Wednesday, 2 June 2021

WEDNESDAY, 2 JUNE 2021

WEDNESDAY, 2 JUNE 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

SPEAKER: Talofa lava, members. I’ve asked Barbara Edmonds to say the prayer in Samoan today.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Tatou ifo ma tatalo. Le Atua silisili ese matou te sulaina lou alofa ma lou agalelei ona o tofiga ua e valaauina ia i matou. Matou fiafia foi e taʻutino lo matou amanaiaina o le Tupu Tamaitai o Peretania. O la matou tatalo, alofa ma taitai ia matou felafolafoaiga uma ina ia faia i le loto maualalo ma le faamaoni ia matou faaiuga i totonu o lenei Maota Fono. Faamanuia i Taitai o le Faigamalo ina ia maua le tofamamao ma le loto maualalo e taitai lou atunuu i le manuia ma le filemu. I le suafa o Iesu Keriso, Amene.

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

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

SPEAKER: No papers have been presented, no bills have been introduced.

Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Sarah Rowland on behalf of New Zealand Eating Disorders Carer Support requesting that the House urge the Government to ensure that the new Dunedin Hospital has a specialist paediatric facility to treat eating disorders, provide more specialist facilities nationally, and enable a national body for treatment standards

petition of Margaret Brough requesting that the House urge the Government to reconsider the location of the proposed National Erebus Memorial, and note that 12,000 people have signed a petition to prevent it being located at Dove Myer Robinson Park.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee.

A select committee report has been delivered for presentation.

CLERK: Report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Controller and Auditor-General, Draft annual plan 2021/22.

SPEAKER: That report is set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) to the Minister of Finance: Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): Fa‘afetai tele lava. The ANZ bank’s latest Quarterly Economic Outlook, which was released yesterday, noted that the New Zealand economy is “well on the way to recovery”. The bank’s economic team said it was surprising to be able to say this so early and that going into the crisis, every economic forecaster was expecting a large, drawn-out recession with a possibility of deflation, a 10 percent unemployment rate, and an economy that would struggle to get back to pre-COVID levels of output. The bank acknowledges that the policy response to COVID to eliminate the virus has meant that New Zealanders have spent the last 12 months living relatively normally. Compared with other countries that did not control the virus, ANZ notes that New Zealand’s health outcomes have been better, which has allowed the country to come out of lockdown much sooner and has, in turn, led to a more advanced recovery in New Zealand than in most of our trading partners.

Dr Duncan Webb: What else did this report say about the impact of the Government’s policies on New Zealand’s economic outlook?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, the ANZ report noted, “The focus of Government policy on keeping workers attached to their jobs has also been a key pillar of [our] relatively good economic outcomes.” We’ve seen employment in New Zealand increase above pre-COVID levels in recent months. The ANZ reports that New Zealand’s labour market is far closer to full employment than anyone could have hoped for. Nevertheless, the recovery in the labour market does remain uneven, and this is why the Government has invested heavily in trades training and apprenticeship schemes, as well as expanding the Flexi-wage programme and also, in Budget 2021, extending the Training Incentive Allowance to support 16,000 New Zealanders into work.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Securing the recovery is also being supported by a number of other sectors. Statistics New Zealand reported yesterday that building consents issued for new homes hit a record high of 42,848 in the year to April 2021, and this overtook the previous annual high set in March 2021, which in turn bettered the previous record that was set in 1974. Building consents for new homes in the year to April 2021 have now risen 41 percent, or by more than 12,000, compared with 2017.

SPEAKER: Order! Before I call on the next question, I’m just going to remind Marja Lubeck that she’s sitting a lot closer both to the Minister’s mikes and to my mikes than she was previously, and her energetic interventions are sort of echoing a bit.

Question No. 2—Housing (Public Housing)

2. CHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): Does she agree with the statement in the Labour Party’s 2020 manifesto that it will “regulate property managers to protect landlords and tenants”; if so, what action will the Government take in response?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): In answer to the first part of the member’s question, yes. In answer to the second part of the member’s question, the Government intends to deliver on this manifesto commitment over this three-year term of Government.

Chlöe Swarbrick: When will the Government regulate property managers?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister: as I said in answer to the primary, it is our intention to do this in this term of Government. The work has already begun on this work stream. In late 2020 and in early 2021, officials started engaging with the property management and tenancy sector stakeholders, and in March 2021, the Minister met with relevant stakeholders. So this work stream has begun.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Will regulation in property managers include a mandatory code of conduct with sanctions if the code is broken; if not, why not?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister: as I said, we’ve begun this piece of work and we are engaging stakeholders, and this will be rolled out over this term of Government. As a starting point, we are committed to ensuring that property managers comply with a mandatory code of conduct—so that is something that we are looking at—be part of a licensing regime, meet a good-character test, and follow a framework that allows tenants and landlords to resolve any issues.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Will regulation of property managers give the Tenancy Tribunal new powers to investigate alleged breaches of the law across the property manager’s whole property portfolio, rather than restricting it to a specific individual tenancy; if not, why not?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister: as I said, that work has begun. I’m not sure if that level of detail has been got into yet. I invite the member to put that question in writing.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Does the Government have an accurate record of how many property managers and landlords there are in New Zealand, and, if so, how many?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister: one of the issues, of course, that we have is because the sector is unregulated, there is no accurate data on how many property managers there are or how many properties they actually manage. Rental bond data that is held by Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment gives us some insight, and shows that at 5 November 2020, 2,104 property managers had lodged bonds for about 42 percent of rental properties. But these are conservative estimates and, of course, part of the work we are doing is so we can have data such as the member is asking about.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Talofa lava, Mr Speaker, and fa‘afetai. Does she stand by all of her Government’s statements and actions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Talofa lava. Yes—in particular, our recent Budget announcement of a main benefit boost, which is projected to lift up to an additional 33,000 children out of poverty on the after - housing cost measures in 2022-23. In combination with other changes under Labour such as our Families Package, 109,000 families with children will be better off by, on average, $175 per week by April 2022. Increasing incomes for our most vulnerable both secures our recovery by adding targeted stimulus to the economy while also addressing one of our most pressing long-term challenges of child poverty. The initiative, along with others recently announced in the Budget, are core parts for helping us achieve our three goals for the term: to keep New Zealand safe from COVID-19, to accelerate our recovery and rebuild, and to tackle our foundational challenges—those issues of housing affordability, climate change, and child wellbeing.

Hon Judith Collins: Why did Budget 2021 cut almost $20 million from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund, which is used to promote research, science, and technology, with the potential to boost our long-term economic growth?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It’s my understanding that the money that the member is referring to is being reprioritised across the portfolio. The other point that I would make is that the Minister is doing quite a bit of work in this space generally, alongside the sector, to determine that we are appropriately incentivising and aiding research and development in this country.

Hon Judith Collins: Has she received any advice on the Australian Budget’s investment in a billion-dollar digital economy strategy, and did the New Zealand Budget contain anything similar?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I received advice on New Zealand’s economic performance relative to Australia’s economic performance based on some of the data contained in both countries’ Budgets, and I can tell the member from that that our unemployment rate is lower than Australia, we are projected to go into surplus, again—operating balance before gains and losses surplus—earlier than Australia and at about the same rate as we did following the global financial crisis, our debt levels are lower, and our growth rates are a solid 3.5 percent across the forecast period, which is also higher. So, on all measures, New Zealand is really outperforming Australia economically. On the issue of incentives and supporting technological development, I’d say that we’re looking at New Zealand’s circumstances, and that’s told us that, really, we need to put that support in for our small businesses, in particular. They saw considerable advancement during the COVID era, where they were forced to technologically adapt. We are trying to continue to support that with some of the acceleration funding that we’ve put in for digital support for small businesses.

Hon Judith Collins: Thank you—fa‘afetai. Why has Budget 2021 revised our projected long-term labour productivity growth down to just 1 percent per annum, and what specific initiatives in Budget 2021 will address this?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In answer to the member’s first question, that data is, as I understand, across decades. As I recall, it’s a 30-year average, so that wouldn’t just take into account this Government’s performance.

Brooke van Velden: Does she stand by the Minister of Health’s statement in regard to Patient Voice Aotearoa advocating for increasing funding into Pharmac that—I quote—“I don’t buy into extremist rhetoric.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: At the same time, the Minister has rightly pointed out that we have increased funding for Pharmac to the tune of $200 million across the Budget period, and that has meant that we’re seeing well over a 20 percent increase in Pharmac’s budget overall. Ultimately, though, many of the advocacy groups that we, as a Government, and past Governments have faced often have specific drugs in mind that they would like funded, and the point that we’ve continually made is our job is to support Pharmac and the model. They are the ones that make the decisions over what is being funded. They should not be decisions for us.

Brooke van Velden: Point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was quite clear: whether the Prime Minister stood by the statement made by the health Minister about extremist rhetoric. I don’t believe that was addressed.

SPEAKER: Well, I refer the member to Speakers’ rulings, I think it’s somewhere around page 183—early on that page—and that is that one can’t expect a specific answer to a supplementary question unless the primary is specific. If this area was signalled, I would be supportive of the member, but that area was not signalled as part of the primary question.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The primary question related to statements made by the Government. That question was accepted. Surely a question about a statement is in order, and therefore the statement should be addressed. The Prime Minister did not do so.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ll just find the one. Speakers’ ruling 183/3: “If a member wants to have that kind of specificity addressed in a supplementary question, the primary question needs to be somewhat more specific than this one. (The primary question to the Minister was, ‘Does he stand by all his recent statements?’.)”—the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith.

Brooke van Velden: Does she stand by the Minister of Health’s denial that he used that language at the Health Committee this morning, stating—I quote—“I didn’t say that, and you’ve got that wrong.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m sure the member will appreciate that I have neither the transcripts from that particular event about what was said by either the Minister nor the context in which it was said. I’m just not in a position to be able to answer the member’s question.

Hon Judith Collins: Thank you—fa‘afetai lava. Will there be a significant opening of the border in January 2022?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As the member will have heard, Ministers on this side of the House say repeatedly that we’re working through, of course, a phased approach to reconnecting our people with the world. We’ve already moved on the trans-Tasman bubble arrangement, but as that already demonstrates, these openings can be complex, and our number one priority, if we want to preserve the position that New Zealand is in—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m taking this as a very serious question asked by the members’ leader. I suggest that the front bench let it be answered because I think the leader might be interested in what’s being said.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: But as the member and, in fact, all of New Zealand has seen, even those arrangements with a country that is in a very similar position to us do pose risk and do pose complexities. So our goal is to put ourselves in the best position possible to start reconnecting with the world. However, we will always base those decisions on the data, the evidence, and New Zealand’s position at the time. We are in a good place; we’re not going to run the risk of losing it.

Hon Judith Collins: Is she aware that the Budget forecasts are based on the assumption that the border will be significantly open by January 2022, and how will the economy be impacted if the border is not opened by that date?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Two things: Treasury, of course, have to make predictions. As I understand it, their framing of that prediction was the idea that New Zealand may have further “green bubble” or bubble-style arrangements which enable further opening. But, again, all the way through COVID, it’s necessitated both Treasury and external commentators to make predictions—

Chris Bishop: Read the Budget.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —about a very unknown environment—and I have, Mr Bishop.

Hon Judith Collins: In which case, why is it that the Budget clearly says that it is predicting a significant opening of the border in January 2022 in its assumptions as to the economic wellbeing of this country?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Firstly, Treasury have to make assumptions and predictions in order to make their economic forecasts and projections. Secondly, the member is interpreting what she believes to be significant to be. I’ve just explained that what is being shared with me is what Treasury considers to be significant.

Hon Grant Robertson: Is the Prime Minister aware of any individuals or loose entities who have called for the bubble to be open, closed; the border to be open, closed; and sometimes at the same time?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I have. I have to say, from the member’s line of questioning, I’m not entirely sure what she is advocating. What I know is that this Government has taken a firm and clear decision—the safety of our people first—and it just so happens that when we predicted that putting people’s health first would support our economic recovery, that has been borne out.

Hon Judith Collins: Why does the Government have a target to reduce prison populations by 30 percent, but not a target to reduce violent crime?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because, as the member will know, having worked across corrections, if you are seeking to reduce the prison population, that’s often the equivalent of reducing recidivism. Many people in our prison population are circulating back through. So if you focus on rehabilitation programmes that make a difference—if you focus on having, as prisoners exit, work to ensure that they are in employment and those things which prevent reoffending—then you ultimately also reduce victimisation.

Question No. 4—Energy and Resources

4. RACHEL BROOKING (Labour) to the Minister of Energy and Resources: How is Budget 2021 supporting the roll-out of heating and insulation to make Kiwi homes warmer?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): We’re continuing our investment in the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders through an extension of the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme in Budget 2021. We are funding the success of the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme, which has, to date, delivered around 62,000 insulation and heating retrofits by investing an additional $120 million over two years to install insulation and heating retrofits for a further 47,700 homes. Tens of thousands more lower-income Kiwi families will benefit from better health and lower power bills as a direct result of the Government’s ongoing investment into warm, dry homes.

Rachel Brooking: How will the extension of this programme result in better health outcomes for New Zealanders?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We know that the poor quality of some of New Zealand’s housing stock has led to an unacceptable amount of avoidable hospitalisations linked to cold, damp, and mouldy houses. In 2011, a Motu study on the benefits of insulation found that the benefit-cost ratio was $4.66 for every $1 spent in comfort and wellbeing. It is my intention to update this study to also look at the impact of heat pumps under the programme, which were introduced in 2019.

Rachel Brooking: How many jobs will be supported by the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Warmer Kiwi Homes programme has been hugely successful, not only for grant recipients but for enabling service providers to continue delivering installation. It is estimated that the Warmer Kiwi Homes programme will support up to 600 jobs in the energy services sector.

Question No. 5—NZ Security Intelligence Service

5. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister responsible for the NZ Security Intelligence Service: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister responsible for the NZ Security Intelligence Service): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. There is a longstanding convention of not discussing or confirming what may or may not be New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) operational matters. This is necessary to protect the NZSIS’s methods, capabilities, and areas of focus so that the agency can protect New Zealand’s national security. For that reason, it’s not in the public interest for me to address every statement and action, but, generally speaking, the answer is yes.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What action has he taken since being appointed Minister to ensure that the SIS shifts its focus off peaceful Māori activists and Muslim citizens and instead targets the right people, including violent white supremacists?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: It would be apparent from the report of the royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks that the NZSIS began its work specifically on white identity violent extremism in May 2018, and has continued to deal with that threat along with other terrorist threats and other threats to the national security of New Zealand.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: What specifically is he doing as Minister to ensure that the SIS are working to protect Māori, who are increasingly being targeted by violent and racist white supremacist rhetoric?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m satisfied that the SIS is devoting appropriate resources to all of the national security threats that New Zealand faces, including the threats of terrorism, which itself includes the threat of white identity violent extremism, which itself includes threats against Māori as a people. I appreciated the opportunity to meet with representatives of Te Paati Māori yesterday, with the Director-General of Security, and to go through those issues. As the member will be aware, the director-general has undertaken to go back and ensure that both the work that they do and in conjunction with partners such as the New Zealand Police meets the expectations of that member and, indeed, all New Zealanders.

Rawiri Waititi: What specific measures and processes does the SIS currently have in place in order to monitor the rise of anti-Māori white supremacist threats?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Both the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service and, indeed, its partner agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau, have, I am satisfied, the means to monitor the threats that we would expect them, as a nation, to be monitoring and keeping abreast of, and are working in conjunction with other Government agencies and partners, including partners overseas, to make sure that New Zealanders are safe from those threats, and that includes Māori.

Rawiri Waititi: Will he work with the Minister of Police to establish a joint task force specifically targeting white supremacist groups and organisations who seek to inflict harm on tangata whenua, and, if not, why not?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I assure the member that the Security Intelligence Service and the police do work closely on matters of national security and where they are manifest and where people are identified as acting out those threats. But, in any event, in light of the events of last week that that member and his colleague, Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, have brought to the nation’s attention as well as to mine, there is clearly a need to ensure that the work that all Government agencies involved in national security are doing is responding effectively to those threats, bringing people to justice, and making sure that they and all members of the New Zealand community are safe.

Hon Marama Davidson: What evidence does the Minister have that NZSIS is able to identify and respond appropriately to white supremacy rhetoric and threats of violence?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Again, I refer that member to the report of the royal commission of inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks, where the inquiry laid out both the work of the SIS and the threats that it is across. But, as the Minister in charge, I can assure that member and, indeed, the House that I am satisfied that that agency and all partner agencies are responding effectively to the national security threats that they face.

Question No. 6—Finance

6. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: Talofa, Mr Speaker. What specific initiatives, if any, in Budget 2021 will materially lift productivity in New Zealand, and by which year will this impact be seen?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank the member for the question. Budget 2021 includes a number of initiatives to ensure that our economic recovery results in an economy that is more productive than we have had before, as well as being more sustainable and inclusive. A wide range of policy areas affect productivity, so I’ll ask the Speaker and the member to bear with me while I cover just a few of the investments included in Budget 2021. Most prominently, Budget 2021 invests $57.3 billion in infrastructure over the next five years, which will not only create jobs but also improve the physical and digital infrastructure that New Zealand businesses rely on and reduce congestion, improving productivity. Improving the skills of New Zealanders is important when it comes to improving productivity, and Budget 2021 invests in this. Building on the more than 100,000 additional apprenticeships and trade training places that have been taken up since July 2020, Budget 2021 continues this with our reform of vocational education, presenting $279.5 million of funding. We’ve also reintroduced the training incentive allowance, with degree-level programmes, so that 16,000 sole parents, disabled people, and carers will have the financial support they need to get degree-level qualifications, increase their skills, and improve productivity. Research and development and innovation is also important when it comes to productivity. We will be investing an additional $300 million in the New Zealand Green Investment Fund, along with $56 million in science, research, and innovation, including a further $22 million to Research Education Advanced Network New Zealand and $10 million in ongoing investments in research—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will now get on to the second leg of the question.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Oh, thank you, Mr Speaker. In answer to the second part of the question: straight away and also over the next four years, evidenced by the Budget Economic and Fiscal Update showing annual business investment averaging almost 6 percent over the forecast period and real per capita GDP growing at around 2.4 percent.

Andrew Bayly: Is he concerned by the Productivity Commission report that shows New Zealanders are working longer but produce less than other OECD countries, and, if so, how will Budget 2021 improve this?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the first part of the question, yes, and in answer to the second part of the question—I’ll get in trouble with you if I go into that any more.

Andrew Bayly: How can he be confident in his Budget when long-term labour productivity growth is now projected to drop to a mere 1 percent—the lowest in 15 years?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: It’s worth going through how that figure is derived. It is derived by the Treasury using a 30-year historical median. In making their assumptions on labour productivity growth, Treasury do not make judgments on any current policy settings, nor on the potential of new technologies, nor on anticipated level of investments in coming years. Those assumptions are entirely based on backward-looking data over the last 30 years.

Andrew Bayly: What are the reasons that Budget 2021 projects long-term labour productivity growth to continue to fall to just 1 percent per annum?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Referring to my last answer, that is because that has been the historical record of New Zealand. The investments that we are making in infrastructure, in skills, and in research and development mean that we have every chance of improving on that record that has bedevilled New Zealand for decades.

Andrew Bayly: Why did Budget 2021 not include a tax incentive to make it easier for businesses to invest in new plant, equipment, and software?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We’ve made changes in the package that we did in March of 2020 that enabled building depreciation, which I know will benefit, according to estimates, around $1 billion in the 2021-22 year, which will significantly help businesses. We previously introduced the research and development tax credit. But, equally, the member can’t have it both ways. He wants more money spent, but he also wants less tax coming in. It doesn’t add up, Mr Bayly.

Question No. 7—Emergency Management

7. SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) to the Acting Minister for Emergency Management: How is the Government responding to the Canterbury floods?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Acting Minister for Emergency Management): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. The Government is supporting the Canterbury region as it responds and recovers from the significant flooding event. Police, Fire and Emergency New Zealand, the Ministry of Social Development, Te Puni Kōkiri, the National Emergency Management Agency, among many agencies, have assisted in the response, alongside personnel and equipment from the New Zealand Defence Force. The Ministry for Primary Industries is coordinating rural recovery support, the Ministry of Education is supporting schools, kura, and early learning centres as damage is being assessed, and Waka Kotahi is supporting the repair and recovery of significant damage to the transport network. As announced on Monday, an initial contribution of $100,000 to support the region has been made through the mayoral relief fund, and yesterday, my colleague Minister O’Connor announced that the Government has classified the Canterbury floods as a medium-scale adverse event, unlocking funding of $500,000 to support farmers and growers in the region.

Sarah Pallett: How well has the overall civil defence emergency management system performed in the event?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The response has been very well managed at a local, regional, and national level. The Canterbury regional civil defence emergency management group has been leading response efforts, and I would like to acknowledge the group controller, Neville Reilly, who has demonstrated calm and effective leadership on the ground, and acknowledge those who staffed emergency operation centres over the weekend and the beginning of this week. The National Emergency Management Agency national coordination centre remains activated in support of the response, alongside local coordination centres in Christchurch, Timaru, Ashburton, Selwyn, Mackenzie, and Waimakariri. I would also like to thank the Canterbury region mayors, who came together swiftly to work with the whole region over the weekend to plan for and respond to the flooding event.

Sarah Pallett: What role have the local community and volunteers played in the response?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Cantabrians have demonstrated once again why responses to local emergencies are best led at the local level. Canterbury-based first responders Ngāi Tahu, Federated Farmers, the Hakatere, Koukourārata, and Tuahiwi Marae, and community and rural leaders, including the Rural Support Trust, St John, Red Cross, and many other organisations and individuals, were critical to the response. I want to thank all those families and friends and neighbours who took in evacuees over the weekend, helped clear debris, and even, in some cases, saved lives. I especially want to thank the hundreds of volunteers like those that I met at the civil defence centre at the Mandeville Sports Club, and also those at the Ashburton and Waimakariri emergency operation centres. There is a significant recovery ahead for affected communities, and Government agencies are well involved in that.

Question No. 8—Housing

8. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister of Housing: Does she believe that Government policies are helping first-home buyers keep up with rising house prices?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. In March, we introduced a package of both demand and supply measures aimed at increasing housing supply, relieving speculative demand pressures on the market, and making it easier for first-home buyers. Ten weeks in, we are seeing some promising indicators that our Government’s recent policies are beginning to help first-home buyers, but I acknowledge that it’s very early to assess the impact of the package. The housing crisis is a problem decades in the making that will take more time to turn around, but our combination of measures, including reducing barriers to building houses, will start to make a difference.

Brooke van Velden: Has she seen reports of how increasing housing costs have contributed to nearly half of the Capital and Coast DHB’s bowel screening programme nurses quitting, and, if so, what urgent actions are being taken to support those affected by rising house costs?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In answer to the first part of the question, no, I have not seen that report.

Brooke van Velden: Has she seen reports of the average resale profit in Wellington increasing by $60,000 over the last three months, and, if so, does she believe that first-home buyers can be expected to raise the additional $12,000 for a deposit they would have needed over those three months?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, I have seen reports of those increases in Wellington, but I have also seen several reports showing that the different impacts of the policies are starting to take effect at different speeds around the country. So if we have a look at the house price index change between February 2021, when we were seeing a 5.3 percent monthly increase in house price, and April 2021, across the country, it was 0.6 percent. I also point to a number of commentators that are pointing to the fact that they are seeing an uplift in terms of first-home buyer market activity in the market, and Westpac economists, for example, who are saying that they’ve revised their house price forecast as a result of the Government’s recent move. I think the point is we are 10 weeks into these changes. These are problems decades in the making, but we are starting to see some promising green shoots.

Nicola Willis: Does she think her Government’s decision to buy up more than $750 million worth of houses to turn them into State homes has helped or hindered first-home buyers?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think the member needs to get some perspective on that number and the size of the total number of sales—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Duff advice—duff advice.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: —of properties that we have—

SPEAKER: Order! Too loud, Mr Brownlee.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Always. The member needs to get some perspective. But what the member is talking about—[Interruption] Thank you, Mr Brownlee. The number that the member is talking about is actually a very tiny fraction of the number of sales and purchases that happen in New Zealand. But, as I have repeatedly told that member in this House, I am not satisfied with the level of buy-ins that I saw were happening within our public housing sector that were instigated under the previous Government. In some years, like 2015, for example, 67 percent of the all-new public housing places were, in fact, buy-ins and not new builds. Our Government has that down to around 12 percent this year. I am proud of what we’re doing in public housing.

Nicola Willis: Well, can she confirm answers to her own written questions, showing her Government has spent—

SPEAKER: No, I think you might just want to rephrase the beginning of it. I don’t think—

Nicola Willis: Showing the Government, not Megan Woods’ Government?

SPEAKER: No, I don’t think they were her questions—her answers.

Nicola Willis: Can she confirm her answers to written questions showing the Government—her Government—has spent more than five times as much buying up houses than the past National Government ever did, and what does she say to the hundreds of first-home buyers who have missed out on a house because they were outbid by the Government?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I certainly can confirm that we’ve spent five times more than the previous Government, because that was a Government that sold off public housing and did not add to our stock. It was a Government that ended up with 1,500 fewer public houses than it started with, and what I say to first-home buyers is that this is a Government that is part of the solution to the housing crisis, not the cause of it. We have built over 5,000 new public homes in the nearly four years we’ve been in Government.

Brooke van Velden: What reports has she received on how fast incomes would have to grow for first-home buyers in order to keep up with house price inflation from the previous quarter?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: There are a number of reports that are out there that are calculating across different regions what that would look like. We saw that CoreLogic is showing what that is doing across different parts of New Zealand. But I think the point I want to make to the member is that we are not content with the current rate of house prices that we are seeing. This is exactly why we instituted these changes back in March and are happy to see that we are seeing some green shoots. That shows some indications that rapid house price growth is slowing.

Brooke van Velden: How much does she believe an affordable house should cost in Wellington?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I think that we’ve traversed this ground often in this House. There are international measures: around 30 percent of income on housing, whether that be through rent or whether that be through servicing mortgages. But, of course, some people choose to spend far more of their incomes on mortgages because they want to pay them off faster.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Is the Government still committed to so-called sustained moderation of house prices, and, if so, is the Minister aware that it will take approximately 50 years for house prices then to get back to the level of affordability in the early 2000s?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We’re a Government that is taking action to ensure that we can do something about out-of-control house prices. What we have shown is that we have a programme of work that we see that the Treasury and the Reserve Bank forecasts show less than a 1 percent increase in housing prices in the coming year as a result of policies that our Government has instituted.

David Seymour: What does it say for the effectiveness of that action by the Government that the May year-on-year CoreLogic figures showed a 20 percent rise in national house prices versus only 18 percent in April?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: As I said in the answer to the primary question, we are 10 weeks in from making these changes, and in terms of the only data we have, which is for April, that reflects six weeks in. The data set that the member referred to first is indeed the one that included the hyperinflation from November through to March.

Hon Grant Robertson: Further to that answer, can the Minister confirm that the latest monthly data does show that in 10 of 19 regions, we are seeing a slowing rate of house price increases?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Yes, and, furthermore, some of that data shows across Auckland even bigger swings.

Question No. 9—Women

9. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) to the Minister for Women: What initiatives are there in Budget 2021 to improve the lives of New Zealand women?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister for Women): I am pleased to inform the House that Budget 2021 delivers for New Zealand women through breast and cervical cancer screening system improvements, increasing benefits to tackle inequality, and providing better employment opportunities for women. Some of the highlights that will have a real impact on the lives of women and girls include extending the training incentive allowance, 3,000 extra places in childcare, pay parity for early childhood education teachers, and $131 million to tackle family and sexual violence.

Willow-Jean Prime: How will the increases to benefits announced in Budget 2021 impact women?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We know that 83 percent of sole parents are women, and 90 percent of the recipients of sole parent support are women. The changes made through Budget 2021 mean for a single mum on the sole parent benefit, she will have received the 22 percent increase in her main benefit under Labour since 2017. The Government has also extended the training incentive allowance, of which 86 percent of recipients are women. In addition, the 3,000 extra places for children in childcare, plus increases in childcare assistance, will help about 900 low-income parents to remain or transition into employment, training, and education, and many of these parents will be women.

Willow-Jean Prime: How else has the Government delivered for women following the COVID-19 pandemic?

Hon JAN TINETTI: During New Zealand’s peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a gap emerged between men’s and women’s unemployment rates. We have now closed that gap, and unemployment between men and women is equal. In real terms, that means in the March quarter there have been an additional 14,000 more women in work compared to the previous quarter. Pre - COVID-19, only 14 percent of apprenticeships were held by women, and just 3.2 percent of all building and construction apprenticeships were women. The Apprenticeship Boost has contributed to a 30 percent increase in women taking up apprenticeships during 2020. This is a Government that is committed to gender equality. The COVID-19 economic recovery plan, combined with the delivery of Budget 2021, demonstrates that.

Question No. 10—COVID-19 Response

10. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Does he stand by all his statements and actions in relation to the Government’s response to COVID-19?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Yes—in particular, the work already undertaken by all DHBs, which has seen them administer over 668,000 vaccines to people across New Zealand, well in excess of their plans.

Chris Bishop: Why does the Canterbury District Health Board not have enough COVID-19 vaccine doses to complete its group 1 and 2 populations, and which other health boards are in this situation?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Vaccination of group 1 is near completed nationwide, vaccination of group 2 in Canterbury is well under way—and I know in many of their aged-care facilities, a majority of residents have received their first dose—and, thirdly, vaccination of group 2 will continue throughout July.

Chris Bishop: Why has it taken until June 2021 for the Government to allow saliva testing to be offered as an alternative to the nasopharyngeal PCR test for workers at the border, when the Roche-Simpson report recommended it be rolled out as soon as possible in September 2020?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: On behalf of the Minister: there’s been a process to work through with identifying the correct use of saliva testing—and, in particular, how that is integrated with the nasopharyngeal PCR test, which we know is the most reliable gold-standard test—and, in addition, a tender process to run.

Chris Bishop: Has he seen the comments of the Hon Phil Twyford on Facebook: “We are working on a longer-term border plan and exploring how we can expand MIQ that will allow more people into New Zealand.”; if so, can he share some more details of this quite important announcement made by Mr Twyford via a Facebook comment?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: No, I am not aware of my colleague’s Facebook post.

Chris Bishop: Will the vaccine roll-out scale up enough to complete the 493,837 doses in the next four weeks, as the Ministry of Health model indicates will happen?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: On behalf of the Minister: he has been clear in his statements that the biggest influence on vaccination doses administered throughout this month and next will be supply. We’ll be receiving an update on supply very shortly and may need to adjust the model, but, currently, our current plan is the model as it is published.

Hon Michael Wood: Which of the Government’s policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic does the Minister believe have contributed to New Zealand being ranked the No. 1 country in the Bloomberg COVID resilience index, recently updated?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Well, there could be many reasons, including our strong public health response, which included an excellent response at the border; the set-up, when we had no existing quarantine facilities, of an integrated managed isolation and quarantine facility; the excellent contact tracing system that we have built over time; and the wide-scale testing system, not to mention the development of multiple pieces of information technology to oversee this.

Question No. 11—Transport

11. INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri) to the Minister of Transport: How does Budget 2021 invest in rail?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. The Government is delivering on its pre-election commitment to invest in rail and develop domestic rail workshops to create jobs as part of our COVID-19 economic recovery plan. Budget 2021’s $1.3 billion investment in rail replaces locomotives and wagons and builds new rail workshops in Dunedin and Christchurch, new IT systems, maintenance, and renewals across KiwiRail’s 3,700 kilometre rail network, creating jobs and improving safety. These investments will create hundreds of jobs, as well as supporting the 4,000 good jobs currently provided by KiwiRail.

Ingrid Leary: Supplementary, faamolemole. What are the benefits of building rail workshops?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: By investing in rail workshops in Dunedin and Christchurch, we’re going to create around 445 good local jobs and boost jobs in the civil engineering and construction sector throughout the wider supply chain. This will create apprenticeships and help upskill KiwiRail’s workforce. Instead of buying ready-made wagons from overseas, the new facility at Hillside will allow us to initially assemble around 1,500 wagons locally. This investment will mean local jobs, rebuilding expertise, youth training opportunities, and boosting Otago’s economy and making our railways more self-sufficient and resilient.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to call a member in a second. I’m going to remind people that if they really want to ask questions, they’ve got stand up and take the call. They don’t—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: But we don’t have any.

SPEAKER: Well, the party has four.

Ingrid Leary: Fa‘afetai lava. How does the Budget’s investment in rail build on the Government’s previous investments?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The $1.3 billion in Budget 2021 for rail builds on the Government’s revitalisation of rail, which includes a range of important investments such as reopening the Wairoa to Napier line, futureproofing the Auckland City Rail Link, bringing the rail line north of Auckland up to scratch to help with freight, building a third main line for Auckland, extending electrification to Pukekohe, future rail stations at Drury, 15 new electric trains into Auckland’s network, starting the Te Huia service between Hamilton and Auckland for commuters, and saving the Wairarapa line from deterioration with critical maintenance work. It’s a busy programme, and there’s more to come.

