, at 4.9 percent, it’s still too high. No one is standing from the chandeliers waving a flag, but it is a heck of a lot better than what we were looking at, which was up to 10 or 12 percent. So at least, with that 4.9 percent, there are 1.5 percent more people working than were projected to be working. That’s 1.5 percent—I don’t know what numbers are on that, but that’s 1.5 percent more people who are actually getting out of bed in the morning, or at night on whatever shift they’re working, who are actually getting out there and doing something, and who are participating in our economy, participating in this world.

So, again, pointing back to this Budget and where we’re going now, it is very heavily focused on the people. We will continue to train apprentices. We will continue to make sure that people can participate in our world, and that’s what having a Living Standards Framework means. A thoroughly—

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, the Budget delivers a lot of money for the COVID response, and that is quite right, but the question I have to ask is: is the oversight and the efficacy of that money being monitored properly? Because it was an extraordinary morning at the Health Committee this morning. Three things came out today that I want to make mention of, because, sadly, in April 2021 we are still talking about issues at the border around testing that were identified in September last year and then again in February earlier this year.

There is the sense of déjà vu in the building, because Mr O’Connor talks about the strong border response of the Government, and to some extent that is correct, but there are critical failings in the system and they have been exposed today. The first point was what we heard this morning in relation to case B from the latest cluster at the Grand Millennium. It was a generally farcical select committee process this morning, but in and amongst the 25-minute lecture from Dr Bloomfield and Carolyn Tremain—including the description of the end-to-end user experience of managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) and a description of the science of COVID-19. After we had the 25-minute lecture, we got a chance to ask some questions—not many, but some—and I asked the very simple question: case B was tested on 8 April; when was the last time he was tested?

Hon Michael Woodhouse: And what was the answer?

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, the answer was, firstly, obfuscation, and I asked again, and eventually we got the answer. The answer is November last year. So for six months, we’ve had a border worker, a front-line border worker, working in MIQ who has not been tested. He’s meant to be on a fortnightly cycle. So from November to April, there were meant to be fortnightly tests for COVID-19, but for six months that did not happen. It’s worth noting in passing that if I hadn’t asked the question and actually pressed the officials on that question, when were we going to find out about that? When were the officials going to tell us that salient fact? So that’s the first point. Now, I think we can all agree that that is very concerning. We kept trying to ask further questions about it, but Labour members don’t like the scrutiny, and so we were forced to end the session.

The second point flows from the first, which is that 450 workers, it transpires, are not being tested regularly according to the law. And, again, in September last year, we had a big hullaballoo here and in the public domain around the testing regime. Members opposite will remember the shemozzle in August around the August cluster. We were assured by Ministers then that things were going to get better, and they put in place these mandatory testing orders. The rules are clear: if you are within the scope of the testing order, you have to get tested every two weeks or in some cases every week. What we learnt this evening, broken by Michael Morrah on Newshub, is that 450 people in the last two weeks have not complied with the testing order. And it’s worse than that: the Government admits that 85 of those 450 may never have been tested—may never have been tested.

So what we’ve got is a situation where we’ve got dozens of people working at the border who are in our front-line response who may never have been tested. At the very least, 450 of them haven’t been tested properly in accordance with the rules laid down by the Government. Now, I think we can all agree that this is not good enough. So that’s the second thing.

The third point is it transpires—again, from the committee this morning—that not all the companies that work at the border are actually using the COVID border testing register. We know that there are dozens of companies and, therefore, hundreds of people that are not using the register that the Government has belatedly provided, and that is really important, and I’ll come back to that.

So quite a lot flows from those three facts. The first question is: why have there not been any checks? Well, the Government says today, “Well, he was lying.” OK. The Prime Minister just asserted that. Chris Hipkins says there’s going to be an inquiry. The Prime Minister has helpfully pre-judged that inquiry for the rest of us. So I hope it doesn’t turn out to be like the situation with the KFC worker in February, when the Prime Minister essentially went on national television and vilified them, and it turns out she owes them an apology—an apology, by the way, we are all still waiting for, as is the KFC worker. So the Prime Minister said that that person is lying, and Chris Hipkins had the temerity to say, “Well, we can’t have an urgent debate, because we might end up litigating what case B did or didn’t do.” Well, his own boss, the Prime Minister, was already on the record alleging that he had lied. So they say that he’s lying. OK, we’ll wait and see what the truth is there.

That obviates or at least obscures the major point, which is: how have we designed a system where someone can go six months without being checked? How is it that the system allows someone to get away with not being tested and not following the law? Then they said, “Oh, we’ll have an investigation.” And by the way, it’s worth nothing that we didn’t find that out this morning. The officials didn’t bother to tell us that there would be an investigation this morning. The media had to ask them that afterwards, and that’s something that we’ll be following up. Then we heard from the Prime Minister that there were private security companies involved. Well, yes, that’s irrelevant. Of course there are private security companies involved at the border. Although, it’s worth noting in passing that we were told last year that the Government was phasing out private security. It turns out that hasn’t happened either.

So that’s the first question. Then the second question is: what has happened to the register? Why is it not working? And, again, this is not a new issue. We talked about this in August; we talked about it again in February. Today, we discover, in response to questions, that the Government will make it mandatory from 27 April. Well, why are we only making something mandatory from basically the start of May when we’ve been having these problems since September? How hard is it to design a system that records people’s testing status and design a system where that is checked every fortnight or at least sufficiently enough to assure ourselves that people are being tested? Where are the checks more generally? Because if we make the testing mandatory, New Zealanders rightly expect that the Government will follow that up.

This is a very important point, because as members opposite have told us on so many occasions, ad nauseam, the border is our first and best defence against COVID slipping into the community. The reality is that it just takes one error. It just takes one mistake. This is not theory. We know this to be the case because we have seen it over the last few months and running back into last year. All it takes is one error or one slip and COVID is caught by someone and then it spreads.

The reason we have the testing regime at the border is to make sure that people who are working on the front line, who are coming into contact with people from overseas who have COVID—and we know that there are more and more people arriving in MIQ from places like India, for example, who have COVID. The reason we make them get tested is to make sure that they’re working there without it, so that they don’t spread it like case A did to case B, who spread it to case C. Now we’re all hoping beyond hope that this cluster does not spread any further. So that’s why we have the testing regime. But the quid pro quo of establishing the testing regime is that the Government goes and checks that people are being tested.

It’s not just good enough for the Government to say it’s incumbent on the employers. Firstly, half the employers at the border are the Government, and, secondly, don’t punch down and blame security guards who can’t fight back because they’re in quarantine. Don’t punch down and blame them and try and obscure the Government’s own ineptitude and incompetence for setting up a regime that does not work. It’s deeply unedifying from the Prime Minister. It’s deeply dispiriting for the country, and the country deserves better than the shemozzle we have been dished up as revealed today.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise as the final member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) to speak on the Budget Policy Statement (BPS). I do so knowing, not only from reflecting on the speakers who have gone before me but from my life time, this BPS reflects to me a Budget Policy Statement that is going to touch on all New Zealanders—where the Government, in the face of COVID-19, had our backs. In a time where we needed a Government to invest in us, we had one.

I reflect now on the speakers that have gone before me. Duncan Webb, chairman of the FEC—he spoke of a world-leading wellbeing approach, where the world is looking at us as we measure making lives better. He also talked about Government agencies and how they’re moving away from being in silos to a collaborative and cooperating approach to working together.

Then we heard from finance Minister Grant Robertson, when he referenced the IMF, Bloomberg, and the Lowy Institute ranking New Zealand’s response to COVID-19 among the best in the world. This is due to our public health approach, at the same time as providing cash flow and confidence to New Zealand workers and businesses. We’ve succeeded in keeping unemployment under 5 percent, compared to the OECD average, 6.4 percent. Austerity isn’t our goal; recovery and rebuilding is. Now we must make sure that the balance we’ve struck continues over the years. It is the strategy of a balanced approach, which our Minister of Finance spoke of this evening, that invests in our infrastructure; that supports the core Public Service, like health and education; that has a plan for making sure we address climate change; and that gives our young people a future—an ambitious plan for New Zealand.

My colleague Barbara Edmonds, deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, spoke of a focus on wellbeing objectives to lift Māori and Pacific incomes, skills, and opportunities. She spoke of going forward and investing in our people because we must keep moving.

My colleague Helen White spoke of innovation, vision, supporting workers and decent wages, leadership, and having the right values, because Labour is for all working people and for giving people a fair go. She spoke of our investment and a housing plan to get more families into affordable homes.

Greg—Greg, my other colleague—spoke not of doom and gloom, as from—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member needs to use the full name of other members.

ANNA LORCK: Yes, Mr Speaker. Greg O’Connor spoke not of the doom and gloom from the other side of the House but of the fortunate things we are doing and of Business New Zealand talking, just at the dinner break, about the success stories that we’re hearing, where we’re growing and thriving. We’ve heard from business leaders applauding the wellbeing approach and moving from the public sector into the private sector, and we’ve even heard from a developer in the room, who spoke about the fast-tracking of land for building and the success of those things. These are the things that we’ve heard about in the dinner break.

I now turn to what my colleague Helen White spoke about here in the House about housing. Housing is where I will talk, on the home front. Our district is leading on the housing front. Hastings suffered under the National Government. I know that for years publicly owned State houses were left to rot and ruin in Hastings. Today, under the Labour Government—land that was going to be sold off and sold down—we now have 44 public homes built, for warm, affordable homes for families. Hastings is an example where this Government is working with the regions. It is an example where, together with local council, iwi, local industry, and trades—I’d like to report—534 building consents were issued in 2020. That is the highest level of homes built in the history of Hastings—the previous high: back in 2007. This includes Government investment in public housing, with 180 public houses being built over 2021, with purchasing intentions for a further 288 homes. Hastings has also been enabled to fast track much needed housing on council land in Flaxmere, where, thanks to the Government, the council received, in the face of a critical housing shortage, $11.5 million to go towards building the water and roading infrastructure to support affordable quality housing.

I now turn to the “Future of Work” as part of the Budget Policy Statement, and I talk about the investment that is being made in enabling all New Zealanders and New Zealand businesses to benefit from new technology and lift productivity and wages through innovation and support into employment for those most affected by COVID-19, including women and young people. I’d like to talk now about the investment that is being made into the human capital—our people; our skills. This is where we are making a real difference in growing the trade skills we need to grow business and build houses in our region.

I would like to also highlight that, on the weekend, I had the privilege—an absolute privilege—of meeting four talented building apprentices from local companies at Hawke’s Bay Homes to understand this. I heard from Martin E, who told me that before he was building as an apprentice, he was making sushi, and now, thanks to Hawke’s Bay Homes and the Government’s free vocational training and apprenticeship scheme, he’s becoming a builder with a great career ahead. Over 100,000 Kiwis have now signed up for this scheme, and across New Zealand—since we introduced it in July last year as part of our response to COVID-19—this newly skilled workforce will play a crucial role as we invest in infrastructure projects, continue our economic recovery, and build New Zealand back better. I’d like to wish good luck to Trent, one of the four young building apprentices I met in the weekend who are now off to represent Hawke’s Bay at the nationals in Wellington.

On top of this, at our local Eastern Institute of Technology we have over 1,250 learners enrolled in this trades training and apprenticeships scheme eligible for programmes. Therefore, they are having their fees paid, and this is the equivalent of approximately $3 million invested in the young people of Hawke’s Bay thanks to this Government. This demand is an increase from previous years, and it really shows how we are working with people on the ground in the regions.

We are a Government that invests in people. We invest in jobs. We’re supporting and backing business right here and growing the economy. We will keep going, and we will never stop. This is the type of thing that you are seeing from this Government, and it’s with this type of investment, unlike what we have heard is nothing but negative naysaying from the other side of the House. I have never, ever heard so much disappointment. Who is really speaking to business? Who is absolutely doing this country proud? Who is making a difference? Who has touched the lives of New Zealanders this year, in the face of COVID-19? It’s—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye; to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.

