Wednesday, 5 May 2021

WEDNESDAY, 5 MAY 2021

WEDNESDAY, 5 MAY 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

DEPUTY SPEAKER: E te Atua kaha rawa, ka tuku whakamoemiti atu mātou, mō ngā karakia kua waihotia mai ki runga i a mātou. Ka waiho i ō mātou pānga whaiaro katoa ki te taha. Ka mihi mātou ki te Kuīni, me te inoi atu mō te ārahitanga i roto i ō mātou whakaaroarohanga, kia mōhio ai, kia whakaiti ai tā mātou whakahaere i ngā take o te Whare nei, mō te oranga, te maungārongo, me te aroha o Aotearoa. Amene.

[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 and humility, for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

Motions

Members’ Notice of Motion No. 1—Amendment

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): I seek leave of the House to delete the word “possible” from members’ notice of motion No. 1, in my name, to read: That this House is gravely concerned about the severe human rights abuses taking place against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that it call on the Government to work with the United Nations, international partners, and to work with all relevant instruments of international law to bring these abuses to an end.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that course of action? There appears to be none.

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

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

SPEAKER: No papers or select committee reports have been presented, no bills have been introduced.

Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Pete McDonald requesting that the House ask Land Information New Zealand and the New Zealand Walking Access Commission to redesign the track symbols used on New Zealand’s Topo50 maps

petition of Mary Coupe requesting that the House pass legislation to reduce the limits for collecting sea life currently set under the Fisheries Act 1996.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

Speaker’s Rulings

Written Questions—Timeliness of Replies

SPEAKER: Members have raised with me the timeliness of replies to written questions. After discussions with the Business Committee yesterday, I have agreed to rule on the matter.

Increasingly, Ministers are proactively releasing papers. This should greatly help public access to information. It has the potential to save time for members and to reduce the number of written questions lodged to seek routine information and I encourage it. There have been two main concerns raised with me. The first is that references by a Minister to information being online have not always been specific enough to assist in the location of the information. I would remind members of Speaker’s ruling 194/5, which states that if a Minister chooses to reply by directing a member to information already available, it must be done with some particularity. It is not acceptable to simply state that the information has already been released. Rather, the Minister should provide a sufficiently detailed answer to enable the member to directly locate the information.

The other concern is the timeliness of proactive information releases. If information is not released in a timely way, it causes unreasonable delays to members receiving substantive replies to their written questions. Under Standing Orders [392(4)], members are entitled to receive a reply to a written question within six working days. It is not reasonable for them to have to wait much longer than that for a proactive release of information. Therefore, I am ruling that if the information requested in a written question will not be made available for two weeks or more, the Minister must provide a substantive reply to the written question rather than refer the member to information that will be released in the future. Where Ministers do refer a member to information available elsewhere, they must provide specific details to assist in locating it.

I will continue to review the matter with the Business Committee periodically to see whether things improve.

Oral Questions

Points of Order—Transfer of Questions

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek clarification on the transfer of questions from the Prime Minister to her Ministers. I also seek leave of the House to transfer my question back to the Prime Minister, with the original wording as lodged, to ask for her views on this important take [issue].

SPEAKER: I thank the member for raising it. I thank him for giving notice to me of the fact that he was going to raise it. There are, I think, two relevant Speakers’ rulings. The first I’ll refer him to is Speakers’ ruling 161/1, which makes it clear that with very limited exceptions it is in the power of the Government to transfer questions to the Minister they think is appropriate.

The second Speaker’s ruling I will refer the member to is 160/1, and that is that Speakers have previously ruled that they won’t put leave to transfer questions back, because the decision has already been made by the Government.

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) 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, I stand by the further drop in the unemployment rate down to 4.7 percent. The figures released today show not only a drop in our overall unemployment rate and an increase in employment but an increase in women’s employment, with an additional 14,000 more women in work compared to last quarter—not just a number. This builds on our March benefit quarterly statistics, which showed a record number of people have come off benefit, with nearly 33,000 entering paid work. These numbers are evidence that our economic plan is working and that the Government’s employment investments are making a real difference in the lives of New Zealanders, including the expansion of the Flexi-wage to support more people into work, which has already had 1,600 placements in its first six weeks; our Apprenticeship Boost scheme to help employers retain apprentices, which has already benefited over 22,000 apprentices; and our free trades training, which has benefited 106,000. I could well go on.

Hon Judith Collins: Was her health Minister correct when he said yesterday that there are two vetoes in the proposed health restructuring; if so, what are those two vetoes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I don’t believe that I would agree with the characterisation of—

Chris Bishop: He said it.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I do not agree with the characterisation the member has continuously put to this House. As we have said in answers yesterday, of course the intention is that a Government would set health priorities; that Health New Zealand, alongside the Māori Health Authority, would then establish national health plans to ensure the delivery of those priorities. Without having that equal footing in approving the way those health plans would work, you essentially just maintain the status quo, which is the idea of consultation, and we are trying to move beyond that.

Hon Judith Collins: So is there a veto power or not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, yes, there is a requirement that we reach agreement between Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority on the delivery of those health priorities. Again, just in the same way that Kōhanga Reo determines how they deliver their services and Whānau Ora determines how they deliver theirs. This is a response to the fact that our system as it stands has not worked well. It does not remove the ability of the Government of the day to set health priorities, but this will, we hope, enhance the way that we deliver those services on behalf of all New Zealanders, including our Treaty partner.

Hon Judith Collins: So what mechanism is she putting in place, or has she put in place, to deal with a situation where the Māori Health Authority wishes to veto a decision of the national health agency—or whatever name it’s called—when there is no agreement? What’s she going to do about the veto power?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I would point out that this is in relation to decisions that will affect Māori health provision, so I think this idea that somehow it’s completely detached or devoid from the delivery of actual services—there will be issues where, of course, we have said that the Māori Health Authority will be involved in direct commissioning, so you’ll have those priorities set nationally. There might be specific services that they will commission. However, there will be other areas where you are providing a service across the board—say, it might be national cancer screening—where we will be doing general population, and we do need to ensure that the Māori Health Authority is having a view and a say in the delivery of those services for Māori, because we haven’t done that to date and we haven’t reached Māori as a result to date. So some of the things we’re working through is if we do reach an impasse—which I, frankly, don’t believe we often will—we have mechanisms to resolve those issues. That’s part of the work that our transition agencies continue to do.

Hon Judith Collins: So if she’s so concerned about using the term “veto”, then why is it in the health Cabinet paper that her Minister took to Cabinet, and why did he say yesterday there are two vetoes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: My question is why can the member not say the word “partnership”?

Hon Judith Collins: What commitments has she made to iwi and the Labour Māori caucus on fresh water and resource management changes?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Simply that we’ll try and work together to resolve an issue that has sat on the table and languished and that her previous Government was unable to resolve, and that we have undertaken that we’ll keep up the dialogue to see if we can work through it.

Hon Judith Collins: So when will she start the dialogue with every other New Zealander on these very important issues?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, I would push back on this idea that we haven’t had good, robust debate around water use in New Zealand over a number of years. I remember it being a particular subject of interest in an election not so long ago, called 2017. Not all of our ideas were at that time successful, but that debate has long been held in New Zealand. It is not new, and everyone has a voice in it.

Hon Judith Collins: So when is she going to tell the New Zealand public exactly what commitment she has advised Cabinet about when she made that commitment to the Labour Māori caucus and the collective referred to in her Government’s Cabinet paper?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Sorry, I’m not entirely clear on the member’s question. Could you please re-ask?

Hon Judith Collins: Yes. So when is she going to tell the New Zealand public exactly what is the commitment that she made to the Labour Māori caucus and the collective referred to in her Government’s Cabinet paper on the meeting around fresh water and resource management control?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Exactly what I said in my first answer: that this issue has been before us for a number of years. No one has been able to resolve it. In fact, some haven’t attempted to. Our commitment is to work together. I say publicly what I say privately.

Rawiri Waititi: Point of order. I’m wondering why two Pākehā women are talking about Māori issues when they’re not talking to Māori themselves. There’s a room full of us.

SPEAKER: Well, the one thing that I’m not going to take responsibility for is the member’s wondering.

Hon Judith Collins: Will she rule out transferring full or partial governance of the foreshore and seabed to Māori while she is Prime Minister?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We commit to upholding the legislation that’s already in place.

SPEAKER: Question No. 2, Barbara Edmonds.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon Aupito William Sio: Bring back Simon Bridges.

BARBARA EDMONDS: To the Minister of Finance—

SPEAKER: Order! Barbara Edmonds.

BARBARA EDMONDS: To the Minister of Finance: what recent reports has he seen—

SPEAKER: No, sorry, I am going to interrupt. I am going to require the Hon Aupito William Sio to withdraw and apologise.

Hon Aupito William Sio: I withdraw and apologise.

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): Today, Statistics New Zealand released the job figures for the March 2021 quarter. The data showed the unemployment rate dropped, again, to 4.7 percent, from 4.9 percent in December, with 5,000 fewer people classed as unemployed over the quarter. The unemployment rate is now the same as it was in September 2017. Stats New Zealand said the economy continued to add jobs at the start of the year, with people in employment up 15,000 over the March quarter from December. This meant people in employment is up by 32,000 since the September 2020 quarter and it highlights the strength of the economy under the Government’s recovery and jobs plan.

Barbara Edmonds: What reactions has he seen to the positive jobs data?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The consensus among economists had been that the unemployment rate would stay at 4.9 percent. The result is also well below Treasury’s forecast at the half-year update in December, which had unemployment to be 6.5 percent in the March 2021 quarter. In their review of the data, ANZ’s economists said New Zealand’s labour market was “undeniably stronger”, and that the employment numbers demonstrated “the remarkable resilience of the New Zealand economy and the success of the Government’s COVID response at keeping workers connected with jobs”. The success of that response can be seen in the data for the Auckland region, which during this quarter was affected by alert level 3 restrictions. Employment in the Auckland region hit a record high during the March quarter. This shows that the Government’s focus on protecting jobs and businesses with the wage subsidy and resurgence support payment continues to be the right approach.

Barbara Edmonds: What other recent reports has he seen on the stability of the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Today, the Reserve Bank released its May Financial Stability Report. The Reserve Bank says its assessment shows “New Zealand has coped with the COVID-19 pandemic better than initially feared,”. The report said that “The spread of COVID-19 in New Zealand has been supressed by border restrictions, periodic Alert Level changes, and an effective public health response.” The bank added that “Business activity has been able to recover, and confidence in the economic outlook has increased.” The report also warned that some vulnerabilities and risks do remain, and—I’ll quote—“New Zealand’s economic prospects ultimately depend on the global containment of the pandemic and on the recovery of trading-partner economies.” That’s why it’s important for the Government to continue supporting the economy with our investments: to secure the recovery while tackling long-term issues like housing affordability, which have built up over decades.

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 announcement to reform the healthcare system to make it more accessible for all New Zealanders. The changes have been informed by the Health and Disability System Review, which found our health system was under stress and that greater emphasis on primary healthcare had the greatest potential to improve New Zealanders’ health. As the Minister of Health said at the announcement, the reforms will mean that for the first time we will have a truly national health system; the kind of treatment people get will no longer be determined by where they live. The reforms will help implement the Government healthcare strategies and visions that include all DHBs being replaced by one national organisation—Health New Zealand—a new Māori health authority, which will have the power to commission health services, monitor the state of Māori health, and develop policy; and the creation of a new public health agency; and, of course, strengthening the Ministry of Health’s role to monitor performance and advise Government. In my view, this will improve the health of all New Zealanders.

David Seymour: Does she stand by her Government’s policy of giving preference to Māori businesses through procurement; if so, will her Government also give preference to other demographics under-represented in business ownership—for example, women?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Actually, just on that, the member has raised the issue of businesses—particularly, I would say, the example of women, but indigenous business owners and operators—and what we can do to increase participation, access, and growth of those businesses. It’s actually been a part of our export strategy, as a Government, and been part of some of the trade negotiations we’ve had with other countries. We’re not alone in the work we’re doing. In fact, around procurement policy, we modelled what we’ve done on procurement on Australia, and, likewise, have looked to the experiences of the Canadians, where they’re using both trade instruments and procurement to try and see a boost in the growth of indigenous and women and small business generally in their representation in procurement and trade.

David Seymour: If a Māori-owned business, a Pacific-owned business, and a Chinese-owned business all submit equivalent bids for a Government contract, how will her Government decide who to award it to?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, we have a range of procurement guidelines, processes, and policies, which I have an expectation that all departments will make sure that they are applying in the work that they do. Rather than go on to hypotheticals, probably the best thing I can point the member to is a process that’s being adopted by Auckland Council. As part of the Southern Initiative, they undertook some very similar work, and, again, we looked at the way they had operated a similar policy. It has led to really positive outcomes. They’ve seen a spread of a diversity in a number of businesses they’re engaging with. It’s particularly supported small to medium sized enterprises, and it’s seen the growth of employment opportunities within the region. Again, we’re not doing this from a starting base of nothing. Others are leading on this. We have learnt from it. In our view, it means that we’ll be able to support greater representation of both small business, Māori business, and others, in procurement policy where they’ve previously been excluded for a number of reasons.

David Seymour: Will the Government compromise on quality or cost when it procures goods and services from Māori business, and if it would, what on earth does that say about this Government’s attitude to Māori? [Interruption]

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject the assertion that’s made in that question.

SPEAKER: Order! We’ve had an unusual situation now where we had interjection during an ACT question from a number of members, and as a result of that, I will give ACT three additional questions, which they can use this week.

David Seymour: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Is it not paternalistic to provide a separate process for Māori-owned businesses than any other business?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

David Seymour: Why isn’t the Government’s goal simply to procure quality goods and services at reasonable prices when it buys on behalf of taxpayers regardless of who is selling them?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That, of course, is one of the goals of procurement policy as well.

Question No. 4—Housing

4. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister of Housing: What progress, if any, has been made on accelerating the build of public housing?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): We are on track to deliver on our promise of over 18,000 new housing—public and transitional—places by the end of 2024. We now have a fully funded public house building programme right through to 2024. To date, since we took office, we have delivered 7,631 net new places, of which 5,848 are brand-new builds. I am focused on rebuilding the institutional muscle memory of the State to provide public housing at a scale we have not seen in decades, as Kāinga Ora is now well positioned to continue this momentum.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: Are there instances where public houses are bought in from the private market?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The practice of buying in more houses than we are building that had been developed over the previous decade needed to stop, and we have done that. Since we took office, we’ve seen the proportion of houses bought in from the private market drastically reduce. For example, in 2012, 63 percent of all new State houses were buy-ins. This compares to an average around 23 percent under this Government. In limited circumstances we continue to buy in houses where there is a clear requirement, such as to address urgent demand in locations where stock is limited or where a property is strategically located and beneficial to acquire. We expect the proportion of buy-ins to continue to decline as our public house build programme ramps up.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: Are there instances under this Government where Kāinga Ora sells houses?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Our Government came in with a policy to stop the mass sell-off of State houses, and that is exactly what we did. However, as we’ve stated numerous times, there will always be instances where there is a need for Kāinga Ora to sell houses. These reasons include where it may be the wrong house in the wrong place—where it does not match demand in that area and it is surplus to requirements. To give perspective, the number of State houses sold between November 2017 and January 2021 was 190, compared with 1,300 sold between 2014 and 2017.

Nicola Willis: Can she confirm there are currently 22,803 New Zealanders on the social housing register, and will she seek assistance from the deliverology unit to help address this?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In answer to the first part of the question, yes, I can confirm there are 22,000 people on the State housing register. This is largely the result of a decade of inaction from that member’s party when they were in Government—not only their failure to build houses but the fact that they ended up with 1,500 fewer public houses than they started Government with.

Question No. 5—Deputy Prime Minister

5. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Deputy Prime Minister: Which critical initiatives will the implementation unit that he will lead be tasked with monitoring, and why is it only being established more than 42 months after this Government was formed?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister): I do note for the member that this Government was sworn in on 6 November 2020, some six months ago. The focus of the unit will be on programmes and projects funded out of the COVID Response and Recovery Fund, infrastructure, and other key Government priorities. The final list of programmes will be finalised after discussion with the head of the unit, who will shortly be appointed. To the second part of the question, we have set up the implementation unit because of our large investment in the COVID recovery, the number of multi-agency programmes in our response, and because it is international best practice to do so.

Andrew Bayly: Will the implementation unit have the authority to tell the CEO of a Government entity what to do?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The implementation unit changes nothing about the Public Finance Act or the Public Service Act.

Andrew Bayly: Where will ultimate responsibility for the delivery of key Government projects lie: with the responsible portfolio Minister or with the Minister responsible for the implementation unit?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my last answer, nothing changes in terms of the Public Service Act, the Public Finance Act, or, indeed, the Cabinet Manual. Ministers remain responsible for their portfolios; chief executives remain responsible for their agency.

David Seymour: Who will have responsibility for implementing the list of projects on which the implementation project will work?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m sure that the member will be delighted to learn that the implementation unit’s programme of work will be subject to the Official Information Act (OIA) and will be released. I find it interesting that the members opposite have such an aversion to the implementation of Government programmes, but we learnt that by what they did in the nine years they were in office, when they failed to implement across a range of portfolios.

David Seymour: Can the Minister reassure this House and New Zealanders that if we were to make such Official Information Act requests, we would not discover that this implementation unit had had a baby and spawned an implementation unit within an implementation unit?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The member will be able to OIA to his heart’s content. He also might like to look around the world and see one of the Leader of the Opposition’s favourite politicians, Boris Johnson, working very closely on a very, very similar idea right now—international best practice.

Andrew Bayly: Why does the Government need an implementation unit when 10,000 more bureaucrats have been employed since it came to office in 2017?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in my primary answer, the $50 billion that was put in through the COVID Response and Recovery Fund is the largest investment that we have seen in the provision of services to the New Zealand public. It includes a wide range of programmes where we have multiple agencies, outside bodies involved. All of those things represent a significant shift in the way the Government is working, and this unit will support the delivery of those programmes.

Andrew Bayly: Would an implementation unit have led to the Government actually delivering on its promises like KiwiBuild or the light rail project?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m very proud of the record, which today in the House was talked about, where unemployment finds its way to 4.7 percent, where we’ve delivered a wage subsidy scheme, where we’ve supported small businesses. I am extremely proud of the delivery of this Government.

David Seymour: Point of order. The question was clearly about light rail and KiwiBuild; they weren’t addressed at all by the Minister.

SPEAKER: That’s a very fair point of order. I’ll invite the Deputy Prime Minister to have another go.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I am extremely proud of the Government’s delivery and the record that we have. I have already said what the projects will be that we’ll focus on. We are looking forwards.

Question No. 6—Public Service

6. GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South) to the Minister for the Public Service: What pay and employment relations expectations has the Government set out for the public sector?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for the Public Service): Last year, the Public Service Commissioner issued guidance to Public Service agencies asking them to have nil or minimal pay increases for public servants until June of this year. Today, the Public Service Commissioner is updating that guidance to make it clear that pay restraint will need to continue to be exercised across the Public Service for the next three years. The updated guidance will continue to mean that there should be no pay increases for those earning over $100,000 and senior leaders within the Public Service. Any increases should be targeted to those lower-paid public servants, largely those earning below $60,000 a year, who account for about 25 percent of the public sector. We want those on the lower wages to be the focus of any increases in pay.

Ginny Andersen: How would the Minister respond to concerns about this pay restraint raised by the Public Service Association?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: This is ultimately about prioritising Government spending. I would say to the Public Service Association that we’ll continue to work closely with them on issues around gender and ethnic pay gaps, on issues of pay parity, and on issues around terms and conditions, as we have been doing over the last three years, where we’re making progress and we know more progress is required. I’d also say to them that the guidance is consistent with the decision last year by the Remuneration Authority that Ministers and MPs would not be getting any pay rises for the next three years because of COVID-19 and the decision by the Public Service Commissioner, who sets the pay of Public Service chief executives, who will also not be increasing any of their pay.

Ginny Andersen: What other expectations has the Government set out for the Public Service workforce?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We want the Public Service to use modern, progressive employment practices, to be a good place to work. We also want a productive unified workforce which is grounded in the spirit of service. To achieve these goals, we’ve set four key workforce priorities for the Public Service: employ people fairly, equitably, and in a way that allows them to live good lives and participate in the economy; work collaboratively with unions and other groups to achieve those shared goals; create an inclusive environment for all workers with the aim of achieving a diverse workforce; and achieve all of those goals within the fiscal context of the Government.

Question No. 7—Māori Development

7. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister for Māori Development: What influence, if any, did the He Puapua report have on the contents of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: Next Steps for a Declaration Plan – lodging Cabinet paper and draft talking points briefing paper that he received last month?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): The next steps to develop a national declaration plan need to be considered by Cabinet. I’m in the process of submitting my proposals for the next steps. To that end, I received the draft Cabinet paper on 7 April 2021 outlining proposed next steps. Part of the draft Cabinet paper includes a summary of He Puapua. He Puapua is one of several elements that fed into the draft Cabinet paper, alongside the guidance provided by the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on the development of a declaration plan and Cabinet-agreed guidelines on Māori Crown engagement.

Hon Todd McClay: Which specific Ministers has he consulted with regarding the draft Cabinet paper on the implementation plan for a declaration on the rights of indigenous people?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: That’s a process that I’m engaging in now. I haven’t consulted with any Ministers at this stage—it’s a paper that will be going around all Cabinet Ministers—other than speaking with the Prime Minister.

Hon Todd McClay: What specific issues did he discuss in relation to the Cabinet paper on indigenous people in his recent meetings with the declaration working group and Independent Monitoring Mechanism group for He Puapua and the declaration?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The independent group who put together He Puapua gave me an overview of their work. They put out some of their aspirations, they asked questions about when recommendations would be going to Cabinet, and we had a very good kōrero.

Shanan Halbert: What should be guiding the development of a declaration plan?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples visited Aotearoa in April 2019 and provided some helpful guidelines and emphasised the point that any declaration plan should be developed in partnership with Māori. This aligns with Cabinet-agreed guidelines on Māori Crown engagement.

Shanan Halbert: What is the approach outlined in He Puapua for developing a declaration plan?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Let me be clear that He Puapua is not the draft national declaration plan that the National Party signed up to. The report recommended a two-step engagement process, robust monitoring over any plan that was to be developed, and ministerial oversight and arrangements for partnership with Māori on the development of the plan. Decisions on the next steps for the development of a national declaration plan, including on targeted and public engagement, are currently under consideration.

Hon Todd McClay: Do any of the mentioned documents or his meetings discuss the possibility of creating separate Māori processes and veto powers over public policy, like the recently announced Māori Health Authority—for instance, over the Resource Management Act or water allocation?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: There are a number of different views that were put at the meeting that I had with the independent group. That was an important meeting where different views were exchanged, and if you find the document, you will see some of the aspirations of that group. I emphasise, though, that that is an independent group; that is not Government policy, and they have started a conversation that the National Party started in 2010.

Hon Todd McClay: Why does he believe implementing recommendations made in the He Puapua report like powers of veto over public policy will lead to fair and equitable outcomes for all New Zealanders?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: As I said, He Puapua is a starting document. It’s starting the conversation. We want all New Zealanders to participate in that conversation. There are three areas: He Puapua, the plan, and the declaration. The National Party have forgotten that they have signed up to this declaration. In 2014, they talked about a plan, then they forgot the plan. The National Party have also forgotten that they agree with probably 85 percent of our views in terms of te ao Māori, as Judith Collins has said many times. They support Whānau Ora, they support the Treaty settlements process, they support kōhanga reo, and it’s really disgraceful how they’ve been handling this subject.

Hon Nanaia Mahuta: Can the Minister confirm that much of the content informing He Puapua is taken from the Treaty settlement process, the Waitangi Tribunal, and public discourse in relation to social and economic inequities relating to Māori outcomes?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Absolutely. I can confirm that it’s following all the lines in terms of the Treaty process that the National Party have signed up to. In fact, this process complements the Treaty settlement process and the partnership that we should all want in this House.

Question No. 8—Housing (Public Housing)

8. RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): What is the Government looking for when it says it will “continue to monitor the rental market closely”, and what would that monitoring have to show to convince the Government to develop new rules to ensure reasonable rents?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing)): The Government has made a number of changes to ensure better support for renters to find affordable accommodation during the housing crisis that has built up over the last decade, including limiting rent increases to once a year, banning rental bidding, banning letting fees, removing no-cause terminations, and allowing renters to go to the Tenancy Tribunal to request a rent reduction if they think their rent is too high. We will continue to monitor the rental market closely, including rent increases, turnover of rental properties, investor behaviour, and any changes to total rental stock.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she believe the rental housing market is delivering efficient and fair outcomes?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Could he repeat that question?

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she believe the rental housing market is delivering efficient and fair outcomes?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I do believe is that we’ve made multiple changes to improve the security and rights for renters, including limiting rent increases once a year and banning rental bidding. We’re monitoring what happens with rent rises and will take action when necessary. I want to quote from the Stats New Zealand rental price index, which shows for the year to March 2021 a 1.6 percent increase in rents across the country. Now, this is lower than the last few years, which saw increases of around 2 to 5 percent, and the lowest we’ve seen since 2009. I reiterate: if a tenant thinks that their rent is too expensive and not in line with the market rent, they can seek redress from the Tenancy Tribunal.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Is it fair that four out of every 10 people who rent have to spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I just want to point to my previous answer. The Stats New Zealand rental price index shows for the year to March 2021 an increase of 1.6 percent in rents across the country. This is lower than for the last few years, which saw increases of around 2 to 5 percent, and is, in fact, the lowest since 2009.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Does she think it’s reasonable that a landlord can charge $300 a week for a property and then get new tenants and charge them $600 a week for the same property, without making any improvements to the property?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I do think is reasonable is the Government’s support for renters in the multiple changes that we have made to improvement rights and securities of renters. Overall, we have aspirations to ensure that, regardless of where your home is—whether it’s a home you own or a home you rent—that that is affordable, and the Government’s housing package goes a long way to addressing this.

Ricardo Menéndez March: Can she confirm that Treasury expects the Government to subsidise people who rent from private landlords by $2.4 billion this year through the accommodation supplement because landlords are charging higher rents than 394,000 people can afford?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: The accommodation supplement is a support mechanism that has been in place for many years to support people to have affordable housing.

Ricardo Menéndez March: How many new State homes could be built with the money that the Government currently uses to subsidise unaffordable private rental homes?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I think that’s possibly better directed to the Minister of Housing.

Question No. 9—Social Development and Employment

9. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What recent reports, if any, has she seen about people entering into employment, education, or training?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Today, the latest household labour force survey was released and it showed a further fall in unemployment down to 4.7 percent from 4.9 percent in the December quarter. This is in line with what we saw in the Ministry of Social Development’s March quarter benefit statistics, with a record number of New Zealanders coming off benefit and nearly 33,000 entering paid work, and it’s despite the effects of COVID-19 or the COVID-19 pandemic. We are seeing a resilient labour market, with record numbers of people finding work. We’re also seeing more people feeling secure in their employment. These are good signs, but, as always, we know there is more work to do.

Glen Bennett: What has the Government done to keep people employed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The Government has acted as a team across multiple fronts. We worked quickly to implement the wage subsidy support and we invested in sectors such as sport, arts, and conservation with recovery packages to keep Kiwis in work. On top of that, we’ve continued to strengthen our industry partnerships to ensure that we can work with New Zealand businesses to fill any spaces where there are workforce shortages. By resetting the economic conditions, keeping people in work, and helping people retrain, we are seeing a labour market that is performing above expectations.

Glen Bennett: What is the Government doing to help people who are out of work back into work?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have many different employment programmes that are designed to help particularly those who are disadvantaged in the labour market. The aim of these programmes is to instil skills and confidence in job seekers so they are work ready, and then we match them up with the employers and the jobs that are available. As the Prime Minister said earlier, we are seeing some great successes with Apprenticeship Boost, Mana in Mahi, He Poutama Rangatahi, Māori trades training, and our industry partnership programme. Our expanded Flexi-wage subsidy is also making a real difference to employers by providing them with incentives to take on staff who need a little bit more support in the workplace.

Hon Louise Upston: If the unemployment rate is the same as it was in September 2017, why, then, in the same time period, are there now 75,000 more on the jobseeker benefit?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The member knows that the household labour force survey is a survey. But what the member also knows is that since mid-January 2021 this year, we’ve actually seen a reduction of around 30,000 people on benefit—down from 390,000 to 360,000. I think that is very clear evidence that despite the pandemic and despite the very dim forecasts that we had in front of us, we are doing pretty well.

Hon Michael Wood: Is it correct that the growth in employment that she has reported to the House today has occurred at the same time as the Government’s made significant increases to the minimum wage?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That is absolutely right, and despite some of the assertions in the House from the other side that lifting wages could result in a decrease in job opportunities, that is certainly not what we are seeing in New Zealand at the moment.

Question No. 10—Social Development and Employment

10. Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: When will the Government start publicly reporting on the number of jobs created from all its employment initiatives to support the 196,806 recipients of jobseeker support into paid employment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): We do report. In fact, a report came out today called the household labour force survey, and it showed more New Zealanders finding paid employment. Unemployment has dropped again—now down to 4.7 percent. It is also important to note that the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) does not have any job creation initiatives, but what we do do is we have initiatives that create job-ready people. These job-ready people add value to the businesses who are growing and need staff, but without the whole-of-Government approach to create the economic conditions from which businesses can thrive, we would have nowhere to send our work-ready people. A strong economy is the best job creation scheme possible and our Minister of Finance is delivering. This Government is a team that is making progress on a number of fronts, and today’s unemployment figures show our teamwork is paying off.

Hon Louise Upston: What other employment initiatives are like the shovel-ready projects, where only half the jobs promised in Beehive press releases will be delivered?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I think, as I said, there are a range of initiatives. There are so many Ministers and ministries, Government agencies involved in the employment space—everyone from the Department of Conservation, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage preparing people for work, and also the Ministry for Primary Industries. This is an all-of-Government response to the pandemic with regards to supporting people into employment.

Hon Louise Upston: If there are so many Ministers working on this issue, why can’t the Minister deliver a simple answer in terms of how many jobs are being created, when, and where?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: If we just refer to the job vacancies in March on SEEK and on TradeMe—on SEEK, we saw a 55 percent increase in job vacancies, up from a year ago; on TradeMe, we saw a 22 percent increase in job vacancies, up from a year ago. I think that’s pretty good evidence that not only are we doing our job as a Government but businesses have been supported to be resilient during a very difficult time.

