Thursday, 6 May 2021

THURSDAY, 6 MAY 2021

THURSDAY, 6 MAY 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m taking a point of order in order for the Leader of the House to arrive, to be able to speak forthwith.

SPEAKER: The Hon—I was going to say “the Late Hon”—Chris Hipkins.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The annual review debate will conclude on Tuesday, 11 May. Wednesday, 12 May will be a members’ day. On Thursday, 13 May, there will be a debate on petitions on COVID-19 immigration and border policies. Other legislation to be considered will include the second reading of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) and the first reading of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Legislation Bill, which will be debated alongside the select committee report on the associated international treaty examination.

SPEAKER: I just say to the member, who’s out of breath after such a short run, that he should ride in from Upper Hutt more often!

CHRIS BISHOP (National): He should come and do the Lower Hutt park run. To the Leader of the House, can I ask the Government when they intend to respond to the Auditor-General’s advice or instruction regarding the Ihumātao land appropriation?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): My understanding, having just taken some rapid advice, is that that’s part of the normal validation process.

SPEAKER: As a former Associate Minister of Finance who knows a bit about cleaning up messes that have been left behind, generally I had to deal with seven or eight every year—and that’s in a good year—and there is a process.

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

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

SPEAKER: No petitions or papers have been presented. No bills have been introduced. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Health Committee on the petition of Eva Chen

report of the Regulations Review Committee on the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border and Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order 2021;

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021.

SPEAKER: The reports of the Regulations Review Committee are set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) on behalf of ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Our economic recovery in New Zealand is being supported by a number of sectors, including strong activity in the construction industry, and I have record-breaking news to share with the House. Today, Statistics New Zealand announced that building consents for new homes hit a record high of 41,028 in the year to March 2021. This overtook the previous record high set in 1974. The House might also like to know that building consents for new homes in the year to March 2021 were up 34 percent, or by more than 10,000, compared with 2017. A range of measures introduced by this Government to increase the supply of new housing has helped create this situation, including our record State house building programme, investment in trade training and apprenticeship schemes, and the general confidence created by the Government’s infrastructure investment plans.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reactions has he seen to this positive economic report?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Westpac’s economists were particularly aware of this. They said, “Today’s results support our expectations for very strong home building over the remainder of 2021 and extending into 2022.” They also noted that the record-breaking house building consenting we are seeing, along with reduced inward migration, means that the housing shortages that have built up in recent years are rapidly being eroded. Westpac’s economists also said, “Non-residential building consents were starting to increase again as the economy recovers from the effects of COVID, with storage and industrial construction segment showing very firm numbers.”

Dr Duncan Webb: What other reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Today, the Crown financial statements for the nine months to March were published by the Treasury. They showed that the operating balance before gains and losses (OBEGAL), and net debt, were in a better position than had been forecast at the half-year update, reflecting the resilience of the economy and confidence in the Government’s recovery plan. This resilience will continue to be tested. The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in India is a painful reminder that we are still in a volatile and uncertain global economic environment. While the results in the Crown financial statements are strong, we do need to remember that we are facing elevated levels of debt and OBEGAL deficits for some years to come as a result of the borrowing needed to support New Zealanders through COVID-19. Budget 2021 will reflect the economic conditions and revenue situation and take a balanced approach that continues to emphasise spending to areas and people where it is needed most, alongside careful fiscal management.

Question No. 2—Health

2. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by all of his statements and actions in relation to a Māori Health Authority?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yes, and I especially stand by my statement that the health system “must work in true partnership with Māori to improve services and achieve equitable health outcomes.”

Dr Shane Reti: When he said this week that he couldn’t envisage a time when the Māori Health Authority veto could be used, will he then remove it?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The way the Māori Health Authority and Health New Zealand—and, indeed, the whole of the health system—will operate under the reformed system is that agreement will be required between the various moving parts. The Māori Health Authority will have the power to make its own commissioning decisions, and it will have the right to have a say on, and reach agreement with Health NZ and the Ministry of Health on, a New Zealand health plan. In the same way that the Māori Health Authority will be free to withhold its agreement if it’s not happy with it, so will Health NZ, and, actually, what will happen is everybody will reach agreement, because everybody shares the same objective, and that is a healthy New Zealand.

Dr Shane Reti: When he said this week that the health reforms in a Māori Health Authority address two things—health inequity and Treaty obligations—why is health need not on that list?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I thought it was self-evident that when we talk about health equity and the parlous situation facing Māori compared to many other New Zealanders, actually, that is about health need. It has to improve, and it will improve way better under the new system.

Dr Shane Reti: Will Health New Zealand have any accountability for worsening Māori health outcomes if decisions for those outcomes were made by the Māori Health Authority?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Ultimate accountability for the performance of the health system will be the responsibility of the Minister of Health, supported by the Ministry of Health, who will have the oversight and monitoring role for the entire health system. But both the Māori Health Authority and Health NZ will have accountabilities to ensure that their use of public funds is meeting the objectives set for each of them.

Dr Shane Reti: Will Ngāpuhi be on the board of the Māori Health Authority, given they are the largest iwi; if not, why not?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The way the Māori Health Authority is being established is with Māori. We have identified a leading health expert in New Zealand to lead the establishment of the Māori Health Authority. Their responsibility will be to assemble a team who will engage with Māori, te ao Māori, putting together the way Māori wants the Māori Health Authority to assemble its governance and put the functions of the authority together.

Rawiri Waititi: What is the Minister’s working definition of “commissioning” as it applies to their plan for the Māori Health Authority?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I thank the member for the question, and that’s an interesting question. When I use the term “commissioning”, it is a very broad term, but it is about a decision to fund and support specified services. As I have said in other forums, my expectation is that, both for Health NZ and for the Māori Health Authority, over time the way commissioning happens will evolve, because we know the discourse from all quarters is that health is no longer just a clinical issue; it is about the determinants of health, and we need our various health bodies to be engaged in all those things that affect people’s health.

Question No. 3—Research, Science and Innovation

HELEN WHITE (Labour): My question is to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation, the Hon Megan Woods.

SPEAKER: Order! The last bit is not necessary. We only have one and she’s here. Just the Minister’s name—go with the question now.

3. HELEN WHITE (Labour) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What recent announcements has she made about New Zealand’s first Government-funded space mission?

SPEAKER: The Hon Dr Megan Woods—see: that’s my line!

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I recently announced that the Auckland University’s Te Pūnaha Ātea - Auckland Space Institute will host mission control for New Zealand’s first Government-funded space mission, MethaneSAT. MethaneSAT is a state-of-the-art satellite designed to detect global methane emissions with unprecedented accuracy, producing invaluable data to inform our climate policy work. Our $26 million investment in the mission will accelerate our capability in our rapidly growing space sector, provide high-value jobs, and establish valuable global research links at the frontier of research and innovation. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Hey, can we have the cadets settle down a bit?

Helen White: How will this mission establish global research links for New Zealand researchers and innovators?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The mission will provide our researchers and innovators the opportunity to showcase their ability on the world stage, working alongside the Environmental Defense Fund, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian observatory. As a result of the investment and involvement with the MethaneSAT mission, New Zealand also stands to benefit through hosting future space missions and take a greater share of the US$350 billion global space industry.

Helen White: How does the mission support research into climate change?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: MethaneSAT will be able to monitor and evaluate methane emissions across the globe, and a New Zealand - based science team will use the satellite’s data to better understand these emissions through the use of remote sensing technologies. The research will contribute to a greater understanding of climate change and the way in which we can manage its impacts.

Question No. 4—Broadcasting and Media

4. MELISSA LEE (National) to the Minister for Broadcasting and Media: What measures, if any, is he taking to ensure the $55 million allocated to NZ On Air’s Public Interest Journalism Fund will not lead to political bias?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister for Broadcasting and Media): As has been the practice for decades, any funding for broadcasters or media organisations goes through New Zealand On Air, and the Public Interest Journalism Fund is no different. The Broadcasting Act states that in respect of New Zealand On Air, no responsible Minister or any other Minister or anyone acting on their behalf may give a direction in respect of any programme or content for the gathering, preparation, or presentation of any current affairs programme or content. And this legislation delivers a well-established, tried, and tested system that makes sure media content funding decisions are free from political influence.

Melissa Lee: Why does he believe the fund has included—and I quote—“Political matters”—unquote—as stated in the Public Interest Journalism Fund general guidelines dated 30 April 2021 as a focus area for Māori journalism but specifically prohibited national political coverage for funding of non-Māori journalism?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Because I believe those audiences might find those issues of interest.

Melissa Lee: Does he agree with New Zealand On Air that—and I quote—“Māori and iwi journalism and reporting is innately political in nature.”; if so, what does that mean?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Those statements are for New Zealand On Air to make. They are an independent Crown funding agency and they make decisions as to how they frame the perimeters of that funding.

Melissa Lee: Does the Minister agree with New Zealand On Air that the funding of such reporting is—and I quote—“integral to the protection of te ao Māori under article 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, as New Zealand On Air states?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I would reiterate the comments that I made in the previous answer.

Melissa Lee: Why has the Minister failed to allow for similar support for public interest journalism funding in other ethnic media communities that may consider their community “innately political in nature”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Because, as the member will know, there is a plethora of funding available to those ethnic media other than the Public Interest Journalism Fund. New Zealand On Air for decades has funded journalism content—the likes of Q+A, The Nation, Tagata Pasifika, and shows like Asia Downunder in the past have received funding from New Zealand On Air.

Question No. 5—Education

5. SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote) to the Minister of Education: What reports has he seen about enrolments in tertiary education and training?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Some good news: I’m pleased to report that the number of apprentices continues to grow, with people from across the community signing up for careers in the trades. The Government has backed trades with investment in free trades training and is supporting employers to continue to have apprentices through the Apprenticeship Boost scheme. That investment is paying off, with double-digit growth in apprentice numbers during 2020, despite the impacts of COVID-19. Tertiary Education Commission data for enrolments in tertiary and vocational study as at December shows that the number of apprentices increased by 17.6 percent compared to December 2019.

Shanan Halbert: Is this growth representative of the diversity of workforce?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes. This is another piece of good news. We’re seeing people taking the opportunity to become apprentices, no matter what their age, gender, and ethnicity. Apprenticeships are traditionally seen as something you do out of school, but with free trades training, we’re seeing a big jump, nearly 20 percent, in workers aged from 25 to 39—they’re taking up the opportunity for a career change—and more than 1,500 additional apprentices are over the age of 40. The number of Māori and Pacific apprentices grew by nearly 30 percent last year, which of course will benefit the economic development of their communities for years to come. The percentage of women in apprenticeships has grown nearly twice as much as the number of males in apprenticeships has grown. That, again, is good news.

Shanan Halbert: What reports has he seen about enrolments in provider-based tertiary education training?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We’re also seeing very strong signs of continued growth in domestic tertiary education institutions. Indicative March data shows that the number of domestic students increased by 12 percent, compared to about 1 percent for each of the previous three years and repeated decreases in full-year enrolment data in the years before that. The growth in 2021 is more pronounced amongst older people, with building courses and teacher training standing out for particularly strong growth. It’s quite rare to see growth in both the on-the-job training and the off-the-job training sectors at the same time. Typically, we see either one or the other going up or down, depending on the strength of the economy. This is one of the goals of the reforms of vocational education, so it’s an encouraging sign that the reforms are working.

Question No. 6—Foreign Affairs

6. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: What communications, if any, has she or her officials had with representatives of the Chinese Government regarding the term “genocide” in relation to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister) on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: It should come as no surprise to the member that Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade officials have engaged with representatives of the Chinese Government regarding the grave human rights situation in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I have made it clear that we continue to raise these concerns directly with China at all levels. For example, New Zealand joined a statement alongside 38 other countries, expressing our concerns about the human rights situations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong at the United Nations in New York. Given there has been a concern for a number of years about human rights violations, it is only right that we would be engaging in urging China to allow unfettered access to Xinjiang for independent international observers, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I have had no direct communications with the Chinese Government regarding the term “genocide”. With respect to officials, it is not possible to go through years of communications with Chinese representatives to see if the word “genocide” was mentioned. What is important, though, is to reiterate that the New Zealand Government has publicly stated its grave concerns at the growing number of credible reports of severe human rights abuses taking place in the region, and we will continue to do so.

Brooke van Velden: What communication, if any, did the Minister or her officials have on the wording of the original motion in my name with representatives of the Government of China?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, as I stated in the first answer, the Minister herself has not had any direct communications.

Brooke van Velden: What involvement, if any, did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade have in advising on alternate wording for a parliamentary motion on the events occurring in Xinjiang?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister: the Minister, as a member of the Labour Party, discussed the member’s original motion. The concern about the word “genocide” relates to the fact that the concept of genocide is an international law concept. It’s one that requires significant investigation. New Zealand very rarely uses it, and so, therefore, the discussion about the use of the word “genocide” relates specifically to that. As the member is well aware, the wording was agreed by the Business Committee of Parliament.

Brooke van Velden: Which members of Parliament, if any, did her office or officials communicate with relating to alternate wording to the original motion acknowledging the genocide in Xinjiang?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, I talked with my caucus colleagues, as the member would expect. What is good here is that the New Zealand Parliament was able to agree a motion, unlike many other Parliaments around the world. I thank the member for introducing that motion and I thank all members of the House for coming together to express our concerns about the credible reports of grave human rights abuses.