Hon Members: Party vote.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: A party vote has been called for. The Clerk will conduct a party vote.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): A point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder if the Speaker could just advise what the motion is so that we can consider it. I wasn’t aware that we actually had a motion on this debate.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Oh, all right. The question at the beginning of the debate was moved by Dr Duncan Webb, and he moved that the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement. After that speaker, I was in the Chair, and I stated that the question is that the motion be agreed to. And now, the motion is in.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Just speaking to that. Those words are used and there are times when a vote isn’t taken.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the House take note of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Budget Policy Statement 2021.

Ayes 110

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill

Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill

Consideration of the Report of the Justice Committee

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): I move, That the House take note of the report of the Justice Committee on the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill.

I would like to take the first call on this particular debate.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order. Is this a second reading?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No.

GINNY ANDERSEN: It’s right that the member points it out that this is a somewhat unusual situation, because as this bill has already had a second reading—the debate today is technically the consideration of the select committee report, rather than a second reading as such.

So as members will remember, this was initially a member’s bill in the name of Darroch Ball, which was voted on in support by National and New Zealand First, and I think ACT as well at the last Parliament, and that was then referred to the Justice Committee. That bill has subsequently been taken under the name of Mark Mitchell, and there have been some proposed changes suggested at select committee.

I would like to speak on behalf of the Labour members and as chair of the Justice Committee. First of all, I think it’s important to state to this House that every assault on a first responder or corrections officer is unacceptable. We support measures that will actually work in order to keep them safe in these important roles that they provide for our communities. We know, though, the way that this bill has been drafted is seriously flawed. In particular, we would like to point to the case in point of mandatory minimum sentences. And it’s good to have agreement by those members opposite who also agree that mandatory minimum sentences don’t work for a number of reasons. And members from the National Party spoke at length at select committee as to why they did not support mandatory minimum sentences—Dr Smith, I remember, was one proponent in particular.

So what was suggested by those National members in committee was to remove the provision in this bill that suggested that there should be a mandatory minimum sentence. The problem this struck was it didn’t leave much of the bill behind. So there were some proposed changes, but the majority of the committee felt that there was not really much left to the bill. So of the changes proposed, there was not enough left for it to carry forward, and that is why Government members did not agree to those proposed changes.

It’s also important to note that as the Justice Committee identified, our men and women in uniform are already provided for and given additional protection through sentencing law. And I’ll give credit to those members opposite, because I do believe, if I read my books right, that that change was actually passed under a National Government, and it currently lists assaulting a first responder or prison officer as an aggravating factor in sentencing. And so that already exists in law.

So the question is: what is this bill actually attempting to achieve? As the law currently stands, as stated, committing an offence against a police, prison officer, and emergency health or fire service personnel at emergency scenes is already an aggravating factor in section 9 of the Sentencing Act. So that means in current law the punishment for assaulting a prison officer or first responder in that instance would already be more severe than an assault in the same circumstances against any other member of the public. And I know that there were some issues raised about that in itself at select committee in submissions. Some of the personal ones I received as well were instances such as those in a convenience store or a 24-hour liquor store who are also put into great harm.

This bill therefore proposes to introduce a new, narrower offence—one for a kind of assault on first responders and prison officers when there are already ways the law can deal with a whole range of potential offending against these important people who protect our community. The established framework of an aggravating factor in the Sentencing Act also is a better way of addressing this issue, and it’s good that on that point there was agreement across the House—there was agreement that imposing that a judge must have a sentence would not work in that particular instance.

The other problem that Government members had had, particularly with what was initially proposed in this bill, was that the bill puts out of step the existing hierarchy of offending, and that is really problematic in terms of making sure there’s a weighting to the seriousness of offences in how they are, I guess, punished or provided for in the courts. So currently sections 188 and 189 of the Crimes Act are carefully formulated to provide a hierarchy of offending in cases of wounding or injuring people to take into account the offender’s intent, how much harm they intended to cause, and how much harm they actually did cause.

So I’ll provide an example to illustrate the point I’m trying to make. For example, an offender who intended to cause someone grievous bodily harm and injured them would then be charged with injuring with intent under section 189(1), which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Had the injury been caused by reckless behaviour or with intent to injure rather than grievously injure, however, they would be charged with injuring with intent under 189(2), which carries a maximum sentence of just five years in prison to reflect the lesser harm meant to be caused. However—and I’m sorry this is complicated, but once it’s unpacked, hopefully it’ll be clear—had the act caused grievous bodily harm rather than merely injury, they would be charged with wounding with intent under section 188(1), which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment to reflect that they intended more harm to be caused to the victim.

So this bill inserts a new offence into the Crimes Act, which is wildly, I guess, in lay terms, out of whack with that hierarchy that I have just outlaid. It disproportionately weights offending, so it causes a problem in the wider scheme of how we are weighing up offending. This bill inserts into the Crimes Act—and it would lead to, I guess, bizarre sentencing outcomes. Firstly, the new offence makes no distinction between recklessly causing injury and deliberately causing an injury—the maximum minimum mandatory sentences are exactly the same. So this could lead to quite strange scenarios where someone who recklessly injured a first responder could be imprisoned for 10 years—double the sentence for recklessly injuring anyone else, and massively out of step with the current sentencing and clearly unjust.

Secondly, the new offence has no regard to the level of injury caused, which could lead to even more bizarre outcomes. For example, if someone had injured a police officer with an intent, they could face a maximum minimum penalty of 10 years. If they caused grievous bodily harm to a police officer with intent, which is worse, they’ll be charged with the extent of wounding with intent, which carries seven years. So what has been done—the members opposite who are complaining about what they’ve agreed to have agreed that mandatory minimum sentences don’t work, yet they’ve come up with no viable alternative—no viable alternative. And so, in order to address the problems that were initially raised, this is not able to be completed.

So when we heard the submissions from those people who came forward before the committee—we received 74 in total. And one of the ones that were of particular interest is that they saw the reoccurring theme that we often get from the National Party that we just want to use increased penalties as a deterrent. This comes time and time again, and it’s deep in the National psychology, that if you increase a penalty that will somehow change the way people think and how they behave. And we know for a fact that that’s flawed ideology—it’s a deeply flawed ideology. So those who oppose the bill—and there were a fair few of them—generally regarded it as too punitive. They questioned whether the desired effect—which was agreed that we want to reduce the assaults on first responders—would be done by imposing a mandatory minimum sentence.

So the problem we have with this bill is that we agree with the intent of keeping our first responders and respecting them and supporting them, we do that wholeheartedly, but we question the fact that this bill is fundamentally flawed. There is now no core crux of what this bill was going to deliver, which we disagreed with, which was a mandatory minimum sentence. Now that that’s gone there’s nothing left. So therefore, the Government members and the members of the Justice Committee will not be supporting this bill to proceed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on this Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill and the second report of the Justice Committee. I’ll address some of the points that were raised by the chair of the committee, Ginny Andersen, but, firstly, I just want to acknowledge Darroch Ball. Darroch Ball, of course, was a member of Parliament with the New Zealand First Party and part of the coalition that was formed between Labour and the Green Party in the last Government. Although Darroch and I sparred often across the House, particularly on justice bills, when I held the justice portfolio, I never for one minute doubted his commitment—

Greg O’Connor: You call that sparring?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —his genuine commitment, to making New Zealand—

Greg O’Connor: Open hatred—come on. Open hatred.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: —and his community safer. When I hear the barracking coming from Greg O’Connor against one of his own colleagues that now is no longer in this House, it just probably reminds him and it could be a reminder to him that maybe they made the wrong decision in terms of who they went into coalition Government with, because Darroch has received no support from his former colleagues at all with either of his two bills that have come into this House. So I want to acknowledge him, and I want to acknowledge the policy intent that he always has, which is, fundamentally, to make New Zealand a safer place, and the community a safer place, and just acknowledge the fact that he has now taken up a deputy chief executive role with the Sensible Sentencing Trust and Jess McVicar, who in my view do tremendous work around advocacy for victims and their families and continue to work in that justice space.

I don’t understand the argument that the chair of the committee was trying to put up around disrupting the hierarchy of offending, because, ultimately, in our criminal justice system, the people that decide what charges to lay are the police. The police will do the investigation. The police will look at the ingredients that go towards the type of offending and the offence that’s been committed, and they’ll take all those issues into account before they make a very clinical decision around what charges will actually be laid and what charges are most appropriate and what charges they feel will have the most success or are most appropriate when they go into our court system. So I think that the argument around disrupting the hierarchy of offending is a moot one and doesn’t have any standing at all.

I want to acknowledge my colleagues who have done all the work on this bill: the Hon Simon Bridges, Simeon Brown, and the Hon Nick Smith, who sit on the Justice Committee. Around mandatory sentencing, we actually feel that there is a place for that at times, but the reason why we compromised on this—and we had a lot of discussion on this side of the House. It went back to the caucus. The reason why we made a compromise around mandatory sentencing is because we were committed and trying to do the best that we could in passing a bill that we think sends a very positive message from this, our House of Representatives, back to our corrections officers, our first responders, our nurses and emergency department (ED) staff, in saying that we recognise and we support you. Because the Labour Party and the members of the committee took a very strong stance against mandatory sentencing, we felt that if we moved on that, we made a compromise, and instead we put forward and made some changes around cumulative sentences, then, actually, it would take away the barrier, it would take away the argument from them around why they couldn’t support the bill, and they’d come in behind the bill.

But as you’ve heard with the chair’s speech tonight in the House, they still haven’t done that. Instead of getting on their feet and saying, “Yes, the mandatory sentencing now has gone, so, actually, it’s a bill now that we could support.”, they’ve got up and said, “No, the mandatory sentencing now has gone, so now we don’t see that there’s any value in the bill.”

Simeon Brown: It’s a shocker.

Hon Simon Bridges: Shocker.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: And I’ll tell you why that’s a shocker—I’ll tell you why it’s a shocker. Because she was right: as of today, an assault on a first responder or prison officer is actually treated as an aggravating factor at sentencing. But this bill goes a lot further. This bill actually makes it an offence to assault a first responder or a corrections officer. That is a big change. That is a significant change, this House saying, “Yes, it’s good to have it as an aggravating factor—there’s no doubt about that. We’re going to take a step further. We’re actually going to make it an offence now, something that someone can be charged with.” I just find it very, very puzzling, when I hear my colleague and friend Simeon Brown on his feet just about every day in his role as our police spokesperson and corrections spokesperson, highlighting the disturbing increase of assaults on our police, on our corrections officers. I’ll tell you what: it’s not always immediately visible, and it is actually hidden away, to a certain extent. It’s probably even under-reported.

But you know what, I do want to talk about our nurses and doctors and the medical staff that work in our emergency departments, because if you go and visit an ED on probably, sadly, now just about any day of the week, but certainly on a Friday or Saturday night, you’ll see them dealing with people that are under the influence of drugs. You’ll see them, the people that have been involved in assaults and domestic violence, that have often injured themselves—they end up in the ED. In my own time as a front-line police officer, I grew to have a very deep respect and admiration for them and the way that they were continuing to try and help and treat and do the best for someone that often was hurling verbal abuse at them, was assaulting them, whether they be minor or whether they were serious and major assaults.

Actually, this bill was sending a really positive message to them from this Parliament. It was saying that we recognise what you do for us. We recognise what you have to put up with, what you have to deal with. When most of us leave home to go to work, we like to think that we’re going to go to a safe environment, an environment where we feel safe. Actually, a lot of these nurses, they don’t. They leave home, when they’re working on the ED—and even some of them working in the wards now, sadly, because even if you go to North Shore Hospital, you’ll see a very strong gang presence in a lot of those wards. They aren’t always safe.

Actually, us representatives—and this puzzles me every single time, when Labour take a position against these types of bills, that we have an opportunity as representatives of this House to say that we ask those corrections officers to go out there and do a job for us as a country. We ask those police officers to work at night to keep our communities safe. We need those ED nurses and doctors and medical staff in there, caring for and looking after people when they come through. Even our fire and emergency personnel, the volunteers in my own electorate—often they’re faced with the same situation: they’re put in situations where they’re dealing with aggressive, violent, drunk, and drugged individuals. The one thing that we could have done as a Parliament—the opportunity that we were given by Darroch Ball with this bill—was to turn our minds to it, was to put it into the select committee process, was to make some changes to it. The changes have been made—the changes, actually, that the Labour Party and the Labour Government asked to be made. They’ve been made. There is no excuse now not to support this bill. You know that they’re waffling.