Hon Louise Upston: If the Minister is so convinced there are so many jobs out there, why is she failing to support the nearly 200,000 people who don’t have a job, are on jobseeker benefit, and don’t have enough money to put food on the table and a roof over their own heads?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The member knows that we have just gone through—or are coming through—a thing called COVID-19. The forecasts were very dim but we have managed to actually do better than every expectation that was in them. I also want to remind the member, who has been around for a long time, that out of the 200,000 people that are on job seeker, about 118,000 of them are job seekers that are work-ready, and about 78,000 of them are actually job seekers with health conditions or disabilities. We’re committed to working with them to actually support their overall wellbeing so that they can get into employment as well. That’s a very important differentiation that that member always conveniently forgets.

Hon Louise Upston: Why can the Minister not provide answers about the number of jobs created by the Employment, Education and Training Ministers Group that she co-chairs, when the focus of that group is to “work with other agencies to develop a job creation measurement framework that will support consistent reporting across the range of job creation programmes.”?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: That work is ongoing. However, what I will say—I will offer one example of many that are in place where agencies are working together. That example is the Apprenticeship Boost where MSD has been working effectively with Education to create opportunities for apprenticeships, and now we have something like, I think, 22,000 new apprentice accounts created because of that. That’s a very big improvement on what we saw under the global financial crisis when there was no investment in apprenticeships and we ended up having big gaps with regards to workforce shortages in trades.

Question No. 11—Health

11. Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made about the Government’s response to the Health and Disability System Review?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): On Wednesday, 21 April, I announced major reforms to the New Zealand health system that will make healthcare accessible for all New Zealanders. The new health system will replace all district health boards with one national organisation, Health New Zealand; establish a new Māori health authority; establish a new public health agency; and strengthen the Ministry of Health to monitor performance and advise Government on policy matters. The reforms will mean that, for the first time, we will have a truly national health system, and the kind of treatment people get will no longer be determined by where they live.

Dr Tracey McLellan: Why has the Government taken this approach?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The changes are in response to the Health and Disability System Review, which found the public health system was under stress and that a greater emphasis on primary healthcare had the greatest potential to improve New Zealanders’ health. The reforms herald a change in the focus for the health system. We will have the chance to make it a priority to treat more people before they get sick, so they don’t have to go to hospital, thereby taking the pressure off hospitals.

Dr Tracey McLellan: What sort of feedback has he received on the structure of the new health system so far?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Since the announcement two weeks ago, I’ve had the opportunity to meet with many health sector groups and stakeholders, and the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve also seen comments by Sir John Hansen, the chair of the Canterbury District Health Board, who said, “This will offer a much more coherent view of health, which my experience suggests has been needed for some time.”, and comments by well-known health leader Dr Lester Levy, who said, “In my view these health reforms are well conceived, soundly constructed, genuinely necessary and, with disciplined and outstanding implementation, will make the difference everyone would like to see.”

Question No. 12—Māori Development

12. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister for Māori Development: Ko taku pātai ki te Minita Whanaketanga Māori, ahakoa he moumou taima. [My question is to the Minister of Māori Development, though it may be a waste of time.] Does he believe that his statement that “in every area of New Zealand society, we have institutional racism” includes the Government and Government departments; if not, why not?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): In terms of institutional racism, there’s no doubt that it is right across the spectrum in terms of New Zealand society. As far as Government and Government departments go, we have responded positively to the challenge over the last 3½ years. I’m proud of the way this Government is not afraid to roll out programmes that advance the interest of Māori, and in doing so, we are addressing the huge inequities—

Hon Simon Bridges: Labour Party largesse.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: —in the system, Mr Bridges.

Rawiri Waititi: What programmes or initiatives is this Government actively pursuing to stop racism against tangata whenua, unconscious or otherwise, in their Government, in Government departments?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We have a number of programmes that are addressing inequity and racism. I think that our support for what Minister Davis is doing in the corrections area is incredibly important, and that change in having prisoners address their culture is incredibly important. The Māori Health Authority is a statement about tino rangatiratanga and by Māori, for Māori. Right across the spectrum, we are seeing examples of this, and, as we all know, it’s irritating the National Party very much.

Rawiri Waititi: How are these programmes being measured and by whom, and what recommendations from the He Puapua report, that this Government commissioned, have been agreed to?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: Taking the second part of the question—nothing from the He Puapua report has been agreed to. The He Puapua report is an introduction in terms of a kōrero—it’s a starting kōrero. I thank that group very much for the mahi that they have done, but we’ve got a lot of work to do that is not Government policy but we will be developing that later on. And I forgot the first part of your question.

Hon Kelvin Davis: To the Minister: what advice would he have for organisations that are clearly suffering from institutionalised racism, who have few Māori amongst their ranks, who have little or no knowledge of Te Tiriti, whose leadership constantly refuses the need to support Māori aspirations—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member was probably right for about one of the—you’re allowed one leg to a supplementary; there were about three there and I think the member went—no, I’m not going to let him answer it. The member went well off track and was a bit too transparent.

Tāmati Coffey: What steps has the Government taken to address some of the inequities that Māori face?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: We have been a very supportive Government in terms of te ao Māori. We’re addressing the inequities that Māori are facing every day. We’ve addressed the wonderful Māori social procurement target for the public sector, to improve the barriers that Māori have in its accessing contracts—in fact, 5 percent. We’ve put record investment into Whānau Ora, and Mr Waititi should be very supportive of that. To support by Māori, for Māori solutions, we’ve announced the Māori Health Authority to address inequities Māori face in the health system. And I have to say, we’re very proud to have announced Matariki and also our commitment to teach New Zealand history, both Māori and Pākehā in our schools—and Pasifika.

Rawiri Waititi: Why did the Government transfer this question from the Prime Minister, when the question directly asked for her views on whether racism exists within her Government and Government departments?

SPEAKER: Order! That question’s not in order. This is not a responsibility of this Minister.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, please. Why is the Speaker allowing the racism that is coming into this House in the treatment of tangata whenua that we’ve been experiencing and listening to solidly for the last two days?

SPEAKER: Well, I’m assuming that that’s a point of order. Applying the rules or the kawa of this House to all members is not something I regard as racist.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Point of order, please. I do want to clarify: is Te Tiriti respected in the basis of this Government and this House or not?

SPEAKER: Well, that is certainly the subject of a PhD dissertation and not an off-the-cuff Speaker’s ruling. [Interruption] The member, I think, knows that if she tries again, she’s being disorderly. Now, I know that her colleague likes being disorderly and likes being tossed out, but I don’t really want to do it to her.

Rawiri Waititi: Point of order. You were saying that the answers are for the betterment of the whole of New Zealand. Over the last two days, all I have heard is Māori, Māori, Māori bashing in this House. [Interruption] We don’t hear Pākehā—we only hear Māori, Māori, Māori bashing. So we want an explanation of why that is happening.

SPEAKER: I think members pointing fingers at each other doesn’t really help in this particular circumstance. I think the questions, the answers, and the debate is a responsibility for the members who take part, and the question of racism is something that I look out for very carefully. I think it’s fair to say, though, that people have different standards, and balancing racism against the ability of members to express their views and the right to free speech in this House is something that requires a balance. Certainly, it’s something which I would take a lot of care on intervening on. I think if the member is unhappy with the actions of particular members, then the appropriate thing to do is to seek appointments with them and to talk it through with them. But I think from this point, we run the risk of becoming disorderly. The member, I understand, has one further supplementary question. Does he wish to use it?

Rawiri Waititi: No.

Hon Aupito William Sio: To the Minister, why is it important for you to tackle institutional racism that arises from this House?

Hon WILLIE JACKSON: I want to—

SPEAKER: I’m sorry; I’m going to ask the member to repeat the question. I was slightly diverted.

Hon Aupito William Sio: I’m asking the Minister: why is it important for him to tackle institutional racism head-on that arises from this House?

SPEAKER: Order! It might be around the edge of his responsibilities, but it is my responsibility in some ways, and individual members’, but it’s not something that this Minister has responsibility for.

Motions

No Confidence in Speaker—Leave Declined

CHRIS BISHOP (National): I seek leave for members’ notice of motion No. 7, in my name, to be set down for debate forthwith.

SPEAKER: Is there any objection to that? There is.

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—Human Rights Abuses

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): I move, That this House is gravely concerned about the severe human rights abuses taking place against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that it call on the Government to work with the United Nations, international partners, and to work with all relevant instruments of international law to bring these abuses to an end.

First and foremost, it is important that we are having this debate. I want to thank members of all parties represented in our Parliament who have agreed for this debate to go ahead. Some people think it is brave for our Parliament to debate something the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may disagree with. Think about that for a moment. We are elected by the people of New Zealand to debate freely and fearlessly, just so long as we don’t offend the Chinese Communist Party—that is what it would have meant to not have this debate. It is vital that we are able to have this debate in the ultimate sanctuary of free speech: our Parliament. It is vital for our democracy, for our conscience, and for our position in the world.

I want to start by saying what this debate is not. I fear that some will try to misrepresent it. So let me be clear: this is not a criticism of the country of China, it is not a criticism of Chinese people, it is certainly not a criticism of our Chinese Kiwi neighbours. In my experience, it is that last group who are often the most strident in warning us about the regime that this debate is about: the Chinese Communist Party. To our Chinese Kiwi friends, I say good afternoon, ni hao, kia ora. We need you to look outside media that is influenced by the CCP, to examine other sources, and to join in the effort to understand the rapidly emerging situation.

Before I go any further, I’d like to briefly comment on the procedures and motions that led to this debate. They may tell us almost as much about New Zealand’s position on the matter as the debate to come. Unfortunately, we are only having half this debate. This is not the debate that I proposed to the Parliament last week. I proposed a debate on the exact motion of Nusrat Ghani that the British Parliament unanimously agreed to last month. I read: “That this House believes that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are suffering Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide; and calls on the Government to act to fulfil its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and all relevant instruments of international law to bring it to an end.”

In that debate, the Minister representing the Government, Nigel Adams, said the United Kingdom Government would not declare a genocide is taking place, saying that is the role of a properly competent court. Many speakers in that debate argued that no such court hearing is possible given the alleged perpetrators will not allow access to the Xinjiang region. I’ll turn to those arguments later. The fact is that the British Parliament had a debate about genocide. Here in New Zealand, other parties, who have the power of veto, would not allow this debate to proceed if the motion mentioned genocide. It’s important for people to know how we got to debating the motion before us today. I started with the same motion as the British, then had to dilute it and soften it to gain the approval of New Zealand’s governing party.

Turning to the importance of our democracy, we are fortunate to have inherited the best system of government. It was hard won at times by our ancestors. The names of battles around this Chamber are a daily reminder of that. As recently as this year, we have seen a legislature like ours, in Hong Kong, lose those rights. It is critical that we assert parliamentary sovereignty. We must reject the idea that foreign powers can interfere in our institutions. It remains problematic that we have seen the Chinese Consulate successfully prevent students and faculty at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Vice Chancellor’s acquiescence was understandable: he was reliant on international student revenue. The CCP could easily turn that tap down or off completely. But, in that decision, he also made AUT a microcosm of New Zealand as we all face the challenge he did on a larger scale.

Universities play an important role as the critic and conscience of society, but Parliament plays an essential role as the democratic expression of people’s sovereignty. For our Parliament to ignore reality and oppose this motion out of fear, as the Minister of trade seemed to suggest we should do yesterday, is intolerable. Our conscience requires that we support this motion. We know that a genocide is taking place. The evidence is voluminous—from multiple sources, and credible. It is also true that the Uyghur people have been engaged in terrorism across China. This should not be without consequence, but genocide is not a justifiable consequence for anything. It is certainly not justifiable to show absolutely no mercy, as President Xi called for in the People’s War on Terror, centred on Xinjiang. Genocide does not require a war. It does not need to be sudden. It can be slow and deliberate, and that is what is happening here.

New Zealand and China both signed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1949. It gives an internationally agreed definition of genocide: “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the groups; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Not one but each of these are occurring in Xinjiang according to multiple sources.

To take one example, there has been a mass imposition of contraceptive devices upon Uyghur women and forced sterilisation, matched by an enormous reduction in fertility rates in Xinjiang. The Parliaments of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands have all passed motions condemning the Chinese Communist Party for genocide. The United States Federal Government has done so twice: once under President Trump and again under President Biden. Not many things can unite those two! Some will say that the convention requires a competent court to decide what is and is not a genocide. That is a principle I would normally agree with, but let’s be honest: the perpetrator of a genocide is not going to submit to a court hearing. Our conscience demands that, if we believe there is a genocide, we should say so.

Finally, we must consider the geopolitical and trade implications of this situation. There will be some who say it is irresponsible to bring this motion. The ACT Party believes it would be irresponsible not to. New Zealand plays an important role in the global community. The world is now looking to us to see what standard we are going to set. Can the CCP play us off as the weakest link in the Western alliance? Will we abandon our longest-standing ally, across the Ditch, when enough carrot and stick is applied? We may face the threat of loss for speaking our mind, but we face a much greater danger if we don’t. The standard we set may be our destiny. A small country has more to lose than most in a world where democratic nations are bullied, played off against each other, and cowed by trade sanctions and worse. Our best hope of security and prosperity is collective defence. So we must make sure the standards of the world are set as high as possible.

The Standing Orders prevent me from amending my own motion to how the ACT Party thinks it should read, but I have put a signed amendment on the Table which reflects the genocide occurring. I hope that some other member will move the amendment so that it can be debated. In the meantime, I call on the Government to use all instruments of international law available to it to ensure that the genocide under way is investigated and its perpetrators be brought to justice. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

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

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): I stand in support of members’ motion No. 1 and I acknowledge the unanimous support across the House for the motion.

E uhi tai, e uhi tai e. Uhi tai uhi tai e. E uhi tai ana koa ngā haemanga kei Haina. Kei tutuki tō waewae i te poro o te paewai. E uhi tai uhi tai e.

[The tide flows, the tide flows. The tide flows, the tide flows. The tide flows over the ravines of China. Least your foot strikes the piece of driftwood. The tide flows, the tide flows.]

The New Zealand Government has publicly stated its grave concerns at the growing number of credible reports of severe human rights abuses taking place against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Since 2018, when reports began to emerge of large-scale extrajudicial detentions in the region, we have consistently called on China to respect the human rights of the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities. The Prime Minister has raised our concerns at the highest levels, with China’s leadership, and joined partners in amplifying these concerns at multi-lateral fora, including the United Nations. My Australian counterpart and I issued a joint statement in March this year on Xinjiang, and the Prime Minister reiterated our grave concerns as recently as this week at the China Business Summit.

While the New Zealand Government has grave concerns about the human rights situation in Xinjiang, we have not formally designated the situation as constituting a genocide. This is not due to a lack of concern. Genocide is the gravest of international crimes, and a formal legal determination should only be reached following a rigorous assessment on the basis of international law. International courts have required fully conclusive evidence before reaching a conclusion of genocide. New Zealand has not previously made an independent determination of genocide; we’ve relied upon judicial findings of genocide in the case of Cambodia, Rwanda, and, of course, the Holocaust.

The New Zealand Government, in concert with others, will continue to call upon China in the strongest terms to provide meaningful and unfettered access to the United Nations and other independent observers to ascertain the situation in Xinjiang. Aotearoa New Zealand will continue to work with our close partners to speak up to defend the human rights of religious and ethnic minorities in a meaningful way. We will continue to work with the United Nations, international partners, and relevant instruments of international law to bring these abuses to an end. We welcome Parliament forming a view and debating this critical issue. We are, of course, a democracy. It raises awareness of the issue in this House and in the wider community. We call on China to uphold its human rights obligations and to respond to the well-founded concerns of the international community.

E hoa mā, koinei anake te kahu o te wai. Taihoa kia rongo koutou i ngā mahi nanakia i oti ai rātou i ngā tau kua huri, ā, inaia tonu nei. Kia hōhonu te ruku i ngā whakamārama o te kōrero nei. Kia kaua noa iho tātou e mōhio ki te kahu o te wai. Uhi tai, uhi tai e.

[Friends, this is only the surface of the water. Soon you will hear the full account of their cruelty over the years, up until now. Let us dive deep into the details. Do not just focus on the surface of the water. The tide flows, the tide flows.]

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): The National Party joins with the other parties of the New Zealand Parliament in support of the parliamentary motion No. 1. Two days ago, I had the privilege of attending the seventh annual China Business Summit in Auckland, where our longstanding relationship with China was assessed through the lens of the last 50 years and the mutual challenges and opportunities which sit in front of us. I was reminded of our longstanding diplomatic relationship, dating back to 1972, and our broader history which goes back even further. I listened to what China and New Zealand have built together over this time, how our two countries have grown, and our people succeeded together—in particular, since the signing of the trade agreement in 2008. I reflected that, in a world where people are increasingly at odds and where a shared sense of purpose has often been replaced with self-interest—and conflicts of self-interest—it remains as true as ever that an ability to engage and to discuss issues are critical to our ongoing peace and prosperity. But that peace and prosperity must be shared.

The depth of our relationship has also allowed us to sit across the table from each other, or alongside each other, to discuss ideas or to raise concerns. It has meant we can have a frank discussion as two peoples who don’t always agree but who have respect for each other and a willingness to listen and, where necessary, to be criticised.

What also struck me, while listening to the insights from businesses such as Alibaba and Guangxin Technology Co. and Fonterra and Zespri, is that, while analysts see trade in terms of billions of dollars and percentage of exports and the rise of e-commerce, the true strength of our commercial and cultural connection is anchored in the relationships between our people—Chinese and New Zealanders, Chinese New Zealanders and their families back home, and the sharing of ideas and opportunities across borders in a world where those boundaries are increasingly impermeable. It is the strength of the personal relationship between New Zealand and Chinese people that has created our shared history. It is the depth of those personal relationships that will guide us through this difficult conversation, because the conversation will be at times difficult.

New Zealand is known for its willingness to walk softly amongst the hard paths of geopolitics, but we walk our own path. We are known to speak with a measured tone and a manner that seeks to resolve and not to compound, but we speak with our own voice. We speak it to those we believe should hear us, but we do not seek to grandstand. But neither do we shirk from uncomfortable conversations, and, today, this House speaks in one voice with our concerns about severe human rights abuses in China. We understand that China views any matter relating to its 1.4 billion people as entirely a matter for its own consideration, but we share one planet and there are fundamental tenets of humanity that should not be constrained by borders or political systems or ideologies. This Parliament and the 5 million people we represent believe that it is a basic human right for people to feel safe in their homes, to pray to whom they wish to pray to, to hug who they love, and to identify with a cultural tradition that best reflects their whakapapa and tūrangawaewae. We are very concerned that this is not a reality for the Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities.

Today is about raising our concerns respectfully but directly to our Chinese counterparts. Two days ago, the Chinese ambassador said these concerns are unfounded, but the National Party urges, in unison with our parliamentary colleagues, that China work with the United Nations and other international partners to confirm that the concerns of our community and this Parliament can be addressed, and conditions significantly improved for the Uyghur people and other ethnic minorities.

It is our hope that our voices here today are heard through the appreciation of our shared history, the depth of our personal relationships, and acknowledgment that we have always been able to speak to each other with mutual respect and reciprocity.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): I move, That the text of the motion be amended to read, according to the Speaker’s Order Paper No. 10: “That this House believe that Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide, and call on the Government to act to fulfil its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and all relevant instruments of international law to bring it to an end.”

SPEAKER: The question is that the amendment be agreed to. Has the member finished her speech?

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Sir, no; that was just the point of order.

SPEAKER: The member’s got another few minutes—so nine minutes to go. If she stops, I’ll put it.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: The Green Party unequivocally condemns the grave atrocities being suffered by the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang province and other religious, linguistic, and cultural minorities at the hands of the Chinese Government. I rise today, as an indigenous Kurdish woman who has suffered what I would characterise in my own region as amounting to at least crimes against humanity, to ethnic cleansing, and perhaps to genocide. I rise also, I note, as we all do each day in this House, on land that was never ceded by the indigenous people of this land, where we know that similar atrocity crimes have been committed and suffered.

I want to thank the member who has brought this motion to the House. I do regret that the final motion that has been debated thus far was, to put it mildly, watered down and that the House has shied away from talking about atrocity crimes being committed by the Government of China, but rather what we’re now calling “severe human rights breaches”. It is important the words that we use in condemnation of what is happening, at the scale that it’s happening, with the systemicity that is happening in Xinjiang province in China, and at the hands of any Government that treats its minorities with persecution and with what we know is what amounts to torture, what amounts to forcible sterilisation, with children being removed, and what we know the numbers are, which is approaching well over a million. That’s all we know coming out of a closed region, based on UN conservative estimates.

We also, here in Aotearoa New Zealand, sit in a House of Representatives where just a year and a half ago, just two years ago, our Muslim minority suffered what our nation now recalls as the latest of grave hate crimes. Again, we know that ethnic violence was not new at that moment on March 15, 2019. We know that our indigenous people have suffered it for a long time. So we stand here in solidarity with the Uyghur minority, knowing a little of their pain.

The crime of genocide—and I have sat in courtrooms, both in defence and in prosecution of that crime—amounts to any act with the intention of destroying that population based on its ethnicity, nationality, religion, or race, in whole or in part, in any region. It isn’t the crime of crimes. All atrocity crimes are equal before the law in international courts. The crime of crimes in Nuremberg was actually recognised as the crime of aggression. We don’t often condemn the crime of aggression in our Western Parliaments or by Governments, and I do wonder why we sometimes, in fact, send our troops to be complicit and to aid and abet in that crime when it happens, at least in my region of the world.

So, today, I hope that this marks a shift that New Zealand’s Parliament is going to stand in solidarity with victims of atrocity crimes, whether they are unlawful wars, whether they are war crimes, whether it’s genocide or crimes against humanity, whether they are committed by Governments who we see as our traditional allies, our trading partners, and, indeed, especially if they’re happening in our Asia-Pacific neighbourhood, as these crimes are today.

But what matters is not only our words of condemnation. It’s not whether or not we recognise this as a genocide and not another atrocity crime. What matters is our actions. I was deeply disappointed to hear leadership from both major political parties refer to trade as a consideration for them when they were discussing whether or not they would allow a motion using the word “genocide” when they were talking about the mass torture. Extrajudicial detention is sterilisation and slavery of some 1 million people. That was stunningly callous. It was absolutely morally indefensible and it is a breach of New Zealand’s legal obligations, our absolute responsibility to support an international rules - based order, where we uphold not only human rights but where we condemn, help to prosecute, punish, and prevent atrocity crimes, because we know that mass crimes like this are an absolute threat to international peace and security to all of our dignity, all of our human rights.

I do hope that this is a motion that will trigger action. What the Green Party has been condemning is happening in Xinjiang province requires us to stop trade of slave labour goods coming out of that region. Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, under questioning and in the select committee, said that they couldn’t even identify if it was happening. Last week, we found out that the Greater Wellington Regional Council had inadvertently bought buses that were very likely produced by Uyghur slave labour, after asking the ministry for go-ahead. We know that that same ministry gave up to 260 permits for trade of military equipment, including under a UN blacklist, which we breached in selling military goods to the Saudi military when they were blacklisted for killing Yemeni children. When I asked ministry officials about that in select committee, they laughed.

We know that our Government is not doing enough to prevent atrocity crimes and uphold our international obligations. We know that the ACT Party itself voted down the last time legislation came through this House to prevent slave labour goods from being sold in New Zealand. We want action, not just words. We owe the victims action and we owe victims across the globe that same condemnation and action. We owe it to the Palestinian children being removed from their homes and imprisoned. We owe it to West Papuans being extrajudicially imprisoned in our Asia-Pacific neighbourhood. We owe it to Western Saharans, who are right now under the process of UN’s decolonisation framework. New Zealand remains the only nation trading in their minerals stolen from their land. We owe an even hand to victims of atrocity crimes across the world, and this motion will hopefully be a beginning of that. We owe it to the people of Aotearoa New Zealand to be on the right side of history. Thank you, sir.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Thank you, Mr Speaker. We will support Parliament’s No. 1 motion as it aligns with our values as tangata w’enua. Also, Te Paati Māori will vote in support of this motion as it rightly draws attention to the suffering of Uyghur people and the human rights abuses they are facing. We are pleased to see the point of order to stop this motion being watered down before it was debated. We must never attempt to silence the atrocities of genocides, and that’s happening to indigenous peoples. We need to be calling out these atrocities for what they are, wherever they are happening in the world.

I stand as a descendant of Pari’aka, a descendant of muru raupatu. The depth of pain of genocide can never be explained. The deliberate killing of a large number of people from particular or ethnic groups with the one aim of destroying or wiping out that nation or group is deplorable. I guess what we are here for today is making sure that we use our sphere of influence to bring to attention that more than a million people are estimated to have been detained at internment camps in the regions, and many are suffering from rape; abuse; horrible, inhumane practices such as organ harvesting; mass torture; slavery; forcible removals. We must condemn these actions for what they are. We must make sure that we never lose sight of those who have been our w’anaunga, those who we have living beside us.

Te Paati Māori has a strong track record on standing up for human rights and indigenous rights in Aotearoa and internationally—in fact, it’s been the bane of much discussion this week. We will continue to advocate for indigenous peoples and fight racism and bigotry in all its forms. We stand in solidarity with all indigenous and oppressed peoples right around the world. Ethnic violence starts with racism. Racism is something that we shouldn’t be scared of calling each other up for. We should use this place to lead and stamp it out. I don’t think that’s the example that we’ve been seeing out of this place, this House.

Just as we stand with our w’anau, with our people, we too need to stand with our Pasifika w’anaunga in West Papua who are suffering genocide. We stand with our tangata moemoeā Aboriginal brothers and sisters. We stand with the First Nations of Turtle Island fighting for justice at Standing Rock and our Hawaiian w’anaunga at Mauna Kea. Let me remind this House again that we normalise and continue to be OK with those who have been perpetrators of genocide, with the monsters we still continue to have on our walls.

Finally, ACT is well known for pushing colonial agendas that oppress indigenous peoples here in Aotearoa, so it’s important that Te Paati Māori say that we struggled to understand how they’ve all of a sudden adopted or developed a desire to support the indigenous peoples in China. It was just five months ago they were calling to abolish our own Human Rights Commission. In this House, we continue to hear words like segregation, separatism, apartheid—those denying partnerships of Te Tiriti. One would hope that they extend this new moral position to their own country and let the tangata w’enua enjoy the same support that they are proposing for everyone else.

Nō reira, i te āhuatanga o tā tātou tipuna, ngā mihi aroha ki a koutou, kia kaha kia māia ki te tangata w’enua. Kia ora rā.

[Therefore, in line with the characteristic or our ancestor, I wish to sincerely acknowledge the indigenous people, be strong and brave. Thank you.]

Motion agreed to.

General Debate

General Debate

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Well, it’s been an interesting 24 hours in the House of Parliament of New Zealand, I must admit, and I think we’d be interested in actually maybe talking about more prosaic matters. I thought what we’re actually observing is a Government that is starting to look like it’s in a little bit of trouble. You know, if I look across the other side and say “What are the issues that seem to be surfacing after 42 months of this Government?”, it is where we’ve got issues with COVID, and we’ve seen certain strains coming through on that, and I’ll talk more about that shortly. Housing: I see the Hon Megan Woods here, who was talking about that before. We’ve got issues with gangs and how they’ve been dealt with. We’ve got health issues, and that’s a significant one, because how these have been dealt with is very significant, and I see Mr Faafoi there, the Minister of Immigration. I know he’s not dealing with the issue of immigration well, because all of our electorate offices have been flooded with people who are not getting a proper and timely reaction or response from the Government.

But I thought today we might talk about delivery—something a bit different, just a little bit different. So I thought it would be useful just to ask ourselves: what has this Government achieved in 42 months? The first thing that I’d like to note is we’ve got 10,000 more bureaucrats that have been employed under this Labour-led Government over the last three years. I’ve got to say, the small cost that has come with that is roughly about $1.2 billion, so that’s a good delivery! And I would have thought with the Minister of Finance, if he was looking for a bit of extra money—and I’m just looking at my finance colleague here—if he were to go and find some money, that would be a pretty good start.

Of course, we had the 340 working groups. Some have been delivered, I think—probably, more likely, delivered to the bottom drawer, because they’re just not going to happen and they are a waste of time anyway.

We had a Prime Minister who proudly banned oil and gas exploration and sailed off into the wind, went off and met President Macron and Angela Merkel in Germany, and said what a wonderful thing it is. So what’s been the downside? Well, we’ve seen energy prices go up fourfold—400 percent; fourfold—or, actually, slightly more than that, since that announcement only a few months ago. We’ve got a Minister who’s so keen on spending over $5 billion on a scheme that is so worrying the electricity and energy markets that they are putting on hold now a lot of their projects because they just regard it as a kahuna of a project that will make such an impact they will not invest in new renewables, and that is why we’re seeing power prices going up four times.

We’re seeing rents go up by 120 bucks a week. I thought this was a Government that’s caring, but, of course, the most damaging thing about that is that these are the people that are the most vulnerable people in New Zealand. These are the people, some of which will be hoping to save for their house, and of course a high rent is not going to help that. So we’ve got lots of these things coming through.

But the most worrying thing for me is all the projects that are not happening. We’ve got the Mill Road project in Auckland, in my electorate and in Judith Collins’ electorate. We’ve got the Melling interchange, which looks like it’s going to be postponed. We’ve got the Penlink one that’s likely to be delayed. We’ve got the Auckland light rail project. We’ve got the housing: 871 of them out of the 16,000 that have been promised but that, of course, haven’t been delivered. And that weird comment today about “institutional muscle memory of building houses”—I just don’t get that.

Then we’ve got, today, the Deputy Prime Minister wanting to set up and talk about his new delivery unit, and, of course, where is the detail behind it? It is based on a UK scheme. It actually got brought in initially, got removed, and has now been brought back in. Here we’ve got a Labour Government trying to—

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

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): There is so much to be grateful for here in New Zealand. I think that one of the things that is important, as a group of people or as the team of 5 million, is that we do take from time to time the chance to reflect on the fact that we can look to the future with hope, with optimism, and that we can see opportunity. This is not something that all those around the world have the privilege of doing.

We did not get here by accident. We got here by collective effort from all New Zealanders, who made a decision that we were going to put people first and that our health response was going to be our best economic response. The hard work that we all put in as a country last year gives us this hope, this optimism, and this ability to see opportunity, and I think that we do have to sometimes pause, be mindful of that, and realise just how we lucky we are.

We are a Government that has a very clear mission of what needs to happen now. We do need to continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID. I think we only need look around the world to see that this is a global pandemic that is far from over. It requires vigilant behaviour on our part as a Government, and that is what we are committed to doing.

But alongside this, we are a Government that is absolutely committed to accelerating our economic recovery and starting to build back better and address those long-term challenges like housing affordability, like childhood poverty, and like climate change. These are the issues that we must address. What we have to do is continue to ensure that New Zealand’s people and economy are in the best position that they possibly can be at this unprecedented time not only in our nation’s history but in our global history. We have a responsibility as a Government but we also have a responsibility as a House, as a House of Parliament, to do that as well, and that is something that our Government is absolutely committed to doing.