Hon Grant Robertson: Supplementary question, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Is it about the Hutt?

Hon Grant Robertson: It can be if you want it to be, Mr Speaker. Has the Minister seen any reports as to why it is that the National Party hates people getting jobs and there being sustainable transport caused by—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Look, it’s not even Thursday, Mr Robertson. When the Minister’s acting for the Prime Minister in the House, I’m reluctant to—

Hon Grant Robertson: Don’t tell her.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ve just mentioned her and, therefore, it will come up on her feed.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Extra question?

SPEAKER: Yes—extra question, Mr Woodhouse.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he think an investment of $75 million for the privilege of assembling wagons at a cost of $23,000 per wagon more than the current procurement process represents good value for the taxpayer?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: In the first instance, I’d encourage the Opposition spokesperson on transport to check his figures. It’s $85 million that the Government is proudly investing into Dunedin and the Hillside workshops, following through on our election commitment, investing in the people, the communities, and the economy of Dunedin and Otago to create skilled jobs and opportunities for young people and to ensure that we have a resilient and reliable transport network. Unlike the previous Government, this Government won’t stand by and run the rail network into the ground. We’ll build up the skills and the infrastructure and the people to have a resilient and reliable rail network in this country.

Hon David Parker: Would the re-establishment of carriage assembly at Hillside workshops have cost tens of millions of dollars less if the previous Government hadn’t shut the previous facility down?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I think that the member is right in making that assessment. Work that this Government has done in terms of building a plan for the future of rail reveals that the New Zealand rail network was in a period of managed decline under the previous Government, and we are very proud of the investments that we have made to ensure that rail, which delivers significant economic value—valued at $2.1 billion every year by the recent value of rail report—is fully realised to make sure that we have a resilient transport system and that we have good jobs for many New Zealanders in the rail system.

Hon Member: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Well, I’ll call a member in a minute, but I’m going to ask people to settle down. I mean, it’s sort of like members here are getting more excited than my grandkids do playing with trains.

Question No. 12—Education

12. Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) to the Minister of Education: Does he agree with the Prime Minister’s comments in response to questions about white privilege in relation to education that “It’s not part of our Government agenda” and “It’s not something that we’re teaching”?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education) on behalf of the Minister of Education: Yes.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: How does the Minister explain this Te Hurihanganui blueprint document guiding that programme in schools, which says, “Building critical consciousness means reflecting critically on the imbalance of power and resources in society, and taking anti-oppressive action to do something about it for the better. It means recognising white privilege,”?

Hon JAN TINETTI: White privilege is not part of the New Zealand Curriculum. I would like to inform the member, though, that the education system in the past hasn’t worked for everyone in this country. It is inequitable. One of the biggest reasons for this is systemic racism. Te Hurihanganui is one resource that works with communities to address this. Te Hurihanganui is a professional resource for teachers. Let me help the member understand the difference between teaching children curriculum and building and supporting teacher competence and capacity. Te Hurihanganui is about critical thinking, understanding who teachers are, the impact of their behaviour on students, and understanding others’ world view—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! First of all, the response is getting too long. This an area of discussion which a couple of weeks ago led us to some problems, and one of the things that my team has agreed is to ask people just to contemplate, both in their answers and in their interjections, the effect that it will have on the House if this area gets wound up in the way that it’s threatening to do.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: If teaching white privilege isn’t part of this Government’s agenda, why are teachers going to Ministry of Education accord teacher-only days where they are invited to “take a minute to list your own privileges. This might include things like white privilege, which we’ve been talking about a lot recently.”?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Teachers are required to teach the New Zealand’s Curriculum to our children. White privilege is not part of that. However, injustice, inequality, and privilege are themes that are explored in some teaching resources to build cultural competency amongst our teaching workforce. Not talking about these concepts does Pākehā a disservice, and Māori children will continue to grow up thinking their position at the bottom of the heap is their fault, rather than the systems that keep them there.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Aren’t we far more likely to successfully address inequities, privileged or otherwise, by dealing with the truancy crisis in our schools than by transposing American culture wars into our classrooms?

Hon JAN TINETTI: On behalf of the Minister: that member needs to understand some of the underlying causes that are causing truancy.

David Seymour: Can the Minister please help the New Zealand public and parents understand how Te Hurihanganui is a resource for teachers about white privilege, it’s a resource provided to teachers, and yet teachers are not teaching white privilege? How does the Minister reconcile those facts?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Te Hurihanganui is a professional development programme for educators. It was co-designed to address bias, strengthen equity, and accelerate educational achievement and wellbeing of Māori. At a practical level, building the community’s knowledge and experience might include things like New Zealand’s history, colonisation, and its effects.

Hon Paul Goldsmith: Has she corrected the Prime Minister so she knows that under Labour, it is part of the agenda and we are teaching it?

Hon JAN TINETTI: In the context of the Prime Minister’s sayings and not the shortened version that the member has taken, no.

Budget Debate

Bills

Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill

Debate resumed from 1 June on the .

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): It’s a privilege to stand up and speak in the Budget debate today. What I am most relieved about is that a central part of the Budget 2021—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Far too much noise. It’s very impolite.

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: —was with respect to the welfare system and making some crucial adjustments and changes to ensure that those who are having to access support from the welfare system are able to do so with a level of dignity. And what was great to see is that, by and large, there was support from across the House, bar perhaps ACT but including National, and I think that is recognition of the fact that the changes, particularly the benefit increases, were long overdue, needed to be done, and actually, I think, reflects a public sentiment and empathy that has grown towards those in the welfare system, an understanding of the fact that, actually, yes, they deserve to get a little bit more.

Yesterday, I heard a speech from an Opposition member of Parliament—I think it was Simeon Brown—talking about the “mother of all Budgets”. He made the point that in 1991 he was only just born. His point was that he felt it was of no relevance and he felt that it was important just to continue to look forward. But I would argue with him on that. We do need to look to our past to understand why we are in the situation that we are currently in, and we need to look to our past to see where mistakes were made and, in any way possible, look to rectify those.

In 1991, the “mother of all Budgets” hit us. There were massive slashes to benefits at the time. Many of us can remember it for our personal reasons; mine was that I had parents who lost jobs at the time. They had always worked. They had always wanted to work. And then, all of a sudden, with not their own choice but because of the economic conditions of the time, they were no longer able to—and then, on top of that, hit with cuts to benefits, which saw them further impoverished, not just because of the economic conditions but because of the political decisions that were made during that period of time. And they were unwise political decisions. They had impacts on generations after as well, and we should not forget that. To finally be able to increase benefits to a reasonable level, a level that was in line with what the Welfare Expert Advisory Group have recommended—in fact, a level that went beyond what the Welfare Expert Advisory Group have recommended for those with children—is actually a relief for me as the Minister for Social Development and Employment and, I know, is a relief for many people in the House.

But it wasn’t just about the increase to income support, although that is incredibly important; it was also, in the Budget, about ensuring that we continue to put investment towards supporting those in the welfare system to be able to work. We are very much focused on that. Last Budget, we put $200 million towards front-line work-focused services through the Ministry of Social Development. The year before, we had put money into work-focused case management. We recognised, when we came into Government in 2017, there had been a decline in the work-focused case management because of the fact that there was more of a focus on hardship, which is important, but the levels of staffing had not been lifted to be able to ensure that anyone who walked into those Work and Income offices could also get the support that they wanted for employment and upskilling. And they do want it. This came out when the Welfare Expert Advisory Group were going around the country and consulting. The vast majority of people who are on benefit want to work, and they want support to get into work. So that investment is as important as the income support or benefit increases that we’ve put in place.

But it wasn’t just about the front-line work focus. We’ve mentioned a number of times in the House, and I will continue to shout this one from the rooftops, how proud we are that we have finally reinstated the training incentive allowance. It was one of the meanest moves, actually, by the previous Government, in 2009, as one of their first actions, to cut the training incentive allowance and cut off that additional support for sole parents, for disabled people, and for carers of disabled people to be able to get that additional money that would support them to get level 4 to level 7 qualifications. Now, why we wouldn’t want sole parents and disabled people and carers of disabled people to be able to access higher-level degree study is beyond me. Of course we want that to happen. So, when that cut was made, it seemed like one of the most mean-spirited cuts and, I will say this, particularly given those cuts were made by a woman who said she got the training incentive allowance herself. So I am proud that we get to reinstate this opportunity. There will be many women out there, disabled people, carers of disabled people—in fact, there will be about 16,000 over the next four years—who will take up this opportunity to enrol at levels of study from level 4 to level 7. And not only will they be better off but their families will be better off.

One of the points I want to make—or the last point I want to make—on the training incentive allowance and the reinstatement of it is that we should not forget that all of the research shows that a child’s level of academic achievement will be determined by, or one of the main determinants will be, the mother’s level of academic achievement. So, when we’re looking for generational change and ensuring a whole-of-whānau wellbeing, it is this type of investment that actually makes a very meaningful difference. So I am very proud of the fact that we’ve been able to reinstate that, and I look forward to hearing the stories of the sole mothers and the disabled people and the carers who actually take up that opportunity to upskill and train.

Another area that we haven’t had a chance to traverse to the extent that I would like, with regards to the changes to the welfare system, is with respect to process. So we’ve talked about the increases in income support, we’ve talked about the increased investment with regards to work and supporting people to work, but also there are process changes that have needed to take place in our welfare system. Of many recommendations that have come through the Welfare Expert Advisory Group on this, one of the key ones that we managed to get across the line at Budget 2021 was with respect to the expectations and the processes around medical certificates. This is raised all the time by beneficiary advocates, by people with health conditions and disabilities themselves, and even by health practitioners—the fact that, through the welfare system, we’ve had an expectation that if you have a health condition or a disability you are, for the first two months, every four weeks, to go and get a medical certificate and present it to prove that you still have that health condition or disability, and thereafter every 13 weeks.

This doesn’t work for people who have conditions that are clearly not going to change in a four-week period, and I think this was recognised back in 2017 when the process was changed for people who have cancer. The process was changed for them because there was so much media around the fact that people were undergoing radiation and chemotherapy and still expected to go and get this medical certificate on a four-weekly basis, and it was deemed to be unfair. But it wasn’t changed for other people with health conditions and disabilities in the welfare system, when they may have been in similar circumstances. So we have changed that. We will take the advice of the health professionals with regards to how often they need to produce a medical certificate to prove that that a health condition or disability still exists, and the flow-on effect means that those people are not going to be having to pay for GP visits, to get that medical certificate unnecessarily, because of this unreasonable bureaucratic process. But it also means that we will save ourselves about 20,000 visits to GPs a month, clearing up that space for people who are actually sick to be able to go to the doctor. And how many of us here have wanted to make an appointment with the doctor the next day only to ring in and find, no, you can’t get in to see your GP for three or four days? So this will assist with that.

I’m very proud of the changes that we have made to date with regards to the welfare overhaul. This was not a beginning; it comes off the back of many changes stretching back to the Families Package that we introduced early in 2018. We have made some significant moves, and I don’t have time to rattle them all off, but Budget 2021 provides some key milestones, and I look forward to continuing this work, continuing the overhaul and the transformation of our welfare system for the better outcomes for New Zealanders.

Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): The clear signal in Vote Health 2021 is that Labour no longer cares about older people. They have turned their eyes away from older people and towards the mirrors on their wall. Labour doesn’t care about older people.

It is the Budget where older people pay for the ideology of this Labour Government to centralise everything, in Wellington. It is the Budget where older people are fobbed off so that the Minister and his increasing band of expensive consultants can decide from Wellington what is good for older people and good for New Zealanders. It is the Budget that hides more than it helps; it hinders more than it hastens. It is the Budget that takes from older people. Labour doesn’t care about older people.

Let’s be clear on exactly what is taken from older people in Budget 2021: $200 million of healthcare, the annual free GP check, has been taken, dissolved, and removed—a broken promise with older people simply dismissed by this Government. They have every right to be angry.

What is even worse is that the draft document papers show cynical discussions, how this Labour Government can pull $200 million out of health but pay off a paltry $8 million towards an aged-care commissioner to keep older people happy. They will see through the smoke and mirrors.

The business case to David Clark for the free annual health check is fascinating as the Labour Government makes the case for why it is so important. The benefits of the annual over-65 health check are: reduced mortality, Labour doesn’t care about older people; reduced health costs for out-patient and in-patient care, Labour doesn’t care about older people; reduced emergency department—ED—visits, Labour doesn’t care about older people. And while we are talking about emergency visits, please explain to me why, in the month of January, from the hours of 1 a.m. to 7 a.m., 156 people over the age of 80 were discharged from DHBs—that is not just in an emergency department; they were in in-patient status in a bed, and 156 sent home at 1 a.m. in the morning. Oh, and what is even worse: three of them were over the age of 100. Explain that to me; that surely is unexplainable. The final benefit: improved mental and social wellbeing. That is another benefit that is being cut. Labour doesn’t care about older people.

So $200 million is what older people have given up in this Budget. What have they got in return? More hip replacements? Nope. More knee replacements? Nope. Half of the cost of this Government’s restructuring has been borne by older people in the experiment for three new statutory entities, three new health systems, and layers and layers of bureaucracy. That is what older people are paying for.

Andrew Little knew that when he was taking money away from older people, it was a bad decision—a very bad decision—because he was even afraid to take it to Cabinet. Written parliamentary question (WPQ) No. 202—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s not allowed to say that.

Dr SHANE RETI: Oh, OK. Then, if I can just talk to WPQ No. 20233: “What communications has”—this is to Andrew Little—“he taken to Cabinet, if any, around cancelling the free over 65s seniors annual health check and eye screening … ?” “I have not taken any papers to Cabinet around cancelling the free over 65s seniors annual health check.”

Is the $486 million a good business decision? Well, let’s check the business case. Oh, wait! There isn’t a business case—$486 million on health restructuring, and no business case. Andrew Little wrote back to me, saying that no, he had not been provided with a business case for the restructuring. So I thought maybe Grant Robertson might throw further light on this. “A formal business case is not part of the review case” is what Grant Robertson writes to me.

So if older people are giving up $200 million for half of the health restructuring—that $486 million—where else is the rest of the money coming from? Well, some of the Associate Ministers were clearly told, “We’re already taking money away from older people and out of core health to pay for this, so don’t even make a Budget bid. Don’t even ask.” WPQ No. 20585, from an Associate Minister of Health—I got this last week—“What communications with the Ministry of Health or Minister, if any, describes Budget 2021 bids that the Minister made … ?” “I did not submit any separate bids”, from an Associate Minister of Health. Wow. No health bids into Budget 2021 from an Associate Minister of Health. What does that say?

I can tell you where the rest of the money to pay for this experiment is coming from: it will come from cutting costs, delaying programmes, and repurposing existing programmes. I know that because that is exactly what the Minister told me. WPQ No. 20827: “Did he send or sign a letter to the Minister of Finance, between Dec 3 and Dec 11 2020 inclusive indicating ‘To live within a smaller funding envelope will require choices to be made about whether to progress these initiatives, how they might be phased, and whether they can be scaled, or I look at what existing programmes may be able to be repurposed’?” The answer to that was “Yes, or reprioritised”—as we heard today; another word for cutting costs.

So what programmes in Budget 2021 were phased, scaled, and repurposed to pay for this experiment? The Pharmac budget is $200 million. In campaign 2020, we had three revenue streams for Pharmac: the first was $200 million for cancer, the second was $20 million for rare disorders, and the third was to index Pharmac funding to the increase in Vote Health that goes up every year. What we know is that it has gone up about 10 percent this year on a $1 billion Pharmac fund—that’s $100 million. We would have been looking at around about $320 million in our hands this year; understandably, still not the $700 million that is required for unfunded medicines, but at least 50 percent more than what this Government was putting in Budget 2021.

What else was scaled? Who else is paying for this experiment? Well, DHB funding has been scaled back by $305 million from last Budget—$980 million is what the operational expenditure for cost pressures for DHB was last Budget; $675 million this year. How will the lights stay on, when operational funding has been cut to DHBs?

Dental care was cancelled. An absolutely clear broken promise, when the Prime Minister stood on the campaign trail nine months or so ago and said, “We promise 20 mobile dental clinics in 2021 and to increase the emergency dental benefit”—nothing in this Budget.

We already have a health Minister who is struggling to stand up to Grant Robertson with his health bids. And we know that because we asked the health Minister whether he made a bid or had he had any correspondence suggesting that Budget 2021 might have 20 free mobile dental clinics. The answer to that was: “I indicated which of the manifesto commitments I believe should be progressed, alongside the work on the health and disability system reforms, which included an initiative around additional mobile dental clinics.” Andrew Little seemed to have understood the importance of the mobile dental clinics, but couldn’t get it over the line with Grant Robertson. Dental care was cancelled. As I say, there are no teeth in this Budget.

I think what we are also concerned about is what else has been removed from the 2021 Budget. I think that a real concern is where we are seeing cost cuttings around rationalising specialist services at provincial hospitals. Now, I actually asked Andrew Little this question on 8 April. It was my second question in this House, supplementary No. 4. I asked him: “Has he read any briefings around rationalising specialist services at provincial hospitals … ?” He said: “No.” Then, imagine my surprise this week, when in reply to my WPQ No. 20767, he replies—my question was: “Has he read any briefings around rationalising specialist services at provincial hospitals to manage funding down pressures, and if so, what?” And he replied: “I received a briefing on 3 December 2020.” Quite different to what he indicated to me on 8 April in the House. He knew specialist services would be cut to fund this experiment—this experiment in centralising health from Wellington—but told me “No.”

If I can just conclude, how else could we spend that $486 million that is to go to restructuring? Well, a few weeks ago, there was an anomaly in cancer drugs for children who currently receive Pharmac-subsidised drugs in hospitals. The Ministry of Health has realised there is a policy anomaly and are considering whether newly diagnosed children with cancer should still be able to receive those medicines in public hospitals. I would strongly suggest that they could. A tiny, tiny part of this $486 million would cover that.

We could completely eliminate the waiting list for cochlear implants—not just double what we’re currently doing; completely eliminate it. We could fund more than half of the total cost of unfunded Pharmac medicines. It turns out that we could do nearly 30,000 hip replacements with $486 million that is being put aside. That would likely clear the waiting list so well that we would be doing normal hips—30,000 hips could be done instead of the $486 million.

In conclusion, there will be no more Pharmac funding, there is no closing or clearing of the cochlear waiting list, and there are no more hips to be done, because, in this Budget, the Government takes from older people, they take from DHBs, they take from Pharmac, they take from dental health, and, finally, New Zealanders are also taken to the cleaners in this Budget. This is a poor Budget. I cannot commend it. Thank you.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): This year’s Budget does what Labour Governments do well—driving economic growth while looking after our people—and I’m proud to be part of the Government that has delivered Budget 2021. I do want to take a moment to acknowledge some of my colleagues that made this happen: our Prime Minister for her leadership around the areas to focus on but also our Minister of Finance. Putting together Budgets can be a lonely time for Ministers of Finance. They do need to phase, they do need to scale, they do need to insist on reprioritisation. Every Government comes in with a manifesto full of three years of activity that it will deliver, and in every term of Government, the first Budget that a Government delivers does a third of what that Government promised to do in its manifesto to the people.

So I want to acknowledge the work of Grant Robertson for crafting what I think was an incredibly clever Budget that allowed us to focus. It allowed us to address the long-term structural issues that New Zealanders need to address, but it also allowed us to deliver on critical manifesto commitments with clear pathways over the next two Budgets. I think it’s not a three-part harmony, as he called it, but a trilogy that we will over this term of Government need to deliver on our manifesto promises.

Of course, Budget 2021 was set against the backdrop of 2020. It took the next steps in our economic recovery from COVID-19, and we cannot divorce this Budget from that. The collective effort and strong health response from New Zealanders to keep COVID from spreading in our community is paying off, and this is backed up by a number of commentators. We see the OECD economic forecast this week that expects New Zealand to be one of the strongest performers due to our swift and decisive response to eliminate the virus and support households and businesses. In line with the Budget update, the OECD forecasts growth of 3.5 percent in 2021 to 3.8 percent in 2022.

We are investing in our people. We are investing in infrastructure, and we are tackling those long-term issues like inequality, housing, and climate change. These are all issues that need to be addressed.

We’re investing $57.3 billion in infrastructure over the next five years to drive our economy. This is a massive investment for New Zealand and it goes some way to addressing the infrastructure deficit that we face as a country, and that, we know, is critical for us to be able to deliver on our desires and aspirations for New Zealanders around housing unaffordability.

In this Budget, of course, is included the appropriation for the $3.8 billion housing acceleration fund that we announced back in March, and this will enable us to maximise the potential of the land that we own to get more pace and more scale into those large-scale projects. It will also allow us to work with councils, it will allow us to work with iwi, and it will allow us to work with Māori to ensure that we are setting up more land for development and that we are finally doing something to address affordability in our housing market.

As we came out of COVID, as the Minister of Housing, when everyone was prophesising that, actually, what we were going to see was a collapse of our housing market, one of the things that we looked very carefully at was what happened post the global financial crisis. What we saw was a development community that, not unexpectedly, went to the safest part of the market for them, and that wasn’t high-density, affordable housing. It was large houses on single sections, and what that did was it reduced the number of first-home buyers that we had able to access housing in New Zealand.

As a Government, as we came out of COVID, we were determined that that was not going to be our fate. We had a chance to build this back better. As it was, as we all know, we far from saw a collapse of the housing market. We far from saw that slump that so many people thought was going to happen. Instead, we saw a period of hyperinflation, and we have to recognise that, actually, if we just leave the market unfettered, we are not going to get those affordable housing outcomes that we know that we need to deliver economic growth while looking after our people. That’s why that was such an important investment in this year’s Budget.

Another important investment that was appropriated in this Budget is the ability for Kāinga Ora to borrow an additional $2 billion to make strategic land purchases. We don’t want the Government to be a passive bystander that looks on and says, “Tut, tut! Isn’t it sad? Housing’s really unaffordable.” We are a Government that is making the commitment. We are showing that in our Budget decisions—that we want to be an active player—and it is our responsibility as a Government to ensure that housing affordability is one of the issues that we put at the core of things.

What we want to do is to stimulate more development that builds upon the critical work that we have done already and the further work that we are going to do, and, as we look to increase intensification, we can look to increase scale and we can look to increase pace, and I hope that we can work across the House. I hope that we can have a shared commitment to New Zealanders that we, as a Parliament, do put things in place that address this most fundamental of issues for New Zealanders.

We also saw in this Budget, in the area of housing, some packages to address the longstanding deprivation that we have in Māori housing. What we know, if we look at all the indicators across Māori, is there are greater rates of homelessness and lower rates of homeownership. Across the housing continuum, we want to address this. Ultimately, opening up homeownership for more Māori is an aim of this Government. If we are to address fundamental wellbeing around health and if we are to address fundamental wellbeing around education, the stability of long-term, secure, dry housing is absolutely critical to that, and homeownership is important as well. That is why we have carved out $350 million from the housing acceleration fund to open up more land, whether that be papa kāinga or whenua Māori, or it be land held in other forms by Māori. That is for the infrastructure under the ground to allow the houses to be built, but it’s also matched by another $380 million fund for Māori housing—housing for Māori—and this is really important. We’re looking to those funds to deliver over 3,700 warm, dry homes, as well as repairs to existing homes.

One of the issues we have with our insulation schemes in some parts of New Zealand is we simply can’t insulate the houses because they’re not in such a state of repair that you can put the insulation in and it will make a material difference. So I’m looking forward to us being able to deliver on that.

Despite the rhetoric that we just heard from the deputy leader of the National Party, Budget 2021 was also a Budget that delivered on health. We saw $4.6 billion in new day-to-day spending over the next four years. We saw $704 million for one-off expenses like building coming through this. We, as a Government now into our fourth Budget, have shown that we are going to address the infrastructural deficits that we have in our health system. We’re not content to have hospitals in the states of disrepair that we found when we came into Government.

DHBs receive another $2.7 billion to keep up with cost pressures, and this represents a 45 percent increase in DHB funding since we came into Government in 2017. It also includes in Budget 2021 an increase of $200 million for Pharmac.

In the last minute that I have available to me, there’s one other colleague that I want to acknowledge for her work in putting together Budget 2021, and that’s the Hon Carmel Sepuloni for the work that she’s been doing through the Welfare Expert Advisory Group to turn around what has been an injustice in this country for 30 years now: to increase benefits to make them at a level where people can live with some dignity. That is something that has been a key priority for our Government. No one has had more tenacity in their advocacy for us to undertake this work and deliver for those New Zealanders than Carmel, and I want to acknowledge her for that work.

Budget 2021 is a Budget that I am immensely proud of. It is a Budget that allows us to address our long-term issues and it puts us on a path going into the future with some optimism. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This was a Budget that could have been so much more than what it is. A Budget is a way for the Government to show the country the direction that the Government wants to lead us. It’s an opportunity to address the key issues that face New Zealanders and provide a road map to improve the lot of all of us. It needed to do three things. Number one, it needed to provide a credible plan for how we maximise the opportunity of our COVID-free status to allow Kiwi firms to grow and to create a more prosperous society. It didn’t do that. Number two, it needed to take the issue of an out-of-control housing market seriously. It didn’t do that. And, number three, it needed to show us a strategy to keep New Zealanders safe from a rapidly growing gang problem in New Zealand—and it didn’t do that. It did none of these things. Instead, what New Zealanders were shown was a Budget that mapped out a course for increasing debt, putting more burdens on businesses and workers, and increasing wasteful spending. So let’s focus on what it should have addressed.

We needed a credible plan for maximising prosperity. Jacinda Ardern told us on election night that she would govern for all New Zealanders. Well, where was anything in this Budget for middle New Zealanders—the battlers of this country who work hard to look after their family, people who are trying to save for a first home? These are people that are being squeezed from every direction right now and the Budget does not provide a single dollar for middle New Zealand. At a time when we have near record terms of trade, we have milk prices sky high, and interest rates at record low, New Zealanders could be forgiven for thinking that the Budget would actually look to lift some of the burdens that the Government has placed on them. Instead, we see a Government focused on increasing the rate at which they spend our taxpayers’ hard-earned money. By 2024, Government debt is set to exceed $94,000 for every New Zealand household. This is borrowed money, borrowed from New Zealand workers, and it will need to be paid back. It will be our children and our grandchildren having to pay back for this Government’s reckless spending.

Now, we’re very grateful to have had the ACT Party in Parliament because we had an alternative budget to show us a different way, a different road map. It’s our battler’s budget. ACT’s plan would pay down that debt faster. It would give New Zealanders some much needed tax relief. ACT’s budget was made for the battlers, those hard-working Kiwis who are striving to succeed, but are increasingly being punished for their efforts, for trying to get ahead and do well for their families. Instead of facing higher taxes and regulations, ACT would have delivered them a $3.8 billion tax relief package aimed at middle-income workers. Instead of increasing debt by billions of dollars, ACT would have mapped out a path to surplus. We can provide tax relief and reduce debt faster than Labour without any cuts to public services. All we need to do is to ensure that we’re spending our taxpayer money wisely and putting it in place where the policies will actually encourage growth. So, we would stop paying hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign wealthy countries in subsidies and we would end ineffective policies like fees-free—and the Government even acknowledges that it’s an ineffective policy, so why are they putting money into it? But we would also lower barriers to investment and cut back the costs and red tape the Government has piled on small businesses.

We needed a realistic plan to build more homes. Beyond support for middle New Zealand, the Government has been unable to rein in an out-of-control housing market. Just this week, another of the seemingly endless reports of further increases to house prices was released. Wellington’s average house price is now over $1 million, Auckland’s average house price is over $1.25 million, and the prices continue to rise. They’re rising across the whole country and it’s increasing the costs of rents, mortgages, and all living costs for all New Zealanders. The problem is actually quite simple, though. We’re just not building enough homes. But the Government’s response in this Budget has been to dither and divide. They’ve announced billions for housing infrastructure, but they don’t have a single detail to support it. They’ve announced major tax changes, risking higher rents and penalising people who are simply just trying to give their families a better future. And what does the Government say to people who have told their stories to me who will suffer real consequences because of these tax changes and because of their divisive policies?

You know, I had a woman write an email to me just the other week. She’s got two disabled sons, both in their 20s, and she has bought two units for them so that they have the ability to live an independent life. The problem is, of course, that she pays or she charges them lower than market rent. With these housing tax changes, she is forced to now sell those homes and give up her children’s independence. She’s doing this out of love for her family. She is not a speculator that this Government is trying to divide and pit us against. Why are we pursuing ineffective and divisive tax policies when the problems should just be solved by building more homes?

I’ve had other stories received from tenants who are worried that these policies will see their rents increase. The Government’s own officials agree that rents will increase. It’s heartbreaking. There was one story from a person with a criminal conviction who had asked their landlord to increase their rent because they say, “I don’t know who else will take me in.” What sort of “kind” Government is this where somebody who is actually trying to make their life better could be made worse off or end up in emergency housing because they don’t have another option because of this Government’s divisive tax changes? We need to be focused on uniting people behind good ideas and not dividing them with bad ones. We need to stop looking at blaming people and focus on solving the problem: build more homes.

We needed a strategy to suppress gangs and keep more New Zealanders safe. This was one of the more telling issues of the Budget: a lack of commitment to initiatives to keep New Zealanders safe. We have seen gang numbers increase to close to 50 percent under this Government. That’s staggering. The result, though, isn’t always just what you see on the Budget sheet. It’s the cost to people’s lives. It looks like gang members taking over State Highway 2 in the Hawke’s Bay. It’s regular reports of shootings and violence in our community. And it’s a woman telling me last week, who lives in Auckland Central, that she does not leave her home after 8 o’clock at night because she does not feel safe. That’s not a country I want to live in. I want one where we are helping New Zealanders be safe, creating an environment where children are not being kept at home because parents are afraid that they might get caught in crossfire. That’s not to mention the meth in our community.

A Budget cut for police at this time is remarkable. It’s difficult to see how the Government does not see the growing problems of gangs as a priority; in fact, there’s even evidence that they’re going softer on it. You know, they’ve spent $70 million to expand community panels to allow offenders of serious crimes to face less severe sanctions than they would in the court system. The Government keeps boasting that its prison population is decreasing. Well, that’s because there are more gangs and criminals on the street, not in prison. They should not be having cups of tea; they should be serving time. For every offence there is a victim and we need to be thinking of those people.

ACT has always been the true party of law and order. We introduced the three-strikes legislation. We have a member’s bill that would require prisoners to do rehabilitation before being released. And we have a member’s bill that would increase the power of police to seize assets connected to gang members. ACT has the real solutions to crime and offending, and we have the plan to build more houses and grow the economy. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Before I call the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan—I didn’t interrupt the member because the member is still a relatively new member. But I did indicate at the beginning of the year that we are going to be a lot tighter on members reading their speeches. The Budget is a debate where members should be able to speak from notes. And I will be interrupting members from now on.

Hon PRIYANCA RADHAKRISHNAN (Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker, in recognition of Samoan Language Week. It is an absolute delight to stand and take a call and be part of this Budget 2021 debate today, and it is a delight because there’s so much in this Budget to speak of, to talk about, to highlight, and that I’m proud of. It builds on the Budget of 2020, which was very much a Budget that laid the foundations and took us through an incredibly difficult period, that we are basically still going through. However, it was a Budget that invested in saving lives and livelihoods.

It is quite unfortunate that the member who just resumed her seat chose to term that “reckless spending”. It was spending that, as I mentioned, saved lives and livelihoods and basically was an economic plan that we see is working. It is what has gotten us to the point that we’re at today, where we can actually look at investing further to address the infrastructure deficit that we’ve inherited, to invest in ensuring that we take all New Zealanders with us when we improve the economy or mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19.

We are in a pretty good position. We are seeing, for example, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD. Growth has increased compared to what was forecast. Our debt as a nation is lower. But I do want to just point to something that the Prime Minister has said before: that there was no costless recovery when it comes to COVID-19. We basically had two paths that we could go down as a Government. There was the pathway of austerity and cuts, which would have seen jobs disappear, which would have seen a reduction in welfare spending.

I just want to point to something that my colleague the Hon Carmel Sepuloni—a point that she made when she spoke earlier today. She really highlighted what that austerity spending—what we’ve seen as a result of that. What we’ve seen in terms of hardship that families have gone through when they’ve lost their jobs, and cuts in benefits as well, is the entrenched intergenerational poverty that we are trying to reverse through successive Budgets. That’s partly the trajectory of that that we’re seeing through Budget 2021 as well.

It is a careful, cautious Budget. It takes into account the fact that we’re in a much better position than was forecast at the start of COVID, but it also recognises that we’re not out of the woods yet. So it balances spending in some of those areas that I touched upon earlier and will go into a little bit more detail on, but it also balances that with keeping a lid on the debt that we had to incur to invest in saving lives and livelihoods, as I mentioned previously.

When our Government took office this term, we were very clear on the three focus areas for this term for us. The first, of course, was to continue to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19. The second was to focus on securing our recovery in the face of the economic impacts of COVID-19, and doing so in a way that was sustainable. The third was to continue to focus on addressing some of those long-term challenges that we face as a nation, challenges like the housing crisis, climate change, and child poverty. That is exactly what you will see, what members will see, through Budget 2021 as well, and I’m, as I said at the start, incredibly proud of it. It is a Budget that focuses on creating jobs, and we know that about 221,000 New Zealanders will be supported into employment as a result of Budget 2021.