Brooke van Velden: Does she still stand by her statement regarding human rights abuses in Xinjiang that “There is clear evidence of severe human rights abuses that include restrictions on freedom of religion, mass surveillance, large-scale extra-judicial detention, as well as forced labour and forced birth control, including sterilisation”, and, if so, what further evidence would she need for her to recognise the situation as a genocide?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: On behalf of the Minister, I stand by all the statements I have made on this matter.

Question No. 7—Education

7. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Education: Does he stand by all his policies and actions in education?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How can he stand by those actions and policies when there are only around 60 percent of kids attending school regularly?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I stand by them because this Government is absolutely committed to ensuring that kids get the educational opportunities that they deserve. We did inherit a downward trend in student attendance. COVID-19 last year, 2020, did exacerbate that. The figure that the member particularly quoted was the term 4 figure last year. The biggest contributor to the increase in term 4 non-attendance last year was justified absence due to illness. Families were taking heed of the Government’s request to keep their kids home if they were sick.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Is he suggesting that the low levels of school attendance is not an issue that his Government should be absolutely focused on?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No, absolutely not. In fact, we think we can do significantly better, and we are committed to doing that.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Why has he, then, prioritised waiving NCEA exam fees for wealthy families over properly resourcing workers to knock on doors and make sure that kids that are missing out on their education get to school?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the member’s question probably indicates why the last National Government started the downward trend in student attendance. Socioeconomics does play a significant role in student attendance. And in areas we have put extra funding into—for example, removing fees for NCEA, providing food in schools—we have seen attendance start to improve. Socioeconomics plays a role in student engagement.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: So why, then, is he prioritising free fees at university for wealthy families while we simply don’t have the people to knock on the doors to ensure that kids who are missing out on their education get to school?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think the member’s clearly lost sight of the aspiration the National Party used to stand for. In fact, many of those kids in school aspire to go to university.

Question No. 8—Arts, Culture and Heritage

8. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage: What steps has she taken to support positive outcomes for New Zealand music?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): Happy New Zealand Music Month. In addition to the annual funding we provide to support New Zealand music, we’ve provided $16.6 million through the New Zealand Music Recovery Fund.

Hon Simon Bridges: Give it some melody!

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Interrupting my flow.

SPEAKER: Yes. Yeah, I know who it was; I’m just getting him to be quiet.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Thank you. Happy New Zealand Music Month—take two. In addition to the annual funding we provide to support New Zealand music, we’ve provided $16.6 million through the New Zealand Music Recovery Fund. I’ve been working, and will continue to work, with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to ensure this funding reaches people and organisations and provides the short-term relief and longer-term support that the sector needs to survive, adapt, and thrive.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What positive outcomes have been achieved?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: I’m pleased to advise that the New Zealand Music Recovery Fund has supported 85 music venues across 26 towns and cities to host concerts and events; 136 musicians and businesses to access funding through the Outward Sound Make Good Fund, New Zealand Music Month Make Good Fund, and the Aotearoa Touring Programme; and 309 grants totalling $2.4 million for artists to produce new music through the New Zealand music programme. I’m pleased that Government funding has reinvigorated the live music industry, supported the creation of New Zealand music, and has allowed musicians and music businesses to recoup some of the revenue lost due to COVID-19.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What updates has she seen on how much local music is being played?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: New Zealand Music Month reminds us to celebrate our local musicians and industry and the great strides they are making. I’m pleased to advise that last year New Zealand music made up almost 21 percent of content on commercial radio, which is a new annual record. Our New Zealand musicians are touring again, and they are smashing it. Six60 sold out to 50,000 people at Eden Park and were screened internationally with a reported audience of over 10 million people. It is important to note we are one of the only nations where 50,000 people can come together and celebrate safely. Aotearoa truly is a slice of heaven.

Question No. 9—Public Service

9. Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa) to the Minister for the Public Service: Why has he frozen some Public Service workers’ pay for the next three years?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for the Public Service): I reject the premise of the member’s question. Yesterday, the Public Service Commissioner issued new pay guidance to Public Service agencies. Essentially, the guidance sets out the expectation that Public Service chief executives would hold pay for higher earners and senior leaders, the default position being no increases for those paid over $100,000; beyond legal obligations ensure that a minimum pay rate provides a livable wage; further to this, provide modest pay increases for staff roles paid below $60,000; apply increases that are contractually required by existing settled agreements; and continue to fund implementation plans to close gender and ethnic pay gaps. For those earning between $60,000 and $100,000, pay adjustments may be considered, in restricted circumstances, against the criteria set in the guidance and it will require the approval of the commission. We want to focus on those on lower wages and make sure that they are the focus of increases in pay.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How has hiring 10,000 additional bureaucrats over the last three years, at a cost of $1.3 billion per annum, impacted the need for a pay freeze in the Public Service?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Again, I reject the premise of the member’s question, and, in fact, it hasn’t. But I would suggest that when he talks about bureaucrats, he might like to think about who he’s talking about. It could be the thousand extra staff employed by the Ministry of Social Development to provide, among other things, the wage subsidy that kept hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders in jobs. It could be the extra 500-plus staff employed by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to protect our border against COVID-19. It could be the more than 300 extra staff employed by the Ministry for Primary Industries to deal with Mycoplasma bovis, which is critical to our primary industries. It could be the extra 600 or so people employed by Oranga Tamariki, the vast majority of whom are social workers working with our most vulnerable children. Those are the sorts of people he’s calling bureaucrats.

Hon Mark Mitchell: So how will those people be affected by the Minister’s policy to apply a pay restraint to them?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: It very much depends on their existing contractual arrangements. Many of the workforces that I just mentioned continue to receive step-based pay progression every year.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Will teachers, nurses, and police officers be affected by this pay freeze?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Teachers, nurses, and police officers all get step-based pay progression, meaning that they will move up a step on their salary scale each year automatically until they reach the top of the salary scale. We are not proposing to change that. In the case of teachers, they have another 3 percent pay increase that was negotiated as part of their last pay round—that is still yet to come into force. Similarly, police also, I believe, have a further increase still to come into effect. And, of course, nurses are in bargaining at the moment.

Hon Mark Mitchell: How many employees will have their pay restrained?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I couldn’t put a specific figure on that, because it will ultimately depend on where they sit on the salary scale—for example, as to whether or not they have further steps on the salary scale, and a lot of public sector employees will.

Question No. 10—Finance

10. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement, “A turn to austerity measures will simply mean it takes longer for us to rebuild society in pursuit of numerical goals that ignore the real world we are living in”; and if so, why is the Government suppressing public sector pay in the name of “taking financial pressure off the public wage bill”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Yes, I do stand by my statement that a turn to austerity measures will simply mean that it takes us longer to rebuild society. I also stand by my statement that our recovery from COVID-19 has to be about getting the balance right. The Government has used its strong balance sheet in response to COVID-19 to support New Zealanders and provide confidence to households and businesses. But we also owe it to future generations to work on reducing the higher levels of debt that we have taken on. In doing so, there are hard choices to be made, and we are focused on investing where it is needed the most. I disagree with the premise in the second part of the member’s question. Our focus in public sector pay is on the lowest income earners, especially the 25 percent of public servants who earn below $60,000. If we want to reduce inequality, that is where our priority should sit when it comes to public sector pay increases. I also note that those between $60,000 and $100,000 in pay can get pay rises under certain criteria.

Jan Logie: Is it possible to prioritise wage increases for the lowest-income earners—as I support—and also allow unsuppressed wage bargaining for teachers, nurses, and border workers, etc.?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the Minister for the Public Service just noted in his last question, when we’re talking particularly about teachers, nurses, police officers, and so on, many of them will be receiving increased wages over the next few years as a result of the steps that they will take on their pay grades. In terms of the first part of the member’s question, I like her support for the idea that it is the lowest-paid people that we need to be lifting the wages of. If we want to reduce inequality, and we are in the environment that we’re in, with the balance that we have to strike, we are focusing on the lowest-paid earners. If, indeed, we are suppressing wages for anybody, it is for those earning more than $100,000.

Jan Logie: Did he ask for any advice or do any modelling on the effect of this wage suppression on public sector capability, churn, retention, or the likely impact on individuals and families paid between $60,000 and $100,000, and, if yes, what did it say?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say in answer to that question is that we seek a range of advice on matters to do with public sector pay. As we looked at the situation that the Government finds itself in, having taken on significant debt, we have made the choice to focus on reducing inequality, and that starts, for us, with the public sector pay by focusing on those who are the lowest-income earners.

Jan Logie: Has he considered the risk that public servants might start moving around agencies, becoming contractors, or leaving the country to try to get a pay rise to keep up with the rising cost of living, and that that might undermine the Government’s work programme.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I would say in answer to that question, firstly, is that public servants do move around a lot within the Public Service, and always have done. But, secondly, I would point to the fact that across the first term that we were in Government, we have seen significant pay increases across the Public Service, including in professions such as the police, nursing, teaching, but also in other parts of Government. So we have a Public Service that works extremely hard, we have a Public Service that we want to continue to support, but in order to get the balance right here, we’re putting our focus on the lowest paid within our Public Service—25 percent of public servants earn less than $60,000. That’s something we should be focusing on doing something about.

Teanau Tuiono: How will he be responding to calls from the early childhood education sector to deal with pay parity within the sector, given the announcement to freeze public sector wages?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As the Minister for the Public Service said during the announcement yesterday, there are certain issues that fall outside this. We will continue work on pay equity, we’ll continue work on pay parity, and we’ll continue work on making sure that those in the public sector workforce such as Māori, Pasifika, and others from ethnic minorities continue to be supported as well—those that sit outside of the pay guidance given yesterday.

Jan Logie: Why is he happy to grow the economy through astronomical levels of housing debt but not through higher wages for our teachers, our nurses, and our core public servants?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I reject the premise of that question.

Jan Logie: Is it a Labour Government value to suppress collective bargaining?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely not. This Government has supported improvements to collective bargaining over the last three years, and continues to do so. We are strong believers in the power of collective bargaining. What we are doing here is making sure that our focus, when we need to get a balance right between reducing the debt that we have taken on and investing where it is needed most, is in the lowest-paid public servants, and we will continue to do that.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Is it a Labour Party value to support those low-paid workers?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely, it is. This Government has committed itself to reducing inequality, and if we are serious about reducing inequality, and we are working within a constrained fiscal environment, then our focus will be on lifting the wages of the lowest-paid people in our economy.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. Mr Speaker, that question was to the Minister of Finance and asked him about his responsibility for the Labour Party values. How can he possibly have responsibility for the values of the Labour Party?

SPEAKER: I should probably have ruled it out or got the member to ask it again. I apologise for being looser today on both sides.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, the point of order is finished.

Question No. 11—Internal Affairs

11. KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: What progress has she seen on the building of fire stations?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): This week, we not only celebrated International Firefighters’ Day but also the substantial progress we’ve made on building fire stations. Firstly, as the Minister responsible for Fire and Emergency New Zealand, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our firefighters and their friends and their whānau who support them for their generous service. I’m also pleased to inform the House that recently I’ve opened six new fire stations, with the building of an additional 16 fire stations currently under way around the country.

Kieran McAnulty: Why has the building of fire stations been progressed earlier than expected?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This work was made possible through the Government’s COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. We allocated more than $50 million to the sector to rebuild or upgrade 26 fire stations, mostly in our rural communities. The member will be pleased to know that the Greytown Fire Station, where I’m told he started as a volunteer, is on that list. Two stations I recently opened in Pōkeno and Kawakawa Bay were the result of this funding and were built to the highest safety standards to ensure they stand strong through any kind of emergency over the next 50 years and beyond.

Kieran McAnulty: Why was an upgrade to fire stations needed?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Fire stations are integral to the safety of our community. Over 14,000 firefighting personnel do an outstanding job. Last year, they responded to over 83,000 incidents, a 4 percent increase on the year before. Firefighting is about so much more than just fighting fires. Our firefighters are there when we need them the most, by responding to a whole range of emergencies in our communities, including motor vehicle accidents, medical emergencies, hazardous substances, severe weather events, and natural disasters.

Question No. 12—Housing (Homelessness)

12. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness): Does she stand by her statement that some children in emergency housing are living in “inhumane conditions … not suitable for any humans but certainly not suitable for young people”; if so, is she satisfied she is adequately exercising her responsibility for oversight of “progress on the support and prevention pillars for individuals, families and whānau experiencing or at risk of homelessness”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Homelessness): Yes, and yes.

Nicola Willis: Does she stand by her statement, “If we’re talking about causing accumulative harm, you know, one of the worst things we can do is have young people in these inhumane and indignified living situations.”; if so, what specific steps has she taken to ensure emergency accommodation is safe for young people?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister, what I do stand by is that I am part of a Government that is finally addressing the crisis we have around homelessness. We have more than doubled the number of transitional and emergency houses. In terms of the specific actions that we are taking, in the coming weeks the one-year updating report on the progress of the roll-out of the Homelessness Action Plan will be released, which shows that all 18 immediate actions of the plan are under way or in place. We are a Government that has finally taken homelessness seriously and put actions in place after inheriting a crisis from the previous Government.

Nicola Willis: How many papers has she taken to Cabinet or Cabinet committee since becoming the Associate Minister of Housing and what were they about?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister, the Cabinet Priorities Committee receives a regular report on this.