I think one of the things that New Zealanders all around the country tell me when I’m out and about is how happy they are in the way in which the Government has managed the books through this crisis and the way in which the careful management is now reaping those returns. We can look to the household labour force survey that came out today and showed that, actually, the unemployment rates that we are experiencing are nowhere near what was being predicted. We have managed to care for New Zealanders. We can look at our joblessness rate across those countries in the OECD that we would compare ourselves with and we can see how well we are doing. We can look at how our economy is performing relative to many of those other countries that we would compare ourselves to and we can see how well we are doing.

Again, this was not done by accident, and I would like to acknowledge the work of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, who has stewarded us through this period of time to ensure that we are continuing to look after New Zealanders. Jobs aren’t turning up by accident, as the Minister for Social Development and Employment was talking about in the House today. We are investing in our people. We are investing in apprenticeships. We are investing in making sure that we are getting young people into the trades, and they are flocking to those schemes.

When we have a look at what we have to do, we know there are many challenges ahead of us. We know that we have to continue to repair the damage that was done that has led to the housing crisis. We know we have to continue to build houses, and that is what we are committed to doing. We are committed to continuing to look after one another and to invest in our future, a future that is rich in jobs and responds to those big challenges that we face as a nation. We can continue to hold our heads high and see just how well—

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

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to start by saying that if the Minister of Housing wrote that speech, she should fire herself and find somebody who can actually write a speech for her. She talked about a team of 5 million, and I’d like to refer to something that my colleague Andrew Bayly has said in terms of the delivery for this Government. That Minister talked about the delivery and what this Government, apparently, have been doing for the last four years, because they were in fact the Government last term and they have already been in Government, second term, for more than six months now, and they haven’t really delivered much, especially if you—not you, Mr Speaker—if one happens to be of an ethnic minority. Consider the fact that the first Asian person, a Chinese man who actually arrived here, came to Nelson in 1842. He is often known as Appo Hocton, but his name is Wong Ahpoo Hock Ting. He was the first Chinese man who actually arrived here, but for many Asian people living in New Zealand, this Government hasn’t really delivered.

Can I quote: Kelly Feng, the director of Asian Family Services, has stated recently in an article, “Currently, the Ministry of Health has no policy for Asian mental health, which means [absolutely] no strategy,”. Can I also quote that the Asian suicide rate increased from 5.09 percent to 7.91 percent per 100,000 people in the year to June 2020. One suicide is one too many, and we need to take action. I’ll also quote Auckland councillor Paul Young, who said, “The DHB mental health services need to find out the needs [of Asian people], not just give [it] translation services.”

Even for translation services, let me tell my colleagues in the House that often during COVID-19, the translation services were done by volunteers within the ethnic communities. They weren’t provided with money. They weren’t provided with the budget that this Government seems to think that they have in fact spent on them. Ethnic communities often did it for nothing, because they were worried that their own communities would miss out on the information, the very information that this Government says they were being inclusive and being kind and had provided to all of New Zealand. A country of 5 million people living in harmony—obviously not, because not all New Zealanders received the information, and if they were provided with that information, it came from their own community. It was done for nothing, a pittance—nothing that the Government had in fact provided.

The Government needs to pay for comprehensive COVID-19 and health information in a variety of languages. Often when we sit in select committee, I have to remind members, and I know that my colleagues across the House will often see me doing this, that we need to include the Asian population, the ethnic population—all of New Zealand—and not just Māori and Pasifika, because when you stipulate, only Māori and Pasifika are given the attention. New Zealand is now a diverse country, and to think that there are many New Zealanders—actually, if we look at the Asian population in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is the third largest, behind European and Māori, and it is projected to increase to 22 percent by 2038, surpassing Māori and Pacific population groups. They are the fastest-growing group, and yet their needs are often not met.

As someone who is actually from that ethnic background, a minority in this country, I would like for this Government to pay a little bit more attention. When you have the Office of Ethnic Communities, which is going to become a ministry of ethnic communities, you would like to think that the actual upgrade will mean that there is going to be attention. But guess what? All of that is just a name change. It’s still going to be under the Department of Internal Affairs. The finances are controlled by the Department of Internal Affairs. The actual work is just a change in name only, and that’s what the ethnic communities are quite concerned about. When the Government said they are delivering for ethnic communities, I just would like to hope that it is not just lip service that they have been providing, like they did with COVID-19. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): I’m not going to lie: I breathed a sigh of relief when the household labour force survey was released today and we saw that, yet again, unemployment has dropped and we are now down to 4.7 percent. These are not easy times globally and many countries are struggling with respect to job losses, businesses are struggling with the pandemic around them, and of course that creates a range of other social issues. Earlier last year, when we were first hit with this pandemic, we had an incredibly bleak outlook. I think at its worst it was forecast that New Zealand would experience benefit numbers up to 490,000. But, instead, what we’ve seen already is since mid-January, those numbers on benefit have dropped by 30,000—from 390,000 people on benefit to 361,000—and we will continue to watch that space.

But, as my colleague who spoke earlier said, this is not by accident. Every action that we have taken as a Government has been deliberate. The wage subsidy that we were able to roll out and get to businesses, I think, within two weeks of announcing it saved so many businesses. It was a lifeline to so many businesses, and we hear that when we’re out and about and we’re talking to businesses. Of course that meant that as a consequence it saved so many jobs, and so that initial action, that early action, made a difference. Whether it be the resurgence payment, or whether it be the investment into infrastructure and the investment into upskilling and training opportunities, all of that has been deliberate.

I do need to say that, yes, there have been challenges with COVID, but many of them were actually pre-existing challenges that were exacerbated by the fact that we were hit with the pandemic. It’s not new that Māori and Pacific, whenever there is a crisis, are disproportionately impacted with regards to job loss. That’s not new. It’s not new that there are inequities within our health and education systems, and all too often, again, it’s Māori and Pacific and disabled people, can I say, who are disproportionately affected. So many of those issues have been exacerbated because of COVID, and our response was, yes, in response to COVID, but bigger than that—this is an opportunity for us to do a bit of a reset.

As has been said so many times before, it is about building back better. It is about looking at some of the pre-existing challenges that we faced, whether it be housing, whether it be child poverty, whether it be inequities in our health and education system, or whether it be disproportionate numbers of Māori and Pacific that are unemployed or disadvantaged in the labour market. It is about a reset so we can build back better. This has provided us with an opportunity, and an opportunity that this team of 65 on this side of the House is very, very cognisant of.

There is more work to do, and we haven’t shied away from that, but what I will say is I’m very proud of some of the programmes that we have implemented. I’m very proud of the focus on trades and apprenticeships. I’m proud of that for a number of reasons: one, because if we look back to the global financial crisis, where there wasn’t this investment, we ended up with a whole lot of workforce shortages because of the fact that the previous Government didn’t think to invest there. But also it will mean for those New Zealanders that get a chance to upskill and train so that in the longer term, their employment prospects are so much brighter and they are also in a position where employment is more sustainable and more likely to be secure, and they’re able to earn more money for themselves and their whānau.

I have said on so many occasions that when we look at something like employment, it’s not just the Minister for employment’s responsibility, or even the Minister who takes charge of the economy and has done such a good job—our Minister of Finance. But we have a team on this side of the House, a team of Ministers that have been committed to this space. Whether it be the Minister of Education, the Minister for primary industries looking at what’s needed in the horticulture industry, the Minister for Economic and Regional Development, the Minister for Pacific Peoples, or the Minister for Māori Development, all of us have been sitting at the table and thinking and working strategically to make sure that every action we take leads us to a place and that we do not end up in that very sad position that the forecasts had predicted but that we actually end up in a place where we build back better and New Zealand and New Zealanders—

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

CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Mangai, tēnā koe, tēnā koutou e te Whare. Today, I am standing to talk about an issue that actually was relatively well highlighted in the Financial Stability Report as aired at the Finance and Expenditure Committee earlier today, which is the housing crisis, and we heard there from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand that they have an immense amount of focus on the need to stabilise our housing market because, at present, it poses a huge amount of risk to our financial system. Now, I’ve spent oodles of time in this House speaking about this feedback loop which has created over successive Governments and through the likes of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s monetary policy almost a “too big to fail” kind of mentality towards the approach we have been taking to ever-escalating house prices.

Just this week, the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand has posed the need to start talking about rent controls in Aotearoa New Zealand, because what we saw in response, in particular, to the Government’s suite of tax changes to try and dampen the demand side of the supply and demand issues with regard to housing in this country was a huge number of property investors being wheeled out and talking about mum and dad investors and just how bad this was going to make things for those who own property in this country. But the part of the equation that the Green Party thinks was entirely neglected from that mainstream narrative and debate were mum and dad renters—just renters, actually, as a matter of fact, because we know that a third of this country rent and we also know, based on Statistics New Zealand’s data, that those renters are, typically, paying more of their income towards housing costs. But we also know that if you look at the distribution of homes in this country—and I’ve spoken about this before in the context of wealth inequality, because we know that the spread is such that the top 10 percent of this country owns 59 percent of the wealth, and the bottom half, the bottom 50 percent of New Zealanders, own just 2 percent. How that plays out in the housing market, noting that a third of people rent—based on Real Estate Agents Authority New Zealand data—is 30 percent of homes in this country are owned by people who own between four and more than 20 properties. You don’t start to rebalance this issue or tilt that balance through timidity, but you do it through bold steps to address a problem that has been percolating for a long time.

So when we, as the Greens, have put questions to Ministers over the past two days that the House has been back in question time that we have been putting on the table the need for greater discussion for rent controls in Aotearoa, we’ve heard in response from Ministers the need to keep monitoring this issue, noting, of course, the fact that over the past 10 years, we’ve seen wages increase by 20 percent but rents increase—far outpacing that—by 50 percent. Ministers have told us of the need to just keep monitoring—just keep monitoring this issue. In fact, they’ve also thrown out the fact that they believe that we don’t need to engage in this dialogue of rent controls because, in fact, if you look at the past year of 2020, rents only increased by—based on their numbers—1.6 percent. But the logic that fails there is the fact that during that record low in the scheme of the past 10 years’ increase in rental prices, we had a six-month rent freeze. That is demonstrative of these kinds of policies working. It shows us that we can do these things.

Here I just want to spend a brief period of time addressing a report produced by the New Zealand Initiative which I think is relatively economically and intellectually disingenuous in the way that it puts forward its arguments, stating, in particular, that in San Francisco with the introduction of rent controls—what they said was that people were less mobile. But, in fact, if you talk to the majority of renters in this country, they would love some stability.

In my electorate of Auckland Central, we have the highest rate of transience amongst renters. That has massive flow-on effects to the likes of the transience in schools that the National Party seems to be so concerned about. Then you also have the point made that in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when rent controls were removed in 1995, we saw a massive increase in rents by 45 percent—again, an argument to continue down this pathway.

We can do this. We have the willpower to do it, and we—

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

Hon PEENI HENARE (Minister of Defence): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. The kaupapa for my kōrero today is partnership. I find it really odd that in the seven years of being a member of this House, I stood in this House alongside what I at least would consider a giant in the Treaty settlement space. Minister Finlayson, for his time, premised much of the Treaty settlements under his watch under partnership—not only just the ability to be able to settle grievance, but to establish new partnerships. In fact, this House passed many bills into legislation, making sure that Māori had partnership in many mechanisms through the settlement process, whether that be at council level, whether that be with Government agencies, or whether that be with the Government itself. We all stood in this House and supported those pieces of legislation, and, sadly, what we’re seeing today from the National Party is dismissive of those achievements made by Minister Finlayson, but, more importantly—and sadly—actually attacking the kinds of partnerships we’re growing on this side of the House.

Partnership: it was partnership that got this country through COVID-19. What I mean by that is our Minister of Finance led a strong team that went into partnership with community. Why? Because community needed strong Government leadership to see them through COVID-19, and they’re continuing to get that as we look into how we recover from COVID-19. That’s our partnership with the community.

The other partnership: the Minister of Finance, along with this Government, partnered with business and sectors to make sure that their businesses were resilient and strong through a very difficult time, when the pandemic grabbed hold of this country. We continue that partnership with them today to make sure that our economy grows back stronger and better. We want to look towards the future, not like the National Party, who want to return to how it was.

After the pandemic lockdown and into the future, as we look towards how we grow back stronger and more resilient into the future, one key theme comes through, and that is partnership. Partnership is what’s going to make sure that we have a health service that delivers for its people, and—as the associate health Minister—a Māori Health Authority will do that. In fact, under the Waitangi Tribunal investigation, under many of the investigations that have gone into the inequities Māori suffered under the health sector, it’s been quite clear that in order for us to turn the dial on that, a partnership that sees an independent Māori Health Authority with a strong partnership with Health New Zealand can only lead to better outcomes for this country, and I am in support of that.

I’m proud of the leadership of the Minister of Health, the Hon Andrew Little, with respect to the health reforms. He saw the need for a strong partnership, not just between Māori and the Government, but Māori and the institutions of health that look after this country, and I’m proud to support him. I’m proud to support the work that he’s doing and I’m proud of his support for the Māori Health Authority.

We also meet quite regularly with another mechanism that was established under the National Government and that is the Iwi Chairs Forum. What are they screaming for? Partnership, and we’re delivering that for them. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a National member at any of those meetings with iwi chairs or in any progressive discussion with our iwi to develop a partnership to look at how we can make this country more resilient and stronger into the future. I am disappointed in that side of the House, and I look forward to proving them wrong and establishing a strong Māori Health Authority that will serve our people.

We’ve set a tight time frame for our delivery of this particular kaupapa. We’ve made it clear that within 13 months, the Māori Health Authority will deliver primary healthcare outcomes for our people—

Hon Louise Upston: How will you measure it?

Hon PEENI HENARE: —and we’ll make sure that we’ll measure it by showing that we’ve turned around the inequities that were established and supported under that Government—the National-led Government.

I’m really excited. That side: their problem ever since they’ve been in the Opposition benches is partnership. They can’t find a partner. Their closest partner is more distant from them than ever before; in fact, one would argue they’re leading them. Kia ora to the ACT Party—that’s partnership. The failure of National to be able to count numbers and have partners at the table is proof today.

On this side of the House, partnership will lead us into the future. Partnership will make sure that post-COVID, this country is bigger, better, and stronger.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This Government is the greatest example of non-delivery since Trevor Chappell did his underarm delivery in 1981, and what is going to happen is the same thing as Brian McKechnie—remember that scene? In utter disgust, he threw his bat away, and, I tell you, in 2023, the country of New Zealand is going to throw this Government out with such disdain because they talk through the hole in their head in terms of ambition and rhetoric, but what about delivery? Well, I tell you, their delivery is absolutely feeble.

I’m going to talk about two or three things if I can get to them over my four minutes. Firstly, in internal affairs, a serious issue: a royal commission into historical abuse in State care. The budget last year was $23 million. Grant Robertson’s expectation of the budget this year is the same number. What is it? It is $41.9 million—82 percent up in secretariat services. They then write a letter to the Minister and say, “We’ve run out of money. We need another $20 million.” He writes back and says, “No. Actually, you’ve got to learn to live within your own budget, and I’m appointing my Treasury officials to come and help you count your budget so you don’t spend what’s left.”—absolutely outrageous. Then, when the Minister Jan Tinetti gets tested on it, she says, “It’s a learning curve.” Well, I’m sorry, but you’re a Minister now. You’re in charge of a multimillion-dollar budget.

You don’t have time to learn on the job, frankly. You’ve actually got to deliver. You have got to deliver now.

You talk about delivery—$25 million down the toilet, just like that. And what’s worse is it appears now that that mandate, the scope of that commission, is going to be constrained because of the Labour Government’s inability to manage their books.

Then we move across to trade. We have heard over the last few weeks from this Government around the importance of diversifying markets. Well, where is your Minister? Forget about hanging around on the West Coast. How about getting on a plane and getting up to Liz Truss—his UK counterpart—and actually negotiating a free-trade deal? Dan Tahan, from Australia, is. They expect it to be done by the end of June. Where is the Minister of trade? He’s lost in Hokitika. He needs to front for New Zealand exporters and actually deliver a trade deal that creates some reality when you talk about diversity.

It’s all very well to stand up in this House, as this Government does, and say, “Oh, exporters are too reliant on China.” Well, go and deliver a free-trade agreement with other countries so we have more choices. You only do that if you can have a face-to-face conversation, and when others around the world are, where is Damien O’Connor? Where is he? He is not fronting. You need to front—you need to leave the West Coast. I know he likes it, but for goodness’ sake, you’ve got a job to do on behalf of New Zealand exporters. Get over there, negotiate face to face, and actually achieve a free-trade agreement, not only with the UK but also with the EU, also with ASEAN, and also with the Pacific Alliance. You’ve got a job to do. Show some urgency. We’re not seeing it. It’s pedestrian, and he needs to be called to account.

While I’m on my feet, I want to talk to a local issue which is synonymous with this Government’s inability to deliver. In 2016, we announced funding for the Tauranga Northern Link to go from Tauranga to Ōmokoroa.

Simeon Brown: How far has it gone?

TODD MULLER: It has gone nowhere. Not only has it gone nowhere—

Hon Michael Wood: It was not funded.

TODD MULLER: —it got stopped while it was out for tender, stopped by that Government, and Michael Wood sits there, as the new transport Minister, reflecting in his own accolades that somehow he’s going to turn this ship around. Well, build a road, mate, and build one in Tauranga. Get it done. Stop fluffing about. Stop talking about it and stop saying, “Well, now we’re not actually sure that we’re going to go to Ōmokoroa—we’re not sure.” All these shovel-ready projects that they crowed about before the election to try to give people a sense that infrastructure was going to be prioritised—where is it? It doesn’t exist. They can’t get the public sector to actually get up and procure and execute a roading strategy. They certainly can’t in the Bay of Plenty—fastest-growing area—and, yet again, another community looks with increasing disdain at a party that talks a good game, but when it comes down to it, it fails and fails and fails to deliver.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I wish to start my comments today with a tribute to the late Brian Corban, the chairperson of KiwiRail and a great New Zealander who passed away suddenly and very sadly over the weekend. Mr Corban will be known to many members around the House. He is the kind of person who I think of as a genuine nation-builder, a man who had an incredibly successful commercial career but who then devoted much of his life to public service. At the time that he passed away, he was the chairperson of KiwiRail, but he held many other roles in recent times with Radio New Zealand, TVNZ, Genesis Energy, the Melanesian Mission, and many, many more which I won’t take the time to mention here. I wish on behalf of the Government to pass on my condolences to his family and those who loved him very much.

Brian Corban, I note in particular, was the chair of KiwiRail who has really overseen the transformation of that organisation from a dried-out husk that had been run down over many years, asset-stripped, and run off the smell of an oily rag, to a burgeoning organisation that is revitalising parts of New Zealand from the North to the South. It was his leadership skills alongside some real political determination that have helped to turn that organisation around.

I do want to speak to some of the achievements and the delivery of this Government in respect of New Zealand’s rail network, an organisation which was in a state of managed decline under the previous Government and which is now moving ahead to build a reliable and resilient network for the people and the regions of New Zealand. This is a Government that believes in investing across transport modes, and not being myopically focused on roads, as the other side of the House is. Yes, roads are important for many of our communities, but it is about building a transport network that is mode-neutral, in which people have real transport choices, in which we focus on bringing down our emissions, in which rail serves that nation-building focus that it always has for the regions of New Zealand going back to the 1880s, but that side of the House has just never ever seen it.

This Government’s investment in rail has also been an important part of our COVID-19 recovery, giving investment and direction to our regions and employing thousands of New Zealanders. I want to speak briefly to some of the work that is under way as we speak, or recent deliveries to build that resilient and reliable network. Recently, I visited the work on the Third Main line, a critical rail project being delivered under the New Zealand Upgrade Programme between Wiri and Westfield in New Zealand. Absolutely essential to make sure that the flows of freight get through our biggest city and that we have an efficient commuter network for the people of Tāmaki-makau-rau as well—$300 million funded through the New Zealand Upgrade Programme, and that work is under way, employing 200 women and men on that project to deliver a critical piece of work for our rail network in Auckland.

Very soon, the work on electrifying the Papakura to Pukekohe line in Auckland will be getting under way as well, bringing the people of Pukekohe into the electrified commuter network and giving them real transport choices. There is $196 million under the New Zealand Upgrade Programme going into, as we speak, improving the Wellington commuter rail network. Again, lacking in investment for many, many years, and it has been this Government which has come forward to make sure that Wellington commuters have access to a reliable, efficient network to move them around our cities and to bust congestion.

I’m very proud that only about six weeks ago, with Kīngi Tūheitia and the Prime Minister, I was able to join them to launch the new Te Huia service between Hamilton and Auckland, restoring commuter rail between Auckland and Hamilton, one of New Zealand’s fastest-growing economic and housing zones. As we know from the hoots on the other side of the House, that side has never backed that region in terms of its aspirations for a decent rail service, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons that they lost the two Hamilton seats to Jamie Strange and Gaurav Sharma at the last election, because the people of Hamilton and Waikato are backing that service and they want to see it continue.

This is a Government that is proud of its investments in rail. We will shortly be announcing the New Zealand Rail Plan, a 10-year strategic plan to continue investing in rail to move people around our cities and regions, to move the freight efficiently, and to decarbonise our transport network. This Government believes in rail and believes in an integrated transport network for all of our people. It will continue to make the investments, will continue to deliver, and it’s an important part of our recovery from COVID-19. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Yesterday we learnt that the Government will set out an implementation unit to be run by the Deputy Prime Minister. The focus will be to ensure that the Government’s plethora of announcements on mental health, infrastructure, housing, and climate change are actually delivered. Call me old-fashioned, but making sure Ministers deliver on a Government’s promises used to be the job of the Prime Minister. But there’s no accountability inside the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, and that’s partly because there’s so little talent on the bench. You can’t sack a Minister when there’s nobody there to replace them.

We have a marketing-led Government, and its Achilles heel is delivery. The Prime Minister announced in 2019 that it would be a year of delivery for the Government. It turns out no one had told the doctor and no one had booked a birthing suite. The year of delivery never arrived. We were promised 100,000 KiwiBuild homes over 10 years. Labour delivered just 871. In July 2020, Grant Robertson announced around 150 so-called shovel-ready projects, all able to start within the next six to 12 months—an easy win for the Government because many of them were already under construction. They just needed more money. Few others have started.

The Government was going to plant a billion trees over 10 years. It turned out that of the hundred million a year, most of them would be private sector trees, and they’re still not meeting their targets. Auckland light rail is still a pipedream, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the number of children living in poverty is stagnant, and that’s why the Prime Minister wants to talk about COVID. It was a COVID election, with endless announcements from the Beehive theatrette—anything to divert attention away from delivery. Only COVID-19 saved the Government from having to admit in an election year that they had delivered practically nothing.

The most critical and important project sitting on the Government’s list is the not even in the implementation unit’s brief. New Zealanders were going to be at the front of the queue for COVID-19 vaccine. Fewer than 5 percent of us have been vaccinated, and we’re second to last in the OECD. The world will soon start opening up and we are going to be left behind at this rate.

But here’s the real issue: the Government doesn’t trust the private sector. They don’t like the private sector. There’s virtually no commercial experience in this Cabinet. It ignores the advice of the private sector with the skills and experience to actually contribute and deliver. They ignore the advice of businesses most likely to be affected by delays and uncertainties and the loss of productivity that’s associated with this Government’s failure to deliver.

There has been virtually no private sector involvement in the COVID-19 response. Grant Robertson said this implementation unit is needed because the Government is delivering projects that are complex and across departments. Well, it must come as a surprise to the Government and the infrastructure Minister that almost every single infrastructure project crosses multiple asset-owners and affects multiple stakeholders—surprise! The private sector knows how to deliver stuff, and the fact that it’s been frozen out by this Government is one reason of many why it has failed on so many fronts.

Here’s the reality: the so-called implementation unit will change nothing until this Government changes its attitude to the private sector. We could make progress on so many of our country’s issues if we look beyond the Wellington bureaucracy, whether it’s harnessing the energy and knowledge of local organisations who want to run charter schools and engage kids who’ve been underserved by local State schools, whether it’s replacing the Resource Management Act so that the private sector can get on with the business of building houses, or whether it’s better collaboration with the private sector to deliver better hospitals and elective surgery. The New Zealanders who live outside the Wellington bureaucracy often have better knowledge about how to get results. That is why it is the most cynical abuse of power for this Government to announce it has the plan or the solution when it has no real idea or intention to deliver.

Almost every announcement, whether on infrastructure, climate, or mental health, is simply a political magic wand—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. [Interruption] Order! [Interruption] Order! When I say “Order! Your time has expired”, I mean it.

I’m going to give the member a warning: do not read a speech again in the general debate. I didn’t interrupt him—the member is new—but that’s the last time.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, what a misery guts! The last speaker is such a misery guts because, really, to suggest that this Government was saved by its outstanding COVID-19 response—how about joining together with a bit of real partnership and recognising that all New Zealanders and all parliamentarians really worked together to create a fantastic response, which has seen New Zealand in a very, very strong position—a position that is in the top three or four nations in the world, a position where our economy is resilient and prepared for a recovery, a position where we heard the Minister say that unemployment is falling and people in employment is growing. Where in the world can you say that? The average OECD unemployment rate: 6.7 percent. That’s problematic. That’s not a healthy economy. Here, today: 4.7 percent. That’s where we were in 2017. We’re in the same place post-COVID as we were in post-National. Isn’t that fantastic?

Look, here we are: GDP is 0.9 percent behind where we were a year ago—a tiny fraction. Now, look, and here we are. The US is 2.4 percent down, the UK is 7.3 percent down—compare ourselves with our peers.

Kieran McAnulty: 7.3—7?

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: 7.3.

Kieran McAnulty: What!

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I know. And here we are, and what’s the projection? Good. What did the financial stability report say? That we have a resilient economy, but there are risks ahead. But you know what? We’re well prepared for those risks. We’re well prepared because we’ve got a Minister of Finance who’s going to deliver a Budget in two weeks’ time that is a responsible Budget, a careful Budget, one which focuses on the things which are important. It’s important that it’s a long-term Budget, as well.

Chlöe Swarbrick stood up and talked about housing, and she was right to do so. We know that there’s a problem with housing in New Zealand, and housing affordability in particular, and that’s going to be a focus of the Budget.

Child wellbeing—we know we’re working on child wellbeing and child poverty, and we’re making progress. That will continue to be a focus for this Government, and rightly so.

The other big long-term challenge: climate change. We’re absolutely working on climate change. We will make progress on climate change, and, I’ll tell you what, we’re certainly not going to sit on our hands, like the National Government did for nine years, and sit on a broken system. We fixed that system, and James Shaw has done a great job in getting the climate change legislation in place and getting the auction framework in place and actually making progress where the last Government did nothing.

I must say I’m very happy that under the last Government, we reached an accord with the farming sector, who, with this Government in partnership—as Minister Henare said, partnership is the way to do things, not by conflict. In partnership with the farming community, this Government will move forward on climate change.

What’s more is you can even take a holiday—some across the other side look like they might need it. But because we’ve had a great response, we can now meet our partners in Australia, meet our friends in the Cook Islands, take a bit of rest and relaxation, and help those economies as well, and, especially, help our Pacific neighbours. I’m really proud of the stance we’ve taken in respect of the vaccine roll-out in the Pacific and that we’re going to take a leadership role in there. So we can go to the Cooks and spend there, just like New Zealanders are spending here.

We have such good confidence that retail spending is up. What’s more, so is investment confidence. Investor sentiment is high. People are employing. People are spending on fixed assets. They’re actually expanding their businesses. Look at the work we’re doing in apprenticeships. We’ve got 17 percent more apprenticeships than we did have a year ago—fantastic.

We live in a volatile world. We know that there’s storms on the horizon—China, India, Europe—but we’re well placed. Our markets are well placed because we’re taking a responsible approach and building for the future, building our human capital with things like the apprenticeships framework but also our fantastic health reforms. What a fantastic health reform to partner with all of our communities—Māori communities and wider communities—to deliver better outcomes for all New Zealanders.

I’m really looking forward to 20 May. I’m going to have a great day. I hope you will too. Kia ora.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Well, that was a bit of a try-hard speech from one of the members of the Government, wasn’t it? They’re trying hard to explain how much the Government’s doing, trying hard to try to prove that they’re actually getting stuff done, but, actually, the reality is very different. This Government has this week announced an implementation unit where they’re going to try hard again, try to get things done in this Government, on a whole range of things. Well, the implementation unit should be called Cabinet. Cabinet should be held responsible to actually get things done, but the problem with this Government is Cabinet doesn’t know how to get things done, and Duncan Webb’s just given us a five-minute lesson on a Government which has no idea on how to actually get things done.

I’d like to talk about how this Government is failing to deliver when it comes to keeping New Zealanders safe. New Zealanders are feeling less safe. Our police are feeling less respected, and they are not getting the resources that they have been promised that they would have had delivered under this Government. This Government promised 1,800 new police over three years to be on the beat, helping to keep New Zealanders safe. They still haven’t even reached 1,400 new police here in New Zealand. They promised that of that 1,800, 700 were to be focused on keeping us safe from gangs and organised crime. They’ve only delivered 240—240—of those officers on the beat, and where’s the plan? Where’s the plan to deliver the remainder of those officers, because what we know is gangs are recruiting faster than the police in New Zealand, and that is something which is concerning more and more New Zealanders.

There we have it: we have the Government’s major operation, Operation Tauwhiro, an operation tasked to crack down on gangs and illegal firearms, because we know that the gangs have not handed back their guns. The Mongrel Mob has not handed back their guns.

So they announced a major operation to crack down on gangs, and what have we seen? We’ve seen a Minister of the Crown turn up to the Mongrel Mob gang pad to try and have a cup of tea and a kōrero and to condone and to give credence to what this gang does. We know the Mongrel Mob hasn’t handed back their guns. We know they continue to deal meth on our streets, and it is absolutely outrageous that no Minister in the Government has condemned the Minister for the prevention of sexual offending turning up to the Mongrel Mob gang pad and giving a speech in front of all of the mobsters there.

It asks the question: what are the measures of success for Operation Tauwhiro? Is it actually to crack down on gangs in New Zealand, or is it just another PR exercise by this Government?

Hon Poto Williams: Oh, the police aren’t going to like you saying that about their hard work.

SIMEON BROWN: It asks the question—well, the Minister of Police is interjecting. I ask her to take a call and condemn the Minister for the prevention of sexual offending. I ask her to take a call—stand up and condemn her for going to a gang pad on Saturday and endorsing and giving credence to the violence they perpetrate on our streets.