Just going back to that point about keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID, though, we see $1.5 billion that is still kept aside through Budget 2021 and is allocated to support the COVID-19 vaccine programme. We know that there will be enough of the Pfizer vaccine for everyone, and I want to underscore this point: everyone, regardless of immigration status, across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Going back to the economic impact of COVID and the steps that Budget 2021 takes to mitigate that impact, we see that there is budget to support the infrastructure spend and address the infrastructure deficit that I alluded to before. The infrastructure investment now totals $57.3 billion over the next five years to increase, for example, housing supply, and Minister Woods outlined in her contribution earlier today the $3.8 billion that goes towards the Housing Acceleration Fund. That will make land build-ready and speed up the building of new homes as one of the steps to address the housing crisis.

So as I mentioned, it takes our spending in infrastructure up to $57.3 billion, and that is money that will be invested into our rail network, roads, schools, hospitals, housing—as I mentioned previously—and energy generation. It is what others—the economist Joseph Stiglitz, for example—have mentioned is doing double duty. It’s about doing what’s right for us as a nation, and also creating jobs at the same time.

Speaking of jobs, though, I just want to also highlight the Training Incentive Allowance, which we have reinstated, expanded. As Minister Sepuloni mentioned in her contribution, it was one of the first cuts, sadly, that the National Government made back in 2009, that locked out a whole generation of people who wanted to retrain, upskill, and transition into careers, particularly to be able to take up educational opportunities at those higher levels. We are reinstating that, and that will support 16,000 New Zealanders into jobs.

Speaking of the support that we’re providing, I’ll just touch on support for small business, because I know that as the Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Ethnic Communities, that is often an area that is raised with me. We know, through the support that we’ve provided to small businesses in the previous Budget, that one of the areas that came up as an area for further investment was to support our small businesses to be part of the digital economy and to take up opportunities in that space. Small businesses, we know, are crucial to our economy, and so I’m delighted to see $44 million invested to support digital business skills training and the package that includes advisory services to small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as well. That, of course, is in addition to the wage subsidy scheme, the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme, the Business Finance Guarantee Scheme, and the COVID-19 Resurgence Support Payment that we’ve seen previously. We know that about 30,000 SMEs will benefit just from the Digital Boost training scheme, and 15,000 small businesses through the advisory services specifically, as well.

I also quickly want to touch on the boost to weekly benefits as well, because it is a huge part of the philosophy of this Government, where when we talk about the economic impact of COVID and mitigating that impact, we know that economic shocks like COVID-19 don’t affect us all in the same way. They disproportionately affect those who are particularly vulnerable or marginalised, and so I’m incredibly pleased that we will see a lift in weekly benefits, from between $32 and $55 per adult. That will roll out completely by April next year, and will lift up to 33,000 children out of poverty on the after-housing cost measure in 2022-23. So that, coupled with reinstatement of the Training Incentive Allowance, gives me great cause for pride, really.

I just want to use my time remaining to touch on the additional $5.3 million over the next four years, to establish the new ministry for ethnic communities, which I’m incredibly proud of, and I want to take this opportunity to put on the record that many from across ethnic communities have been advocating for this, and I’m proud that our Government is delivering that. As of 1 July, we will have a new ministry that will take the place of the Office of Ethnic Communities, keeping, of course, the expanded community engagement function. We almost doubled the resourcing to the office in the last term, and increased the Ethnic Communities Development Fund eightfold. Now, for the first time, this entity will have a chief executive solely focused on lifting the wellbeing of our ethnic communities, and driving the Government’s policy programme in a way that also benefits our ethnic communities to take up the opportunities that they have often felt left out of.

Can I just take the last few seconds of my contribution to pay tribute to the Prime Minister, to the Minister of Finance, and our Government for putting this Budget together—a Budget that will continue to lift the wellbeing of all New Zealanders. It’s an inclusive Budget, and it’s one that I’m incredibly proud of. Fa‘afetai lava.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker, thank you very much, and can I congratulate you for taking the chair, firstly. Secondly, can I tell you that in the good old fashion of some countries around the world, don’t give it back to the man that just left. Stay there. We probably like you much more because of your smile—and some other reasons.

The last speaker in this debate, Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan, finished by saying that this is a Budget that will lift all New Zealanders up. If that was the case then this could be a very short speech, because, as the Opposition, if it was doing that, it wouldn’t be politically great for us, but we could just agree, but sadly it doesn’t do that. Most New Zealanders actually are not better off. And where this Budget has missed a real opportunity is there is virtually nothing in it to help New Zealanders to help themselves.

Now, the National Party is often—it is said we talk a lot about the economy and a lot about business, and that’s correct because the economy is people, and in New Zealand Kiwis own businesses. It was the case not so long ago, and I’m sure it still is, that New Zealand had more small businesses per capita than any other country in the world. These are hard-working mums and dads that get out of bed every day and go to work, they take risks, they borrow, they put their houses up as equity, and they look to employ others so they can provide for themselves and their family—they are the economy. They’re not the large companies that often do well one way or another, it’s actually in every single suburb in every single part of New Zealand, these hard-working Kiwis that were looking towards the Budget and this Government for some help as a result of everything that’s happened over the last four years, and particularly the significant impact that last year had upon them as a result of the restrictions and lockdown and the debt that they took on. It does not do that, and therein lies the problem that it is a missed opportunity.

Business New Zealand came out very quickly on the day and, actually, to their credit, they do talk about things the Government does in a light that I may not always be politically comfortable with. They offer praise to the Government when they get it right—this Labour Government. But in this case, Business New Zealand said they’re disappointed at the lack of focus on growing the economy in Budget 2021, and I quote, “Business was keen to see less burdensome regulation, policies to stimulate growth and development, and more certainty around business policies into the future.” Kirk Hope said, “There’s not enough really in there to boost economic growth.” Well, if the economy is individuals, it’s people, it’s hard-working Kiwis that run businesses, who take risks, and there isn’t enough in this Budget for the economy—there is not enough in there for these hard-working mums and dads.

But what we have seen over the last four years, and certainly since the election is changes that come very quickly through this House, often through urgency, without appropriate time in committee that add cost to businesses. So on the one hand, we’ve got significant costs coming down when businesses are doing it hard: a doubling of the sick leave. Nobody in this House would argue that if somebody’s not well they shouldn’t be looked after, but when you double sick leave you’re imposing costs directly upon small businesses that are already finding it hard to pay the bills. An extra holiday that they must meet the cost of and the fair pay agreements that are going to be anything but fair.

Do you know the most interesting thing, if you go back in history and you have a look at countries around the world, when the leader of a country puts the word “democratic” in the name of the country, it often isn’t democratic, and that’s been the case in many places around the world. To call this a fair pay agreement means it’s not actually going to be fair; it’s actually going to revert to an area where the Government, with unions, will get to tell hard-working Kiwis and small businesses what to do. And yes, the Government says, “Well, we’ll pay attention and we’ll make sure that, say, in Invercargill they’re not treated the same as in Queen Street.”, but that won’t be the case, because this is extra cost placed upon small business through bureaucracy that they’re already finding it hard to pay the bills for.

The Government has increased the minimum wage very, very quickly over the last three or four years. It was a commitment that they made. It’s now $20 an hour and soon it will go further. The Minister responsible has said he wants to look at moving it further to the equivalent of the living wage. Every time the Government puts the minimum wage up quickly, it does have an impact upon the economy and it is on those small businesses, because when you put a cost upon a business, a small business, it can only meet that cost in one of three ways.

It has to put its prices up. Well, they can’t always do that and if they do, the very people the Government say they’re trying to help are impacted, because costs go up for that consumer—number one. Number two, they have to economise, and they don’t let people go straight away, but we see it when it comes to confidence from the business sector. When business confidence is down, it’s an indicator of what will happen in six months’ time. It’s a lagging indicator of what’s happening in the job market. And if somebody leaves, they often will not be able to replace them. It means they have to work harder for what they are doing, and the very people the Government says they’re trying to help with vast increases in minimum wage actually are worse off.

Yes, the economy creates jobs, but it doesn’t create jobs for the people that are losing them that often have the lowest level of skill and they actually earn the least and that the Government is forcing out of the workforce because of the costs they put on businesses.

Well, the final thing a small business has to do is absorb that cost. What’s happened over the last four years is—if there is a single small business in the country that can still absorb costs the Government’s piling on them, I would be surprised. That’s why in January of this year, there were a thousand fewer small businesses than the same time a year ago. The rate with which we see small businesses closing in New Zealand is escalating quickly, some of that as a result of COVID—some of it is—but not most of it. Most of it is the debt they’ve taken on, that the economy is not doing as well as the Government says, and that there is cost being piled upon them day after day after day.

There are some things in the Budget that I would like to say are good. The last speaker, the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan, spoke about some more support for small business, but it’s not the support that the small businesses in New Zealand need. The $22 million this year to help them with some digital stuff? It hasn’t been defined. And, actually, there are a lot of small businesses out there that say—Manuka restaurant owner Peter Reeves, who says he doesn’t have time to do training as the Government’s crackdown on immigration means he’s had to wait tables rather than focus on growing his business. He doesn’t need help from that. His small business needs the other type of help that allows him to pay his bills and to grow his business, which grows the economy. But there are others in here who are saying it’s just as bad.

There are many questions. But if help is needed for small businesses, is it really about the digital economy just at the moment? Is that the most important thing or could the Government have taken some of the $1.5 billion, or whatever it was, he wants to plough into putting together Chinese locomotives down in Dunedin and applied that to things that would actually help the private sector, the small businesses, mums and dads who are finding it hard to pay their bills and therefore finding it hard to provide for their families?

There are many things that are lacking in the economy at the moment. There is a lack of skills in the workforce. The Government has said there is some money they’ve set aside to train people. But as we are waiting, as we waited for KiwiBuild and light rail and fees-free to actually deliver, businesses in New Zealand are struggling. They need the skills now to grow their businesses. You know, I’ve had a business get in touch with me, an engineering workshop, who actually wanted to employ somebody who had skills—he was in New Zealand but from overseas, needed a work permit—so that this person could train others to work in the business. And when he went to look to apply for the work permit, because the Government has resoundingly said, “The border is closed. We’re not issuing these things any more.”, he was told he had to find somebody in New Zealand, who doesn’t have the skill. He didn’t want this person to take a Kiwi’s job. He wanted them there to train others, and they said no. Time and time again they are being let down.

There is a need for labour in New Zealand, skilled and unskilled. The Government suggested it wants to lift everybody up. But I tell you what, there’s not many members on that side of the House that will be out there worrying that the kiwifruit won’t be picked or the apples won’t be picked because the workforce is not there. It is not the fault of these hard-working Kiwis and their businesses that they can’t get the labour they need. The Minister of Tourism went to Queenstown and announced money to help tourism—$20 million to help tourism not be tourism businesses any more—and they can’t get the labour they need to do what he says is “pivot”. The border remains closed without the Government talking about when they would like to open it. There is a lot more bureaucracy. There is cost being piled on.

If this was a Budget, as the last speaker said, that lifted all New Zealanders up, well, that would be a good thing. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t do anything for small businesses who are in debt and finding it hard. It doesn’t do anything to show there is a plan to grow the economy sustainably. If the economy is going to do well, it’s through the Government’s debt-fuelled spending, and when they spend money New Zealanders don’t get their roads, they don’t get their infrastructure. It is not a good Budget.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. I’m very pleased to be able to speak on Budget 2021, a Budget that is focused on securing our recovery. Along with members on this side of the House, I am enormously proud of the progress that New Zealand has made over the last year as we have faced the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19. Budget 2021, which, as I say, is about securing our recovery, is about building on the hard work of New Zealanders, it’s about building a strong economy, and it’s about making sure that we bring all New Zealanders along with us. I want to talk about each of those things in turn in my contribution.

Contrary to the enormous and extraordinary catastrophising of the previous speaker, New Zealand is incredibly well positioned, and there would be few people around the world who would not wish that their country was performing as well as New Zealand has performed over the last year. Budget 2021 continues to make the investments to make sure that we build on that hard work and sacrifice, and to ensure that we keep New Zealanders safe. That is our number one priority. So while it is all very well for members of the Opposition to stand up and proclaim, as we have just heard, that the borders should be thrown open because we need some kiwifruit picked and apparently it’s too hard to train New Zealanders, this is a Government that says that we will put the health and the wellbeing of New Zealanders first. And that has not only served New Zealand so well in terms of making sure that we are topping the global league charts in terms of our resilience against COVID-19; the number one thing—the number one thing—that is supporting our economic recovery and that is supporting small businesses across New Zealand is this Government’s work and our country’s work, our team of 5 million’s work, to keep COVID out, and this Government will continue to stand by those policies and continue to keep Kiwis safe. But in Budget 2021, we have continued to put the investments in—$1.5 billion in Budget 2021 to make sure that all Kiwis have the opportunity to receive a free and safe COVID vaccine, and that programme is rolling out now. It is an incredibly important part of securing our recovery.

Building a strong economy is an important focus of Budget 2021. Again, I note the previous member’s catastrophising and negativity. It’s simply extraordinary that, as we stand here, 18 months into a global pandemic—a global pandemic—New Zealand has an unemployment rate of 4.7 percent, amongst the lowest in the OECD and lower than the point it got to under the so-called rock star economy of the previous Government. Growth projected to be 3.5 percent over the next three years—higher than virtually any of our trading partners. A path towards managing down our debt to sustainable levels. I want to acknowledge the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, who’s done an extraordinary job of bringing these things together to offer a stable economic platform to secure our recovery. But there are important investments in here, because, unlike that other side of the House who all see it in the negative, this is a Government that believes that by investing in New Zealand and New Zealanders, we build the platform for future growth, prosperity, and fairness for all Kiwis.

That’s why, in Budget 2021, there is a record $57 billion of investment in infrastructure over the next four years. This is the infrastructure Government that is investing in infrastructure right across our country. As Minister Radhakrishnan said so eloquently, quoting Joseph Stiglitz, “Doing double duty.” Investing in our schools so we have people put to work in upgrading important infrastructure in our education system to deal with growth, but at the same time giving our kids the high-quality modern classrooms that will support their learning. Huge investment in the health system. The rebuild of Dunedin Hospital and many others around our country that were underdone, under-invested in for so many years under that previous Government. And in this Government, through that investment, we are creating jobs and we will deliver the First World health services that all Kiwis deserve.

I would be remiss not to mention the investment in free trades training for over 100,000 young Kiwis to get into apprenticeships. If we want to talk about investing in the future, if we want to talk about investing in a more productive economy, that’s where the investment needs to go. That was let go by that previous Government who said, “Leave it to the market. They’ll take care of it.” This is a Government which does believe that Government has an important part to play in partnering with the public sector, in making sure that we invest in the training and skills of young Kiwis to make sure that they get into good, sustainable jobs and support our growth in the future. I’ll repeat that figure: 100,000 young New Zealanders who have now got hope, who’ve got skills, who’ve got training, who are able to contribute—100,000 since July last year into apprenticeships, and that will continue to be supported through Budget 2021.

I said before that, as well as building on our hard work and as well as building a strong economic platform, Budget 2021 is about bringing all New Zealanders along with us. We are determined that this will not be a Government that—in our response to a global economic crisis, in getting ourselves out of that—will leave the vulnerable of our country behind. We have seen that happen before. That is what happened in 1991, when the other side of this House had the Treasury benches and we saw hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders plunged into poverty and despair because of their instinctive response to cut the support that the most vulnerable in our country needs.

Contrary to that, our Government sees that investing in our people is the way to take our country forward economically and socially because it is the right thing to do. That’s why I was so very proud of the work of my good friend, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister for Social Development, in having the courage and doing the mahi to make sure that we got to the point of being able to reverse those disastrous cuts that were put into place on our most vulnerable in 1991. That is lifting the living standards and just giving a little bit of hope and light into the lowest income New Zealanders.

There was one other policy that the Minister for Social Development announced through Budget 2021 that really speaks to the difference between the vision and the humanity between the two sides of the House, and that was the restoration of the training incentive allowance. Sometimes in this House the word “ideology” is thrown around like it’s a bad thing. I don’t actually hold to that, I actually support people who have a coherent ideological vision, whatever that is. If you can put some ideas together, have a vision that’s linked together and works well together, then I respect you for that, even if I disagree with it. But there are few policies that were more spiteful and more stupid than the destruction of the training incentive allowance under the National Party and their previous leader, Paula Bennett. A policy that gave people on benefits the ability to get into higher education, supposedly to do all of the things that members on that side of the House consistently lectures them that they’re supposed to be doing, and here is a policy that actually gives practical support to make that happen—lifts people out of poverty, lifts their life prospects, gets them into work and contribution, and that side of the House took away the rungs of the ladder. On this side of the House we were proud to put that ladder back together for people, by restoring the training incentive allowance.

I really should say a few words about transport in respect of Budget 2021 as well, because there was so much in there. This was a Budget which made further progress in terms of restoring a resilient and reliable rail network—and on that side of the House there are few things that they hate more than investment in New Zealand’s rail system. The other thing in the Budget that I’m so proud of is investment in fair and decent conditions for New Zealand workers through fair pay agreements, and I’m very proud of the Budget for making investments in both of those things.

Rail, under the previous Government, was left to rack and ruin in a state of managed decline, assets stripped by the vultures that were let in in the era of privatisation in the 1990s. This Government, which has a nation-building vision for rail in New Zealand, is very proud of the $1.3 billion of investment that we have put in. It is so important in terms of reaching our climate change obligations. Last year, 119 out of 120 members of this House stood up and declared a climate emergency, and I take my hat off to every member across the House who did. This is a Government which is now actually doing something about it, and the investment in our rail system is an important part of that. Every year, KiwiRail takes the equivalent of 27,000 trucks off New Zealand’s roads by moving freight efficiently around our country. We stand for an integrated freight network in which we bring road, rail, and coastal shipping together to get freight around our country efficiently, and in which we reduce carbon emissions. That investment, alongside the $85 million in the Hillside Workshops, is one of which we are very proud. That investment will create jobs, it will create skills, it will really help to take the Otago and Dunedin economies ahead and create much greater resilience in our rail system.

As I said, this is a Budget which is about securing New Zealand’s recovery, it’s about building on the hard work and the sacrifices of New Zealanders over the last 10 years, it’s about making sure we have a strong economic platform, and it’s about making sure that we bring people along with us. This is a Budget in the proudest of Labour traditions, and it ensures that we all move forward as a country together. While that side of the House is focused in its desperate and divided state on pitting New Zealanders against each other, this Budget is one that takes us forward together. I commend it to the House.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Talofa lava, manuia Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa. Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I want to take the time in today’s Budget debate to talk about the kaupapa of health, specifically the Māori Health Authority, Whānau Ora, and Pharmac. The inconvenient truth is that the health system fails Māori. Systemic racism plagues our health sector and sees Māori dying approximately seven years earlier than Pākehā. The failure to ensure equality in access and outcomes for Māori in the healthcare system is a mirror image of the degrading way we have been treated by successive colonial Governments. Tinkering with the broken system will never achieve the transformative outcomes that tangata whenua desperately need and are owed.

Te Paati Māori have stayed cautiously optimistic about this year’s Budget. It is the first Budget to accept the need for a targeted approach to funding, rather than a universal one. Te Paati Māori recognise that this Government is resourcing a system that kick starts Māori ability to look after ourselves in the Māori Health Authority. There has been $98.1 million budgeted in establishing funding provided to set up the Māori Health Authority, and we acknowledge the significance of this and established funding. Many Māori health experts have been calling for a proportional approach to funding the Māori Health Authority—one that would look at per capita Budget health entitlement. This is also Te Paati Māori’s policy. Therefore, budget for the Māori Health Authority funding should be $5 billion. That would be about 20 percent of the 2019-20 health budget. So in our opinion, this falls slightly short.

We are concerned why we would spend $98 million when we have pre-established models of success in Whānau Ora and its commissioning agencies. We are concerned that money may be, and is going to be, poured into bureaucracy at the cost of quality care, at the cost of attention to growing health disparities and inequities. That is why our position is that the funding for the Māori Health Authority should be channelled through the Whānau Ora commissioning model rather than through Pākehā structures or the Ministry of Health. The model of Whānau Ora, which is by Māori, for Māori, according to Māori, is an ideal kaupapa Māori model for success. No more cash for Whānau Ora in this Budget is a major blow. We are particularly puzzled that Whānau Ora received no additional funding given that the Minister is on record saying it is the highest-performing portfolio in Government. We need to invest in what works, and Whānau Ora has proven itself to be delivering life-changing outcomes for our whānau.

Another area of growing disparity in health that is needed is Pharmac. People are struggling to survive as they can’t even afford life-saving drugs such as for cancer and spina bifida, which are publicly funded in similar countries. These people are disproportionately Māori, who are even less likely to afford drugs that aren’t funded by Pharmac. In this Budget, Pharmac received $200 million of new funding over the next four years. We acknowledge this as a step forward; however, the call has been loud to double the Pharmac budget, with an increase to $400 million a year. Many of our whānau, including Patient Voice Aotearoa and chair Malcolm Mulholland, who I mihi to, have been among those leading this advocacy. On 12 May, just a few weeks before the Budget, we heard the karanga of patients and advocates in delivering a 100,000-strong petition calling for the doubling of Pharmac’s budget. I think of young 13-year-old Casey with spina bifida, and this Budget has fallen short.

Our unapologetic voice in Opposition has given Māori in Government the kaha to fight for more, and this Budget is a reflection of that. In the bigger scheme of things, this Budget presents a significant win for Māori. The fact that it is such a great Budget is the very problem, because we are building from a shockingly low baseline. Whilst this Budget is a significant move in the right direction, we will continue to apply pressure, to keep the Government accountable, to encourage you to keep being bold, to end disparity, to end poverty and environmental destruction. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Manuia le Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa. Can I also thank all the members of the House for using the language here. Samoan Language Week is the second of nine Pacific language weeks that will be celebrated this year.

As I listened to Mr Todd McClay make his comments earlier, I thought thank goodness he’s speaking the truth, because he was declaring where National stands and their philosophy. They stand for keeping labour costs down at the expense of New Zealanders. They are well-prepared and don’t care if they’re socialising the cost for business, but in so far as the profits—that stays theirs. That whole speech was about reducing labour costs. That’s what he spent 10 minutes doing. On this side of the House, we are a Government that governs for all New Zealanders.

Hon Member: That’s right.

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: That’s right. We are a Government for all New Zealanders. Remember the wage subsidy? We prioritised business last year. That’s right. Are we asking for business to pay that back? No. We’re asking business to value workers, to ensure their employment, and to pay them a decent wage. Do businesses do that? Some of them do, but not all of them do. That’s why this Government continues to lift the minimum wage—to $20 an hour, as it was as of April this year.

This Budget, I want to say thank goodness that we have a finance Minister that understands the needs of all New Zealanders. This Budget is about securing our recovery from COVID-19. They keep forgetting there is a pandemic here. They keep forgetting, and every now and then they lose sight of is this about keeping costs down or is this about prioritising New Zealanders. This side of the House is about prioritising all New Zealanders. We inherited so much harm and damage in the health sector, education, employment, and income because of that very attitude that Mr McClay has talked about: keeping labour costs low at the expense of New Zealanders. So we’re having to address the long-term challenges of housing, inequality, and climate change, while we’re making sure that we can continue the growth of our economy.

A recovery Budget is what this Budget has been about. I want to acknowledge all the Ministers, and particularly the leadership of the Prime Minister and Grant Robertson, the Minister of Finance, because it’s been hard to balance the needs of all New Zealanders. But this Budget here is a continuation from the work that we started when we came in in 2017—raising the minimum wage, lifting benefits, ensuring that we are supporting families with children. In Budget 2021, yes, we’re raising main benefits, but that will enable us to lift an additional 33,000 children out of poverty. In total, 109,000 families with children will be, on average, $175 a week better off as a result of changes by our Government since 2017. Treasury has forecast that over 200,000 more people will be in jobs in the next four years as our economy recovers.

For Pacific peoples, I’m very proud that Budget 2021 continues the work that the Government allocated—targeted, specific support to the Pacific—from 2019 and last year. I want to share something with the House. So you see, in 2018, we released a report: The New Zealand Pacific Economy Report. In that report, it showed that Pacific peoples contribute $8 billion to New Zealand’s GDP, despite inequalities, despite the barriers. Here’s something interesting that we’ve just learnt: Pacific peoples volunteer 66,000 unpaid hours per week, and, in addition, they give not only their time, skills, and knowledge but also money. Pacific peoples gifted $2.4 million to others over four months. That’s about $160 per week per person.

I’m so grateful that I’m part of the Government that recognises that in order for all New Zealanders to contribute positively to New Zealand’s economy, we’ve got to eliminate these inequalities, we’ve got to eliminate those barriers—because imagine if we do that. Just imagine, if we’re able to do that, the kind of contribution that all New Zealanders can make to Aotearoa New Zealand.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Look, a few weeks ago I spoke about how living in New Zealand right here, right now feels like we’re living in the main street of Disneyland. You walk down it, you see the saloon, you see the emporium, you see the lolly shop, you look back; it’s just a facade, and Mickey Mouse is having a smoke behind the facade. There’s nothing in this Budget that’s fundamentally changed that view for me.

I want to talk about three things. The first thing is, yeah, it was great to see the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommend an increase in benefits, but they also made another significant recommendation that wasn’t picked up, which was do the work, make the investment to help people get from welfare into work. On this side of the House we fundamentally know you should do that work in order to make that happen. Spend significant amounts of money to get people out of a pathway of hardship where they’re sitting there on State dependence, on benefits, into a job. That’s the only way that we can get them moving forward.

The second thing is that we’ve actually got a squeezed middle, and it’s very obvious this Government doesn’t care about the workers of New Zealand. These are the people who are waking up each day, they’re taking on the extra shifts, they do the two or three extra jobs, they raise their kids right, they pay their taxes on their lower middle incomes, and there’s nothing in here to support them. And yet this Government’s gone off and increased the cost of living for those very people. Think about it. The costs are piled on to small business—that’s reflected in higher prices. The costs are piled on landlords—reflected in higher rents. Food’s up 9.5 percent, rents are up 30 percent, and fuel’s up 17 percent. Power’s up. Building costs are up. There’s a four times increase in shipping and air freight costs. All these labour and material shortages—we’re getting increasing prices and the cost of living is going up for the squeezed middle, and there is nothing in this Budget for these people. It is quite obvious that this Government, for workers and for small-business owners, they are not their tribe and they don’t care enough about them.

The third thing is that there is nothing in here about growth and private sector - led recovery, because there’s a fundamental belief in this Government that “We know best. We don’t trust you to go off and make things happen in this economy. In fact, we create the jobs.” The Government doesn’t create the jobs. It’s the private sector that fundamentally creates the jobs, and I can tell you right now the prosperity of our nation and the quality of our life is single-handedly going to be improved by improving our productivity. And who does that? It’s actually private sector and private enterprise, creating jobs and growth.

There’s nothing in here that’s pro-trade or pro-growth. And the reality is in the next two to three years all the global economies are bouncing back big time. You’re seeing double-digit growth out of China. You’re going to see high single-digit growth out of the US. And we’re not going to be able to participate in that global recovery, because we haven’t got the economy shaped up in the right way. What we’ve got instead is we’ve been talking a lot about—you know, we’ve done a tidy job on COVID and keeping it out of New Zealand, an island nation at the bottom of the world with lots of water round it. Great—good stuff. But the bottom line is we’ve got nothing going on in terms of vaccination, so our vaccination plans and our trade plans, which are we want to keep people healthy so we can get our economy powered up, are not happening. The second-worst economy in the OECD in terms of vaccination roll-out and speed. The risk here is that we’ll do an OK, tidy job on COVID, but we’ll miss the huge opportunity, economically, that sits out beyond COVID because of our settings and our vaccination plans.

I think the biggest, saddest thing is there’s nothing here about seizing on the opportunities that exist out there in the world. We know the biggest problem we have in this country is our productivity disease. It’s been with us for 30 years, and there’s some big things that we need to be able to do that. We need to power up our export firms and make sure they operate at global scale around the world and actually can raise the floor, be better firms, and raise the total business environment as a consequence. We know there’s a lot of work to do on labour skills, because it’s all very well talking about improving productivity, getting to higher-value sectors, getting more money through the front door, but when you can’t get your kids to school and then you’ve got the lowest levels of reading, science, and maths that we’ve got in the OECD—in the bottom two or three—you’re not in a great shape to go off and create higher wages and salaries and therefore give families and people more choices as a result.

The last thing is we’re not really delivering infrastructure. We’re borrowing a hell of a lot of money, but we’re not, fundamentally, putting that money in between hard, hard infrastructure that’s about nation-building, reimagining what our country can look like for the 2040s and beyond. We just continue to band-aid and number eight wire stuff. There’s no real solution around a second harbour crossing. There’s nothing nation-building that’s going on here. There’s no big plan. It’s all really tactical stuff, and yet we know, fundamentally, that improving productivity is the biggest thing that we can do, and export firms, education, and infrastructure are the way in which we can get that job done.

So what we’ve learnt in this Budget is exactly what we’ve always understood: fundamentally, a National Government grows the economy. It cuts taxes and it creates jobs, and what we’re seeing here is exactly what a Labour Government does every single time: it increases taxes and spending, and it grows not the economy but bureaucrats. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): Fa‘afetai, Mr Speaker. The first thing I’d say to Mr Luxon is stop getting your lines from Mike Hosking, mate. You need to read, you need to understand, and you can see what’s going on around you. We have the lowest unemployment in the OECD. Our economy is growing better than nearly every single country we compare ourselves to.

This Government has three priorities: keeping New Zealand safe from COVID, accelerating our recovery and rebuild from the impacts of COVID, and laying the foundations for the future. There’s a five-point recovery plan that underlies all of these. It’s investing in our people, creating jobs and improving productivity, supporting small businesses and entrepreneurs, positioning New Zealand globally, and preparing for the future. This Budget delivered on all five of those.

The objectives are very, very clear, and I’m going to outline a few of those as they relate to my portfolios. But first of all, I’d like to say congratulations to the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, and our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, for the prudent management of our economy during the most difficult of times. History will show that this Government’s policy of a health response as the best economic response has actually worked. We are yet again number one in Bloomberg’s global Covid Resilience Ranking, and it is very, very hard to argue with that. That’s because as a team of 5 million, we have worked together. We took the hit together, but now we’re enjoying the openness of our communities and our economy together.

Having said that, I acknowledge and I have always acknowledged that some members of our national team of 5 million have done it harder than others, and no more so than the tourism sector. That’s why in this Budget we allocated another $200 million, on top of the $400 million beforehand, to help the tourism sector transition from now till when the borders open—very, very important, because we understand the value of our tourism sector. They asked, we heard, and we delivered yet again.

For small businesses, it’s vital that small businesses are part of the digital market place, part of the digital revolution. McKinsey & Company, an American consultancy, did some work in the States which showed that five years’ worth of digital enablement had been compressed into eight weeks in the States, and I think that is exactly what has happened here.

I used to say, pre-COVID—and I certainly reiterate it now—that this is the last generation of business owners that would survive, let alone thrive, without being digitally enabled, because everything we are doing in this Government is based on a digital platform, whether it’s paying your taxes—and no, there were no new taxes, Mr Luxon, as you mentioned in your last speech. It’s paying your taxes, it’s interacting with Government, it’s procurement, it’s paying invoices—everything we are doing is based on a digital platform. It’s why we allocated another $44 million to the Digital Boost programme, to ensure that small-business owners could learn about what digital technologies can do. They can learn about this in their own time, in their own place, in their homes, but it will drive a level of innovation that we have never seen before.

I talk about the digital adoption curve. That has been thrown on its head. There’s a whole lot of small-business owners who understand now that it’s not about success; it’s about survival, and digital technology is a part of that, and that is not the only one but a major, major focus for this Government.

The previous member talked about driving productivity growth. We are concerned about the lack of productivity across our economy. It’s why we have instigated industry transformation plans, and this Budget reiterated that. There are five areas—five areas—in our economy where we believe we need to increase productivity, where we can develop some form of global competitive advantage, and we need to get all the stakeholders in a room, working together to come up with a plan to drive this forward. We can’t do it as a Government—I acknowledge that—but neither can business do it in a vacuum of Government, so that is why we’ve got the unions, the iwi, key stakeholders, Government, and the private sector working together. That is the only way we are going to get the sort of results we require. I know that there are really smart, engaged people on the other side, like Erica Stanford, who get this, who know that the only way to drive productivity and growth across this economy is by working together, not in isolation.

Let me talk about regional economic development. This is a Government that, for the first time ever, engaged in the level of economic development that has made a huge, significant difference across our economy. In the new fund, the Regional Strategic Partnership Fund, from which the Provincial Growth Fund has morphed, will be a much more targeted fund, working with local regions in order to help them to drive opportunity, to achieve their objectives—again, in partnership.

