Tuesday, 22 June 2021

TUESDAY, 22 JUNE 2021

TUESDAY, 22 JUNE 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

[Almighty God, we give thanks for the blessings which have been bestowed on us. Laying aside all personal interests, we acknowledge the Queen, and pray for guidance in our deliberations, that we may conduct the affairs of this House with wisdom and humility, for the welfare, peace, and compassion of New Zealand. Amen.]

List Member Elected

List Member Elected

SPEAKER: Members, I have been advised by the Electoral Commissioner that under section 137 of the Electoral Act 1993, Harete Hipango has been declared to be elected to be a member of the House of Representatives in place of the Hon Dr Nick Smith. I understand that Harete Hipango is present and wishes to take the Oath of Allegiance. Would she please come forward to the chair on my right.

Members Sworn

Members Sworn

The Speaker administered the Oath of Allegiance to Harete Hipango, who then took her seat in the House.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Ko ahau, ko Harete Hipango, e oati ana ka noho pūmau taku pono ki a Kuini Irihāpeti te Tuarua me tōna kāhui whakaheke, e ai ki te ture. Ko te Atua nei hoki taku pou.

[I, Harete Hipango, swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.]

Privilege

Privileges Committee Referral—High Court’s Treatment of Speech Made in the House

SPEAKER: Members, it has been drawn to my attention that a recent decision of the High Court raises a general matter of privilege that requires further examination. This matter has not been raised by a complaint from a member, but it is my opinion that the subject is sufficiently important enough to exercise my authority under Standing Order 414. The decision in Staples v Freeman [2021] NZHC 1308, dated 4 June 2021, relates to an action for defamation and substantively considers a speech made in the House on 23 July 2014. The issue for consideration by the Privileges Committee is whether the court’s treatment of the member’s speech in its determination of the action for defamation compromises the House’s privilege of free speech as described in the Parliamentary Privilege Act 2014 and in article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688. The Privileges Committee is the body that the House has established to investigate such matters. It has the power to hear evidence and to formulate recommendations for the House that will provide guidance for the future.

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

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

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced. Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Alexandra Johnston requesting that the House amend the Dog Control Act 1996 to give courts more discretion when ordering the destruction of a dog that has made an attack

petition of Degu Geddebo requesting that the House urge the Government to condemn the ongoing atrocities of the Amhara ethnic group in Ethiopia

petition of Arya Nair requesting that the House urge the Government to give special consideration to registered nurses (with permanent residence) when determining whether our partners are eligible for partners’ visas

petition of Ehab Takawi requesting that the House urge the Prime Minister to replace the immigration Minister.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers. [Interruption] Order! Order! The member must not take leave for that action.

CLERK:

Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission, strategic intentions 2021 to 2025

Southern Response Earthquake Services Limited, statement of performance expectations for the financial year 2022, statement of intent for financial years 2022 to 2026

Transport Accident Investigation Commission, statement of performance expectations 2021-22 and statement of intent 2021 to 2025.

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

Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Environment Committee on the petition of Erin Hampson-Tindale

report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the Intelligence and Security (Review) Amendment Bill

report of the Governance and Administration Committee on the Office of the Ombudsman report on the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act compliance and practice, Porirua City Council

report of the Health Committee on the petition of Nancy Sutthoff

report of the Petitions Committee on the petition of Andy Earl

report of the Primary Production Committee on the briefing into Optimus Group

reports of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, the petition of Barbara Kuriger, and the report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The report on the Ombudsman’s report and the briefing are 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: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government’s efforts to secure our recovery have been reflected in the latest measure of the country’s economic health. Statistics New Zealand reported last week that GDP rose by 1.6 percent for the March 2021 quarter—exceeding the expectations of even the most optimistic commentators. New Zealanders’ confidence in the recovery saw a boost in retail spending, particularly on big-ticket household items, hospitality, and holiday accommodation. Importantly, activity in the construction sector returned to near record levels, while business investment in plant and machinery jumped by over 15 percent. The higher COVID-19 alert levels during the quarter only had a limited impact on the economy thanks to the quick response which provided cash flow and confidence. Quarterly activity in March has now exceeded the December 2019 quarter pre-pandemic level. Nevertheless, the data does show the volatility that New Zealand has to deal with during the pandemic. This 1.6 percent increase followed a 1 percent decline in the December quarter and a record 14.1 percent increase in the September quarter.

Dr Duncan Webb: How does New Zealand’s economic performance compare with other countries?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: This result is further evidence that our public health strategy of going hard and early to beat COVID was also the correct response for the economy. Getting our economy back up and running without COVID in the community has meant households and businesses can move about and operate more freely than in many other countries. The New Zealand economy was 2.4 percent above where it was in the March quarter last year, outperforming the countries we compare ourselves with. In the same period, Australia rose by 1.1 percent, the United States by 0.4 percent, Canada by 0.3 percent, while Japan declined by 1.5 percent and the United Kingdom by 6.1 percent. The global economy is recovering, but the ongoing and uneven impact of COVID-19 means that the environment will remain volatile for some time.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reactions has he seen to the GDP report?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: We’re doing it in real time here, but, previously, the ANZ economist called the result “eye-popping”, and noted that “the rise in GDP confirms that New Zealand has seen a spectacular economic recovery”. That sentiment was reflected in other commentaries. Kiwibank said, “The report was stronger than expected, pretty much across the board. And the economy has confidently returned to pre-COVID levels.” And as the ASB noted this year, “unexpected strength of quarter one GDP growth adds to the weight of evidence that the New Zealand economy is on very firm footing, despite the global pandemic.” This Government’s economic recovery plan is working. We are supporting businesses and workers to succeed, despite the uncertainty of COVID-19 and the naysayers on the other side of the House.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and on behalf of ACT, I’d like to congratulate you on becoming the father of the House. My question is to the Prime Minister—

SPEAKER: I’m tempted to say “grandson” or something, but just keep going.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Alrighty, Grandad! [Interruption] He started it.

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

2. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by her statement that “A large number of those buyers of those vehicles are not using them for the legitimate use?”

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I stand by the point I was making, even though I will absolutely say that I think I could’ve been clearer in the way I made it. As a Cabinet, we gave full consideration to the option of creating a carve-out for those vehicles for which there currently aren’t equivalent low-emission alternative options, where those vehicles were, for instance, used for business or work purposes. As the member and, I know, many in this House will appreciate, drawing such a distinction does raise issues of fairness, consistency, and implementation. I would make the point to the member that almost two-thirds of the utes sold in New Zealand last year would not be covered by this policy as they were part of the existing second-hand market. We also expect new models to become available over time.

David Seymour: So as the “feebate” policy was finalised with that advice, will people who are using a ute for their legitimate use still have to pay tax under feebate?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: First, I’d like to clarify that, actually, it was not the advice of officials that we have a carve-out, and, in fact, their view was that we should not. That did not stop Cabinet having a discussion over the fact that for many, there is not an alternative for a ute which is used for business purposes, that there is not an alternative—currently—no-emissions vehicle on the market. So that’s why we had that discussion, but, ultimately, as I have said in my primary answer, there were issues around how you would implement such a carve-out. So, ultimately, the decision was taken to have a much more straightforward scheme, recognising which was coming on stream. The point I make to the member: no one who currently owns a ute is affected by this policy. This is for new and imported vehicles rather than those that are existing and in the country and in the second-hand market, a point that I note is not being clearly made by all members in this House.

David Seymour: Could those people buying utes for “legitimate” uses avoid the tax by purchasing an electric ute from Toyota, and if not, why not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: At present, those who are bringing electric vehicles into the market within the next 12 to 24 months include LDV. Toyota have themselves said they “hope to have [a] Hilux hybrid enter the market before the end of next year”—that statement was made by the Toyota New Zealand CEO on 22 April 2020. I would say again to the member: the vast majority of utes purchased by New Zealanders are from within the second-hand market, which is not affected, and this policy that we’ve applied does cover incentives or no fees for low and hybrid vehicles, not just electric vehicles (EVs).

Hon Judith Collins: Thank you. Is it the Prime Minister’s job to tell Kiwis whether or not their vehicle choices are legitimate?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member, if she had listened to my first answer, would’ve heard me clarify that, actually, drawing those distinctions are incredibly difficult. So creating a carve-out, although it was considered by Cabinet, was just not something that we felt we could do fairly. I would say to the member that given Stuart Smith says, “I’m against subsidies for EVs”, Michael Woodhouse says, “National supports introducing financial incentives for EVs”, Chris Bishop says, “National is the party for EVs”, Mark Mitchell says he would incentivise them, and Todd Muller says he’s broadly supportive, I personally would be interested in what National’s policy is on this issue.