Hon Louise Upston: Why aren’t they supporting it?

Hon MARK MITCHELL: They aren’t supporting it because it’s disrupting the hierarchy of offending, which—I don’t know if anyone back home even knows what that means. I’ve got no idea how that applies to this bill. Because I’ll go right back to the start. In terms of disrupting the hierarchy of offending, I’ll tell you—

Hon Simon Bridges: I think it’s the hierarchy of the Labour Party.

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, that’s very true. They’ve obviously been told what they’re going to do with it. The reality of it is this: when the charges are laid, the police decide what the appropriate charge is—not the judges, not us as parliamentarians or legislators. It’s the police that decide what charge is going to be applied. So to stand in this House—and I feel sorry for the other Labour speakers that are going to stand and respond to this, because they’ve got their speaking notes and they’re going to get up and say the same thing. They’re going to say, “Oh yes, we didn’t like the mandatory part of the bill.” We’ve taken that out. Simeon’s put a very good Supplementary Order Paper in around cumulative sentencing, which we think goes a long way to actually sending that very positive message out there to our first responders. But they’re going to get up and they’re going to say, “The mandatory piece has been taken out, but, actually, now there’s no substance to the bill.” Yes, it’s true. We are creating an offence, and, actually, that’s substantive. That’s important—that is important. But they’re going to say it’s disrupting the hierarchy of offending. Define that for this House and explain it to—

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

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I stand not as a member of the Justice Committee but as a huge fan of first responders, and also as a lawyer with high regard for jurisprudence and the integrity—and also as somebody who has experienced firsthand the impacts of extremely violent crime, and yet I refuse to take the stance of lock them up and throw away the key.

I recently attended the St John Ambulance awards with my colleague Dr David Clark from the Dunedin electorate, also with the Mayor of Dunedin, Aaron Hawkins, and myself—it showed the regard that we have for St John as an organisation. We were watching people receive awards for five years, for 10 years, for up to 45 years of service, and I have stood in this House to tautoko them and to advocate for more funding for the incredible work that they do. For first responders, the work they do is not just work; it is a vocation, and we leave our lives in their hands. I have the highest respect for them, and that is for all first responders—the police, fire, prison officers, and the ambulance. But I do take offence to the minimum sentence of six months’ imprisonment. It is seductive, simplistic, us-and-them politics, it is populist, and what it does is it seeks to differentiate between categories of people. It doesn’t address why these assaults happen and, importantly, it won’t prevent them happening in the future.

I have experienced the fallout from very violent crime. I shared a very personal story of my own on Facebook last night, and I want to thank all the people who have given me their support for that. As I was leaving the building, I saw a van with the words “Grouse Lighting” on it, and it brought to mind an event that I haven’t thought of for quite a while. My ex-boyfriend, Paul Anderson, was violently stabbed to death by the killer Graeme Burton. Graeme Burton was locked up, and when he was out on parole, within months he went out and he killed again. As much as the hurt is there for the family of the other person that Graeme Burton killed, and for all of the victims of Graeme Burton, I know firsthand that locking him away and throwing away the key with no rehabilitation, and creating us-and-them categories through our corrections and through imprisonment and our justice system, simply does not work. If it did work, I would support this motion, but it doesn’t work and I won’t go over the reasons why we believe it doesn’t—it’s already been traversed very capably by my colleague, Ginny Andersen.

What I will do is just really support the police, tell them what we have done, to reassure them that we are supporting them, that we are supporting first responders, and there are many things. We have a strong record in supporting them, we’ve invested $450 million into the police since we came into office. As a result, the total workforce for the police is the largest it has ever been, it has surpassed 14,000 officers. We’ve already delivered on our commitments of 1,800 new police officers, and we are well on our way to meet our growth target of 1,800 over five years.

Last year, the police launched the Frontline Safety Improvement Programme, and that has six work streams to boost safety. These are training, valuing front-line responders and their whānau, equipment and capability, command and control framework response models, and operational safety systems. May I also, at this point, commend the St John Ambulance for resisting pressure to not introduce double-crewing. Double-crewing was going to be an expensive option, but they chose to do it because it is the right thing to do for their workers, around worker safety but also around first response incidents, so tautoko to them. The programme that the police have launched with front-line skills will give 1,200 constables with at least two years’ experience an extra week of training this year, and it will aim to improve their tactical and operational skills. They have also had other work being delivered, including safety reminder videos, increased tactical training at the recruit level, and greater scenario-based cognitive training and de-escalation techniques.

De-escalation is what we must be looking to for all of these incidents involving first responders. I know that I have family members who have been assaulted in the course of their work as medics, as doctors, and as nurses. They do not agree with this offence, because of the way it creates an us-and-them scenario. Ginny Andersen has pointed out the hierarchy of aggravated factors in offending, and she has also pointed out the fact that aggravation can be taken into account in sentencing. We don’t want to become a society that just slaps mandated sentences on to groups of people because we think that’s an easy sticking plaster for the conditions that create these situations in the first place. The conditions that lead to offending are complex, they involve lots of whys, they involve lots of equity issues, and there is a mechanism for the judges to look at all of those facts and take all of those facts into accounts when sentencing. That is the correct approach.

When we start to create categories of offences like this, even with the changes around cumulative sentencing that have been proposed by National members, it doesn’t allow the judiciary to do its job in terms of taking into account the full set of circumstances in that particular case. It forces us to lump groups of offending together, and to start to make assumptions about members of society that fit populist politics and that make for easy solutions. There are no easy solutions when it comes to criminal justice. They are complex situations that we need to look at, both in terms of how we respond with the criminal justice system but also the preventative measures that stop people from doing assaults in the first place and getting themselves into those situations.

So as tempting as it could be for people to think that this is a nod to our first responders, this proposed legislation, it really isn’t. It is a way for the Opposition to continue to create a divisive society, a society that creates gangs of us and them, they even use the word “gangs”—the last speaker did in his presentation—and it doesn’t lead to inclusion, it doesn’t lead to social cohesion. We know that societies that are not inclusive ultimately end up with more crime, less security, less productivity. We, in the Labour Party, are about an inclusive society. When we look at people, we look at them as individuals with equal rights, and we then look at their behaviours. We don’t lump them into categories, which is what the Opposition is trying to do. The fact that the Sensible Sentencing Trust has earned the participation of the member that previously supported this bill makes me even more secure in the fact that I would not want to support it. The Sensible Sentencing Trust themselves take a very punitive approach to the justice system. So, for these reasons, we cannot support a bill that is divisive, that plays into populist politics, that tries to create an us-and-them mentality, that doesn’t have merit, that has not been able to be corrected despite two processes through the select committee, and that when you take out the mandatory sentencing element of it, really, doesn’t have anything left to offer this House. I cannot support this bill.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): It’s good to take a call on this bill. I just want to start firstly, though, by acknowledging that the parliamentary cricket team played a game of cricket in Hamilton, I think it was. And I just want to acknowledge the member for Hamilton West over there. I wasn’t on the field, I wasn’t there, but I understand that he was instrumental in the team winning in the weekend—and I just wanted to say that.

I do want to talk about this bill, though. It is an interesting bill. I want to start by saying that the member for Taieri, I think it is, gave possibly the most namby-pamby, soft-on-crime speech I’ve heard in a decade. She fundamentally said, “No, look, if someone injures an ambulance officer, we actually just need to kind of understand them and be nice to them and that is somehow going to solve it.” Look, I’m all for rehabilitation and reintegration, but that kind of namby-pamby, soft-on-crime approach does not work.

We support this bill with amendments, Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) which we would, at the committee of the whole House, put forward to make this, I think, a good bill—and that is our proposal.

I just want to make four or five points in the eight or nine minutes I’ve got. The first is that it is—despite the namby-pamby, soft-on-crime speech that we’ve heard on the other side of the House—right to create an offence for injury of first responders and prison officers. I think the best point the other side could make is, “Well, actually, it’s already an aggravating factor at sentencing.” So if you are sentenced for assault, for assault with intent to injure, for assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, or what have you, well, in those instances that it was a first responder would be an aggravating factor at sentencing—and it might be an uplift, a relatively small one at that.

But I want to say this to the other side as to why this offence is not only desirable, actually it is necessary: because signalling in criminal law really matters. We have another bill before the Justice Committee in relation to insane offenders—that is the legal terminology—who are not guilty by reason of insanity. Well, what we heard from, I think, in the end, actually, hundreds of submitters in that case, was that that nomenclature, that naming of the verdict in that: well, it was offensive to them. It was, effectively a revictimisation for them—not guilty by reason of insanity—and they want a name change. The signalling matters, and it matters here, as well, because first responders and prison officers deserve—for their loyal, hard service in our country—formal recognition by Parliament of that critical public service. Yes, we can thank them, but, actually, we should do better than that; we should try and help keep them safe with deterrent sentences in the courts. We have that opportunity to do that in this bill.

I would also say, look, as an element of an offence—which we are doing: we are creating an offence here where it is an element of the offence that it is a first responder or a prison officer; in fact, it is wider than that, but I’ll come to that point—it will mean that offenders in these situations, and I make no apology for this to the soft-on-crime people on the other side of this House, do receive higher, more condign, deterrent sentences. And that is actually right because what they are doing is wrong. We need to see harder sentences in this area because it is getting harder and harder, worse and worse, for first responders—whether they be prison officers, policemen and policewomen, you name it.

If you don’t think I’m right, Simeon Brown told me a remarkable series of facts that he has worked out through his work as a member of Parliament: 92 percent; there has been an increase of 92 percent of prisoner assaults on corrections officers in the last three years. Right? In the last three years, it has gone up 92 percent. And those requiring medical treatment in our prisons—that is the prison officers who have been assaulted—it is not as high as the 93 percent; it is up 33 percent, and all the while, Stuart Nash, the prison population has dropped 15 percent. So the numbers have dropped, but the assaults and the harm on officers is worse. Who would want to be a corrections officer in this country today? And, actually, the union is making that point clear with their vote of no confidence in the Minister of Corrections.

That’s not the point of this bill. But I simply make the point: actually, it is right to have this offence; the symbolism of it matters; these are people, great New Zealanders working hard for our country; it is dangerous; it is getting worse for them on their ground, as I’ve demonstrated, and we need this offence.

The second point I want to make is that we support extending cover to a wider group of public services. And if we have the opportunity, we’ll have an SOP that does that so that it is not just first responders of a certain kind, a strict kind, and prison officers; we would extend this to police officers, to general practitioners, and the hospital staff that work in critical Public Service roles. I know from long experience that for so many of these people, it is dangerous.

I remember a jury trial in Pukehina, I think it was, it was a murder trial, the ambulance officers were the first people on the scene, they turned up, there was a bit of a crowd, it had been a party, someone had been stabbed to death. As the ambulance officers got out to try and assist, they were spat at and kicked and punched. And by the way, that is not uncommon. That is happening as a matter of course around New Zealand—I’m not exaggerating to say—every single day. First responders are treated like crap by scumbags in the country, when they are trying to save people’s lives and do the right things.

So I say—quite clearly, actually—we should extend coverage in this bill. That is the right thing to do here. We have that opportunity if this bill were to pass.

Thirdly, it was New Zealand First and Darroch Ball, as we’ve heard, who proposed a mandatory minimum sentence. We don’t support that. Most of National are against that in principal, full stop. I’d say judges, if I can put it this way, are squiffy, as a general rule of thumb when it comes to mandatory minimums. They think that and say that it gets in the way of their discretion when it comes to sentencing. I do just want to say this: I think, on occasion, mandatory minimum prison sentences are appropriate. I think that constitutionally it is entirely within Parliament’s remit to pass them on occasion. Sentencing and what prisoners receive in court is constitutionally the right of Parliament, not just the courts. And if I can name-drop, for a second, at Oxford, the foremost expert in the area of sentencing around the common law world, Professor Andrew Ashworth was quite clear on that. I do think there are occasions—not in this bill—where mandatory minimums are the right thing to do.