I could talk about this for 45 minutes, around what this Budget delivers for businesses, what this Budget delivers for Kiwis, for economic development, for regional economic development, for our regions and this country, but my colleagues will elaborate on that. But I am very, very proud to be a member of Cabinet in this Government. Thank you very much.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Firstly, I’d like to give a big talofa lava to all of our Samoan community for Samoa Language Week, especially my Samoan brothers and sisters over there, from me, their Cook Island cousin in the Green Party. This year’s theme for Vaiaso o le Gagana Samoa / Samoa Language Week 2021 is “Poupou le lotoifale, ola manuia le anofale.”, which means “Strengthen the posts of your house, for all to thrive.” That sounds like a Budget announcement to me! I like that whakataukī because it is like when you are building a foundation for a fale, it can’t have a weak foundation or post, because it will just fall over.

I would also like to acknowledge that it was Samoan Independence Day, actually, yesterday, and acknowledge the connection and history and the importance of the Mau movement to Samoa and also to us here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I also do hope that the political situation in Samoa comes to a conclusion which is in line with the aspirations of the democratic institutions of Samoa, as well.

I don’t pick sides—I don’t pick sides at all—but wasn’t Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson great in the latest version of The Fast and the Furious? Talking about going faster, the Greens do like the direction of travel of this Budget, but, like with all things Green, we would like it to go faster and furtherer—is that even English? Maybe. So it was good to see the wellbeing investment into our Pasifika communities. We welcome the $108 million boost for Pasifika-led initiatives, giving Pasifika people more revenue to gain employment, training, and education that will boost the livelihoods of our families—that is a great thing. Pasifika whānau come to Aotearoa for better education and employment, which is supported through this Budget. So it is good to see that on top of the commitment to Pasifika housing earlier this year.

However, there are some things that I did hope to see in this Budget, and perhaps they are hidden in the back balance sheets of the Budget somewhere where my seventh-form calculus was unable to interpret in the Budget book. I wanted to see something signalled in this Government’s Budget that was about giving an apology for the Dawn Raids—perhaps that is going to happen, and perhaps that corner of the House will surprise me pleasantly. For me, this apology is long overdue. The dawn raids are a shameful stain on New Zealand history, defined by racial tension and unrest, as police and immigration authorities victimised Pacific Islanders who they suspected of abusing the terms of their visas. I also wanted to acknowledge the legacy of the Polynesian Panthers and the role they played in standing up for the rights of Pasifika communities, particularly in the 1970s. They organised against the dawn raids. Any apology that does happen needs to be meaningful, and that means also ensuring that that history is remembered and taught in our schools. So if it is somewhere in the back balance sheets of the Budget, perhaps it is in the curriculum review—and I hope so.

The thing is that in order to ensure that we have learnt from our history, we also need to send signals that we won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. I’d like to acknowledge the leadership of the Pacific Leadership Forum, who I managed to connect with just after the first lockdown, and the concerns they had about providing pathways to residencies and an amnesty for overstayers.

In this Budget, I would have liked to have seen a greater emphasis on emergency benefits so that Pasifika migrants could be connected and delivered more effectively without them having to show they have a return ticket. I have concerns about Pasifika migrants being exploited, and also understanding that many of these workers are essential workers. They are the people that got us through the COVID crisis; they are the people that continue to get us through this COVID crisis.

I would like to end by recognising that we are just starting into Matariki, and I know that we began our Matariki season today on top of Tangi-te-keo, and I know that, in the same way that we can see Matariki from our hills in Aotearoa, they can see them throughout the Pacific. It is a reminder that Aotearoa and the Pacific are deeply, deeply connected, and the need for us to embed ecological sustainability in the curriculum review, which, I hope, will begin to talk about our Pacific histories, including the history of connections between Māori and Pasefika communities, but also more recent history around the dawn raids and about our connections and our responsibilities as people from Aotearoa and the Pacific. Fa‘afetai tele lava.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. I am honoured to talk about our Budget this year: a Budget which is about continuing to keep Aotearoa New Zealand safe from COVID-19, a Budget which is about accelerating the recovery and rebuild from the impacts of COVID-19, a Budget which is about laying the foundations for the future and addressing some of the key issues that confront us. In particular, this year we focus on child poverty, and that motivates the benefit increases—the benefit increases this year that finally expunge the levels of cuts from the 1991 “mother of all Budgets” and a benefit increase that meets the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. Of course there is more to do, but it is wonderful to see this action being taken. And those increases in benefits will flow back to the local communities as families spend the extra money on their children and on the resources to support themselves—it’s a great move.

I want to cast our minds back to the lockdown last year, which was, I guess, very difficult for many of us. In my neighbourhood, what I noticed was many, many people out walking about, enjoying the native bush where I live, and that bush is very precious to us out west in Auckland. The Waitakere Ranges are our jewel, our treasure, but, in the Waitakere Ranges, the kauri are dying. Kauri dieback has taken a really strong foothold there. We have all sorts of measures in place to try to reduce its impact, but for many—in fact, ever since I’ve entered this Parliament I’ve been advocating for a better approach to kauri dieback, and this year this Budget delivers that.

This year, this Budget delivers $28 million towards rolling out a national pest management plan for kauri. Now, what is that? Well, it’s a legal framework that brings together the work of Government, of councils, of iwi, and of NGOs all together in a framework that means that activity is coordinated and that everyone is at the decision-making table and involved in understanding how to fight against kauri dieback.

It’s pretty interesting having a national pest management plan for kauri dieback. We have three in place currently: one for Psa-V in kiwifruit, one for bovine tuberculosis, and one for American foulbrood in bees. But, interestingly, those are all there to protect commercial crops and commercial species. This is the first time that a national pest management plan will be rolled out for a taonga species—for our kauri, which have no commercial purpose, but they are deeply important to us, and we do need to do some astonishing work on trying to save them.

I mentioned that it had been something that I’d concerned myself with since I entered this Parliament. I have a report here from the previous Parliament from the Environment Committee where, at the time when I was chair, we led a series of briefings into kauri dieback. And what we found at that stage was that the work around kauri dieback was fragmented, it wasn’t coordinated, that there were lots of people trying to do lots of things, but altogether the effort wasn’t adding up to enough. As we talked to the various Government agencies, we found that work was beginning on putting together a national pest management plan or some kind of coordinated plan. Our committee recommended that that be followed—that that go ahead as soon as possible. So it took a bit of time for the money to arrive, but I would like to commend the Minister for Biosecurity, the Hon Damien O’Connor, for finally pulling together this package of funding, which will ensure that kauri dieback is addressed properly.

But as well as commending the Minister, obviously, I also would like to acknowledge the other people who’ve worked on this for many years and have been raising their concerns around it: people like Te Kawerau ā Maki from the Waitakeres, who have this deep commitment to kauri; people like Dr Nick Waipara, an absolute expert in plant pathogens, who has brought his considerable knowledge to bear on this issue; people like the Save Our Kauri Trust—all people working to save our kauri. I’m very grateful for their work and for their advocacy, for their input into the select committee briefings on kauri dieback, for the contribution they have been making to the development of this national pest management plan, and for creating the will to do it. So there’s a lot of work that has gotten us to this point where, in the Budget this year, finally, with the support of the Minister and to my great delight, that money has been allocated. And it does contribute to our future, it does contribute to our security, it does contribute to our recovery. Why? Because it is part of our bush, part of our New Zealand native species, part of our treasures. Kauri are magnificent trees—they are absolutely fabulous trees. It has been heartbreaking to see them dying in my neighbourhood, and it is wonderful to see this plan now rolling into place so that we can save our kauri.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Talofa lava, Mr Speaker. Budget 2021 was the chance for new initiatives and aspirational reform in the immigration space and to provide hope for all New Zealand businesses who are, frankly, sick and tired of being chastised for keeping their operations alive by employing desperately needed migrants. Businesses are doing everything they can to find and train up locals, and have to prove this to Immigration New Zealand, but they’ve also told me that it’s not particularly helpful when the Government constantly implies that many of these sectors are low skilled, unattractive, and not a great career pathway. The Government isn’t exactly selling it to locals. Businesses all over New Zealand have been through the wringer when it comes to their workforce needs in their interactions with Immigration New Zealand.

In terms of managing expectations around Budget 2021, that wasn’t really a problem for business owners. The recent commentary from the likes of the Minister of Immigration, the Minister of Tourism, and even the Prime Minister provided the backdrop to what they could expect from this Budget, which was absolutely nothing. No new initiatives at Immigration New Zealand, no aspiration, no real solutions for migrants overall—just a Government that after four years still tries to put all the blame on business owners and migrants themselves, who pay their fair share of tax and got absolutely nothing other than continued headache and heartache.

What we’re left with is a significant missed opportunity for reinvention, and the chance for a positive strategy for the so-called immigration reset has gone begging. Talk of an immigration reset has been going on since before the 2020 election, so there’s been no shortage of time to develop a strategy and use the opportunity of Budget 2021 to map a clear path forward. But, perhaps, they’ve just been too busy trying to deal with their self-inflicted visa application chaos. All we’re getting is the usual reviews in the policies and processes, and even the forthcoming changes to work visas took far longer than originally promised. And given the way the roll-out is designed, it will almost certainly create unintended consequences.

Businesses and migrants have been asking why the Minister of Immigration has not confronted the obvious when it comes to immigration’s role in our post - COVID-19 economic recovery. The rhetoric from the Government, particularly in recent weeks, is divisive and tone deaf. To suggest that businesses nationwide need to stop employing hard-working migrants, drive up costs and therefore their prices, and fill vacancies in areas with skill shortages is not only ignorant, it’s economic sabotage, especially in the regions. I’ll be honest, though. I suspect the Government’s strategy, if you can call it a strategy, is actually just going to fizz out into nothing, and subsequent rhetoric will be a mix of backtracking and verbal gymnastics—probably during question time—because they can’t change reality. Sectors will be crying out for migrants, whether highly skilled or in more manual jobs, and the Government may just have to give in and quietly put the whole immigration reset concept on ice.

It was also intriguing to hear from the Reserve Bank last week in a select committee when my colleague Damien Smith asked if the Government had given them any indication as to future immigration levels to assist with their economic forecasting. Evidently, the Government hadn’t, and I think we can safely assume that this is because the Government doesn’t know either, and the bankers are left guessing in their models. I suspect there’s a fair bit of that going around, particularly as we look at forecasts around productivity, employment, and inflation.

Not everyone in the immigration space was left empty-handed by Budget 2021 though. Immigration New Zealand itself got a significant bailout in February, with more to come. And I sincerely hope that they use this stake to get on with the job at hand: get visas processed, reunite families, and get investment back into New Zealand fast. We have an immigration system that is at breaking point, a visionless Government that seems totally disconnected from the realities of doing business. Whether a person owns a small cafe, a restaurant, a high-tech start-up, or an apple orchard, they’re paying their weight in tax, providing jobs for migrants and Kiwis, and they want some answers.

ACT would start again with the whole system: create aspirational and efficient pathways that reward skilled migrants and be truly business-led when it comes to work visas, as opposed to the Government’s plan, which may drastically increase migrant exploitation and unemployment. We certainly wouldn’t blame businesses for lacklustre Government policy around training initiatives. We would empower them because it’s business owners who know best when it comes to their workforce needs and the needs of the economy as a whole. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Talofa lava. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. What an opportunity to be able to speak today on such a magnificent Budget. I must say that in the recess time, I’m lucky enough to be able to get out into my community and talk to people about what’s in the Budget. I never get sick of doing that. It’s a great opportunity, because Budget 2021 was about securing our recovery from COVID and people can see this. When you look at what’s happened in the past, people know that New Zealand has delivered a strong health response; they can see that. People know that through the wage subsidy, our local businesses and local workers continue to be employed and our local economy in the Hutt is thriving. We can also see there’s been a significant investment in infrastructure, and that translates not just to the things that we need to drive or trains or hospitals, but it also means jobs—jobs in terms of our apprenticeships and our people working and bringing home a good wage, and that’s what people see when you talk to them.

But this Budget builds on that. It builds on that platform that’s already been delivered over the last Budget and it lays the foundations for coming out of COVID stronger and building back even better by addressing some of those challenges that we know are systemic within New Zealand: the housing crisis, inequality, and also climate change. There is a whole lot of good work in there that continues to develop the hard work that’s gone on before.

When you think about real examples and you talk to people—I met an early childhood education teacher the other week, who knew that they were going to get as much pay as kindergarten teachers, and that was making a significant difference to what they could afford to buy. A local business owner who now had two apprenticeships going, under his watch, instead of just one, because of the apprenticeship scheme. And because that had worked so well for his business he’d taken on two in Mana in Mahi who were previously unemployed, and had got the benefits through that, and he was looking at taking those lads from Mana in Mahi into doing apprenticeships.

When you talk to someone who knows they’ll be able to now get the Training Incentive Allowance, that their bus fare, that their books, that their additional support to be able to get to and learn and improve and drive stronger—that is what New Zealand wants. It’s to give opportunities to people to make the most of what their lives can be. And it even helps so much more to have the mum or the dad who knows they’re getting that extra money in their benefit to buy some shoes, to buy some food, and to buy those extra things to help get by.

I could talk about all of those things a lot, because there are so many things in this Budget. There are so many great things to pick out. But I’m going to use my remaining time to talk about something that I’m really passionate about, and that’s Te Pae Oranga, which is Māori justice panels. Just today we’ve had the announcement in Hamilton that Budget 2021 will invest in reducing reoffending by funding an additional 12 Te Pae Oranga community justice panels, or iwi community justice panels. This will include nine new rangatahi or youth panels, and that will fund approximately 35 fulltime-equivalent positions within police to work within communities.

I was waiting to hear the cries from the benches opposite of “Soft on crime.”, but they seem to have gone quiet today. But I came prepared just in case they did cry out “Soft on crime.”, because I have a couple of great quotes. The first one I’d like to quote is—

Hon Members: Soft on crime!

GINNY ANDERSEN: Oh there you go, thank you. “Sending someone off to jail for their first shoplifting offence might make society feel good, but if that then sets them on a lifetime path of crime, then I don’t think society has won out of the deal.” That was by the former Minister of Justice the Hon Amy Adams in 2016. Here’s another one: “Having sat through these panels, they are not soft on crime. The offender certainly has to pay the price.” So it’s great to know that there’s agreement across the House on the fact that having a community response, having an offender work within their community to address the underlying issues of what is driving low-level offending, is actually how you drive transformational change within the justice system.

When I first worked on police and sat on these panels and saw how they operated, I can say firsthand that people who would have entered the justice system were prevented from doing so. They provide real opportunity for local autonomy, local communities, local marae to work hand in hand with police and their people to make sure we have positive long-term outcomes for our next generation. I’m proud to be part of a Government that delivers a system that enables that engagement early on and does not resort to just courts and prison as a knee-jerk reaction, instead of addressing the underlying factors that are driving that offending in the first place. I think that is the way we will work forward to have a better New Zealand, and that is what Budget 2021 delivers.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to this Budget debate. I stand here on behalf of the National Party to oppose this Government’s Budget and to support the Hon Judith Collins’—National Party leader’s—amendment that “this House has no confidence in anything this Government promises, because after just four years its track record of failing to deliver, of broken promises, of spin over substance, and of announcements over results speaks for itself.”

To bring that amendment to life, I want to focus on mental health. Absolute four years of failure from this Government. If I can begin by the context when this Labour Party was in Opposition: they politicised mental health, they weaponised suicide statistics, they raised expectations with vulnerable New Zealanders, and they got thousands of New Zealanders to turn up to an inquiry and tell their traumatic and heartfelt stories. And what do they do? They kick them in the guts. They announce a lot of funding in 2019, wash their hands and say that’s all.

Why do I know that Budget 2021 is an admission of absolute failure in mental health? They’ve raised the white flag. How many times did the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern mention mental health in her Budget speech? None. Zero. De nada. How many times did Grant Robertson mention mental health in his Budget speech? The Minister of Finance—one. The two top people mentioned mental health once. That’s why Budget 2021 for mental health will be known to sweep mental health under the carpet. They don’t want to talk about mental health anymore, because what does a Labour Government do in Opposition? They say, “Here’s a problem: put us in Government and we’ll make a difference.” They promised New Zealanders they would change the mental health system and they have failed.

In the context of this Budget, they turned up after announcing record amounts of mental health funding in Budget 2019, and just before Budget 2021, as of 30 April, they were supposed to have spent $247 million in new services. They promised vulnerable New Zealanders. And as of that date they were supposed to have spent $247 million. They have only spent $147 million. Already, going into Budget 2021, they’d underspent $100 million. I know New Zealand Association of Counsellors working in secondary care and in DHBs are crying out for funding to respond to the growing referral numbers in response to COVID-19—and they’re not spending the money.

Grant Robertson has record underspends in his mental health bank accounts. And what was there for mental health in Budget 2021? Nothing. They wouldn’t even mention the word. Nothing for mental health. They don’t talk about it anymore.

Tomorrow, I will accept a petition from Rebecca Toms from my region of Canterbury—a heartbreaking story. Many New Zealand parents around the country, they’ve got kids with eating disorders. They go in to get treatment and they’re told that their kid is not near death enough to access the treatment service. They went to Andrew Little, the health Minister, and asked for funding. Currently, eating disorder services are funded by a paltry $15 million. If addiction services are poor second cousins to mental health services in New Zealand, eating disorders aren’t even on the radar. Their stakeholder group is voluntary; they get no funding. They went to the health Minister and asked for funding in Budget 2021, just a few million so they can develop a strategy for New Zealand. They got nothing.

Here we have, I think, the actual epitome of how these guys have absolutely failed. Many will know what I’m going to say, and that’s Mike King handing back his Queen’s honour. He says there is more than enough money in the system. It’s just the incompetence at the top. It is so up the creek without a paddle, it’s ridiculous. Families are suffering. Shame on them for letting down vulnerable New Zealanders.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Talofa lava. I’m extraordinarily proud to stand here today talking to what is my first Budget in this House, and what a Budget it is. I was preparing for this speech and I was finding it really hard to find the best bits to talk about, and so I had to really just stick to the bits that were relevant to me. Relevant to me as the proud MP for Ilam, relevant to me as a woman and a healthcare provider, and relevant to me as a breast cancer survivor. But, of course, they’re not just relevant to me; they’re relevant to many, many thousands of other women and other people in New Zealand and beyond.

Now, Ilam, where’s the relevance, you might think. Ilam is actually home to Antarctica New Zealand and one of the six bases from which our scientists travel to Antarctica. Now, Scott Base is, as you know, in the Ross Dependency in Antarctica. It’s actually 3,800 kilometres south of Christchurch. It houses world-leading scientists from New Zealand, and they are completing world-leading science in what is an old set of buildings that were in urgent need of upgrade and repair. So our scientists are going to be better equipped in a fantastic new series of buildings that will be constructed in New Zealand and probably, I hope, in Christchurch. They’ll create 170 jobs at the peak of construction and 700 over six years. And that will enable us to continue to understand how climate change affects Antarctica, affects Aotearoa by extension, and the rest of the world. It’s absolutely vital work that we need to continue to support, and, hopefully, in a way that doesn’t mean our scientists are having to stand on the roof to sweep the snow off as they do currently—not ideal in minus 50.

As a breast cancer survivor—moving on—I see a Budget that is literally lifesaving; 3,200 people a year are diagnosed with breast cancer. So, currently, at the moment, our screening programme provided by BreastScreen Aotearoa, who are doing an amazing job, does screen eligible people between 45 and 69 every two years. But it’s an opt-in service. What we’re doing in this Budget is allocating $55.6 million for a major upgrade of our breast-screening programme, which will mean that we’re able to screen 271,000 extra women who are not currently accessing this screening programme. Currently, we have an opt-in programme, so you have to know the screening is available and actually access it yourself. But what we’re going to be doing is using technology to ensure that it’s an opt-out programme, and that’s why so many more women are going to have access to it. This disproportionately affects Māori and Pasifika women, who are much more likely to be benefiting from this opt-out programme.

Speaking of lifesaving, more money is being spent by this Government in this Budget—$53 million—as we move into a new test for cervical cancer. Each year, 160 women develop cervical cancer. And I’m noting, as I say that, that I’m standing at the desk of the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who was one of those this year. Kiritapu Allan has been absolutely vocal in her support of cervical-screening programmes and has encouraged all of us to make sure that we do access the programmes that we can to make sure that our cervical screens are up to date. And when I describe this new programme, it’s not to say, “Please wait for it.”, but to “Please have your cervical swab now.”, and the screening programme will be rolled out from 2023. The new programme will be self-administered, it will be quick, it will be a swab that’s less invasive and more effective, and it will be preventing 400 additional cervical cancer diagnoses, saving 138 lives over the next 17 years. Of those 138 lives—138 lives will be saved—a third of those will be Māori, because, at the moment, 61 percent of eligible wāhine Māori are not accessing our cervical-screening programme. I think that’s because it can be a little invasive and it can be a little embarrassing to go for that smear, but I do encourage everybody wholeheartedly to make sure that they do do that and don’t wait for the new screening programme. Thank you so much.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Talofa lava. Fa‘afetai. We all deserve a strong safety net that helps people live with dignity, and that’s why the Greens were so pleased to see in this Budget the increase in income support for New Zealanders living in poverty, in line with the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. That means 33,000 children will be lifted out of poverty.

This Budget has also seen a huge investment in climate-related activities: $2.1 billion. It quadruples the size of the Green Investment Fund to kick-start low-carbon technologies, with an extra $300 million, and there’s been a major commitment in this Budget to recycle the revenue from the emissions trading scheme (ETS) from next year’s Budget into green initiatives. That will mean approximately $3 billion can go towards climate action in coming years, and when the Minister for Climate Change, James Shaw, is going to release the climate commission’s final recommendations on 9 June, knowing that all this ETS revenue can be invested in climate action, it is really exciting.

This Budget 2021 has been about people. It’s been about investing in people and infrastructure and climate action. Papatūānuku also needs investment. There was a big increase in funding for conservation in Budget 2018 and in 2019, and then we saw in the COVID recovery package with Jobs for Nature an extra $1.3 billion across four agencies.

In Budget 2021, there’s an extra $132 million in Vote Environment for the design, enactment, transition, and reform of the Resource Management Act (RMA), because of the recognition that it has really failed to protect the environment. It is too cumbersome and takes too much time, and, unlike in 1991, when the RMA was passed, there is funding to help with implementation and the guidance that councils will need.

There’s also $28 million for kauri dieback, to protect the taonga of our kauri forests, but what’s missing in terms of this Budget 2021 is an increased investment in our oceans, in fisheries, and in marine protection. So we haven’t seen that. In the words of the Ministry for Primary Industries, in answer to select committee questions, there is—and I quote—“no significant change” in the fisheries appropriations as a result of Budget 2021. There are no new policies or outputs, no reprioritisation of funds, and just no change to the outlook. So that is same old, same old, but same old, same old is not delivering for fisheries management. It is not delivering for our oceans.

We’ve got a huge information deficit in terms of fisheries management and big shortfalls in information about fish stocks, about species bycatch, and about ecosystem impacts of fisheries. That’s long been recognised, and it was highlighted by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Dr Juliet Gerrard, in this report about the future of commercial fisheries. But this Budget has no additional funding for fisheries research. That’s despite some fish stocks being in freefall.

In 2020, nine fish stocks were reported as collapsed, five were virtually certain to be experiencing overfishing, and two were likely to be experiencing overfishing. We need more funds for stock assessment and we need more funds for that to be done every year. In 2019, only 160 fish stocks had been scientifically evaluated. There were 228 fish stocks that hadn’t been assessed. Those 228 fish stocks account for 30 percent of our commercial catch. Expecting sustainable fisheries management without real-time assessment of those stocks is not sustainable management.

Forty-six percent of our commercial catch comes from bottom trawling. The Budget in 2022 needs to provide for significantly more investment to tackle the impacts that bottom trawling has on beds, the ecosystems, and the habitat. Overseas, there’s been a lot more effort to protect seamounts as biological hot spots, but not here.

There’s no extra funding in the Budget for reform of marine protection. That may be being done under Fisheries New Zealand’s baseline and the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai’s baseline. It is urgent, because the 1971 Marine Reserves Act is outdated. It doesn’t provide adequately for Te Tiriti. It’s focused around protection for scientific research. We need major reform of marine protection, and we need an investment in that.

We rely on our oceans. They’ve helped protect us from a warming climate, and we need more investment.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): Talofa lava. It is a privilege to speak in this, my first Budget debate as an MP and a Minister. This Budget lays the foundations for coming out of COVID stronger and focuses on securing our recovery. This Budget builds on the strong position New Zealand is in thanks to our world-leading health response to the global pandemic. It means we can tackle long-term challenges like housing, inequality, and climate change. We can take a balanced approach that will create jobs and keep a lid on debt, and we can invest in our infrastructure, lifting children out of poverty, and building a stronger, more responsive health system.

I do want to take a couple of minutes to highlight some new initiatives that will make a real difference to people. And let’s start with COVID. In this Budget, we’ll see that public health units will receive a $53.2 million investment. That is building on $40 million for public health units in the last Budget. Not many people know the day-to-day work of public health units, but they are the people who respond to all our COVID outbreaks, who do school testing, who coordinate public health responses to every outbreak, who do the contact tracing, and who often coordinate COVID-related activities across the DHB. In addition to this, they are also promoting health in their communities through things such as smoking prevention or improving food environments. As part of this investment, there will be $15.4 million to train 10 additional public health specialists each year. This, plus the Government’s plans to develop a public health agency as part of our wider systems reforms, means that the future of public health in New Zealand post-pandemic is in good heart. We will never need to rebuild our public health infrastructure in the face of a pandemic again.

Other initiatives that are related to preventative health include the HPV testing and breast-screening announcements. Budget 2021 will deliver a better cervical-screening test and a major upgrade to breast screening that will save lives. We’re investing $53 million to implement a new human papillomavirus test, which is the cause of the majority of cervical cancers. As my colleague Sarah Pallett has mentioned, the new test will replace the current smear test, and it will mean that, for 1.4 million eligible women, they will soon have a simple and quick swab rather than an invasive speculum exam. We know from clinical trials conducted in New Zealand that this will increase the number of Māori and Pacific women who are willing to participate in the screening programme. These are groups that we have traditionally underserved. Our modelling predicts that we’ll detect an additional 400 cancers over 17 years, and save over 138 lives. Around a third of those will be lives of Māori.

In breast screening, we are also investing in new technology. We’re building a better register that guides the information technology for our breast screening. As has been mentioned, the opt-in model is currently a barrier to women accessing breast screening and, through the new register, we’ll be able to reach the 271,000 women proactively who currently are not on the screening programme.

In the final moments, I want to draw attention to some of the other health and vaccine investments, particularly those that are of interest to seniors. One of the biggest investments—I think it’s underappreciated how important it is—is the $1.4 billion we’ve invested in the COVID vaccination programme, to ensure that a New Zealander can receive a free vaccination. Yes, it’s a massive investment, but it is also an investment that is most likely to save the lives of seniors in New Zealand, and I think that will be one of the biggest impacts that we’ll have on the health of seniors in history. These investments sit alongside other major investments in health, including $200 million for Pharmac, so that New Zealanders can access more medicine, and $100 million for ambulance services.

Finally, we have also put aside money in the Budget for an Aged Care Commissioner, which we’ll be able to provide more details on in the future. There is much more in Budget ‘21 that I could talk about, from the investments in warmer, healthier homes to the major increases in weekly benefit rates. This is a Budget for recovery and that looks out for people in need and tackles our long-term challenges.

SPEAKER: As I call Erica Stanford, I want to indicate to her that she has less than five minutes because, when there’s 10 minutes to go in the debate, I will call the Minister of Finance in reply—about four minutes.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition to this Budget 2021, and I don’t think anyone will be surprised about the fact that I’m going to talk about immigration, because when you add it up, all the money that they’ve bailed them out with and the money that they’ve given them, it totals about half a billion dollars. The single overarching purpose of this appropriation—and this is the funny part—is to provide efficient immigration services that generate positive economic and social outcomes for New Zealand. Now, anyone listening to this debate, to me speaking today, who is either an immigration agent, an immigration lawyer, or anyone who has to actually interact with the immigration service, will be laughing or crying, or a combination of both, because they know how broken our immigration system is.

Let’s, firstly, just take a look at those words: “efficient immigration service”. We’ve got residence queues that are the longest we’ve had in history. We’ve got an immigration department that are on a go-slow, producing one outcome in residency a week, where they used to do 1.2 decisions a day. We’ve got an expression-of-interest (EOI) queue being frozen since March last year. We’ve got secret priority queues, split migrant families. All of this is not because of COVID; this started as far back as 2018—they are not allowed to use that as an excuse.

Poor Minister Stuart Nash had to get up on behalf of Kris Faafoi the other day and talk about the immigration reset, where we’re going to, you know, have highly skilled migrants. Well, if you google “how to do immigration”, that is pretty much what it tells you on any immigration search. There wasn’t anything new in that speech, and yet everyone flew to Wellington for it, thinking that it was going to be some great announcement, and poor Stuart Nash had to deliver the bad news: there was nothing in it, apart from more anxiety and stress for migrants.

If we take a look, the most important thing about our immigration system is to encourage highly skilled migrants here. If we take a look at the expression-of-interest pool that is now reaching 10,000 people, that has been frozen since March last year: 235 doctors are sitting in there, 900 nurses, 543 teachers—one of them at my local high school, Rangitoto College, is a great maths teacher, and she also coaches my daughter at netball; stuck in an EOI queue, thinking about leaving—150 plumbers and electricians. Those are just the registered occupations. If we want to have the very best people, the most highly skilled people, come to New Zealand to help us claw our way out of our economic decline that COVID has caused, then we need to do the best—

Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Take a breath.

ERICA STANFORD: —and we don’t have the best—I’ve only got four minutes, Carmel Sepuloni, and you know that well; no time for a breath.

If we want the best, we have to be the best, and we are currently one of the worst. People think that people want to come to New Zealand to live and work. Right now, they don’t. In fact, the good people we have here, the highly skilled people that Stuart Nash is talking about trying to invite, are already here: they work for our local businesses, they are our teachers, our nurses, our doctors, our IT workers, and they are all looking to leave because they can’t get residency, because they are stuck in a queue that is going nowhere or it is going to take two years or they are split from their families for over 500 days and can’t see their children. Why would they stay here? They are all looking to leave—our doctors, our nurses, our teachers, these good people, these skilled people that Stuart Nash and Kris Faafoi want here in New Zealand. They are already here but they don’t want to be here any more because we treat them so appallingly.

A man I spoke to today who owns a company whose staff are looking to leave, a Kiwi, he said to me, “I am embarrassed about the way we treat our migrants.” We all should be embarrassed about the way we treat them. It is appalling. The immigration system is broken, and here we are spending half a billion dollars on an immigration system that is supposed to be efficient and have good positive economic and social outcomes, but, actually, when it boils down to it, is delivering the exact opposite. We will be watching every single dollar that is spent—

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I thank all members who have contributed to this debate, including the member who’s just resumed her seat, Erica Stanford, who did, I think, manage some kind of world speed record with her speech. But I do thank her, and all members, and I also thank members in advance for the work that they’re about to do in the Estimates hearings as we go through the full Budget process. It is a very important part of the accountability of Parliament to look through the processes. Some hearings will be better attended than others, as we go through this period of time, but they’re all important and all ones that are going to contribute to the debate.

This is a Budget that I am intensely proud to have presented on behalf of this Government. It is a Budget that builds on the hard work of New Zealanders over the course of the last year and a bit. When I stood up in this House in May 2020, we were facing down a period of significant economic restriction, of a reduction in our GDP that had not been seen before, of unemployment being close to 10 percent, and we can proudly look today at a country where we have overachieved against those predictions, and relative to the rest of the world. We continue to be able to look across the world and see that our strong public health response has enabled a limited amount of restrictions in our economy and has seen us able to operate in a way that other countries are still not able to do. Whatever the other side of the House want to say, we take a look at whatever measure you like, and the Bloomberg Index is the one that is being used by a lot of people—New Zealand sits at the top of that index. That index is not just about our health response, it is not just about the work that New Zealanders did to support one another to get through COVID; it’s also about our economic response.

I can think of nothing more than that—and this Budget builds heavily on this—in the area of apprenticeship and trade training. I remember sitting in this House after the global financial crisis—in fact, I remember being at a select committee hearing and asking how much money was going into making sure that apprentices could stay in their jobs. The short answer was that money was actually put aside and it wasn’t spent and it wasn’t used, and apprentices got laid off. It meant that when it came time to do the recovery and to do the rebuilds, there were not people trained up to do it. Well, we made sure we didn’t repeat that mistake, and since 1 July last year, as a result of this Government’s policies, more than 100,000 New Zealanders have taken up apprenticeships and trade training for free—57,000 of those people are new apprentices. Of that, a third are in the construction industry, an area where we now see a 7.1 percent increase in filled jobs in that sector over the course of the last year. That is the kind of thing that we have been able to do to make sure that we have got through this in a way that is, relatively speaking, better than a lot of the rest of the world.