Hon Judith Collins: Ha, ha! Does she view driving—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The extra questions are mitigated by the fact that the laughter came from both sides.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she view driving a seven-seater people mover, like the Mazda CX-9, as illegitimate; if not, why is she putting a tax on them?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, this is also about trying to make sure that we are incentivising and discounting low emissions—not just EVs, but low emissions options. We know from research that placing incentives at the point of sale supports those who otherwise may not have the ability to ultimately purchase a vehicle which would be cheaper over the lifetime cost. A Toyota Estima seven-seater produces a $670 discount for a used vehicle; a Toyota Prius v seven-seater has a $1,310 discount; a Nissan seven-seater has a $3,450 discount—they’re all used vehicles. In fact, eight out of 10 of New Zealand’s most popular used vehicles either have no fee or attract an incentive or a discount.

David Seymour: Has the Prime Minister driven an electric ute from Toyota, and, if not, why not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I have already said, LDV are bringing the electric vehicles, and Toyota themselves have acknowledged that they are bringing in a hybrid. Again, no one here is saying—and this is the very reason we’ve discussed the carve-out issue—that there currently is that immediate alternative. However, as has been said by Drive Electric, “Taken together, the emissions standards and consumer incentive, puts New Zealand on the map for electric vehicle manufacturers. We are telling them, New Zealand is a serious market for electric vehicles and we want that supply. We are looking forward to them bringing in new ranges and models.” New Zealand may have otherwise suffered from manufacturers not necessarily supplying New Zealand with alternatives if we did not have clean car standards and incentives.

David Seymour: Will it be a legitimate use for a Toyota electric ute to drive it on the bike bridge that the Government announced last week, and, if not, why not?

SPEAKER: Order!

David Seymour: Point of Order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Now, I’ve ruled the question out because it involves irony. The member knows that; the member knows it’s out of order. If he’s going to really argue that it doesn’t, he’s going to have to make a pretty good argument.

David Seymour: Mr Speaker, there’s a perfectly legitimate line of questioning about the legitimacy of different use of vehicles—the Prime Minister is trying to tell New Zealanders what that is, and people want answers about what it might be. There’s also a perfectly legitimate line of questioning about the utility to be derived from the Government’s announcement of a bike bridge. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask what the scope of that bridge is. Now, I’m glad that you find it entertaining, Mr Speaker, but people at home want answers to these serious questions.

Hon Grant Robertson: Does the Prime Minister think it is possible for New Zealand to reach its climate change commitments, including those signed up to in Paris, by changing absolutely nothing about our vehicle fleet?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, in fact the majority of New Zealanders when surveyed support initiatives in this area, because—unlike the member asking the question—they do not believe that we can sit back while the world continues to move and change around us without getting in front of this issue. We are behind the rest of the world when it comes to the uptake of electric vehicles, and a good reason for that is because the price point at the point of sale is high. This is one way we can support New Zealanders, and it will reduce the lifetime cost of their vehicle. That member wants them to pay more at the pump instead.

David Seymour: If Toyota electric utes did exist, would it be legitimate to use them on the bridge recently announced by the Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

David Seymour: If Toyota electric utes did exist and they were able to be driven on that bridge, would that help raise the benefit-cost ratio for the bridge from the measly 0.4 reported in the New Zealand Herald on Friday?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Look, on the one hand I do want to applaud the ACT Party for finally agreeing that, actually, climate change exists. That’s a vast improvement on where you were 10 years ago. I sat in this House when Rodney Hide instigated a select committee to inquire into the existence of climate change. So, look, congratulations for moving on some way, but the member—at least if he wants to acknowledge that climate change exists, perhaps now is the time to actually support some initiatives that will do something about it.

David Seymour: Is this line of questioning getting under the Prime Minister’s skin?

SPEAKER: Further supplementary?

David Seymour: I’ll ask the Prime Minister: if Toyota electric utes did exist and could be driven on the bridge and it would make the bridge viable under the benefit-cost ratio, what would be the Government’s plan for disposing of all those thousands of toxic EV batteries?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: So the member, unfortunately, believes that we as a nation will be instead better off becoming the dumping ground for all of those high-emissions vehicles that other countries are currently banning. No one in New Zealand, I would have thought, would think that is a good idea. Unless we move to a combination of clean car standards and incentives, we will be the dumping ground of the rest of the world. I also note that countries that he likes to replicate—the likes of Singapore has a clean car incentive such as the one that New Zealand is proposing.

David Seymour: Could the Prime Minister please now answer my previous question: what is New Zealand’s plan for disposing of EV batteries? It’s a serious question.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, I’d be forgiven for not thinking—

Hon Michael Wood: Point of order. The member’s had a fair go, but it’s very hard to see how that question stems at all from the primary question.

SPEAKER: I think, unfortunately, because the Prime Minister was fairly fast to answer the previous question when I would have probably ruled it out, by her answer, she made the subject area broad enough for Mr Seymour to ask his question—just.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I could be forgiven for not taking the member’s question as seriously as he intended, given the nature in which he asked it. But when it comes to the issue of batteries, these of course are things that the likes of the Ministry for the Environment continue to work through. But I would still caution the member around the idea that somehow that is a reason for us to continue, as I’ve said, to be the dumping ground of vehicles that many, many other countries we import from are banning.

Hon David Parker: Is the Prime Minister aware that the lead acid batteries in cars and trucks are amongst the most recycled item on the planet, and is she as confident as the Minister for the Environment that such systems will also be used in the future for lithium ion batteries?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes.

Question No. 3—Social Development and Employment

3. TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What reports has she seen regarding the number of people receiving a main benefit?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): The monthly benefit update for May shows a further decrease in the number of people receiving a main benefit. As of 31 May, there were 357,591 people receiving a main benefit, a fall of 3,087 from April 2021. Overall, the number of people receiving a main benefit has fallen 32,010 since the end of January, and 20,484 of these people moved off the job seeker work-ready benefit. It is clear that the Government’s quick action in combatting COVID-19 has lessened the expected economic impact and kept people in jobs. We’re not out of the woods yet, but the signs are very promising.

Terisa Ngobi: What is the Government doing to get people work-ready and off a main benefit?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In the March quarter, we saw a record number of people cancel their benefit and move into work. This trend continued in May 2021, with a further 10,881 more people leaving a main benefit and moving into work. The Government has invested heavily in programmes that focus on upskilling people and getting them ready for work—Mana in Mahi, He Poutama Rangatahi, Flexi-wage, and Apprenticeship Boost have been particularly successful in getting people ready for the jobs on offer in the labour market. Budget 2021 continues this work by investing a further $99 million over two years to bolster the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD’s) front-line work-focused services to get people back into work.

Terisa Ngobi: What is the Government doing to get long-term job seekers into work?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: In the March quarter, 4,137 people who had been receiving a benefit for longer than a year exited the job seeker work-ready benefit into employment. Most people on a benefit want to work, but many have barriers to employment. The role of MSD is to find ways to overcome these barriers, and, as the numbers show, we are having some success. But we also have programmes in place to incentivise employers in taking a chance on those who are disadvantaged in the labour market. One such programme is Flexi-wage, which has placed 3,582 who are at risk of long-term benefit dependency into work since February 2021, and 97 percent of these placements have not returned to benefit.

Question No. 4—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s efforts to secure our recovery, which have been reflected in GDP increasing 1.6 percent in the first three months of 2021. Overall, the economy was 2.4 percent above where it was in the March quarter last year, outperforming the countries we compare ourselves to, such as Australia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan. While there is a lot of uncertainty on how COVID-19 will affect different parts of the global economy, our recovery plan has kept people in jobs, with unemployment in the March quarter at 4.7 percent, and supported businesses with ongoing targeted stimulus. The Government will keep its focus on keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19, accelerating our recovery, and making progress on longstanding issues such as climate change, housing, and child wellbeing.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she think New Zealanders would have expected her Government to have delivered more than just five extra acute mental health beds in the two years since she announced $1.9 billion for mental health?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: On our mental health programme, we were very clear from the outset that we wanted to focus on trying to support those New Zealanders who find themselves in our mental health system, and often at the very acute end, without necessarily having had support through primary mental health services. So we have been building those primary mental health services, and 1.4 million New Zealanders are now enrolled in primary health care with access to mental health and addiction services. They’re offering 10,000 sessions per month. Those are sessions that did not exist before. Take that alongside funding for Youthline, for our youth health services, the roll-out of health services in schools, Mana Ake and counselling services in schools—we are building the front end of mental health. When it comes to capital and bed space, the member will know well the time that takes. I understand in 2015, Minister Little, that the one programme or project that National funded took over five years to deliver. We want to do things more quickly than that, but building buildings and creating bed space does take longer.