Finally, we do support cumulative sentencing for this new offence. As I say, the good New Zealanders who work so hard in this area in dangerous, difficult jobs, seeing people at their worst, turning up to crimes, in our emergency departments, in our prisons with the most dangerous New Zealanders—sadly there are, and, sadly, these days, a lot of Aussies, as well—they deserve deterrent sentences in this area.

In the last minute or so, I do want to say—I haven’t prepared this; listening to the speeches of the Labour Party members, I feel somewhat obliged to do it—why on earth would the Labour Party vote against this bill? Well, is it because they don’t value first responders? Is that why they do it? They sneer on the other side, but, actually, when they’ve got a good bill before them that would help protect first responders, result in more deterrent sentences, I just wonder. I think the ultimate reason is this: the Labour Party of New Zealand is soft on crime and soft on the causes of crime. They actually think, like the member for Taieri, that if they sort of hug a hoodie, if they go along and have hui with patched gang members, that somehow is going to make things better. Well, we know that rehabilitation, reintegration, and setting people up in the prison system for success on the way out is the right thing to do. But you also have to sentence them and make sure they realise—and are punished for what are terrible crimes that make Kiwis less safe.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise to speak, unfortunately, against this bill. As a member of the Justice Committee, I can’t support this. I want to start by saying I have been a prosecutor. I have spent my life working to improve the efficacy of the criminal justice system, and particularly to make it more possible for the police to bring difficult sex offence cases through the court successfully. But I can’t support this bill. I want to start by taking a moment to just think about the range of services that our first responders do give us. Recently in Whangārei, in our office Kelvin Davis and I were just starting our first meetings when the tsunami warning sirens started, and we all had to evacuate. And out along the street were our police, out in our communities were our voluntary fire brigades, were our civil defence emergency responders, our hospitals geared up. The response was instantaneous and it was, frankly, magnificent. I would particularly like to call out the wonderful services that were done by our volunteer fire brigades in Onerahi and in Waipū who not only helped to evacuate many, many schoolchildren, but then fired up the barbie and actually cooked the sausages donated by local businesses that made it possible for the teachers and the early childhood educators to keep those many, many little kids calm and happy. Our first responders do an extraordinary job. We all know it. We all honour them for it. But this is not the way we protect them.

I am actually really disappointed because it seems to me that my first few months in the House have involved a series of bills coming from National where they are, essentially, the criminal justice equivalent of a sugar hit. They are empty calories of a response. We are talking about bills that again and again and again propose a solution in search of a problem when the criminal justice system already provides a more than adequate response to the problem. They are sound and fury signifying nothing, and I, frankly, find it difficult that the House is asked to spend its time on things that don’t need fixing, because we already have a solution. There is so much more to be done in the criminal justice sphere, and we are busy talking about creating an offence where, as a prosecutor I know perfectly well, the courts are already capable of taking into account this offence and this behaviour and making proper judgments as to how to weight it.

So I want to turn first to the question of just what is already out there. What is it that makes me say we just don’t need a separate offence? And I want to take you to section 9 of the Sentencing Act, because it is section 9(fa) that states that if the victim is a constable or a police officer acting in the course of their duty, that is an aggravating feature. And then section 9(fb) states that if the victim was an emergency health worker or fire service worker acting in the course of their duty that is also an aggravating feature. We are already capable of dealing with this problem on behalf of those vital members of our society, our first responders. And what’s more, the point of having them as aggravating features rather than as a discrete offence—and particularly this offence, but I will come to that. The point of having this as an aggravating feature means that we actually are able to cover the full gamut. So not just injuring with intent to injure. Why is it not possible and why is it not relevant to the member opposite, for example, that a constable is assaulted in the course of his duty or her duty? Why is it not relevant to the member opposite that a constable is threatened with grievous bodily harm or even a threat to kill? These things are not covered. Apparently the only thing that matters is injuring with intent to injure. The beauty of treating it as an aggravating feature is that it gives the judge that flexibility. Now, I will come back to that point of flexibility so I would like you to hold on to that thought, because I really take issue with Mr Bridges for what he said earlier. Flexibility in judging is one of the beauties of our system.

So the point is we already have the ability to take cognisance of the fact that the victim is a first responder delivering vital service to our society. We already have the ability to do it in a far wider range of circumstances than the current bill under discussion would ever allow us to do it. It seems to me that when we have so much to do for our poor country, so many things to clean up and to fix, here we are essentially making work. This is empty calories. It may make people feel good. It may provide them with this idea of—I think Mr Bridges called it a signifier. He called it “signalling”. It signals, unfortunately, nothing.

I have never met a police officer in the course of my reasonably lengthy career in criminal justice who asked for a separate offence of attacking an officer. I have never met a nurse or a doctor who asked for that sort of response. What they ask for is that we make real change. They ask that we look at the causes of offending. They ask that we look at giving them, for example, more colleagues to work with. They look for the fact that we have more police officers. And thankfully, I am part of a Government that has, in fact, provided the biggest police force we have ever had in this country. I meet doctors and nurses, for example, emergency consultants who say what we need to do is provide more support for our vulnerable members in society so they don’t end up in these situations. I’ve never had an emergency consultant come to me and say, “Please put me in the Crimes Act, Emily.” It is a mystery to me that we are being asked to spend our time on this.

But one thing I have been asked to spend time on is the hierarchy of offending, and this is the second way in which this particular bill is simply not going to achieve what it needs. The hierarchy of offending, and we’re talking sections 188 to 192 or so of the Crimes Act, sets out a scale of offending that starts at the most serious and goes to the least serious. So I think if you consider what a common assault is—I wonder if it is worth just taking a moment to remind the House of what an injury and an assault and a wound, in fact, are. Because an injury simply means—an assault is a touch. It may not have any physical impact whatsoever other than a touch. An injury leaves some sort of mark, but it may be very transitory. A red mark from being grabbed is considered an injury. A wound is when you break the skin, that level of greater seriousness, and then you get to grievous bodily harm (GBH) and you’re talking broken bones and serious injury.

So there’s two elements to this hierarchy of offences. One is that it is based on the seriousness of the injury. The other is it is based on the culpability, on the mental element. And these are the two ways in which this particular offence really doesn’t do justice to anyone. First, it completely conflates reckless or unintentional offending and actual intentional offending. And for some reason, both of them are given exactly the same sentence. The second point is it doesn’t pay attention to the actual seriousness of what’s done. It leaves the bizarre possibility that we could end up having a police officer who has suffered GBH, whose offender is charged with GBH and who gets a sentence of seven years, while his friend who just got a red mark on his arm, his offender’s sentenced for 10 years. This is just a nonsense.

The final nonsense—and I really want to get this in. The final nonsense is the idea that this would ever be a deterrent. There are studies after studies after studies. Deterrence only works if you’re thinking about the offence before you commit it. Deterrence works for white collar criminals. Deterrence does not work for people who are not thinking, who are in the middle of a scuffle or an affray. Deterrence doesn’t work for them. This bill, this offence, is candy for the mind.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. Tēnā koutou katoa. Well, I learn new things about this job every day. Tonight, I learnt that if both our spokesperson and the back half are not here, the person on duty gets to do the speech. So I apologise, actually, to the House that I stand to take a very short call without the experience and research that I would normally like to bring to any topic that I stand here to speak on or that my colleagues would have brought. So I will be very succinct.

Number one, we absolutely support our first responders for the incredibly important and life-saving work that they do. We must look after them and acknowledge the role they do. I also honestly hope that we pay them well enough for what they do.

Number two, as my colleague Emily Henderson, who just resumed her seat, said, all the research shows that mandatory sentences do not form a deterrent—they do not.

Simeon Brown: They were removed at select committee.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Thank you.

Simeon Brown: We’re talking about cumulative.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Cumulative, so there you go. This is again—

Simeon Brown: Oh, you don’t like those either?

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE: Thank you for the clarification. Any kind—whether it’s mandatory, whether it’s cumulative—of higher sentencing disproportionately affects Māori and often Pacific Island people as well.

The Greens accept the work of the Justice Committee. I know that we work very hard on the Health Committee and we work generally in consensus, so it’s concerning to me, then, that the select committee wasn’t able to bring something to this House that we could all support. But we cannot support this bill going forward. Kia ora.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on this bill. Can I just start by acknowledging those who have put this bill together: a former MP from New Zealand First Darroch Ball who chaired the Transport and Infrastructure Committee that I sat on. I know that he was passionate about all things related to things like this and he’s not here but I acknowledge Mark Mitchell for taking this forward. Also, I put an acknowledgment in for the Justice Committee. I know they’ve looked at this bill twice over. I’m not a member of that select committee, but I know there’s been a lot of work and rework on that to ensure the best possible outcome could be achieved.

Unfortunately, as the House has heard, on this side of the House we will be opposing the bill and you’ve heard many good reasons. Part of this, the inspiration for me, has been that previous colleagues have talked about why we are opposing this and one of the big impetuses for this has been when I heard my colleague from Whangārei Emily Henderson, who really—and I want to sum this up as a “prevention first” mantra. As she said, she talked about if we wanted real change, we would be looking at the causes of offending first. They’ve been summed up, unfortunately, by some as us being soft on crime. I reject that, because those comments, in my view, they lack authenticity. When I hear that it’s a slogan, it’s unreal, it’s not true, it’s inaccurate, it’s almost cheap, because the bottom line—and I know that the police have this as part of their value system—is prevention first.

So what are the causes of offending: very much to stop the old ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach. And what a slogan—I mean, “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff”, because this very much is that; it doesn’t address the root causes. It doesn’t do anything deep. It doesn’t really do anything other than what—sometimes I think, you know, and I don’t want to discredit the member who brought this forward, but maybe it was just easy to put this back in the box and to get this through. I’m not sure.

But we also heard that we’ve got some big numbers. I reflect, just on Sunday, I was at one of the largest community events in New Zealand being Newtown Festival and there you get a really good experience of our first responders who are there in action, be it the St John Ambulance service—obviously in Wellington here we have Wellington Free Ambulance as well, but St John Ambulance do the event services part of the operation here in the city. We also saw the fire guys and the extent of the parade stretches right up to Newtown fire station, for those that know that part of Wellington, and you see them. And very much one thing I like about both of those entities is the effort that they put in for education. I think often education and responding in that way is seen as soft. And I look at so many cases where if we just simply took some time to educate people around some of these things and maybe then you wouldn’t get the outcome or the crime that comes. To call that soft is really unfair to those first responders because they don’t deserve that.

The police were there, a small crew—estimate for 100,000 people. I know our police department really well. I know the four: there were two constables, senior sergeant, and an inspector. I know them well. To have only four tells me that it’s a community that they feel safe in. And also our Māori wardens, I feel they take an active role through the Maori Community Development Act. They have the respect and mana now that goes well beyond just dealing with our Māori communities; much more in dealing with communities in general. They know the whānau and families and I treat them as first responders also. But I knew I was probably going to be speaking on this and I observed them closely during the—it seemed like a lifetime I was there, but 12 hours standing on my feet at that festival. I was thinking, “What would happen if anyone did try to do anything to them, apart from the community responding and saying and preventing anything, hopefully, too bad?” But this bill reminds you of how they would feel.

I relate the conversation back to my colleague Emily Henderson, who really said, you know, “I don’t think this would be the sort of thing that they would want. They would want more resourcing.” And we see that with the police service now where we’ve got more police, be it sworn or unsworn. I mean, on that side of the House, let me tell you this. They’d always want more human resource, whatever—sworn, non-sworn, any bits and pieces, dare I say it, that make their lives easier. But this would be the last thing on their mind. I don’t think they would go to work thinking, “Thank Christ, we’ve got a piece of legislation there that will help us if anything goes wrong.” That’s not their kaupapa. They are there to help people and serve them, and if things do go wrong, they’re there to simply do their job—and I think without asking them, I must say, because it’s our role to facilitate these outcomes on their behalf. And with my many years of knowledge working with each of these organisations—even, dare I say it, and the previous speakers have spoken about nurses, too. We’ve got a hospital there in Rongotai. We’ve got the emergency department and observing our nurses and our medical staff in action, I think this would be the last thing on their mind. What they would like to see is more resource, more effort, more equipment, and, luckily, this is a Government that cares for core public services and those resources are and will be available.