But COVID is not over, and every person who watches the news each night—and tonight people will watch the news and they will see that the lockdown in Melbourne has been extended by another week—will look around the world and see the places that some members of this House have wanted to compare us to, like Vietnam, like Taiwan, and see that those countries have further outbreaks and are now in restrictions and lockdowns. So we need to continue to invest in keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID and in making sure that we continue to play an active role in the economy, to continue to stimulate the economy, because every single economic forecast contains the words “uncertainty” and “volatility”. So that is why this Budget sets a very balanced approach, investing in the areas where it is needed most, but keeping an eye on the future, keeping a lid on debt, and making sure that we are looking out for future generations. The Budget invests heavily in the Government’s number one priority of keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19, with $1.5 billion going into a vaccination programme that is ahead of schedule. You’re not going to hear that from Mr Bishop, are you? Ahead of schedule, 9 percent ahead of schedule, 235,000 people fully vaccinated. On this side of the House we know that we will achieve our goal of making sure that every New Zealander who wants it, over the age of 16, is vaccinated. At the same time, we’ll keep investing in the managed isolation facilities, we’ll keep investing in making sure that our border is safe and secure, and this Budget does that.

But what it also does is it has an eye to the future on the two other priorities of the Government this term: accelerating our recovery and our rebuild, and making sure we get on with addressing those long-term challenges around climate change, around housing affordability, and around child wellbeing. There’s $57.3 billion into infrastructure. This is the pipeline that the infrastructure industry asked for year after year after year under the previous Government, and they did not get it. They got inconsistent, haphazard investment in our infrastructure. Rather, from this Government, what they get is a long-term pipeline. Now, there are constraints in the New Zealand economy at the moment, caused by supply constraint, caused by lack of labour supply, but that means that at least those companies now know where that investment is coming from, and that the Government is prepared to put its money where its mouth is. It’s not about putting out press releases, it’s not about standing in the middle of a field and saying, “This is where a road’s going to be built.”, and putting no money in; it’s about making sure that that money is actually on the table and ready to be spent. In addition to that is our ongoing investment in skills and in training and the reform of our vocational education system, of looking ahead to a future where New Zealanders have high-paid jobs wherever they live in the country.

In the time remaining, I do want to focus on the third of those key priorities, and that is the work that we have done in this Budget to improve child wellbeing. I want to congratulate the Minister Carmel Sepuloni for the hard work that she has put in over several years now, in terms of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group and our ability to now be able to respond to further of their recommendations. I heard, in one of the opening speeches in this—actually, I didn’t, I heard about it later—from the Leader of the Opposition, where she used the phrase that this was a “broken compass Budget”. It’s not. It’s a “moral compass Budget”. It’s a Budget where a Government has got the moral compass back for New Zealand that has been lost over so many generations. We are not creating a world in which people who are living on main benefits are somehow or other going to be flush with cash. We are still expecting a 25 year old person to be able to live on $315 a week. Now, that is a boost, that is going to make a big difference to that person’s life, but that is far, far from being some kind of lap of luxury life that we hear from some members across the House. This is about restoring dignity, and it’s about restoring hope, and the same applies to the reinstatement of the Training Incentive Allowance for degree-level qualifications. It is another thing that is about giving a chance and an opportunity and a hope to those who want to go and get those qualifications and then add to the productivity of New Zealand through doing so. Alongside that, we’ve got additional support around the childcare allowance, additional support around the unsupported child and orphans benefit as well. All of these are things that add on to what we have already done, meaning that New Zealand families will be better off, 109,000 of them, by more than $175 a week since this Government came into office.

The other two of those priorities are also important. This is the Budget that appropriates the $3.8 billion for the Housing Acceleration Fund, practical work, funding that will go out and build the roads and the drains and make sure that land is build-ready to put those houses on. It’s what local governments asked for, it’s what the private sector has asked for, and it is delivered inside this Budget. It is also a Budget where we finally take some proper steps around Māori housing, and I do think it’s really important that we note today the work of our Māori Ministers who are out there at the moment, in our communities, talking to the communities about where we can build houses, where we can repair houses, and give a clear basis for good development for our Māori communities. The same applies to the work being done in the Māori Health Authority establishment, also funded in this Budget.

Then there is the third of those priorities, that are around climate change. This Budget—and I know you, Mr Speaker, will understand this, as somebody who has helped put Budgets together—does something very significant. It says that all of the revenue that we will get through the emissions trading scheme will be hypothecated, recycled into emissions reduction initiatives. This is not something the Treasury’s always a particularly big fan of, but it is something that is important, because if we are truly to deal with an intergenerational issue like climate change, then we must take a step such as this.

So this is a Budget that secures our recovery. This is a Budget that gets the balance right, between making sure we invest where it is needed most while being responsible and careful with the financial management of our country. It is a Budget that starts to get on top of our long-term issues around inequality in our society, around making sure everybody has a warm, dry, safe home to live in, and looks to the future of a low-emissions economy that will produce high-paying jobs. It is a Budget I am immensely proud to have delivered in this House.

SPEAKER: The question is that the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition be agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That all the words after “That” be omitted and the following substituted: “this House has no confidence in anything this Government promises, because after just four years its track record of failing to deliver, of broken promises, of spin over substance, and of announcements over results, speaks for itself.”

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 75

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

Amendment not agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill

Instruction to Transport and Infrastructure Committee

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): I move, That the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2021 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196(1)(b) and (c).

If I can just take a couple of moments to speak to the referral motion and why it is that the Government is seeking from the House a shortened report-back date and the other conditions that I have just outlined on this piece of legislation. The driving reason is that we are very keen to ensure that New Zealand can accede to MARPOL Annex VI in early 2022 in line with international commitments that we have made to ensure that New Zealand can benefit from the reduced air pollution that will come from ascension to the treaty and, very importantly, to ensure that New Zealand can assume a credible role in negotiations at the international maritime organisation that will be beginning to occur from that time onwards. Our ability to be able to stand up and say that we have acceded to MARPOL Annex VI is an important part of New Zealand’s ability to engage in a meaningful way in that process.

Once a bill has passed through Parliament, it will take about three months until the instrument of ascension is deposited for Annex VI for MARPOL to come into force in New Zealand. Therefore, to meet that deadline of around about February 2022, we do need to deposit the instrument of ascension before the end of this year. So, working back, that means that a select committee report-back date by September allows us to have the bill passed at around about that time and for public consultation to carry on.

I do note, in respect of this piece of legislation, that there has been extensive public consultation over a number of years and that the select committee consideration of the bill occurred between February and June 2020. It received a small number of submissions from interested parties, but the select committee unanimously reported back to the House and recommended that we do proceed with this piece of legislation. So it’s a non-controversial piece of legislation that there is support around the House for. I do note that the proposed report-back date still does allow 3½ months for the Transport and Infrastructure Committee to examine the legislation and take submissions, but it is a reduced report-back date for the reasons that I have outlined previously.

So, in conclusion, given the extensive public consultation that has occurred, given the unanimous nature of the select committee’s examination of the international treaty that this piece of legislation springs from, and given the important need for New Zealand to accede to the treaty by the beginning of next year, I think that the reasons for a shortened report-back date are sound and I look forward to the House’s agreement to that proposal.

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

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Look, National doesn’t support the referral motion and it’s very simple: because we’re not following due process and there’s no really compelling justification for it. The first thing that the Minister’s talked about is that, you know, we’ve got a requirement under MARPOL legislation to get it there on time. Well, the question is: why didn’t you bring it to the House earlier? If you thought it was that important, why hasn’t it been done earlier? It just feels lazy, shambolic—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —sorry, why didn’t the Minister bring it to the House earlier so we could actually discuss it in time, if that’s the case? I thought James Shaw made a very articulate speech last night and he talked about the urgency around climate change. But we declared a climate emergency; it could have been done the very next day. This legislation should have been done under urgency if we thought it was that important as a result.

So we oppose it because now this is the 34th bill that’s been coming to this House since this Government came to power that’s been under four months in terms of time for us to go through the process, and I think that’s the key issue. So we don’t think there’s an adequate reason. We just think it’s sloppy and lazy and shambolic as to why it’s come here so late. If we believe it’s so fundamental, then why wasn’t it done under urgency? It’s just becoming a practice and a habit that we don’t, fundamentally, think is good for debate in this House.

I have to say, we know the key issue with this Government is, fundamentally, implementation. We know execution is their enemy. Now this Minister’s probably better than the one that delivered the oil and gas ban, but we now deliver an oil and gas ban, we don’t follow through on execution, we import Indonesian coal, and our emissions are up. So we really want to make sure that when we go into understanding—you know, we need to be reassured, given that track record, given this thing is being done with a truncated process, that we actually do answer some specific questions like: what fuel will be available in New Zealand—low sulphur fuel? Who will it be available for? Where will it be available and in what bunker port?

So I think we need time from the officials to understand some of those questions and, again, we see no justification and, again, we’re going against due process. We can’t work out why we’re doing it this way.

SIMON COURT (ACT): The member Christopher Luxon has raised some valid justifications as to why a shortened or truncated period at select committee is unacceptable. I’ve had advice today from stakeholders that this is a rush to a low sulphur fuel. The case has been made last night that actually it’s not a rush, because the treaty was signed some time in the 1990s. However, we’re talking about New Zealand here, a couple of dozen ships, many which rely on the fuel that’s currently available and manufactured by the refining company in New Zealand, and will have no choice but to switch to—essentially—diesel, at two to three times the price. So at a time when the supply chains are under pressure, where our manufacturers and importers are under pressure, and there’s a risk of all of those costs passing through into the economy—we’re talking about transport bulk cement and bulk solvents and other chemicals around New Zealand, as well as transporting containers and other goods up to the Pacific Islands. All of these shipping companies will be at risk of increased cost pressures that flow through to the wider economy.

Now, it’s clear that New Zealand is about to face a very uncertain energy future. Many of this Government’s policies have been announced on the hoof, potentially by mistake, later backside-covering exercises involving working groups to try to justify decisions taken on the hoof. It seems unreasonable—given all of the risks raised by the shipping industry, by the fuel suppliers, by the refinery, even by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that pointed out New Zealand is woefully short of the strategic petroleum reserves that the IEA requires its member countries to have, those 90 days of storage that New Zealand doesn’t have—that all we are currently holding are IOUs that we might go begging around the world for a few ships to come and save us in the event that we face a supply problem here in New Zealand. It’s not acceptable to refer this bill to select committee for a shortened period of submission and consideration when all of these risks are coming through this very narrow point at one time and the solutions for them—while they might be available, are not available soon, and they’re not available without cost.

So it is for that reason that the ACT Party does not support this truncated and shortened period at select committee and for submissions. In fact, we think, in this case, the full period should be allocated to hear from submitters, to hear from stakeholders, and to give the industry—as well as Government—time to come up with solutions to come up with these important environmental objectives.

Hon JAMES SHAW (Minister of Climate Change): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Green Party supports the referral motion. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points that the previous speaker, Simon Court, made. He talked about the “rush” to low-sulphur fuels. It’s a rush that has so far taken 25 years to get to this point, given that MARPOL VI was agreed to in, I think, 1996! I think it came into effect in 2002, and we started work on it in this Government at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018. It’s still taken, even with a Government that actually said, “OK, let’s get into this thing”, nearly four years to get to this point. So I would say we’re hardly rushing into this, given that that is most of my colleague’s life to get here.

I would also say, when you look at the weight of submissions, there were only 48, and that somehow it took two years to process. Forty-four of those submissions, I think, were in favour of the transition, and those were from the industry itself. So what that suggests is that this is an entirely non-controversial process. It is, clearly, carefully considered, given that it’s taken us 25 years to think about it so far! I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that’s going to take an enormous amount of time from the select committee to have to go out and ask all of the same questions that the Ministry of Transport has already asked many times over, in workshops and in submissions processes, and so on and so forth. Therefore, we do support the referral motion. Let’s get this done finally. It’s time to put this thing to bed.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 16 September 2021 and that the committee have authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting (except during oral questions), during any evening on a day on which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting of the House and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196(1)(b) and (c).

Ayes 75

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Fair Trading Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 19 May.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Point of order. I seek leave for this Fair Trading Amendment Bill to be referred back to the select committee for it to deliberate, produce a report, and forward it to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I’ll just take some advice on that. [Pause in proceedings] Leave is sought for that purpose. All those in favour say Aye. There is objection. I call the Hon Todd McClay.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): A travesty of justice right there and of democracy. You see, the problem is—and I have an email here that says the following—“The Fair Trading Amendment Bill has been discharged from the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. This is because, although the original schedule for the dissolution of Parliament meant that the bill would be eligible for reinstatement in the 53rd Parliament, the postponement has meant the report-back date of 12 August has now passed.”

This is a piece of legislation that is important. The Government members will stand up in a moment, as the Minister did a few weeks ago, and talk about protecting consumers. They won’t talk about getting the balance right so that those businesses that this legislation should focus on are targeted and affected. They will talk about the things that mean that businesses in New Zealand that function properly, that are running their businesses well and are caring for consumers, will be impacted and there will be a cost upon them. And what we will see from the Minister, I believe, is a significant number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) of amendments to the legislation because the committee was not allowed to finish its work.

Now, I know the Government is in a rush to get things through. That’s why lots of pieces of legislation have come to the House and been rushed through in urgency in a day or two when there was absolutely no urgency at all. But a question to members opposite and to the Minister is: why will he not allow the select committee, or why will Government members not allow the select committee, to do its job properly, to improve the legislation and get it right, if this is so very, very important?

Now, there could be a reason, and that reason could well be because the Government wants to get this into law so very quickly. But we have now had six months since the election, six months of House time where the committee could have done its job. The committee could have done its job and finished hearing submissions and deliberated and talked to officials and got it right and produced a report, perhaps with amendments—some of the SOPs the Minister will dump in the House so that submitters and members of the public and others won’t have a chance to consider and inform us on. And this, again, therefore, I suppose, will be rushed through. That’s just not good enough, because there isn’t urgency with this. We’ve had six months. It could go back to the committee for just a month to finish the work that would have been done if the last committee, and the chair of the last committee, had been able to get it back, but that hasn’t happened.

Herein lies the problem, because we are going to see significant SOPs. That means the Government knows the legislation as it stands is not going to do the job it needs, or it’s changed its mind, or actually a significant number of submitters from the business sector have been engaged with the Minister, meeting in his office, or going to the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and the Government realises that, actually, in its current state, it will not do what it wants and it will burden businesses in a way that it shouldn’t, create costs that inevitably will be passed on to consumers. Because, inevitably, every time this Government comes up with a bright idea and they don’t allow a committee to do its job properly, it means costs upon businesses that end up being passed on to consumers. And that’s just not good enough, because this is a Minister who, in essence, hasn’t got this legislation right. He won’t allow it to go back to the committee; so he hasn’t got that right. He’s going to dump significant SOPs on the Table, which means so far that it has not been right. And when I saw him earlier, he hasn’t even got his hair cut right! This is quite important, and the reason for that is it’s going to make significant changes.

National supports sensible, transparent, straight-forward regulation that prevents the exploitation of consumers. This legislation doesn’t do that. It’s going to create significant burden upon some businesses where it doesn’t intend to, that’ll make it harder for consumers and will pass on frustration and cost. We don’t support imposing the poorly crafted or ill-defined regulation that is in this bill. I hope, when the Minister comes here and dumps a huge number, a large number, of SOPs, that actually they fix some of these things. But who would know? Because the experts haven’t been able to advise the House, because there isn’t a report from a committee—and I’m not meaning the members of the committee; the experts. We’re the ones that take advice, hear from the public, hear from businesses, and get to question the Minister’s officials to make sure that he is not captured by them. I don’t believe he is, but I can’t see the reason why he won’t allow this to go back to the committee.

You know, one of the biggest challenges with the legislation is that it fails to specify which behaviours would constitute unconscionable conduct. He mentioned this in his speech two weeks ago; this is what the bill is trying to achieve. But by not actually defining “unconscionable conduct”, what it does is create uncertainty. Businesses won’t know. There will need to be regulation. Whenever there is uncertainty, there is cost. So this isn’t about deciding that there shouldn’t be legislation; it’s that the Government and the Minister haven’t done their job properly.

Much of what the Minister has said he’s trying to achieve is already covered by legislation that’s gone through this House, the majority of which was when National was in Government. You see, we did a number of things that would ensure that consumers were protected, and, sadly, some of what this Minister is doing he says will protect consumers more but indeed it won’t. What it will do is merely make them feel better but won’t provide any additional support to them.

As an example, the Minister said it strengthens the ability for consumers to dismiss or prevent door-to-door salesmen from entering their property. They already have the ability to do that under existing law when it comes to consumer rights, and equally around anybody that comes on to your property if you do not want them there. So I don’t know what extra ability this gives consumers they don’t already have, but if the Minister had waited or asked for a report from the committee, he might have known that the committee looked at that in some detail. National will not be supporting this legislation, not because we don’t support consumers—we do—but this legislation won’t achieve what the Minister wants. It won’t protect consumers more. It is window dressing.

There is one very important point in it, though, that actually needs to be looked at, and if the Minister doesn’t have an SOP drafted on this, he must, because it actually is going to be of great challenge. One of the things he said in the legislation is that it’s not to focus on smaller businesses, and he’s defined this by way of contract. But one of the challenges that he has is looking at the value of smaller contracts. If you look at the insurance industry, actually there can be a contract for underwriting insurance companies which is a very large amount that has no impact on the consumer, because actually it’s not the value in the same way as it would be if somebody purchases something from somebody else. It is just a contract in the case there would be a problem, and the entire insurance industry will have to go and have a look at what it is they’re doing, and they’re considering what the rules are and how this will affect them. There will be great uncertainty, which adds to cost.

More than that, though, I understand the same Minister has another piece of work around reform of the insurance industry, because there is legislation there that certainly needs updating; there is no question on this. So why is he putting his toe in the water to have a little crack at the insurance companies here, which will create uncertainty, won’t provide any more support or protection for the consumer, and as soon as this is through later on come back and actually do the whole insurance industry? It is because the Minister isn’t in charge of this portfolio. He’s not focusing on the things that are important, and what he is not doing is thinking about legislation that actually will have the effect intended, as opposed to just window dressing that creates cost through regulation and uncertainty on business. Because every time you do that for a business, large or small, someone has to pay, and sadly it’s always the consumer, the very man, the very woman that this Minister says he is trying to help and protect with this legislation. We won’t be supporting it in its current form.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Delighted to take a call on the second reading of the Fair Trading Amendment Bill as the chair of a very, very busy select committee. And just to acknowledge the previous speech, there is a Supplementary Order Paper coming from the Minister. And to acknowledge what the previous speaker, Hon Todd McClay, said about the Minister’s haircut, the Minister has a very nice haircut and also a very cost-effective haircut as well.

This Government is committed to protecting New Zealand businesses and working closely with New Zealand businesses; that’s what we’ve done over the past four years and that’s what we will continue to do—and protecting consumers from unfair commercial practices. So what I’ll do is I’m just going to outline a little bit around what the bill does and maybe just use a few sort of anecdotes around that. Then, particularly, I wanted to focus in on the aspect around empowering consumers to direct uninvited sellers to not enter property. This bill addresses business behaviour that goes beyond what is commercially necessary—where the little guys have been taken advantage of and consumers are suffering.

At times there is a power imbalance within the business world. Over 90 percent of businesses in New Zealand are small businesses—less than 20 employees—and at times those small businesses enter into negotiations with much larger businesses and there is a power imbalance. So what this bill does is, basically, builds on previous work that has been done to ensure that there’s good faith discussions going on and the best outcomes for New Zealand consumers and the best outcomes for all businesses in New Zealand.

The bill introduces three key changes. The first one is it prohibits unconscionable conduct in trade; secondly, it extends protections against unfair contract terms to business contracts under $250,000 a year; and, thirdly, it empowers consumers to tell uninvited sellers—whether that includes MPs, we’ll maybe find out in the committee stage—to leave their property, including through the use of a “do not knock” sticker on the door.

So the reason we’re making these changes is because there have been many stories of small businesses who have been bullied by suppliers or by business customers. I just want to give a bit of context around this and a few examples. So one example that we’ve seen, actually, is businesses waiting a long time to be paid for their invoices. Now, the challenges for this are obvious in terms of cash flow. If someone is leading a small business, then the cash flow challenges can be exacerbated because there’s obviously less money within a small business than in a large business. The large businesses can, basically, bully the small businesses by not paying the invoices on time.

A second example is businesses having contract terms changed without their knowledge or consent. Now, this is obviously unfair. One of the fundamental philosophies that we have here in New Zealand—and all New Zealanders subscribe to this—is the aspect around fairness. We believe in a fair society where everyone should have an equal opportunity and an equal right to operate in our society. In this context we’re talking about business and we’re talking about fairness within business.

And the third example that we have seen in terms of bullying is businesses being pushed into unfavourable contracts due to a lack of bargaining power or alternatives. And that basically goes to what I was saying before about the power imbalance. The power imbalance does exist—we have to be real around that in terms of we have a diverse range of businesses in New Zealand. And it’s really great that we do, but the reality is we’re always going to have some small businesses, some medium, and some large. Like I said before, the majority of our businesses are actually small businesses here in New Zealand.

Businesses can experience stress, interruption, reduced profitability, and are unable to focus on growth, and we want our businesses to focus on growth. We want our businesses to have the ability to invest—the ability to borrow and to invest capital. But more than that, we want our business owners to be able to lift their heads up and to be able to be visionary. We’ve seen a number of visionary businesses here in New Zealand, and more and more are coming online each day in a whole range of areas. So we don’t want our business owners to be bogged down in these sorts of challenges, and particularly this bullying behaviour. If you look at bullying—I mean, if I think back to sort of my high school days—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not me.

JAMIE STRANGE: No, sorry, they’re my high school days, Madam Speaker—I appreciate that. The bullying generally happens when there is a larger person bullying a smaller person. That smaller person then often loses the will to either come to school or to operate, but, more importantly, to have a vision, and we want our small businesses to have vision, to have aspiration, and we’re supporting them to do that.

As the chair of the select committee, which, like I said, is a very busy and hard-working select committee, I’d like to thank all of the submitters who submitted on this bill. Now, as was previously raised, the submissions took place under the previous chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, Jonathan Young, so I’d like to thank Jonathan Young, who is no longer a member of this Parliament, for the excellent work that Jonathan Young did as the chair of this committee in terms of shepherding those submissions through, and there were other members on the committee as well.

The committee received 51 written submissions—so there was certainly some interest in this—and heard oral evidence from 20 submitters in hearings in Wellington and virtually over Zoom. Officials considered these submissions in the departmental report. Now, just to highlight some of the submissions that we heard: so we heard a number of submissions on the unconscionable conduct. Some submitters wanted a definition of “unconscionable conduct” to aid clarity. The list of factors in the bill provide a principle-based approach to help determine what conduct could fall foul of the law. There were a number of submissions on extending unfair contract terms to businesses. Submitters had mixed views on whether the unfair contract terms extension is appropriately targeted. The protections only apply to standards from contracts which aren’t subject to effective negotiation; this limit is for the protections to smaller and more vulnerable businesses who have poor bargaining power and don’t have the resources to identify unfair terms.

I’d like to move on to one other point, as I indicated at the start, which is the aspect of this bill around empowering consumers to direct uninvited sellers to not enter their property. So we currently have a situation—and I’m sure that many people who are either watching Parliament TV tonight or are listening at home have had this experience, whereby you are sitting at home, there’s a knock on the door, and somebody comes to sell you something at the door.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Me?

JAMIE STRANGE: Oh, Madam Speaker, I apologise—to sell the people something at the door.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I don’t want to buy anything.

JAMIE STRANGE: No, no, no. I was going to sell you some encyclopaedias, Madam Speaker! Ha, ha! A wonderful set of encyclopaedias! And look, in the 1980s and 1990s it really was. Encyclopaedias was sort of the cliché, and the reality is I know a number of people who have a large range of encyclopaedias in their house because of the sales pitch.

These days it can be a whole range of products, but there are many examples of somebody sitting in their house and receiving a knock on the door and somebody at the door trying to sell them something. And then that person then, basically, says to them, “Look, I’m not interested; I’m a little bit busy.”, but the salesperson can often be quite pushy, and it can create a really difficult environment, and pressure is put on consumers, and I’ve experienced that myself, and I know a lot of people have.

Sometimes these people can be, obviously, very well meaning, and sometimes they can actually be charities. The charities often subcontract someone to do the selling for them. But the reality is that there is an aspect of pressure that is often not welcome. Sometimes that pressure, like I said before, can come from members of Parliament. I know myself when I’ve knocked on doors previously and I’ve seen the sign “Do not knock” on the door. What does that mean for a member of Parliament? I’m not sure. Maybe someone else might have an opinion on that. I actually have been bitten twice on a doorstep by dogs, Madam Speaker, not by constituents, but I have been bitten twice by dogs—I didn’t learn the first time, but it is very important when someone does go to a door that they don’t put extra pressure on the person who opens the door.

I could tell a number of extra stories to illustrate what this bill does, but I see that my time is coming to an end so, unfortunately, I will not be able to tell any further stories about the door-knocking aspect. I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The time has come for me to leave the chair for the dinner break and the House will resume at 7 o’clock.

Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break, we were commencing the second reading of the Fair Trading Amendment Bill, and the next call goes to National.

MELISSA LEE (National): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The previous speaker, Jamie Strange, made a comment about the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, saying how it was a hard-working select committee and that we worked really well, and I have to say that, actually, we do. However, the issue at hand is that the Fair Trading Amendment Bill, which is now currently before the House at its second reading, has not even completed the due process.

Earlier, my colleague the Hon Todd McClay took a point of order to try to return this bill to select committee, because what had happened was that when the select committee in the previous Parliament was considering this bill, we had—I think Jamie Strange mentioned—more than 50 submissions on this bill. Not all of the submissions were even heard and the select committee did not even consider the departmental report, and I am unsure how the Minister can actually claim that this bill has gone through proper process in this House.

This House is about listening. This thing that I’m talking about is democracy, and there is such a terrible injustice when good people in New Zealand make submissions to select committees for a particular piece of legislation—they want their voices heard.

The Minister has actually said that there will be lots of SOPs—Supplementary Order Papers. What that means is that he himself recognises that this bill does not fit what a good bill is supposed to be. That means there are major issues with the bill that is currently before this House that we are debating if it has to have Supplementary Order Papers. One of the questions that I’d like to ask the members opposite is that since the last election, we have now had six months of House time: why could the Government not have returned this bill to select committee so that we could have had plenty of time to go through the process of actually examining the bill, looking at the submissions, talking to the officials, examining the departmental report that they were going to produce, and actually considering making changes to the bill?

In the previous incarnation of this House, the Commerce Committee worked really well, and that was before the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, when members of the Opposition as well as the Government—all of the parties—were involved, and I have to commend all of the members who did that. Through the submissions process, there were some suggestions that a certain bill actually get changed, and the thing that was really lucky was that the Minister who was responsible for the communications portfolio was the Hon Amy Adams. I, as the chair, approached the Minister and said that there was a submissions process and there were some suggestions through the submissions process by submitters that certain aspects of this bill change, and she was really open to it. She had given the select committee the opportunity to completely redraft the bill, and that was one of the major highlights of my chairing a select committee. I think every single member who took part in that process, from right across this House, would agree that that’s how a select committee is supposed to work.

The process in this particular instance—I will read the email that I received from the former clerk, who said, and I’m quoting part of it, that “The Fair Trading Amendment Bill has now been discharged from the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. This is because although the original scheduling for the dissolution of Parliament meant that the bill would be eligible for reinstatement in the 53rd Parliament”—that means we didn’t actually finish the work, and it would have been reinstated when Parliament resumes. But because there was a delay in the process of the election, the actual end date for reporting back came up on 12 August. That means that that had actually passed, and that means this bill had to be returned to Parliament and it doesn’t have an opportunity unless this House sends it back to a select committee, and it should have been sent back to a select committee.

There are aspects of the bill where this bill amends the Fair Trading Act of 1986 and I think Jamie Strange mentioned something which talked about how, as a member of Parliament, we also doorknock, and if there was a sticker saying “Do not knock”, what would that actually mean to us as a member of Parliament. It actually shows that as chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, he doesn’t actually understand the bill, either, and it should have been sent back so that all of the new members could get to grips with this bill.

We are not opposed to protecting the consumer rights. We are wanting to protect consumer rights, but the thing is that this bill should have gone through the right process so that it could be examined properly and returned to this House for recommendation so that the bill could have been changed. Now we have to deal with it as an SOP, and I haven’t seen the SOP and I’m not sure if we can actually support it.

One of the submitters, Business New Zealand, said—and I will quote what they said—“It would be fair to say that addressing this issue has been a lengthy and repetitive process and we have consistently made the point there must be clear evidence of a significant problem before any of the changes proposed are enacted. At no stage during the process—now lasting around 16 years—have we had any clear evidence yet despite this, issues apparently already dealt with have now resurfaced. This raises the obvious question—what has fundamentally changed? Despite exhaustive issues and discussion papers over time, we still remain perplexed as to why these same issues keep coming up when no legitimate problem has been clearly identified.”

One of the things that I am really confused about in this bill is when they talk about a specific terminology—“unconscionable conduct”—which most submitters actually objected to, because the bill does not define what unconscionable conduct is. Nobody wants people to be cheated out of their good savings or anything, but the thing is that it has to be narrowly defined, in my opinion. Unfair conduct such as the use of pressure tactics, deception, or targeting vulnerable people, which some of the other speakers have talked about, is something that we certainly do not want in New Zealand, and we need to protect the consumers. But we already have laws that protect them, and these laws are already in place. I don’t think that this law, this piece of legislation, is good enough work, and I oppose this bill. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): This bill will be remembered in this House as being a bill that’s brought out many ironies. First of all, let’s set the record straight. Jonathan Young was the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation (EDSI) Committee when this bill was referred to select committee—

Melissa Lee: Good chair.

NAISI CHEN: Maybe not as good as you, Melissa, because what happened was he had six months to write the report and he had six months to direct the work of that select committee to finish this report on such an important bill, but did he? No, he did not and, unfortunately for him, my good colleague here has taken over the good electorate of New Plymouth and so we have an even better chair this year, Jamie Strange, chairing the EDSI Committee, making sure that we stay on schedule.

This bill had six months in select committee. What happened was that they did not arrange for the submitters to make their oral submission in time, before the time that this bill was due, and what happened was that our officials from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had to end up writing the departmental report for this bill. What they did—and credit to them—they actually went through all of the written submissions and actually included their opinion into their departmental report, which we have at the moment. There had been already 20 oral submissions that Jonathan Young got to, but there were still a lot left. But what happened was that they did submit written submissions so we have them here in the departmental report here today.

You know what I said—that this would be a bill that brings out many ironies. I was actually reading Hansard about a month ago on this bill. Do you know what Jonathan Young said when he got up to speak—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me. Order! Order! Not me.

NAISI CHEN: Excuse me, Madam Speaker. When Jonathan Young got up to speak on this bill in the first reading, he said, “I am so pleased it’s coming to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.” and then—blah-blah—“We have had such a light workload”—blah-blah-blah—and then he said, “he can have assurance that we will do the job unbiased. We will do it professionally.” Did he? No, he didn’t. He had six months to complete this bill, to hear all of the submitters. Technology’s an amazing thing—we did go through COVID—he could have called them on Zoom. He did some of them but he didn’t finish all of them.

What I would like to turn to now is actually the substance of this bill. Like I said, irony prevails in the way that the National Party has handled this bill. I still remember my colleague Dr Deborah Russell when she first spoke on this bill. She said it was incredibly ironic how the National Party would not be voting for a bill that actually supports small businesses here in New Zealand. This bill was designed so that small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) would have a fair opportunity to do business here in New Zealand, so that they didn’t have to stand up to the big companies and actually be bullied into contracts that were unfair for them. So this is a situation where we find often small businesses in the situation of David and Goliath—when they had to take a contract because maybe the bigger company was their sole supplier, it was their only source of business.

But we want to make sure that New Zealand remains one of the best places to do business in the world. We’ve retained that reputation. We want that to continue, to last into generations, and so that is why we have to legislate this bill, to make sure that businesses in New Zealand can do it fairly so that they’re not bullied, like in the report where we’ve seen that 45 percent of businesses get bullied when they’re actually doing business. We know that they are.

SMEs are the fundamental foundations of our economy as we look at recovering from COVID-19, and what a great Budget we have to do that, to lead us into that. We need our small to medium enterprises to be able to feel safe while doing that, to be able to write and get into fair contracts while they’re doing that. They need to make sure they have the support of this House, of this Government. That’s why I am proud to be in a Government that looks out for small businesses to make sure that no one gets bullied when they’re just doing business in this country.

There’s a third part that I think is really, really important that I would really love to talk about, which is the doorknockers or the people that come up and do door-to-door selling. As someone who comes from a migrant community, can I just reflect on a very personal note that they are actually very scary for people who might not speak fluent English. They don’t know who’s at their door. They might not understand the whole entire context of why they’re there. And often the tactics they use in order to sell their products are quite pushy or sometimes even quite abusive. And in that way, I think this bill will actually set the safeguards for all communities to be able to feel safer in their own homes so that they will not get bullied into buying things; so that for fear of their own safety they will not have to agree to spend ridiculous amounts of money in order just to get someone away from their front door.