Nicola Willis: Does she stand by her statement, “I actually had a really good think about it, and what I am realising and hearing is the increase in unaffordability is probably unprecedented.”, and how does she reconcile that with Minister Williams’ statement yesterday that recent rent increases are “lower than the last few years”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: If you look at the data, you do see that in the 12 months we’ve had to March, we’ve had an annualised rent increase of 1.6 percent. Probably if you removed the period where we had the rent freeze because of the COVID lockdown—that probably is more in line with the 2 percent to 5 percent increase on rents. But I can certainly put that more into context than if I were to think about a quote from a previous Minister who had responsibility for this, when asked about homelessness and would people get a roof over their heads, who said, “Look, I can’t guarantee that.” This came after an announcement of $41 million in the Budget for emergency housing over four years to fund around 3,000 emergency beds over a 12-month period. However, this was to fund already existing beds and the then Minister Paula Bennett said, “It’s just not tenable to deliver those as additional beds.”

Nicola Willis: What specifically has she done to improve the safety of emergency accommodation since I asked about it in Parliament more than six weeks ago, or is her role, as Minister Sepuloni describes it, “She’s out there scoping what’s going on and feeding back and giving insights.”?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister, I reject the premise of the member’s question.

Hon Grant Robertson: Which approach does the Minister prefer: providing emergency accommodation through the system the Government has at the moment or leaving people to be homeless, as the previous Government would have preferred it? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Nicola Willis: Why has the most recent progress report on the Homelessness Action Plan not been publicly released despite her being briefed about it weeks ago, on 26 March?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Associate Minister, as I said in reply to an earlier supplementary, in the coming weeks that one-year progress report will be released.

Bills

Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): I present a legislative statement on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill.

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

Before I call the Minister, I’m going to indicate that I’m going to be in the Chair for a period this afternoon and we are going to test the purposes of these legislative statements, and I’m going to be very tight on members not reading their speeches.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I move, That the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill is being passed on 6 May because the legislation that it replaces or updates will extinguish on 15 May. There were two contentious issues that came out of the second reading, the committee stage, and the select committee stage of this piece of legislation that were raised by the Opposition, and I want to again address those to make it clear as to why it is necessary to extend this bill by two years and also make the other changes to the bill that ensure that we have the flexibility that we need. To clarify for—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Can members—as they’re leaving the Chamber, it’s very, very rude to stop and talk and have your back to the person who’s speaking. There’s an ability for whips to go and talk to other people or leaders, but not for other members to wander around having a chat.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The original piece of legislation passed, roughly, 12 or 13 months ago was in order to respond flexibly and swiftly and quickly to the global pandemic. That allowed Immigration New Zealand to deal with visa changes as classes and not as individuals, and I think there was a fundamental misunderstanding of that from the Opposition, both through the select committee and through the second reading and committee of the whole House, given the contributions that they gave in those debates and in the select committee process. Again, I will reiterate: this piece of legislation was brought in in order to deal with the border closures at this time last year and to give the flexibility to the Government to make those changes.

We do not know how long this pandemic will last for. When we introduced this bill about six weeks ago, there was talk in this House that things seemed to be improving around the world. In that short amount of time, we have seen just how seriously and how quickly the global pandemic can spread. So in order for us to have the flexibility, and in response to our immigration settings, this Government has sought a two-year extension to the powers that are currently in place.

The Opposition argued that that should only be 12 months. If that were the case, given the issues and the length of time that we imagined that our borders would be closed and that we think that the global pandemic will continue to have its way around the world, in order to extend beyond that 12 months, we’d probably be in this House in September or October, looking to extend these powers again. While arguments have been made across the other side of the House that it should be 12 months, we would argue that two years, or 24 months, is the right judgment to make in terms of the length of the extension of this legislation.

The other issue that was raised by the Opposition through a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) was to introduce the 28-day rule to the regulations or the special directions that I, as the Minister of Immigration, may make or that the Government may make in order to change the classes of visas or the decisions that the Government may make. We believe, given the last 12 months, that that is not practical.

One example of that not being practical in real terms is a decision that we have made this week for about 5,500 Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme workers who are already in the country. We have waived the right for certain conditions of renewing their RSE visas in order for that process to be more efficient and effective for them. We are able to do that as a class swiftly. If we had to do that with a 28-day rule, that would delay the process for them, and the suggestion that has come from the Opposition that we no longer need these powers—the fundamental powers within the legislation—would see 5,500 applications from those RSE workers make their way to Immigration New Zealand to process. That’s just not pragmatic in the current situation. It would cause issues for those individual RSE visa applicants, and, I would hazard a guess, the fortnightly meeting that I have with the horticulture and viticulture sector would be that they are experiencing extreme delays in those visa chain processes and that that time frame would not be ideal for them.

So, Mr Speaker, in order for you to see the benefits of the legislative statement, I believe I have dealt with some of the arguments that are going to come from the Opposition that they have made, obviously, at the first reading, the second reading, the select committee, and the committee of the whole House. I believe that despite not supporting the SOPs, we have a piece of legislation here that will enable us to continue to control the flows at the border in the way that the public has entrusted in the Government over the last 13 years to keep us safe, and I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: Before I call the next member, it sounded at the beginning of the Minister’s speech like he might have moved the first reading of the bill. I just wanted to check that he’d moved the third reading before I put the question.

Hon Kris Faafoi: I believe I said “third”.

SPEAKER: Well, we’ll—the question is that the motion be agreed to.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased to take a call on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill at third reading.

This bill is very important. This bill transfers a huge amount of power to a Minister to make decisions for whole classes of visa holders. At the stroke of a pen, thousands and thousands of lives are affected, and with this huge amount of extraordinary power comes huge responsibility to exercise these powers properly, to exercise these powers in a timely way. The legislation, in fact, requires the Minister to use these powers to benefit migrants, but this can easily be undermined if those powers are exercised in a way that, in fact, does not benefit those visa holders; for example, ignoring whole classes of visa holders or giving very short time frames for the notice period for those decisions.

Now, with this legislation, we had the opportunity and the ability to look at the ways in which these powers had been exercised—these extraordinary powers—and to make changes to this bill to ensure that we are actually benefiting migrants who, let’s face it, are in a very vulnerable and anxious situation in this country, who are moving from visa extension to visa extension. We had the ability to take a look at the current conditions, as they are now, compared to what they were a year ago and seek answers from the Minister as to whether or not there is a justification for these powers to continue, not only for one year but actually for two years. The difference with this bill is that he is asking for these powers, these extraordinary powers, for up to another two years, and it is up to us to make sure that he has the justification for that.

And what was the Minster’s justification for these extraordinary powers for another two years? Well, what we heard from him all through this and mostly last night was, in fact, “Well, I did things OK and you can trust me because I’m a nice guy.” That was basically his argument last night. So, basically, he was saying to us, “What’s your problem?” The problem that we have is that “I’m a nice guy, trust me, and I’ve done a good job so far.” is not a reason to extend such extraordinary powers for such a long time. We don’t hand over power carte blanche to a Minister without being satisfied that he is still answerable to this House. Thousands of lives at the stroke of a pen—thousands of people who are living visa extension to visa extension. He must be held accountable in this House. We must act as a check on those powers. We must be a safeguard. And he’s asking for these extraordinary powers for another two years. We must be confident that he is doing a good job and that these powers are warranted.

We made the argument that he should have to come back after a year and justify himself to this House to show that he has exercised the powers in the manner that we expect, to ensure that migrants, in fact, have been benefited from the powers that he is exercising. We need to make sure that he’s using the powers properly and that the circumstances still exist for those powers to be used. A year ago, things were very different. We were in a situation where COVID had only just begun, things were looking very dire and we didn’t know what to expect in the coming months. This House, as a whole, agreed that the previous bill was necessary.

But things now are very different. We have multiple bubbles that are opening, vaccination programmes taking place around the world and apparently in this country by the end of the year, and in a year’s time who knows where we will be? Things will be very different. And this is not just my opinion. Every single submitter on this bill who is an organisation—the hort guys, the ag guys, the winegrowers—all of them said, “Yes, we understand that the Minister needs these powers.”, but none of them agreed for another two years.

Chris Bishop: Not a single one?

ERICA STANFORD: Not a single one.

Now, the Minister believes that because he’s done a good job and he’s a nice guy, he can have two years, because he doesn’t want to have to come back in a year’s time and do this all again, because it’s just a bit of a pesky annoyance. But every single submitter on this bill, including the Law Society, who made this argument a year ago, could see that this wasn’t right, that this can’t go on for ever, and, in fact, that he must come to this House to justify the need for extension of these powers after one year.

As it turns out, the second main reason for wanting two years was, as I mentioned just before, inconvenience. He mentioned not wanting to take up the House’s time, and he also mentioned that he didn’t want to tie up his officials by having to come back to this House. I would argue, and we did argue, in fact, that this is exactly the perfect use of this House’s time, to scrutinise and to examine the extraordinary powers that we are giving to this Minister in a highly unusual way. That is what this Parliament is for. It’s a check. It’s a safeguard to ensure that the Minister is using his powers properly and that they are in fact still required. It’s not just a pesky annoyance, as I said, that gets in the way of the Minister doing his job. There is nothing that he told this House that justified another two years of this power. There was nothing that he said that made any of the submitters or anyone on this side of the House believe that he needed an extension of two years.

And it’s worth noting, as we did throughout this bill, that he didn’t actually want two years. The Minister, in fact, wanted no sunset clause on this bill. He wanted these powers for ever, which makes us think, “What is coming in the next few months with the immigration changes that are going to be coming out?”

One of the things we argued strenuously for was a notice period for these decisions, and the reason that we did so was because we are seeing the effects on migrants of the very short period of time that he’s giving them when he makes these special directions. The situation in the last 12 months, if we go back to July last year, was that on 7 July, he extended visas for people whose visas were expiring on 10 July. That is three days’ notice. People had booked their flights. They were under extreme stress and anxiety, thinking that they were going to uplift everything and leave. In February this year, with visitor visas, they all got a letter to say: you need to leave. Five days later, the Minister decided that he would extend their visas for three months.

Now, the Minister has tried to argue, and he did again today, that this is about him being flexible and nimble and being able to respond really quickly. I say that this is a Minister being slow, asleep at the wheel, who is too busy in his other portfolios to pay attention to the thousands of lives that he has control over. He says, “We’re fixing this and we’re learning.”, but this term, in my electorate, there are children who cannot go to school because their status is unlawful because Immigration New Zealand weren’t given enough time to do the work in the background to change people’s status, because this Minister didn’t give them enough time.

The way in which he is exercising these powers over the last year—while we agree that he was justified in doing what he did, the time frame that he gave these people was not adequate. We argued vigorously all the way along through this process that he should have to give a far greater notice period. And we backed up the views of the New Zealand Law Society, who said he should have to give 28 days to give these people a period of notice so that they’re not booking flights and having to uplift their lives. Remember that they are vulnerable and under extreme pressure and stress and anxiety. The Law Society also argued that it would give an additional safeguard on the bill in that these special directions could be scrutinised properly before they came into force.

It’s entirely, though, I have to say—all of these last-minute changes—in keeping with this Minister’s modus operandi in immigration, his general approach to do nothing. We’ve had secret residency queues for two years, trying to hide a mile-long backlog. He’s ignored split migrant families until he was dragged kicking and screaming by me into doing something about it. And even with this bill, he didn’t bring a Cabinet paper—

SPEAKER: Order! I know it’s very late in the member’s speech, but I am going to now bring her back to the bill. The third reading is really the most restricted reading of the bill, and it’s only to discuss the bill as it comes out of the committee, not a general policy debate.

ERICA STANFORD: Well, Mr Speaker, what we’ve ended up with—in the last 20 seconds I have—is a bill that was unchanged, a bill that gives the Minister powers for two years, for these extraordinary powers, which he did not justify, even though it was requested by the Regulations Review Committee to have proper justification for these powers—justification that never eventuated.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and it’s a pleasure to take a call in the third reading of the Immigration (COVID19 Response) Amendment Bill. Earlier this week, I spoke on the process that this bill went through as chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. It’s important to note that most supporters broadly supported the need for the bill and they also recognised the need for these powers to continue—and most people understood that that was all it was about. But as we have heard in the previous speaker’s speech, there were a couple of overarching themes that I want to touch on.

One was the extraordinary powers that Erica Stanford mentioned, as well as the fact that she made a mention of the situation now being very different. And so, first of all, I would like to talk about the parliamentary scrutiny that will continue all through this bill, because, of course, there are continuing checks and safeguards through this bill that were passed in the very first original bill but are continuing in this bill. One of them is the fact, and I highlighted it in my first reading—the major safeguard is the fact that the powers delegated to the Minister, they cannot be just exercised; they can actually be disallowed by the House. And that means that there is continuing scrutiny by the House. The second one, and this is also a really important one, is that the exercise of the powers must really clearly be related to COVID-19.

So, in effect, when the member talks about a time limit on this bill, whether that be one year or two years or not even any time line, that is actually naturally restricted by the fact that the powers have to be related to either the outbreak of COVID-19—and I’ll just read the specific measures out: “either the outbreak of COVID-19, measures undertaken to contain or mitigate an outbreak, or other domestic or international measures to contain or mitigate the outbreak of COVID-19 or its effects.” Of course, in New Zealand, we had a really successful response to COVID-19 and sometimes in a way that is a little bit—it makes it easy, perhaps, to forget that in the rest of the world COVID-19 is still raging. There is a massive pandemic and it infects and kills many people, and, in fact—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Come back to the bill, please.