When I look through some of the detail, I think a lot has been said, and I’m just going to reinforce some of the things that have been said. I want to reaffirm to those who may be listening here tonight—those first responders are probably out working or taking time off or resting from their shifts—but any assault or any misdemeanour on a first responder, regardless of role, is completely unacceptable. I think the select committee—I know and I had a lengthy chat with the chair, the member for Hutt South, Ginny Andersen, saying, “Why? What happened here?” Why did this not get through, despite having a lot of work done to it in terms of what she said to it going through the select committee process twice? So how does something go through a process twice and still not get to an outcome where both sides can agree? And that puzzled me. That puzzled me. I thought, “Hold on a minute. How did we get to that?” And I thought then, “OK, so we’ve got to that stage. It’s still coming to the House and it will come here knowing that we will oppose it. And why was that?” And I thought. “Because the amendments that were put forward, they still didn’t address the significant issues that this bill should have addressed—the fundamentals that we’ve heard previously.” I thought, “Well, that could have been better with extra work, but hei aha—that’s how it is. So I come back to that fundamental around saying: what, I guess, with a prevention-first approach is the need for this? I can’t see it. Madam Speaker, kia ora.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): I stand before you tonight in support of this bill for our first responders, and I’d like to, throughout this speech, address some of the comments that have been made from across the floor, but I’ll start off in the first place with just a couple of points from the ACT Party.

One is that we think this bill sends a powerful message that we support and wish to look after our first responders, and when I hear of going to a festival and there being lots of people around and we cannot imagine whether or not we’re going to see somebody assault a first responder, I’d like to tell you that it probably doesn’t happen at festivals, with a lot of people around. What we see on the reality TV programmes is that it’s happening late at night; it’s happening where there’s only a few people. What I’m hearing from my colleagues next to me is that there’s a nurse that got head-butted. It’s too late then to actually jump in and help that person. What I’ve heard of is a niece of one of our members, a nurse, who has been punched in the stomach. Again, it’s too late to do something then.

I don’t see this as being a deterrence; the ACT Party sees it as being a consequence to the actions that somebody takes on one of our first responders. And, while I hear from across the House where they say St John Ambulance don’t want this or first responders don’t want this, that’s not what we’re hearing when we’ve been lobbied, especially by the prison officers. I’d like to commend the National Party for the three Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that they put in, because the ACT Party was quite prepared to support those and actually see them as a really good compromise to the issues that the Labour Party had brought up during the select committee process.

I too sit on the Justice Committee. One of the questions, actually, that was asked was, “Do we need to create an offence?” And the answer to that is, actually, yes, we do need to create an offence, to show that there will be a consequence to the actions of going after one of our first responders. We also had made the point of saying in the select committee that we needed to extend this so that the first responders included the GPs, included the doctors, the nurses, the fire response people, and also the prison officers—the prison officers who, National have already told us, are living with a 92 percent increase in violence that is occurring within the prisons. They are looking for support, and we would like to support them. When I heard from the member from Taieri her sad story, I tautoko her story but I also heard her say that she has a high regard for St John, and I wonder: how can you have a high regard for any organisation but not for their safety when it comes to discussing looking after them as first responders?

I also heard the other side talking about us wanting to lock up the offenders and throw away the key. Now, I’ve not seen in the first bill or in any SOPs anything at all to say that we were wanting to lock them up and throw away the key. We want to see a consequence to the actions of going after one of the first responders. We’d like to see the support from this Government to all of those first responders. And I’ve seen heads shaking over there. I’ve seen the Labour Party actually talk about wanting to create other solutions so that we don’t have people wishing to attack the first responders, when the reality is, from where I’m sitting, you’ve had four years to actually get into that and make some positive changes and it’s not occurring. What is occurring is an increase in the violence that is occurring to our first responders.

We are hearing about other solutions that are needed but haven’t been told exactly what those solutions are. So I am going to factor in that it’s probably that we need more mental health help, we need jobs out there, we need people in homes, and people are just getting frustrated and they’re attacking others, and this is where we need to make sure that they know there is a consequence to that. To have no support of this bill is actually to not support the first responders, and we need to do that, because there’s actually a failing in the other issues that are causing this response. So we need to do something in the first instance for them. To ensure that a general practitioner, that his nurses, that Fire and Emergency, that our constables, that our prison officers are actually held in high regard does mean that we need to pass a bill to help protect them, and it does send a message that this Government actually values the work and the effort that they put into our communities.

And, further to that, I have four children; three of them are girls. One of them is studying to be a doctor, another one is studying to be a nurse, and the third one, when she leaves school, will become a paramedic, and I want to make sure that my three daughters are protected, that society will have the same respect for them that everybody in this House says that we have, by introducing a piece of legislation that will help protect them. So it’s disappointing to hear what’s happening from the other side of the House, but ACT will support National’s Supplementary Order Papers and we would have wished that this bill could have gone further in order to support those first responders, those that are there now and those that will be there in the future. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I stand here as a someone who, before I came to this House, spent 41 years and nine months as a police officer, 21 years of them on the front line. I acknowledge my colleague Mark Mitchell across the way, who spent a little bit less time than that. I also acknowledge those of my ex-colleagues who are out there. Someone mentioned they’ll be starting just heading off for night shift tonight, many of them, not knowing what’s going to happen. That’s one of the reasons why probably many of us liked joining the police—that sense of better work stories and not quite knowing what’s going to happen. It’s certainly a job that I found very fulfilling over those years.

I also stand here as someone who got a good hiding when I was in the police. Like all police officers, there were always a few scuffles and various other things that took place. But the one decent hiding I did get, like many assaults, came out of nothing. It was a Wednesday afternoon, called to a family violence—it’s called now; then we called it a domestic—in Mount Victoria. A male had come around to try and kidnap his child. When we got in there, without going too deeply into it, I ended up having a baby thrown to me, which I ended up holding on to while I was attacked by three gang members, and I couldn’t do much about it. I was eventually able to get one of the neighbours to take control of the baby, and we were able to then retaliate. But that was one of those experiences that—and I’m sure Mr Mitchell sitting there, and any police officers listening tonight—anyone who’s been in the police will all know, as there’ll be prison officers, as there’ll be those who have worked in emergency services. They’ll all have that one moment where the violence of the moment really—I suppose it was a bit of a loss of control at the time.

But, as in many of these cases, the offenders in my case ended up spending some good time care of Her Majesty, as almost invariably these cases do. Even now, of course, in the Sentencing Act, it is an aggravating feature to assault a police officer, a prison officer, or indeed an emergency worker. So it’s in there. Generally, also, when I was a member of the Police Association, when there was a sentencing after one of our officers had been assaulted, I always made contact to see if they were happy with the sentence. Generally they were, because almost invariably those people—particularly after serious assaults, there was a long prison sentence involved. I won’t say everybody was always happy and would like to have seen—particularly the people who probably were the least happy were the partners of those who had been assaulted. I found that they were the people who really probably were more angry on behalf of the partner who had been assaulted than the actual person assaulted themselves. So I bring that up to give some context, some personal experience.

Also in my last period before this job, I worked in the Police Association and spent my time getting the protection that police officers in particular need. I realise this is broader than just police officers, although I was pleased that by the time I finished, prison officers were able to avail themselves of some of the things that we’d achieved for police, initially being—OC spray was one, tasers, vests, even digital radios; all things that did all work to make our people—as, I suppose, the society changed, and more surveillance of what—and also, I suppose, even the size of police officers changed. Again, not all police officers look like Mr Mitchell and myself, who locked the scrum in Waipū on Friday night. But, obviously, the police should be reflective of the society that they police, and that ensured that they did represent people of different sizes. So what was obviously necessary was to ensure that where perhaps the physical presence wasn’t quite enough, therefore it was compensated for by the tasers, by the OC spray. So there’s some balancing out necessary. So things do evolve.

It’s a little bit like having spent most of my career as a detective, something that—Mr Mitchell, as a dog handler, never probably made those lofty heights. But he will sort of mention that detectives probably didn’t work at night as much as the dog handlers, but we had to learn a little bit more. One thing that I did do is also train detectives at the same time. One of the things that always confused young detectives that came through when we were training them was this whole area around assaults and trying to define what was the assault. It used to be that we would set questions. How we’d train detectives is we’d do what we call a criminal liability, where you’d outline a situation where they would have to go through and determine what offences had been committed. Of course, the basis of every offence is an intent, and where there’s—in establishing any case. Mr Bridges was here before. As he will know, having been a very good Crown solicitor in his day, you don’t really take—with the exception of a few cases where there is strict liability, and they are relatively few, you do need to actually establish an intent in all these cases. So, of course, what you’d be then asking, having established there was an intent to assault, an intent to do whatever—that was always an important part of the offence—then you would start breaking down, and you’ve heard some of the previous speakers talking about the hierarchy of offending. That hierarchy of offending was determined by the intent and by the injury. Most of it was overly complicated and remains overly complicated. My belief is more discretion by, shall we say, well-trained judges is probably what the system—under certainly, clearly, the necessity for guidelines.

That was why, initially, when I was on the very-hard working Justice Committee—good to see my ex-colleagues over there, still beavering away and obviously doing some work on this bill to try and probably revive it, I would have to say. That would be the only way I could say it, because it was quite clear that it was a bit of a bill with a solution looking for, probably, the problem, because it wasn’t going to make any difference.

I think as legislators here, it’s very important that when we do—passing laws is really important, and we’ve always got to know why we are doing it. So when we’re standing in this House—that’s why the legislative process is quite a complicated one. There are many who speak to—probably many of us before we came to the House. “Why don’t you just pass a law to do this?” We’ve all heard it in our electorate offices: “Why don’t they just do that? Why don’t they just do that?” Well, we are those “they” now, and when we get here, the first thing we realise is that we actually owe it to make sure that by time a piece of legislation does leave this place, it is a good piece of legislation—a good piece of legislation that is going to do what it’s intended to.

I just refer to the previous speaker, Nicole McKee. She actually was quite surprising and revelatory, her speech, where she said she didn’t see that this legislation was going to have any preventative act or element to it at all—quite surprised me. She said it was all about retribution. And yet at the same time, she said she’s got three daughters who are going to be going into the field where, actually, these—and good; congratulations. They’re going into the field. Yet she had just said that they deserve the protection. But, actually, this wasn’t, as she said herself, going to provide them with any protection because it wasn’t going to stop them being assaulted in the first place. Actually, I’ll quote—she actually said it was actually all about a consequence, not a deterrent at all. So anything we should do should be about making sure it deters.

Actually, one thing all criminologists to the left, to the right, to the top, to the bottom all agree with is actually that the best crime prevention measure, the thing that actually determines whether they will commit a crime or not, where there is any intent, is actually a belief that they will get caught. That was what, when Mr Mitchell and his dog van would turn up—a belief that they would get caught would be, actually, a thing that would determine their behaviour. So, actually, by Ms McKee’s own admission, any legislation like this wasn’t going to actually provide or prevent the assault, which she very honestly—I think it was very insightful and honest of her to stand here and say that: that it was all about, for her, making sure there was a consequence for that action.

Well, I can reassure her that, actually, there are consequences. While, as I say, particularly partners of those assaulted are often not happy with the sentencing, generally my experience has been where there’s been the sort of serious assaults that this legislation has been geared towards and was pointed towards, there’s never been a shortage of ability—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member’s time has expired.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National): This bill comes down to a simple principle: that this Parliament owes a duty of care for the ambulance officers, the firemen, the police, the correction officers, and the doctors in A & E that every day keep our community safe. I am appalled at the hand-wringing that we have seen from Government members refusing to provide those good people with the protection that they deserve.