We’ve heard of the example of encyclopaedias. I’m sure many who are listening to Parliament TV tonight will be looking at their collection of encyclopaedias at home and reminiscing about the time when they were forced or they were bullied into having to buy that set. So today, as we talk about this bill, as we get on with actually legislating this bill, we are looking out for consumers in New Zealand so that they actually feel safe in their own homes.

We know that in New Zealand doing business is extremely important. That’s why in this bill we have to actually achieve the right balance. We’ve talked about that and MBIE, our department, has done so well in trying to balance that, and we know that that balance will be further achieved with all of the Supplementary Order Papers that the Minister will bring about, because we are actually trying to do the hard mahi that was left out by the select committee of the last Parliament. I think this bill is really, really important in terms of protecting our businesses, protecting our consumers, protecting everyday New Zealanders, but also protecting our economy so that we have the right climate for businesses to be attracted to New Zealand—even for the incentive to actually be able to start off businesses, because we all know that businesses start off small. Every business, even the large ones that we see that have prospered in New Zealand, they started off small, and we want to make sure that they have a fair go in our economy and we want to make sure that the law actually protects them and makes sure that they get given a fair chance. And so that is why I’m commending this bill to the House.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to make a brief and succinct call on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill. Look, I support the intent of the bill and the direction it’s taking to clamp down on unfair practices and protect consumers, and I think this bill makes a commendable move towards ensuring that our consumers are better protected from unfair practices.

I wanted to touch on one of the submissions that was co-written by Beryl Anderson and Sue Kedgley, one of our former Green members of Parliament, from the National Council of Women of New Zealand. They felt really strongly about clause 9, which is around the directions to leave premises or not enter premises. I acknowledge that, as Naisi Chen mentioned, there are communities that are actually far more vulnerable and feel much more targeted by door-to-door salespeople, and this includes women, people who do not speak English, people who are disabled, and so I do think that the intent of this bill to safeguard and protect consumers is really important. I think back to a time where I—in between being a student and finding a more permanent job—took a very, very brief stint as a door-to-door salesperson for an electricity retailer. I have to say that the experience was so uncomfortable, because you were encouraged to actively try and get into someone’s home and to be as coercive as you could to get that commission. And I think about the fact that we’ve created a culture where companies are incentivised to push workers towards unsafe situations that ultimately put our households into unsafe situations. So I think the intent of this bill, in terms of protecting consumers and actually making sure that our companies are not also putting workers in a situation that is not safe, is really important and a really key move to ensure that the way that we conduct commerce does not put people in danger.

Sue Kedgley also noted some of the imbalances between big businesses and smaller retailers that clause 6—inserting new section 8—aims to address, in terms of ensuring that there’s some safeguards to ensure that small businesses that feel like they’re targeted have avenues to deal with that. One of the examples they made was around supermarkets penalising suppliers because they promote or sell products to other retailers. I think the example in the supermarket industry and in the food industry is a key one where this bill will, hopefully, ensure that smaller retailers who work around food are not at the mercy of big supermarkets in terms of unconscionable practices. And that’s something that has been raised for many, many years. So while we can litigate time and time again what unconscionable conduct is and we can work, hopefully productively, across the House to put really strict definitions around it, ultimately I think the key call from the communities has been that big retailers and companies that engage in door-to-door sales have had far too many powers and that consumers have not been well served by our legislation.

So while I hear comments from members from the other side of the House around the process and I hear some qualifications around, perhaps, where some of the gaps may have occurred, I think there is an opportunity none the less to work towards progressive legislation that helps protect our consumers. So we commend this bill at its second reading. Thank you.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Before I start this speech—Mr Nash and Mr O’Connor might be able to relate to me—but the Encyclopaedia Britannica was a very useful tool for the four kids that were in my family, and, actually, it’s where I first saw a picture of New Zealand. So I think we shouldn’t really defame the pre-internet literature that was available to us at the time, and it served us well.

Mr Strange made a very strange speech, and there’s some very strange behaviour going on this evening. I think the last committee and this committee probably failed to define “unconscionable conduct” in a way that gives confidence to consumers and business. We need to ensure that there’s a well-functioning market—you know, you can’t just go to a tribunal or to the court for any old reason at all. There are some examples in the press today about a painter with a $16,000 quote for a two-bedroom house, deemed outrageous by the disputes tribunal, and it would be classified as four statements: outrageous, not unconscionable, but potentially unfair. So this is the sort of area and zone that we’re in.

We’d love to support this bill; we just can’t see how the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee has actually done the job of defining what is accurate around unconscionable conduct. We don’t think it’s sufficiently formed to provide clarification. Even the Citizens Advice Bureau have said that they think it’s unnecessary and that unfair or bad conduct is deemed as acceptable in terms of the types of cases that even they see. So we should all look at this and maybe send it back to the select committee and just be sensible about it. I know there’s obviously a massive majority on the other side, but maybe this is one where we actually go: “Right. Let’s just take this back and do a bit more work.” I’m sure Mr Webb would agree with me.

The one thing about New Zealand is that it does, in the Commerce Act, have a web of protection already for contract terms and conduct around various Acts. There are several tests there that actually protect both a consumer and a business relationship and a business to consumer relationship. So we’re sort of reinventing the wheel a little bit here. Even when the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment sought submissions around this, there were only about 50 percent of businesses that actually thought it was an issue that was sufficient enough to want to change the law. It is going to cause confusion and a lot of court time—a lot of resolutions that will have various different opinions.

Now, I’ve actually got a definition from the Australian consumer commission, which we could use tomorrow, but it still isn’t applicable in some contexts to the New Zealand marketplace. But one exists, and I don’t understand why it’s not actually in the bill. Surely that should be one of the precursors of doing that.

So the elements of the bill, “unconscionable conduct”—the other big area that I think we’re all missing is just on the small contract terms. The transport industry made a very good point in the submissions that $250,000 wasn’t actually enough to help them, given the nature and size of their contracts, and they recommended that $500,000 be the best-case scenario. I think we should really take that into consideration because the size of transactions by various industries does vary. But given the fact that transport and haulage is such a major issue in this country, a load in the back of a truck or some dispute has a significance, more than some of the monetary sums that are in this bill.

So we’d like to get the officials to consider that the threshold to define “unconscionable conduct”—you know, when you compare it to “unjust” or “unfair”, it’ll take a large effect on what is happening in terms of harmful conduct, and the lawyers will have a field day.

So the financial markets, the Citizens Advice Bureau, the supermarkets, everyone is challenging the reason for this, and we need to do, I think, a better job around this bill. So we can’t impose this on business dealings. Let’s be sensible. We don’t want to create chaos in the market. We don’t want to actually do something that distorts day-to-day relationships with people who enter into contracts together. And we don’t need to put any natural bias into what is something that the commerce Acts already protect. So I’d like to recommend that we go hand in hand with industry, with consumers, and take New Zealand with us on this one, because I think we’re sort of imposing, as politicians, something that’s overly dramatic. We’d like the bill to go back to the select committee and then we’d like to review. And if the bill is needed or not needed, we should get it right. But at the moment, the status quo would probably be a preferable option to what is being proposed at the moment.

So we’d like to offer a comparison to the Australian market, which hasn’t seemed to have been done particularly well. And just to put it into context, we’re not talking about massive transactions here; you know, it could be a rental lease, it could be a franchise condition, it could be something that does involve door-to-door selling, but, let’s be honest, the amount of door-to-door selling that’s going on is very little now, and there are probably more problems, actually, on the internet. I also think that, with regards to direct selling, there is nothing wrong with that industry. It has a set of rules around it, and people make a living that way. So in that sense, ACT can’t support the bill as it stands at the moment, but we’d certainly be open to review at such a time as the definition was more clear. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. I rise in support of this bill, and I would like to try and make this a genuine discussion, so I want to actually try and respond to some of the comments that you’ve made.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me. Order!

HELEN WHITE: Sorry, the member Damien Smith has just made.

I worked as an employment lawyer for a long time, but I did law generally, and one of the gaps that I saw in the law is going to be filled by this bill. Because what we had was a situation where we started to understand the vulnerability of an employee, but we ignored the vulnerability of the fledgling companies that were actually the same employees trying to live their own life on their own terms. They got crushed by bigger companies that use these kinds of tactics.

Now, one of the case law points that I think is interesting is a case that was about Home Direct. With Home Direct what they did was they set up a standard contract, which would be covered by this bill, and the standard contract had in it that people who bought the goods at the door would actually sign up to pay for the goods over quite a long period of time. When they’d finished paying in full for the goods, which were at an inflated price, the contract had in it a point which meant that they actually continued to pay. They paid and that money went straight to Home Direct. In exchange for that, they got vouchers. So if they did not use their vouchers to buy goods from Home Direct within 12 months that was forfeited. That cost people in this country $600,000-plus in one year, and that was just for the vouchers that were forfeited, not for the people who spent their vouchers. That is an unconscionable kind of agreement. It’s actually something that’s well defined in this Act.

So what the purpose is of having a definition over something like this, a very general definition, is the same purpose that you get with something like good faith. So a concept like good faith got introduced, it was a general concept, but it came in on a wave of people’s thinking and case law. The same is true here. There is a lot of case law in Australia on what unconscionable conduct is. There is actually a very good formula in this bill. There are eight points which you can look at in the bill, and there’s a catch-all so you can actually go—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

HELEN WHITE: Sorry, I apologise, Madam Speaker. So if you go through this bill you will find those eight points. Sorry, the member will find those eight points actually point the way to the kind of conduct which I doubt the member thinks is acceptable. Those things are all looked at by a court and balanced. Actually, if there is something new that a new instigator comes across, because people are very inventive in the way they will track others, then actually this law allows the law to evolve. So it will catch the situations where people are being exploited.

Now, I want to talk about the fact that this law actually moves to an area where it looks at businesses that are basically doing business at about $250,000 a year. It is absolutely right, as the Green member said in his speech, that we have all seen this for a long time. We have known that our big supermarkets, for example, hook in a supplier, get them into a situation where they’re now dependent upon that supermarket chain, and then they actually just continue to erode and erode and erode the amount that they’re paying the supplier. It actually brings those people, those businesses and their families, to their knees. They’ve often actually invested in huge amounts of equipment to make something. They might have created a new form of jerky. They may have brought a new form of yoghurt. They need our help and support in getting a fledgling business off the ground. They need to be supported for all our sakes because they are our innovators. They are the people who will actually make this country stronger, and they actually need to be seen and recognised for what they are, which is vulnerable. They are also creative. They are also interesting, and they need our support.

Actually, a party like ACT would be likely to be able to see that if it looked at what the purpose of this bill is. The purpose of this bill is to actually do several things at once. It is a purpose that is set out by the Minister as promoting competition and protecting the people we have and protecting businesses against unfair practices. So it’s always about promoting competition. Those things are not in tension. They complement each other.

We need to nurture our small businesses and our people, and this law does this. It is not OK to delay payments, to unilaterally add duties and cost to businesses. It is not OK to blackmail them, and it is not OK to bully them. The word “unconscionability” will grow in the minds of New Zealanders under this law. And we will all understand that that is not just good business, it is not hard business, it is unconscionable behaviour, and so I’m very proud of that term.

The term “unconscionable” here, just to drill down a bit, if you go to the bill you can see that it involves the balancing of what about the conduct that is not necessary. It is not appropriate. So it’s always looking at is this a necessary term? And if we go back to the Home Direct example we can see how that applies. Because was it necessary for a company selling a good to somebody in their house to sign them up for a contract which actually meant that they were getting their money after that purchase had been completed? Was that necessary? Was it appropriate? It was neither. And so when you look at the actual terms you will see—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Ahem!

HELEN WHITE: —sorry, I apologise, Madam Speaker. I will get used to it and change my habits.

So the bill actually talks about the eight factors. The eight factors that the bill will involve are assessed as “the relative bargaining power of the person engaging in the conduct”. It will be a matter of looking at the person and whether they have bargaining power. So if it’s a supermarket and a supplier there’s an obvious issue here. “The extent to which the trader and an affected person acted in good faith:”. Again there is an importation of a terminology which actually has become commonly understood in New Zealand through the case law. “Whether, taking account of the particular characteristics and circumstances of an affected person, the affected person or the affected person’s representative was reasonably able to protect the affected person’s interests:”. Again, we’re talking about the particular person and their vulnerability.

“Whether the person was able to understand the documents that were provided, (e) whether the trader subjected an affected person to unfair pressure or tactics or otherwise unduly influenced” that person. Again, the whole idea of “undue influence” is something that as lawyers we know and understand, and it would be very, very good if one of the ethics that we grew in the society was not to unduly influence. Whether the trader failed to disclose to “an affected person—(i) any intended conduct of the trader that might adversely affect the affected person’s interests:”, or any risk that that has to that person. So that’s about saying to somebody, “This is the risk you’re taking. This is what you’re actually doing.” That’s actually about informing them, and that’s a very important thing. It’s very, very well-established in other parts of the law.

What we’re doing in this bill is we are changing the way that people think about these things. This is no longer legitimate, hard conduct. This is us all learning to live in a society where there are big multinationals, where there are sophisticated characters out there who will actually take out their competition, who will actually do that if we do not actually have decent rules for a decent way of managing those relationships. And so I am absolutely proud to commend this to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): It is my pleasure to rise this evening on behalf of the National Party, and as the member of Parliament for Southland, to speak on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill. The National Party opposes this bill. The National Party supports sensible, transparent, and straightforward regulation that prevents the exploitation of vulnerable consumers, increases trust, and lowers transaction costs. That is why the last National Government amended the Fair Trading Act 2013 to streamline and simplify regulations, decrease the compliance burden on businesses, while developing a fair trading environment for consumers.

Uncertainty created by poorly crafted legislation, on the other hand, is effectively a tax on small businesses. Labour needs to understand that increasing uncertainty and piling cost on to businesses will end up hurting the very consumers that they think they are helping. New Zealand needs a Government that is focused on removing unnecessary or burdensome regulations and allowing Kiwi businesses to survive and thrive; not one that’s hell-bent on piling on ever more rules, directives, costs, guidelines on businesses.

We already have laws in place that can be used to prosecute those who do try to exploit vulnerable consumers. What Labour seems to fail to understand is that every time they introduce a new rule, they are creating additional costs for businesses, in particular small businesses, and ultimately harming the consumers they think they are protecting. Without defining the definition of “unconscionable conduct”, what they’re, effectively, doing is they’re creating work for lawyers. And having been a lawyer, I can say this: there’s going to be a lot of litigation over the terms of this Act and this definition.

We look through some of the factors that the court can take in regard, in determining what’s unconscionable conduct, and we see “whether an affected person was able to understand any documents provided by the trader:”. Well, how is a small-business owner going to possibly figure out whether someone understands their documents or not? That’s placing an unnecessary, onerous, and subjective burden on small businesses.

Let me just speak to small businesses, who this will affect the most. Small businesses are the engine room of New Zealand’s economy. In fact, 97 percent of all New Zealand’s businesses are classified as small or medium sized businesses. They employ nearly a third of New Zealand’s workers and they generate more than a quarter of our economic output.

Hon Stuart Nash: Absolutely.

JOSEPH MOONEY: Simply put, as Mr Nash will know, what happens to small businesses matters, in this country. When they thrive, our economy thrives. When our small businesses suffer, our economy suffers, and right now they are suffering. Most small-business owners are under immense pressure and are working hard just to make sure their businesses survive.

In fact, even today I’ve received a letter from a small-business operator who is not able to get more employees because this Government has decided to clamp down on immigration settings. Some of his employees have left because the visas aren’t being rolled over in time. He can’t get more, and he’s asking me, “I’m starting to wonder if it’s even worth keeping on going.”

And this bill—

Hon Member: Tell him to pivot—pivot your business!

JOSEPH MOONEY: Just pivot your business—find something else! It isn’t going to work, and this is a classic case of why this Government does not understand what small businesses need.

Hon Stuart Nash: Come on, Joseph. You’re better than that, mate.

JOSEPH MOONEY: I have been in small business, Mr Nash. I have worked past midnight many nights in a row, and I’ve had to deal with regulations and try to keep the business operating, try to keep my people paid, try to make sure the bills are paid, and I know how tough these regulations are. And if you’re a small-business owner, you are operating on very small margins. You do not—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me. Order! Not the Speaker.

JOSEPH MOONEY: My apologies, Madam Speaker. When one is a small-business owner and is working usually very long hours, usually paying oneself last, and you have all these regulations that one has to comply with, it is incredibly difficult. One does not have the resources that a larger business has to figure out how to comply with all these regulations. This is a classic example of uncertain law that will place more compliance costs on small business and make it, frankly, harder for small business operators to operate.

This is irresponsible of this Government not to take into account the impact its regulations are having on small-business owners, so I do not commend this bill to the House. I would recommend the Government take a look at this and provide some certainty to our small-business operators, who are employing about a third of New Zealanders and are making sure that this country keeps going.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. A pleasure to rise and stand here and take the call that the Māori Party would take, should they choose to, but once again they choose not to. I do find it extraordinary that a party that claimed, or the leader that claimed in his maiden speech, to be speaking on every piece of legislation in this House, to scrutinise it from a Māori perspective, has once again chosen not do so.

But over here, we heard from Mr Mooney, and the irony of hearing the usual National Party lines around small business and freedom from regulation when this bill—

Joseph Mooney: Point of order, Madam Speaker. The member used the word “lies” and that’s not parliamentary language.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Did the member take offence?

Joseph Mooney: The member did take offence, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Withdraw and apologise.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I withdraw and apologise. I look forward to reading Hansard, and I hope the member will read Hansard as well. And perhaps if he’s—my office is just over the way; he’s welcome to drop in with a case of whisky to make amends for that error of his.

But the point is this: that this bill has its sights set on protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large businesses, and that member has missed the boat entirely. Here he is talking about this putting more burdens on small businesses, when it does the opposite. It arms them with a remedy so that if a large business acts in a way which is oppressive, unfair, unconscionable, if it exerts its powers in a way which is utterly unreasonable—and we know, we’ve seen that this happens. I mean, not so long ago we heard about Fonterra unilaterally telling its creditors that it was going to 90-day payments, isn’t that right, Mr Nash? I believe it is. And that was utterly unconscionable, but the power lay all on one side, and it took intervention from the outside for that outrageous decision to be reversed.

Well, this will not allow unfair terms like that to be imposed on small businesses. Whether they be dairy farmers or whether they be dairies, this is a bill which actually puts the power—and what it does is it redresses the imbalance. We know that unconscionable contracts have always been illegal, but the problem is the remedy. What this piece of legislation does is it puts tools in the hands of the Commerce Commission so that litigants don’t have to go to the courts at huge expense, that the agency that is tasked with making sure that our markets work effectively and efficiently can take the appropriate steps to redress that imbalance. And so for the suggestion by Melissa Lee that “unconscionable” was a vague term, it’s a term familiar in our law since about 1600. It’s got a very clear definition, and it’s about imbalance of power. In fact, in what was the Credit Contracts Act, now the Credit Contracts and Consumer Finance Act, that term appears there as well. It’s well established that unconscionability is about a vulnerability, an imbalance of power, and an abuse of that relationship, and that’s what we’re looking for. So if—

Melissa Lee: If that’s the case, then find it in the legislation.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Once again, look, I would invite you to just do a little bit of reading, because the fact of the matter is that this is very clear, and the law, time and again—and the other point is this: that when you’re using terms like “unconscionability” and “unfairness”—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Order! Not the Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Thank you, Madam Chair, I stand corrected. When one uses terms like “unconscionability” or “unfairness” one needs flexibility, flexibility to take into account the multitude of arrangements that may be unfair or unconscionable. So we’re not going to constrain the Commerce Commission or our courts, we’re going to let them—and trust their judgment to address the problems that arise in the market.

So this is a bill which is excellent. It’s a bill which is going to make our markets work better, and we know that a good market is an efficient market, and an efficient market is one that has free information and equal bargaining power. That’s what this creates. That’s what the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee that considered this, that Jonathan Young chaired, failed to report back, but this Government isn’t going to let that stand in the way. It’s going to move this legislation along and make New Zealand better for it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Talofa lava, kia ora, namaste, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure today to rise in the House to take a call on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill, which amends the 1986 Act to introduce new protections against unfair commercial practices. These unfair commercial practices exploit vulnerabilities of a consumer or a small business, and this bill addresses this in three ways: first of all, by prohibiting unconscionable conduct in trade; secondly, by extending the Act’s existing protections against unfair contract terms in standard form consumer contracts to also apply to small trade contracts; and, thirdly, by strengthening the ability of consumers to require uninvited direct sellers to leave or not enter their property.

The Act currently provides protections against unfair contract terms in standard form consumer contracts. So what are these standard form contracts? These are the “take it or leave it” contracts, where the party accepting the contract has no real ability to negotiate its terms. The bill extends these protections against unfair contract terms to standard form small trade contracts. These are contracts between businesses with the actual expected value of less than $250,000 in any 12-month period.

I was recently looking at a report from the Royal New Zealand College of GPs’ Workforce Survey, and they said 42 percent of GPs are either small businesses or contractors. Last year, during COVID, a lot of these GPs were front-line healthcare workers, and I heard from a lot of them, because one day they were out there working in the global pandemic; next day, they received a call from the small medical practice and they just said, “Well, sorry, don’t come back the day after. We don’t need you any more.” Now, this conduct was against the conscience by reference to the norms of the society, norms of acting honestly, fairly, and without deception or pressure.

But that’s not where it stopped. The GPs also had in their contracts that they couldn’t work within a certain radius from the actual medical practice. So you couldn’t work for 10 to 15 kilometres from the practice that had just terminated your contract, with your business. Next day you had absolutely no job; you couldn’t work anywhere in town. This was even worse if you actually worked for a big commercial entity that owned 30, 40, 50 practices. If you worked in Auckland, if you worked in Hamilton, for one of these practices, you just couldn’t work anywhere in town. It’s about protecting the rights of small businesses, and this is just one example in healthcare, but this applies to businesses across the board, not just in healthcare but other businesses as well which don’t have these protections.

We’ve heard today from the other side, many of whom want this bill to go back to the select committee. As some of my colleagues have talked about it—you know, people like Melissa Lee and other members on the other side—they keep forgetting that they were in charge of the select committee through which the bill came, and for six months there was no report from their side. But in many ways, the country is lucky that they were only in charge of the select committee and not the House, because if they were, well, we know what would happen. Couldn’t figure out who the leader of the party was, couldn’t figure out whether we should keep the borders open or not—they couldn’t even figure out if they should write a report or not, for a bill that we’re discussing right now. Apparently we should now, but not for six months when you had the bill.

So aren’t we glad that we just had them for the select committee, for six months, to not be able to write a report, rather than in the House, where they can’t decide who the leader of the party is, they can’t decide whether we keep the borders open or not. The select committee had the bill for six months, and now they want it back. We are lucky that we had departmental reports on this where they had provided enough information, collating the information that was submitted to the select committee about how the bill should go ahead for the second reading. Now, thank God that the Labour Party is doing the job that we were asked to do.

But, again, I bring back the point of small businesses, like the GP practices, where the small businesses, the GPs, didn’t have a bargaining power to take care of that contract. But, also, there was no good faith from practices which fired these GPs last-minute in the middle of a pandemic, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent. The people who are out there making their living and in good faith working for another business, with another business, have that protection in place when their own business makes less than $250,000 dollars in 12 months.

So I would like to commend this bill to the next stage, because I know the National Party hasn’t done their work.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Well thank you, Madam Speaker. Dr Gaurav Sharma is a new member, so we’ll have to give him a bit of latitude, but he may not have been aware—in fact, it sounds very much like he wasn’t aware—that we had a lockdown and select committees didn’t meet. Select committees couldn’t come to Wellington when we went out of level 4, actually. So the member might like to go and read his relatively recent history—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, he’s happy being ignorant.

STUART SMITH: Well, OK. Yes, perhaps he is happy being ignorant, but we’ll leave him with that.

I think a lot of the speeches tonight have swung around the point of unconscionable conduct. You know, I would think after Dr Webb’s excellent definition there, I’ve finally realised what unconscionable conduct is. It’s promising to build 100,000 homes and delivering 800, if you’re lucky, with a tailwind. That is definitely unconscionable conduct. So I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. However—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Not funding GP practices in a pandemic; that’s unconscionable.

STUART SMITH: Well, that’s right—or promising to do all the vaccinations; not having the vaccine. Promising that we’re at the front of the queue, and we’re not; we’re way down the back. [Assistant Speaker gestures for member to return to subject of bill] Well, this is absolutely related to the bill because unconscionable conduct is a major part of this bill. I could go for 15 minutes on unconscionable conduct—given the look on your face, Madam Speaker, I will actually move on.

But I think it is very interesting to note that Business New Zealand opposed this bill. And I think the last sentence in the piece that I’ve read is, and I’d just like to quote this, “Despite exhaustive issues and discussion papers over time, we still remain perplexed as to why these same issues keep coming up when no legitimate problem has been clearly identified.” I think that’s—

Hon Stuart Nash: That’s not true.

STUART SMITH: Well, it is actually true. I think everyone in this House would agree vulnerable people should not be taken advantage of. Absolutely agree with that. Vulnerable businesses should not be taken advantage of. I’ve been a businessman. I know what it’s like taking out contracts. Is it a level playing field? It’s never a level playing field. One will always be bigger than the other. The buyer, depending on the product that you’re selling, is actually in a better position, particularly if there’s plenty of product around. On the other hand, when there’s not a lot of product around, the seller is in a good position. And I know in the wine industry at the moment, that’s absolutely what’s happening. Because of the short vintage, buyers are now disappointing people they didn’t have contracts with because they can’t supply, and they’re choosing buyers at a higher price. So what—

Melissa Lee: That’s unconscionable.

STUART SMITH: Well, under some of the definitions we’ve heard tonight, that might well be unconscionable, even though it isn’t in contract.

I think what we have to also ensure we don’t mix up here is unconscionable conduct and buyer’s remorse, and that is a very common phenomenon. People buy something, they think they want it, the next day they think, “Oh no, I don’t really want that now.”, and we could end up in that situation with this bill. So we don’t disagree on the definition that we don’t want to see vulnerable people taken advantage of or vulnerable companies taken advantage of. But is this bill going to do it? Well, according to Business New Zealand, it’s not going to do it. Also Consumer New Zealand, although they supported it—they thought that the definition of unconscionable conduct to ensure the provisions work as intended and to avoid division about the meaning of the term as there has been in Australia.

We only have to look over there to see the issues that we’ve had in this sort of legislation. I think we’ve got a lot of problems when we have these sorts of things coming through where case law will define at some point in the future what the definition is of unconscionable conduct. If Dr Webb is so certain on the definition of unconscionable conduct, why didn’t they put it on the bill? No answer.

The reality—

Dr Duncan Webb: Yield. Yield.

STUART SMITH: I think the jack-in-the-box over there has had his turn. The real reason here is—in fact, this is another act of unconscionable conduct. This bill had not been reported from the select committee. It could and should have gone back to select committee. Instead, the unconscionable conduct of this bill will be to dump a whole lot of Supplementary Order Papers in the committee stage on the House with no forewarning, with no proper process—

Melissa Lee: Due process.

STUART SMITH: —where we can—due process; that’s correct. Where we can actually get submissions from the people it will affect—the people that will know out there–that’s how good legislation is made. That’s what we have a select committee process for. Our parliamentary system is built on that. But unfortunately, in this Government—again, unconscionable conduct—they have taken every opportunity, in this case six months doing nothing, then they dump something on in real haste to try and get it through, ram it through without due process, and we’ll be back here fixing it. I guarantee it.

Most of the legislation that’s been passed under urgency in this House is shoddy. It has all sorts of problems, and we’ll be back here fixing it. The members on the other side all hanging their heads, they know that’s right. Well, the new ones might not, but the others do. And that is a waste of parliamentary time. It’s a waste of the public’s time, because they’ll be the ones that bear the brunt of poor legislation, and we’ll have to fix that up, and I think that’s really appalling process. So with that, I condemn this to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to wrap up this side’s debate on the Fair Trading Amendment Bill second reading for my friend and colleague who is shepherding it so ably through the House, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, David Clark. Really, we’ve heard tonight that this is about the David-and-Goliath relationships that can occur in commerce. So, yes, there can be level playing fields, but very, very frequently there isn’t, and we don’t assume that the playing field is fair. I guess that sums up the difference between the arguments on this side of the House and the other side of the House. This piece of legislation, which will significantly change the landscape of consumer law, really does look at behaviours. It promotes competition but it also ensures that the behaviours that occur during contracting enable fair contracts and reduce the chances of exploitation.

I didn’t sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. However, I do have, amongst my extended networks, firsthand experience of individuals who have been really unfairly impacted by unfair contracts, and I’ll come to that later. But also, like members on my own side and on the Opposition, I’ve been a small-business owner. Like Joseph Mooney, I’ve had to deal with cash flow, deal with paying contractors and staff before myself, deal with contracts, deal with the pressure of trying to find contracts, deliver on contracts, and report on contracts all at the same time. For me, I would have welcomed this piece of legislation with my small business because it would level the playing field. We all know that many contracts, particularly by really big suppliers, involve pages and pages and pages of fine print, and who really sits there to read those to find out whether they are putting themselves at a great disadvantage?

I said in my maiden speech, last year, that I am in this House because I’m interested in and committed to economic justice, and this bill really does go towards that. It assumes that contracts should benefit both parties and not be exploitative. It is about fairness. It addresses specifically things like pressure tactics, deception, the one-sided contract terms, and the general exploitation of consumers and small businesses. It also arms businesses with a remedy, as Duncan Webb has so rightly pointed out. It includes prohibiting unconscionable conduct in trade, as we’ve heard, and it also extends protections against unfair contract terms to include small trade contracts. For those watching at home who may not have been tuned into the previous parts of the debate, this applies to small trade contracts where the trading relationships exceed $250,000. And it applies to the following types of contracts: franchise agreements, telecommunications contracts, retail leases, independent subcontractor agreements—so many of those happened in the industry that I had my business in, which was in television—in waste management terms, and also supply agreements in the agriculture sector.

With unfairness, the elements really are whether it causes a significant imbalance in rights and obligations of the parties and whether it isn’t reasonably necessary to protect the interests of the benefiting party and whether it would cause detriment. So that is a robust test. It is a clear test on fairness. It is based on the effects on the parties, and it can lead to the Commerce Commission declaration so that a term may not apply. To my mind, that is an equitable approach; it is about equity and it is about fairness.

Turning to “unconscionable”, which has had so much attention tonight, it is really important that we don’t define it. The Opposition know full well that defining a term in a piece of legislation means that it has a limiting effect to the things that fall fairly and squarely within the categories that are listed. This is about applying a threshold. It is about defining features, which can include relative bargaining powers, the requirement to comply when it is not necessary to protect the benefiting party, undue influence or pressure, and the extent to which parties acted in good faith. And that last element is really important. As has been traversed by our side, there is plenty of case law, both in Australia—case law that will evolve to further give us understanding of “unconscionable”. That term, as Duncan Webb has pointed out, has been around since the 1600s. It is a well-known legal term and it will continue to evolve. What we don’t want to do is limit it to a finite list or definition.

The good faith element of it also negates the possibility that was mentioned by another member opposite about buyer’s remorse. Somebody simply changing their mind about purchasing a product or a service or entering a contract would not be able to be exempt through buyer’s remorse. There would have to be those other elements around a lack of good faith or around unnecessary benefit to one of the contracting parties. The penalties are $600,000 for bodies corporate or $200,000 for individuals.

The Opposition, I understand, has raised concerns about the criminality elements to do with unconscionability, as well, and that was looked at by the Ministry of Justice who raised it with the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and they noted that if one looks at unconscionability in the criminal sense, that mens rea is inherent. It implies good faith. Were there unfair pressure tactics? Was there inducement? All of that implies an intentionality which safeguards against a lack of mens rea for that criminal element. The other items that MBIE have noted is that there are parallel civil and criminal remedies already in place in the Act and that the penalty levels are consistent with existing penalties in the Act.

I’d like to turn now to the “Do not knock” element. In my own networks, this would have been a fantastic law to have in place for somebody who we know who bought encyclopaedias, bikes, cleaning products, and aromatic oils, and not only bought these products but signed contracts which meant that the funds were going out of their bank account, and every time they failed to have sufficient funds in their bank account, they also faced a bank penalty of $25. It took some undoing, each time these purchases happened, to get this person out of the contracts. They were able to live at home, they were definitely vulnerable, and they certainly would have benefited from a “Do not knock” sticker to protect them. That sticker, under this law, will fill a gap in the Trespass Act 1980, where one needs to identify the person who they are seeking to trespass, in order to get them to leave the property. It also actually upholds the principle of “one’s home is one’s castle”. It won’t apply to personal visits or charities or political parties, but it does involve a visible or audible direction to leave. Those who are interested in the stickers can actually get them from Consumer New Zealand.