MARJA LUBECK: Fair enough. Fair enough. So coming back to the bill, we had many submitters, as the previous speaker mentioned, that actually submitted on general immigration themes. And we do acknowledge that there have been difficulties caused by the fact that we had to close the border. But that is out of the scope of this particular bill. The original bill that was passed by Parliament was passed unanimously, and at the time it was obvious that the Opposition did see the need for these powers by the Minister to be able to be flexible and nimble and be able to, perhaps, respond to changing situations. There’s still a chance that there may be a variant of the virus coming along, so restricting this bill to perhaps only a one-year time line would be unwise because we would find ourselves back here—hopefully not, but it could potentially be the case that we would see ourselves here within a few months arguing an extension of the powers yet again. So it is still a very uncertain situation.

We had 138 submitters and 43 people actually made the effort to come to Parliament and submitted—gave us oral submissions predominantly during recess—so we thank everybody coming to us in person and submitting in Zoom. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to make two remarks in my speech, and they relate to the substance of the bill. The first is there is no justification for a power grab of this magnitude, for the length of time that the Minister of Immigration is grabbing. A two-year extension simply cannot be justified, and that is the principal ground upon which the National Party will oppose the legislation. We support the general intent around flexibility for the Minister, and as did my colleague Erica Stanford, who’s done the heavy lifting on this bill for National—and the heavy lifting on immigration more generally in the Parliament, actually. We acknowledge the circumstances and the difficulty that the Government faces when it comes to visas and it comes to immigration notices. But we do not believe a two-year extension is justified, and I want to come back to that.

The second thing is there is no justification for the speed of the passing of this legislation. This is very important legislation. It spent just three weeks at committee. Three weeks is better than no amount of time, but there should’ve been longer than three weeks used to allow all submitters to be heard and for the proper ventilation of the issues, particularly around the two-year extension and around the 28-day notice arguments that my colleague Miss Stanford has been making.

Just on the first issue in relation to the two years, because National moved Supplementary Order Papers to this effect: what are the arguments the Government has put up in relation to that? Well, the Minister told Parliament, I think at the second reading stage, that he didn’t want to come back here in October this year and have to pass another piece of legislation. We just heard from Marja Lubeck, the chair of the committee, that—

Dr Duncan Webb: Great chair.

CHRIS BISHOP: —well, I’m not on the committee, but I’ll take your word for it, Dr Webb—

Marja Lubeck: Ask any of your colleagues.

CHRIS BISHOP: —OK, I’ll do that—“We didn’t want to have to come back here.” So, essentially, the Government’s argument is just one of convenience. It’s basically, “Oh, it’s just a lot easier for us if we just pass the law through now and we don’t have to turn up again for two more years.” Well, I’m sorry. That is probably true; it will definitely be easier for the Government to have two more years of the Minister being able to wave a wand—or actually, you know, a biro pen—and sign off various visa extensions or cancellations or whatever. I’ve no doubt it will be easier for the Government, but, you know, that’s not really the way we make law in New Zealand. It’s certainly not the way we make law, and it’s certainly not the way in which we give executive power to the Government, because, actually, what we say is “In extraordinary times, we’ll give you extraordinary powers”, as my colleague Miss Stanford noted. And we are giving the Minister huge powers, but those powers are constantly checked and authorised by the legislature, which is Parliament.

So I don’t really buy this argument, as the Minister said yesterday and we’ve just had adverted to by Miss Lubeck, that, well, the officials would have to spend quite a bit of time—I mean, firstly, they’re not actually doing a lot at the moment, as Miss Stanford’s been highlighting in the media. There’s a stack of residence applications and other applications before the immigration department that they should be dealing with. But, secondly, again, the argument that “We don’t want to take up too much time of officials.” is not a satisfactory argument, or, at least, it shouldn’t be a satisfactory argument. So we reject the idea that a two-year extension is justified.

I make this point: the Government’s logic is round the wrong way. Back in May 2020, the Government turned up to Parliament and said, “Look, COVID’s happening. It’s chaos round the world. Things are out of control. We don’t know what’s going on. We need to give the Minister quite a lot of power in order to make visa variations, and can you please allow us that power?” OK, fair enough. Parliament unanimously passed that bill, and that’s now the Act we’re debating, or the extension. So Parliament said, “Well, that’s fair enough.” You know, this was May 2020; I think we were about to be in lockdown or, certainly, had come out of it, and the world was a very uncertain and scary place. Well, a year on, I acknowledge the world is still an uncertain and scary place, but I think it’d be fair to say we have a lot more certainty around the world in May 2021 than in May 2020—but yet the Government’s gone for a two-year extension.

So the Government’s logic is totally skew-whiff; it’s round the wrong way. “The world’s in chaos; we’ll just seek a year to give the Government some time to sort out what’s going on.”, and then we have a year—and I acknowledge that, you know, things aren’t perfect, but we at least have much more of a sense about what the world is like a year on, and yet the Government’s gone for two years. That doesn’t make any sense. I just implore the Government: you can’t change things now, but—well, I suppose I implore the Government to vote against it, really, because a one-year extension is far more sensible. You know, if it was a one-year extension, the National Party might well consider supporting the legislation, but because it’s a two-year extension, we can’t do that.

What the Government should really be doing is asking the Parliament to grant the Minister an extra year of the powers and then coming back later on and asking for more if they’re required. Frankly, they should do the policy work in the meantime to better tailor the legislation to the circumstances. Now, again, May 2020—chaos round the world. Things had to be done very quickly—“We’ll give the Minister these powers.” But what should’ve happened in the last year or so is there should’ve been a tailoring of the legislation and some policy work done to make sure that the Minister’s powers were constrained only to what was required, and as far as I can see, none of that work has been done.

We’ve had a year. I acknowledge there was an election in the middle of it—you know, members like talking about the election; we don’t like talking about it so much. But, you know, there was an election. Parliament was suspended, or prorogued, for a few weeks and then we had the election, and then we had to wait for the Government to be formed. So I acknowledge all that. There was a period of time when Parliament was sitting and couldn’t consider legislation, but, actually, with respect to officials at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and the immigration department, once you’ve done the briefing to the incoming Minister in the pre-election period, that would’ve been the time to do the policy work, and put in the briefing to the incoming Minister—

SPEAKER: Order! I am going to bring the member back to the bill, not what’s not the bill, because that is not relevant.

CHRIS BISHOP: Right, OK, fair enough, Mr Speaker. I’d just make the point that we should’ve been considering a more tailored legislation.

The second point, which I’ve kind of already covered, is in relation to the speed of the passing. Three weeks at committee, as I’ve mentioned in my opening remarks, was not enough time, and simply saying, as the Minister says, “Trust me; I’ll do the right thing.” is not an appropriate basis for lawmaking. That is essentially his argument: “I will do the right thing.” Well, Kris Faafoi’s a good guy. He’s a sensible bloke. That may well be the case, but he may not be the immigration Minister in six months’ time, and Parliament deserves better than what we’ve been dished up today.

We wanted to support this legislation. We did support it at first reading to send it to the committee. We wanted to support it because we do believe the Minister does need some discretion around visa extensions and around visa law, or immigration law. We do accept that, so we’re not opposing it holus-bolus, but the two-year extension that the Minister has sought is unjustified, the speed of passing is unjustified, and, also, the 28-day notice period that Erica Stanford argued for we do believe should be in the legislation. We wanted to support the bill; it’s regrettable that we can’t.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Sometimes, extraordinary situations need an extraordinary response, and that’s exactly where we are now. This bill went through scrutiny—intense scrutiny—and a lot of people submitted on it, and we have listened to all the submitters and we’ve listened to their stories. Some of them are quite sad stories. Me being a refugee who came to this country, I sympathise with these people and I see their points. But, at the same time, a lot of them, in fact, asked the Minister to act, to do something. Well, unless he has these powers, the Minister cannot do anything about this.

Now we’re hearing that the argument is that the Minister is going to misuse the power and the Minister is not going to do this and that, but the reality is, in the last year, the Minister did not in any way misuse his powers. If the Minister is misusing his powers, there is a process in place, and Parliament can simply revoke the powers—as simple as that. So to argue otherwise is just, to me, cynical. Also, the Minister’s exercise of powers has to be clearly tied to COVID-19—nothing else, nothing more.

Last year, when COVID-19 was raging—this bill was introduced in May—no one had thought that in 2021, 12 months later, this virus would be killing more people, infecting more people. But the reality is, it’s still infecting more people. It’s still killing more people. We never knew in 2020 the way it was going to be killing more people and infecting more people, and the advice that we got was two years is a proper response—two years is enough. Maybe if we’re talking about more than two years, maybe it’s not; but two years is perfectly enough. So if it’s going to be one year, and then in September the select committee has been—we would be going through this process. So it’s not worth it.

People talk about, yes, we’ve got the vaccine; we’re doing well. Yes, because of the response that we have taken, the stance that we have taken, we are in a stronger position. We are safe, but a lot of countries are not. As we speak today, in the last 24 hours: more than 700,000 infections, more than 12,000 new deaths—this is a sober reminder that this virus is deadly and it’s going to be around for a while.

So with that, I highly commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I rise to make a statement on the third reading of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge, as many of us have done, that COVID-19 changed everything for all of us. But it did create specific challenges for our migrant communities, many who have been stranded in their homelands. Ultimately, as we finish the discussion on this bill, I think it’s important to centre our discussions on the communities that are going to be most affected by this bill and the decisions the Minister uses with the power granted by legislation, which are those on temporary visas, those who may have overstayed their visas, and those who are currently in their homelands.

The legislative statement was quite clear around why this bill was needed in the first place, which was in regards to the impact COVID-19 was having in Aotearoa, around the need to act swiftly, and flexibility on our border controls, and in recognition that, ultimately, what we’re dealing with is a deadly and very aggressive disease. But, I think, what is often missing is the impact that it has on some of our most vulnerable communities who cannot fully participate in society.

The legislative statement, as well as the bill, is quite clear on how this bill may be used. I want to draw attention to a couple of those points, which include extending expiry dates on visas and granting visas to classes of people in the absence of an application. What we heard from submitters at the Education and Workforce Committee was not so much an issue of misuse of the power but rather that the powers have not been used to the full extent to ensure that the wellbeing of our migrant communities is at the forefront. So we heard from people on post-study work visas who are facing uncertainty and a lack of clarity about whether they will have a visa by the time the border restrictions end. Our submitters were really clear that they support the intent of this bill, which was to be able to take a public health approach to the pandemic response and for our borders to be able to respond adequately to the pandemic, but they were very clear that, ultimately, these are people who—many have made Aotearoa their home—still have livelihoods and connections to communities in Aotearoa and who are facing ill physical and mental health as a result of the uncertainty in not knowing whether their visas will continue.

We also know that the powers in this bill are able to be granted to enable our communities to fully participate in society. And I think that’s particularly important for disabled people and temporary visas, many who are not able to attend school and who are not able to access income support. This bill is really clear that we could be using the powers granted to the Minister to ensure that disabled people are able to access residency class visas and, therefore, be better equipped to deal with a resurgence of the pandemic locally here in Aotearoa.

With the continuous risk of the pandemic reaching our shores and us moving from alert level 1 to, potentially, level 3 or 4, it is all the more important that our temporary visa holders are able to access residency visas. I’m talking about the ability that the Minister has in this bill to be able to grant visas to a certain type of people, and we are talking about residency class visas.

We saw during the lockdown the difficulty that migrants faced when it came to accessing income support. And even though emergency benefits were rolled out for migrant communities, if the powers had been used to enable people to access residency class visas, they would have been able to access assistance through our welfare State and be better protected and, therefore, better participate in our public health response to the pandemic.

So the issue that the Green Party has with this legislation is not so much with this arbitrary discussion about whether it should be two years or one year—because, ultimately, we do acknowledge the need to respond flexibly to the effects of the pandemic—but it is more about the fact that our communities were quite clear that the powers have not been used to their full extent to ensure there is equity with our migrant communities. The Green Party offers our support to work productively with the Labour Government to ensure that the Minister understands the needs of our communities.

I want to point out—and I pay tribute to my colleague to the left, Ibrahim Omer, when he mentions his background—that a lot of the discussion in this House about the impact of this bill on our communities is not centred from members who actually belong to our communities, members who have a lived experience with the immigration system. I am concerned that we’ve seen plenty of white saviourism around the discussion of this bill and the impact that this bill has on our communities. So my call is for members of Government to listen to the members of our community; not so much members of the community who may just have a stake in political point-scoring around the use of the powers.

This is reflected by the fact that our select committee heard, predominantly, from members of our migrant communities. The few industries that presented to the select committee were all actually quite clear that the powers should be used for the betterment of migrant communities. In fact, some of the industries even supported that the powers be used to grant residency to a large class of people, which is something that the Green Party supports.

So going forward, it will be important for the Minister to use the powers of this bill to close the gap that exists in our immigration system—to close the gap that means that investors and millionaires are able to promptly access residency class visas while disabled people are not able to access residency visas whatsoever—to ensure that our migrant workers that are here in Aotearoa are able to access the support that they need.