I’m actually appalled at the sort of evidence we heard at the Justice Committee. Let me give you one: 90 percent of the doctors and nurses that work in our A & E up and down New Zealand have been physically assaulted in the course of providing care for New Zealanders. That’s a disgrace. The very people that provide the care—regardless of people, whatever violence they’ve been caught up with—are assaulted in their job. Let me give you another one: since Labour’s been in Government, there’s been a 92 percent increase in the number of assaults against our corrections officers. These are the people who actually put their life at risk to look after some of the nasty, bad people in society that pose harm. And, again, I say this Parliament owes those corrections officers the basic principle that if you assault, if you beat up, if you hurt those people who society requires to be there on the front line—that we’re going to protect them and the members opposite won’t. It is as simple and as blunt as that.

When I hear the Labour members opposite talk about principle—let’s talk about what happened to this bill. When it was a New Zealand First bill and they needed New Zealand First to put them into the Government, they supported it, but when it’s a National bill, suddenly, they flip-flop and they’re opposed to it. Their opposition to this bill has got far more to say with the petty politics that I’ve seen almost every members’ day in the term of this Parliament. When National members sponsor good bills, Labour are so narrow-minded and petty that they oppose it regardless. That pettiness was exposed in the select committee. Members on this side of the House heard the evidence and proposed amendments that would make the bill better. Labour members of the committee admitted the amendments would make the bill better but voted against them. Well, I think we owe a duty as members on select committees, whatever the bill is, to make it the best possible bill. Members opposite are like robots for the executive and will just do whatever they’re told, even when it breaks their basic principles.

I look forward to engaging with the ambulance officers, the policemen, the corrections officers that get weasel words from members opposite. When it comes to voting in this Parliament, these guys are more interested in backing those that hurt our people on the front line. I say to members opposite: have a damn good look in the mirror. This is one of those occasions when Parliament needs to not speak but act in favour of backing those public servants, those volunteers in communities from Kaitāia to Bluff who put their life and their work on the line to protect society. I’m proud to be part of the National Party, that knows right and that’s prepared to back these good people and is prepared to send a very clear message to the community of New Zealand: that you don’t beat up on those people on the front line.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have just a short call this evening, but first I wanted to acknowledge, like many others have in the debate tonight, those people in our communities who are working on the front line to protect our communities. I stand here tonight and acknowledge the many cousins, friends, and people in our community who are part of the ambulance service, who are part of the fire and emergency service, who are in the police, who are corrections officers, and who are in A & E. I am related to many; many are my friends. I would not stand here in this House and deliver a speech which I don’t believe to be true, that I believe is going to protect those members of my whānau, of my friends, and of my community.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Why did you vote for it at first reading?

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Now, I want to correct something that Dr Nick Smith said. Let’s correct the record, because anybody listening might take what you just said as the truth. It is not. Let’s go back to the beginning of the process. Yes, we supported it to first reading. If you go and look at the Hansard debates, you will see in those debates that we had concerns and—

Erica Stanford: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. The member just said that my colleague the Hon Dr Nick Smith had said something that was not true, and I understand it to be a breach of Standing Orders to claim that a member has wilfully misled this House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I thank the member. It is up to the member concerned to take a point of order on that.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Indeed, the member said just that and also breached Standing Orders in respect of referring to you when you were distracted.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I ask the member to withdraw and apologise.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: I withdraw and apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Willow-Jean Prime.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I just want to make it clear and put it on record for anybody who might be confused by the prior contribution that, yes, we did support this to first reading, but we noted our concerns with the member’s bill in those debates. We supported the first reading because—and let me say—we believe that the issue of ensuring our first responders are protected is important, so we wanted a select committee process—we wanted to hear submissions. But I say we noted that we had numerous concerns with the bill.

So when it went through that process—when it went through that process; when we heard the submissions; when we looked at what things might be done to rectify the situation—we could not support it at second reading. We were not confident that our concerns had been addressed. So it proceeded because National, in fact, supported it. It is an unusual case where we have had two select committee processes on it. We reopened it for submissions—we heard further submissions.

Now, I wasn’t a member of the committee in the last Parliament, but I am a member of the Justice Committee in this Parliament. One of the things that has been highlighted by many of the speakers on our side of the House this evening is that once you remove what really was one of the fundamental proposals in the member’s bill—which was mandatory sentencing—it really doesn’t leave much to achieve in terms of this. Why is that? The other side would have you believe that we don’t want to support our first responders at all—right? But we actually already have legislative provisions to be able to weigh that into the consideration of sentencing, and the appropriate people to do that are the judges. They already have the ability to do that; they do not need this piece of legislation to give them the power and the ability to do that. That already exists. When you take one of the main proposals out of the member’s bill—which was around mandatory sentencing, which the other side also doesn’t support—then it really doesn’t leave much else.

I am confident that what already exists in the legislation will support our first responders. The judges are able to take into consideration the aggravating factors when determining sentencing, and therefore our side of the House—the members of our select committee from the Government—do not support this bill.

I do want to just finally acknowledge that many of those who we are talking about tonight will probably not be tuned into this debate this evening because they’ll be undertaking their good work, but I do not want it to be misunderstood or misconstrued.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on this piece of legislation. I’ve been sitting here listening to this debate, and I’ve been listening to the Government members of this House give what I think is a slap in the face to our front-line officers, our police officers, our corrections officers, our nurses, our doctors in emergency departments (EDs), our paramedics, and I am appalled and I am very disgusted—disgusted—by this attitude of this Government.

The Government has refused through the select committee process to help to improve the bill. Select committee is meant to be there to help improve the legislation. This Government got in the way and did nothing. And I haven’t heard one single suggestion tonight as to how they are going to make it any safer for the front-line officers and the front-line first responders who put their lives on the line every single day to protect New Zealanders and to keep them safe—not a single suggestion. All they’ve said is the current legislation is fine. Well, I ask them to say that to the nurses and the doctors, the corrections officers who are seeing a 92 percent increase in assaults by prisoners—92 percent increase in assaults under Kelvin Davis’ leadership; that is unacceptable. And there’s not one single suggestion that they’ve brought to Parliament tonight to try to solve that problem.

Actions speak louder than words, and actions speak a lot louder than the crocodile tears I’ve heard tonight. I’ve heard stories about, “Oh, I met this first responder the other day.”, or “I was at this event down in this suburb of my electorate and I saw how amazing their work was.” Well, I’m sorry, but actions speak louder than words, and actions speak a lot louder than these fake crocodile tears, which I just think is absolutely disgusting.

I firmly believe that victims should be at the heart of the criminal justice system. That’s the National Party’s view—victims should be at the heart of the criminal justice system. And I’m not going to stand here in Parliament and make excuses for criminals and excuses for people who bash up front-line officers—I’m not going to stand by and make excuses for them. The New Zealand Police Association in their submission on this piece of legislation made it very clear: it is not in the job description of a police officer to be assaulted in the line of work that they do, but it’s happening far too often.

The Corrections Association of New Zealand would say the same thing: it’s not in the job description of a corrections officer to be assaulted in their line of work. They work in the most dangerous environment, working with the most dangerous people, and it is not in their job description, and they are being assaulted more and more often. Not only just being assaulted—and some people listening might be thinking, “Oh well, that’s just a bit of a bruise or a bit of a clip around the ears.”—the number of corrections officers who have had to received medical care has increased from 162 to 292 per year under this Government; an 80 percent increase in the amount of Corrections Association staff requiring medical treatment. And we hear the Minister trying to downplay these assaults and saying, “Oh, well, we’re trying to encourage more reporting.” Well, you might be trying to encourage more reporting, but there’s more people being assaulted more seriously. And he tries to say, “Oh, well, the number of serious assaults is not going up.” Well, it’s pretty serious if they’re needing medical treatment and taking time off work. There were corrections officers that I’ve met who’ve had to have serious time off work, operations, all sorts of procedures done so they can get back to work, and then it’s the emotional stress and the emotional strain which comes later afterwards. And I see the Police Association talking recently about post-traumatic stress injury, and the injury which is caused from these traumatic events.

We have to also recognise the seriousness of this. That’s why this piece of legislation is so important. It’s important because it does make a difference. And I’ve heard the Government members try to downplay this piece of legislation to say, “Well, it literally doesn’t do much—it doesn’t do anything.” Well, I’ll tell you what, it does two things—two very important things. Firstly, it puts in place a specific offence, so if you assault a corrections officer, police officer, an ED doctor or nurse, or a paramedic, there is a specific offence that you will be charged with for committing that crime. And they say, “Oh, well, it’s already an aggravated factor at sentencing.” Well, it might be for some of them, but it’s not for the nurses. Patricia, who’s been emailing some of us, watching from her home in the Waimakariri, she’s been telling us it doesn’t fit for her, and this is another reason why this piece of legislation is needed. It sends a very clear message that as Parliament, we will not accept these people being assaulted. It sends a very clear message that there should be a deterrent sentence, and that people who do this should be punished.

And some people say, “Oh, we shouldn’t be sending people to jail.” Well, this Government has a goal of reducing the prison population by 30 percent, and I wonder if that’s the reason why they don’t want to vote for this bill, because actually a few more people might go to jail.

Hon James Shaw: Point of order, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Point of order, Dr James Shaw—Hon James Shaw.

Hon James Shaw: Thank you. I aspire to a doctorate one day, Madam Speaker. This is the earliest opportunity I’ve had to ask this point of order—it’s just taken me a while to look up the Speaker’s rulings. I just wanted to ask you to clarify the ruling that you made before when you asked Willow-Jean Prime to withdraw and apologise in relation to two points, one of which was that she had used the word “you” and drawn you into the debate, and the other was that she had said that a statement by Dr Nick Smith was untrue. And I wanted to ask you which one of those two things you were asking her to withdraw and apologise for, because I’ve been checking—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you, I think I understand the point of order that the member is making—the member will resume his seat—and the member, you’re quite right, took a point of order. I ruled that Dr Nick Smith had risen to his feet and had taken offence, and that is why I asked the member to withdraw and apologise.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. And a reminder to members to take points of order, I guess, when the issue actually comes up.

But the point here is this bill does two specific things: the specific offence, which actually recognises the importance of the work that these people do, and it is an incredibly important piece of work that these people do. And I was talking about the fact that maybe this Government doesn’t want these people to possibly go to jail, because actually they want to reduce the prison population by 30 percent, and the Green Party signs up to that goal too. This Government is namby-pamby when it comes to actually taking action against people who cause serious offences.

The second point is it puts in place the ability for a judge to have a cumulative sentence, and this is most important to those corrections officers who get assaulted in their day-to-day work by a prisoner who might be on remand, and then what happens? They go before the judge with an additional charge of assaulting a corrections officer, and the judge has to use the totality of the offending, and there’s no actual additional punishment for that offence. In fact, it’s essentially a free punch on a corrections officer. And these are being caused particularly by gang members. We know 60 percent of the assaults on corrections officers are being caused by gang members. The Mongrel Mob turned up to Parliament the other day and told us how they’re just such a kind, betterment association. Well, actually, in January, 16 of the 51 assaults on corrections officers were caused by Mongrel Mob members. They’re not a group of people who just want to be kind and caring. And so there should be a very clear message sent: there are no free punches in the prisons against corrections officers, and that’s what this piece of legislation will do.

This piece of legislation is incredibly important. I am proud to be supporting it. I’m absolutely disgusted at the arguments put up by the other side—the crocodile tears about their support for front-line officers, but they will not do the work and actually put their words into action, and that’s what we as politicians are elected to do, and the Government and the Green Party have failed.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to rise at this late hour and take a call to speak to the Protection for First Responders and Prison Officers Bill. This is, of course, a bill that has come through the Justice Committee, of which I am a member. As we’ve heard tonight, there was a majority committee recommendation on this report in favour of taking note of the report, but not in favour of the bill progressing. I do want to acknowledge that there was an alternative view, but, unfortunately, that view still left us with a very unworkable bill.