I ask the question: is it part of Operation Tauwhiro for Ministers of the Crown to turn up to gang pads and to give speeches endorsing what they do? I have an Official Information Act request here from the police, where I’ve asked them, “What are the measures of success? What are the things that they are going to be doing?” Well, firstly, interestingly enough, the press release from the police in February said that all districts would have tailored initiatives focused on how they were going to target gangs. Well, I would expect, two months into a six-month operation, that all districts would have a tailored initiative. Well, guess what! Only five districts have got tailored initiatives in place so far—only five districts. Two months in, and only five districts have actually got a tailored initiative. I think that’s absolutely unacceptable and a failure to deliver.

But it gets worse. You go to the Tasman District and you find out what they’re tasked to be doing, and you’d think, “Well, they’d be going and raiding some gangs down there.” They’ve had a 177 percent increase in gang membership under this Government, the fastest increase of any police district in New Zealand. I read it and it says, “The Tasman District Police will have ongoing communication and work with gang leaders to bring about long-term change.” The police should be out arresting these gang members, not sitting down and having a kōrero and a cup of tea.

This Government is not keeping New Zealanders safe, and I ask the Minister of Police to take a call and condemn Marama Davidson for her outrageous and unbelievable act of turning up to the Mongrel Mob gang pad—

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

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to speak, following what might have been a rare misstep by Simeon Brown, because I am so proud—so proud—to be a part of this Government.

I’m especially proud and grateful to stand here as the member of Parliament for Ilam, because Ilam has played a pivotal role in keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. The moment you land at Christchurch Airport, you find yourself in Ilam and you know that you’re in safe hands. Four out of six of our managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities in Christchurch are in Ilam, and, of course, we can’t fault the staff at the airport itself.

I just wanted to take a moment to express my profound gratitude to all of the staff at our MIQ facilities, but in particular, of course, those in Ilam. I’d like to reference Michael Patterson, who is the manager of the Commodore Hotel, who I’ve met with recently and who expressed gratitude for the fact that the Government was in fact running MIQ facilities through these hotels, which has enabled them to survive since this virus hit our shores.

We also have a testing facility at Orchard Road. It’s a big testing facility, and I, again, want to express my gratitude to all of the staff members there. They’re part of a testing regime through Canterbury DHB that’s processed 68,782 tests, which I think you’ll agree is a large amount of tests and a good commitment.

I also wanted to express gratitude to the team of 5 million. But I’m going to revise that to the team of 4,999,967.

I’m proud, too, of this Government for taking decisive, swift, and effective action, which has accelerated our economic recovery. The wage subsidy has supported 197,000 jobs in Canterbury alone in the first week of the 12-week roll-out. Businesses like Untouched World in Ilam, run by an extraordinary woman CE and founder, Peri Drysdale, described as a treasured Canterbury company—we have our own manufacturing facility there in Christchurch, in Ilam. They were beneficiaries of the wage subsidy for the first two rounds and have also used other support packages from the Government to re-position their business to create masks. They’re producing a lot of masks—very high-quality masks—and they have a great reputation for having the best masks in the business. They’re quoted as saying the support that they received would “make the climb out of this much more effective”. I quote Peri in saying it “set [them] up for growth”, and that’s what we want. We want us to set up for growth.

The strategic asset funding and the Department of Conservation funding, as well as the wage subsidy, has kept our penguins alive in the International Antarctic Centre. They say that without Government funding, they would have had to shut their doors and go into hibernation. I don’t know an awful lot about penguins, but I’m not sure they’re supposed to hibernate, and, obviously, they have to be kept fed so that they can be entertaining everybody in Christchurch, domestic and international tourists alike, whilst the International Antarctic Centre provides an extraordinary education, actually making us better informed about our environment, conservation, our precious seas, and, obviously, our resource of Antarctica—to which, you’ll be aware, Ilam is, through Christchurch Airport, one of the few gateways in New Zealand.

The school holiday period for the International Antarctic Centre has been good. Things are looking up, but they do still need ongoing support.

I’m proud, too, of the controlled, thoughtful, and flexible border reopening. I’m looking forward to enjoying more family reunions as we continue to keep New Zealanders safe. I’m looking forward to encouraging international tourists as well as, obviously, domestic tourists back into our outstanding attractions like Orana Wildlife Park and the International Antarctic Centre.

Thank you so much, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity of expressing how proud and grateful I am of being part of this Government, and how we’re continuing to keep New Zealanders safe.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in Committee for consideration of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill.

Bills

Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Temporary powers relating to visas

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The House is in committee on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. Members, we come to the first part, Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 16, “Temporary powers relating to visas”. The amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 32, in the name of Ricardo Menéndez March, is out of order as outside the scope of the bill. The member, therefore, cannot speak on that amendment. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Can I begin by giving a little bit of context as to why the bill that we are amending was passed roughly this time last year. Obviously, earlier in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government made—[Change of Chairperson] that was very swift—one of the biggest and best decisions it could make. It was not an easy decision to make, to make sure that our population kept safe, and that was to close our border in order to put a protective armour around our country to keep New Zealanders safe and to keep COVID-19 out of our country. Obviously, by taking that relatively unprecedented action, the need to regulate the flow of people and also cohorts of groups of visa holders in New Zealand and those outside of New Zealand was necessary, and it had to be done in a different way. The purpose of the original bill and the current Act was to ensure that we could deal with some of those cohorts as groups and not as individuals, because you could imagine the logistical nightmare that Immigration New Zealand would have if we were dealing with changes of visas with people who are in the country on an individual basis. The time that it would take and the resources it would take would have been troublesome, and it would have certainly overwhelmed the system.

So the bill passed last year, which we are amending through this stage, gives the Government and the Minister of Immigration eight powers, and those powers have to be linked to responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those powers are to “vary or cancel conditions for classes of resident visa class holders; to impose, vary, or cancel conditions for classes of temporary entry visa class holders: [thirdly] waive any regulatory requirements for certain classes of application … grant visas to individuals and classes of people in the absence of an application: extend the expiry dates of visas for classes of people: waive the requirement to obtain a transit visa in an individual case, or suspend a transit visa waiver made by regulations in an individual case: certify immigration instructions under which an immigration officer may revoke the entry permission of a person who has been detained by regulations made under the principal Act to have been granted entry permission: make regulations suspending the ability to make applications for visas or to submit expressions of interest in applying for visas by classes of people.”

I would like to thank the Education and Workforce Committee for their very prudent work under time constraints for this piece of legislation. I do note, having had a look at some of the reports that came out of the select committee hearings, that quite a broad number of stakeholders came and gave submissions, and I thank all of them for taking the opportunity to talk either to the issues that they are facing or to the substance in the bill. I would also note now two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) that have been put before the House both in the name of Erica Stanford. In essence, Supplementary Order Paper 30 is to reduce the extension of the bill from the current proposal of two years to an extension of the current laws and powers in the bill to one. Then Supplementary Order Paper 31, in essence, is to enforce a 28-day rule of enforcement of any special directions or regulations that may come about of the powers that are afforded to the Minister of Immigration and the Government within this piece of legislation.

I didn’t hear the contributions of the Opposition in the second reading speeches—the quality of them is not for me to judge—but I understand that the Opposition may be predicating its further support on whether or not those two SOPs will pass. I want to put the Opposition members out of their misery nice and early in this debate, because I know that—pre-empting a question—the Government will not be supporting those SOPs. I understand that those issues were relatively well thrashed out and debated in the select committee process and submissions were received.

But in order to deal with Supplementary Order Paper 31, which goes to the adding of a 28-day rule, what we have found when we are making decisions about using special directions, for example, is that having the flexibility in our response is important and in a small number of instances, some of the changes had to be made quite quickly in order to take action for cohorts of people who we were making decisions for. Including the 28-day rule within the purview of all the decisions that are made would take away that flexibility for us. So, in that respect, the Government won’t be supporting Supplementary Order Paper 31.

Then to go to pre-empt some of the questions that may come from the Opposition around truncating the extension of the current bill from two years to one, there is a simple answer to that. I know some concerns have been raised, but even in the short time since we had our first reading, COVID-19 has taken an even tighter hold in some countries. So just how long we will be dealing with this pandemic and to have the current border settings as they are is a question mark. So in order to make sure that we do have the tools and do have a flexibility to deal with this ongoing issue, we believe that two years gives us the ability to make the kinds of changes that we need to, that the powers within the current Act give us.

So I hope that will deal with some of the questions that might come from the Opposition at some stage. Happy to let the committee stage lie.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I have to say I’m very disappointed that the Minister doesn’t go back and look at my speeches on demand. I thought that’s what he did in the evenings—clearly not. But as it turns out—

Matt Doocey: He does.

ERICA STANFORD: I bet he does.

Hon Kris Faafoi: Not yet, not yet.

ERICA STANFORD: One day.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!

ERICA STANFORD: But as it turns out not only did he not listen—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order!

ERICA STANFORD: —to my speech—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! You sit down when I stand up.

ERICA STANFORD: Oh, sorry. I apologise.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The Minister knows he should not be interjecting from the chair.

Hon Kris Faafoi: I apologise.

ERICA STANFORD: It’s all right, a bit of banter. As it turns out, not only did the Minister not listen to my speech, it turns out he also didn’t read Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 31 in my name all the way through, because if he had he would have seen at the bottom it says, “that special directions commence no earlier than 28 days after publication unless the Minister is satisfied that extraordinary circumstances exist to justify earlier commencement.” Now, that bit there allows the Minister, when there are circumstances that require him to be nimble and flexible in the small amount of cases—in his own words—that exist from time to time, to require less than 28 days. He would have the ability to do that.

I’m going to come back to this later because I didn’t want to start with that because it’s probably not the most important thing. What our support hinges on, in fact, Minister, is not both of the SOPs—although, this is a very important one—but actually the two-year time frame that he’s giving himself.

I just want to remind the House of some of the important details around this two years. We have to remember, from the Cabinet paper that we’ve seen, that the Minister went to Cabinet actually wanting no expiry date, no sunset clause. His backup was three years. He ended up getting two. It’s important to note that he took this Cabinet paper, asking for no sunset clause, on 22 March this year. If he’d got his way and there was no sunset clause, we would’ve had an extremely truncated process—like we ended up having—for no sunset clause at all, which is a huge grab of power, transfer from the officials to the Minister with effectively no sunset clause and no safeguard.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Order! I’ll just stop the member. We’re debating in committee the bill as it was approved at second reading. It’s not appropriate for the member to be debating something that’s not in the bill.

ERICA STANFORD: I’ll get to my point. The point, Mr Speaker—

Hon Simon Bridges: He’ll make a good Speaker that guy.

ERICA STANFORD: Ha, ha! The point, Mr Speaker, that I was getting to—took a wee while there—is that the Minister ended up with two years, which is what we’ve got. The Regulations Review Committee wrote to us specifically asking us to make sure that we were happy that we had enough information as to why two years was required. That is a red flag from the Regulations Review Committee. Now, we weren’t satisfied in the select committee—the National Party weren’t satisfied—that we had enough of that detail. So I want to get into that today.

If you take a look at the first reading speech, the second reading speech, and both legislative statements from the Minister—in all of those speeches and statements that he gave—he only ever committed a very small part of those quite long speeches and statements to the reasons why two years was required. Now, this is really important because this is what the whole crux of this comes down to. It’s not the power but how long he’s got it for.

Now, the New Zealand Law Society themselves said that they weren’t satisfied that enough reasons were given. We weren’t satisfied that enough reasons were given. The only reason the Minister has given us is that COVID still exists—that was the first thing. The second thing that he said was he didn’t want to have to bring the bill back to the House later this year—having a bill two times in one year. Now, that’s not our fault; that’s the Minister’s fault for only bringing the Cabinet paper, as I referred to earlier, in March this year, when he should have taken it last year.

The fact of the matter is this is a huge transfer of power, and we want to know why, other than just COVID still exists—which, by the way, a year ago compared to now is extremely different and in a year’s time it will be different again, which is what all the submitters said. So my question—[Bell rung] Mr Chair, I’ll finish it up. My question to the Chair is—I want him to stand up and explain to us in detail why he needs two years other than just one. Because every single submitter to this bill who was an organisation, every single one—there wasn’t one that said anything different; they all wanted one year rather than two. There wasn’t a single submitter—oh, sorry, one submitter wanted six months. But there wasn’t a single organisation, not one, that backed the Minister up, and he ignored all of that advice.

I want to know from the Minister what overarching reason there is, because the Regulations Review Committee have asked us specifically and we’re not happy with what we’ve had so far. I’d like in detail why two years over one, and I don’t want to hear, “We don’t want to bring it back to the House.” Because, actually, that’s just inconvenient for you, but, actually, this House deserves it. Other than, “Well, COVID’s still around.”—COVID’s going to be around for a really long time, but it doesn’t mean that we transfer the Minister these powers for ever. There has to be a point where he gets his department to a point where they can process visas in the way that they normally would.

The Minister never came to this House and gave us figures of how many people—this is prior to last night—were still onshore or the capacity of the workers at Immigration New Zealand to be able to do their jobs. His argument in the first passing of this bill last year was “There are 350,000 people onshore and none of my officers can work from home.” And we agreed with that and we voted unanimously to transfer these powers to the Minister. But none of those arguments, not a single one, was brought up this time, and they were the main reasons for him to have this power in the first place.

Why was it, Minister, that you never came to this House and said, “Here are the number of people onshore now”—because we know a whole lot left—“and here’s the capacity of my staff in the Department”? Not one single time have we heard from this Minister or his staff as to why—with all of those immigration officials back at work—they now can’t process visas as they normally would. Let’s remember that they’re processing 450,000 fewer applications than they were in 2019 across four categories and there’s only, what, a couple of hundred thousand people onshore? Why is it, Minister, that your officials can’t do the job as they normally would?

This is a huge transfer of power. I think this House deserves an explanation given that those were the reasons you originally asked for the bill—an explanation as to why you never came to this House until we basically brought it up and said, “Hey, by the way, you haven’t given us any figures.” He did, at the last minute last night, and has never talked about the capacity of his immigration officials to do their job. It’s not OK to say, “I don’t want to bring the bill back, because it’s inconvenient for me.” It is a huge transfer of power and we expect that this House has the safeguard of one year.

The other point I’d like to make is that it was always trumpeted as a one-year safeguard because of the truncated nature of the first select committee. Well, the second select committee was truncated as well; a lot of people didn’t get to have their say. So, again, a one-year sunset clause would be a perfect safeguard for this bill, and yet the Minister has come asking for two. No credible reasons have been given to satisfy this side of the House as to why this bill is needed and certainly hasn’t given us any response that we could give back to the Regulations Review Committee to say, “Actually, yes, we’re satisfied.” Because we’re absolutely not.

So I want to be very clear: I want the Minister to be able to tell us today why he needs these powers for two years rather than one given that all of the submitters wanted one year.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m just going to speak very briefly and add my thoughts to this. The Minister has asked for a two-year extension of the extraordinary powers, and, as we’ve heard, he is not accepting one year. I think it is fairly obvious that the circumstances that New Zealand will be in over the next two years will be vastly different to when the original Act came into force. So I also ask: why is the Minister asking for two years? What is the basis for that power grab? What is the motivation? What is really going on in the immigration space, behind the scenes? And how does this all fit into a long-term, hypothetical immigration reset—whatever that means?

I have previously questioned the outcomes of the original legislation over the past year. They have been totally insufficient in addressing the critical needs of migrants, employers, and New Zealand at large. In particular, the state of the skilled migrant category, which we’ve spoken about, is an utter disgrace. So I’d like to know how the Minister plans on using his powers in fixing it. If the Minister has the temerity to ask Parliament for two more years of extraordinary powers, then I think he owes us this explanation. The debilitating situation for so many thousands of migrants cannot go on. I do wonder and worry what the Government has in store. If the Minister wants two more years, how about giving the people of New Zealand an explanation as to his thinking for both this bill and long term? Is it good news or just more bad news? Thank you, Mr Chair.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I might just take the opportunity to address a couple of the issues, because I think I may have addressed most of the questions that were asked in my opening statement.

The powers in this legislation have been framed as a power grab. Now, if they could have any negative effect on people, then I guess that concern in some way might be valid. But in order for us to use these powers within this bill, it cannot have any negative effect on any class of visa holder. So, in fact, the powers that we are asking to extend here—and alleged to be using in a power grab—can only be used to positively benefit visa class holders. We have used it on a number of occasions.

So for those of you who may be listening—or watching, if you’ve stumbled on to Parliament TV this evening—

Hon Simon Bridges: Change channels!

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Yeah, please do, especially if the Opposition is going to drag this out! Any connotation that this is some kind of power grab, I would push back against.

Again, going to the issue that is in Supplementary Order Paper 30, one of the reasons why we believe this needs to be two years, I will reiterate, is the global issues that continue to rage outside of New Zealand and the reality of what bringing back a piece of legislation that we would only have in force for one year would be, for this House—I don’t think that we should be using the time of very busy officials or the time of this House to be back here in September revisiting some of these issues to extend it for another 12 months.

The people of New Zealand, towards the end of last year, backed the Government to make the right decisions around our border settings to keep us safe, and they trust us that we are making the right decisions, in order that they can live with relative freedom at a time when things in the rest of the world are markedly different. Even in the first reading speeches from the Opposition, we did hear from some of their members that they did think that, when we used the discretion and the powers that are given to us in the Act that we are amending today, we had used them well. So any suggestion that a power grab is being enacted by extending this legislation actually doesn’t bear out from what has actually happened, and people on that side of the House, to my left, have actually agreed with us.

That again goes to the fact that the people of New Zealand have entrusted us, again, with a responsibility to keep that armour around the country and to have the settings of that right to keep us safe. So all of those things in totality mean that we want to ensure that we have these powers for whatever length of time we believe is necessary—and at this stage it is two years—to keep the country safe. If anyone in this hall has got a crystal ball about how long they think the COVID-19 pandemic situation is going to last for, I would happily buy it off you. But I would hazard a guess that we will be in a similar position with our border settings in a year, and therefore we will need to continue having the flexibility that is within this bill to make the decisions that we have been trusted and will continue to be trusted to make.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you. I didn’t get the answer to my questions, so I’m going to ask them again, because the Minister has reiterated what he said the whole time, which is just “COVID”. But actually the arguments in the first place, the arguments he came up with in the first place, were why it was that Immigration New Zealand couldn’t process these visas themselves. He said last year it was because they were all at home and we were in lockdown and they couldn’t process as they normally would. That is not the case now. This is not about keeping people safe in COVID. This is about the department being able to process visas.

Why is it that they are unable to do that? They are now back at work. That was one of the single biggest arguments a year ago as to why this bill was required. And we agreed with the Minister, because those officials were at home and they were unable to do their job, and we got that. They are now back at work. Why is it that they are not able to process visas as they normally would, given that their workload has significantly dropped off, because there’s 450,000 less applications going through at the moment—why is it? And I’ll keep talking to give the Minister time to chat with his officials. Why is it that they can’t do their job as they normally would?

And also, why is it that it took until last night for the Minister to come forward with the information around the number of people who are on shore, given that that was such an important reasoning in the first place? But the main question here is: why is it that these visas can’t be processed in the normal way that they would be?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I’m not sure how that—and maybe I might be wrong—pertains to any clauses in the bill, but I’m happy to address some of that question.

Stuart Smith: Oh, how magnanimous of you!

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Are you done? So I think the question goes to a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on with the immigration system and the processing system at the moment. Yes, we aren’t able to process visas for people offshore, because the border restrictions are in place. The member may have noticed, though, that there is a border exception regime in place. A lot of the resource that is taken up for some of the very complex processing of visas is actually being taken up by assessing the large volume of border exception applications that are coming into New Zealand. I think I’m right in saying that, as of about two weeks ago, 135,000 people went through managed isolation. Roughly 10 percent of those came into the country on a border exception.

So we don’t just take an application and rubber stamp those and say you can come into the country. The process is that there are very strict criteria—given the border closures at the moment, as to whether or not people who don’t have the absolute right to come into New Zealand—they have to meet in order to get a border exception and to be able to come into the country. The criteria vary depending on whether you are wanting to come here for six months or over six months or some other humanitarian or cultural reason.

All of those applications have to be processed, and they are not simple processes. They are complex processes. And sometimes, as with a lot of visa applications, some of that information is incomplete. So it does take some time to get through that process. And the people who would otherwise be processing visas as per normal are doing a lot of that border exception work.

Can I thank them for that. They are under extreme pressure. As you can imagine, there are plenty of businesses, communities who would like either workers or their loved ones to come to New Zealand for some reason, and I’m sure that that issue will come up at some stage during the debate. But that work is being done by that processing staff, and I want to take my hat off to them for doing that work, which is new work for them, obviously under extreme pressure because the volume of those applications is large.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. We’re OK with the extension of the two years and the extension of those powers, but I think it’s really important that there is direction in the way that those powers are used and that those powers are used responsibly. One of my concerns and one of our concerns is that, if you use those powers to just plaster over the cracks, people start to fall in those cracks. The mandate of those powers is actually an opportunity to deal with the inaccuracies and the cracks within the system that are already there.

With the COVID crisis, we know that there are people here who have been overstayers, people who have been on temporary visas, and the COVID crisis has exacerbated the material conditions of those people as well. So to me it’s like this two-year extension argument that we’re having here is a solution looking for a problem. I would suggest that the problem that we need to be addressing here is helping to create pathways to residency for those people who have been caught here—creating a broad amnesty programme for people who have been overstaying.

I understand that there’s around about 14,000 people who are overstayers in this country as well. A large number of those people are essential workers who helped get us through the COVID crisis. Also, a large number of them are Pasifika people as well; so it would embed the relationship with Aotearoa and with the wider Pacific, as well. I think these powers should be directed in that way. I think it would go a long way in addressing the inconsistencies within the immigration system, and I think that is a good way for you to move ahead.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Can I thank the member for that contribution and acknowledge that the safeguards that are in the bill that we’re amending remain, and certainly the powers that are within the bill that we hope to extend, we have, I believe, used extremely responsibly over the last 12 months.

But I did want to take his speech as an opportunity to acknowledge some of the issues that are related to the likes of those who don’t have regular immigration statuses at the moment in the context of what we’re trying to do to make sure that people are safe. I want to take this opportunity to reiterate that, in terms of vaccination, we want to make sure that everyone in the country gets vaccinated. Regardless of your visa status, everyone in New Zealand is able to get vaccinated.

I certainly know, from some of the Pacific communities that we have spoken to, that they are concerned that if they come forward for testing or vaccination, it may affect their visa status if that information was to be passed on to Immigration. So I want to use this opportunity in the House tonight—and the member has raised some issues like that—to ensure that we reinforce that the information that people hand over to health officials, if they aren’t holders of valid visas, will not be passed on to Immigration New Zealand at all. We want them to know that they are safe to get the COVID vaccine and that, if they fear any retribution because of their immigration status, because they’ve engaged in the vaccination system, they do not need to worry about that.

We want to make sure, first and foremost, that everyone who should get vaccinated does get vaccinated and, in order to do that, that the information they may hand over to officials, to make sure they have the vaccinations and can be, for want of a better term, ticked off on the vaccination spreadsheet, will not make its way to Immigration. That will not affect them. They do not have to fear anything out of that. I do think that’s one of the side issues that we have at the moment in relation to the community that that member has mentioned, and I want to reinforce that they are safe when they get vaccinated and they are safe in an immigration sense once they get vaccinated and have been through that process.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to come back to my Supplementary Order Paper and the need for two years, because the Minister in the chair, Kris Faafoi, again is continuing to use COVID as an excuse. COVID is going to be with us for a while—who knows how long?—and it’s not a reason for a wholesale transfer of power, as he actually originally wanted, for a long period of time. It’s up to Ministers to get their departments match fit to be able to deal with what happens as a consequence of COVID.

Now, a lot of the submitters, and also in my opinion, said that nothing happened over the last 12 months by the Minister to get his department into a position to be able to deal with this, and, actually, the truth came out today in the Minister’s previous response to my question. We finally got down to the reason for this bill, and the reason, as the Minister told us, is that his department does not have the capacity to process visas as they normally would. So when he told us a year ago that it was because they were at home and they couldn’t process visas, that actually wasn’t the reason, because that reason doesn’t exist now and there are fewer people here. The real reason was that back then, and now, the department of immigration doesn’t have the capacity, even though they’re at work, to be able to process these visas.

So the question is: are we giving the Minister an extra two years of this extraordinary power because of decisions this Government has made prior to COVID, like closing down offshore offices and transferring that visa processing capacity to onshore? Are we now transferring that power to the Minister because of decisions that they’ve made for our immigration department, who are now not able to process a couple of hundred thousand visas? As I said before, there’s 450,000 fewer visas being processed across four different categories. We’re only talking about a couple of hundred thousand people onshore and, the Minister said, 10 percent of the people who’ve come through managed isolation, which is only 13,500—you add those two together, we’re still only maybe at around 250,000. That’s still 200,000 visas shy of what we were doing in 2019. So why is it that the immigration department can’t process these visas and that we have to give the Minister the power to do it?

It’s really interesting, actually, I find, that the Regulations Review Committee wrote to us and we asked—[Interruption]

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Can we please not have side conversations in the Chamber? Sorry about that.

ERICA STANFORD: That’s OK—

Hon Willie Jackson: Carry on—sorry, sorry.

ERICA STANFORD: That’s OK; apology accepted. This is important because the Regulations Review Committee wrote to us and they were concerned about two years, and so I’m concerned about two years. The New Zealand Law Society is concerned about two years. In fact, every organisation who’s submitted is concerned about two years. So it’s really important that we get to the bottom of this as to why the Minister needs the powers for such a long time, why his department don’t have the capacity to do it. A year ago, it was because they were at home; today, it’s because we don’t have the capacity to do it. Which one is it, because there are fewer visas being processed today than there were two years ago, by 200,000, and yet your department doesn’t have the capacity to do that. There’s only 13,500 Critical Purpose Visitor Visas that they’re approving. That’s not that many, even when you add it to the people who are onshore. So what are the reasons that this bill is required for such a long time?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I hate to burst the member’s bubble, but she may want to go look at the explanatory note, and I think in the version of the Act as it is now, because it says the Act as currently drafted—and this is the original Immigration Act—has a very limited ability to deal with applicants as a class or groups of individuals. In emergency situations, this creates challenges and constrains the Government’s ability to respond flexibly where, for example, large numbers of visas need to be changed or extended at once. So to cherry-pick one of the reasons as to why this piece of legislation was brought in in the first place because of closures under either level 4 or level 3, I believe, is disingenuous.

The explanatory note also goes on to say—and it’s pretty obvious—that at the time the immigration system was facing unprecedented challenges in managing a large number of migrants who, practically, are unable to leave New Zealand due to COVID-19 outbreaks. Ordinarily, temporary migrants are required to submit individual applications for a new visa or to vary its conditions where circumstances change and, for example, they need to be redeployed by their employer into a different role or different region. Now, the reality of what the Opposition is asking us—and if I can take an example of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme (RSE)—is that if we wanted to change the conditions of some of those visas, the 4,500 RSE workers that were here before we allowed the extra 2,012 in would’ve had to put their applications in to vary or change a circumstance on their visa, whenever that may have come up, on an individual basis. Now, if we allowed that to happen, I can bet quite a lot of money that the Opposition would be in this House saying, “This is taking too long. What is happening? This is not happening at a fast enough pace.”

I have been on that side of the House when you have to try and find something wrong with a piece of proposed legislation, and this is what the Opposition is focusing on, but in order for us to have the flex and the ability to move swiftly, in order to benefit—benefit positively—large cohorts of visa holders, these are the powers that are within this bill. So, to answer the question, this bill was brought in so we could deal with classes of visas, and our ability to deal with individual changes would be very difficult for the immigration system, and I think we’d be here having another conversation which would be remarkably different because things wouldn’t be moving fast enough.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you Minister Faafoi. I’m pleased you’ve raised the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) issue. It is an issue very dear to my heart, and actually the Minister really hit it right on the head: it actually is about speed and moving it through. So I’d have to ask the Minister: why did he not, then, deal with RSE workers last year under these provisions, when it was a real problem and people were in Central Otago waiting for their special directions so they could go and earn a living in Marlborough? With the stroke of a pen, the Minister could do it; he dragged his feet for weeks. So it’s all very well having these powers; we have little confidence that the Minister moves with the pace that this bill allows. It’s all very well to have that, but, Minister, you have to back that up.

I think it’s quite rich—it was very interesting that 13,500 number—and it seems very clear that this hasn’t been thought through. We had the Minister, in his Cabinet paper, seeking this to have no time limit at all. Then he got knocked back by his Cabinet colleagues to two years. Now we’re hearing a whole lot of shifting sands as to why these two years are needed. First thing, it was essential because of COVID—and this is my question to the Minister: what is the definition, then, of COVID? COVID is out of the box or out of the laboratory now; it’s with us for ever. It’s not going to be eliminated, like other diseases, I deeply suspect, and I think most of the scientific community agrees with that. So what is the definition of when COVID isn’t with us?

As per section 50(4B), “However, the Minister may not make a special direction under subsection (4A) unless satisfied that (a) doing do is reasonably necessary to manage the effects, or deal with the consequences of, (i) the outbreak of COVID-19; or (ii) measures taken under this Act or any other enactment to contain or mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19 or its effects; or (iii) any other measures (whether in New Zealand or elsewhere) to contain or mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19 or its effects;”. So is this COVID only in New Zealand? Is this COVID-19 overseas? What are the numbers? How many visas—what’s the maximum number or the minimum number that you would say, as Minister, is OK for your department to actually cope with? Because we’re hearing different things from you: it’s all because of COVID; it’s all because we don’t have the capacity; we can’t process the visas—so, very much a shifting sands thing. I think, actually, this has not been thought through. I think, if we go right back to the RSE issues I started on, it is a Minister that is not moving very quickly, not across his portfolio, and he’s trying to make this up as he goes along.

This was absolutely necessary last year. It’s necessary now, but I’m not convinced, and the Opposition is not convinced, that it’s necessary for two years. In addition to that, we have, of course, ADEPT, and I’d like to hear from the Minister about ADEPT, which is a programme that will process visas much more quickly. When that kicks in—and it will be later this year, I understand—won’t that take all this pressure off? Why is it two years, Minister? I think you’re trying to have a dollar each way on this one, and I think the Cabinet paper was very, very revealing. Clearly, the Minister did not want to give up any of this extraordinary power.

I don’t think the Minister actually understands what he’s actually asking for. He says it can only be used for good. Well, I’m sure there are lots of authoritarian Governments that have said that very thing. That’s not the point, Minister. The point is we have these laws, and we don’t have “Henry VIII” powers just because you’re a decent bloke and you’re not going to use them inappropriately. That’s not the point. Every action that the Minister has, particularly when he has these special directions powers, will have some effect. It might be positive—it might only be positive—but they will have an effect, and that is why we normally have processes. Otherwise, we would have only good laws that the Minister could make and change as they chose as they went along. That’s not how our system works, and, quite frankly, Minister, to get the powers that you’re seeking we have not heard a convincing argument yet. All we’ve heard is a whole lot of bluster about things that aren’t backed up by numbers or facts. I think even your officials aren’t looking that confident there, and I think that says it all, quite frankly. So I’m very interested to hear your response.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I might just begin by saying I’m the one in the chair, so I would appreciate it if the member could leave the officials out of it, actually—I don’t think that’s appropriate—and I thank him for his earlier kind words. It means a lot to me.