Hon Judith Collins: Why does it take two years just to put in five extra acute mental health beds?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Under that Government, there was no business cases for any new acute mental health services. We have had to build from scratch in some areas—for instance, in the East Coast, where there have not been drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation beds, we are starting from scratch. So the member may like to reflect on her own time in office as to why we have had to do that.

Hon Judith Collins: Is she satisfied with the implementation of her $1.9 billion mental health announcement from Budget 2019 when only 0.2 percent of the funding for new facilities has been spent after two years?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Over 200 general practice sites are delivering integrated primary mental health and addiction services; over 520 fulltime-equivalents are contracted to provide services; 134,000 sessions have been delivered by new primary mental health and addiction services since our announcements; 96,000 students have access to school-based health services; 800 additional Māori and Pacific cultural competency workforce training places every year; 1,400-plus people are supported by Te Ara Oranga, the meth harm reduction programme; and 74 Māori and 18 Pacific suicide prevention initiatives have been funded. We’ve announced, as I’ve said, the expansion of Mana Ake into five new district health boards. And, yes, we have put $200 million in for new and existing mental health and addiction facilities, which we continue to work through, rolling out and building that capability.

Hon Judith Collins: Who is responsible for the failure to deliver on the $1.9 billion committed for mental health in Budget 2019 that has seen only 0.2 percent of the funding spent?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I completely reject the premise of that question.

Hon Judith Collins: Is the review into mental health funding—just announced—an admission of her Government’s failure to deliver on the mental health promises of 2019?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No, and I say again, in 2019—in 2019—we announced $1.9 billion across mental health, addiction services, and homelessness. Ten thousand sessions of care are being provided every month. We’re rolling out into schools. We are funding support for our young people. We are providing cognitive behaviour training (CBT) that never used to exist. So I totally reject the member’s suggestion that nothing has happened in this space—it is, but it takes time to build from nothing.

Hon Judith Collins: Is it fair to make tradespeople, farmers—or large families even—pay to subsidise someone who can afford a brand new $70,000 Tesla Model 3?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Actually, on that—as the member will have heard me say earlier in one of my answers—in fact, one of our designs around the scheme we have means that we’re not just creating incentives around electric vehicles and hybrids but low emissions vehicles. And that means eight out of 10 of the most popular vehicles that are purchased in the second-hand market in New Zealand either attract no fee or attract a discount. So in our mind-set, it is supporting New Zealanders to have options around vehicles that are often already popular.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with her Minister of Revenue that “We’ve made commitments that we’re not making new taxes this term”; if so, how is a $3,000 tax on a Toyota Hilux not a tax?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member well knows, of course, that if you’re able to legitimately avoid paying a fee by making a different choice, and, for instance, you’ve got an incentives regime attached, that is not the common definition of a tax. What I would also say is that on that side of the House, based on what I’ve seen, according to at least Chris Bishop, National was meant to be the party of electric vehicles. If the member is now proposing that they do not wish to have a fee regime attached, then that’s $1 billion—$1 billion—over 10 years to fund an incentives regime if it does not have a fee regime attached. I’d like to know how the National Party would pay for that.

Question No. 5—Oceans and Fisheries

5. ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour) to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: What announcements has he made about improving the sustainability of the marine environment?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): This morning, Dr Ayesha Verrall, as Acting Minister of Conservation, and I launched the Government’s plan to revitalise the Hauraki Gulf. This delivers on an election promise. The Hauraki Gulf is our busiest marine environment. It includes the Auckland port and its beaches. It’s popular for boating and fishing. It’s home to an important inshore fishery and aquaculture, as well as a vast array of biodiversity. Human activity, both on land and at sea, has placed pressure on the gulf, and we need to take action to ensure it can be enjoyed by current and future generations. The strategy actions will work alongside the essential water programme in respect of sediment issues. Sustained action in the gulf is necessary to ensure that its environmental, cultural, and economic benefits can continue to be enjoyed by future generations.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What actions does the Government’s plan to revitalise the Hauraki Gulf include?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The package includes a fisheries plan with some 50 initiatives, including a range of changes to commercial and recreational fishing practices and catch settings. Bottom trawling is being restricted to carefully selected corridors. Eighteen new marine-protected areas are to be created as part of the framework to support the active restoration of some of the most biodiverse regions in the gulf. The 18 new protected areas will increase marine protection in the gulf almost threefold. Better monitoring will improve our understanding of the marine environment and track progress over time. We are also working with mana whenua in local communities on local area coastal management in respect of local depletion issues. Promoting a prosperous, sustainable aquaculture industry will also help clean up the water. We thank all of the many thousands of Aucklanders and people around the gulf for their efforts to bring forward the sea-change plans, and the ministerial advisory committee that helped us get it to the shape in which we’ve landed.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What other changes has he made to oceans and fisheries management?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The 2016 report on behalf of the prior National Government by Mike Heron QC into Operations Achilles and Hippocamp showed significant discarding and high grading of fish. We’ll never know the exact quantity of what’s been happening, but it has been material. As a consequence, last week we made two significant announcements to remedy the problem. The first is for 300 inshore commercial fishing vessels to be fitted with on-board cameras—this delivers on another of the Government’s election commitments. On-board cameras will provide independent, accurate information about commercial fishing activity; this will provide greater certainty and transparency and more evidence on which to base decisions about policy and regulation, scientific research, fisheries, and protected species management. The roll-out will be staged to prioritise those vessels that pose the greatest risk to protected species, such as Hector’s dolphins, black petrels, and antipodean albatross. When complete, cameras will record activity on vessels responsible for about 85 percent of the commercial inshore catch by volume.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: What fisheries rules are the Government changing as a consequence of installing cameras on boats?

Hon DAVID PARKER: This is part of a wider programme where we are clamping down on discards and high grading. In general, from when these rules come into effect, a fin fish, if caught commercially, will have to be landed. This will incentivise fishers to innovate and move to more selective fishing practices in order to catch only the fish they want and to find ways to avoid catching the smaller or economically lower-value fish if they don’t want to catch them. The changes include simplifying the rules around which fish must be landed. Some of the rules are very complex for the commercial fishing sector to comply with, currently. As a consequence of the greater transparency and more simplicity of rules, we are able to move to a more graduated set of penalties that better reflect the scale of offending; sometimes those penalties are a bit over the top for minor offending, at the moment. This is part of wider work that we are doing with industry leaders to improve the outcomes for everyone, and I was gratified to see that there has been considerable support from not just environmentalists but also significant parts of the industry for the measures that we are taking.

Question No. 6—COVID-19 Response

6. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Does he stand by his statement on 17 November 2020, “when vaccines come to the market, we will be at the front of the queue for those”, and is he satisfied with New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccine roll-out?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Yes. The New Zealand Government negotiated advance purchase agreements which gave us choices, assuring us access to four different vaccines against COVID-19. We chose a Pfizer-based strategy. Now, there are a range of effective COVID-19 vaccines in use around the world, and our vaccine roll-out uses the one that has routinely received the highest efficacy estimates in the world and it has an excellent safety profile. We have secured 10 million doses, and our roll-out has seen low wastage of the vaccine and—importantly—high uptake of second doses. Although the Pfizer vaccine poses challenges such as the need for storage at ultra-low temperatures, we have worked through that in our roll-out. So we are rolling out this programme while maintaining border and public health protections that keep New Zealanders safe, and, as a result, we have seen zero community cases for more than 100 days. I have confidence in our COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.

Chris Bishop: Has she been advised as to how many people have had their second doses of the Pfizer vaccine delayed beyond the recommended three weeks—in some cases, up to eight weeks?

SPEAKER: I’m just going to remind the member that he’s asking the Minister, not the Associate Minister. But go anyway.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: No, I do not have access to that information, but if the member wants to put a request in writing, I’d happily provide it to him.