And so, as we move forward and we continue scrutinising the use of the powers by the Minister that come from this bill, we will extend our support and also our critical eye to ensure that the wellbeing of our migrant communities is at the forefront. Kia ora.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill extends the extraordinary powers granted to the Minister for pretty much the remainder of this parliamentary term. ACT has been consistent in our messaging from the start: the Minister is asking for too much, and even if he was asking for one year as opposed to two years, we are simply not satisfied with the performance and the execution of these powers over the last year to support it in any way. It is also good and refreshing to hear that the National Party has changed its mind and has come over to our side of this debate.

The questions I’ve had, aside from the term length, are (1) will the powers be used for good, and with agility; and (2) will they be used in conjunction with significant and transparent work on immigration policy and, crucially, fixing the worst performing and most dysfunctional Government agency in this country? That is the big picture.

I do wonder if the Minister will have to ask for additional powers during the rest of this parliamentary term in order to deal with the wide range of self-inflicted challenges, because these extraordinary powers are a band-aid for failed policy and a lack of vision, or even a vague attempt at efficiency. Policy needs to recognise the long-term and generational benefits of migration and the economic and cultural benefits that come from the networks that new migrants have in their home countries.

What we need is an immigration system that is fit for purpose, simple in its pathways, transparent, and one that rewards and encourages hard work and enterprise. What do I mean by transparency? Well, for one, it’s about getting rid of these last-minute announcements, which, to be fair to the Minister, has been a feature of our immigration system for many years, even before he became Minister. It is also about engagement with stakeholders, which has been totally absent from this legislation.

We also need to deal with the dual purpose of visas. They’ve got to be fit for purpose. Delays will resolve themselves by simplifying and streamlining policy, because visa processing delays are a symptom of policy failure. In many cases, policies are designed for one purpose, but they’re being used for other purposes. This encourages fraud, is confusing to applicants, it creates enormous processing delays, and, frankly, in my experience, Immigration New Zealand (INZ) staff are often incapable of applying complicated policy.

As I’ve stated in previous calls, we currently have a mass of backlogged applications, and onshore migrants stranded on their pathway towards residency. INZ processing is absolutely at breaking point. I personally think that they should consider wiping the slate clean and allowing applicants to enter a transitional pathway to residency, with clear and simplified criteria. There should be a focus on directing the current onshore migrant community to qualifications, industries, and regions that need them, while new policy is drafted and debated.

We also need to acknowledge the realities of the immigration space in New Zealand. We must compete internationally for investment and skills. There is a need for migrant labour at all skill levels and sectors, and that policy can be a driver of fraud and exploitation. Honesty and a fit-for-purpose immigration system will provide clarity for migrants, will reduce abuse, and simplicity will enable operational efficiency. And the criteria can be adjusted to meet the needs of regions and businesses, including recognised seasonal employers, who have been totally abandoned over the last 12 months.

The Minister should also be using his extraordinary powers to bring in more international students, and simultaneously focus on improving student visa policy to reward and incentivise international students. There should be a list of qualifications that are in demand and a simple and clear pathway to residency upon graduation. Student hardship should also be alleviated with broader and larger working rights, which will reduce immigration fraud.

As we’ve said, ACT supported the original legislation, given the uncertainty around the novel coronavirus at the time. The world will look very different in 2023, and we feel that it would be irresponsible for us to support this bill. We put our trust in the Minister to use these extraordinary powers wisely, and for good, to reunite split families, which is well overdue, and to address the longstanding issues at Immigration New Zealand. But, alas, all we’ve heard is excuse after excuse, and a border exemption process that fails to meet our expectations.

I wish the Minister well in sorting out his department and for developing policies that create real, positive change for New Zealand. It would be great to be debating and supporting a new immigration bill that achieves everything I’m talking about, but instead all we’ve had from the Minister in the immigration space is this bill—a disgraceful power grab that is full of excuses. But that’s all from us—we’ve said our piece, and we once again oppose this bill. Thank you.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is with great pleasure that I stand to speak yet again on the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill, and I’m going to start with that title, just to remind the member who previously spoke that this is not a bill that was ever about addressing any of the challenges that may be present in our immigration system. This is only about a response to COVID-19, and that is really important. Because that is the line that has run through every decision that is made, and it is the line that will be run through when this legislation could—these powers could—actually be lifted before the two years is up if necessary, because it’s only about COVID.

So I just want to remind people why it was a truncated policy, because it came to the House unchanged. The reason it was unamended from last year, when it did have support from the House, as we have been reminded by the other side, was because it worked. It enabled the Minister to respond nimbly and appropriately to keep everyone in New Zealand safe. Those borders are the only way that COVID can get into the country, and so it is really important that we manage them appropriately.

We are able to keep our people safe because we are managing the borders, and industry has said so. Industry has said it has worked. They made submissions despite the truncated process, they came along, they wrote huge submissions, and, as we heard earlier, many of them—dozens of them—came along and talked to us about their experiences. The meat industry came along and told us how much they appreciated the exceptions that were able to be made for their industry. They appreciated the tension, the very fine balance, between supporting industry and protecting our people—my mum; not just the meat industry, horticulture and winemakers. They said they appreciated the approach that our ministry and our Minister made when they talked about the problem solving, the collaborative approach that was taken, because every day—as we were reminded of earlier this afternoon—the situation changes. You have to be creative and responsive in order to have the smartest border in the world.

So that is why it was unamended. We heard earlier that about 12 months ago, things were looking dire, and we didn’t know where we would be in 12 months’ time. Well, actually, quite frankly we didn’t know we would be in this situation a couple of months ago. Who would know that we would have a couple of international bubbles on the boil? Who knew that the variants that are rampaging the rest of the planet meant that we’ve actually got countries where we’ve had to make the border restrictions even tighter? Who would have known how the roll-out of vaccinations is going globally? Who would know? And so this is part of the problem; this is where it feels like some people on the other side are a little bit confused, because they say we don’t want a truncated process, we need time to engage and consult. So that would have meant we would have to bring it—if we had only 12 months—back to the House in a matter of weeks.

Now, my mother always said I was a bit of a procrastinator, but she also said that the good thing about being a procrastinator is you make just-in-time decisions. So to start making decisions about what would be appropriate in a year’s time, or in 10 months’ time; in two months’ time doesn’t seem to make any sense at all, because the information that we will have in two months’ time about what will be appropriate then doesn’t make for good decision-making. So what we could do is bring it back in a couple of months when we really don’t know what the situation will be like in a year. Or we have the more accurate and nimble checks and balances that are in the legislation.

The exercise of these powers has to be clearly tied to COVID-19, or the responses to COVID-19. If circumstances change and suddenly the variants disappear, we have enough oxygen for our poor comrades around the planet and everyone gets vaccinated, and circumstances change so that our borders can suddenly reopen, the regulations can be revoked, in whole or in part, by Ministers with powers to act. I think it is a very cynical response to suggest for a moment that our Minister can’t be bothered bringing this back to the House. Our Minister has worked tirelessly to keep our borders safe, and you know that, because look at how many of our people are safe. He has worked really, really hard. If circumstances change and we can open our borders, then we will be able to do so. It is a cynical, very cynical, suggestion to think that he can’t be bothered. This is about the best decision-making to keep our people safe.

I just need to remind you of one more thing. There, again, to come right back to the title of the bill. The challenge—

Hon Scott Simpson: Tell us again what a good guy he is!

ANGELA ROBERTS: Well, apparently some people still aren’t very clear on it. This is a very narrow-focused solution to a very big problem. This is not a power grab; this is about responding to COVID and COVID only. We’ve done it, industry has said so, and thus we will continue to act in a way that works for our people, and I commend this bill to the House.

TEMPORARY SPEAKER (Todd Muller): I understand this is going to be a split call. I call the Hon Paul Goldsmith.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Mr Speaker Muller, it’s very good to have you in the Chair and to have the opportunity to make some comments on this bill. This is a bill that this Government will pass—they have the numbers—and that we supported last year as an extraordinary measure to give the Minister of Immigration extraordinary powers to deal with circumstances brought about by this COVID-19. The point that concerns us, however, is that this lazy Minister has come up and just extended his extraordinary powers for two years, because, apparently, it would be too much trouble for Parliament to consider whether or not it is appropriate to extend those powers one year from now. The only point we’re making is that we think one year is more than sufficient an extension, and then we can reconsider that. That doesn’t mean we have to start legislation in two months’ time; it means that we should be able to give sufficient thought to this in the months ahead, as to whether it’s necessary to extend these extraordinary powers.

Immigration has an enormous impact on people’s lives—many, countless, people in New Zealand and overseas whose lives are on hold because of decisions made through our immigration system. It is absolutely important that we have a rules-based system as soon as we can. We acknowledged the need for extraordinary measures under COVID19, but we do not think the Government should be lazy about extending those powers for very long periods of time. The Minister, apparently, wanted a three-year extension of those powers, and we firmly hold the view that Parliament should scrutinise more regularly than that and that New Zealanders should have a say about exactly how they’re organised. What happened was that they were brought in under an emergency last year for a certain amount of time. The Minister didn’t do anything about the problem until it was very late in the piece and then rammed through legislation very quickly to extend it for two years. That’s no way to run a Government. He should have taken the time to allow people to have a decent amount of input into the decision, and then, with humility, extend it for a year, and then let’s see how we go beyond that. That’s how any good Government should deal with what is an extraordinary situation.

The only further point I’d like to make is an acknowledgment of the extreme challenges facing many families across New Zealand and beyond because of the border restrictions that we, in the interest of all New Zealanders, have imposed, through this House, for our public health reasons. We acknowledge the terrible strain many families are under. We do want to return to a situation approximating normality as soon as possible. So with those parting comments, I will finish this speech.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora, Mr Speaker, and congratulations, Mr Muller, on your new position. I hope it goes well for as long as it lasts!

Now, this bill—and I’m really surprised and a little saddened at the changed direction of the National Party, in the sense that this bill has been shown to be essential. Whilst we would love to think that COVID-19 and the response that goes with it is a thing of the past, the tragedies around the world have shown us that we need to be constantly vigilant and that things are not going to change for the better in any significant way any time soon. And we’ve seen only very recently the need to close our borders. Very unfortunately—and unfortunately for many people who would love to come to New Zealand—we’ve had to close our borders to India. We need to be able to do that very, very rapidly indeed. That’s why these kinds of executive orders which are set out in this Immigration (COVID19 Response) Amendment Bill are so important.

But there seems to be some sense on the part of the other side that there are not protections here. The fact of the matter is—as is clear from the legislation and the framework in which it sits—that there are plenty of ways in which those powers, those regulatory powers, are controlled. Most importantly, of course, any regulation is subject to review by the Regulations Review Committee. The committee is, in fact, as anyone who’s sat on it would know, a very important and powerful committee in that it can either look at any complaint about any regulation made by a member of the public or it can inquire into things of its own volition. In fact, any member of that committee can bring things to this House for consideration. So if the Opposition is so concerned about a regulation that the Minister chooses to make under this Act, its members on that committee are fully within their rights to come to this House and this House must debate and approve that regulation, and if they don’t, that regulation is disallowed. To suggest that this is some sort of carte blanche is just entirely inaccurate.

The other thing to note is this: that it’s all very nice to say that these are terrible powers, but six out of the eight powers set out in the bill are powers to give indulgences to people who need special consideration. So we’ve seen people stuck in New Zealand on student visas or work visas or even visitor visas. Now, travel has been very difficult; so the Minister has been able, when appropriate, when those visas are coming up to expiry, with a stroke of the pen, as Mr Bishop—well, you said biro, actually; a stroke with the biro to extend the visas of those people. Now, that’s really important because if we had to go through an arduous process, that wouldn’t be possible and those people would be in New Zealand illegally. That’s not good for anyone at all.

Further, there is a decision-making framework within the bill. It’s not simply the case—it’s quite fatuous and inaccurate to say—that the Minister can just wake up one day and feel like granting a few more visas. There is a very clear decision-making process, and it must be shown that the power exercised is necessary. As Angela Roberts said, “necessary for the safety of New Zealand” is an important aspect of that. I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that it is exactly these kinds of measures which have protected New Zealand.

And the other thing, just by way of conclusion, is to remember, of course, that if the Minister exercises those powers outside of the constraints set out in the Act, they’re reviewable. The exercise of executive powers is subject to the supervision not only of this House in some cases but also of the courts. So here we have a piece of legislation that, incidentally, the Māori Party, despite their protestations that they would scrutinise every piece of legislation, have chosen not to speak on this afternoon, but here’s a piece of legislation that’s good, it’s robust, it’s subject to scrutiny by this House and by the courts. It’s a good piece of legislation. I commend it to the House.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Mr Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak this afternoon. Before I move to the bill, I would like to acknowledge the passing of Hamilton city councillor Margaret Forsyth. Margaret Forsyth, unfortunately, passed away yesterday after a short illness. Margaret Forsyth was a Hamilton city councillor in the ward in which my electorate resides. I knew her personally. She was also a member of the Silver Ferns from 1979 to 1987. I’m sure the House would join me in sharing our most sincere condolences to her family during this time.

Like I said, I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on the third reading of the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill. As we’ve heard from previous speakers on this bill, COVID-19 continues to rage around the world. I use that word “rage” quite deliberately because I regularly speak to people who have friends in countries like India, you know, parts of South America where COVID-19 is, effectively, out of control, unfortunately, during this time and it’s an incredibly difficult, difficult environment for those countries. The reality is that in New Zealand we have a relative sense of calm. Obviously, unfortunately, we have had people die of COVID-19, but when we compare that context to the rest of the world, you know, the decisions we have made have certainly held us in good stead.