I find it difficult that the Opposition—I won’t label the whole Opposition—or that member hasn’t quite grasped the seriousness of the COVID pandemic. So to ask the question “What is COVID?”—maybe that member should go away and probably watch the news in about 35 minutes and look at what is happening around the world. The simple fact is we don’t want that happening here. It’s that simple. That’s why the border restrictions are in place, and, Mr Stuart Smith, if you don’t get that, then that’s on you.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Kia ora, Madam Chair. First of all, I would like to begin by acknowledging and thanking the Minister for the assurances that he has given our communities who have overstayed their visas, around their ability to access vaccinations. I think that’s an important reminder in our response to the pandemic.

But participation from migrant communities and for those who have overstayed their visas is clearly about much more than vaccination; it’s about being able to access income support when we potentially go into lockdown, since we’re not immune to a resurgence of COVID-19, and we’re very well aware of that. It’s about not being in exploitative situations as we move from level to level to respond to the pandemic. Ultimately, what we are saying is that the bill needs to ensure that our migrant communities and those on temporary visas are able to fully participate in society and are able to access the support that they need as we need to respond to the pandemic. This is why we’re very clear that the powers granted to the Minister, by nature of this legislation, should be used to grant pathways to residency, as the legislation is clear that these powers can grant visas to individuals and classes of people in the absence of an application. Even though it needs to be in the context of the pandemic, we do believe that the more that people are able to fully participate in society, the more swiftly and nimbly we can all respond together, as a team, to the pandemic.

I want to acknowledge as well that the Minister did touch on the fact that this legislation cannot be used to affect people negatively. But I do want to point out that, in the absence of action that benefits our migrant communities, we are left with a broken immigration system that already puts a lot of stress and pressure and has a lot of inequities in our communities. For example, even for the Minister, it talks about the rigid criteria for border exemptions and applications for visas. We do have inequities that mean that wealthy individuals and investors, for example, can be granted a visa while our overseas whānau who are on post-study work visas are facing uncertainty. These are not so much inequities that exist because of this legislation but, rather, because of our immigration system more broadly, and this legislation does present an opportunity to ensure that there’s equity in our response to the pandemic and our immigration system more broadly.

So there are also inequities that exist based on country of origin—who can apply for border exemptions just based on where they’re from—and also the ability for disabled people, who may be here to apply for residency class visas in order to participate in schools, in order to participate in society more fully, and, therefore, for disabled people who are on temporary visas to be able to be part of the team that is responding to the pandemic. It’s a lot harder to respond to the pandemic when you don’t have full access to State services.

So the Green Party does support the powers of this Act being granted for two years, but we’re very clear that the Minister has a responsibility to use the powers to benefit our migrant communities and to address a lot of the points that were raised in our select committee’s report around extending visas for people offshore. I talked earlier about post-study work visas, particularly giving assurances for members of our migrant communities who were back in their homelands and who come from non-visa waiver countries such as India to be able to know that they’ll have a visa once the pandemic truly subsides and once the world contains COVID-19.

The whole point of this legislation was to keep our communities safe. I don’t want to minimise the effects of the pandemic, as some members in this House may have. The reality is that the pandemic is continuing to kill people, and, actually, people in non-visa waiver countries are some of the places where the pandemic is raging really, really rapidly. For those people stuck overseas, who may have already made Aotearoa their home, they are particularly vulnerable to the effects of the pandemic, and the least we can do is give them reassurance that they’ll be able to come back and that their visas will continue to be valid as our border settings change.

So we call on the Minister to act in the benefit of our communities to use the powers granted by this bill. We hope that, in two years, while the wider review of the immigration system happens, our migrant communities will know that this Government backs them.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair, and it’s my pleasure to speak in this debate. So this legislation that’s been introduced in this House in a hurried fashion, like most of the legislation by this Government in recent times, is wanting to extend for two years extraordinary powers given to the Minister of Immigration to deal with immigration matters made more complicated by the crisis that we face with COVID-19, and the point of this Opposition is to say that, yes, we agree that those powers are necessary at this time, but we do not agree that it needs to be for two years before we come back and revisit this. We think that one year is sufficient time for those powers to be extended and that the Minister should trouble himself, and his ministry should trouble itself, to come back to Parliament in a timely fashion to allow the people of New Zealand to consider this properly and to have a normal submission process.

Now, the Minister regards this as an intolerable inconvenience. He doesn’t want to do this, he doesn’t want his ministry to be troubled with this, and he doesn’t want to be troubled with it himself. In fact, he regards, in an incredibly arrogant way—

Tim van de Molen: Pesky.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —that this is a pesky requirement from the Opposition and that we shouldn’t be annoying him. The point that I want to make to the Minister is that he should remember that he is serving the people of New Zealand and he is accountable to this Parliament. If he wants to have extraordinary powers extended to him in a time of crisis, he should be accountable for those powers, and we should come back on a regular basis to this Parliament and give New Zealanders an opportunity to talk about it properly.

Now, what we saw was it was rammed through urgency originally during the crisis, and we can all understand that. What we’re not so impressed by was the complete lack of organisation on his part, and the part of his officials, to get this legislation into the House early enough so that it could be properly considered by New Zealanders. Because of their incompetence and their slowness and their slackness, it was introduced rather late in the piece, and we haven’t had much time to deal with it. The submitters haven’t had the normal time in order to be able to make their submissions on it—but we’re dealing with it in a timely fashion in this House, nevertheless—and he has the temerity to turn up and say, “I demand another two years.” Apparently, all the word is that he was expecting to have even longer, three years maybe, and at least his Cabinet colleagues pushed back against that and said, “No, no, you need to come back within two years.”

We’re saying that it is actually important that New Zealanders have a chance to have a say about this. Why? Because the powers in this legislation are extraordinary. This is an area where it is an incredibly fraught area of Government policy: how to handle with the rules around immigration. People’s lives are affected by these decisions in an enormous way, and all New Zealanders are aware—and everybody in this Parliament is aware—of the lives that have been put on hold by the situation that we face with COVID and the extraordinary pressures on many families. So how we handle these issues is incredibly delicate, and it is important that New Zealanders feel absolutely confident that the decision making is made in a way that is defendable, robust, and predictable. So the situation that we have with the extraordinary powers handed into the hands of the Minister is, like I say, something that we accept as a reality that is required.

But the question I have to the Minister is: why does he have to react in such an arrogant way when we, as the Opposition, are asking what I think is a reasonable request to ensure that, on an annual basis, he takes the time and effort to come back to this Parliament, and we ask ourselves, with a situation that is moving so rapidly, where there is so much change around the world and we can’t predict what the situation will be within nine months’ time or eight months’ time and the consequences thereof—we believe that it is important that Parliament reconsiders this in a timely fashion.

KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the question be now put.

Ayes 77

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

Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that Erica Stanford’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 30 be agreed to.

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

Amendments not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 32, in the name of Ricardo Menéndez March, is out of order as outside the scope of the bill.

The question is that Erica Stanford’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 31 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 53

New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Amendments not agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Modifications of principal Act in connection with temporary powers

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to the debate on Part 2. This is the debate on clause 17, “Modifications of principal Act in connection with temporary powers”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to talk to the Minister about the way in which he has exercised some of his powers under this legislation. We talked at first reading and in select committee about some of the ways in which the powers have been used, and most of them for the right reasons—we’re not saying that the Minister has used his powers in the wrong way. The issue has been with the lack of timeliness and the communication around the way in which those powers have been exercised. We saw last year some classes of work visa holders that were given only three days’ notice before their visas were extended. We saw earlier this year, in February, five days’ notice before whole classes of visitor visas were extended. The amount of anxiety and stress for these vulnerable people, who are being given a very, very short period of time before their visas are due to expire, to know that they’ve got that extension, is not very good work on behalf of the Minister, and there has been no reason given for why he has had to give them such a short period of time.

The visitor visas: for the most part the people who are on those visitor visas in this country are elderly people. They are extremely stressed and vulnerable, and when they think that they are going to have to leave the country because their visas expire in five days, they are, as you can imagine, upset and stressed out and anxious. Now, the Minister, for whatever reason, on a number of occasions has chosen to give them only a very, very short period of time—a short notice period. Now, he mentioned at the very start of this process that there were only a few occasions, in fact, that a short notice period would be required.

So the question is: why is it that the Minister is unable to give these people a much longer period of notice before these come into effect, given how anxious and vulnerable these people are, who are, in effect, living from extension to extension? That’s how they’re living their lives, and the way that he has conducted himself around giving them notice has, in my view, and in their view—because they came to the committee and told us this—been less than ideal. Now, the Law Commission wanted to have a far greater notice period as an extra safeguard around the bill, but my reason for that was to give these vulnerable people far more time and notice.

The other thing that I would point out is that, when the Minister does this, his immigration officials don’t catch up very quickly. When they’ve got only three days’ or five days’ notice, it means entire classes of visa holders become unlawful in this country. Many of them lose their jobs, and still to this day—in fact, this term—there were children who could not go to school, in my electorate, because their status said that they were unlawful, because the officials didn’t have enough time to catch up and get all the paperwork in order. If they were given more time, they would be able to do that.

As I said, people lost their jobs because their status was showing as unlawful because the Minister is not giving a long enough time period of notice for officials to catch up, and, as I said earlier, it’s also causing people to buy flights and get stressed and anxious that they’re going to have to leave the country, when, actually, three days before they’re due to expire, it turns out they don’t. That came up very strongly in select committee from our submitters. I’ve heard it, and many members of this House will have heard it as well from their constituents.

There is very little reason why in most cases the Minister can’t give more notice. There will be some extraordinary circumstances, we understand, where he needs to be flexible and needs to be nimble, but those situations can’t be all of the time. As he even said himself, when he first got up to speak today, it is only in a small percentage of the time. So why is it that the Minister is unable to give these people certainty and surety and reduce their stress and anxiety, and actually let his officials catch up with their paperwork so that people don’t become unlawful?

I know that I have snuck this into Part 2, but we didn’t get a chance to debate my Supplementary Order Paper in the first part—and I apologise—but I would like some answer from the Minister as to why he is unable in the majority of cases to be able to give more notice for these people. We understand that there will be some times when emergency powers are needed at the last minute. Why is it that he can’t give more notice?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I might quickly just address that question from Erica Stanford by, well, just saying some of the factors that go into consideration when we’re looking at using these powers to extend the period of visas for classes. When we consider that, it is taking into consideration, obviously, their visas, but also the labour market tests and issues that we’re also trying to manage within New Zealand. I can stand up quite happily and say that we’ve had good news in terms of our unemployment record today, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not without challenges in New Zealand to get New Zealanders into work. Something that always is a test when we’re looking at visas and the ability to approve a visa, especially for those who are working, is: is there somebody else in New Zealand available to do that work? We’ve during this period tried to make sure that we get that balance right of making sure that we give New Zealanders opportunities to work when the chips have been down but, because of the response that we’ve had, the economy is actually going quite well. But, again, I would reiterate that there are still challenges that we have to meet in balancing that decision about extending visas—and labour market tests are something that we take into consideration.

I would also remind the member that these people are on temporary work visas or temporary visas. So at some stage, they also have to do a calculation, as the member said, about whether or not they should stay here in New Zealand and I acknowledge some of the difficulty that they would have in any case if they were to face that situation. I think everything’s been a learning curve over the last 12 months. I think certainly some of the communication to visa holders, Immigration New Zealand and I would say could have been better and we’ve learnt a lot of lessons over the last 12 months as to how we can do it. But I can assure the member that the intent has always been trying to balance some of those competing factors to make sure that we keep the safety intact of New Zealanders and make sure that those businesses who want to be able to keep their workers here in New Zealand can also do that. I think we’ve done that to good effect over the last 12 months.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Is three days an acceptable notice period to give work visa holders?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I can’t recall the case and the decision which the member talks to. Again, as I mentioned in my previous answer, there have been lessons learnt both in communication and in timing and as one who likes to take lessons when they are offered in front of them, if we are afforded the opportunity to pass this bill, we’ll continue to make sure we learn from them.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): That’s an explanation of sorts for work visa holders, but if we take visitor visa holders—nothing to do with their ability to work, because they’re not here on a work visa; they’re here via visitor visas. For the most part, they are older people. Earlier this year, in February, they were all sent a letter to say, “You need to leave.” Five days later, the Minister told them that they had an extension. Is that acceptable, and did he, in fact, learn the lessons from last year?

The New Zealand Law Society made a very good recommendation for a longer period of time, not only because of these issues we’ve just been speaking about but also because of the fact that this disallowable instrument, the special direction, is only disallowable after it’s been made. If there was an ability before that to have some notice, then this would be an extra safeguard in the bill. Now, I know that the Minister wants to be flexible and nimble, but in most cases he’s been giving three days, five days, and in one case a week’s notice, which he admitted they’re going to learn from and, hopefully, move on and get better processes in place. But, actually, a notice period fixes so many problems and anxieties that these migrants are feeling. Other than “We’d like to work-test.”, there has been no explanation from the Minister as to why he can’t give more notice period.

Given the fact that we all agree that there will be some extraordinary circumstances where he will need to be a little bit more flexible and nimble, he can have the ability to make a decision in three days or five days or a week, if that’s what is necessary. But, actually, especially for those people who are here on visitor visas, why is it that they can’t have a far greater notice period, rather than being told as short a time ago as February this year, when they thought they’d have to leave the country in a week, that the Minister turned around and changed his mind, after they’d all been sent a letter, and said, “Actually, no, you can have your extension for three months.”?

These are the kinds of things that are happening. People are losing their jobs. Kids can’t go to school. Older people are being stressed out and buying flights and having to reschedule them. They’re all living on a knife edge because this Minister is making decisions at the last minute and hasn’t been able to explain why it is that he can’t give more notice to these people, especially those people who are here on visitor visas, who are mostly older people.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): I invite the member, if she has another question to ask, to come back to Part 2, which is only clause 17. Notice and time period was all included in her Supplementary Order Paper, and we’ve passed Part 1.

The question is that Erica Stanford’s amendment to Part 2 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 30 be agreed to.

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

Amendment not agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Part 2 agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to the debate on clauses 1, 2, and 3, which are the title, commencement, and principal Act clauses. The question is that clauses 1 to 3 stand part.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): I would like to talk to the Minister about the commencement date of this bill. I want to know from the Minister why it is that—Madam Chair, I’ll take your guidance on this, if it’s out of scope—all of this was done in such a rush. The reason that I want to bring this into the commencement is because we’ve had very, very little time to hear from all of the submitters that we wanted to hear. We had a very short time to consider what is a doubling of the extension of the powers. As the New Zealand Law Society said, the truncated nature of this bill meant that, actually, the one-year sunset clause that we had was a really good safeguard, but the Minister wanted two years. So the fact is that we’ve had a very truncated select committee process, both in the first time we passed this bill and the second time we passed this bill, yet we’re asking for two years.

So my question to the Minister is, why is it—because he’s actually never answered this question—that this bill wasn’t brought last year, when we would have been able to have a proper, long process, especially given that he wasn’t asking for one year? In fact, he originally wanted three years, but he’s actually asking for two years. So my question to the Minister is: what happened? Why do we have this short time frame, given that he’s known about the sunset clause in this bill for a year?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well, while the Minister sits there impassively and declines to trouble himself with answering that question, it is a question that I think New Zealanders want an answer to. What we have here is a perfectly predictable issue that these powers that Parliament granted to this Minister at an extraordinary time under a pandemic were about to expire. He had plenty of time to work out that this was going to happen, and the proper thing to have done would have been to have introduced this legislation earlier in the process so that we would have had a proper amount of time to debate it, to consider it, and to fully understand the implications of it. That’s how Parliament works in this country.

So for the benefit of people who are tuning in on their crystal sets to this publication here, how bills—legislation—are normally passed in this country is that the Government proposes a bill and then it’s sent off to a select committee which calls for submissions, and then there are several months so that New Zealanders have an opportunity to comment on it. One thing that I learnt as a—

Kieran McAnulty: Point of order, Madam Chairperson. This is a very narrow debate about the commencement date for this bill. So far, we have had one and a half contributions that have talked about the select committee process and sunset clauses, but not commencement date.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The member has a point. This is about the title and the clause of commencement. The Hon Paul Goldsmith, can you make it relevant, please.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m very grateful for your comments, but, of course, the commencement date is only the commencement date because of the timing of this bill. The point I was making was that—

Kieran McAnulty: It was out of order.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: And I don’t need any comments from the member from over there. I can handle this myself, thank you very much.

Now, the proposal around the commencement date of this piece of legislation, and the point I was making was that the normal process—and I was doing it for the benefit of people who might be listening in—is that New Zealanders have an opportunity to talk about it. Now because we haven’t had that opportunity, we’re left here with what is an inadequate scrutiny of this legislation because of this Government’s laziness when it came to introducing this legislation, and that is relevant to the time, notwithstanding the fact that it will be passed because this Government has the numbers in this House. We agree with the basic proposition of these powers being extended; the question is how far and for how long. So my only point to the Minister is I’d just expect a little bit more humility, I suppose, when dealing with the processes of Parliament.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I might just take a quick contribution to address the question that’s been afforded of us in this very narrow debate.

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Make it 2½ minutes.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I’ll try my best. If you do some of the maths on some of that process, this bill extinguishes mid-May. If we were to have a select committee process, whether it be four to six months, you’d take us roughly to January or December of last year. Now, something happened late last year, it’s called an election, and coming into Government and making sure that we were progressing priority legislation was what the new Government wanted to do. We always knew that this piece of legislation would need to be updated in order to allow the officials to have the lead-up and do the policy work to get it to that stage, and the period where there was an election being held obviously affected that. It helps us that the election result is what it is, because we are able to get this piece of legislation through now. So if that answers the question in this very narrow part of this debate, I hope that suffices the Opposition.

KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that clause 1 stand part.

Matt Doocey: A point of order, Madam Chair. I’m just wondering if you could repeat that, because I was slightly distracted.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the question be now put. The question is that clause 1 stand part.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Mr Speaker, this committee has considered the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

SPEAKER: The House is now adjourned for the dinner break.

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

Bills

Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill

First Reading

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I present a legislative statement on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

It will be very hard for many of us to forget the tragic events of 15 March 2019 and the terrorist attack on the two mosques in Christchurch. On that day, a terrorist attack ended 51 lives and directly harmed many more survivors and witnesses. The impact of this attack on New Zealand communities, and in particular on our Muslim community, is immense, and we want to do everything that we can to prevent this from happening again.

The nature of terrorism has been changing. We are seeing more lone actors and small groups rather than larger organised terrorist groups, and this is a trend within New Zealand and overseas. We need to ensure that our laws can respond to that changing trend. Our counter-terrorism legislation, particularly the Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002, was developed in response to international experience, such as the 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the United States, and focuses on managing prominent terrorist groups. It therefore does not allow us to adequately respond to the range of terrorist activity that we see now. The New Zealand Government coordinates counter-terrorism activities to protect the safety, the rights, and the freedoms of New Zealanders, and our agencies need up-to-date legislation and a legislative framework to give them a mandate to better identify threats and disrupt events before they occur.

The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill strengthens New Zealand’s counter-terrorism legislative framework to better prevent and respond to terrorism and provides law enforcement agencies with clear legal authority to disrupt terrorism and terrorist-related activity. The amendments in the bill balance enhancing our ability to prevent, to disrupt, and to respond to terrorism to protect public safety with the individual rights and freedoms recognised in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

In response to the tragic events of March 15, the New Zealand Government commissioned a royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attack to investigate all aspects of that attack. The royal commission produced recommendations to the Government to make changes across the system to protect the lives and wellbeing of those who make New Zealand their home. The royal commission highlighted the importance of regulatory stewardship and ensuring that our legislation remains fit for purpose. Recommendation 18 of the royal commission’s report was for the New Zealand Government to review all legislation related to the counter-terrorism effort to ensure it is current and enables public sector agencies to operate effectively. The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill is the first step in implementing recommendation 18 of the royal commission’s report.

The royal commission also highlighted the need to consider creating offences which relate to the preparatory behaviour of a terrorist before they attempt a terrorist act. Overseas jurisdictions, including Australia and the United Kingdom, have developed offences that are precursor in nature, but this is currently the gap in our legislation. The bill amends the Terrorism Suppression Act 2002 and the Terrorism Suppression (Control Orders) Act 2019 and creates offences in the Terrorism Suppression Act that may be broadly described as precursory in nature, including an offence of planning or preparing for a terrorist act. The bill brings New Zealand into line with the way that terrorism is criminalised in overseas jurisdiction with similar legal systems and enhances our ability to meet our international obligations.

If I can now take an opportunity to set out the key features of the bill. The definition of a terrorist act is the cornerstone of New Zealand’s counter-terrorism legislation, and it is important that it is clear and appropriately framed. Although there is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism, our current definition aligns with definitions used in jurisdictions with similar legal systems to New Zealand and with academic commentary. However, our agencies identified aspects of the current wording that may present unintended difficulties in using it. The bill makes minor changes to that definition to ensure that it is clearer. The definition is made up of three key elements. It specifies the motivation required for a terrorist act—the person must intend to impact others—and what outcome they must be intending to achieve. The definition also has an avoidance of doubt clause. The bill amends the definition to modernise, to provide clarity, and to ensure that the threshold is set at the appropriate level.

In New Zealand, we don’t currently specifically criminalise the planning or preparation of a terrorist act. This is a gap that was identified by the royal commission as reducing our ability to intervene at the planning stage to prevent any harm from occurring. Jurisdictions similar to New Zealand—as I mentioned before, the likes of the United Kingdom and Australia—criminalise this type of behaviour, and I believe that New Zealand needs to take this step too.

The bill also introduces a new offence of planning or preparation for a terrorist act, and this offence will ensure that making plans for a terrorist act is specifically criminalised in New Zealand. The new offence will give police the opportunity to effectively intervene when the person or a group is planning or making preparations to carry out a terrorist act. The offence will not reach further than is necessary, because it requires proof that the preparatory behaviours were done with the intent to carry out a terrorist act, whether that be a few hours or a few months away. I believe that in order to ensure that this offence enables early intervention, police also need the ability to use warrantless powers of search or surveillance where this is necessary. Terrorist preparations may quickly escalate into a terrorist attack, particularly where a terrorist wants to seize an opportune moment, so police must be able to intervene and stop this from happening.

The amendments to the terrorism financing offence framework update that framework to cover the changing nature of terrorism. The framework currently only criminalises providing financial support for terrorism. However, international experience has shown that terrorists have relied on a range of both financial and non-financial support to carry out their terrorist attacks. The bill criminalises material support provided to terrorist persons or groups, and the support that is criminalised includes things like offering advice, providing goods and services, and financial assistance. Currently, a person can be convicted of this offence if they intend for the support to be used to support or facilitate a terrorist act or if they know that it will be. The bill also introduces an alternative mental element of recklessness to the offence. Similar jurisdictions—including Australia and the United Kingdom, again—have also taken this approach. This means that a person who didn’t explicitly know that the material support being provided would be used to support a terrorist act can now be convicted of this offence if they perceived the risk that the support may be used to support a terrorist act and provided it anyway.

The bill also criminalises participating in weapons or combat training to prepare for a terrorist act or to enhance the ability of a person or a group to carry out a terrorist attack, and I consider that a separate offence ensures that receiving or providing of weapons or combat training will be clearly denounced as criminal conduct. Currently, it is not a crime to travel to or from or via New Zealand with the intention to carry out a terrorist activity. New Zealand’s existing mechanisms to prevent travel, such as cancelling passports, are not responsive and are not suitable in all cases. Because of this, police cannot effectively intervene to prevent a person from travelling for terrorism purposes. Having a specific terrorist travel offence makes it clear that New Zealand considers this behaviour as both harmful and criminal.

Control orders are court-imposed civil orders, and that places requirements—for example, for monitoring and restrictions on association—on individuals who continue to pose a real and public safety risk. Currently, the control order regime is only available for individuals who have engaged in terrorist activities overseas. This bill extends the control orders regime to apply to individuals who have completed a prison sentence for a terrorism-related offence here in New Zealand. The bill also contains amendments that improve the workability of the Terrorism Suppression Act. Although these minor amendments do not make a substantive change to existing law, they will provide clarity and improve coherence and consistency with the Terrorism Suppression Act.

I am confident that this bill will make a valuable contribution to New Zealand’s counter-terrorism effort. The bill is the first step in implementing the royal commission’s recommendation to review all legislation related to our counter-terrorism effort. The bill strengthens New Zealand’s counter-terrorism legislation to enable us to better prevent and respond to terrorist efforts. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to take a call on this, the first reading of the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill, that will be going to the Justice Committee. I don’t sit on that committee, but I’ll be watching the passage of this bill with interest. I have had a chance to read the bill tonight. It looks comprehensive. I’ll talk to some of the parts of the bill later on.

But I just wanted to state and put on the record for the House that the National Party will, of course, support this bill through first reading and to select committee. It’s important that we do that, because I think that in relation to matters of our national security, we do have a long and proud history in this House of the two major parties recognising that it’s incumbent upon this Parliament to take action to make sure that our population is kept as safe as possible, especially from external threats. That is why we’ll be working with the Labour Party and the other parties on the select committee to try and make this the best possible bill.

I’d like to go back to 2014, when I was chairing the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. The Prime Minister at the time, the Rt Hon John Key, asked me to ask the committee to pass the Countering Terrorist Fighters Legislation Bill. It was a bill that we had to pass through in a truncated time frame because of information that had been received by SIS and GCSB that there was an imminent threat to Kiwis and the country. So I worked very closely, the committee worked very closely—in particular, I want to acknowledge the right honourable Phil Goff and David Shearer, who were both Labour Party members on the committee at that time, and there was a genuine bipartisan approach to making sure that that was the best possible piece of legislation that came back to this House and was then passed. I would hope that the Justice Committee will adopt and take the same attitude and the same approach in their work on the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill.

I think that—in fact, I know that—collectively, as a country, we were left in a state of paralysis and shock for moments on hearing about the terrible terror attack in Christchurch. It was really a time for us as a nation where we lost part of our innocence, because up until that point, me included, probably many of us thought that we’d never have to face a terror attack on our soil, and a terror attack that could come from anywhere, from any corrupted ideology, as we witnessed and were confronted with in Christchurch.

The thing that I like about this bill—one of the things that I really like about this bill—is the fact that they’ve covered off, and the Minister has covered off, through clause 10, the ability to shut down financing for terror networks. This is an area that is not always focused on. We’re always very focused on human intelligence, surveillance, and interventions through warrants, physical interventions, when, in actual fact, one of the major disruptors and a real disruptor that we should not ignore is that of financing, because many of these organised terrorist cells rely on a steady stream of finance to be able to plan and execute a terror attack. So I’m pleased to see that there is a focus on finance in this bill.

The other point that the Minister raised, and I agree with, is that often a country’s security services, whether it be the GCSB or the SIS—and I want to acknowledge both of those services and the leadership within them; they are world class. They are services that, as a country, we have come to rely on and trust. And there has to be a high level of trust that’s given because they’re dealing with serious matters around individual rights and privacy. They are given a big licence. With that licence comes accountability and responsibility, and I think that everyone in this House, or certainly myself, acknowledges the fact that we have got a world-class intelligence service in both our SIS and our GCSB.

These types of bills are critically important in terms of making sure that people’s rights, as much as possible, are protected. Yes, it’s incumbent upon all of us in this House to make sure that New Zealanders are protected from external threats, but it’s also important that, as far as possible, we protect individuals’ rights around privacy. Those will often be a lot of the debates and the discussions that will happen throughout the select committee process.

The other point that I just wanted to address quickly is the point that the Minister raised around the police being able to respond quickly. We have seen a major change in the way these terror networks and often individuals—and we were a victim of this ourselves in this country—operate. You may get some terrorist cells that operate with a very, very high degree of sophistication. We saw the Twin Towers as a clear example of that, where you had individuals that were planted in the States years before, that went through genuine commercial pilot training, were accepted in the communities and the societies that they lived in, and then they flew commercial airliners into the Twin Towers—a lot of finance, highly organised, and a very sophisticated attack that rocked the entire world. But then you’ll come back to a very basic terror attack where it might quite simply be an individual that is completely corrupted with an ideology, that gets in a truck and drives into a crowd of people.

So the one thing that the agencies that are tasked to protect us—and here in New Zealand it’s the police, it’s our customs, it’s our SIS, it’s our GCSB. The one thing that we can give them is the ability to be flexible and to be able to move quickly, and if they come across information or they need to respond—because I can tell you now that the person planning a terror attack, or a terrorist cell that is active, is not restricted. They don’t have to be compliant with regulations. So it’s actually really important that we give our police the ability to be able to respond and act quickly if a sudden threat becomes apparent to them, and there seems to be some effort in this bill to be able to do that.

So I am pleased to be able to stand in support of this bill. We will be watching very carefully as it makes its way through the select committee process, in terms of any changes that need to be made. But in terms of national security, the National Party feel very strongly that it is a responsible position to support this bill through the first reading and to the Justice Committee for select committee process. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I feel very privileged to rise to speak on this very important bill. Before I do so, I’d like to thank the Hon Mark Mitchell for his collaborative and positive view. I, too, would like to start my speech by remembering and acknowledging the 51 shuhada who lost their lives in the March 15 Christchurch terrorist attacks.

Today, I’m not only speaking to you and to the House as a member of Parliament, but also as a Muslim who sat there in horror and grief. I felt any sense of security I had in our country disappear on that fateful day. In our attempt to debate the counter-terrorism legislation bill today, we must not forget to remember why this bill is being introduced into the House in the first place. The Minister went into details, I am not going to go into that, but the royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attacks on Christchurch clearly came up with the 44 recommendations, which this Government proudly accepted and agreed, in principle, to implement—particularly number 18, which recommended our Government review legislation related to the counter-terrorism efforts, including the Terrorism Suppression Act of 2002 and the Intelligence Security Act 2017.

While the report did not find the attacks could have been stopped or prevented, it was outlined that there was a disproportionate amount of surveillance to minority groups, specifically to Muslims. Just as the report has recommended, our legislation needs to adapt and reflect the changing nature of terrorism. For far too long, terrorism has been unfairly coupled with Islam and Muslims. This was the first time myself and many others heard terrorism finally being used to describe the lone wolf or the white terrorists, white supremacist terrorists. We have watched overseas the rise of white supremacy and the disregard, the subsequent disregard, of the terror and the fear that their actions have caused to so many communities. We need to recognise the surge of lone actors rather than the terrorist groups, and our laws need to respond to that in order to enable public sector agencies to operate effectively.