I am a new member of the Justice Committee, having been elected last year, and one thing I’ve noticed, just comparing it to my experience in sitting in other committees, is that it is a highly emotive committee because of the nature of the issues that come before us. They are often issues that we deal with that are about harm done to individuals. I think, because of that, it requires an emotive response—and as it should, which is why we should be sitting there, hearing those important submissions that we heard on this bill. And then we have an obligation as lawmakers, a responsibility, to reflect on the principles of law that we are setting in place in this House that should pay respect to the principles of criminal law—they are principles about proportionality, about responding to the needs of individual perpetrators, but also individual victims. It is about taking a four-tiered principled approach to crime, which, yes, it does include prevention; yes, it does include punishment, as my colleague Nicole McKee spoke to earlier this evening; it does include community safety; but it does also include rehabilitation. In this House, we have an obligation as lawmakers to consider those principles. That is why the scale of offending and the scale of sentencing is critical. I’ll come back to that.

Given I am the last speaker, I will very quickly recap the key features of this bill which amend three separate Acts: the Crimes Act, the Sentencing Act, and the Summary Offences Act. As others have traversed earlier this evening, the big change was really that creation of the new offence of injuring a first responder or prison officer with intent, the requirement of a minimum sentence being imposed of six months for those convicted of the new offence, and requiring that any sentence of imprisonment be imposed cumulatively on any determinant sentences. I do acknowledge that there was an alternative view in that respect that agreed with the majority view removing that minimum sentence. I will speak to that later. Thirdly, there was the expansion of the existing offence of assaulting a police officer.

So in terms of our process at the Justice Committee, a few of my colleagues have mentioned that we received 74 submissions. I actually just wanted to reference a few this evening as I speak to why I am opposed to this bill progressing. I wanted to first reflect on the submission of the Law Society, and they said this: “The desire to offer greater protection to first responders and prison officers while on duty is understandable. It is however not necessary to amend the criminal statutes to achieve this objective. The Crimes Act and Summary Offences Act already contain specific criminal offences for assaults on police and other responders, and the Sentencing Act 2002 expressly recognises the status of the victim—police and prison officers, and emergency health or fire service personnel at emergency scenes”. This was section 9(1)(fa) and section 9(1)(fb) of the Sentencing Act that the Law Society were referencing. So we do already recognise first responders in our legislative scheme. Simon Bridges from across the floor referenced the fact that we needed to signal that this was wrong; this is the signal. It is already there. So it doesn’t add in that respect. We already have the signal.

But what it does create is an inconsistency in terms of the basic principles of criminal accountability. It doubles the maximum penalty for one type of assault—injuring with intent to injure—but not for other assault offences. That leaves a huge inconsistency in terms of the law, because offences not only need to be proportionate to the crime—and this is just in response to my colleague Mark Mitchell from across the floor, who wanted a further explanation to this. So it is not just that the sentence needs to be proportionate to the crime, crimes also need to be considered across the board so that there is consistency between life offences. So doubling an offence like this because of the nature of the victim would be extremely unusual in terms of criminal principles. It wouldn’t be unusual for it to be an aggravating factor, which it currently is, but it would in terms of doubling the offence. So in terms of the inappropriate outcome in this respect, injuring a first responder or a prison officer with an intent to injure would be considered twice as bad in terms of penalties. So that is the hierarchy in comparison. That doesn’t sit right in terms of criminal principles.

Now, the other issue is mandatory sentencing. I wasn’t going to speak on this, but as Simon Bridges has raised this as an issue that he believes should sit within parts of the criminal law, I do think I should address this. There are no offences for which a court must impose a minimum mandatory sentence. The proposal for a mandatory minimum sentence is a significant departure from principles of sentencing in New Zealand, so that is except for the crime of murder. That is the only time when a mandatory minimum sentence is imposed. It is a significant departure. JustSpeak said this well in their submission to us. They said, “Mandatory minimum sentences necessarily increase incarceration—the human rights issues and overcrowding in the prison system in the United States of America, which pioneered … mandatory minimum sentence[ing], should be a salutary lesson to Aotearoa New Zealand.”, which I completely agree with. The Howard League also echoed that to us in their submissions, as well.

So I do think that, in terms of mandatory minimum sentences, they are absolutely a disproportionate response, and there are other commentators who make similar comments but expand their arguments against minimum sentences, including that they focus on particular kinds of offences which mostly tend to have an effect on a certain category of individuals, as well; that they often impact the nature of bargaining when you are going through a criminal trial, which can sometimes confound that process as well; that putting people in prison, obviously, costs money; that there is little policy of evidence; that it prevents further commission of crime; that it doesn’t benefit the victims; and that there are alternative ways of having a more effective way to address criminal sentencing.

I would also like to comment on the proposal around cumulative sentencing which stayed in the alternative proposal that has come to the House today. So section 83 of the Sentencing Act actually already provides for the court to impose a cumulative sentence if it considers it appropriate. So to add this to another offence would, again, change that balance or the assumptions of whether a cumulative sentence is appropriate or not. At the end of the day, we have allowed judges to make decisions about what the appropriate level of sentencing is, because they have a closer view of the offender and of the victim and of the nature of the crime. Cumulative sentencing ties their hands in a way that is actually unhelpful to preventing further offending.

Lastly, I would just say that I think the motivation behind this bill is good. I think it is about deterrence. But deterrence is about more than just increasing sentencing; it is about addressing the causes of crime. It is about increasing support to our police, which this side of the House are absolutely doing. So thank you for the opportunity, again, to speak to this bill, Madam Speaker. I cannot commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, before we come to the votes on this bill, I’ll let you know that there will be two questions put, which has been agreed by the Business Committee. The first is about the House taking note of the select committee’s report. When we’ve dealt with that, the second question is on whether this bill should proceed. So the question is that the motion be agreed to.

Motion agreed to.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question now is, That this bill now proceed.

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

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 75

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

Motion not agreed to.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This bill will not proceed, and will be withdrawn from the Order Paper.

Bills

Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 7 April.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to take a call on this bill or not, because whenever I speak about my police dogs, I tend to get emotional. But I felt that it was appropriate to support my colleague Matthew Doocey and thank him for bringing this bill to the House. Reflecting back and responding to what was a very strong feeling and message being sent to him by his own community in relation to police dogs and them being killed on duty, I thought the best way for me to do this was just to share some personal insights and tell a story to the House about exactly what police dogs are all about. I wanted to respond, in particular, to the comments made by the Green Party member Ricardo Menéndez March, calling them attack dogs.

So, firstly, let me talk about my own dog, Czar, and the section that I was a part of. Czar and I, in probably the first couple of weeks we were operational, were called out to a job where a young guy—it’s a sad story; he was suffering from mental health—had armed himself with a samurai sword, put a bulletproof vest on, and went up to Rotorua Hospital with the intent of killing some of the nursing staff up there. I was called out. Fortunately, they managed to lock the doors and he couldn’t get in, and when I arrived he was making his way down to a primary school in Rotorua. During the arrest, both Czar and I were stabbed with the samurai sword. I wasn’t sure whether Czar would make it, but he did. He returned to duty, and he worked out a fully operational police life.

I’ll come back to Czar, but I want to talk about Rajah. Rajah was Kevin Weatherly’s dog. In Gisborne, Kevin and I were the Armed Offender Squad (AOS) dog handlers there for many years, and so Kevin and I worked very closely together and our two dogs Czar and Rajah worked closely together. Kevin was called out to a violent domestic one night, where the offender had taken a baseball bat and he’d assaulted his partner so badly that she was crippled on the floor and couldn’t move. When Kevin arrived, the offender moved to the kitchen and took out a butcher’s knife with the intent of finishing what he’d started. Kevin and Rajah intervened immediately, got into the house, and Rajah was stabbed in the neck and the chest during the arrest. Rajah never really made a full recovery, in my view, in terms of returning to work.

Then I want to talk about Woolf, Bill Eivers’ dog in Gisborne. During an arrest, Woolf was stabbed through the eye and lost his eye. Although he returned to police duties, he was never the same as well.

I spoke with Mike Sandle today. Mike is actually the manager of the Black Caps and has been for 10 years, and has been a part of what’s been a very successful leadership team with them. But he was a police dog handler with me, and he reminded me of his dog Rock. Mike lost contact with Rock one night, with a very violent offender that had managed to escape an AOS cordon, and Mike lost contact with Rock. Rock actually found the offender. They tumbled into a river and the offender drowned him—held him under and drowned him. This story actually has a happy ending, because somehow—they’re not sure what happened—Rock, who was obviously being held under, had let go of the offender. He was washed down the river, and somehow got a gasp of air. When Mike found him, they were able to revive him, and he actually went back to duty.

I just want to tell one other very quick story. Czar and I were called out one night to go to the Taupō emergency centre. Pete Masters was there, a very well-known New Zealand rescue helicopter pilot. It was a terrible night, there was a storm—snow, sleet, gale-force winds. He said, “There’s a two-year-old girl that’s gone missing down at Ruapehu, at the national park. It’s marginal flying. I’ll go if you’ll go.”, and I said, “We have to go—it’s a two-year-old. We’ve got to get down there as quickly as we can”.

Czar lay on the floor, basically, on our flight down—I don’t want to recount that flight again. We arrived there, Czar worked tirelessly through the night in sleet and in rain, sucking freezing cold air up over his olfactory glands. His feet were torn up with volcanic rock and snow. Thankfully, a guide—Cliff Jones—and Pete Masters went back up in the helicopter and went ahead of where I was tracking. We found that two-year-old. I’ll never forget the look in Cliff’s eye when he came out holding her, and, you know what? Czar wanted to get to her. Czar’s tail was waggling, and—for Mr Ricardo—he didn’t want to bite her. He wanted to nuzzle her. He wanted to give her a lick because he’d been working for three or four hours to try and find her in very difficult conditions. A week later, he was down in Tūrangi confronting an offender with an axe who was on methamphetamine.

This bill is about what value do we do put on our police dogs. What value do we put on them? I say that the five years in Matt Doocey’s bill is a fair value to put on the life of our police dogs.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): God make me the person my dog believes me to be.

My dog is currently wearing the cone of shame. He would not make a police dog. He is a very, very nervous labradoodle. But, I’ll tell you what, there is nothing like the love of a dog, like the devotion of a dog, and like the selflessness and the loyalty of a dog.

Mark Mitchell, thank you for those stories of the remarkable spirit that we are so incredibly lucky to have when we partner with a dog. There is absolutely nothing like it. I learnt to walk holding on to an Old English sheepdog called Arthur. One of my children actually wants to a policeman so that he can be a police dog handler.

With all of that, however, it is our job as parliamentarians and as lawmakers not to act on sentiment but to make a difference for our society and make a real difference for our society. I rose earlier and I said that in the short time I have had the privilege to stand in this House, I have been somewhat disheartened by the bills that have been proposed that seem to me sheer emotion and not a lot of practicality. You may well want to reflect on the fact that a party that prides itself on its hard-headed pragmatism is the party that is putting forward measure after measure, with not a lot of actual effect behind it.

When there are good bills that come across the House, they are looked at seriously, and they are accepted by this side of the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: I have just—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: I’m sorry, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): If the member could make a passing reference to the bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: Oh, a passing reference, ma’am. No, my point is that this bill is one of a number that we have looked at which don’t have a real, practical impact.

The problem with this is: 40,000 call outs, 56 years of police dog service, and, as tragic as each of these incidents is, 26 deaths only in 56 years, and some of those were actually accidents. I ask the House whether there is really a need, other than sheer emotion, to bring this forward.

The Sentencing Act already makes aggravating features possible to take into account the death or the injury of a police dog. We have, under section 9(1)(a), actual or threatened violence or the use of a weapon; under section 9(1)(d), the extent of the loss and the damage and the harm—I don’t think anyone would not expect a judge to pay attention to the loss of a police dog—particular cruelty, under section 9(1)(e) or the victims’ vulnerability, under section 9(1)(g); and, finally, in section 9(4), any other aggravating factor the court sees fit. We have the mechanics already to take the loss of a police dog into account.

If the death results from ill-treatment, we can then turn to the Animal Welfare Act, which was—I would like to point out—amended by the National Government in 2010, as far as the penalties went: in section 28, five years’ imprisonment or a fine not exceeding $100,000 max., or both, for anyone who wilfully ill-treats an animal with the result that it dies or is permanently disabled or seriously injured and impaired. The National Government had the opportunity in 2010. They changed it to section 28, and I suggest that we stick with what is actually working and sensible.