I’m quite confused by the view of the National Party on this bill because the National Party are not supporting this bill. I believe that they need to lift their heads up and have a look to see what’s happening around the world, because this bill is required in order for the Minister to have the flexibility to respond to the COVID-19 challenges that are obviously happening around the world but they do affect us because no country lives in isolation. We heard from the National Party—to me, what I found quite a staggering statement from Chris Bishop, who said that they would have supported this bill except for the two-year time frame. So basically, what the member was saying was that he agrees the bill is necessary but that they’re not supporting it simply because of this two-year time frame. The reality is—so what they’re doing is then putting people at risk who need visas extended or people who need to move around the country or come to New Zealand or have various freedom of movement. They’re putting all of that at risk because of this two-year time frame, so I’m going to start my speech by talking about that.

It’s not certain that the impacts of COVID-19 will be over by mid-May 2022, and that’s one of the key reasons for this two-year time frame. So a one-year extension would be likely to imply that the Government would be prudent to introduce a further bill during this year to enable the powers to be continued, if necessary, later into 2022. Now, this would obviously not be an efficient use of the House’s time. But further than that, if COVID-19—and this is a point that the previous speaker made—is overcome earlier, the requirement that the exercise of the powers must be reasonably necessary to address the impacts of COVID-19 means that those powers would, effectively, expire at that point. I’m not sure that the National Party understand that because we are in an incredibly dynamic environment, as I outlined before at the start of my speech—the fact that COVID-19 continues to rage. Yes, we have vaccines, and we’re making really very good progress as a world on those vaccines, but the reality is COVID-19 will be with us for quite a long period of time.

The fact is, if we touch on those words there: “reasonably necessary”—the powers must be “reasonably necessary”—I have faith in the Hon Minister Kris Faafoi to interpret the fact that when the powers are no longer reasonably necessary, the powers will not be used. There is a natural time line of COVID and of these powers and, as we’ve heard previously, the Regulations Review Committee will play a key role in that if we are obviously more successful than we think we may be in terms of COVID time frames. But the reality is we don’t know the exact time frames for COVID. We haven’t got a crystal ball. We’re doing well. As a country we’re doing well. The vaccine is starting to roll out but we don’t know those exact time frames.

So that’s the point I’d like to mention first—that two-year aspect—because I do find it staggering that the National Party are forgoing their support for this bill and all of the important aspects of this bill simply because of this two-year period.

Hon Member: Politics.

JAMIE STRANGE: To me it does seem like politics, as my colleague has alluded to.

I’m on the Education and Workforce Committee at this time—a very, very good, hard-working select committee. We appreciated the opportunity to meet in recess to hear from many of these submitters. We had 168 submissions on this bill so there’s certainly quite a bit of engagement in the parliamentary process, which was good to see. Forty-three of these submitters submitted oral evidence and quite a few of these oral submissions were actually around personal circumstances, and it was certainly harrowing to hear some of these stories, but particularly around the split families aspect. As people will know, I have children. Many people in this House have children and we can only imagine how difficult it must be for those families who are separated from their loved ones. Actually, up in Hamilton I recently hosted a meeting for split families and we had around 150 people turn up. It’s certainly a very challenging environment for them, and rest assured the Minister is working hard to support those families and we continue to feed through to the Minister those stories as we hear them.

I’d like to touch on a couple of aspects of what the bill does. As we’ve heard, it extends the powers granted under the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Act 2020 until 15 May 2023. The National Party supported the bill—the first bill. Now they have revoked their support for a bill that is, effectively, the same. So I think there’s a bit of confusion over the other side and I look forward to the next speaker on the other side giving us a little bit more clarity on that—just to clarify: is that the reason why they’re not supporting this bill, this two-year provision? I do find that staggering that they would put visa holders at risk in New Zealand for that purpose, but we look forward to the next speaker—we look forward to the next speaker from the Opposition side.

In my final two minutes, I would just like to highlight some of the powers that this bill grants the Minister and just talk through some of those. So the first aspect is the power to amend visa conditions for large groups of people. Now, why is this important? The reason this is important is because we are in a volatile environment, both globally and in New Zealand, because we are affected by COVID-19, you know, in terms of people travelling from other countries. People are here on work visas, working hard, and we appreciate their contribution to the economy. At times, those work visas need to be extended and we have seen that happen. So this, basically, you know, it’s a very practical piece of legislation because what it does is that it provides opportunity for the Minister to respond in real time to the effects of COVID on New Zealand.

The second point is that it extends the visas of large groups of people for varying periods of time. The third one is that through regulations it can stop overseas people from making applications while we have border restrictions. Our borders are constantly being monitored. We’ve seen recently a travel bubble open with Australia. We don’t know what the future will hold so the Minister of Immigration needs the flexibility to respond in real time to what’s happening with COVID. A key aspect of that is around visas, it’s around the borders. Effectively, it’s around the movement of people and that’s what this Government is doing: we’re making very careful decisions to ensure, first and foremost, that the health and safety of New Zealanders is paramount, but at the same time working where we can to enable the movement of people. This is a practical piece of legislation and I commend it to the House.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on this bill although we don’t support it, as has been stated by the previous speaker, Jamie Strange. I’d actually like to begin by acknowledging the Marlborough Boys’ College students who are sitting up in the gallery—a fantastic school and a magnificent class of students, who asked very good questions earlier in the Legislative Council Chamber.

Now, from what we’ve heard from the previous speakers on the other side, one would think this bill should be renamed the “Pfizer Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill”. It is not a cure for COVID. Actually, they’re conflating this with some sort of border control, which this bill does not actually address. This is about addressing people’s visas within New Zealand and also giving the power to stop people from offshore applying for visas. That is what it will do, and it will have a life—we believe one year is all that is needed for this bill. The Minister wanted no limit on this—just leave it in for perpetuity—and we don’t think that’s right. It’s too much power for a Minister to have. Of course, it’s convenient for the Minister but that’s not how we do things in New Zealand.

I think it’s an appalling piece of legislation, and it’s totally unjustified. Immigration New Zealand have a programme called ADEPT, which they are actually testing now, which will process visas electronically. It will enable visas to be processed in a much more efficient manner than they are now, which is a very cumbersome and labour-intensive process. This bill is all about processing visas; it’s not about COVID as such, but that is the justification that we’ve heard from the other side. The Minister needs a year—that is all—and to take it out to two years is an overreach of biblical proportions almost, and I think that we need to call it out for what it is.

So we put up a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP)—or, actually, Erica Stanford did, an excellent SOP—that would limit the bill to one year. She also put up another excellent SOP, which would require the Minister, unless there were extenuating circumstances, to not bring in these conditions for 28 days. He’d notify what it was, but 28 days later it would be enacted. The purpose of that was to force the Minister to act in a timely manner so we didn’t have the situation we did in Auckland where school students were refused entry into school because they were, effectively, illegal in the country because their parents’ visas had expired. That was about the Minister not acting soon enough to actually use the stroke of the pen and these extraordinary powers that he had to do it in an efficient way.

We also, as I raised in the other readings of this bill, had the situation of vineyard workers, Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme workers, stuck in Queenstown who had run out of work down there and were unable to shift to Marlborough to work where there was work. They were reliant on charity, and the community rallied around them to help them, because they couldn’t earn money, they couldn’t support themselves, and they didn’t have winter clothes in a Central Otago winter. They all had a puffer jacket by the time that was over. The community were fantastic. They stepped up and helped these people.

The Minister had the power to do this, but he simply didn’t get round to it, and I think, when we see the shoddy way that this bill has been put together and the Minister’s overreach, there’s a bit of a pattern here. There’s a significant pattern here. I think everybody has recognised this. The reality is the Minister just has to do his job and do it in an efficient way. He’s hanging people out to dry totally unnecessarily. He hasn’t done his job properly. He’s put a bill before the House that is totally, in my view, an overreach—and the National Party’s view. We don’t support it. It’s a shocking piece of legislation. And so, with that, I will finish my contribution. Thank you.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): It is my privilege to wrap up this debate about this bill, and I think when I’ve sat here and listened, it’s really been about certainty. The National Party, on the other side, think things are much more certain in the COVID world than we do. And may I remind the House that three leaders ago, they were certain we could open the borders to Australia when there were 350 people per day being infected by COVID. Two leaders ago, they were certain we could open to Australia when active cases were around 7,000.

So I don’t apologise for the fact that we believe that the uncertainty caused by COVID warrants the extension of the powers that the Minister has for the next two years. The Opposition would have you believe that nobody wanted the extension, but may I read from this press release, dated 8 April this year, from the Hospitality New Zealand organisation, welcoming a move to extend the Government’s ability by two years. The press release says, “It will allow the Minister to adjust settings as they arrive, and that’s exactly what we need to make the most of the opportunities.” And it goes on to talk about giving everyone more certainty.

In these uncertain times, business confidence needs certainty. The reason we have a good economic recovery and saw those positive statistics come out today about debt being lower than forecast and tax intake being higher than forecast is exactly because we have been able to keep our borders safe. And the powers under this Act give the certainty to the Minister and to the sector so that he can be flexible in responding to their needs and they can go on confidently with their businesses.

So this is about certainty in very uncertain times. These extra powers are needed for two years, and we commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 76

New Zealand Labour 65; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 9; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Education and Training Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I move, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

The Education and Training Act came into force on 1 August last year. It was quite possibly the largest rewrite of our education legislation that we’ve ever undertaken. Even the very, very large rewrite of education rules in 1989 still left some legislation in the old 1964 Act untouched. It was about time, I think, that we brought our education and training framework all together as one. So this Act replaced what was the Industry Training Act, what was the Education Act 1989, what was the Education Act 1964. It was an incredibly big undertaking. In addition to streamlining the legislation, in a policy-neutral sense, it almost made quite a number of policy changes as well.

This particular bill primarily deals with issues that weren’t policy changes but there were the inevitable tidying-up things that emerge when you do such a big piece of legislative change. I do intend to bring forward another amendment bill later on in the year that deals with other policy issues, where either we want to make further policy change or where we want to do other things. However, I’ve tried to keep this bill relatively technical, so it tidies up things that were unintentionally changed, in the way the various pieces of legislation were drawn together, and it also tidies up some areas of ambiguity.

I will just talk through one of the biggest things that this bill does. With the amalgamation of the education legislation, one of the things that became apparent to me was that there was a lot of very prescriptive legislation around the way schools and early childhood services and tertiary providers have to operate that was more appropriately transferred to regulation. To give an example, the Act itself specified how school board meetings needed to take place. If you wanted to do a teleconference or a Zoom meeting, for example, you couldn’t do it because the primary legislation was that specific around how school board meetings had to be conducted; with similarly prescriptive requirements around a school board election, as to when things had to be posted. Of course, we don’t tend to use postal quite so much these days, and it didn’t allow for the potential of online voting, which is regularly used in a whole lot of other forums. It didn’t allow for a variety of other things.

So we tried to move parts of the legislation that needed to be amended more frequently, and to be a bit more flexible, into schedules that could then ultimately be incorporated in regulation. As we’ve gone through that process of starting to develop and prepare those new regulations—and the Education and Training Act has those schedules eventually being repealed automatically, once the new regulations were put in place—it’s become apparent that there are still some things in there that are actually better positioned in primary legislation that Government shouldn’t have the ability to amend, through regulation, without coming back to the House to talk about. For example, Schedule 20 includes some provisions that impact on the general right of students to enrol in any State school. Those provisions should more appropriately be in primary legislation, rather than in secondary regulation. So this bill makes those changes.

Schedule 23 includes provisions about the ineligibility and disqualification of people from being school board of trustee members. Also, I think there is a need to have some more flexibility around how we do school board elections and so on, and that more appropriately sits in a regulatory setting. Something as fundamental as who’s allowed to be on the board should still sit in the primary legislation. So this bill deals with that.

Schedule 24 sets out key provisions regarding national student numbers, like their purpose and use. National student numbers provisions were due to be repealed on 1 January 2022, and we want to make sure that they are still incorporated there. So that’s why we’re trying to push this bill through the House this year, to make sure that we don’t end up repealing things that we’ve subsequently looked at and decided need to still be in the primary legislation.

There are some further changes around aligning the Children’s Act 2014, passed by the last National Government, with the Education and Training Act, when it comes to issues around police vetting of those working in an early childhood setting. What’s become clear is that there is some inconsistency and ambiguity there around what vetting requirements are needed for those wider early childhood workforces. So there are some further changes here just to make sure that that is all very, very clear. It’s in keeping with the principle, I think, of the reforms of the Children’s Act 2014, passed by the last Government. We should have a very low-risk tolerance when it comes to people who are working in those settings with children. So the changes in this bill more closely align with that.

The bill makes a number of minor and technical changes. It amends section 171 of the Act, which relates to the thresholds for interventions in State schools so that it replicates the provisions of the 1989 Act. There were some changes there that inadvertently changed those thresholds. That was not intended. This fixes that up. It extends the transitional provisions around tertiary education providers that prevent them from charging a compulsory student services fee to those who are doing on-job training for a further year, as we continue to work through a more integrated funding system, as we’re bringing together on-the-job and off-the-job training.

The bill clarifies the early childhood education regulation-making power in the Act and it ensures that the regulations can be made to cover applications for approval to apply for an early childhood education service licence. It’s a new process provided by the Act, but it’s not yet come into force. Regulations will be required to operationalise the process and the bill clarifies some of those.