To highlight this, I want to share with you a mini story of what I have experienced a few years ago. While I agree with the Hon Mark Mitchell on the good work that the agencies have done, but also I’ve really—while I was active in my community, as a leader in the refugee and the Muslim communities, I was approached several times by NZSIS and was spoken to over coffee and asking for collaboration with me to find out more about the internal state of my local Muslim community. At that time, this really made me feel uncomfortable and caused me to decline and question the intention behind it. Looking back now, I see that clearly it was an inefficient use of their time. This bill asks us to build the clarity for public agencies, mandating them to undertake the counterterrorism operations, to focus on identifying and dealing with the real threats.

In the last few months, I had the privilege of accompanying Minister Little and Minister Radhakrishnan, and we conducted over 30 hui around the country. We heard from the Muslim youths, men, women, and panethnic and pan-faith communities who posed a common question: what will the Government do to make us feel safe? And today, I stand here and I remember those faces and words.

We have heard a lot of cynicism about the bill in the media—that it is not going to do what it is intended for. These sentiments are misplaced and do not reflect the voices of the community that were consulted in those huis. So, in fact, it was an unfortunate disregard of those who suffered from the terror attacks. New Zealand should be a place where all people feel that they can openly express their identities, culture, and beliefs, and to feel valued and accepted and safe, without fear of violence. Our laws should act to ensure just that. With that, I highly commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise as a member of the Justice Committee to commend this bill to the House and in the hope that I, as a member of the Justice Committee, will get the opportunity to work on and investigate what is a really important bill. This bill is only a piece of the puzzle. As my colleague has just said—44 recommendations. This Government has wholeheartedly and openheartedly accepted our responsibility to action those in principle. This is our start. This is our first pou in the ground.

I was a mum of an eight-month-old baby when the Twin Towers went down and when the world rocked to that terrorism. I remember sitting in front of the television with my eight-month-old on my knee and thinking that the world was ending. We came home a couple of years later to New Zealand. We came home having watched the continuation of a pattern of organised large-scale terrorism across the world, including the return of terrorism to London. It was a relief to get here. I remember my disbelief, therefore, on that sunny Friday afternoon on 15 March, driving home through Maunu in Whangārei, switching on the radio and hearing, while my children were in the back of the car, there had been this appalling shooting of numerous people in a mosque while they sat and prayed.

I thought this must be a family violence murder. My only explanation was this must be one of those appalling femicides of which we have far too many in this country—even one would be too many but we have appalling rates. I thought this was some estranged man taking out his rage on his ex-partner and his children and their community. I could not conceive that what we had faced, what the world was facing, had finally come home to little New Zealand. But so it was. And it is, I think, indicative of what we so often—and Mr Mitchell across the House said we lost our innocence that day. But listening to my colleague Mr Omer, I am reminded that others had had their innocence stripped earlier. And those of us who were able to stand in our white privilege had been comforted and supported and we had not noticed, perhaps sufficiently, what was going on in the world: that it is not just large organisations, it is the lone wolf—although I’m not sure why we say “the lone wolf”; the lone rat.

This bill takes the formulation of terrorism as we understood it following 9/11, when it was aimed at those large organisations, and it looks to that lone rat offender. I particularly want to pick out one example, because I think there has been some concern at times expressed that there is no need for some of this legislation and, particularly, the new offence of preparation. So I just want to take us to section 72 of the Crimes Act, because it is necessary that we have clause 9 inserting new section 6B, which is the new offence of preparing to commit a terrorist offence. That is not covered by the Crimes Act section 72. The Crimes Act section 72 covers attempts—and attempts are a very, very limited class of activity. They are immediate and proximate to the act or the actual offence. And they are explicitly not only in preparation for the commission of the offence and too remote to constitute an attempt.

This bill is necessary. I commend it to the House. I hope it will become an Act. I look forward to the process of select committee investigation. Sadly, I regret that it is necessary but I look forward to us creating a society that is more aware of our lone problems and that brings us together in a more cohesive, tolerant society that I believe New Zealanders want and deserve. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Point of order, Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I hope you’ll give me some latitude. I didn’t want to interrupt the speaker’s speech, but I just wanted to address one issue that she raised. I may have taken it out of context, I’m not sure, but she referred—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! This is not strictly a point of order, unless the member can—

Hon MARK MITCHELL: Well, it’s a point of order in the sense I’m just trying to put some context around it, Madam Speaker. The speaker referred to—I felt that she was reflecting back that I’d spoken about white privilege and—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I’m sorry, the member will resume his seat. That is not a point of order. Thank you. That is a debateable motion. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to begin by acknowledging the context that has been raised again and again in support of passing this legislation, which is the suffering of the victims of the Christchurch terror attack from almost two and a half years ago now. So we do stand here in a nation where 51 innocent lives were lost in our Muslim community, targeted because they were seen as being different, targeted because of their faith, and targeted by a white supremacist far-right nationalist terrorist. And, of course, the suffering of their family members, those that were injured, and the mental harm that went with that. So I want to centre that harm, but I also want to say, and recall, that the institutions that failed those victims that day are yet to be reformed.

So we stand here in a context where institutions that we have entrusted to keep our communities safe, all of our communities safe, failed that day. There’s been a royal commission inquiry. That royal commission came back with damning findings of prejudice in our national security and intelligence agencies, in our police force and—we have to call a spade a spade—essentially, we saw that racism existed in those institutions. We know now, some two and a half years on, that nothing has changed within the institutions that we are entrusting with the administration of the powers being sought to be granted by this bill.

We know, and I attended the select committee—the oversight committee for the SIS latest hearings that looked specifically at the changes that were made in reaction to the royal commission findings—and found, breathlessly shocked, that there still remains not a single white supremacist or far-right nationalist group or person added to their lists as a terror threat other than the Christchurch terrorist. So it seems we are broadening the powers given to an institution that will not see a white-nationalist terrorist as a threat unless he has gone on a rampage, killed dozens of people, gone to court, been convicted, sentenced to life, and, then, they will add him to their list.

To broaden the powers granted to that institution and the definition of what we call terror before we can be assured that that institution is not still riddled with the kind of prejudice that allowed the March 15th attack to happen and go unchecked is callous. The Green Party does not support the use of a tragedy like the March 15th terror attack to broaden the powers of a national security agency that sees, and continues to see, the Muslim community, Māori, and other communities of colour as terror threats while it leaves white-nationalist threats unchecked. We do not support legislation that broadens the power of the police force to hold people after they’ve served sentences, as this legislation does with the control orders regime, which just a month ago was found to be targeting Māori children by photographing them without an ounce of evidence or a reasonable belief that they’re involved in any crime at all.

We were assured—and this was really important to us last term in the terror legislation—this wouldn’t happen once the full review happened, and it has happened. It’s here in this bill. We do not support importation of the definition of terror or terrorism related crimes from foreign jurisdictions where protesters and dissidents may be targeted through that kind of law. We see, again, in this legislation that control orders may be applied to people returning to New Zealand after having served a sentence of imprisonment or having been convicted of terrorism related crimes overseas. Now, we know that there are many jurisdictions overseas where terror is defined as dissidency, terror is defined as belonging to a religious minority group—as it might be in my home country of Iran; the teachings of the Baha’i faith might be seen in that light.

We know that New Zealanders may travel to Hong Kong to protest the Draconian application of laws and changes in law by the Chinese Government in their home State, and they may be seen as terrorists. We also know that there are jurisdictions overseas where, even if the definition of terror accords with ours, that due process would not apply, that convictions may be entirely unsafe. And I want to remember as well—because the memory of the 9/11 attacks has been invoked in this House tonight and I stand here as a Middle Eastern woman—that this type of legislation, these broadening of powers for tyrannical institutions that operate with prejudice have resulted before. It happened here in New Zealand after 9/11. We pandered to the George Bush era war on terror rhetoric and we held an asylum seeker without charge or trial for some two years when the SIS wouldn’t release information pursuant to which he was held. That was Ahmed Zaoui. That was under the jurisdiction of a very popular, very powerful Labour Party Prime Minister.

So we fear for our communities. It was Māori that raised the voices of the Muslim community and our migrants of colour after the Christchurch terror attacks and said, “Actually, this has happened here before. White supremacy does exist here.” That is what we need to address. Until we have the kind of reform that we need in our institutions, in the police force, and in the SIS that actually assure us that our communities are not going to be targeted, that our rights are not going to be undermined, this type of legislation has no place in this House. So, with regret, the Green Party will not be supporting this legislation. We want our communities to be safe. We stand against violence, against terror, but this is not the way to go about it, because we do not trust the prejudice riddled institutions that are getting this Draconian power today.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): I stand before you today as the member for the ACT Party supporting this piece of legislation, the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill, through its first reading. We do have some reservations, but we believe that these can be addressed through the select committee process. Legislation of this nature needs to be analysed with the utmost care. Very few pieces of legislation have such powers to suspend people’s liberties as our terrorist-suppression legislation does. And, while ACT believes that such legislation is justified, the onus is firmly on us elected lawmakers to make sure that the problem the legislation is seeking to solve is well defined, that the provisions are justified, and that we are also balancing infringements on liberty with the needs of suppressing the risks of potential terror acts.

To that end, we continue to trust in a robust and consultative process of lawmaking and that it can be undertaken here by allowing the full time to be set aside for the select committee to hear and consider submissions. One would expect that there are a number of non-terrorist groups who may feel compelled to submit on this bill with concerns of being unduly caught up in what they would deem as innocent activities. While we work through how to upgrade our terrorism laws, we must ensure that we do not do so at the expense of civil liberties.

ACT recognises that the threat of terrorism is more complex than it was in 2002, when the Terrorism Suppression Bill was first introduced, and much of this bill provides some sensible updates to this legislation; hence, we are supporting it. However, we do have several reservations, as mentioned before. Our primary reservations relate to the seriousness of some of the provisions that are contained in the bill and ensuring that the powers we are enacting are used well. For example, as mentioned before, there are suggested suppression orders which allow for wide-ranging restrictions on the liberty of certain persons. There are also provisions allowing warrantless searches for preparatory offences. We would, by default, also allow for wider and less accountable searches. And, by making changes to surveillance laws, we would be allowing surveillance for lesser offences than what is already the status quo. If we change the definition of “terrorist act”, we could potentially lower the standard that must be passed that authorises those search and surveillance powers. There are good justifications made by officials in relation to these powers, but they are of concern simply by the nature of what they do. All lawmakers should take an interest in law that seeks to widen the power of the State and ensure that it is being used well.

The risk is always that if provisions are not used well or are ill defined, people who are not intended to be affected by these provisions end up being harmed by them. I well note, for example, the concerns that have been raised around the actions of our security services in the past towards the Islamic community—similarly, concerns from Māori communities who have in the past felt unduly targeted. In my own career, I have been involved in a community that has been subject to undue vilification following the unconscionable actions of one person. I have already been contacted by people involved in legal sports, such as recreational firearms use, who are worried that the provisions of this bill could target them. We need to have a fulsome debate that addresses concerns such as these and clearly defines the types of problems this bill is seeking to solve. We have to make sure that we get this right.

Now for the bits that we think need work and why. Making it an offence for web-based fund-raising tools could mean that foreign terrorist fighters or lone actors are more likely to be captured. The suggested new laws around material support would include transportation, accommodation, and stockpiling of resources. We join the concerns that the current frameworks are not satisfactory but add that a robust select committee debate needs to be had to ensure that there isn’t the unintended capture of an innocent person framed as being a potential or perceived terrorist for their normal activities.

This bill also wants to criminalise the planning or preparation of a terrorist act. In order to facilitate proving this, there is a provision to apply warrantless powers of entry and of search and surveillance. We can see the obvious benefits of being able to disrupt terrorism-related activity in this way, but we do believe the standard that currently needs to be met will be lowered, and this is of concern to us. The lowered standard could be abused by officials to the detriment of the innocent. Yes, we recognise that there are some safeguards against misuse of a warrantless search, including it being used when a serious or imminent threat is identified, and we also recognise that this power could only be exercised when a warrant could not have been readily obtained. But this change does have human rights implications, and there are concerns the law could be abused. But, again, we believe that this can be addressed through the select committee process.

We’re looking forward to participating in the debate, ascertaining what the new definition of a terrorist act would, could, or should be. Bandied around are descriptions of fear or intimidation. We believe that would set a much lower standard and unjustly capture unintended persons. We will argue that the standards need to be kept high, and we believe that the current descriptor of terror does that. There are powers proposed in this bill to cancel passports and travel documents. Our view is that this may not enable intervention in some cases—for example, where a person holds a dual or foreign passport. We must also consider that if we prevent travel of a suspected terrorist, are we going to be creating a domestic security issue? Nevertheless, the offence would enable police to prosecute individuals and manage their risk according to the outcome of that prosecution, and we’re interested in the views of the community here.

Now that I’ve outlined some reservations, I would like to speak to the elements within the bill that we do agree with. We support the clearer wording around the financing of terrorism. It allows for prosecution for earlier intentions prior to an act of terror being commissioned. It also criminalises travelling to and from New Zealand for the purpose of supporting terrorism. While we do have some existing laws that capture some of the behaviour leading up to a terrorist event, we note that there is currently no specific offence in New Zealand law for travelling here to undertake terrorist activities. The reality is that people travelling to fight for terrorism purposes is a global problem and one that will not go away even with restricted travel being experienced right now. Eventually, people will be on the move once borders begin reopening around the world, and it would be prudent to prepare this legislation on terrorist financing before it does. This all modernises the legislation that we currently have, and it will better reflect as well as manage the risks that we are facing today.

Therefore, with so many questions but a knowledge of the need to update the 2002 Act, we support this bill through the first reading and into the select committee stage. In doing so, we request that full time be allocated to allow submissions from all interested parties to take place in a manner that is not rushed but thoughtfully contemplated. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in relation to this bill, which is a very important bill, but also one that is clearly borne from tragedy. I do want to acknowledge the 51 shuhada who were lost on 15 March 2019 but also those who are injured and for ever changed, both physically as well as emotionally. I want to acknowledge their whānau and all those who continue to be affected by the loss.

Ko tō tātou kāinga tēnei is a response and report to the royal commission of inquiry terms of reference in to the terrorist attacks, and the meaning of that is “this is our home”. The purpose, as the report itself said: “The country needed to know what had happened, and why, and what should be done to reduce the risk of future attacks.”

I want to speak very briefly to a few parts of this bill which respond in part to recommendation 18 of that report—firstly, the clarifying of the definition of “terrorism” or a “terrorist act”. The new definition proposed by this bill is one that advances an ideological, political, or religious cause carried out to induce fear in a population. So this is rather than using language of “terror in a civilian population”. This is important because using “terror” as part of the definition itself is recursive or circular.

When we look to other jurisdictions, what we see is more akin to what’s been proposed in this bill. For example, in Australia, they define in part a terrorist act as “intimidating the public or a section of the public”; the word “intimidating” is used. The UK also includes the word “intimidates” in its definition. In the US they use language of “intimidate or coerce”. So this will help our law become more clear.

The creation of a new offence to criminalise planning or preparation for a terrorist attack is another element of the bill. This remedies a gap in the law that was referred to in the case of R v S. Now, a few people here have mentioned or made the argument, not tonight but in statements before this debate, that section 175 of the Crimes Act already in part addresses this issue. Section 175 is about conspiracy to commit murder, and I suspect that most of us in this room would agree where actions are planned and prepared for that are similar to those carried out on March 15, that signifies something significantly more than murder. There is an intent to induce terror and the purpose of advancing an ideology or political or religious cause. I am a member of the Justice Committee so I won’t take up more of the House’s time tonight. I am looking forward to receiving some submissions as part of that committee. I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Rawiri Waititi—five-minute call.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Oh, what?! Tēnei te mihi atu ki a tātou i tēnei pō. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. We acknowledge that the impetus of this bill was based on the horrific terrorist attack on the Muslim communities in Christchurch on 15 March 2019, and our aroha and solidarity remains with our Muslim whānau always. However, despite this context, we strongly oppose this bill, which seeks to make our already flawed counter-terrorism legislative framework even worse. It would widen the net of potential terrorist activities even more, making it even more likely that Māori and others are wrongfully accused under these laws.

Planning and undertaking terrorist attacks is already illegal under standard laws. Additional anti-terror laws are unnecessary. We also know that security agencies such as the SIS and the GCSB have traditionally been far more focused on Māori activists and peaceful Muslim citizens rather than actual terrorists such as white supremacist groups. Changing this would be the single best thing the Government can do to prevent any future attacks. It’s pretty simple, really: focus on the right people and use the laws we already have to protect our communities. Instead of pushing for more Draconian laws, bureaucrats in our security agencies should be reflecting on why they were targeting completely the wrong people.

The Crown has weaponised fears around terrorism to target and vilify tangata whenua and has used anti-terror laws to criminalise our people, as we saw with the Urewera raids. As the MP for Te Waiariki, I am reminded often of the terror that was instilled in Tūhoe from those raids. Young children had their school bus boarded by heavily armed officers, and whānau were locked in garages without food and water. The elderly were made to lie on the floor for hours on end. In another display of State aggression, the Crown wrongfully tried to prosecute the Urewera Four with anti-terror laws. In the end, the Crown failed in using those laws and instead drummed up firearms charges. It’s likely that the Crown would have tried to use the new provisions in the bill relating to weapons training and planning preparation, which may have ensured their success in demonising Tūhoe whānau, who were only practising their mana motuhake on their land, on their whenua, as they have done since time immemorial.

Te Paati Māori opposed the Search and Surveillance Act 2012 despite being in Government, and have a strong track record in opposing policies dressed up as anti-terrorism measures that undermine the human rights and civil liberties that all parties in this House claim to hold dear. We are proud to continue that track record of opposition tonight and vote against this legislation. The Government needs to refocus on the drivers of violence and hate in our communities, such as white supremacy, racism, and bigotry in all its forms. Te Paati Māori do not support this bill. Tēnā tātou.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

Bills

Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety): I present to the House a legislative statement for the second reading of the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I move, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I’m very happy to be back in the House for the second reading of this important piece of legislation. It’s an important part of the Government’s programme of delivery to ensure fairness for working people and to deal with an important public health issue. It sits with a range of other initiatives that the Government has progressed in its first six months in office this term to ensure that working people do have a fair go. We’ve increased the minimum wage to $20 per hour, brought security guards into the protections of Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act, ensured that seafarer welfare centres are properly funded, and we’ve taken action on longstanding problems with the Holidays Act by accepting the recommendations of the independent task force. And this piece of legislation, which increases the statutory minimum for sick leave from five days per annum to 10 days per annum, is an important part of that programme of delivery, and I’m pleased that we’ve been able to move on it so early on in the term.

This bill is an important part of our response to COVID-19. Having gone through the year of COVID, I think that we have learnt that it is time for New Zealand to move past that dangerous culture of just toughing it out when people are sick and continuing to come into work. I’ve done it, and I suspect that many others in this Chamber have done it from time to time. We feel the pressure, we feel the sense of obligation, we think it’s no big deal, but after a year of dealing with a global pandemic, we have had to learn and relearn that the best thing for Kiwi workers to do for their own health, for the health of their co-workers, and for the public health interest is to stay at home and get well. We know that, for many people, that statutory minimum of five days per year is simply not enough to cater for that, particularly if we think about some groups of workers who might have dependants who are reliant on that sick leave to cover the illness of their children or other dependants as well.

As I said, this is important both for the worker themselves; we want to make sure that they don’t have to come into work when they’re unwell, because of a lack of adequate sick leave. It is important for the co-workers, for everyone else in the workplace. We’ve learnt through the course of COVID-19 that bugs do spread, and, of course, if someone comes into work when they are sick, those bugs spread to other people and potentially have a bigger impact on that workplace than had the person taken a couple of days to get over it. A study in the United States in 2015 revealed that workers coming into a workplace when they were sick decreased productivity in that workplace by 20 percent in the period concerned.

Thirdly, this is an important public health measure. COVID-19 for most of us in our lifetimes has been the first kind of pandemic that we have to deal with at a scale like we have had to deal with, but it is potentially not the last one that we will have to deal with, and we just have to make sure that—whether it’s in a pandemic like COVID-19, whether it’s during seasonal influenza, or it’s one of those other bugs that people pick up—we don’t spread it around our workplaces and around our communities.

The select committee has reported the bill back and recommended no changes. I want to thank the select committee for their work. They were very ably chaired by chair Marja Lubeck, and they received around 400 submissions and had a large number of oral submissions as a part of that. There were varied submissions in support and in opposition to the bill, and many raised very valid issues that the select committee has carefully considered, and I just want to touch on a few of those in the time that I have remaining.

One of the issues that was raised with the select committee was the question of the qualifying criteria before people are able to access paid sick leave. At the moment, someone needs to have been employed by their employer for six months before they are entitled to the statutory minimum for sick leave—currently five days, to transition to 10 days under this bill. There were some very reasonable and well-considered representations which argued that, in reality, a person can get sick on day 100 of their employment or on day one of their employment; so it doesn’t necessarily make sense to have that entitlement kicking in after six months and can lead to perverse consequences with people, before that six-month criteria, coming into work when they are unwell, with all of the fallout that I’ve previously discussed.

I think this is a very valid point, but it was ruled to be out of scope of this bill by the clerks. But the good news on this front is it is part of the Government’s work picking up the recommendations of the Holidays Act task force. This is one of the recommendations that we have accepted. So officials are right now working on the broader programme of changes that will come into effect through the task force recommendations, and bringing in a staggered entitlement to sick leave from day one of employment is one of those recommendations. So, while that will not be progressed through this piece of legislation, it is on the Government’s work programme, along with a range of other very, very positive changes to simplify and improve the Holidays Act as part of that task force process.

Secondly, there were submissions around the possibility of prorating the entitlement of sick leave for part-time employees, and a number of employers raised this and it was given consideration by the select committee. The contention put forward as part of those arguments is that an entitlement of 10 days’ sick leave is more than what might be required by part-time employees who might be working a couple of days per week. The committee and I have received advice from officials on this issue, and, of course, when you think about it, the reality of sick leave for a part-timer is that a part-timer has fewer days on which they are going to be employed and going into work.

So, on average, the call on paid sick leave that a part-time employee will be making will be less than the call being made by a full-time employee just by dint of the fact that there are going to be fewer days at which that person is at work on which they might be sick. So the concern that this might result in part-time employees maxing out their sick leave entitlement is one that we do not think is borne out, and I do think some of the arguments that were raised around possible abuse of the system are somewhat overblown. I think we do have to operate under a high-trust model, and most employees and employers do. And, of course, there are provisions in employment legislation to deal with any abuses that come into effect.

There were also representations, primarily from unions, about the question of when the increased entitlement to 10 days’ sick leave will take effect and the commencement of the bill as well. So the provisions of the bill will come into effect two months after the bill receives Royal assent, and employees will then be entitled to the increased allocation of sick leave at their next anniversary date for their sick leave anniversary, which is generally the date that is six months after their starting date with the employer. Effectively, representations—mainly from unions but from some others—were to bring both of those forward; could we have the increased entitlement applying closer to the date of Royal assent and could we bring the increased entitlement forward from an employee’s anniversary date to some earlier point in time?

Again, those arguments do have some utility about them; they would give the benefit of this legislation to employees more quickly. But we have been conscious of bringing this bill forward in a balanced way that is manageable for employers, who will have to make changes to their payroll systems and other systems in their workplaces. So, taking that all into account, we have retained those provisions, which mean that the bill kicks in two months after Royal assent and that the increased provisions will kick into place on the employee’s anniversary date.

Finally, I do want to address some of the core arguments that I have heard from some people who have been opposed to this bill, including the Opposition. Fundamentally, I think this does come back to the kind of model that we want to have for employment relations in our country. Do we want that low road, low trust, low pay, low entitlement model or do we actually work together and really partner to make sure that we have workplaces that are fair, safe, and productive? As Minister, my view is that for too long we have seen those things as being in conflict with one another. Yet, the very best workplaces and employers that I deal with in my role are employers who recognise that those things go together—that when you treat your workers well, when there are adequate entitlements, when people are able to take time off when they’re unwell, you build up trust with your workforce, you increase productivity, you keep your people for longer. And that actually is the high-road path that this Government is taking with this bill and as part of our broader vision for employment relationships, and I think that is a very important thing that needs to be heard in our communities, and many, many people, I think, get this, particularly after the year of COVID, when we have seen the damage that can be done if people don’t have adequate entitlements.

I do note that, at the moment, around about 50 percent of people through their agreements do have 10 days or more. So the impact of people relying only on the statutory minimum falls disproportionately at the moment on women, on Māori, on Pasifika, and more vulnerable workforces. So this is an important bill in terms of the health and wellbeing of individuals, of workforces, for the public health interest, and it’s about making sure that we do have a fair, a safe, and a productive employment relations system that is equitable for all workers in New Zealand. Again, I thank the select committee for their work, I thank submitters, I look forward to the further speeches in this debate, and I commend the bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. On a day when I thought the Minister would come to this House humbly apologising for the way that his Government has treated and thrown under the bus the Public Service and told them that there will be no pay rises for those hard-working civil servants, I’m surprised that he should be here arrogantly professing to understand how business works and how it operates and what motivates and what goes for a high-trust model. What does need to be learnt within the Government, within the Labour Party, and within the trade union movement is what trust means and what a high-trust model could look like, because, on that side of the House, most of them come from a trade union background and they know that in the Finance and Information Workers Union, which the Minister used to be an employee of, they had very little trust, and that was reflected in the way that they engaged with their employers and the way they conducted themselves as union officials.

So this bill, members will remember, was introduced under urgency very early on after last year’s election, under urgency, and then sent to a select committee for a truncated hearing period of time in which submissions were to be received during the Christmas holiday period. And I think that that was callously designed so that there would be not many submissions. Well, in fact, there were lots of submissions; I think the Minister said there were over 400. And apart from the pro forma trade union submissions that all sounded exactly the same and were probably generated from the same word processor, there were a large number from small businesses and from business organisations who clearly understood that the good intentions of this piece of legislation would have significant negative, unintended consequences on not only the businesses but also the people who work so diligently and hard in those businesses.

It was during the select committee hearings process that we heard about some of those unintended consequences. The primary one, of course, was that this measure of itself, according to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment regulatory impact statement, will cost New Zealand employers something close to a billion dollars a year, near enough to 1 percent of the country’s total payroll, without a single ounce of extra productivity being generated as a result of it, no extra productivity.

So, for those on the other side of the House, what happens when you get extra costs added into your business and you get no productivity added into your business, that’s just a cost that the business has to absorb. And when businesses have to continually absorb extra costs, as they have done under this Government’s administration and look likely to continue to have to absorb, they do one of two or three things. First of all, they will do whatever they have to do to remain competitive and profitable, because if those businesses don’t remain competitive and profitable, then there are no jobs, there is no business, and those employees who work in those businesses end up having no sick leave because they are no longer employed!

What happens is that businesses will then adjust and modify and reconfigure their businesses to accommodate those increased costs. So what they might do, for instance, is put up their prices and it will be consumers, end users, who end up paying the price for this well-intentioned but costly, feel-good piece of legislation. Then what they might also do is they might reconfigure their business into a way that means that their costs of employing people are actually less. And by that I mean they will employ fewer people.

We heard from a number of submitters at select committee who said that they would do exactly that, that the unintended consequence of this piece of legislation and a raft of other pieces of legislation that this Government has pushed through means that businesses will be actually employing fewer people. Because guess what? They’ll be automating. They’ll be changing the way they operate their business. And one only has to look at retail, supermarkets, and all sorts of places like that to see how it is changing, and it’s changing dramatically.

I talked to a large employer, a supermarket operator, who told me that, yes, of course, they are putting the minimum wage up. Yes, they’re going to give people an extra week’s sick leave, and yes, there’ll be an extra public holiday and all those sorts of costs. But what will happen is, because of automation, he’s actually going to be employing his people for fewer hours. Now, that surely can’t be the intent or the objective of this Labour Government’s grand plan, to punish business and actually, by unintended consequence, punish employees. So that’s the kind of thing that will be happening up and down the countryside.

I wanted to just talk a little bit about something that came as a bit of a surprise to me, and it was the submission from the Children’s Commissioner, Judge Becroft, who actually, when we started questioning him, started to understand the implications for people who may be employees with children. And where we got to, and the judge was very clear on it, was that effectively what this legislation means is that the employer will be, effectively, underwriting the healthcare of his employee’s or her employee’s children.

So let me put it to you this way, Madam Speaker—well, not you personally, but let me put it to the House this way. So if an employer is hiring new staff and there are two candidates, both with equally comprehensive and good backgrounds, CVs, experience, and talent, but one of the candidates has no children and one of the candidates has say, I don’t know, four, five, or six children, guess which one the employer is going to employ? It will be, as Judge Becroft succinctly and clearly understood, a negative impact on employees with children, because employers simply don’t want to take the risk of underwriting the good health or otherwise of those children.

Now, the Minister spoke—the Minister spoke—[Interruption] Now, I know on the Government side, the trade unions, they forget that they’re now in the Parliament. [Interruption] They’re not in the Trades Hall now. They’re in the Parliament of New Zealand, and they have to actually get beyond the trade union rhetoric and start thinking positively and concisely about the impacts of their legislation. This is not the Trades Hall; this is the Parliament of New Zealand. And what it means, for instance, when the Minister talks about his reluctance to pro rata, is that part-time employees will be disadvantaged as well.

Here’s why. If you don’t pro rata—and this legislation, effectively, gives a part-time employee 10 days’ sick leave a year. So let’s think about an employee who works one day a week for an employer. They get 10 days’ annual sick leave. That’s potentially about 20 percent of their working year on sick leave, but it gets worse than that. So if that one employee then works for a separate business, another entity, another day of the week, they get another 10 days’ annual sick leave. So it’s not 10 days per employee; it’s 10 days per employment. And that is, I think, a matter that this Government has clearly not understood. The potential there for part-time workers to be disadvantaged will simply mean that businesses will structure their businesses in a way that means that they won’t put themselves at that kind of risk. I don’t think that was what was intended.

I want to just refer to one submission, and it was just one that I picked at random from a small-business person, Deirdre Morgan, who came to the select committee and said, and I quote, “On a practical level if an employee is earning $20 per hour and working 40 hours per week, the potential additional cost to employ that person is $800 per annum in sick leave. In addition to that, the company may need to employ a temp worker to cover that period, and that could cost another, say, $1,400 for the same period. Therefore, the total cost is $2,200 per year in extra sick leave. But if there are 10 employees in that business, then the potential added cost is some $22,000.” So one gets an idea how quickly this escalates and snowballs in terms of the cost to small business. Why is this a problem, particularly for small business? Because small businesses don’t have the capacity to cover in the way that large businesses do.