Chris Bishop: Has the Minister been advised as to how many openings of vaccination clinics have been delayed or put on hold due to a lack of vaccine supply?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: No, but the DHBs continue to track according to the targets that we have set them, and that is the main metric to which we are gauging the roll-out.

Chris Bishop: Why is the Government not able to release how many people each DHB has vaccinated in each of the four groups, or even how many people are in each group at a DHB level?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: Because the criteria for the groups aren’t necessarily things that Government has data sets on, so for—

Chris Bishop: Oh, come on.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: No, that’s true. I mean, for example, there is not necessarily a register of everyone who meets the criteria for having a chronic condition. The work to make those targets rests on estimates, and so there is not a register of that at the DHB level.

Chris Bishop: Will every resident living in an aged-care facility who wants a COVID19 vaccine get at least their first dose of the vaccine before the end of this month, as Dr Bloomfield said last week would be the case?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I’m not aware of anything that has changed since then, but I think the important thing is that the final dose of vaccines for people in aged residential care will be offered by the end of July.

Chris Bishop: Why are MPs around the Parliament being contacted by people in group 3 with underlying health conditions who have not been contacted by their DHB and who ring their GP or their DHB, who tell them they have no idea when they will be vaccinated?

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: People in group 3 include over 1.5 million people, and they will be invited to have a vaccine—given their booking appointment by the end of July.

Question No. 7—Education

7. WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland) to the Associate Minister of Education: What recent progress has she seen on providing barrier-free access to education?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education): Last week, I saw the first free period products being delivered into schools as part of the Government’s nationwide roll-out. So far, over 86,000 pads and tampons have been received by schools. Free period products are part of the wider effort to combat child poverty, help increase school attendance, and make a positive impact on student wellbeing. It follows other barrier-free access initiatives rolled out by this Government, including free healthy lunches in schools, counsellors in schools, removing school donations, and manaaki mental health and wellbeing services.

Willow-Jean Prime: What feedback has she received on the impact this programme will have?

Hon JAN TINETTI: I have spoken to many young women and girls in schools who have told me firsthand the differences this will make in their lives. One young girl last week, at Auckland Girls’ Grammar, shared a story of how it will make a difference to her and her single-parent father. The free period products will not only reduce financial stress on their household but will improve her participation and comfort in school life.

Willow-Jean Prime: What are the next steps in this programme?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The subsequent phases of this programme will include refining the distribution model so we can further improve the allocation of products where and when they are needed. This will be informed by student voice, and the aim is to be as flexible to their needs and preferences as possible. An important part of this roll-out is the programme that will involve developing educational resources to support the education, to reduce stigma, and to help our young people’s comfort in talking and dealing with their periods at school, for both our male and our female students.

Question No. 8—Health

8. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Why, as of the end of April 2021, had only 0.2 percent of the $235 million announced in Budget 2019 for capital investment in mental health and addiction facilities actually been spent?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): The $235 million was set aside for the investment into rebuilding or upgrading mental health facilities from the total Vote Health allocation of $1.1 billion for the mental health services upgrade. Health capital projects follow a detailed process, which takes time. This includes prioritisation, business case development, and design work, all before building can start. For example, the original announcement for the full rebuild of the Henry Rongomau Bennett Centre in Waikato said the facility would open in 2023. In relation to what the member says has been spent, the member should be aware that there is a timing difference between what is spent by district health boards on a capital project and what is claimed from the Ministry of Health and booked against the relevant appropriation. Claims for expenses incurred for capital projects are made at relevant milestones—for example, once the detailed business case and allocated funding has been approved, or at relevant times during the financial year. Of the five projects funded from the $235 million allocation, four are on the detailed design phase and one is still awaiting a business case. All are incurring expenditure right now, but only two have sought minimal reimbursement for preliminary work.

Matt Doocey: Why did the Ministry of Health mislead the media yesterday when it stated they couldn’t say how much had been spent on building—

Hon Grant Robertson: Point of order. I’m not sure—I think there are various Speakers’ rulings about using the phrasing that the member did in that question. I’m not sure that’s within the Standing Orders.

Nicola Willis: But only in relation to members of—

SPEAKER: Order! Who interjected then? The member will withdraw and apologise.

Nicola Willis: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And I’ll reverse out the decision I made earlier.

Matt Doocey: Speaking to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Speaking to that point of order?

Matt Doocey: Well, the reason I’m able to put that primary question is because I received from the Ministry of Health how much they actually spent, yet yesterday they told the media, when asked the same question, that they didn’t know how much—I’d call that misleading.

Hon Grant Robertson: Speaking further to the point of order. The point is that it was made as a direct assertion. Mr Doocey’s provided us with some information which may or may not be correct—we can’t see that—and I don’t think it’s with—

Nicola Willis: Ah!

SPEAKER: Who was that?

Hon Grant Robertson: It’s a repeat offender, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Who was it? Who made that noise?

Nicola Willis: I did.

SPEAKER: The member will leave the Chamber.

Nicola Willis: Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker.

Nicola Willis withdrew from the Chamber.

Matt Doocey: Would it be helpful if I slightly rephrase the question—might get through with your permission? Can I give it a go?

SPEAKER: The member can give it a go. I was tending in his direction anyway, but have a go.

Matt Doocey: That’s OK—here to help. It’s been a tough day for you guys.

SPEAKER: So the answer is, now, no. So if the member wants to use another supplementary, he can.

Matt Doocey: Why has only one new mental health facility opened since Labour came into Government almost four years ago?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: There’s a very good reason for that, and that is that apart from one facility that the previous Government approved in 2015 and that opened last year, that Government did absolutely nothing for mental health services in New Zealand. They left the mental health services in this country in an absolutely parlous state, which is why, as soon as we took office, we did a stocktake, we had a review, and we developed a plan—a $1.9 billion plan—that is a four- to five-year plan, and we are part-away through implementing that, with all the benefits that the Prime Minister has already articulated, but we are doing a plan. It is good, it is making a difference, and it is the right thing to do for vulnerable New Zealanders.

Matt Doocey: What was the point of the last mental health review, initiated by the Government in 2018, if we now need to have another review announced this morning?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The reason we had the review in 2018 is because the previous Government left mental health services in an absolutely parlous state. They just totally ignored the emerging mental health crisis in this country—they washed their hands of it. And the sad reality is that, as typically happens, Labour Governments end up picking up the pieces. But the pieces when a Government neglects mental health are the shattered lives of vulnerable New Zealanders who we are now desperately having to repair a broken system for so they get the treatment and care that they deserve.

Matt Doocey: How can New Zealanders trust the Government’s review into mental health announced by him this morning when his Government’s failure to deliver in mental health is the problem?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m happy to go through what this Government has done in the two years since the announcement of the $1.9 billion upgrade: 520 fulltime equivalent roles now added to our mental health services, 360 health improvement practitioners and health coaches in GP practices, 50 in kaupapa Māori health services, 50 in Pacific mental health services, and another several dozen in our youth mental health services. So we have added considerably to it. We’ve made the commitment to significantly upgrade or rebuild five mental health facilities because they were left in a state of neglect by the previous Government. We have done more in mental health in the last 3½ years than was done in nine years of that previous National Government.

Question No. 9—Oceans and Fisheries

9. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries: Why has the Government’s response to the Sea Change–Tai Timu Tai Pari Hauraki Gulf Marine Spatial Plan not implemented the Hauraki Gulf Forum target of protecting 30 percent of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park/Tīkapa Moana/Te Moananui-ā-Toi?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Oceans and Fisheries): The Government’s plan to revitalise the Hauraki Gulf announced today includes just under a threefold increase in marine protected areas, plus a significant reduction in the areas open to bottom trawling and Danish seine fishing, plus restrictions on scallop dredging, plus habitat restoration. All of these actions are supported by a cross-agency implementation plan, with a new monitoring and reporting approach to enable changes to this strategy if we’re not satisfied with progress. I note the Hauraki Gulf Forum today welcomed the Government’s announcement, calling it “an important first step” towards the desired 30 percent of marine area protection. Today’s announcement, in my view, is a milestone that ought not to be understated.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Were the potential impacts on commercial fishing the major reason for fully protecting only 5 percent of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Why is the Government proposing to delay legislation to establish the proposed new marine protected areas until 2024?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That, I think, is the date for completion of legislation. There are some preliminary steps that we are required to go through before introducing legislation, and then it will take its ordinary course. I would note that the process that’s been proposed is just about identical to that which the member was promoting when she was herself the Minister of Conservation. I don’t think a lot has changed since, and I thank her for her good efforts back then.