So I don’t think this bill is going to set the world on fire. It is a relatively technical and, I would hope, a reasonably non-controversial bill, compared to some of the other education legislation we deal with. I can assure members of the House that there’ll be plenty of opportunity to debate some more exciting education issues later in the year when we do bring forward some further policy changes. Now, this particular bill really isn’t designed to make any further policy changes. It’s largely a tidying-up bill.

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

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Speaker.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Madam Speaker, apologies. National will be supporting this bill through the first reading to the select committee, in the spirit of bipartisanship that we often seek to extend across the House. The Minister says that the bill has a number of small and non-controversial changes. On the surface of it, that seems to be the case. What it shows is that they brought through significant legislation last year and mucked up several elements of it, and now, within a year they are coming back to fix those where areas where inconsistency and ambiguity exit, and tidy up mistakes made last year. We, of course, note that this does happen from time to time, and we will work through them through the select committee and would be very interested to hear advice from professionals working in the sector about the proposals. And, you know, we see here things being moved into regulations as opposed to the original Act.

There is some particular focus on ensuring that former teachers are not automatically enabled to use physical restraint in schools. I’m conscious of the fact that it is quite a technical and difficult area for many schools, so we will certainly be looking very closely at views on that proposal from people working at the actual school front and having to deal with very difficult circumstances, so as to ensure that that is workable and practicable. We also note, in relation to early childhood education around regulation powers, again, that can be a very fraught area.

So I don’t see the point of extending the speech on this bill to any great degree, beyond the fact that what we have here is the Government tidying up a piece of legislation that they’ve only just passed, dealing with mistakes made in that original piece of legislation. It is an area of inconsistency and ambiguity. As appropriate, this will go off to the select committee, and at that point there will be the opportunity for people working in the sector, dealing with these issues day in, day out, to have their say, and we will listen closely to them and form a judgment as to what we support and don’t support. But, in the meantime, we’ll work constructively with the Government to ensure that we have the best legislation that we can, given what is proposed.

In the meantime, we continue to have a truancy crisis in this country. These are the sorts of things that we hope that the Minister will be bending his mind towards. While all this is well and good, if we only have 60 percent of students attending regularly, as we do at the moment, these are massive, massive issues for the sector to deal with. I do hope that when he, in his first reading speech, referred to the fact that there will be more substantial legislation coming through the House, he turns his mind to some of those issues, because if we are going to deal with falling off the international pace in terms of educational achievement that we are seeing in this country, there are a couple of things that need to happen—the first of which is that kids need to be at school, and the second of which is that we need to have some way of measuring progress, particularly in the primary and intermediate school sector. So I’m hopeful that the next time he comes with some legislation in the education area, he’ll be addressing some of those issues. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak. Isn’t it lovely that peace and harmony has broken out across the House on a Thursday afternoon, with the National Party and the Labour Party, obviously, in support, and we look forward to the contributions from the other parties to hear where they might sit on this bill.

So, as we’ve heard from the Minister of Education, who gave an excellent outline of what is contained in this bill, this bill makes a number of small and non-controversial amendments to the principal Act, but some of them are relatively urgent, which is obviously why it has come to the House. As a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, I look forward to this bill coming to our very busy and very well-chaired committee.

I’ll just touch on a couple of points. I’ll just keep my contribution fairly brief. I know, as I said, the Minister outlined the full extent of the bill, but the bill introduces a new structure that’s intended to follow the journey of students through education, starting with early learning and moving to schooling, and then tertiary and vocational training. The reason this is important is because when students move from one area of schooling into another, those transition points are incredibly important. So whether it’s early childhood into primary, or whether it’s primary into intermediate or some sort of middle school, and then into high school and then tertiary, those points there can make or break a person’s education. If they have good, positive transitions, then things will go well, but if those transitions don’t go well, then it can have quite a long-lasting negative impact on their education. So I’m particularly pleased to see the new structure that this bill introduces.

Just one final point is that it moves some prescriptive detail directly into regulation—so rather than into legislation, it moves it to regulation—and that gives flexibility for the officials and the policy makers to make changes in real time in terms of being able to respond to what’s happening in our education system. We have a dynamic education system, and it’s important to be able to do that. I commend this bill to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, as my colleague Paul Goldsmith has said, we support to select committee this Education and Training Amendment Bill and the general tidying up of the technical components of the amendments. But we do have some concerns around clause 12, extending the prohibition on providers of charging a compulsory student services fee to trainees that transfer over to Te Pūkenga, the new mega-merger Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics of New Zealand entity. That inability to charge those compulsory student services fees is a risk to our tertiary education organisations because they are being asked to cover more and more services for our students.

Now, nobody is denying that our students need to have these services and, in fact, the legislation would allow tertiary institutions to charge for them individually, but it would be absolutely impractical to be doing that on an individual trainee by trainee basis. This really does continue a trend of the Minister exerting influence over the fees that institutions can charge while expecting those institutions to do more and more and not giving any extra support from the Government.

I just want to outline some of those extra things, those extra student services that are being asked of our tertiary institutions. We’re looking at a new code of wellbeing and safety that will be issued in 2021 to take effect in the beginning of next year. It builds on an existing interim code. The sorts of things that it expects institutions to be able to do are: to be more responsive with more student services, and teaching and learning approaches to meet diverse needs of the learner population; to provide more training and support for staff, and that’s now including accommodation, staff, security, and cleaning staff; peer support training; better protection for learners who want to make complaints and resolve disputes; and better consistency within and across providers for dealing with emergencies. Now, nobody is saying we don’t want these better services for students, but how are the providers going to provide them if they can’t charge fees for new trainees, if they can’t increase existing student services fees, and if they don’t get additional revenue from the Government?

They’re saying that in the new wellbeing and safety code we’ll have many more dimensions to this support—so community and stakeholder consultation. That’s involving not only students but staff, whānau, local community, and iwi in identifying and defining wellbeing and safety, and issues with provider learning environments—a whole-of-provider approach, going beyond just student services, but looking at promoting an environment and a culture that enhances learning wellbeing across all levels of institutions. It’s looking at the learning environment, both physical and digital, providing positive teaching, learning and living experiences. So that’s not just in the formal education environment, but as learners develop personally and socially—that’s going to be a challenge as students are particularly social at that tertiary education stage—and individuals’ wellbeing and safety needs across a whole range of contexts, effectively looking at their social, physical, spiritual, and cultural needs throughout their learning journey.

Now, these are not insignificant requirements of student services on institutions, but they can’t charge any student services fees for new trainees to do this, and they can’t increase their compulsory student fees for existing students, and they aren’t getting any further money from the Government, except that they did have some money promised to them. So we can look at it in the context of the $25 million that was promised to the tertiary institutions for student mental health and addiction services. It was announced in July 2020, but not one dollar of that has been able to be spent yet. The $25 million was allocated in the midst of COVID-19, and it was explicitly sold as helping students through the pandemic. The education and health Minister at that time, Chris Hipkins, said, and I quote, “The lockdown has been hugely disruptive for students. Many of them have had to relocate and move to online learning, isolating them from … peers and tutors. Mental health is a priority for this Government, and it’s never been more important to ensure that our young people have access to the help they need when they need it.” Except they haven’t. So getting money out for student services such as this should have been able to happen quickly.

But what did they do with the $1.62 million per annum that was to go to the institutes of technology and polytechnics? Well, once it would have gone out to them and they would have straightaway got it into student services. But this time, and for anyone who’s worried about what happens when there is centralisation, that money went to the mega-merger polytechnic institute Te Pūkenga. That slow, cumbersome, bureaucratic morass has sat with the money and they are still in discussions with the Ministry of Health about how to use it. Remember, this was money for student services that was announced in July of last year and is still sitting, waiting to be allocated.

So this Education and Training Amendment Bill prohibiting institutions from charging a compulsory student services fee for trainees that transfer into this mega-merger institute Te Pūkenga are going to be sitting there getting access to services but not being charged for them. This is another example of the Government making announcements and putting impositions on to institutions but not getting the money to them to be able to do it.

These institutions only have three ways of getting money, essentially: student fees, Government income, or international student income. They don’t have the international student income, because this Government will not allocate managed isolation and quarantine places to the universities who have guaranteed that they would pay for them to let international students in. They’re not allowing the trainees to be charged for compulsory student fees, and any money that they are making announcements about getting out for student services is not getting to the institutions and is not getting to the students. It is a continuation of the Minister exerting his influence over our institutions, which should be autonomous entities that should be able to make decisions for themselves and should be able to get services out to those students quickly. But they certainly can’t do it if they don’t get the funding to be able to provide those services.

While we support this legislation to the select committee stage, there are certainly issues that I’m sure we will be debating in this bill but also in the additional bills that come through for education over the coming months. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Thank you for the opportunity on a Thursday afternoon to take a call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill. We’ve heard quite a bit of detailed outline of what this bill pertains to, so I probably won’t go into that particular detail. In fact, I think I recall the Minister of Education starting his speech by saying this bill won’t set the House on fire—but if it did, I’m sure one of those many fire stations that we are building all through the country could probably deal with it.

Kieran McAnulty: Whereabouts?

MARJA LUBECK: Anyway—all over the place, yeah.

But when it comes to this very small but relatively urgent bill that will come to our select committee, I think it’s probably helpful to look at the context of the wider education sector and what it means for that. So, as the Minister already outlined, we had the Education and Training Act enacted in August last year, which amended the 1964 and 1989 Education Acts, and it made for some simplified, less prescriptive, and more modern language. What this bill does is, basically, it continues on that same trend with some more small amendments, and that basically goes to ensuring that we are working further towards our work ensuring success for our future learners.

I really look forward to this bill. It is a very busy Education and Workforce Committee, but we’re doing some really good mahi there. It’s a collaborative team, and with this bill impacting primary, secondary, tertiary, and vocational learners and teachers, I’m hopeful that we will hear from a wide range of people and organisations on how we can progress this bill and continue to improve the educational outcomes for all New Zealanders. So, with that, I’m delighted to commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Kia ora Madam Speaker. The Greens will be joining the peace that has broken out across the House today to support this non-controversial technical bill. I did note the comments from the Minister that this bill won’t set the House on fire, which is good, especially on a Thursday afternoon when we’re all just about to head home.

There is a well-known Māori whakataukī that goes: ko te manu e kai ana te miro nōna te ngahere. Ko te manu e kai ana te mātauranga nōna te ao. The bird that partakes of the berry, their domain is the forest. But the bird that partakes of knowledge, their domain is the world. And, of course, with a well-resourced educational pathway from early childhood through to secondary and onwards to tertiary education, that bird is more likely to have more opportunities and access to a wider diversity of berries—or pathways to other nutritious nuggets of knowledge, if berries are not your thing. I’m personally a berry person, so that analogy works for me, but what I’m saying here is that education creates opportunities, and that it is important that our education system should give everyone the best possible start on a lifelong journey that happens inside and outside the classrooms.

We will be supporting this bill, because it makes a number of relatively small and minor changes to the primary Act, but I do hope that means that this will give this Government time to deal with some of the bigger issues. Just after lunchtime I managed to look outside of the ivory tower, down to the Parliament lawns, and I wandered down because I saw a whole lot of students down there with their desks out—they were having a teach-in. I do want to acknowledge the Hutt Valley High School students who were parked up on the Parliament lawn with their desks and schoolwork for a teach-in. They were here to highlight the issues and protest about the toxic mould which was discovered in a block of classrooms at their school. So let’s get these small technical things out of the way, so you can deal with the real big issues like infrastructure in schools. Having young people engaged in politics and advocacy for, and on behalf of, their communities is a great thing, and a great way to broaden one’s educational pathways, and it further acknowledges that schools are at the heart of community wellbeing. So good luck to those students, and I hope the Minister gets a bit of a move on and gets that high school sorted out.

Other issues that have been front of mind, at least for me, are the pay parity issues within the early childhood education sector and in associated workplaces, and an urgent shortage of teachers. We know that early childhood teachers do an incredibly important job, but their pay lags significantly behind kindergarten and primary teachers with the same skills, qualifications, and responsibilities—so let’s get that sorted.

But back to this bill. It will make a number of relatively small and minor changes which add clarity and may have been overlooked in the creation of the primary legislation, the Education and Training Act 2020, enacted last year, such as provisions which ensure workers who do not quite meet the definition of a children’s worker in the Children’s Act can still be safely checked under that Act and that all other early childhood centre or school employees meet police vetting requirements in the principal Act; and ensuring that interventions in State schools by the Secretary for Education mirrors the corresponding provisions in the Education Act 1989. This will ensure the types of interventions the secretary makes are only those provided for under the Act. It also includes provisions which mean teachers are not automatically enabled to use physical restraint in new schools they start teaching at, but must have the prior approval of the school that employs them. Regulation-making powers relating to early childhood service licences are clarified, and agencies to which ministerial statements of expectations might apply, are specified. The ban on tertiary education charging trainees a compulsory student service fee is extended by one year.

With greater Government and community support, everyone can reach their potential so they can fully participate in society. Together we can make the necessary changes so that all children thrive. Let’s get this down the road so we can focus on the big issues. I commend this bill to the House.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill today. This bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill, seeks to make some amendments to the principal Act. I stand here not only as a parent of four children who have been through the New Zealand education system but I also know as a grown-up how hard life can be when the education system lets you down. So ACT will support this bill through its first reading so we can make sure we get this right, for all our children’s futures.