I’d also just like to go back to the point I was making earlier. If this is a deterrent sentence, again, it ain’t gonna work, and I don’t see the point in doing things that ain’t gonna work for the sheer candy and the sugar hit of making ourselves feel good. I’m here to make a difference.

In 1941, we removed the death penalty for murder. In 1949, the National Government brought it back. In 1957, we removed it again. Do you know why? Because the rate of murder doesn’t change. Crimes of passion—and killing a police dog, that’s one of them—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s great to be able to speak on, I guess, another issue involving first responders, and in this case it’s the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill. I want to just acknowledge the New Zealand Police, and particularly the dog section.

I know members of that section and the work that they do, and can I acknowledge Mark Mitchell and Matt Doocey for not only their work in it, but in the previous speech I talked about that not being genuine. I believe there is a genuine desire here from both members to do this, because I know that, and, look, I have seen a police dog in action on a rare occasion and I did wonder what the heck was going on. You could hear sirens. I was down at Shorland Park there on the south coast of Wellington and I just heard a flurry of Holden Commodore dog vans, and out pop dogs and off they run. Police were everywhere and I didn’t really know what was going on, but what I do know and what I did see is that the police dog handlers rewarded their dogs for capturing the offender, or whoever was doing a deed that was wrong, and they did that with love. I thought, “Now, there we go—there goes a part of the police service I certainly wouldn’t want anything to do with.”, but I do acknowledge the importance of our police dog section in the New Zealand Police.

I said also in the last call that I spoke on regarding first responders that there had been calls on our opposition to that being part of the soft on crime mantra of this Government. Can I reinforce to you that this is not true, and that—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: It is true.

PAUL EAGLE: It’s not true, and can I just correct the member who’s being a little unruly on that side of the House that the mantra of this police service under this Government is prevention first, and they will know that. They will know that anything that happens comes with a prevention-first value approach, and they know that if things worked previously, then they wouldn’t need to do things like this.

But, in that essence, we are opposing this bill, and that’s no disrespect to those members. It’s really saying, “Hold on a minute.”, in terms of increasing the maximum sentence for the killing of a police dog from two to five years’ imprisonment. That underpins that decision. It underpins it because it’s saying that, actually, I know—and I said this in my last speech—that the policemen and women of Aotearoa New Zealand go to work not thinking that there will ever be a case where they go there thinking, “Hopefully, there’ll be a sentence of five years versus two.” That’s not what they think. They’re there to do a job and to do a job well. That includes just catching the offender or contributing to the process of catching an offender, and the dog is the mechanism in that sense. So there’s no disrespect there. The issue here is just purely, I believe, around the deterrent being the extension of the time frame from two years to five years. That’s, for me, the heart of the opposition to such a bill—saying “Does that underpin the need for this amendment bill to go forward?”

We’ve heard already some of the reasons why in terms of the killing of police dogs—very few—and look, it could all change in a flash. Something might be happening right there, right now somewhere around Aotearoa New Zealand.

Can I say this: that on balance in terms of how this bill’s been put together, what the bottom line for this, and whether it will make a major difference, I don’t believe it will. I know that the police dog section of New Zealand Police would want any protection they can get, but this probably isn’t one of them. I don’t know that, because I haven’t sat down and talked, certainly, with our district police service, but I do know this: that more equipment, or more resources of any sort, would certainly override this amendment bill. Kia ora.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Five minutes in reply—Matt Doocey.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tonight, we are debating the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill. There are really only two positions in this debate. The first is that you believe the current penalty of two years for killing a police dog in the line of duty is sufficient, which is the status quo—and that is the Government’s position—whereas on this side of the House, we wholeheartedly believe the penalty for killing a police dog should be increased to five years.

This issue was raised with me by my constituents in Waimakariri after the death of the police dog Gazza in 2016. I listened to my constituents and I brought this bill up to Parliament because I am representing their views. Gazza was the seventh dog to be killed in New Zealand since 1972. Twenty-four police dogs have given up their lives in the line of duty to keep us safe, to keep our families safe, and to keep our communities safe, and why I am proud to be standing here supporting this bill tonight is that I have the support of thousands of Kiwis who have backed this bill and signed my petition.

Currently, the penalty for killing a police dog in New Zealand is too lenient. When you look at other countries around the world, in the United States, it’s up to 10 years; in Canada, up to five years; and in South Australia, up to five years. We are too lenient with our penalty for killing a police dog.

The New Zealand Police Association supports this bill. They said they support the section 53 which is my bill in its entirety. They said, “a police dog is a key part of a police team, and, within police, any act of violence towards the police dogs is considered similar to an attack on a police officer. It is a direct attack on law and order and needs to be recognised for the serious offence it is.” The Police Association support this bill.

The Ministry of Justice wrote, and has advised that the proposed legislation remedies a discrepancy in New Zealand law, because what we have in New Zealand law is that this bill will propose increasing the penalties to bring it in line with the maximum term of the Animal Welfare Act 1999. We have a discrepancy in our current law. In the Animal Welfare Act, if you were to kill a dog, you would get up to five years. In the Policing Act, it’s capped at two years. So the Ministry of Justice is advising Parliament that this bill will remedy a discrepancy in our current laws.

To finish, I want to finish with the words of Josh Robertson. Not everyone will know who Josh Robertson is. He reached out to me when he heard of this bill on social media. Josh is the police dog handler of the late Gazza, the police dog that died in the line of duty that I wrote this bill about. He writes, “I am humbled that the public would choose to support increasing penalties for injuring or killing our police dogs. These dogs help victims, apprehend dangerous offenders, and protect fellow police staff. I received overwhelming support from a wide range of the community when my police dog Gazza was shot and killed in 2016. The offender shot at me through a closed door, and Gazza was shot and killed as a result. It left me devastated, as well as a lot of the public who support hard police dogs’ work. Gazza worked on the front line for only 2½ years and apprehended over 250 offenders—250 offenders that probably would not have been caught if he wasn’t there. These dogs are invaluable to police and to the public. There is no excuse to kill or injure a police dog.” That’s the words of the police dog handler of the late Gazza.

We’ve heard the words of the Ministry of Justice, we’ve heard the words of the Police Association, we’ve heard the words of New Zealanders, and what did we have tonight from the Government MPs? Absolutely disgraceful. Shame on them tonight.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Policing (Killing a Police Dog) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 75

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

First Reading

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): I move, That the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

It’s a privilege and an honour to be able to bring the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill to the House for its first reading. Firstly, though, can I mihi to the Hon Kiritapu Allan, as this is my first opportunity to speak in the House since the news of her wero. I want to acknowledge, as a newbie settling in, that Minister Allan showed tautoko, aroha, and guidance to our class of 2020. Kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui e hoa.

Secondly, may I give gratitude and thanks to the Hon Jan Tinetti, who initially gave thought to the concept of removing barriers for parents and caregivers to ensure they are able to attend our educational hui, or meetings, with their tamariki kaiako, or teachers. It is a privilege to be able to take this important mahi forward.

This bill amends the Holidays Act 2003 to allow workers with tamariki up to four hours’ parent-teacher interview leave in each 12-month period of current continuous employment. Such leave may not be carried forward. Employers must be notified at least three working days before the leave is to be taken, and may not unreasonably withhold consent to an employee’s request for this leave.

We know that in many cases good employers already offer this leave to their employees. However, this bill will ensure that all parents have the opportunity to work in partnership with the educators to support the child’s educational success.

As it stands, there is a growing trend in having insecure and casualised workers. This makes it particularly difficult for parents and caregivers in those employment arrangements to take leave to attend their tamariki parent-teacher interviews. It is important to ensure all parents and caregivers have the same opportunity to be involved in their child’s education and to attend these important hui, and the amendments in this bill will ensure they will have this opportunity.

These hui are an important opportunity for whānau to discuss their tamariki’s academic progress. They are one of the few opportunities for these crucial discussions and provide a unique opportunity that allows for whānau and kaiako, or teachers, to support our tamariki’s growth. There is a larger social cost associated with not implementing this amendment, as tamariki and their whānau would not otherwise be able to work together for positive educational outcomes face to face.

Although we had a successful response to COVID-19, there was some disruption for children and their families. It is important that parents and teachers have the opportunity to discuss their child’s education and achievement and how they can be supported to reach their full potential. Further, these huis will give an opportunity to kōrero about how they are coping and learning and their social interactions at kura after the COVID-19 lockdown. It is widely known that one of the predictives of tamariki academic achievement is not how prestigious their kura is, but, rather, the engagement from home in their school lives, as well as tautoko and support and encouragement from their whānau.

As I’m sure this House is aware, our most vulnerable New Zealanders, including Māori and Pacific communities, are more likely to be our shift workers and our casualised and insecure workers, and, therefore, they are the most affected as the Act currently stands. The amendments in this bill will rectify this and give these workers the same opportunities as, for example, our nine-to-fivers, reducing the current inequality and allowing workers to attend these important educational hui.

I understand that some on the other side of the Whare feel prioritising paid time off work for workers to support their children, teachers, and schools, and ensuring good educational outcomes, is a price too high to pay. But may I add: the proposed cap to four hours per year on minimum wage would amount to $80 before tax. Even if either parents and caregivers both worked for the same employer, you’re talking about $160 before tax maximum per year proposed, and that’s if they use the whole four hours. I do not think that is a high price to pay to ensure we support whānau, tamariki, and great educational outcomes that will benefit society as a whole. But, again, the cost of not doing this is far too high in terms of not just educational outcomes but whānau, tamariki, and kaiako—teachers’—wellbeing, adding further to the poverty and inequality we see in Aotearoa.

Further, I also know that some people on the other side of the Whare may not have a realistic picture or have truly experienced how the other half live. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to take time off unpaid and not having to worry about an hour or two short in your pay packet so you can attend your parent-teacher interview. Many of our vulnerable whānau and communities, including our shift, insecure, and casualised workers, and Māori and Pacific, are not in this privileged position. Let me advise from experience that one or two hours unpaid for workers and their whānau can mean choosing between a bill or two that you can miss out or skip paying for this week, and then you can save worrying till next payday about how you’re going to catch up on these payments or these bills later, knowing that your tamariki has to come first.

I would add here that not a week after I was lucky enough to have the bill—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I apologise to the member. Interjections are to be rare and reasonable. Thank you.

TERISA NGOBI: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to add here that not a week after I was lucky enough to have this bill pulled from the biscuit tin, the Green Party of Aotearoa wrote to me in support of this bill and the kaupapa. Likewise, Te Paati Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi have also written to me in full tautoko of this kaupapa and this bill. This is because those members in those parties also understand that the proposed four hours to ensure whānau, parents, and caregivers can get along to their parent-teacher interviews is a game-changer for many of our most vulnerable whānau, and ensures accessibility, opportunity, and equality for all tamariki to have the support they need to succeed in education.

So I’m really proud to be part of a Government who understands this and has a realistic understanding of the struggles facing our whānau, especially our vulnerable whānau, and schools and teachers, who are currently having to find creative ways to ensure they can get engagement and face-to-face time with whānau to kōrero about their tamariki’s academic outcome and identify any goals or areas that need further mahi or support. This can often mean teachers needing to go over and beyond. This could be, for example, having to do their weekends and knocking on whānaus’ doors, as that’s how important the face-to-face time with parents, caregivers, and teachers is.

This Government is taking views and steps to reduce poverty and inequality, especially for our tamariki. We know this means lots of mahi in unison, not pieces here and there, or making policy and legislation that benefits only the few. This Government is making policy and passing legislation for all, because we know that is what will make the real impact in reducing poverty and inequality in this country, further ensuring access and support to all New Zealanders. This Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill is just one part of this progressive Government’s plan to ensure all New Zealanders get to live their best lives. I look forward to seeing this bill through to the Education and Workforce Committee, where I anticipate changes—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House stands adjourned until 2 o’clock tomorrow.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.