And so here we have, I think, a probably well-intentioned piece of legislation straight out of the Trades Hall, straight out of the union playbook, using the cover of COVID as an excuse to bring it to the Parliament and using that as a rationale, as an excuse, for actually bringing forward their agenda, but with unintended consequences that will actually lead to significantly less productivity in the country, significantly fewer people actually employed, and businesses not wanting to take the risk.

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

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Now, the previous speaker talked to us about urgency, and the callously carried-out process of urgency, when this bill actually came to the select committee that I chair on 1 December, which was five months ago. Now, that’s not the kind of urgency that the National Government used many, many times when they were in Government, many times on all sorts of occasions, and, notably, when they were riding roughshod over employment rights, like, for example, internationally recognised workers’ rights, taking away collective bargaining from workers under the “Hobbit bill”, overnight without any select committee process at all, without any opportunity for public input at all. The same with 90-day trials—so that full outrage about this urgency is a little bit misplaced.

But let me talk about the nearly 400 submissions that we received from businesses, NGOs, not-for-profits, individuals all across the country, and, as well as that, we had time to do the 34 oral submissions that were requested. Of course, it won’t be lost on anyone in the House here how important it is to look at workers’ rights for our New Zealand workers and especially on the back of what has been a very unprecedented COVID period, where people had to be very careful in how they were treating their sick leave and making sure they didn’t bring that to their workplaces and spread any of their germs.

A little word on unintended consequences that the previous speaker was talking so much about. Now, that must be like the unintended consequences that we hear about every time we put the minimum wage up. Apparently, it would result in massive job losses, every time we put this up. But what happened? What did we hear today? Unemployment, in fact, is down to 4.7 percent. I think it’s the lowest that it was since September 2019. So, so much for those unintended consequences.

Now, I also picked a couple of submissions at random, like the previous speaker did. I picked one from Together, and the one I want to talk about is a hairdresser who came to us and talked about the times that she said she would just make do if she wasn’t 100 percent. Of course, you know, you can imagine in that kind of a job, that definitely has a flow-on effect. But that particular person said to us that she had learnt from the COVID-19 pandemic and that she actually realised that she needed to be more aware of—and I quote—“taking care of her own health and thereby of everyone around her”. That same organisation, Together, also conducted a survey of working people, and they had about 700, or 711, something like that, people get back to them about their current entitlements to sick leave and their experience with the five-day sick leave and also what they felt they needed to, in fact, have a safer use of sick leave for themselves. It basically reinforced what we already know: that, as we have at the moment, the minimum of five days is absolutely inadequate.

That brings me to one of the overarching themes that our select committee really saw through all of those submissions, and that’s that there’s a stark choice that workers face when they get sick. That is either they need to choose between taking unpaid leave and perhaps not being able to pay the bills, or they have to choose to come to work sick, not look after their own health, not look after the health of the people around them, and potentially spread their germs in the workplace. That, of course, has a flow-on effect, resulting in perhaps many more people being sick.

But, anyway, for many workers, taking unpaid sick leave isn’t even an option. We heard from one of our E tū members, Marina—she is a cleaner. She talked to us about how she had to take unpaid sick leave and was worried about how to put bread on the table for her children. That’s how dire it gets for some of those workers out there. And the pressure of a toughing-it-out culture and risking infecting others, E tū mentioned, has created a culture of heroism. That really isn’t on in these days.

Workers and families need flexibility to make sure that people take sick leave when they need it, have a proper opportunity to rest and recover, and, as a result, being happier and healthier in the workplace will also mean that they are more productive. So that’s exactly what this bill does. It supports workers to take the sick leave when they need it, look after themselves, look after the people around them, look after their families, and produce a happier and healthier New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker, thank you very much. In the second reading of this bill, the Labour Party is now one step closer to delivering on an election promise, which is to increase costs upon business by $2.8 billion a year. We’ve heard other speakers in the debate so far from the other side—indeed the Minister—talk about productivity gains, but you don’t increase productivity in an economy or in a business by imposing costs upon that business. You do so by reducing red tape and regulation and allowing those businesses to get on with what it is the economy needs them to do—run their businesses well, create profits through productivity and competitiveness, and, of course, look after their employees and pay them more.

This is a piece of legislation that is very blunt in what it is trying to achieve, as we have seen so very often from the Labour Party. Indeed, we hear often from them, “Unintended consequences are not important.” But if we look at everything that’s happened during the previous three years in Government and since they have come to Government just six months ago, there are unintended consequences that have a direct impact upon the very workers they say they are trying to help. I’m going to set that out in a way that pulls this together, because the cost of this legislation upon businesses—not the taxpayer through the taxes they pay to the Government, not on the Government itself, but the businesses that will meet the cost of this—is $1 billion.

When the Minister has said there will be greater productivity, he is yet to show the House, or any large or small business—and particularly small business—how extra productivity will be driven through this legislation, or any anything else the Government has done around workplace relations, to make up for the cost of that extra billion dollars. Because it has to be paid for and it will be paid for by businesses in New Zealand. The ones that will be most hard hit in paying this are the small businesses, the mums and dads who work so very, very hard to provide for themselves and their families and a few employees. They’ll bear the cost of this, not the Government, but them.

See, the problem you have is if you keep imposing these costs upon businesses, they actually have to do one of three things: they absorb them—well, that doesn’t work anymore, because during COVID last year, and lockdown, businesses in New Zealand, small businesses, did what was asked of them by this Government, they absorbed costs when they weren’t able to open and they took on debt. Few, if any, of them have seen their turnover, their income, return to those levels, sustainably, that they were before COVID. So they’ve taken on that debt and, in this case, they can’t absorb that cost.

Secondly, the thing that they do is they have to look to reduce their workforce. And yes, the Government has said the unemployment rate that has come out today has fallen again, but behind that is masked, ongoing, significant taxpayer and Government contribution to help and keep people in jobs, and at some point—the Government can’t keep borrowing and spending—that has to stop. So, largely, what a business does is it has to look at how it can economise and it reduces its workforce. It may not do it on day one, but when it comes time when they lose a staff member who may leave or do something else, they hesitate and they wonder whether they will replace—in many cases if the Government imposes extra cost, they don’t replace that person. They have to try and do more with the employees they have left, or they must pass the cost on.

So the $1 billion that this bill will impose upon businesses in New Zealand—as part of the $2.8 billion of a range of things the Labour Party promised to do before the last election, that mean Kiwi businesses pay $2.8 billion extra every year—will have to be passed on. Who is it that pays this $2.8 billion when it’s passed on? It is the consumer and it’s the very people the Government is saying they’re trying to help the most through the very fast increases to the minimum wage and these extra costs, including looking at a doubling of sick leave.

So I say to the Minister, why did he go from five days to 10 days? Where was the maths or the science or the evidence behind that, other than it was a good election slogan? Why did he decide to impose only $1 billion of extra cost? And, actually, where will the productivity gains be for the economy that pay that back? Because he’s quick off the tongue, but slow off the hip. He hasn’t been able to demonstrate that.

Finally, when it comes to sick leave entitlement, actually there is a disincentive here because what the Government has done is said that, “Actually, you can only carry over one year.” Well, currently, an employee in New Zealand can carry over three years—not year upon year upon year—but there are many employees who don’t use their full entitlement and they will grow them and they will carry that over in case it is needed at some stage. Because it’s not a holiday, it’s not an entitlement for a payment, it’s in the case they are unwell, so that they are provided for. What this legislation does is, instead of carrying over three years, or 15 days, it doubles sick leave, but can only carry over one year or 10 days. That is likely to have one of two consequences: that, actually, those who need sick leave that may have 15 days there—plus their five-year entitlement a year; so would have 20—actually wouldn’t have that in the same way. Or there may well be employees that say, “If I’m going to lose this because I can’t carry it over any more, I wonder if there is a way to use that.”

Now, I actually believe it’s better to find ways to encourage employers and employees to work well together, because I’m yet to meet a good employer—and this country is full of business people who are good employers, who care about their businesses and actually want to retain good staff; because it is much easier, much easier to keep good staff members than it is, as this Government thinks, for good employers to get rid of them to then go and hire someone else because it may be easier or cheaper. I think we should find a system that trusts and encourages them to work it out for themselves rather than the blunt instrument of the Government, of just saying, “We made an election promise that we’re going to double sick leave. We have not put any thought into it other than it sounded good at the time. There are consequences to this, but don’t worry, it’s good for productivity.” Forget the $1 billion extra cost that is imposed upon these businesses, because the Labour Government sees businesses as an ATM for paying the bills they want to run up.

This is a country that has more small businesses per capita than any other country in the world. There is a reason for that, because Kiwis are hardworking, they’re ingenuous, and they want to do well. For so very many of them, they are wonderful employers and they have amazing employees that turn up to work every single day. For the Government to come in and say, “We have a suite of changes we want to sweep through without genuine consultation with the people that will be most affected, because we made a promise before the election that will cost $2.8 billion.”—and, by golly, the Government says they’re going to keep this promise of an extra $2.8 billion of cost upon Kiwi businesses, and therefore consumers, the people they say they’re trying to help, that actually they do them a great disservice. The ultimate outcome of that will be higher costs passed on, businesses that struggle more, and employees that won’t be better off because the employers will have fewer choices rather than more. We should be backing hardworking Kiwi businesses, not putting costs on them; finding ways to reduce the costs upon them so they can employ more people and pay them more, because almost every small-business person I’ve met wants to do that.

But what they want the Government to do is get off their backs, stop imposing costs upon them that make it harder for them. In fact, the Government should be finding ways to reduce red tape, to reduce burden, to make it easier for them to support the good employers and the good employees—focus only on those who are not meeting their obligation, and those that are, actually encourage them to do more.

This is not a positive piece of legislation for the economy, and the day the Minister turns up and gives absolute evidence that there will be productivity gains, not just a $1 billion cost on businesses, particularly small businesses, will be a day this House will wait a long time for.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, yet another important bill, that might look unnecessary to the Opposition, but it’s very important for thousands of workers, who, many of them, are front-line workers. Before I kick off my speech, I’d like to start with sharing a story, a story of a working woman, a cleaner and a mother, Malia Motusaga. Malia lately said, commenting on the increase of this 10-day sick leave, “I was grateful to hear that the Government will increase the minimum sick leave from five days to 10 days. This is very important to me and to my family, as well as to other workers. This is the reality of living on the minimum wage and working two jobs: sometimes you need to make sacrifices. If my children are sick—and usually someone gets sick from my family—I would have to take time off of work unpaid. The extra five days will benefit me and my kids. Now I know that if I get sick, I can stay home, and if any of my kids or my husband gets sick, I can stay home to look after them. I feel really good about that.” That statement speaks volumes about the importance of increasing sick leave from five days to 10 days.

Now, last year in 2020, when the pandemic hit, we all of us went into lockdown. I remember there was an outpouring of support and love and solidarity towards front-line workers. Every 7 p.m., we would go out in our driveway and we would clap. We would clap in a spectacular show of solidarity towards these hard-working people who played an important role in getting us through the lockdown times. That was a beautiful display of solidarity, but that was not going to pay their bills. It was not going to put three meals on their table. But increasing sick leave, allowing them to stay home when they are sick, is going to make a difference in their lives. I am very proud of the record of this Government supporting working people. This Government pumped up the minimum wage to $20 and started implementing the living wage in core Government sectors. Now increasing sick leave is also another milestone that’s going to support this vulnerable workforce.

Now, some of the submitters, we must admit, expressed some concerns around this bill, and we acknowledge that. Some of their concern is that this increase in sick leave will hurt small and medium sized businesses or that some of the employees will take advantage of this goodwill. Those assumptions are just unfounded and misplaced. I was a cleaner. I have worked with hundreds of cleaners, and as a union organiser I looked after cleaners, security guards—I have never seen anyone taking advantage of sick leave that’s available to them. Ethical employers already are doing this, and we haven’t seen any business running out of business because of increasing sick leave from five days to 10 days. In fact, they are doing a good job. Their productivity has increased and they are grateful, and their employees are grateful and they are working harder than ever because they feel valued.

This is just a part of the scaremongering that we heard about when the minimum wage increased: unemployment is going to increase. In fact, the finance Minister today said that unemployment has decreased to 4.7 percent despite the minimum wage going up to $20. This is another sign that things are not always the way that the Opposition seem to make them out.

Lastly, as we live and we continue to fight the pandemic, we must value and respect our hard-working front-line workers, because that is part of our health response as well. A happy and valued workforce is always going to get us through the tough times. At least, people like Malia deserve this. With that, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m really pleased to get to rise and take a call on this piece of legislation, which I know from the number of conversations I’ve been having in the community is a law change that a huge number of people are desperately waiting for. The Green Party are incredibly pleased to support the extension of the minimum paid sick leave entitlement from five to 10 days for full-time and part-time workers.

We heard through the select committee process a good number of submissions and some really compelling submissions from working people, who told us, unfortunately, that life happens. People have experienced unexpected illness. They’ve experienced mental health problems while they’ve been employed, and they’ve had sick family members that they’ve had a duty to care for. Not everybody is in the lucky position to have enough sick leave to be able to stay at home and get well, to be able to actually look after their mental health in this mental health crisis that we have, because they know their mental health will get worse if they can’t afford to pay the rent. So they go to work and just stay on eggshells for an extended period of time and are unable to truly get well.

We hear from people who are—like, their kids are sick, and they don’t have paid leave. They have to be at home to be with their kids or we can be pretty sure everybody in this House would be judging them for not being there. But they know that, when they choose to go there and be with their kids, they are forgoing that income until they can get back to work, and that means they do not know how to pay their rent. They do not know how they are going to be able to afford the kai to be able to feed their kids to get them back to health. That is the stress that people are under at the moment because of the extremely limited provision of the minimum sick leave entitlements. We heard from people that they were making that choice.

We heard from the Opposition today the really very clear consequences for employers of this—and I’ll get to that if I get time, unpicking some of their perceptions of that—but what they didn’t mention was the consequence for the working people of not having enough sick leave. It’s either you go to work sick and work ineffectively, because you’re either working through that fog or not able to concentrate properly—potentially putting yourself or others at risk from injury or sickness through spreading the disease—or you stay home, don’t have the income, and struggle to pay your bills. Or, as we heard from some people of what they’ve had to do, particularly if their children had repeated illness, you leave that job to put your children first. We all end up paying for that, but most of all that family ends up paying. I would also argue the employer loses out.

There’s a real problem, because this is some of what we heard from the submitters supporting the legislation. What we heard from employers, not all of them but a large number who presented, was that they opposed it because they saw it as a cost. They didn’t recognise the fact that, if people are sick, they’re sick; they’re either coming to work and not doing a great job, because they’re sick, or they’re not turning up to work and you’re just not paying them. But you’re not getting the job done, because that person is actually sick, or you’re losing great staff because they can’t sustain their health or their kids’ health and your limited provision of sick leave. That is an increased cost.

So we heard from members on this side that this has nothing to do with productivity and that there are no productivity returns around that. Well, the evidence says otherwise. The evidence says that, as a country, we have a problem with what is called presenteeism. It’s the opposite of absenteeism. It’s people compulsively turning up to work when they are sick and underperforming and making others sick. That has a really significant impact on productivity, and employers lose. Families lose. We all lose from this obsessive culture of seeing human beings as a cost as opposed to the people that actually do the work that create the value in our society.

So we’re very pleased finally to see these provisions in terms of the extension of the leave. I would say, however, though, that the Greens are disappointed with some aspects of the bill. I acknowledge the point that this was brought in under urgency as one of the very first pieces of legislation that the Government brought in, on 1 December, and I know from conversations with people that they are really—they’ve been asking me “So, when am I going to get my 10 days?”, because they are in that situation at the moment of not knowing, if their kid gets sick, how they’re going to be able to look after them, because they don’t have enough sick leave at the moment. So they are desperate for this support, and this is particularly people in care industries and in early childhood education, and we heard a lot from people in industries where they can’t come back to work until they’ve been well for, like, two days. So it’s not just the sick day. There’s expectations in terms of health and safety that people stay away from their workplace, and yet the leave doesn’t always match that expectation.

So it is disappointing that, with this legislation, there will be some people that won’t get their 10 days until mid next year because of the provisions in terms of phasing this in, and I think that is disappointing and unnecessary. From the Green Party’s perspective, we believe that this is right to do in principle and it can be done straight away. We were also disappointed to see the reduction in carry-over leave entitlement from 15 days to just 10 days and that, actually, there is—you know, and clearly people who are carrying over their leave are not exploiting their leave. It is really just in those cases, if somebody gets very sick, that they have that and they haven’t used it, and we don’t want to see any reduction in entitlement, and it doesn’t seem to us that we’re in a situation in terms of employment relations in this country where there should be the need for that. I think it’s for the benefit of all of us to actually build up that store of sick leave for times people may need it.

I also just want to acknowledge that we would have preferred to see the 10 days come in from day one of employment but acknowledge that the holidays working group has come to a consensus on that and that there will be an accrual that will start from the first day of employment. We look forward to that legislation coming in.

One of the other points I wanted to mention—and I do believe it will help deliver on the intent of this legislation and the content of it—is the provisions of proof and employers’ ability to require people to get medical certificates, which is clogging up our healthcare system, a completely unnecessary cost. In lots of areas, it takes weeks to get in to see a GP. We do not need to see people with colds going into their health clinics, putting potentially other people at risk, just because their employer has an automatic distrust of everybody in their workplace.

If we are going to have that culture that I think it was Todd McClay spoke about, where there is a higher-trust model, actually we should revert to the pre-2014 requirement, where employers can ask for proof and medical certificate if they have reasonable grounds to believe that somebody is not sick. So if they see something on Facebook that somebody has been out partying, then, actually, they can require it, or if somebody’s got a pattern of taking every Monday off, then they require it, but not this automatic assumption that people are ripping off the system, because that creates workplaces of suspicion and undermines the wellbeing and participation of everybody in the workplace. Progress, but not quite good enough.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill for a number of reasons. Mainly, the ACT Party believes employers aren’t bad and they deserve a break. This new legislation comes on top of a hugely difficult year for business, where employers feel set upon by this Government: minimum wage increase at the start of the lockdown, a new stat holiday. Next we’ll be giving people time off to attend Peachy—oh, we’re already doing that! Employers just don’t know what’s coming next, but they know it will keep on coming, as we have a Minister who just doesn’t get business, a Minister who said in 2017 that minimum wage increases will only happen if conditions permitted—a one-in-100-year pandemic is obviously not enough!—and the same Minister who said the increased sick leave would “add a little bit of cost” to business. Sick leave in 2018 cost businesses $1.7 billion. Just a little bit of cost!

Submitters were divided into two camps: business owners and the employees. The business owners are the ones who put themselves on the line. They’ve taken the risk and employed people. They understand where money comes from. Employees, as human nature dictates, will often take what they can get, and a number of submitters thought that they deserved not two but four weeks’ sick pay. They are currently being enabled by a Government who has a very skewed position on what makes the world go round. ACT opposes this extra burden for employers, especially in today’s environment. Employees are currently entitled to four weeks’ annual leave, 12 stat holidays—that’s over six weeks. They’ve got five days’ sick pay. They’ve got family violence leave, and whatever comes next. Employers are up against it constantly. To suggest that sick leave is not abused and used as annual leave, like some have suggested, by many employees shows a great ignorance and a lack of understanding of what goes on in the actual workforce—unless, of course, you’re looking at it through the union eyes.

Those countries that we aspire to be like, on average, are twice as sickly as us. We can expect New Zealand’s sick leave to double. It’s almost $4 billion for employers. We must treat apples with apples if we’re going to compare ourselves with other countries and not just take the good bits. With any pay rise or leave entitlement or other changes in employee conditions, we must look at productivity to make sure that we can pay for it, and unfortunately New Zealand just doesn’t cut it at the moment. We constantly compare ourselves with other countries when it comes to the minimum wage, work conditions, leave provisions but constantly ignore the most important factor that enables these countries to provide different conditions to their employees: much, much higher productivity. Ireland, around No. 4 in the world; Australia, around No. 17; Norway, around No. 6—we’re constantly comparing ourselves with those countries. New Zealand, consistently around No. 28 or 29. To think that paying people more or giving people more holidays and increasing sick leave will increase productivity, which it must do so it can be paid for, shows a very poor understanding of business—and, unfortunately, especially business in New Zealand. This bill could well hurt the very people it intends to help, as has been mentioned before. Employers will look very hard before employing people with health issues, mothers with kids, and those who they would previously have given a go.

This Government constantly trumpets on about how much help and support they gave businesses during COVID. I just don’t get it. Employees were looked after—effectively, put on a benefit—during lockdown, with a guarantee of employment when it was over. Businesses were assisted in getting a loan if they needed it. The thing about loans is that you have to pay them back. They still had the same rates, power, insurance—in many cases, rent—and all the other fixed costs in running a business. Businesses had to go into debt in order for employees to have a job. If that’s looking after business, I’d hate to think what they get their friends for Christmas. ACT believes employers are good, hard-working people. A number of submitters, while supporting the increase, also stated that their employers looked after them when they needed it. They admitted that the employers were good people and they looked after them, but they still were keen on the extra leave.

Employers are good people. They’re prepared to take the risk to make this economy work. If a business is doing well, employees will do well, despite what you may hear from those who have never owned a business. Unfortunately, in the last four years, businesses have been under attack. This latest unnecessary luxury, coming at a time when most are hurting and trying to recover from COVID, is just another example, and we just wonder what’s next. For these reasons, ACT opposes this bill. Thank you.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Kia ora. Thank you. I’m really pleased to be taking a call on this Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill. Despite everybody declaring that the sky is falling, it is not. We did have time in the select committee to consider the consequences of this bill, and tonight I want to remind you of some of the gains. People keep talking about cost; I want to tell you about some of the gains that businesses as well as workers told us would come with increasing sick leave to 10 days, the reasons why five days are simply not enough.

We heard some really intensely personal stories from workers who are really vulnerable, who themselves have ongoing health or disability issues, or are caregivers either of their own children or of their parents or of their brother or sister, and they use up their sick leave really quickly. It can be something as simple as a child with conjunctivitis—can’t go to school. You get it; you can’t go to work. It doesn’t take long for five days to disappear. We heard some really powerful stories from some really articulate people—some of our poorest paid, most vulnerable precariat, mainly women. The decisions that they need to make—they’re not decisions being made in the best interests of public health; rather they’re deciding whether to stay home with a toddler or by themselves to get well and not share their infections, their germs, with others, or whether to pay the rent, or whether to quit their job, or whether to take unpaid leave or personal debt.

We heard from an amazing young woman who is a home care worker, and she talked about the incredible guilt and tension of knowing she shouldn’t go to work, because she was unwell and she was putting her clients at risk, her colleagues at risk. But she couldn’t afford to do it or she would be sleeping in her car, which is certainly not the best way to get over the flu. It was a powerful testimony, and it is one that we must ensure has an impact on this legislation.

Some have signalled or indicated—suggested—that COVID isn’t an excuse to have something that should just be temporary; the extra five days should be temporary because it’s just about COVID. But we did have temporary responses put into place. We’ve got the short-term absence payment and the leave support scheme. Rather, what COVID has done is it’s highlighted a couple of things. The Minister spoke earlier about our “tough it out” culture and how that is not good for anyone. Staying at home keeps others safe: you don’t catch a bus to work; you don’t cough on your clients or on your co-workers.

I need to talk about this being good business sense. We’ve heard from people on the other side of the House talk about the cost when I know, from having grown up in an entrepreneurial household, that the biggest investment an employer can make is in their workers. I know that. And so this is about improving productivity. When you work while you are sick, the evidence is quite clear: your productivity drops by about 20 percent. This is understood elsewhere on the planet. Australia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Spain, etc., have at least 10 days. We heard evidence from Frog Recruitment—a woman who said that she has given her workers unlimited sick leave. Oh, no, the sky’s going to fall in! They’re going to be taking leave willy-nilly! But the element of trust actually meant that her workers knew that she believed in them and that they were going to look after themselves and take themselves and their job seriously and they would stay home and get well. And she found that they took fewer sick days. Maybe it had something to do with that they weren’t coming into work and getting their co-workers sick. And, very simply, it allows us to meet the societal expectations for reasonable conditions for all workers in New Zealand.

The last thing I’d like to talk about is actually the impact on our children. We did hear from the Privacy Commissioner, and we heard from mothers, we heard from teachers, we heard from unions about the incredibly difficult decision of sending kids to school when they are sick because you cannot afford to not be at work. That child does not have an opportunity to get well. They get long-term implications, illness, things like glue ear, because they do not have an opportunity to stay home and keep well. If parents can take time off and look after them without those financial burdens, without the cost, being able to pay the rent and put the kai on the table, it has an impact on the wellbeing of children’s lives. I know, from being a secondary school teacher, the impact on our young adults when they have to stay home from school and look after their youngest siblings or their nana because mum has to go to work and do a shift.

So, because it is best for productivity, it is best for our workers, it is best for our tamariki, it is best for our society, I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill, second reading. I was a member of the committee that heard submissions on this bill.

I just want to start by delving just very briefly into this whole “element of trust” malarkey that’s coming from the other side of the House. It’s all very interesting that, when it comes to workers, there is a huge element of trust and they can be trusted not to take advantage of the extra days that they’re given, but every single possible opportunity this Government has to tie up employers in regulations and costs and more red tape, they will take that opportunity every single chance they get because they don’t trust employers—but, of course, we can trust employees; they won’t take advantage of the situation!

For goodness’ sake, we’re passing a bill at the moment, from the other side of the House, that’s going to give parents an hour off every term to go to a parent-teacher interview, because we can’t trust employers and employees to work it out amongst themselves to go to a 10-minute interview. So this whole element of trust and “It’s all going to be wonderful.” is all very well and good but, when it actually comes down to it, this Government doesn’t trust employers. But here we are trusting employees not to take advantage.

Can I just say that, actually, when it comes down to it, this isn’t a free lunch. This will be paid for somewhere. This billion dollars of cost on the economy isn’t going to be made up for in some magical increase in productivity. And, by the way, the regulatory impact statement, and many of the submitters, said, “Actually, there’s no evidence to back up this claim of increased productivity.” It’s anecdotal, it’s from some stories, it’s from some thoughts and feelings from the other side of the House, but the reality is there’s actually no evidence to back this up. From a Government who loves to base everything they do on evidence and facts and science, well, in this case, that was never presented, because it doesn’t exist. It’s just an anecdotal sort of thought and warm fuzzy feeling that productivity will be increased so much that the billion dollars will magically disappear. Well, anyone with any brains knows that that’s not actually the case. Those costs will be passed on somewhere down the chain.

We heard from many, many employers who talked about the fact that they will have to pass this cost on through their goods and services, increasing the cost of living for the people who can least afford it. They will cut hours, they will cut shifts, they will hire fewer staff, they will rearrange things so that they’re not employing so many people on a part-time basis, which often goes to those people who need that the most; they will delay wage increases. There will be potential discrimination against the types of people who may be using more sick leave.

Now, the other side scoffed at that in select committee and again today, because “That can’t possibly happen.” But in reality we know that it does. There is that unconscious bias when it comes to companies who are facing huge costs. And let’s remember that not that long ago, last year, we were begging businesses—this Government, this Prime Minister, was begging businesses, “Please keep hold of your employees. Take on some extra debt. Pivot. Do everything that you can to try and stay afloat. We’re not going to give you any support other than the wage subsidy”—but that went straight to the employees, not to the employer. So the employers got very, very little apart from huge debts, massive stress, a whole lot of loans that they didn’t have before, and, now, on top of that, they’ve got two lots of minimum wage increases—

Anna Lorck: Businesses were thrilled with the wage subsidy.

ERICA STANFORD: —have another Berocca!—they’ve got a Matariki holiday, they’ve got increased cost of their migrant workforce as well, because those hourly rates have all gone up. On top of that, debts and loans. These guys are under extreme pressure.

Anna Lorck: Kept our businesses going, workers in employment.

ERICA STANFORD: Keep yelling, love. Listen, the point of the matter is that these costs aren’t going to disappear somewhere into some magically increased productivity. They are going to be borne by the businesses, who will pass this on—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: To the consumer.

ERICA STANFORD: —and then to the consumer, who can least afford it. And they’re going to be passed on in the form of people who will not be employed or who will have their hours reduced, and that is the unintended consequences of something like this. These things don’t just magically disappear; they have to go somewhere.

Anna Lorck: Healthier workplace, better productivity, businesses and workers working together.

ERICA STANFORD: I’m going to take a stake in the Berocca business because, clearly, business is booming for them! Good Lord.

I just want to finish by saying that the people who came to our select committee, who are the people who are employing the people of New Zealand, told us that the reality of this bill is that their costs will increase and that will have to go somewhere. The productivity gains, which, by the way, can’t be measured and there’s no evidence to show they will actually materialise, will be borne by those who can least afford it, and the other side of the House just refuses to understand that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise to take a short call on this matter. I’m absolutely delighted to do so. I spent 27 years as an employment lawyer, and this is not a change that is one that I look at in terms of COVID. I think COVID is the lesson about how valuable people are in our society and we should have learnt it a long time ago.

When I was an employment lawyer I had one big employer, who at that point in my career distressed me because they actually started to performance manage their staff because they were taking the minimum entitlement in sick leave. Now, that was one of our bigger, richer employers, and it was one that actually employed a lot of men, and I wondered how much it actually encouraged a mentality in that workplace that was machismo, that treated people like they were machines. They’re not machines; they’re human beings, and when we employ human beings, we need to accept that they have families, that they get sick, and that they’re valuable in themselves, and that they shouldn’t be at work when they’re sick and they shouldn’t be at work when they need to stay home and look after their children.

I remind the last speaker that, in COVID, we actually had a situation where most workers in this country whose employers took the wage subsidy from the Government also took a reduction in wages of 20 percent. They were in there, boots and all, helping. Actually, this is another form of partnership that perhaps the National Party might get its head around. This is actually about us all working together, us all having a stake in things, and us all producing in this country, including the workers of this country. So I am absolutely thrilled at this legislation.

I also wanted to point out that it’s probably worth a thought that there are employers out there, many employers out there, who pay 10 days’ sick leave—lots of them. They are actually not in an even playing field, when they are competing with people who are cutting back entitlement to such unrealistic levels. I want to see a place in New Zealand for employers to be actually patted on the back and encouraged and supported when they do the right thing, and that means that all the employers who are already paying 10 days’ sick leave are actually going to feel supported when this legislation comes through.

I’m absolutely thrilled to see a change in mentality in this country. It’s been a long time coming, and a lot of people have suffered while we waited for this kind of legislation to recognise that workers are human beings. And that is the end of my call. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): It is a pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight, and I want to begin by thanking the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety for bringing this bill to the House early in this term of our Government. This piece of legislation was an important part of Labour’s 2020 election manifesto, and I just want to acknowledge the work of our members in bringing this forward. Many would say that this change is overdue. A lot of people across many parts of our country have worked incredibly hard to bring forward 10 days’ sick leave. This, as the Minister has said, is part of our delivery for working people as we recover from COVID, and as previous speakers have said, we learnt the lessons from COVID about just how important it is to have adequate sick leave so that we can ensure our communities stay healthy. I want to thank the select committee and all of the submitters and officials for all of the hard work they’ve done over the last few months to hear submissions on this bill.