So, to sum up, this bill goes towards the Government’s goal of creating a productive, sustainable, and inclusive economy. It is about fairness. MBIE has said that the elements needed to make that economy happen that way are trust, merit-based competition, reasonable opportunities for businesses to grow and thrive, but also to protect consumers from detriment. So it is about finding that balance. It assumes good faith in contracts. It provides a clear steer to the Goliaths in the David and Goliath relationship about the expected behaviours, and it looks at the impacts of the contracts, which is an equitable approach. It doesn’t assume a level playing field. It acknowledges that, in the current world, there are Davids and Golaiths in the contracting environment, and, therefore, it seeks to recalibrate so that there can be fairness, transparency, competition, and also protection for consumers. I’m delighted to commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Fair Trading Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I present a legislative statement on the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I move, That the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill will strengthen and improve the National Cervical Screening Programme, a programme that protects the health of women throughout our country. It will enable the programme to take advantage of modern information technology. The new rules are needed because Part 4A of the Health Act did not anticipate the information technology that is available now. The bill also paves the way for the screening programme to move to human papillomavirus (HPV) testing, which causes 99 percent of cervical cancer. As we have discussed earlier today, in Budget 2021 we included investment of up to $53 million to complete the design and implementation of human papillomavirus screening. The new test will replace the current smear test for the 1.4 million eligible women aged 25 to 69 years old. It is a simple and quick swab that women in the future will be able to do themselves and does not require an invasive speculum exam. We anticipate, based on trials that have occurred here in New Zealand, that this will greatly reduce the barriers to getting screened.

Tonight, in my remarks, I want to discuss the purpose of the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill, outline the recommendations from the select committee, and then describe a tabled Supplementary Order Paper to address the unintended consequences of some of the select committee recommendations, and a remedy to them.

So, first, the underlying bill: currently, clinicians who want to access the screening record of a participant have to request and receive that information via fax—via fax. Fax should have been abolished ages ago in the health system. They are unsafe, unreliable, and have a privacy risk attached to them. This bill clears the way for a move to direct, secure, log-in access, just like all the other information systems used across our health system. This is a standard that we should aspire to for every programme, particularly a vital public health programme. This will mean that healthcare providers have the most up-to-date clinical information when a participant attends an appointment, either for cervical screening or follow-up, and it’s crucial information because, if you don’t know the past history of a woman in the screening programme, you can’t decide what to do next—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not the Speaker.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: —one can’t decide what to do next and how that woman should be referred. As a result, there can be delays, and women who present for what should be a simple matter are asked to come back once the information has been sent via fax from the screening programme, meaning, in some cases, an additional appointment is needed.

You can imagine that this is troublesome enough in the type of settings where screening usually occurs—say, in a general practice clinic—but if we want to be more innovative, and we could be in the future with self-sampling, then perhaps we’d want to be able to do this in different settings as well, and being able to use direct log-on with mobile information technology would mean we’d be able to move the screening programme into the community in a way we haven’t been able to previously. So we can and should be doing better for participants in the cervical screening programme, and this bill will allow us to.

I’d now like to turn to the second matter: the Health Committee’s recommendations, and there were four I’ll canvass. The Health Committee reported the bill back to the House on 19 September 2018. I’d like to thank the committee for its consideration of the bill and everyone who took the time to make a submission. The committee unanimously recommended four changes to the bill, and I’ll go over them now.

Firstly, minor changes have been recommended to the definitions of “diagnostic test”, “screening test”, and “specimen” for the purposes of the programmes. Members will find these proposed changes in clauses 5(1AAA), 5(3), and 5(4) of the bill. These changes would apply to all provisions in Part 4A of the Health Act. This will mean that we will move away from using the term “smear test”, as samples with the new HPV test are not smeared on to a slide, and the definition of “screening test” will now also include reference to the human papillomavirus.

Secondly, changes are proposed to the new section 112J(4)(d), which relates to the disclosure of information for the purpose of enabling compilation and publication of non-identifiable statistics from the register. So I stress: these are non-identifiable statistics. The change is to use the phrase “unless the disclosure is prohibited by” instead of the phrase “in accordance with”. This change is designed to make it clear that any regulations cannot authorise disclosure that is prohibited under another provision.

Thirdly, the consequential amendment is the recommendation to the kaitiaki regulations themselves. The kaitiaki group oversee the use of Māori women’s data by the cervical screening programme. Members will find this proposed change in clause 9(1A) of the bill. This change is recommended because clause 5(1) of the bill will amend the definition of National Cervical Screening Programme register to include “any part of the register that is replaced”. It therefore makes sense to amend the definition of National Cervical Screening Programme register in the kaitiaki regulations so that it is consistent with the definition used in the principal Act. I fully support the adoption of these recommendations.

The fourth change, and the one I propose to change through the Supplementary Order Paper, is a change to clause 6A. The Health Committee recommended the introduction of a new clause 6A to the bill. The clause provides that section 112ZE(1) of the principal Act does not override the requirements of the kaitiaki regulations. The regulations provide for the national kaitiaki group and give it a role in the protection of use of information on and from the register that identifies participants as being Māori. The committee has identified that section 112ZE of the principal Act enables screening programme employees to retain, access, and use and disclose any cervical-screening information to the extent necessary to perform their functions as employees. This provision, being the principal Act, overrides the kaitiaki regulations. The amendment will change the operation of section 112ZE so that all screening employees’ use of data would become subject to the kaitiaki group’s approval.

I accept the Health Committee intent in introducing clause 6A. However, the information that is likely to be captured by the legislation is necessary; it needs to be used on a daily basis for routine internal data analyses, data modelling, and data quality checking. I think this is an unintended consequence. It is also possible that clause 6A might be interpreted as requiring approval of the automated use and disclosure of data during even things as simple as electronic data uploads to existing electronic applications. It would be unworkable for the programme employees to be prohibited from accessing this information until approval was sought for their day-to-day work. This could impede the provision of timely data to the sector, used for monitoring and quality assurance activities, as well as having unintended consequences on the workload of the national kaitiaki group.

The timely execution of these internal processes is vital to the quality of cervical-screening programmes. As clause 6 was not considered in the development of the bill, an independent panel of reviewers with expertise on the screening pathway considered its impact. It also included expertise on Māori health, and it has considered that to both meet the intent of the Health Committee and mitigate the risk of unintended consequences, a legislative response is required. To this end, I’ve tabled a Supplementary Order Paper that would replace clause 6A as recommended by the Health Committee with a new clause 6A. The new clause will retain the Health Committee’s clear intent that the screening programme employees must gain the kaitiaki group’s approval for using programme information but only when that information is intended for publication. This would include annual reports, monitoring reports, cancer case reviews, parliamentary review committee reports, any public-facing component of a new electronic application, other publication of information captured by the legislation, and external requests for information captured by the legislation.

However, the new clause 6A would also require that the kaitiaki group’s approval will not be required for the programme’s internal processes that are not intended to result in a publication, nor would applications be required for data uploads to existing electronic applications or for existing publications. These changes would provide assurance that the programme’s internal data and information management can continue at pace and will not be subject to delays. I believe the Supplementary Order Paper goes a considerable way to addressing the select committee’s intent, and recommending clause 6A is necessary given the identified risks.

In summary, I am pleased with the very robust consideration that the bill has received since introduction, both at select committee and the independent review panel, and I look forward to the passage of the bill so that the improvements can be made—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired. The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. National will be supporting the onward progress of this bill. This kind of makes sense. I mean, in one way it’s just addressing a very small administrative factor whereby anyone other than administrators couldn’t access the cervical-screening register, and if you weren’t the administrator you needed to, as I recall, fax in your request. It would be authenticated and then you’d get a fax reply back.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not me. Order! Not the Speaker.

Dr SHANE RETI: I’m sorry. Someone would. A provider would—I’ll get into the anatomical detail shortly, if you really wish. And this was cumbersome, although I may be able to—I mean, looking back, to think why we were using faxes, it is hard to explain. It could be that at that stage, we were following some of the American terminology around health information security. Their Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations actually talk to this, because what happens is, in the US, if you’re HIPAA compliant, if you’re transmitting information in an electronic way—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Not me. Not the Speaker.

Dr SHANE RETI: Sorry. If one is transmitting information in an electronic way other than a fax, you have a whole range of compliance called HIPPA compliance, which adds on roughly a minimum of $20,000 of compliance to transfer that information. But for some strange reason, fax transmission is outside of HIPAA. So it may well be that when the legislation first—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: I think you’re a very HIPAA person.

Dr SHANE RETI: —ha, ha!—came into the House, we were following the HIPAA legislation. I don’t know. I’ve considered it as well and it just doesn’t make sense here now, so we’re trying to redress that so that providers, authenticated providers, can access the register.

This started off as a National Party bill years ago. It’s sort of hard to understand why it’s taken so long to get here, and yet if we think about it, the promise here was that the cervical-screening register would build on top of the bowel-screening engine. So when the bowel-screening engine was created, the engine was going to be the core to screening IT, and you’d put cervical screening on top and now, you know, purportedly coronavirus and other things. But, as we well know, the bowel-screening engine took so long—it was delayed by six to 12 months—and so I suspect that may be why this bill has taken so long. Because by the time it’s enabled—now, it will be after coronavirus, but it needed to be added on top of the core screening engine which came out of bowel screening.

As it came through select committee, there were some really good suggestions, some really good futureproofing suggestions, as one can see in the bill. It talked about increasing the anatomical area of pathology, relevant—that made sense. And as the Minister spoke, about futureproofing it for HPV, which absolutely is a good idea, and I totally support that. That’s a really important next progress for cervical screening. Disappointing that it failed the Budget bid 2020. I know Professor Bev Lawton and her team were very enthusiastic about it, but here we are now. I think this will do a huge service to women and certainly help reduce the inequities, particularly for Māori, that we all want to achieve. So I am very supportive of HPV screening.

I’m sort of hoping that Louisa Wall will be able to take a call, because the issue that we did spend a lot of time on in select committee was around the kaitiaki group and, more specifically, data provenance for Māori. The rest of the bill was quite easy. This became the most complicated part, as I recall, and that’s what leads us to the Supplementary Order Paper. Because we were mostly looking for that balance between appropriate provenance and management of Māori women’s cervical-screening data—is what was trying to be achieved—and there was some concern that this bill might override or, more specifically, that this bill might be used to strengthen up some of those kaitiaki regulations. That’s actually what was looking to be done. Having said that, we understood some of the difficulties, because officials did say to us that we could complicate or hinder the sole purpose of cervical screening by putting these regulations in. But at the time, and on balance, we thought it was reasonable.

Having said that, here we are with another set of views in the Supplementary Order Paper, which we’ll talk to later, which reinforce the point that, actually, officials think this could be unmanageable to have it in its current form as it was reported back. Having looked through this and seen it, we’re quite relaxed on that. We were relaxed in select committee, understood both sides of that argument, and there’s nothing at first blush that we see in this Supplementary Order Paper that gives us any reason to pause.

So in net summary, this is mostly an administrative bill. It makes a lot of sense—contemporises what we’re doing with cervical screening. The select committee did a lot of really good work to futureproof it to what’s now turned out to be the current protocols, and we’ll be continuing to support its progress through the House. Thank you.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. Since the National Cervical Screening Programme started, the number of people who have died from cervical cancer has dropped by nearly two-thirds and that’s incredibly good news. But the issue we’ve got is that inequalities still remain, and so we’ve got much higher rates for Māori and Pacific women, and that’s something that we really need to focus on moving forward in terms of reducing those inequalities. The good news, though, is that cervical cancer usually develops slowly and so it means that those pre-cancerous changes can get picked up by cervical screening, allowing for early treatment and, in most cases, a cure. But what needs to happen for that to occur is that you need to start screening early, and so the current recommendation is that if you’re between 25 and 69 years old, you’ve got a cervix, and you’ve ever been sexually active, then you should be having a cervical smear every three years—or even more often if you’ve had an abnormal smear.

What this bill does is it makes some changes to the current screening programme so that we can actually modernise it and make it more effective, and what I’d like to do tonight is just focus on two of those aspects. The first one of them is looking at how we improve access to the cervical screening register, because as we’ve heard tonight, at the moment, what we’ve got is we’ve got a register that holds the information on women on the screening programme, but it’s unduly restrictive, and so what needs to happen is that people request information. So if you’re a smear-taker working out in primary care, you have to request that information and then wait for a fax. I’m not even sure that many places still have faxes, but, apparently, that’s how it still happens at the moment. So, clearly, this needs to be sorted out.

The other issues are that if you’re laboratory or colposcopy staff, you still need the Director-General of Health to have approval. And so what this bill will do is it will make changes so smear-takers in primary care, colposcopy and laboratory staff, will be able to have look-up access, read-only access, to the register. And so what they can do is then access that information for authorised purposes about those that they are screening. But also a number of district health boards, the Ministry of Health, employ people to follow up on people who have been late for their smears, and this is where we are trying to make sure that we reduce inequities and inequalities in screening rates. So being able to contact people and invite them and remind them about their smear, and so having access and improved access to that, because a lot of this work happens in the evenings—and so, again, anything that’s there to reduce inequities will make a huge difference.

So one of the main things this bill does is just modernise the whole approach. We’re not relying on faxes. We’ve got look-up access, but it still protects all of those privacy provisions and makes sure that it’s only for authorised purposes—that’s closely monitored—and also making sure that no information is disclosed about identifiable individuals, so those protections remain.

One of the other aspects, though, we looked at in select committee is widening the definition, because “cervical smear” is relatively old terminology. And what we changed in select committee—there was a recommendation to expand the definition to include high-risk HPV tests and also cervical and vaginal cytology tests, just to reflect more up-to-date approaches to screening. So what that does is it clears the way for human papillomavirus—HPV—testing, which is thought to cause about 99 percent of cervical cancers, the HPV virus. As has been mentioned tonight, the Government invested $53 million in Budget 2021 to enable HPV testing to replace the current smear test. And what we’re looking at is a start date about mid-2023. What we’ll do then is we’ll change over to HPV testing as the main way of cervical screening.

What women will experience is quite an improvement, because instead of the traditional smear test, which requires a health professional to take the smear and a range of associated equipment, women will be able to self-test with a vaginal swab and, basically, do that privately themselves. The expectation, initially, is that they will still come to a healthcare provider for that screen. But what that saves is a lot of healthcare professionals’ time and equipment, and also, for the woman, a much better experience. And then, once women have had their test, if they have a negative HPV test they can be reasonably reassured that in the next five years they would be unlikely to develop any of those precancerous changes. And so what that means is they would only need to be screened once every five years instead of once every three. But they can still, if they’ve got any concerns, consult their healthcare provider in the meantime.

Then the Ministry of Health is looking at: can we even make that much easier in future? Possible options would include mailing out self-test kits if they’re found to be safe and effective for women. So what this bill does by changing the definition is allowing some of these changes to occur. So this is an important bill and what it will do is improve the cervical-screening programme. It’ll reduce inequalities and it will save lives. I commend this bill to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to speak in support of the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill in its second reading.

As previous speakers have said, this is largely an administrative change. The bill amends Part 4A of the Health Act 1956 to enable health professionals who provide services to women along the cervical-screening pathway and their support services staff to directly access this information from the National Cervical Screening Programme register. The key amendments are really ensuring that this information is available in a modern and timely manner. It’s almost unbelievable that, currently, the access to this clinical information occurs via fax. It’s incredible not only from a technology perspective but also from a privacy perspective that people are standing around waiting for something like this to be coming through on a fax, and so we certainly support this becoming a much more modern means of accessing this information.

It’s important that women understand or are assured that privacy is going to be well catered for. The amendments will allow providers to look up the information directly by using secure log-on access via the internet. It is important to note that the relevant provisions of the Privacy Act 1993, the Health Information Privacy Code 1994, health professional regulatory constraints, and employment and contract law are unaltered by the amendment. The National Cervical Screening Programme manager retains the administrative control over who they grant secure access to the information, and it remains an auditable activity. So all those privacy concerns are still catered for.

As my colleague Dr Reti has already traversed, this bill picks up on work that was initiated by the previous National-led Government. So we support this bill bringing this basic amendment in, which brings the clinical information process into a much more modern set-up.

It will certainly speed up the process for smear-takers getting this information and being able to discuss it with their patients without compromising their privacy, and of course we would support anything that makes it easier for women to access primary healthcare. We know that the National Cervical Screening Programme makes a fantastic contribution to the lives of New Zealand women, and so we, again, would want to support any improvements with that.

Cervical screening, as Dr Liz Craig has noted, is a key tool in maintaining the health of women across the country, and being able to get an immediate improvement to the way we access this information on the national cervical screening register is imperative to these improvements. The bill will enable also future upgrades to the IT that supports the register and how it’s used, as well as future improvements to the screening programme, but it retains that strong control over the register.

I wanted to just bring in some context from my own electorate, where WellSouth have been doing some research on their primary healthcare network. They analysed individual-level data from the entire WellSouth enrolled population as of 1 January 2019 on key health indicators, of which cervical screening was one of those indicators. WellSouth’s target for cervical screening of women with up-to-date smears is 75 percent. That’s in line with the current 2010 primary health organisation performance programme target of 75 percent or more of eligible women in that 20 to 69 years age group enrolled in their practice to have had a cervical smear recorded in the last three years. What WellSouth found was that they were not meeting that target for either Māori or non-Māori women, with 63.9 percent and 61.7 percent.

So the point was well made by the Minister that while this amendment will bring improvements in accessing information from the National Cervical Screening Programme through faster and better access to information, the real improvements will come when the primary screening for HPV occurs, and, again, Dr Liz Craig outlined how that will break down a number of the access barriers for women. So we consider it absolutely appropriate that this bill would make the amendment to provide for the new definition of “screening test” to include reference to the HPV test.

So, in conclusion, I speak in support of this amendment, and we look forward to the progress of this. Thank you.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Talofa lava. It is a pleasure tonight to speak in support also of this bill at its second reading, the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill.

I’d like to start by acknowledging the Minister, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, not only for her work but also for the fact that she prioritised this amendment bill. Listening to the Minister’s contribution earlier reminds us—on this side of the House, in Government—we are committed to improving outcomes for all New Zealanders, and this bill is yet another example of us doing that. I’m very pleased, also, to see colleagues on the other side of the Chamber also supporting this bill and the potential that it has to improve outcomes for women and for New Zealanders.

What this bill does is it, essentially, seeks to bring the National Cervical Screening Programme (NCSP) into the 21st century, progressing it from an outdated, bureaucratic, and laborious process into something that’s much safer and a much more efficient sort of system. It’s topical, I think, that we’re debating this bill following the recent Budget 2021—a fabulous Budget which included, amongst many other things, up to $53 million for the design and implementation of the new test that the Minister outlined earlier on, the new test for HPV to replace the current smear test. I think it’s fair to say that there’s no doubt this new test will save lives, particularly wāhine Māori lives.

So it is fantastic to stand here tonight and support a bill that will, firstly, facilitate the new test; and, secondly, strengthen the existing process in parallel—which currently, as noted by several of my colleagues, requires health workers to receive crucial screening history information via fax following an indirect authorisation process, which is also cumbersome. So, importantly, this bill enables the development of a register that provides secure, direct access to really valuable screening information. However, having said that, detail is also important, as is expert input, so I’d like to also acknowledge the work done at the select committee stage—the previous Health Committee—where, it should be noted, most submitters strongly supported the bill, the gist of which could probably be summed up by the submission by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners when they said, and I quote, “The College supports this bill and views it as a significant improvement over the current situation where a fax is sent to the general practitioner. We consider the bill will result in better communication and outcomes for patients.”

Having said that, I think it’s also important to note that some people also raised privacy concerns, and these concerns, I think, should be alleviated both by what the Privacy Commissioner, John Edwards, subsequently submitted, and also the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which she outlined. So the Privacy Commissioner stated, “I have no outstanding privacy concerns with the bill as introduced,” adding that although “Providing more people with access to the register comes with some increased privacy risk … I am satisfied the bill provides for this risk to be mitigated through appropriate operational controls—access to the register will be controlled by the NCSP manager, and the Ministry of Health has advised the activity will be auditable.” So in addition to that, as I said, the Minister also introduced an SOP which directly assesses concerns regarding privacy for Māori participants and should allay any of those outstanding concerns from the bill as was introduced.

So in summary, I think we are making important changes to the NCSP system, while maintaining the appropriate safeguards so that women in New Zealand Aotearoa trust the system and actually feel safe getting what could be a lifesaving test. We know that cervical cancer, as a couple of my colleagues have already pointed out, develops slowly and is both preventable and treatable. The latter is, of course, highly dependent on early detection. We must do everything within our power to assist those health workers responsible for the screening process. By improving the programme to expand information, accessibility, and to make the system more efficient, we go a long way toward facilitating prevention and early detection in a timely intervention.

The bill may seem technical in nature, but it is actually about decreasing bureaucracy, retaining trust in the health system, and ultimately improving those outcomes and saving lives. So I don’t want to hold up the progress of this bill any further except to say that it is an important contribution. With that said, I have no hesitation to commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Talofa lava. This morning we greeted Matariki with a karakia on the top of Tangi te Keo or Mount Victoria, and then we visited the land occupation at Mau Whenua. Just when I thought my job couldn’t get any better, tonight I get to speak in the House about supporting the health and wellbeing of people with a cervix and a vagina. So while those people with a cervix and a vagina are predominantly cis-gender women, it also includes trans-men, intersex people, and non-binary people.

Now, cervical cancer is the easiest cancer to prevent. A simple pap smear, an HPV vaccine, will do that job. However, we have about 160 people developing it, and about 50 die from it every year. As the chair of our Health Committee identified, of course it is one of the many ways in which Māori and Pacific Island people suffer disparities. I fear we will see an increase in those numbers soon, because when our select committee considered and reviewed all of the DHBs, I noticed that many of them reported that in order to allocate resources and staff to deal with the pandemic, their screening programmes for cervical cancer and breast cancer were affected. I really, really hope not.

The national screening programme is hugely effective and has reduced the incidence of this type of cancer significantly. One of the ways that it tried to attract and make sure that Māori women would feel comfortable coming to do this, be screened, was to assure them of their privacy, that not just them as a person coming into this quite vulnerable position and situation, and having that done—and everyone here in the House knows what that feels like: it’s not fun. So they were assured that their privacy would be protected because of the national kaitiaki group that was established that said no information would go out that hadn’t been checked by them in certain circumstances. So they would protect that data by respecting the sanctity of te whare tangata and any data associated with that, making sure that nothing was published inappropriately or that would impact negatively on Māori, but that, overall, any information would be used to benefit Māori women.

So we absolutely support our employees in our screening programmes to have all the data they need to do their job, to make their lives easier for them as staff but also all of the people that they’re caring for. We have a concern, though, that the kaitiaki group doesn’t receive many applications for checking the use of that data. So we want to make sure, absolutely, on a day to day, that that gets done and people can do that. But there’s a big gap between that and something being published. So we just want to make sure that that kaitiaki group is still effective and still doing what it needs to do.

But the other issue I wanted to raise was about the particular ways that members of the takatāpui, trans, intersex, and non-binary communities suffer, and the discrimination they face in the health system. Unfortunately a big part of that description is a complete and absolute obsession with their genitalia. So when it comes to any encounter with our health system, especially to do with sexual and reproductive health, they suffer greatly. So I just wanted to make sure that when we’re talking about privacy, we’re not just talking about particular groups. We’re looking at a group of people who we should also be able to reassure that their information will not be used against them. I have been approached by people who are trans, non-binary, and intersex to talk and tell me the experiences they have had. So one particular example is because they have access to all of their data, they will then address them with a pronoun that’s not appropriate. We know that there are some employees who will use old names, what some of the community will call dead names, which are no longer how they identify and not who they are.

So in conclusion, we absolutely support this, but we want to ensure that all people, no matter their background, no matter what they were assigned at birth, the sex they were assigned at birth, if they have got a cervix and a vagina, their health and their privacy will be protected. Kia ora.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill at the second reading, because we believe that the amendments would provide our healthcare professionals with even better tools than they currently have, through enabling improved accessibility to the National Cervical Screening Programme register, and significantly streamline the process.

For context—and I can’t believe that I’m saying this—our current system uses faxes. You know, there is an entire generation of health practitioners coming through the system, coming through college, now in the workforce, who probably should never have used a fax. I have never used a fax. I can’t believe that people are being trained up to be using near-obsolete technology. So this amendment is about enabling our health professionals to access the National Cervical Screening Programme register without going through that whole rigmarole of the current process, the fax process.

It’s deeply concerning that health practitioners who take smear tests, whose job it is to provide services to our patients along a cervical-screening pathway, are forced to go through such an outdated and obsolete programme. Unfortunately, that’s just one way that shows the inefficiencies in our healthcare system. We have to acknowledge that the problem here is not with the health professionals. Our nurses and our doctors do a great job helping New Zealanders with their healthcare needs. It’s just a massive flaw in a system that they’re having to do it with such outdated technology.

I do admire the work that our health practitioners are doing to make sure that New Zealanders can get the care that they need, but we also have to admit that data efficiency and accessibility in healthcare is extremely important to make sure that people can get the care that they need in a timely fashion, and especially when it concerns issues such as cancer, because being able to directly access data on a patient’s screening history actually impacts how quickly people can get the care that they need and how quickly a smear can be carried out.

While we believe that this bill would make an important and necessary change in the short term, we also think, as the ACT Party, that there needs to be longer-term thinking from this Government, and we actually believe that the outdated IT infrastructure is of huge concern in New Zealand. I mean, we’ve just seen the Waikato DHB issue, and we had reports in 2019 and 2020 that showed that our DHBs don’t have the necessary data technology and security to make sure that they are protected from cyber-attacks.

We actually want to be committed to a modern healthcare system which empowers New Zealanders. We should be able to keep people’s information safe but, importantly, acknowledge that a lot of this problem is down to outdated technology, just like this is with faxes. So we believe in streamlining our bureaucratic healthcare system, reducing overheads, making better use of technology, ensuring better integration of our healthcare system, and focusing on patient outcomes, and so I commend this bill to the House.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare, talofa lava.

Shanan Halbert: Talofa.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME: Talofa. Tuatahi māku, ka tīmata taku kōrero ki te mihi atu ki a rātou kua mate i tēnei mate pukupuku, momo mate pukupuku, kua pāngia hoki i tēnei mate pukupuku.

Tuatahi, ki a Talei Morrison. Ko ia tētahi o ngā wahine toa e hāere puta noa i te motu ki te kōrero ki ngā kapa, ki ngā whānau, ki ngā wāhine, ki ngā hapori katoa e pā ana ki tēnei mate pukupuku. Me te whakahau ki ngā tāngata kia hāere ki te rapa, ki te Smear i ō Mea.

Tuarua, e tuku mihi ana au ki tōku hoa mahi, arā, te Hōnore Kiritapu Allan. Kua pāngia e tēnei mate. Engari kei roto ia i te hohipera. Ko tēnei te wiki tuaiwa o te whiwhi rongoā mō tēnei nō reira e mihi ana ki tōku hoa, ki te Whare, i tēnei pō. Ka huri au ki tēnei pire.

[Firstly, I would like to begin my speech by acknowledging those who have died of this particular cancer and those who have been afflicted with this cancer. Secondly, I acknowledge Talei Morrison. She was one of the warrior women that travelled the country to talk with kapa haka, with families, with women and with communities about this type of cancer. She encouraged people to “Smear Your Mea”.

Secondly, I would like to acknowledge my colleague, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who has been afflicted with this disease. She is in the hospital. This is her ninth week receiving treatment so I would like to acknowledge my friend and the House this evening. I turn to the bill.]

Every year, about 160 women develop cervical cancer, and about 50 die from it. This is a tragedy because in almost all cases it is preventable or it can be treated if it is found early. That is one of the real issues that we have and that this bill is trying to address by introducing new systems and processes that may make this screening more accessible to more women so that it can be identified early and, hopefully, treated, and therefore the deaths are preventable.

In my short mihi in beginning this contribution tonight, I acknowledged wahine toa Talei Morrison, who unfortunately was taken by this disease, but, in her journey, she shared with so many people the message about how important it is to Smear Your Mea and really encouraged kapa haka groups across the motu, communities across the motu, wāhine, and whānau to take up that challenge, to make sure that we look after te whare tangata and that we smear our mea. I also acknowledged—of course, known to everybody here in the House tonight—the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who is currently undergoing treatment, and today she reported being in week nine of that treatment, and giving us all a message of hope and saying kia kaha and aroha to everybody.

So it is really important, therefore, that this bill goes through the House and passes, because it will enable a more modernised system, which should make the opportunity for screening more readily available to people, and, hopefully, more user-friendly. But it does require legislative change in order to achieve that.

I thank the member from the ACT Party Brooke van Velden for her contribution just prior to me speaking. One of the issues for anybody listening tonight is that the current legislation requires the transfer of information to happen by facsimile, and I was just thinking then, “When was the last time I ever used a fax?” Now, I think my doctor says, “I’ll fax that across to the pharmacy and then you can go and pick it up and you’ll get a text message to tell you that it’s there.” I’m not sure that they are still faxing that information, but anyway that’s what they say. But when I thought about it, the last time I received a fax was when I was 16 years old and I was in Australia on a basketball tour, and my parents sent me a fax to Australia—I’m 38 years old now, and I haven’t received a fax since then. I think that we all agree, in the House, that the fax is something that is quite outdated. We need to modernise the technology that we can use so that we can be more responsive; we can do it in a much quicker manner.

This Government, in the latest 2021 wellbeing Budget, committed $53 million to improve our cervical- and breast-screening programmes. As part of that funding, there is an allocation there to upgrade our IT system and also to introduce the HPV testing. The legislation includes the HPV test, which is important because we are going to be funding that and phasing that in and phasing the other one out by 2023, and also funding for a new IT system. So it is important that this legislation is actually in place so that that funding that has been allocated will be effective.

I wasn’t on the Health Committee, but I did read their select committee report, and I did want to talk particularly to the issues raised around the kaitiaki regulations. I want to acknowledge Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall, who approached us as the Māori caucus to talk about the challenge that she had in terms of the advice that she was given about potentially how unworkable the current proposed clause 6A would be in the legislation, and how we could work through and get a balance of what the concerns were that were raised by the kaitiaki group and submitters who were submitting on that, as well as those of all of us who, I am sure, are very keen to see more Māori women, who, unfortunately, are overrepresented in the statistics, get access to cervical screening. I thank the Minister for coming to us and talking about quite a sensitive issue and how we get the balance right. I read the select committee’s report and heard what their concerns are. I have also read the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) and listened to the Minister’s contribution and am thankful for the process that she followed with us in terms of it.

I’m satisfied that the new clause 6A will retain the Health Committee’s clear intent that the screening programme—employees must gain kaitiaki’s approval to use screening programme information where that is captured by legislation, but only when the information is intended for application. As she mentioned, that would include information that is used for annual reports, monitoring reports, cancer case reviews, Parliamentary Review Committee reports, any public-facing component of a new electronic application, any publication of information captured by the legislation, and external requests for information captured by the legislation.

However, the new clause 6A would also ensure that the kaitiaki group’s approval wouldn’t be required for the programme’s internal processes that are not intended to result in publication. The real practical effect of that is that, as it was, they would potentially have to go and seek approval every single time they were wanting to use that information, which would make it clunky and slow the process down. I don’t think that was what was actually intended by those kaitiaki regulations. If we look at why the kaitiaki regulations exist, as Dr Kerekere mentioned in her earlier contribution, they “must have regard to the … sanctity of Te Whare Tangata; the need for culturally appropriate protection for the taonga of the information covered by the regulations; [and] the need to ensure that the information is used for the benefit of Māori women.”

So I believe that the SOP proposed by the Minister gets that balance right. It allows those using the information on the day-to-day practical side of arranging and referring for screening to be able to do that without having to go and seek permission. However, if any of the information were to be used for any publication and specifically those that the Minister mentioned, then the kaitiaki group does still have its role there, and that is carried over not only into this legislation but to the legislation that empowers those particular regulations.

I have almost run out of time. I just want to thank the Health Committee for the work that they did on this. I heard Dr Shane Reti’s contribution earlier. So for those members who were on that committee, thank you very much for the process that you went through, for your consideration of that balancing that was required for the kaitiaki regulations, the protection of sensitive information, te whare tangata. I am pleased that there is cross-party support tonight for this very important bill and for the programme to be as effective as it can be for our wāhine Māori and those with a whare tangata. Nō reira, tēnā tātou katoa.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora. I call Erica Stanford. This is a split call.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m pleased to take what will be a very short contribution. I spoke on this bill back in 2018 at first reading, and I remember a couple of things. Firstly, it was the Hon Jonathan Coleman who spoke for us—that’s how long ago this was—at first reading. He opened, I believe. Then I do also recall congratulating Julie Anne Genter for bringing this bill to the House and also on her pregnancy, I believe, and here we are again. So congratulations, Julie Anne Genter, on your second pregnancy. That’s how long we’ve taken to bring this bill back.

Look, I think that what needs to have been said has already been said by previous speakers, especially on this side of the House—the very capable Dr Shane Reti and also Penny Simmonds, who has taken up a role on the Health Committee very ably. And we have, sort of, digressed, I think, into conversations about who remembers when they got their last fax, which was quite amusing. I remember the last time we got a fax was from my father in a Boeing 747, 30,000 feet above the Pacific, telling us he’d left the water on in the glasshouse. You used to be able to send faxes from airlines, in the cockpit.