Hon Eugenie Sage: What scientific research and modelling supports the Government’s decision to allow bottom trawling to continue in some areas, against the Sea Change plan recommendation that the Government exclude activities such as dredging and bottom trawling from the gulf by 2025?

Hon DAVID PARKER: There’s significant changes being made here. Already, bottom trawling is banned on all of the inner part of the gulf. There are extensions to some of the seining methods, and, as I’ve already explained, future bottom-trawling will be limited to corridors. Those will be chosen on the basis of minimising damage to benthic environments—in other words, protecting the most important benthic environments from bottom trawling. We think that this will make significant progress. It will also enable us, through the monitoring regime, to assess the longer-term outcomes of the sites relative to each other. If we’ve got limited corridors for bottom trawling, we will be able to carry out some in-depth science as to what is the effect of bottom trawling in the areas in which it remains compared with the environmental outcomes in other areas.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Why does the Government’s strategy exclude protection of the waters around the Noises islands Ōtata, Ruapuke, and David Rocks, even though the Ōtata owners, research organisations such as Auckland Museum, and others have actively sought the protection of those waters?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That protection hasn’t been ruled out, but it hasn’t been landed yet, and work is continuing on those issues.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Will the Minister commit to further work to establish marine protected areas over at least 30 percent of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park in this term of Government; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I’m very suspicious of people who call for us to, effectively, halt and go back again and have another talk about what we might do. I’d rather get on and do what we’re doing. I really do think we should not understate the significance of what’s been announced today.

Question No. 10—Transport

10. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Minister of Transport: What recent announcements has he made about increasing the uptake of low emission vehicles?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Recently, myself and the Hon James Shaw announced our clean car package to help drive down emissions. This builds on our previous announcements of decarbonising the public transport bus fleet, revitalising rail, and our Clean Car Import Standard. We’re supporting the uptake of zero- and low-emission vehicles by making sure that electric vehicle (EV) chargers are now available every 75 kilometres along most of the State highway network, nearly quadrupling the Low Emissions Transport Fund to grow the nationwide EV charging network, setting up a clean car sector leadership group, bringing in a sustainable biofuels mandate to prevent over a million tonnes of emissions, and implementing a Clean Car Discount to help get more Kiwis into clean cars at a lower price.

Angela Roberts: Why is decarbonising the transport sector a focus for the Government?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Tackling climate change is a real priority for this Government. The transport sector currently produces 47 percent of New Zealand’s carbon dioxide emissions, and between 1990 and 2018, domestic transport emissions increased by 90 percent. Reaching New Zealand’s goal of net zero carbon by 2050 will unclog our cities, clean up our air, support the creation of new businesses in low-carbon industries, and create sustainable jobs around our country. Now is the time for New Zealand to move ahead with the transition, like the rest of the world is.

Angela Roberts: What reaction has he seen to the announcement?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The announcement has been very warmly welcomed across New Zealand and by the industry. The Motor Industry Association chief executive, David Crawford, said he was delighted, and New Zealand energy solutions—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m going to ask the Deputy Prime Minister to stop inciting a riot.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As I was just saying, the Motor Industry Association chief executive, David Crawford, said he was delighted, and New Zealand energy solutions business Vector welcomed our announcement. Automobile Association policy and research manager Simon Douglas said, “Reducing emissions from transport is going to take a mix of actions for new vehicles, used vehicles, and the fuels that vehicles already on our roads run on, and this package from the Government takes good steps on all fronts.”

Question No. 11—Transport

11. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany) to the Minister of Transport: Does he stand by all his statements and actions?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Yes, in particular our Government’s Maintaining International Air Connectivity scheme, which has helped keep trade channels open and maintain supply of time-critical goods like medicines into New Zealand. Since May last year, Government support has enabled more than 7,000 flights carrying over 136,000 tonnes of air freight, helping our economic recovery, and I can confirm there were no weapons for the Saudis on any of those flights.

Christopher Luxon: How does $785 million for the proposed Northern Pathway cycle bridge represent a better use of money than a new Ashburton bridge or fixing one of New Zealand’s deadliest roads from Te Puna to Ōmokoroa?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: As the member will be aware, the Government makes a range of initiatives across our transport system, and in the recently announced New Zealand Upgrade package, $8.9 billion of investment has been made across road, rail, and walking and cycling initiatives. This Government does believe that if we want good transport outcomes for all New Zealanders, we have to invest across all of those modes. Unlike the previous Government, we don’t believe that a four-lane motorway is a solution to every transport problem.

Christopher Luxon: How would the proposed $785 million Northern Pathway cycle bridge shorten commutes for tradies stuck in gridlock and help older Aucklanders get to their appointments on time?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: The member, for an intelligent member, in his question displays an incredible immaturity in terms of how transport policy—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. That is not an appropriate way to start—[Interruption] I’ve got little hair to tear out, but when I’m trying to assist the members in getting the Minister to answer in an appropriate way, their support is counterproductive. The Minister will withdraw and apologise and start his answer again.

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I withdraw and apologise. A transport policy that supports good outcomes for everyone will actually bring together different modes. And so just saying, “Does a particular transport project in a particular part of the city affect an individual?” is not the way to develop an integrated transport policy. What we need to do in our congested cities is actually turn around the failed policies of the past, where all we’ve focused on has been building roads. That is what has got us into the current mess that we are in. And if we continue doing it, we will get the same outcomes. That is why this Government does have a policy of investing across the modes including road, including rail, and including walking and cycling. And the message for people who are stuck on those roads is that every single person on Auckland roads, Wellington roads, Christchurch roads around the country that we get on to public transport, that we get on to walking and cycling, is one less person congesting the road that that tradie is stuck on.

Christopher Luxon: Will the estimated 3,000 daily users of the $785 million Northern Pathway cycleway seriously drive transport mode shift for a city of 1.7 million people?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Firstly, the member has used a statistic which is 40 percent below the estimate that has in fact been provided by Waka Kotahi. But the key point that I wish to make is that solving the transport problems that we have in New Zealand that have built up over many decades will take a range of investments. So in terms of the New Zealand Upgrade package, of which the Northern Pathway is one point, we have $2.5 billion of investments in South Auckland as well, including investments in State Highway 1—

SPEAKER: Order! The member’s answered the question.

Christopher Luxon: Can he guarantee that the $785 million cost will not be increased further in light of the twentyfold increase in costs since Labour candidate Michael Wood announced in 2017 that the SkyPath project would cost $30 million?

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: I can give the member confidence in the robustness of the figures that have been produced, but the member might like to talk to some others about the long history of transport projects in this country, including the roads of national significance, which required an additional $2.5 billion of investment to be delivered under that previous Government.

SPEAKER: That concludes oral questions.

Tāmati Coffey: Mr Speaker?

SPEAKER: Sorry? [Interruption] Sorry, Tāmati Coffey. I apologise. I was just sort of looking forward to getting on to the next business.

Question No. 12—Statistics

12. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Statistics: How is she ensuring that Statistics New Zealand increases the data capability and capacity of iwi-Māori?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Associate Minister of Statistics): I am working with Statistics New Zealand to support the growth of iwi Māori data capability and capacity by ensuring that the department works collaboratively in a community-led manner, to design and test engagement activities aimed at increasing participation within specified communities; by developing an approach to enable iwi-led collection and analysis of census data; and by co-designing products and services that will be of value to Māori, using Census 2023 data. We’re also working with iwi Māori, including on the co-design of a Māori data governance model to develop an approach to data governance that reflects Māori needs and interests. Why? Because what’s good for Māori is good for all.

Tāmati Coffey: How is Budget 2021 helping to increase iwi Māori data capability and capacity?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Budget 2021 continues this commitment towards iwi Māori data capability and capacity building, with a particular focus on Census 2023. The $14.08 million secured in Budget 2021 will enable Statistics New Zealand, in partnership with iwi Māori, to collect census data in two geographical areas of approximately 10,000 dwellings each. This will ensure capability and capacity is built in two key areas—data collection and data analytics. This approach is an important pilot that will help to strengthen enduring ways for the Crown and iwi to work together on co-design and delivering together. Delivering with Māori means delivering for all.

Tāmati Coffey: What data announcements has the Minister seen in relation to partnership with iwi Māori?