These amendments, for the most part, are straightforward, uncontroversial, and aim to clear up some areas that have resulted in uncertainty. These amendments are so straightforward and uncontroversial that it begs the question: why were these missed from the principal Act to being with? For example, take the provision that proposes to specify the five education agencies that must comply with the statement of expectations relating to the Treaty of Waitangi issues. These agencies were not named in the principal Act, so the uncertainty that followed is understandable. ACT voted against the principal legislation, with the worries about the possible consequences that could arise from the rushed way that such an extensive piece of legislation was brought about. One could argue that the need for these amendments is an expected consequence of rushing legislation.

Also, ACT disagreed with the principal Act’s provisions that shifted educational responsibility around enrolment schemes away from locally elected school boards, and centralised these powers with the Ministry of Education. We believe that local school boards understand the needs of their schools best, especially when it comes to zoning. But ACT is also the party that advocates for better-quality laws and processes. These amendments make some minor changes that provide clarity and certainty. This we support.

It is ACT’s view that the sooner we make these changes, the sooner we can direct our attention towards addressing the real issues, such as New Zealand’s education crisis. The fact that students’ performance on objective international tests has been plummeting all century, in addition to the fact that barely 60 percent of our children are attending school regularly, is the real crisis, and that is the issue that requires our urgent attention. So ACT will support this bill to the first reading.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I stand to, I guess, accept the challenge that was put down to us by the Minister, who tried to imply that some of us wouldn’t be excited by this bill.

Kieran McAnulty: She’s excited.

ANGELA ROBERTS: I’m excited. I’m easily excited. As an educator, a mother, I’ve been on a board of trustees, and I know very, very well the complexities that surround our education system. And I think it was a really ambitious and important thing to try and pull all of those Acts together in one—all of that that legislation that covers us, as my colleague referred to earlier, from early childhood through to schooling through to tertiary, so that we can build towards a seamless and coherent lifelong learning system for our nation.

I think that when we talk about the challenges, about, you know, “This was rushed and there’s all these bits that were missed.”—well, first of all, it was not rushed. The reason that there were bits and pieces that need clarifying and tidying up, I think, really shows why it was necessary to pull all of these pieces of legislation together in the first place.

Schools are operating in very complex environments, and when you look at what we are trying to do with the police vetting—we’ve got police vetting that applies to different people and workplaces and it applies in different Acts. So it is incredibly difficult for schools and boards of trustees to navigate those complexities when all they want to do is keep our tamariki safe.

We have looked at the policy statement. The legislation is sorting out physical restraints, it’s sorting out thresholds for interventions, and tidying things up. It is really great to hear the Greens and ACT are really keen to get this sorted, get on with the real business, which is about continuing to lift our world-class education system so it works well for everybody. I commend the bill to the House.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Look, it is a real pleasure to arise and take a short call on this bill, which is the Education and Training Amendment Bill. I think, as we’ve been talking today, it is obvious that we’ve got a series of very straightforward, very practical, quite common-sense amendments as we try and fix up and enhance the Education and Training Act from 2020. There’s some pretty practical things in here, like keeping the schedules in the principal Act around matters like the national student numbers, the school enrolment schemes, and the school boards. There’s some very good things around police vetting requirements, just so that we make sure that our children are safe.

There’s also things around specifying the actual five education agencies, which, of course, are the Tertiary Education Commission, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Education New Zealand, the Education Review Office, and the Ministry of Education, and just making sure that those ministerial statements of expectations are very clear as we try and hold those organisations to account for delivering better outcomes for our children in education. There’s a number of other, I guess, minor and technical drafting amendments that are there as well.

We are looking forward to supporting this bill into the select committee, and, importantly, I think my colleague Penny Simmonds highlighted the sort of core issue that we do want to discuss further in that select committee, which is really the prohibition on tertiary education providers charging trainees a compulsory student services fee. That’s around clause 12, and that is important because, as Penny quite rightly highlighted, that fee is actually used and it allows providers to be able to charge that fee so that they can use it—in addition to the fees they charge students—to support services around the students.

As we have been talking about, there’s no doubt about it that we’ve a mental health crisis in this country. When we think about youth and adolescents and their ability to access mental health services, it’s blown out from 16 to 17 days to up to 23 days. I can tell you that in Counties Manukau and where I come from, in Botany, it’s very much an extra week for parents and young people and adolescents to be able to access our mental health services. We want to make sure that, obviously, we are working together on outcomes and making sure that people who need help and support can actually get it easily, and I think that that would be an important thing for us all to pick up and debate within the select committee process.

Can I also just say that it’s going to be really important—and I think we’ve expressed it here in this House—that we are, all together, very fixated on educational outcomes. We have some big challenges to deal with around education in this country. When we have a truancy crisis like we’re experiencing, we should probably make a declaration around our truancy crisis—it might be a novel thing to do—and actually do something about it. But when you think that 60 percent of our kids are going to school only 90 percent of the time, that’s something that I thought we had solved in our generation of coming through and being students ourselves. I thought we had fixed truancy—the basics of getting someone from home to school so that they could actually attend is actually important.

The other alarming thing for me, and probably one of the most alarming statistics since I’ve come into this House, has been seeing how we have had a massive deterioration of our maths, our reading, and our science scores at year 5 and year 9, and how we have slipped tremendously when you look at other developed countries from around the world. You know, we are in the bottom three in the OECD on many of those metrics, and, at the same time, we’re seeing countries like Britain actually enhance its reading, science, and maths by making sure that the curriculum is centred around a curriculum, rather than around what we’d call student-centred learning. It’s actually instructed learning, and that’s not important just because of league tables and where we stand relative to other countries; it’s actually important because when you achieve educational attainment, that, ultimately, is what drives into the higher salaries and wages, and that’s ultimately what creates choices for families about how they choose to live their lives. So it is really important stuff that we’re able to really focus on that.

Ultimately, for this country, its problem is that we work, all together, incredibly hard, but we don’t generate enough value from what we do because we can’t get ourselves up the value chain to generate higher-value products and services, which, in turn, drives our salaries and wages, which, in turn, drives the choices that families have as a result.

So it is a pretty perfunctory, straightforward sort of bill. It’s a thin band-aid bill to fix up a number of issues, which we’re all in support of. We do support this bill through to select committee stage. But we really do need to get cracking on making sure we fundamentally deliver a system that delivers outcomes so that our young people have the best chance to be able to compete in a world out there of 195 other countries and 7.8 billion people, and where no one owes us a living. It’s going to be important that we have the education, skills, and support in order to be able to realise those opportunities for our country and for our people. Thank you.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise to take a short call on the Education and Training Amendment Bill. As I do, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the 18 years of passion and commitment, to a school and the hundreds of students, of the principal of Te Mata primary school during his time. I am certainly in agreement with this quote, reflecting, when he went on to his new job. He said, that, on reflection, “He had seen ‘moving through the dark days of national standards’ and a restriction of the curriculum to be ‘basically reading, writing and mathematics’, to now [after abolishing national standards] having the autonomy to ‘bring back the richness of the curriculum’, which [Mr] Bain says is an ‘absolute winning moment.’ ” I wish Mr Bain all the very best, from Hawke’s Bay and the Tukituki electorate, in his new career pathway.

Now, as I turn to the bill, I’m speaking in support of the first reading. The purpose of the Education and Training Amendment Bill is to make a number of small and non-controversial amendments to the Education and Training Act. When I listen to speakers today, it is pleasing to see that everybody across the House is speaking in support of this bill. It is the second time that I rise, after yesterday speaking on another bill, where we’ve had across-the-House support.

This bill introduces structures—a structure right through the education journey—and puts our children on the road to a lifetime of success, from early childhood, primary and intermediate and secondary and to territory education, skills, and training.

In commending this bill to the House, I’d also like to thank the hard work that the teachers do for our children—and as parents, I’d like to thank them too. I commend this bill to the House.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very grateful to have an opportunity to contribute to this bill. I understand that this is one of a series of bills that the Minister is intending to introduce to this House. This bill does a lot of things. It amends a lot of provisions. I would have wanted to pick up quite a few of them. However, due to the time constraint, I’m just going to leave that for the next stages of this—

Erica Stanford: You’ve got 10 minutes. There’s no time constraint.

IBRAHIM OMER: Thank you, Erica. Next time! The impact of this bill is going to be present in primary, secondary, tertiary, and vocational training. However, I know that it’s going to come through the select committee that I’m very fortunate to be part of. So I look forward to seeing the Education and Workforce Committee deliberate on this, and I look forward to engaging with the public and our wider education sector. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Well, isn’t it interesting that the speaker who’s just resumed his seat, Ibrahim Omer, talked about the time constraints when he had 10 minutes on the clock and then sat down in under a minute? I would encourage that member to use his full allotted time if he has that much to say.

Can I just open by also commenting on the children who were outside on the forecourt today from Hutt Valley High School, who were here in what was quite a remarkable protest, if you could call it that. They were here to do their schoolwork on the forecourt of Parliament, out on the grass out there, in protest of the mouldy, damp, cold, and rundown buildings at Hutt Valley High School, especially that C block that they tell me about. That is one of the very undesirable places. I just want to say to Flynn, who was one of the organisers of that event, well done. It certainly garnered lots of attention from MPs and the media. I think they made their point very well.

I’ll move on to the bill, the Education and Training Amendment Bill, which, as many speakers before me have pointed out, is a fix-up bill, a technical bill. Sometimes these things happen, and when the Minister delivered his speech earlier on, he did point to the fact, and he is right, that this was one of the largest bits of legislation that’s been done in a very long time when it comes to our education system. Of course, when that happens, there are things that fall through the cracks and there are some unintended consequences.

So this bill is here today—we’re here today—to fix some of those drafting errors. I would note that and I would like to say to the Minister, “Thank you for bringing this bill at this time.”, because I see that it has to be in place by January next year to avoid some of those unintended consequences. It is nice to see from this Government a bill brought in in a timely manner so that we can, in fact, have a full process at select committee, which we haven’t always been afforded. A bill that’s just recently gone through—this evening, in fact—the Immigration (COVID-19 Response) Amendment Bill, only had three weeks, and it could have had a much fuller process like this bill is having. So it is good to see that the Minister is giving us a bit of time.

The bill was moving things around, shifting things into primary legislation and other things into regulations as should have been done. One of the things that it does around police vetting is also a necessary change. But I would like to point out that with the police vetting at the moment for early childhood centres who are looking to employ staff—and that’s another thing I’ll touch on in a minute—when they are having their staff vetted, it is now, at this current point in time, taking 30 days for that to come back. So the real crisis that’s happening here at the moment with our lack of early childhood teachers is being exacerbated by the fact that it is very, very difficult to get police vets done in a timely manner.

So, while this bill is fixing a few things up and making it a little bit easier, the real problem out there on the ground in the centres is the fact that they can’t actually get those police reports back in a timely way. In fact, most of those early childhood centres who are looking to employ staff actually vet every single one of the applicants because they know if they wait till they have chosen one of them, it’ll take so long to get the police certificate or the police check back that they won’t have that employee on the floor in time. That’s actually something that is going to require our attention because it is having an immense impact on early childhood centres.

Just going back to that, while this bill is a relatively uncontroversial technical fix-it—although I think my colleague Penny has some other ideas—for the most part at this early stage, from what we can see, it looks like most of these things are required and necessary and shouldn’t cause too much drama, although we will have a fulsome process at select committee to ensure that is the case. We do hope that some of the more pressing issues in the education system then have our attention. As other members have mentioned, we’ve got truancy issues. We’ve got issues with our maths and literacy in schools.

But one of the issues—the very important issues—that we have in our early education centres at the moment is a massive, massive shortage of teachers, which is impacting on those early learners. A lot of the time we are seeing reliever teachers on the floor to make up numbers, and even that has been a problem, getting relieving teachers, because of the changes to early childhood teachers having to be registered in a different way now. Where the fill-in teachers used to just have to do a few hours a year to remain registered and would fill those spots, they now can’t do that. So we’re heading into winter with a massive teacher shortage, because we can’t bring in migrants, and we also have early childhood education educators who can’t teach because they aren’t able to get their teachers registration in the same way that they would—having to pay thousands of dollars a year—so they’re just not doing it, adding to that crisis.

So I do hope that while this bill is just really a formality, we will turn our minds to it at select committee, in my select committee. There are some bigger issues out there that do require our attention and I do hope that the Minister will bring some more meaty bills. He did allude to the fact that he will. We are just here on this side of the House foreshadowing some of those issues and hoping that he will, in fact, bring those issues to the House in the form of legislation later this year. I commend the bill to the House.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to stand here and speak as the final speaker on this bill. I note that all parties in this Parliament are supporting it, and I congratulate Parliament for that. It’s something that the public don’t often see. They see Parliament on the news and they see parties having a crack at each other, but it’s times like this that I think should be celebrated, because it just goes to show that politicians aren’t always having a go—although I will take the opportunity to have a minor go. The other side of the House have mentioned truancy rates quite a bit tonight. Well, I’d like to remind them that this is potentially a result of the restructuring and, essentially, privatisation of truancy services that occurred under the last Government, because—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Could the member come to the bill.

KIERAN McANULTY: Well, now that we are past the five-minutes-to-closing mark, I would like to say that I commend the Minister of Education for introducing this and fixing this up, and I also commend the bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Education and Training Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. Tuesday, 11 May. Mā te wā.

The House adjourned at 4.57 p.m.