Anyway, when I do remember speaking on this bill early on, just the disbelief that it was still the case that doctors had to, firstly, ring up a registry to get results and also rely on the use of a fax. But the bad thing about that was it often meant that maybe they wouldn’t do that and then would potentially do the test in a different way which wouldn’t get the results that they needed if a woman had had a previous result that meant that a different type of test needed to be carried out. So that’s potentially quite dangerous.

So this really is a very small technical bill that does a lot of good things, dragging us into this century and allowing those practitioners to dial straight into the registry and get the information that they need. It’s going to improve women’s health, and I commend this bill to the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a very brief call in relation to the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill. I am not a member of the select committee who considered this bill, but it is a huge privilege to speak briefly in its favour. I just wanted to begin by commending the work of Minister Verrall for shepherding this bill through the House. As the previous speaker mentioned, a lot of has already been traversed about the bill, and as I was listening to speakers, I was thinking back on a quote I heard from a cancer survivor who said, “Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it.” I suspect that many people in this House know of and have had family members or friends who have lived with or passed from cancer. And there is a lot of truth to that quote. There’s a lot of profound courage and love and strength that comes from those survivors. But it’s my view that life is also about learning and doing a service to that strength and courage and really looking at the systems that we have in place in terms of providing cancer services to ensure that when people are fighting some of the most difficult battles of their lives, before they go on to those battlegrounds we’re providing them with the best odds possible, and that, for me, is what this bill is about. This is a bill that’s about saving lives.

My colleagues have quoted the number of women who are diagnosed every year and the approximately 50 who die from it—and this is really an avoidable tragedy, at the end of the day. I just wanted to note very briefly some of the stats that I saw from the 2017 National Screening Unit, which said at the time that there were 63.7 percent of Asian women who were screened—so under what the target was, which at the time was around 80 percent, and the changes made in this bill will really go towards addressing that. This bill is important as it will explicitly allow the people providing community-based services, as my colleagues have said, to be able to look up access to the register so that they can perform their work as easily as possible. I do think this is one step in terms of what we need to do. I referenced the numbers for Asian women who get screened, or rather those who don’t, and I do think that there are a number of steps we need to also take in terms of addressing the culture of women feeling comfortable across all cultures to go and get screened proactively to take away some of that stigma. I commend this bill to the House.

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): Talofa lava e te Mana Whakawā. It is an honour and a privilege to speak on the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill. I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall and her leadership now at the second reading here in the House.

I also want to acknowledge the submitters. I know that it’s been a while since it came to the select committee, but the Health Committee was one of the first committees that I was on and I remember the discussions on this, so I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the 16 submissions received. I think it’s important that we say in this House—record—the names of those who’ve made submissions, because it is really important that we do, so if I can just read it out. I want to acknowledge the Māori Women’s Welfare League - Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko I te Ora, who, when they gave their oral submission, had attended with Dame Silvia Cartwright; the Auckland Women’s Health Council; the Federation of Women’s Health Councils Aotearoa; the Cartwright Collective; Chris Berriman; Family Planning; Mrs Georgina McPherson; the National Council of Women of New Zealand; Mrs Uputaua Ioapo-Peniata; the New Zealand Nurses Organisation - Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa; the New Zealand Medical Association; Jillian Lamb; the Office of the Privacy Commissioner; Southern DHB; Waipatu Karamu Māori Women’s Welfare League; and the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners. Of those 16 submissions, we had oral evidence of three submitters, and, of course, we heard many times from the Ministry of Health.

I referred to the attendance of the Māori Women’s Welfare League at select committee with Dame Silvia Cartwright. I think it’s important for the House to remember that the report of the cervical inquiry was in 1988—33 years ago. I want to read this excerpt from the background provided by the Māori Women’s Welfare League, because we are decades down the line and it’s still important that this is a focus, and I quote, “In her report of the cervical inquiry in 1988, Dame Silvia Cartwright recommended that a nationally planned population-based screening programme should be implemented as a matter of urgency. In relation to that recommendation, Dame Silvia [Cartwright] stated that a special duty was owed to Māori women who had three times greater risk of contracting invasive cancer, complicated by barriers to Māori women being screened which were identified as a ‘financial, cultural, and questions of accessibility.’ Dame Silvia Cartwright identified the need for a programme to be developed in consultation with Māori women”. It is 33 years down the line and we are still talking about this.

I refer to the Māori Women’s Welfare League because in their submission it was important that whare tangata and its sanctity is important and continues to be, but also in the information shared by the ministry. So we’ve heard from the Minister speaking about the definitions of bringing into technology of this bill—making it come to technology in terms of fax machines and whatnot, but, really, what remains the same is the concern about the sharing of information relevant to Māori women. One of the focuses of the group was about the sharing of data for research and for publication. So I’m glad to hear from the Minister that the fourth change that is recommended by the committee will introduce the new clause 6A to the bill and that the clause provides that section 112ZE(1) of the principal Act does not override the requirement of the kaitiaki regulations, and I think that’s important.

I really want to talk about the sacredness of the whare tangata. As a Tongan, we refer to the whare tangata as the “fonua”, which is one of our many words for fonua. It could mean land; in terms of Māori it means the whare tangata, it means the afterbirth, so it is important—this is really important. In terms of whether it’s invasive through sharing of information for publicity in terms of research, it must—and it must—go through the kaitiaki programme because of the importance it has for Māori. But when we talk about Māori, we forget that it’s important for New Zealand. So in the care that they provide for information for Māori women, we then follow on as new migrants to Aotearoa after Māori. So I really want to echo that care that it is important in terms of the act in itself of providing information in terms of cervical screening, and it’s also important in the sharing of the data, whether it be for publication or internally.

I just want to echo too the acknowledgment that our fellow MP, our fellow sister, the Hon Kiritapu Allan is going through a tough time, but with all the whole country’s prayers and all of this House we want to say, “Kia kaha wāhine toa.” In your experience, that experience itself has helped women come out to look at their health in a new way of achieving health for themselves.

It was said before that this is mainly a women’s issue, but it is actually all of us—it’s an issue for all of New Zealand. And when we do care about the whare tapa whā, the fonua, the woman, we protect our future. And in that case, I commend the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill to the House. Fa‘afetai tele.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Talofa lava. I cannot start my speech without acknowledging the Hon Kiritapu Allan. When New Zealand now talks about or thinks about cervical cancer, I’m sure many of us have her face in our minds. I want to take this opportunity in the House to commend and congratulate the Minister on her bravery in sharing her story with New Zealand, because I think it has had a powerful impact across our communities in terms of women’s willingness to have screening, to go and have those tests, and that is an incredibly powerful thing to do. I just want to put on the record for this House, Kiritapu, that we on this side of the House stand with you as you work on your recovery. We wish you every piece of wellness on the journey you are on now, and we wish you a very good recovery.

This bill is about making the technical changes that are needed to ensure we have modern healthcare services available in our society. It’s a great case of where technology and innovation have gone ahead and the law, unfortunately, hasn’t kept up. So National absolutely supports this bill for the practical changes that it makes.

I want to acknowledge the select committee, which I didn’t sit on, but which I understand has heard a number of submissions on this. I want to acknowledge Dame Sylvia Cartwright, who is the figure who stands in the background whenever we talk about cervical screening and the processes used. And actually, having now read this bill and looked at it in preparation for my contribution tonight, I want to acknowledge the healthcare workers and the clinicians and the people involved with the cervical-screening programme who have had to put up with a ridiculously outdated framework, governing Act, for far too long. I almost coughed on my coffee when I read that the status quo is that currently, when cervical screening providers need to access clinical information about individual patients, they do so by fax, that the National Cervical Screening Programme staff fax the information to them. So I just want to do a shout-out to those staff and the people on the other side of the fax; they should not have been having to put up with such outdated technology and such an outdated mode of communicating for so long. I am glad that Parliament is taking the opportunity to remedy that and allow them to move into 2021 and the technology and options we have available to us.

It’s my view that if we want to provide good modern healthcare to New Zealanders, then the things that we should be considering are: what can we do to make that healthcare better, to ensure people get it sooner, and to ensure that wherever possible they get it closer to home? What this bill essentially does is it makes it easier for people to get the screening that they need. It makes it more convenient. It will encourage more people to do it. Those are good things. It shows the power of technology to improve healthcare, because by having databases that are more accurate, that are more easily updated, and by ensuring that more people are able to access them for appropriate purposes, what we actually have is an end result for the patient, and the end result for the patient is that the healthcare people in their life have connected up the information about that individual’s health. That is, I think, what we should expect in terms of all healthcare practices—that, wherever possible, people are joining those dots on the patients’ behalf, so that they get the care they need as soon as possible.

I can’t help looking at this bill and thinking to myself “Doesn’t this highlight how far New Zealand has to go?”, but also what an opportunity we have to improve our health services by harnessing the power of technology, because this is just one area of our health system where things have fallen woefully behind. We are still in a situation where data sharing even between GPs and hospitals, even between hospitals in one DHB and hospitals in another DHB—even sharing information, accessing information about my own children’s health records is still overly cumbersome, too difficult. That is because we haven’t fully harnessed the power of the technologies that are available in our modern world. It’s my view that if we do that, we can actually provide much better care to people, fewer things get missed, and more people get the services that they need.

This bill deals with screening. Screening is a vital form of primary healthcare. If we get screening right, we are right at the prevention end of things. And I know that all of us in this House share a view that it is better to prevent things than it is to have to treat things down the line. So having a good framework for managing the national screening programme makes good sense from a primary healthcare perspective and will ensure that the screening programme is more accessible and is just simply more practical for more people.

One of the things that this bill does and deals with that we are having to grapple with across the board when we look at technological amendments, when we move from fax to computer, is this issue that there is the potential for privacy to be compromised, there is the potential for data to be compromised, there is the potential for individuals to have wide access to information that they could misuse or manipulate. So I am pleased to see that this bill sends a strong signal by creating an offence for those who might choose to amend the cervical-screening register without authorisation. That is something that modern technology may make easier to occur, but of course it would be a very grave offence in that doing that could compromise the health of not only individuals but many people but would also, I think, very importantly, undermine trust in this database, in this system.

That is something that we all need to protect here. Women need to know that when their most personal data is being held in a national register, it will be protected, it will be looked after, that it is there to look after their health, and that it won’t be compromised in any way. And I think offence provisions like this, while I very much hope they won’t have to be used in the sense that I hope there aren’t abuses of this register, they do allow for a very strong signal to be sent if that occurs.

Finally, I think in this bill what we see is the power of research and development innovation to unlock future ways of both preventing, screening for, and treating cervical cancer. Because what we see in the detailed provisions, for example, is the fact that we now are moving to screening for HPV, primary screening for the human papilloma virus—forgive me, medical people listening—rather than simply screening for examining cells. That reflects the fact that we now have better research, we have better information about what are the precursors to cervical cancer, but we also know that this bill will accommodate some of the new ways we have of screening that are easier for women, that are better for women, that potentially allow them to feel more mana and dignity in the testing process, and that I really hope—I really hope—will ensure more women do the testing we so need them to do so that they can live good long lives and so that if they have problems, we can catch them as early as possible.

I’m also hopeful that there will be further research and development, there will be further technological development that means that in the future, fewer women in this country die of cervical cancer, that fewer women in this country have to go through the trauma and sadness of what we now all know, as a nation, is a very extreme form of treatment for a very serious disease. Yes, this is a small and practical step, but it is important, and I say again, to the Hon Kiritapu Allan, I have you in my thoughts tonight.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Talofa, Madam Speaker. Fa‘afetai tele lava for the opportunity to arise today and take a call on this bill. But can I first acknowledge, please, like everyone else, including across the House, our colleague, the Hon Kiritapu Allan—and I have said before but, as a newbie settling in, she was very supportive, gave us a lot of tautoko, a lot of guidance, and for a new MP that’s huge and something we really value. I know I speak for all my other new colleagues when I say we’re with you, and kia kaha wahine toa. Thank you.

I wasn’t on—obviously, being a newbie, I wasn’t on the select committee that considered this, the Health (National Cervical Screening Programme) Amendment Bill, but I know they considered 16 submissions, three of those oral, and can I just say, thank you for that work. Because this bill isn’t just a bill—like others have said—this bill is going to save the lives of many of our women in Aotearoa. So thank you to those on that committee.

As other people have said, this bill is about modernising the technology and upgrading our systems. Currently, like others have said, when cervical-screening providers need to access clinical information about individual patients, they have to do so by fax. And although I look really young, with no wrinkles and no grey hairs, I also remember faxes, so now I’ve probably busted myself and am showing my age. But yes, I also remember faxes and how long that takes, and God forbid if there’s a power cut and the fax stops because the line doesn’t—it’s diabolical.

So to be able to be sure that we can modernise our system to make it easier to not only contact our patients but also look up our patients’ records—health professionals, of course—right there is obviously a lot easier, especially for women who are having to come in and talk about smearing our mea. And I feel more comfortable saying that rather than talking about other things—you know, cervical smear. So, yeah, we’ve also heard tonight that 160 women develop cervical cancer, and as has been said before, 50 die from cervical cancer. And we know that a majority of them, unfortunately, are Māori women. So this bill will come some way to making that less and less, and will save many more women, particularly Māori—and, can I say, Pacific as well.

Because, as a Pacific woman—and, as I said, I’d rather say “smear your mea”—and having a Pacific mum growing up, and, Madam Speaker, you may have also experienced this as well: things like this were never talked about in my household. That didn’t mean that my mum didn’t care about my health or what needed to happen to me as a women; it just was never talked about. So even for me—again showing my age—when I started to have cervical smears, it was my friends that took me along to that rather than my mum. I’m happy to say now that there is much more awareness and much more encouragement, and much more of an effort to make sure that we are messaging that out to Māori and Pacific women in the channels and the messages, and how we need to hear that, so then we’re getting a bit more of an uptake in our people “smearing their mea”, and that’s fantastic.

However, like I said, this—although it’s small—technical change will make a big difference to women who are feeling very mā when they come in to talk about having to get their mea smeared. So, and again, I know this is probably quite similar to many Māori women as well—you know, being close, Moana a Kiwa are cousins of the Pacific people—I can imagine that it’s a similar thing, having to go in and, first of all, talk to nurses and doctors that you don’t even know, or receptionists, to talk about why you’re there and then having to wait until they, back in the day—or, sorry, even now—fax away your stuff. It can be humiliating. So being able to now make those changes, again, is going to make that whole process—although I still can’t, kind of, talk about the whole process, it will make it a bit easier for many Māori and Pacific women.

I know I acknowledged Kiritapu Allan before, but can I also acknowledge the work that the Hon Kiritapu Allan is doing in this space at the moment. Again, I’ve just talked about how mā it can be for Māori and Pacific women and how we are getting better at messaging in the right way so that Māori and Pacific women understand and are encouraged to make sure they do their regular smear their meas. What Kiritapu is doing at the moment while going through her own wero to me is just an inspiration, that not only is she fighting the really good fight—and she’s strong and she’s young and she’s an inspiration in that field—but she’s also thinking about other women. And even on her really bad days, and you can see sometimes she might have had a really hard bout of chemo, she’s still talking about, “Hey, get out there. Smear your mea.”, and trying to save women’s lives, just like this bill is doing.

So while this bill is small, focusing on modernising the current system, this bill is actually mighty in what it actually does. Essentially, it saves women and it saves many of our New Zealand women, and for that, again, I am grateful, and I want to say fa‘afetai tele lava to the select committee who worked on this bill. I also want to acknowledge our Minister, Ayesha Verrall, who’s championing this cause—as well as many others—for women, and of course with her announcement around the cervical smear and breast cancer screening, as well. Can I just finish by saying it’s such an awesome time to be part of this Government when we are making massive changes for all New Zealanders, but certainly for our wāhine toa. So I just want to say thank you again, fa‘afetai tele lava, and I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for Building and Construction): I present a legislative statement on the Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I move, That the Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Firstly, can I pass on to you, Madam Speaker, my gratitude for the work that you have done in this space and for laying a very strong foundation for the continuation of this work. I mihi to you and I acknowledge your work in this space.

This bill was introduced to the House on 8 May 2020, and it’s with a great deal of satisfaction that I now bring it to its remaining stage in the House. The building sector is, as we know, under significant pressure to deliver durable and affordable buildings to meet a growing pipeline of construction projects. We need a building system that inspires trust and confidence, that lifts building quality and productivity, and that supports innovation. This bill seeks to address longstanding challenges in the building and construction sector.

It’s the first stage of a set of reforms that will promote a more efficient building system, lift the quality of building work, and provide fairer outcomes for those involved in building and construction. The reforms also support the Government’s broader housing priorities to speed up the supply of housing and to create an economy that grows and works for all New Zealanders.

The bill amends the Building Act 2004 in a number of ways. First, the bill introduces a mandatory building product information requirement to support better and more informed decision-making. Currently, the Building Act doesn’t require basic information to be provided for building products.

The importance of basic building product information cannot be underestimated. Poor information can lead to delays in consenting and increased cost, and it can lead to poor building outcomes if products are chosen that are not fit for purpose. The new product information requirements in the bill will help builders, designers, consumers, and others choose the right products for the right job in the right place, and they will help building consent authorities to make faster decisions on building consents and will reduce the number of requests for further information—and I know that’s a particular issue in my area.

Second, the bill introduces a new voluntary scheme for modular component manufacturers. New Zealand’s been relatively slow on the uptake to adopt innovative off-site manufacturing processes. Some manufacturers are experiencing difficulties in gaining consents for buildings that involve the use of innovative manufacturing approaches. This Government is doing more to support innovation in building and construction because modular component manufacturing has the potential to lift productivity, reduce building costs, and reduce building waste.

The new modular component manufacturing scheme will provide faster, more consistent building consent approaches for manufacturers who are able to meet quality and performance standards. In some cases, a building consent involving modular components will only need to be processed in around 10 working days. These changes will allow New Zealanders to make the most of the new methods of construction and will help building owners and building consent authorities to save time and money.

Third, the bill introduces a new registration requirement for product certification bodies so that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) can have greater oversight over the CodeMark product certification scheme. Product certification bodies will need to be registered as well as being accredited before they may issue product certificates. The product certificates will also need to be registered with MBIE. These amendments address concerns about the level of confidence with the CodeMark scheme and provide greater assurance that certified products comply with the building code and will result in safe and durable building work.

The bill introduces new offences and penalties to support the new building information requirements and the new modular component manufacturer scheme. It also introduces higher maximum penalties for other offences under the Act, because many of these have not been adjusted since 2004. The bill also extends the time frame to file a charge so that enforcement agencies have more time to investigate complex cases.

Collectively, the changes to the enforcement provisions will promote compliance and deter bad behaviour. Other amendments widen the scope of the building levy and how the building levy may be used to support a more effective building regulatory system.

Phase two of the Government’s reform programme will progress reforms to occupational regulation focused on ensuring people have confidence in the engineers and regulated building practitioners and their work. I look forward to presenting these reforms to the House in due course.

I’d like to thank the many people from across the building and construction sector who gave their time and made submissions, and shared their experiences and expertise with the Environment Committee. I would particularly like to thank the Environment Committee for their efforts to improve this bill. Finally, I’d like to thank the select committee staff, MBIE officials, and Parliamentary Counsel officers and drafters who worked on this bill. I commend the bill to the House.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m happy to take a call in the final reading on the Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. The Minister has given a pretty good outline of the context, the substance, of what has been, or will be, passed into law as a result of the completion of this final reading.

I want to state, initially, on this side of the House, we support the bill, and we have through all stages actually. The idea of a registration and certification system for modular or offsite manufacturing is a good one. I like the idea of being able to speed up that process of construction, to, obviously, have a clear set of rules and guidelines and penalties, potentially, around that if the rules aren’t followed. But speed of construction, confidence around the process, is critical for our sector. These are some of the areas where I think we have a real opportunity to make some headway. At the moment, there is a massive need for housing, but actually construction in general is facing significant pressure as there is a massive expectation on the construction sector to play a significant role in the recovery and the ongoing, I guess, growth of our economy post-COVID. So we really support that aspect.

The other aspect I’m excited about within this bill is broadening the scope of use for that levy. I think there’s real potential there to run the rule over some of the different standards, to have a look at how we are ensuring compliance, the opportunities and methods we can streamline as a result of having this surplus levy, some $50 million-odd that’s currently sitting there as surplus, being able to utilise that in a range of different areas. So I’m really looking forward to hearing some of those initiatives, and we haven’t heard any specifics yet around what that might be. Looking forward to seeing or hearing of those in due course.

So this is all good stuff, and I’ve been fortunate enough to visit some offsite manufacturing companies, Concision down in Rolleston, Clever Core up in Auckland, Builtsmart in Huntly—companies that are doing really innovative and really exciting stuff. I think there’s huge potential in this offsite manufacturing space to really ramp up productivity within our construction sector. They can churn out residential properties very quickly, pretty cost-effectively, and very precisely. Those are all factors that I think are desperately needed in the sector and will be greatly received as well. The ability to speed up some of the consenting process by this bill is great in that regard. I’d really like to thank those three companies in particular that I’ve just mentioned for the time they’ve given me to understand their concept, what they’re doing, what they’re looking for, some of the challenges they’re seeing at the moment in terms of the limitations placed on them—they could do even better, so, hopefully, some of that is addressed with this bill. But I still think there’s more that can be done as well. So we’ll continue encouraging the Minister to expand the opportunity for offsite manufacturing in particular.

So these are all good aspects but there’s a lot more that needs to be done in our building and construction sector as well. There are some big priorities that we haven’t heard much about yet from this Government. I would really encourage the Minister to place more urgency on things like their licensing and certification process. Have we got the licensed building practitioner scheme right? There’s plenty of feedback I’ve had as I travel around the country talking to a number of building and construction businesses who are saying that, no, we haven’t quite got it right. What about self-certification for plumbers and drain layers? That’s not on the table yet. Well, if you’re a gas fitter you can self-certify your work, and that’s, in many cases, the exact same person as a plumber, drain layer, and gas fitter. They can sign off part of their work but not the other parts. So let’s have a look at that process, self-certification.

Obviously the critical aspect to this, and the licensed building practitioner scheme as well, is having a clear set of guidelines in place but also ensuring there’s accountability and maintaining that quality assurance throughout that process. So having that aspect of it dial in really tightly is critical. But I really think there is huge scope in that space in particular to speed up the process. I am hearing consistently every business I visit in this industry tell me they are being held up by the consenting process, by the inspections process, by not being able to sign off some of their work—any number of factors that end up causing months of delays in the construction process. At a time when we are just screaming out for new houses, that’s not good enough. That’s something I’d really like this Minister to be focusing on more strongly and presenting a solution to this House with urgency. So I would encourage her to really pick that up. There are plenty of experts out there in the industry who would be more than happy to give feedback on this, how to streamline this process whilst ensuring we manage that quality throughout it as well.

The consenting aspect is another biggie. We are seeing far too many consents taking far too long to get through the building consenting authorities. There are a huge number of requests for more information (RFIs), that are being sent back out to the submitters of these applications, asking for more information. In some cases, perhaps, that’s a delaying tactic because the council simply haven’t got the capacity to process. In other cases, councils are finding they’re just not receiving the necessary information. I’ve talked to a number of council consenting authorities in this regard as well, and so, absolutely, the blame is not simply on one side of the fence. But this is an area that we can really tighten up. This bill addresses part of that by reducing that consenting time frame down to 10 days in particular circumstances, and that’s good. But the 20-day time frame to provide a consent is quite long, and it’s quite inconsistent. So whether you’re building a pretty basic, straightforward run-of-the-mill house, it’s 20 days versus a multi-storey apartment building, also 20 days—obviously, slightly more complexity in that process. So we need to have a good look at that. That’s an area that, again, I really would like to see some strong focus on from the Minister.

These aspects can make a significant difference in our productivity. We can really ramp up our ability within the sector to deliver if there is a lot more work put into streamlining some of these aspects that I’ve just mentioned.

But the other big one as well, and we’ve heard some encouraging news around the high number of consents that have been issued recently—fantastic, but actually you’ve got to be able to build them. Our challenge at the moment—again, I’m hearing this message consistently as I travel around the country—is that we simply don’t have enough skilled workers in the building and construction sector. We need some of those migrant workers coming in here to contribute to our economic recovery, to provide that expertise that we are lacking in some areas. We simply can’t train them fast enough. It’s been encouraging to see a significant increase in the number of apprentices, and I do want to acknowledge the Government for some good work in that space, but that’s going to take years to deliver for the industry. Right now there’s a pressure point where you have a shortage of labour, and we need to address it. I’m not hearing from the Minister a solution to address this. We absolutely need to be driving strongly to see more migrant workers coming in to support this desperate need now to get the construction curve ramped up even further.

So those are some of the issues that I would really like to see a strong focus on from this Minister. Pretty good work with this piece of bill, some good stuff in here that will help, but actually there are some other priorities that we really need to see around the certification and registration for labourers, for tradespeople, also the consenting process, and of course getting more labour in here. Those are three key priorities that I’d really like to see as a stronger focus from this Government. But we do support this bill, and I’m looking forward to seeing a lot more work from this Minister for the building and construction sector. Thank you.

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

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Talofa lava, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to talk on this, the Building (Building Products and Methods, Modular Components, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

We all know that housing is of utmost importance to New Zealanders. We want good buildings and good houses that we know are safe, that will provide good, healthy environments for people to live in, but also that we can produce the best houses as quickly and efficiently as possible. That is what this bill is trying to do, or trying to address in part. We’ve heard the Minister say already that this is stage one of a series of reforms. On the previous Minister, the Minister who spoke, the Hon Poto Williams, she has also got a housing portfolio. So there’s some real synergy in this Government in trying to deal with housing, not just to say there’s a magic bullet for housing but looking at a whole range of issues, being very, very proactive, and not just sitting still on anything.

We’ve heard today as well from the Hon Grant Robertson, who’s the Minister of Finance and also, relevantly to this to this housing issue, the Minister for Infrastructure. He said today in question time that building consents are at a record high at the moment. There’s over 42,000 of them, closer to 43,000. People are working hard, this Government is working hard, to get housing for people.

Hon Scott Simpson: Can’t live in a consent!

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Good speech, Rachel. Keep going!

RACHEL BROOKING: Thank you. So it’s great to be part of this Government that actually cares and gets on with the job.

Now, we heard, in the committee stage, there was quite a lot of questioning about the new definitions of building product and building method and also about the regulations that can really spell out what these things are. So I think it’s important that we go and we have a look at these. So the bill introduces, at clause 7, a new 9A and 9B. Now, 9A is the meaning of a building product. So it says, “In this Act, building product means a product that (a) could reasonably be expected to be used as a component of a building; or (b) is declared by … by Order in Council.” And it goes on. At 9B we have the meaning of the building method. And, again, it says, “In this Act, building method means a method (a) for using 1 or more products or things as part of building work; or (b) for carrying out building work that is declared by the Governor-General by Order in Council to be a building method.” So what those regulations do is they can really say what a building product is and what a building method is.

There was concern in the committee stage about the consultation requirements around that regulation-making process. So it’s useful to go to section 403 of the primary Act and to look at what those consultation requirement are for making regulations. This section is amended very slightly by the bill but only to be specific that these new sections 9A and 9B, that I’ve just read out in part, the consultation requirements for making those regulations apply.

So at 403 we see that “Before making a recommendation for the making of an Order in Council or regulations under those sections, the Minister must be satisfied that the chief executive has consulted in accordance with subsections (3) and (4).” So we’ll go to that. At subsection (3) “The chief executive must (a) do everything reasonably practicable on his or her part to consult with the persons or organisations that appear to the chief executive to be representative of the interests of persons likely to be substantially affected by the making of the relevant Order in Council or regulations; and (b) advise the Minister of the results of that consultation.”

Moving on to subsection (4), “The process for consultation should, to the extent practicable in the circumstances, include (a) giving adequate and appropriate notice of the intention to make the Order in Council or regulations; and (b) giving a reasonable opportunity for interested persons to make submissions; and (c) adequate and appropriate consideration of submissions.” This is a good process for those regulations that are going to help us define what a building product and a building method are.

I think it’s useful also—we’ve seen in the legislative statement that’s been referred to by the previous speaker, Tim van de Molen, a number of really useful things that are happening in this bill. One of them is that the building levy scope is widened to enable monitoring and oversight of the building system, and that is an important change. Another one is that the time for prosecution goes from six months to 12 months. It’s very difficult, first of all, to hear about a problem, gather your evidence, and then initiate prosecutions, particularly if there are delegations that you need to obtain, in a six month process. So that 12-month extension is a very sensible measure.

Also, there’s a new offence for misrepresentation. If you misrepresent yourself as a product certification body or you make some sort of false certification around a product, that’s a new offence in this bill.

In summary, this bill is an important piece of legislation, one I think you introduced, and I am very happy to commend it to the House because it moves on with making the tough decisions, doing the job of actually improving our system so that we can build better. Thank you.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I know that there are rules in this House about reading speeches but it seems that there are no rules about reading their legislation. So we’ve had a classic example of the misconnection between academia and the real world in the last speech, because the last speech from the member who has just resumed her seat, Rachel Brooking, focused entirely on the technical detail of the legislation, which is exactly part of the problem that this Government has in terms of delivery—and that is, too much focus on not really getting things done. They don’t deliver—they don’t deliver and they don’t get things done—and that has become the hallmark of this socialist Labour Government: high on words but very, very slack on delivery.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I invite the member to come back to the bill.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well, this is a bill that is involved with trying to make a small step in the right direction in terms of solving the housing dilemma that the Government is faced with. It’s a small step and it’s one that we’ve supported throughout the processes. We supported it a first reading, at select committee, at second reading, and now at third reading. But I don’t want to traverse the minute detail of the bill; others have already done that. But what I do want to do, is talk a little bit about the potential for real impact from this legislation.

Now, in my electorate in the Coromandel, there is a builder, Cherrywood Homes, and they build a range of homes that are all to a standard plan: standard fittings, standard design, standard cladding, standard roofing, and standard in every particular way. The issue that they have is that their ability to provide economic homes to that standard is hindered greatly by undue red tape and process: for instance, the three or four local district councils all have different rules and regulations in terms of consenting those standard homes that this bill, hopefully, will minimise, if not completely remove entirely, and that will be a good thing.

So, for instance, if a standard build house is being built, for instance, in the Thames-Coromandel District Council area, there are different rules and regulations for a house that is identical in every respect save for maybe the colour of the roof or the colour of the cladding or the colour of the taps and light fittings; but every other way—but every other way—it’s similar and identical. Then if you go to the Hauraki District Council and have exactly the same building, maybe with only a different roof colour cladding, then the rules are different. So the real advantage of this bill is not the establishment of the regulatory regime, not the establishment of the registration and certification system. That’s a given and that’s what a competent and delivering Government should do. Those are in the bill and so we give them a small tick for that.

But the real benefit is in the ability for prefabricators to actually get the economies of scale and to achieve some real benefits in terms of standardisation of design, standardisation of componentry, and standardisation of delivery. And these will be the real benefits to New Zealand homeowners, because it will mean that some of the large firms that have been wanting to prefabricate, and actually have been trying to do so for some time, will have the regulatory weights that have been constraining them removed, and I think that that is a good thing. On this side of the House, we are very supportive of the projects, for instance, that a business called Panasonic Homes has been able to achieve at Te Kauwhata. There they were able to build a prototype house using prefabricated componentry in a way that will only be able to be sped up by this process. The real skill and the real ability is if we can have an opportunity to use this piece of legislation as a piece in the jigsaw puzzle that would allow New Zealand prefabricators to do as is done in many other jurisdictions around the world.

For instance, in the UK, in Australia, and in the United States of America there are very significant benefits to be had from economically built constructed homes that are constructed, essentially, in much the same way that one might construct or manufacture a car: literally on a prefabrication assembly line. Those are design and manufacture techniques that this bill will enable the prefabricators to actually improve more efficiently their processes. Some of the red tape will be removed. There will be sufficient control in the legislation—and we heard at select committee from a number of submitters who were quite happy with the underlying rules and foundations that were going to be presented—but still a freeing up of the mire that they have currently had to work their way through. And when I look at some of the modern, economical, and very attractive prefabricated homes that are available to citizens in some of those other jurisdictions that I mentioned, particularly in the United States of America, there is a big market for homes that are built, essentially, in a large factory environment, with economies of scale, that can be transported by vehicle to a location and then put on a property, and suddenly, then, the more affordable range of the market can be fulfilled.

So this is a piece of legislation that does provide a small piece in the jigsaw puzzle that we hope will provide a little bit of support for those innovative businesses that want to get on and help create better housing options for people, particularly at the lower end of the pricing spectrum. This will be something that I think will be welcomed, not only by the manufacturers, not only by the designers and the builders and the prefabricators, but hopefully, also, by those people who want to get into their first home, maybe, who can secure a piece of land that is not exorbitantly priced, and then not be straddled with the sometimes prohibitive costs of construction that have been foisted upon them because of the existing framework and the existing regulatory regime. And so I commend organisations and businesses like Panasonic Homes, but I know that they will be bringing their unique prefabrication technology and methodology—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Fa‘afetai tele lava, manuia le po.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.