I spent many years before coming to this House as an organiser with FIRST Union, and I want to acknowledge their submission. FIRST Union is a private sector union that represents a significant number of people in supermarkets, in banks, in retail, manufacturing, transport industries—many industries where, if people do become unwell, it’s very easy for them to pass their bugs around to co-workers and each other and also people going into their supermarkets, getting on their buses, getting on their trains. So, having spent many years in this industry, I’ve seen and have many, many firsthand examples of what it’s like for workers who actually don’t have access to enough sick leave.

I want to respond to a previous speaker, Scott Simpson, who made some comments around supermarkets. I’m actually going to set the record straight around supermarkets. We have two large supermarket chains in this country, one of which is Countdown, and to the best of my knowledge, they still pay eight days of sick leave a year. The previous speaker made some very good points about an even playing field, because the other large chain, Foodstuffs, who own Pak ’N Save and New World supermarkets through individual owners, they don’t—most of them, unless they have a collective agreement—pay more than five days’ sick leave. I’ve spent many, many hours attempting to negotiate for more sick leave at Pak ’N Save in Richmond, in my electorate of Nelson. What I can say is the owners of those supermarkets are incredibly wealthy multimillionaires, and what I can say on that is that Countdown supermarkets have come to us on many, many occasions asking us to even that playing field, because, actually, supermarkets should be competing on quality of product, on customer service, not on a race to the bottom over wages and conditions that actually lead to poorer outcomes for workers.

In my experience, there are three reasons why our workers don’t take sick leave. The first, which we’re talking about tonight, is that they don’t have adequate sick leave. It’s very common for people to use up their sick leave on one incident of either themselves or a family member being sick. We have situations now when it’s not just women looking after children; you often have both parents working, and in my experience, it was actually often male-dominated industries, particularly in sawmills, that were arguing really hard to have increased amounts of sick leave, because those whānau were finding that, whether it was the mum or the dad who was looking after the child, actually they needed sick leave, both of them, in order to be able to look after their tamariki. But, look, that’s what we’re addressing tonight.

But there’s other things that happen, and one of the things I’ve seen is a significant amount of pressure from employers for people to go in when they’re sick. The classic case which used to come up all the time was workers ringing in sick and being told by the employer, “You don’t sound sick.” Now, it’s such an old-school way of thinking. There are many times when people are sick and they don’t sound sick but they certainly are sick, and they’re having to prove to that employer that they were genuinely sick and having to have an argument about why they needed to stay home. That’s partly because of our culture.

This is the third reason, and a few speakers have picked up on that tonight: in the supermarket industry, one of the things I used to find was workers who didn’t want to stay home because they were letting the team down. We’ve had this culture in New Zealand of taking a concrete pill, sucking it up. The “she’ll be right” attitude, the “you don’t want to show weakness” kind of attitude. Actually, what happened during COVID: we finally had that change, we finally addressed this as a nation and actually said it is important for ourselves, for our whānau, for our co-workers, for our communities to stay home when we’re sick. So part of that self-imposed pressure, that culture, is changing, and it’s a good thing.

Many speakers have talked tonight about what is a good employer. In my view, a good employer—and I come from a family of employers as well and have employed people—is one that actually looks at how they can support their workers to be the best that they can be, to be well and to be productive. We know that workers who are treated well, who are respected, will treat their employers well in return. It’s a fallacy to talk about cost, because, actually, if people stay home when they’re sick, they are less likely to spread that sickness to others, actually leading to lower amounts of sick leave.

Now, I signed up to a little tool last year called Flu Tracker, and if others in this House haven’t signed up to Flu Tracker, I encourage you to do so. One of the things we saw last year was that as well as having people staying home to protect themselves from COVID19, we actually had lower levels of flu circulating through our community. So what I say and what I propose is that, if people are able to and our culture changes to where they do stay home when they’re sick, those contagious types of bugs are less likely to be passed around.

We’ve had people talk tonight around people misusing sick leave, and I do acknowledge there are times when people do that, but I also say there are management tools in existence that should be used to manage when people are misusing sick leave. There’s fantastic case law out there where people who perhaps applied for annual leave, had it declined, had gone on a little jaunt, photo on Facebook, and, look, in those situations, employers have found to be justified in dismissing someone under those circumstances. So, actually, part of this is about employers also using the tools available to them properly to discourage that. But, as I said, we do know that employees who are treated well treat their employers well in return.

So, to sum up, we need to change our culture around sick leave. Look across at Australia, where they have 10 days a year. For too long in Aotearoa we’ve been struggling away on only five days a year, and most workers are using that up every year for good reason. So this change, it’s overdue. It’s necessary to continue protecting our communities, and on that note, I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to stand against this bill. People tuning in might say, “Well, how can you be against extra holidays? Extra holidays are a good thing.”

Hon Members: Holidays?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Not holidays; sick leave. We’ve had kind of a strange debate. People from the opposite side of the House, Labour members, saying such profound observations like “Workers are human beings.” Well, I don’t dispute that. I don’t think there’s anybody in the House that would dispute the point that workers are human beings, and I don’t think anybody would suggest that anybody would argue the point. I think all people in this House—and that was a very fine observation; I don’t like to be unkind to the member who made it. But the point is that we here all want the best interests of New Zealand workers and New Zealanders generally, and if we lived in a perfect world, there would be no limits on sick leave and there would be very high minimum wages and everything would be great. The only issue is that ultimately what we have to try and navigate our way through is how businesses can stay profitable and continue to employ people. Now, in a free situation, there is nothing stopping any business giving any workers as long a leave as they would like, but what we’re talking about here is legislation ruling a minimum level where they must provide five days at the moment and the proposal in the bill is to double that to 10 days.

The concern that we have on this side of the House is that while that may be a very welcome thing—and we can all think of many, many instances and many individuals where extra sick leave would be very welcome. The only question is right here right now, at a time when New Zealand businesses are struggling—some are; some aren’t—and that’s been one of the extraordinary elements of this whole COVID saga, that many businesses have continued to prosper and some have really struggled, and those that really struggle, particularly in the hospitality and any tourism-related businesses, are finding it very difficult. What this Government has done is add not just one area of cost to businesses, not two areas of cost, but many, many areas of extra costs to businesses. And those costs don’t just go to business owners; they filter through to customers, because a lot of those costs are passed on, but some can’t be. And some make it very difficult for people to continue successfully in business. That’s why there needs to be care and moderation taken by any Government so as to not make it too difficult for businesses to grow and provide new opportunities for New Zealanders to get work and create their own careers.

What I think the mistake that is often made on the other side of the House is to assume that business is all big, hugely profitable, powerful businesses with very large employees, like big supermarket chains, and that this is just something that they can absorb and nobody will notice. But, of course, the reality of New Zealand is that most businesses in New Zealand are small and they have five or 10 employees, they’re mum or dad operators, and they go from GST payment to GST payment. Staying afloat in business can be very, very difficult, and if you’re a tiny little business with three or four employees, employees being sick and on sick leave is not an immaterial issue. It can be very difficult for businesses; so this is meaningful in its impact on those businesses.

Like I said at the start of this, everybody would like to see all New Zealanders have access to as much sick leave as they require. But here in this House, legislating at a time such as this, just to double sick leave entitlements at the same time as very significantly increasing minimum wages and at the same time as increasing energy costs and increasing petrol levies, and a whole lot of other things that the Government is doing is very much taking for granted the ability of those businesses, large and small in this country, to continue to pay those costs and survive and provide the jobs in order to survive—and also, beyond that, in order to make the investments in their businesses in order to grow this economy and make us more productive.

I suppose the broader theme that we hear from this Government, and no doubt we’ll hear some more of it in the Budget in the weeks to come, is an attitude which says that the role of Government is just to spend more money and pass laws that force private sector employers to spend more money, and that is the purpose of it all, and isn’t it wonderful! But what we don’t hear anything about is: how do we grow the broader economy and how do we provide a more productive economy so that we as New Zealanders can generate higher incomes and sustain the living standards that we want to sustain over the long period? I don’t hear too much about that at all from any of the legislation coming through.

I see a whole lot of legislation providing more, insisting that employers do more for employees, and I see a whole lot of new spending from this Government. I see a few more taxes coming through, higher taxes for individuals, and in the petrol sense, and I see a whole lot of stuff, but the question I ask is: well, where is the growth plan and how are we going to actually get this economy back on track and pay the enormous amount of debt that we’ve taken on over the last year? But perhaps that will be for another day and perhaps we’ll hear about that in the Budget—who knows?

And, on that basis, I say: wouldn’t it be wonderful if it was a simple matter and a painless matter of doubling sick leave entitlements? If that was the case, we’d happily vote for it, but we live in a world where there are many businesses, large and small across this country, that we want to succeed and continue to grow and invest. And if this, along with many, many other costs that this Government has added to the business sector, is all taken into account, rather than making it easier for those businesses to thrive and grow and employ—this Government time and time again is making it more difficult for them. And, on that basis, I oppose this bill.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call, after the Hon Paul Goldsmith did paint a rather bleak picture of how businesses are doing in New Zealand. Look, we certainly acknowledge that many businesses have found it difficult during COVID, but the reality is most of the businesses I talk to at the moment are actually doing fairly well. Yes, there are some challenges around accessing labour at times, but most of the businesses have got high levels of demand and they’re doing pretty well, and they’re certainly very grateful to the Government, particularly around the wage subsidy.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this bill at the second reading. This bill increases sick leave to 10 days and, by doing that, supports workers and gives more flexibility to working families, and I’d like to start on that point there. I know we have heard from a few speakers the aspect around the flexibility for families, but just to share my personal story, my wife and I have four children. We didn’t get the memo to stop at two; we sort of carried on. But the memo didn’t—

Nicola Willis: Four’s best—four’s best.

JAMIE STRANGE: I acknowledge a few others here who missed that memo, but back to the bill. So we have four beautiful children. We actually had four under five, and there was a period in our life when things were fairly intense. We, however, were fortunate enough that I was able to work and my wife was able to stay home for around about 10 years and look after the children. So the reality is, when the children were sick—which the reality is, you know; they often are—my wife was able to look after them. But that is not the case for many, many families in New Zealand.

Now, for many families in New Zealand, when the children are sick, they’ve got a very difficult choice to make. The reality is that they can stay home and look after the children, but they can only do that for five days per year, and after that, there are a whole range of contorted outcomes that take place, and they have impact across a wide range of our society.

When the children are over the age of five, it’s the same sort of situation. If the children are sick, one of the parents needs to stay home because the children can’t go to school. But often what is happening is the children are going to school sick, and, as a former schoolteacher, I’ve seen many children in my class coughing all over kids and I know that it’s just going to spread throughout the classroom. So this is a practical piece of legislation and it has a wider impact, rather than just on the person who is sick themselves.

I’d also like to touch on the aspect around businesses, because we have heard from the Opposition that the employers—the Opposition have basically been saying that they think the employees will take advantage of this; so the employees will look to just ramp it right up to 10 days and just try and abuse the system. That is not the example that we’ve seen in other countries who have raised their sick leave up to 10 days, and I don’t believe that this will be the example that we will see here. The reality is most people are good, honest people, and they only take a sick day if they are sick.

For me, myself, I take very few sick days, but I do know that at any point in my life I might come across a situation where I fall upon challenging times and I do need to take sick days. I probably have taken those “concrete pills” that we’ve heard about from previous speakers, and I have gone to work sick most times, and if I tease out why that is, it probably comes from my childhood and it probably comes from, as well—as we’ve heard from previous speakers—not letting the employer down. But when going to work sick, you are not supporting your employer—you are not helping your employer—and that argument has certainly been made.

So we’ve heard some very strong arguments from this side of the House across a range of areas, but I’d particularly like to just highlight those two aspects around the children and around the fact that if you do go to work sick, you’re actually hurting your business and your employer. This side of the House certainly commends this bill to the House. Thank you.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Holidays (Increasing Sick Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Financial Market Infrastructures Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 4 May.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Last time the debate was interrupted on the third reading of this bill, Greg O’Connor had the call. He has eight minutes and 12 seconds left, if he wishes to take it.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I felt that I was just reaching the crescendo of my speech at the time when the night came to an end, and when one is speaking on something as really intrinsically interesting as the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill, it deserves to be given licence.

Often, when trying to explain what this is, it’s sometimes easier to go into things that it’s not. There will be some around the House who remember when workers were mostly paid in cash—not the type of cashie’s backhander that we talked about, perhaps, today that also help to lubricate our working system, but actually a right to be paid with a payslip. Those were relatively simple days, because you would take that money, take it home, distribute it, and pay many of your bills, and life was done in cash. However, those days are something of the past. As we’ve become more sophisticated in the way we remunerate each other, so we have built this infrastructure around it that we really need to have an intrinsic trust in, and this bill is about that. It’s about ensuring that the plumbing of the whole financial system is robust and is trustworthy, and it won’t fall over.

I suppose, again, a better way to look at it would be—again, people will be aware of blockchain and bitcoin and the advent of that. Well, again, that’s a new system of payment that doesn’t have any of these safeguards in it, and the world is watching—I mean, I see, tentatively, many of the managed funds are now starting to dip their toes in the water and buy them. But this is a system that everyone’s very wary of, because it doesn’t have the sort of safeguards that this Financial Market Infrastructures Bill has, and the financial market infrastructures themselves exist to give that trust in the system. Every so often, we see the price of bitcoin heading up around that NZ$100,000 per bitcoin. It will get there very shortly, those speculating—although every so often it drops away and no one really knows why. In fact, I was just reading an article recently that nobody actually really knows who started this thing. So we don’t really know.

But when and if it does—and there’s a possibility it may become the currency of the future. Who knows? But if it does, to have the trust that countries will be able to have confidence in to start moving the money around the globe, there will need to be a financial market infrastructures bill like this, because what this bill is doing is actually putting us in line with other international markets so that when we go off to our EFTPOS machine or when we settle a mortgage tomorrow, or on the Friday, which is the traditional settlement day for mortgages—many will be settling this Friday. It’s a matter that the lawyers have got to have confidence in, and the agents, the vendors, and the buyers have all got to have confidence that when they sign that bit of paper, all this money that’s going to shoot around the globe—it may be international. It could be someone in Scotland buying a house in Wadestown and competing with me, and I hope the British pound weakens so he doesn’t have the ability to do so.

But this is what I’d tell anyone who’s wondering why anyone can get excited about this, because when you look at it, you can see that it’s so important a part of our lives. So I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House. It’s in its final reading. I’ve been privileged enough to be working my way through the system, through from first reading right through to where we are today, and through the select committee system as well. So, through that, I’ve been able to develop a little bit of understanding of this. If I can understand it, probably most people can, if they take the time. So, again, I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s often said that in financial services, regulation follows innovation, and there have been extraordinary amounts of innovation in the financial services and financial markets sector over the course of the last few years—things like trading, clearing, settlement services, reporting services for payments, securities, derivatives, and so on. It’s an incredibly fast-moving area. If these services take hold, which is starting to happen in Aotearoa New Zealand, that provides huge opportunity, competition to banks, new levels of financial services, and secondary and tertiary products and industries that can trail off the back of it. But it is one of those things where in the absence of an effective regulatory regime, that actually tends to dampen innovation, because there’s a level of uncertainty about the operating environment for those services. This is particularly true in financial services.

So this is an area in New Zealand which has had a very light level of regulation, and obviously the regulation is also old, and because the innovation is moving so quickly, it needs to be updated. So, on that basis, this is a very good bill. It’s a timely bill, and it’s an important part of the regulatory infrastructure to support the financial markets infrastructure that the bill is intended to address.

I wanted to say that I think it’s had a good process, this particular bill. There was an exposure draft in advance of the bill coming into the House. It attracted very little public comment, which shows that it’s not terribly controversial. It’s had support throughout its process, and so I think we’re probably at the point where we can say we’ve done our job and been thorough about it.

I do want to say that I think the intention of the bill is important. That is to protect New Zealand’s financial markets and the participants in it from significant damage, to increase fairness, to increase transparency, and to ensure that good practices are followed in the financial services sector, all of which are consistent with the principles that my party puts forward when it comes to monetary policy or financial services policy as well. So, on that basis, we support this bill and we’re looking forward to its passage into regulation.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to support the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill. As previous members have stated, this is a fairly technical bill but important to the healthy functioning of New Zealand’s economy. The proposed regulatory framework allows our exporters to trade with certainty and to manage their risk. It is incredibly important to the financial security of New Zealand, as was painfully evident in the global financial crisis.

Generally speaking, ACT typically does not support additional regulation with great enthusiasm; however, we also feel that fixing a potential market failure is perfectly justifiable and reasonable. We favour an efficient financial system in New Zealand, particularly in times of crisis. This bill provides a regulatory framework to insulate financial markets during periods when the markets can become illiquid and it’s difficult for trades to occur. This bill will assist in providing certainty in such times.

When I lived in London in 2007, just as the global financial crisis was unravelling, I saw the significant impact on financial markets, the economy, people’s businesses, and, not least of all, the devastating human cost, including on my own family. So anything we can do to insulate ourselves when such global events crop up is a good thing. We have recently seen issues such as the trading of game stock shares on novel electronic platforms, where investors were exposed to significant losses because of the lack of liquidity in those platforms. We’ve also witnessed a similar series of events with the volatility in the movements of cryptocurrencies. This bill could reduce the impact of these events on New Zealand investors.

ACT also favours this bill because it is largely an opt-in system for non-designated financial market infrastructures; however, it is prudent that institutions deemed too big to fail are also mandated to be part of this regime. ACT supports the quest for a more efficient and stable financial system. Supporting this bill would reflect a long consultation period, which has been conducted across the world by organisations such as the International Monetary Fund, and will ensure consistency with our trading partners. I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Madam Speaker, thank you very much. It’s a privilege to take a call on the third reading of the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill. It’s been a long time coming to get to this point where we’re in now at the third reading—eight years, actually; eight years of policy development, consultation—and to the point where we’ve finally got to a bill that is so important, because everybody in this House today, I am pretty sure, has used their EFTPOS cards. An FMI, or a financial market infrastructure, is the payment system that underpins an electronic funds transfer at position of sale. So to anybody who’s used an EFTPOS card, this bill is increasingly incredibly important to you.

The bill, as previous speakers have said, provides a regulatory regime for FMIs, and, for someone like Aotearoa, who uses EFTPOS—we’re one of the highest users in the world. For example, Payments NZ, in 2019, cleared $6.9 trillion through their FMIs, with the FMIs being settlement before interchange or high value clearing systems.

An FMI, as the Minister of Finance in the second reading—he likened it to a plumbing system. You know, it’s just like a plumbing system in a home, and if you’ve got plenty of children there, you know how important the plumbing system is.

So when you’re an in-house lawyer or you’re a lawyer and you’re doing submissions for court, one of the really important things is, for a piece of policy that’s taken eight years to develop, in order to help do your submissions to court, you need to track through the Hansard and track through how you got through to the policy development. So I just want to quickly touch on the history of this bill to help that future in-house lawyer, or that lawyer in the future from the Reserve Bank or Treasury, who needs to look back into how we got to this position today.

So in March 2013—as I’ve said, this has taken eight years—the Reserve Bank began its first round of consultation by releasing a proposed new regulatory regime. Then, in April 2015—two years later—they then did another round of consultation, and they released a consultation paper to modify the existing statutory framework. Then, in March 2016, the Reserve Bank issued another consultation paper, and that was around the proposed crisis management powers which are covered within this bill. Then, in August 2019, the Reserve Bank published the exposure draft, which previous speakers have spoken to. In that exposure draft, it also had a covering note which now led to what is the regulatory regime, which is in here. Then, finally, in December 2019, we have the bill that is before us today, that was introduced with the first reading on 12 February 2020, the second reading was on 16 March, and then the committee stage was here in 2021.

So I want to commend the Minister, the Reserve Bank officials, and Treasury officials for the robust, sound, and well-analysed bill that we have before us today. Good things take time. This bill has taken time, so I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): That’s OK—I won’t be needing the five minutes, Madam Speaker. In my second reading contribution on the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill, I think it’s fair to say it’s probably one of the least esteemed speeches of my political career, where I admitted to nearly no technical expertise in the areas which this bill seeks to improve. But I was fortunate enough to hear from a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who said this about the bill: he said, “It’s a good bill. We need a good credit card system. Goodness knows where we would be if that system collapsed. My Uber Eats might not get delivered.” That happened to come from Dr Duncan Webb, chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, in a weak moment.

But he actually had a point, flippant though it was, which was underscored, I think, by Dr McDowall’s and Ms Edmonds’ contributions around the importance of what Barbara Edmonds calls “the plumbing” and what the Minister referred to in his speech as “the important electronic movement of currency through our financial system”.

Actually, James McDowall talked about cryptocurrency, and I think one of the things that we can say about a modern financial system is how incredibly quickly things change. My first job after school, actually, was in the National Bank, stamping cheques and folding bank statements, and that was before the first ATM was introduced into New Zealand in about 1983 or 1984, but we are fast adaptors. We are fast takers-up of technology. EFTPOS is another very good example of the way in which our financial systems have changed over the years.

Indeed, we’re now at the point where cheques are not being issued by banks any more. Very little cash, comparatively speaking—certainly in most parts of the economy—is being used now, so electronic transactions are literally the circulatory system of our economy and our financial system. Therefore, it is important that the regulatory framework continues to keep up with those fast-paced changes.

But it’s also fair to say that for many people, including myself, the technical aspects of this bill have been somewhat beyond even a chartered accountant and lapsed banker. The importance, then, of officials who are advising the committee and able to articulate to the previous Parliament’s committee in plain English the very, very complex technical aspects of this is absolutely vital, and I think it speaks to the quality of the public sector that we have in this country that we are able to rely on them to the degree that we have. So I want to commend them, together with the submitters who have also helped us make improvements to the bill.

We’ve got some others. We’re already doing the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill, which is before the select committee, which I—I’m pleased to say—know a lot more about and understand even better. It is, nevertheless, still being supported by those submitters and our officials. So I want to commend them and thank them, and I commend the bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and good evening to you and everyone in the House. Tonight, I’m rising in support of the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill, a bill that establishes a new regulatory regime for the regulation and oversight of the financial markets infrastructure.

I take my two points from previous speakers tonight: first from my colleague Barbara Edmonds and the acknowledgment of a very practical part of our day-to-day lives, an EFTPOS card. I think back to the past 12 to 18 months and the life of COVID-19, and we think to our small businesses across Auckland and across New Zealand, who have had to pivot and adjust and adapt their business models to work within our new world and keep afloat, essentially. And at the other end, our customers have had to change what they purchased and adapt to those evolving markets too, not only because they’re consumers but also because they want to support local business, and that was something special of that last 12 months throughout COVID-19.

But what this bill does, essentially, is it upgrades, I guess, the plumbing—we’ve called it this evening.

Barbara Edmonds: It’s necessary.

SHANAN HALBERT: It is necessary now. What we experience is that we have financial infrastructure systems, regulatory systems, that are incredibly out of date. It’s important as we rebuild our economy post - COVID-19 that we support our local businesses, that as consumers we go out and buy the things that we want to, that it’s as easy as possible, for all involved it’s as simple as possible. On that basis, I would like to commend this bill to the House. Tēnā koe.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise for the first time on this bill, in contrast to many of the others who have spoken before me. In doing so, I reflect on my colleague and deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Barbara Edmonds, who, in speaking on this bill in an earlier reading, talked of her past experience as a policy official and about the fundamentals of policy coming back to three very basic questions: what is the problem you are trying to fix, what are the options to fix the problem that you’re trying to fix, and what are the next steps? Tonight, we are at the very final step in this process: the third reading of the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill.

As we commend this legislation wholeheartedly, and across the political divide, to the House, and as I look back on the speeches by other members—some who will have, by the end of this, spoken three times and participated in the second reading and in committee stages, including my friend Greg O’Connor. He enjoyed saying, with a lot of enthusiasm, that there are several common themes that have come through on this piece of legislation. First is that the Financial Market Infrastructures Bill is very timely. The second is that everyone agrees that it’s a very technical bill and an important bill. And thirdly, in agreeing, everyone is also supporting this bill across the House.

I’ve had to quickly come up to speed with this bill, which seeks to establish a new regulatory framework for financial market infrastructures—that’s FMIs—along with providing certain FMIs with more legal protections and also the enforcement of these rules. The bill makes sure that the Reserve Bank and the Financial Markets Authority, which are the agencies who have the role and the functions of the regulator in the bill, are both given the authority to do the work and given the powers they need to undertake the work. It is a regime based on a framework which also provides the flexibility to allow these regulators to do their job underneath it.

Throughout the debate, we’ve heard that the bill is very important, as it’s intended to bring New Zealand’s regulatory framework for FMIs in line with what is best international practice. While I’m new to speaking on this bill, I’d like to acknowledge the select committee for their work in the previous term, officials from the Reserve Bank, and the 10 submitters who took their time to submit on the bill. This bill has been very well consulted on, resulting in the select committee considering and making several amendments to the bill. Those amendments have all been adopted by the House. These include adding a new principal regulator, adding a new streamlined process for transitioning settlement systems, and a variety of other changes, both technical and detailed, designed to support the operation of the new regulatory framework.

Another common theme that has appeared through the debate is to provide some more understanding around the technical nature of the bill in everyday language. Far too often when discussing technical, sophisticated financial information, rules, and regulations, we can turn people off. So I enjoyed the advice that my colleague Greg O’Connor shared with us, which he had received, about not getting too overwrought when confronted with a lot of financial papers in front of you; simply just break them down in a way that people will understand. What we’re really talking about is simply a bill that keeps the whole financial system moving, often referred to as, as we’ve heard, the plumbing.

We know that with all infrastructure, we have to get the systems right to operate effectively and efficiently. While the operational role of FMIs is often taken for granted on a day-to-day basis, they are critical to ensuring the financial system keeps working in a sound and efficient manner. If they break down, this can have a very serious impact on the operation of our financial system and the day-to-day ability for the business and consumers to buy and sell products. We have come a long way and we have done so well to get this bill to where it needs to be. I am very proud to speak on this final reading and commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): In rising to offer the final contribution in this debate, I’m reminded of that reality, which is that we politicians in this House do an important job but we would be absolutely nowhere without the highly informed and educated officials and public servants behind us who do much of the detailed, difficult work on bills like this and do so with a level of expertise that is, as I think it is fair to say, and with all due respect to all of my colleagues, to a level that is beyond the comprehension of anyone who’s contributed to this debate.

Because we do have in front of us a very complex piece of legislation that relates to an area of law that is acknowledged by all members as fundamentally important, yet is difficult to understand and opaque to most of us. But what it is is the regulatory regime for financial market infrastructure. And what we know here is that getting the regulation right in this area is vitally important. It’s not just Duncan Webb’s Uber Eats that is at stake. It is the very health of our economy. It is the wages entering the bank accounts. It is financial transactions being able to take place. It is the water running through the pipes.

So it’s vitally important. And, as with any regulatory regime, it is important that it keeps pace with technology and the reality of how our money systems have evolved over time. In this area, as in so many other areas of regulation, New Zealand needs to strive to keep up with best practice, to allow for innovation but also to protect from risk. In this area we are doing a bit of catch up with the rest of the world. In doing that catch up, as contributions throughout this debate have acknowledged, we do need to note that we are interdependent here. We can regulate our own financial system in our little corner of the world as well as we like but we are ultimately very dependent on what is happening elsewhere in the world, and there are various aspects of this regime that highlight that reality. I do think that it’s important that we note this for the House.

So National rises to support this bill. We commend the officials and the experts behind the scenes who have put the effort into producing this bill, who understand it better than all of the politicians here tonight. It’s an important piece of catch up. It’s an important piece of regulatory work. I commend this bill to the House.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill, and it’s actually a pleasure just to speak on something where, in fact, all the parties agree. It’s a really nice way to end our evening—that we will be doing that. This is a piece of legislation that I have had the delight of watching, for example, Andrew Bayly talk about with a degree of glee because he got to talk about derivatives, and I think, while we glazed over, he was in utter delight at being able to do that. It reminded me, in fact, of when I asked a friend who was really into cricket to explain leg before wicket, and it was quite some time before we came up for air, and I still don’t understand leg before wicket.

This piece of legislation is one that is actually quite a simple and practical piece of legislation, and I like that. So, rather than talk about it being technical, I think I’ll talk about why it isn’t. It’s a very sensible, common-sense approach. What they have done in this legislation is they’ve put together something where there is actually a real focus on the key instruments that, if they went down, it would be a calamity for us all. So there’s a real focus on those. There’s a real support of those instruments so that they will actually provide appropriate information, so that they will have contingency plans if something goes wrong. That’s one of the really sensible things that, really, it’s crazy we’ve lived without. Obviously, a lot of these institutions would have had those kinds of contingency plans. Now they’ll be required to provide them and make sure that they are really up to scratch.

If the key infrastructure is not providing the kind of information that’s good enough, then there will be the capacity to intervene, and there will even be the capacity to penalise. There’s also the capacity for an instrument that isn’t a key piece of infrastructure to actually opt into this piece of legislation, and that, I think, is a really interesting thing. When you start to build a structure and you start to see people opt in because they would rather be in the safe regime that is present and everybody works within those parameters, that seems to me a very, very useful part of the structure.

It is true that these pieces of infrastructure are things that people find it hard to understand are even there. We have used the example repeatedly of EFTPOS, and EFTPOS is the one that we understand. But there are so many parts of the infrastructure that we’re vulnerable to because we don’t understand, and it’s very, very nice to know that somebody who understands a derivative will be looking at this and will be making sure that those parts of the structure that, actually, we rely on, like clearinghouses, like netting—these kinds of things—will be in the hands of people who understand them. They will be watchful and we will not be as insecure as perhaps we have been in the past as these things have developed.

So this is a piece of legislation that I am not at all surprised that we all agree on, because it is the stuff that will make New Zealanders safer and New Zealand more secure, and it will actually provide a lot of resilience in itself to our economy. It is very, very good that we are all able to see that and that we have managed to put together a piece of legislation that has that kind of consensus across the House. I wasn’t on the select committee when this this happened, and so I’d just like to thank those who have done the hard work. It has clearly been hard work. I thank the submitters, who really have, no doubt, really thought about these things and, obviously, have a lot of information that has been made available. They’ve done a lot of hard work, and that work was adopted in the process. So it wasn’t a waste. It’s a good example of how expert submitters produce really good results through a process that I have come to really admire in terms of its capacity to bring those submitters into the system.

So, without saying any more, I think it’s really something that I would like to say thank you to everybody involved. I’d like to thank the Opposition for all supporting this. I’d like to thank my colleagues for doing the hard work. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.