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI: Today, Statistics New Zealand and Data Iwi Leaders Group have jointly released the 2018 iwi affiliation estimated counts to help fill gaps that currently exist within the data system for iwi. Under the Mana Ōrite Relationship Agreement signed between Statistics New Zealand and the Data Iwi Leaders Group of the National Iwi Chairs Forum, we’re aspiring towards systemic changes to ensure that iwi Māori have equitable access and responsibility in relation to the data system. Alongside this mahi, and with the support of Statistics New Zealand, the Data Iwi Leaders Group have created the data platform Te Whata, an online storehouse of data designed to make iwi data more relevant, accessible, and useful to iwi.

Urgent Debates Declined

Revitalising the Gulf—Government Strategy

SPEAKER: I’ve received a letter from the Hon Eugenie Sage and Chlöe Swarbrick seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the release by the Government of Revitalising the Gulf—Government action on the Sea Change Plan. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. The test for whether a matter requires the immediate attention of the House is a high one. The matter is, undoubtedly, an important one. The strategy is to be implemented over time, and there will be further opportunities to debate the success of each element of it. Implementing parts of the strategy requires legislation. While the application comes close, it does not have a sufficient element of urgency to warrant setting aside the business of the House today. The application is therefore declined. It could, however, be the subject of an application to the Business Committee for a special debate.

Bills

Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill.

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

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill.

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[To the powers, to the voices, to the esteemed leaders, greetings, greetings, greetings to us all.]

I am grateful to be able to speak to the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. In December last year, the Crown was invited to Rangitihi Marae in Matatā to sign a deed of settlement with Ngāti Rangitihi—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sorry to interrupt the Minister. Would all those members who are leaving do so quietly and quickly. Thank you.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Ngā mihi, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Crown was, in December last year, invited to Rangitihi Marae in Matatā to sign a deed of settlement with Ngāti Rangitihi, and I was humbled to have the privilege to be able to stand on the marae that day and not only sign the deed of settlement but to apologise on behalf of the Crown for its acts and admissions that prejudiced Ngāti Rangitihi.

I want to begin with a few acknowledgments. Firstly, to the members of Ngāti Rangitihi in the gallery this afternoon, and in particular, their lead negotiator, Leith Comer. Tēnā koe, Leith. Leith and his team have put in a lot of hard work to get us to this point. Kei te mihi ki a koutou. I want to acknowledge the people, both past and present, who made the claims that this bill pertains to, and kept the fires burning. It’s been a long time coming. I especially want to acknowledge those Ngāti Rangitihi tīpuna who are no longer with us to see their claims settled. I’d also like to acknowledge the effort of chief Crown negotiator Katherine Gordon, and those people from the Crown who worked alongside her, and, of course, Te Arawhiti.

Finally, I want to acknowledge two rangatiratanga who have left us since the deed’s signing. I want to acknowledge Stephen Ihaka, who acted as a cultural adviser to the Crown for many years. Stephen was involved in facilitation and cultural support throughout the settlement, often during some of the more difficult times. Most recently, Stephen led the Crown party on to Rangitihi Marae at the deed signing in December last year. We were very grateful to have him with us on that day and watch him delight in the festivities of the day. I do believe that was the last official engagement on behalf of the Crown that Stephen took, and I have to say he is deeply missed by myself and, I know, many others.

I want to acknowledge also Allan Skipwith, the chair of Tūhourangi Tribal Authority. Tūhourangi are close neighbours to Ngāti Rangitihi. Throughout Ngāti Rangitihi settlement negotiations, their relationship was tested and strained, but ultimately improved, and no small part due to Allan’s measured yet firm leadership. And I enjoyed meeting him, I enjoyed his company. He was a very wise man and we are here in part because of the contribution that he has made to getting this agreement and this settlement.

Moe mai rā e ngā rangatira, moe mai, moe mai.

[Rest in peace, oh leaders, rest in peace, rest in peace.]

For generations, the people of Ngāti Rangitihi have sought redress for breaches of the Treaty by the Crown that have hurt them and harmed them. From the 1960s, they’ve made petitions, submissions, and claims to seek redress for Treaty breaches. This settlement contains Crown acknowledgements of an apology for well-founded breaches of the Treaty and its principles. The Crown acknowledges it breached its Treaty obligations when it failed to protect the tribal structures of Ngāti Rangitihi, failed to always act in good faith when leasing and purchasing Ngāti Rangitihi land blocks, failed to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from becoming virtually landless, failed to protect the Tarawera Awa, failed to actively protect te reo Māori and to encourage its use, failed to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from the impact of high survey costs, and failed to act in good faith by taking excessive land at Te Ariki for public works purposes.

The settlement provides for 19 sites of deep significance to be transferred to Ngāti Rangitihi as cultural redress on settlement date. These include two properties to Te Tapahoro Bay—the beating heart of the Ngāti Rangitihi rohe—two properties in and around the Waimangu Volcanic Valley, and five properties at Matatā. An important element of the settlement for Ngāti Rangitihi is the natural resources arrangement over the Tarawera Awa. The settlement establishes the Tarawera Awa Restoration Strategy Group that will operate as a permanent joint committee of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council. The Tarawera Awa Restoration Strategy Group will support, coordinate, and promote the integrated restoration of the mauri and the wellbeing of the Tarawera River catchment. A settlement also provides $500,000 to help enhance the mauri of, and Ngāti Rangitihi’s relationship with, the Tarawera Awa.

The settlement provides statutory acknowledgements and deeds of recognition over four areas, including the Tarawera Awa, and statutory acknowledgements over seven areas. A whenua rāhui is provided over the Lake Tarawera Historic Reserve and part of the Lake Tarawera Scenic Reserve. A total and commercial redress for Ngāti Rangitihi is about $11.3 million plus interest. This consists of a share of Crown forest land in the central North Island, valued at $7.3 million, paid on account in 2011, and $4 million in financial redress.

It’s the Crown’s wish that through this settlement it can restore its honour and atone for its past injustices that it has inflicted on Ngāti Rangitihi. No settlement can ever truly atone for this wrongdoing or compensate for the hurt Ngāti Rangitihi have endured, but I hope that this settlement will be a starting point, signalling a new, strengthened relationship between Ngāti Rangitihi and the Crown, based on cooperation, mutual trust, and true respect for the Treaty and its principles. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): It is an honour to rise, as the member of Parliament for Southland and the spokesman for Treaty negotiations for the National Party, to speak on the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill.

Kia ora e koro mā, e kui mā, e rau rangatira mā, e ngā Ngāti Rangitihi, tēnā koutou, nau mai, haere mai ki te rā whakahirahira.

[Greetings to the elders, male and female, the esteemed leaders, those of Ngāti Rangitihi, greetings to you all, welcome, welcome to this significant day.]

It is a privilege to speak on this first reading of the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. I’d certainly like to extend a very warm welcome to everyone from Ngāti Rangitihi who has come here to witness this historic occasion here today, in Parliament. Welcome to the whānau and hapū of Ngāti Rangitihi. This legislation and this process is about you, your tūpuna, and uri.

I note that this bill completes the settlement process which began under former Treaty negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson, under the last National-led Government. I want to acknowledge the Hon Andrew Little, who has completed this as the present Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations. I also recognise the settlement negotiators for the Crown and for Ngāti Rangitihi, who, through their efforts, have shaped an agreement that helps to build a brighter future for the iwi and subsequent future generations.

On a personal note, I spent a short part of my childhood living near the shores of Lake Tarawera, looking across to Mount Tarawera, and I travelled on the school bus past the gates of the very village every day. The stories of the approximately 110 lives that were lost and the villages that were destroyed when Mount Tarawera erupted in 1886 made a deep impression on me as a child, as did the stories of what preceded that and what happened afterwards.

It’s an honour to stand here today, to be part of recognising the wrongs that were visited upon Ngāti Rangitihi following the eruption, when the people of Ngāti Rangitihi were already devastated by the effects of that eruption; to be here today to be a small part of righting the wrongs of the past, to strengthen the present relationship with the Crown and iwi, and provide some redress, which will help create a stronger base for Ngāti Rangitihi to expand on its economic potential.

I note Te Rangitihi the man was the eponymous ancestor of the iwi that became known as Te Arawa, and his eight children became known as the eight bleeding hearts of Rangitihi, pumanawa e waru. All of the children became the founders of significant iwi in their own right.

This bill reorients the relationship with the Crown and Ngāti Rangitihi towards the future. Through this legislation, the Crown recognises and apologises for the many historical injustices wrought upon Ngāti Rangitihi through its failure to uphold its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi. Crucially, the Crown commits itself to renewed and strengthened partnership with Ngāti Rangitihi.

An immensely valuable aspect of all Treaty settlement legislation is the enactment of the historical account. Minister Andrew Little today has laid out the historical events that led us to today; allow me, however, to draw attention to four aspects of the account. The Crown promoted land laws in the 1860s which individualised the tribal land tenure of Māori. Between the 1870s and the 1890s, the Native Land Court investigated the areas where Ngāti Rangitihi claimed interest. The court system involved significant costs for Ngāti Rangitihi, particularly for surveying. Although Ngāti Rangitihi rangatira protested against the outcomes of many court decisions, the Crown largely ignored those complaints. In the 1910s, the Crown drained the Rangitāiki swamp, depleting Ngāti Rangitihi of food resources. The drainage led to the neglect of two Ngāti Rangitihi urupā and degraded the mauri of Te Awa o te Atua. From 1954, Crown legislation allowed the Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. to discharge waste, which caused heavy pollution to the Tarawera River and Lake Rotoitipaku.

Despite the many challenges that Ngāti Rangitihi have faced, I want to acknowledge that they maintain a history of loyal military service in support of the Crown, which continued into the 20th century, with Ngāti Rangitihi serving in many countries and suffering through combat and disease. And it’s a particular moment to acknowledge that here today in the House. It’s a great sacrifice that your tūpuna made for our country.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Ngāti Rangitihi faced poor housing conditions and lower levels of education and employment than Pākehā. They recall being punished for speaking te reo Māori in schools. Those conditions, along with the alienation of their customary lands, had a devastating impact on Ngāti Rangitihi’s social and economic development, and cultural hauora. In a spirit aimed at genuine hope for reconciliation in this bill, the Crown acknowledges its failure to protect the tribal structures of Ngāti Rangitihi, its failure to act in good faith when leasing and purchasing Ngāti Rangitihi land blocks, its failure to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from becoming virtually landless, its failure to protect the Tarawera River from pollution, its failure to actively protect te reo Māori and encourage its use among Ngāti Rangitihi, and its failure to protect Ngāti Rangitihi from excessive surveyor costs, and by failing to act in good faith, by taking excessive land at Te Ariki for public work purposes.

The Ngāti Rangitihi settlement package includes a total financial and commercial redress of $11,334,820 plus interest. Nineteen sites have been transferred to the iwi as cultural redress, and three place names have been changed for the settlement legislation.

Mr Speaker, and te iwi of Ngāti Rangitihi, it is not possible to fully compensate Ngāti Rangitihi for the loss they have endured and the mamae of their ancestors. However, I hope and I trust that this settlement will forge a new relationship with the Crown and Ngāti Rangitihi, and will be a real catalyst for positive change for our present and future generations of Ngāti Rangitihi. Today, I hope, is a day for the heart of Ngāti Rangitihi to beat strongly with pride. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker.

Ko te manu

He kaikōkiri ata

He pānui māna

Mō te ao katoa

Kia mōhio ai

te nuinga o te whenua

Kua tata mai rā

Ka awatea.

[The bird

Calls in the morning

It has an announcement

For the whole world

So that they know

That in most of the land

Daylight

Is near.]

Today is a new day for Ngāti Rangitihi. It’s a new day on what has been a very, very long journey for them, and I want to acknowledge them today in the gallery for coming here, for traversing Te Ika-a-Māui to end up here in our House, in your House, on this very, very auspicious day. So thank you for being here.

Can I note that on the long journey to this point, we were talking not long ago about Wai 7. We were talking about the Central North Island Forest Land Collective. We were talking about, just at the end of last year, signing the deed of settlement over in Matatā, at the marae, and how significant all of those occasions have been. But my friends, my relations, the journey is not yet over. We have a bit of processing that we need to do in this House, and until that happens, we won’t be able to finally tick it off.

But we are involved in a process, and I do want to thank the chair of Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi, Leith Comer, for the work that you’ve done. Leith, it’s not an easy journey, jumping through the Government hoops, but your career in the Public Service has served you well, and you have guided our iwi to this House today. Can I also acknowledge the other trustees, Merepeka, Cathy; the negotiators, Ken, Tīpene, Del; and can I also acknowledge the officers from Te Arawhiti, who do a brilliant job in trying to mirimiri and manaaki through a process which has its ups and downs.

Can I mention as well that Rangitihi have a very special place in Te Arawa. We identify as Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru o Te Arawa. They are the children, the eight children, of Rangitihi. They are Rātōrua, Tāuruao, Rangiwhakaekeau, Rangiaohia, Rākeiao, Kawatapuarangi, Apumoana, and Tuhourangi.

Mr Speaker, anei tētehi uru o Tūhourangi e tū ake nei, e mihi atu nei ki a koutou, ōku hoa moenga.

[Mr Speaker, this is a descendant of Tūhourangi standing before you, greetings to you all, my bed fellows.]

That’s a line that we sing in one of our waiata—our waiata poroporoaki, our waiata aroha—about a significant event that we were both involved in, both Ngāti Rangitihi and Tūhourangi, back in 1886 in the pahūtanga o Tarawera maunga—the eruption of Tarawera—which, to this date, happened 135 years ago and about a week. So our whānau travelled to the top of Mount Tarawera to pay their respects and to remember those of our whānau that died in that eruption.

It’s beholden on me as a descendent of Monita Te Kitua and his wife, Ngakawhena, who proudly sits there in our whakapapa but who passed away in the eruption at Tarawera. Since then, there has been a relationship that has gone on between Tūhourangi and Ngāti Rangitihi which has stood us in good stead, even up until today, and our Minister, as he stood before, did a mihi to Alan Skipwith, who was crucial in helping to navigate some of those issues, those border issues that are so fraught in this House when we start talking about things like overlapping claims. Actually, the good relationship between Tūhourangi and Ngāti Rangitihi meant that we navigated that with mana and with dignity. So I want to acknowledge the late Alan Skipwith and the part that he had to play in this as well.

There are a lot of stories to come out of this, and as we move this bill through the Māori Affairs Committee, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other and sharing in those stories that are yet to be told. Through the submissions hearing process, we’ll put the call out, and anybody that wants to put in a submission is able to. We’ll hear about those people that are very supportive of the bill, and there may even be some people that aren’t very supportive, and that will create an opportunity for them to be able to come forward and be heard.

A precedent that we set when we listened to the submission hearings for our Moriori whānau on Rēkohu on Wharekauri, on the Chatham Islands, was that we went to the Moriori marae to listen to their submission hearings. It’s new territory, because I can understand that a very risk-averse Government process would not want to go to one particular marae for fear of alienating another particular iwi, or something like that, and so it’s been standard practice to go to the local hotel—not that there’s any in Matatā. Anyway. Or even the local rugby club—we could head there as well.

But I’m going to be supportive, and I’ll be talking to the whānau and also our members of our select committee about actually going to the marae. There’s only one that we want to go to, and I think it’s appropriate that we go there. The main thing is that we’re able to create a safe space for those submission hearings to be heard, and I hope that we can work together to try and create that outcome and that safe space that’s necessary for a process like this. I look forward to hearing the various submissions and the different pūrākau, the different kōrero that will come out of this inevitably, but most of all I look forward to tracking this through to the second and, eventually, the third reading.

I had a question before from Auntie Cathy, and her question was: what will happen—she had concern about, through the process, our ability to block this Treaty settlement, and I was able to let her know that, generally, when a Treaty settlement comes to this House, actually, it has already done a pretty thorough due diligence process by the iwi but by also our Crown officials through Te Arawhiti, and this Treaty settlement is no different.

There is a process that we have to go through though, and we’ll do that, but the intention at the outset is to support this bill through the House, because, as we mentioned before, it’s been a long process just to get to this point right now. So we will go forward with good faith and listen to people that want to be heard. Our select committee is made up of various members from across the House. We have members of the National Party, members of the Green Party, and a member from the Māori Party. But, actually, you’re in good hands as we go through this process.

So I know, in the select committee process, that we’re going to flesh through all of the detail that’s considered in this very hefty piece of legislation right here, but if this is the product of the due diligence, if this is what the iwi want, then, actually, it’s up to us not just to ensure that there’s a good process but to actually ensure that it moves through so that we can sign it off and we can put to rest an injustice and a hē. Hopefully, through identifying that, through fleshing out some of the details, talking about the good stuff and the bad stuff, we’ll get to a place of enlightenment, of māramatanga, and the ability for the iwi to move forward and achieve their aspirations, which is really about the oranga of the iwi—the oranga of the iwi. Whether it’s the oranga of reo, of tikanga, of hauora, we want to create through this process an avenue for them to be able to realise their own aspirations for the uri of Ngāti Rangitihi that they have so desperately wanted for a very long time.

So whānau, let’s get this show on the road. I look forward to the process. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): I just want to acknowledge the Ministers who’ve been involved in this: obviously, Minister Chris Finlayson, no longer in this Parliament, and Andrew Little. More than that though, I want to acknowledge the Crown negotiator, Leith Comer, and, of course, iwi Ngāti Rangitihi, who I see here today and wish them well. I don’t want to take long on this bill. I acknowledge what the previous speaker, Tāmati Coffey has said, which is that this will get a good and thorough airing at committee. And I share with him the aspiration that it may indeed go into the rohe and local marae there and that the process will go well throughout that.

I really just want to make two points. And the first one really is that, of course, National, as we have in many debates on Māori-Crown issues, relationships, and so on—we have from the very beginning, as it were, supported the historical Treaty settlement process. And of course, whether it’s been the partnership really of Jim Bolger and Doug Graham or John Key, Bill English, and Chris Finlayson, we have strongly believed in this process. And the reason for that is—in this country there may be a small group of outliers who disagree, but I think there is in place, in this Parliament, a strong and a clear consensus that real wrongs were done in the 1850s, 1860s, 1870s in this land. They created very clear, real grievances, and it is right, it is just, it’s the only thing we can do to apologise as this deed of settlement does and, to some extent—and I say “to some extent”—right the wrongs of the past. And I say “to some extent” because, of course, what is true here is that the quantums, the recompense in kind, in no way come close to the real damage that was done in the past. And that’s true across the Treaty settlements; they are but a fraction of the real economic, social, and cultural harm that has been done. And there’s a bunch of reasons for that that, you know, I don’t need to go into. We may question—and indeed I will tomorrow at the Māori Affairs Committee with Minister Kelvin Davis—the extent to which contemporary claims, contemporary issues, ongoing things that happen by the Government, may be right and proper, but we certainly believe in this process as right. But I digress.

The second thing I wanted to say is, of course, that this bill in relation to Ngāti Rangitihi is part of that historic Treaty settlement process I have spoken of and I just really want to say we could run through the bill but it is there; we could run through the history, which is set out, I’m sure, at a level adequately, but to make the point, I think, quite simply, your rohe and the area that you are from are some of the most beautiful parts—if not the most beautiful—of New Zealand and, indeed, the world we know. I’ve always grown up with beaches and, of course, I love Mount Maunganui beach, but my wife as a pom likes lakes—and I think quite simply Lake Tarawera and also your Blue and Green Lakes are the most beautiful lakes in New Zealand. I think they’re the most beautiful lakes in the world. In the last year, I’ve been in them and at them several times. We stay sometimes on Te Mu Road. I’d like to buy a place on Spencer Road but it’s too expensive. Properties on the lakeside are about two million dollars and up, thanks to the policies of Kris Faafoi and his Government, but we won’t get into that. I do just make the simple point that it’s, I think, a wonderful part of this world of ours, a real favourite of mine. I always reflect when I’m at Lake Tarawera that it has a real magical and spiritual quality to it. You can feel it simply by being there.

So I want to give iwi here today the clear assurance that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition, the National Party, are fully supportive of this process, of this bill. We wish it well and the speed that the Minister has urged upon it in his first reading and we are looking forward to participating constructively as it goes through committee. Kia ora.

ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, and tēnā tātou katoa, ngā uri o Ngāti Rangitihi. It’s a pleasure to rise today to speak as part of this debate on what is your bill and the bill that sets out and gives effect to the deed of settlement which represents so many years of negotiation between your rangatira and the Crown.

You heard from my colleague Tāmati Coffey—who is the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, which will hear this bill—that it’s been a long process just to get to this point. And I want to reflect on that before I make my substantive points about this bill. It has been a long process which, your deed of settlement recognises, began with petitions, submissions, and claims to seek redress for Treaty breaches from your tūpuna dating back to the 1860s. In 1878, Arama Karaka petitioned the Government for a rehearing of the Haehaenga block, which was, effectively, confiscated by the Native Land Court, and that was the first of the recorded petitions to the Crown which fell on deaf ears.

In 1881, Niheta Kaipara petitioned the Crown regarding the unfair purchase of Kaingaroa, and the Crown’s response—it wasn’t long, and it included the phrase “if the petitioners have any grievance, which is very unlikely, it is against their own people.”

In 1888, Takawheta, Niheta, and others asked for a rehearing in the Native Land Court of all of those blocks, and the petitions went on. But it’s the submission of Raureti Mokonuiārangi and 17 others of Ngāti Rangitihi to the Premier in 1899 which I want to focus on. That submission was about all of those injustices and more. In April 1899, Raureti petitioned the Minister of Native Affairs and lands on behalf of those in Ngāti Rangitihi who had not sold Ruawahia. They repeated their request for the succession of the Crown’s purchase of Ruawahia, and Ngāti Rangitihi noted that the block was under the provisions of the thermal springs Act 1881, meaning that the owners could not enter into any alienation of their land, except with the Crown, and that some owners had sold their interests to the Crown.

I want to read for the House what that petition said, because it is with this spirit that I’m so proud to stand here and say that what the Crown gave as a response to those petitioners and those submitters was wrong. They said, “Be assured to us, because our thoughts are permanently attached to the places where our ancestors and parents who have passed away from us lie (buried), it is the mountain of parting for all the Hapūs of the Arawa. We cannot stop a person from selling land, seeing that the way is open for the Government to acquire land, therefore we ask the Government to have some regard for us and that you two put a stop to this, so that those who desire to sell may not be able to do so.”

That’s the history which we look back to today and acknowledge the tīpuna of the people in the gallery, who have been so engaged with the Crown, who have come not just from those meetings and those organisations within their own community who oppose those sales of land, they have reached out to the decision-makers here in Wellington to make their case so articulately about why the land is important and why it is foundational to their identity. It’s an honour to be able to say that this bill goes some way to addressing those wrongs and establishes again the identity and the cultural connection in law which should have always been in place.

Let me talk briefly about the Te Ariki isthmus. It’s particularly important, and I want to draw the House’s attention to the effect of the deed of settlement between the Crown and Ngāti Rangitihi in relation to the Te Ariki isthmus, because this puts a wrong right around public works takings, which are particularly important for the Crown to acknowledge. In that case, this land, which links Lake Tarawera with Lake Rotomahana, is approximately 100 acres. It was taken by the Crown in 1908, even though the Crown knew that it was a burial site and that it was of particular significance because of the pā built around the lakes. It was also taken under false pretence, and it was never used in the way that the Crown intended it to be used at the time that it was taken.

What’s important to acknowledge here is that these land takings and findings in the Native Land Court were not just about private sales of land to settlers in the area and that the Crown was actively involved in confiscations for public works, not for the reasons that they represented to those native landowners who had prior rights to that area. It’s particularly important for the Crown to acknowledge those wrongs and to put those on the record very squarely as things that we would not accept again.

The second point I’d like to make is about how Ngāti Rangitihi might move forward under this self-determined rangatiratanga, and particularly around the Te Arawa mandate. The deed of settlement acknowledges that there is significant overlap between Ngāti Rangitihi and other Te Arawa groups, and that the Treaty settlement negotiations between the Crown and other Te Arawa groups from 2003 to 2008 prompted Ngāti Rangitihi to challenge matters of mandate and redress in those negotiations that impacted upon them. The tradition of petitioning the Government and submitting here in Wellington continues. There were urgent Tribunal inquiries brought by Ngāti Rangitihi, and there were ongoing negotiations, but that advocacy by your leaders led to the assertion of customary interests in those areas.

This is not a matter of tribal politics, but it’s supported by kōrero whakapapa and in well-documented evidence: things like the submission in 1891 of Mikaere Heretaunga, who was a chief of Ngāti Rangitihi, who said during the Ruawāhia hearing that “I know the boundaries of Rakeiao’s and Apumoana’s land. I live at Ngaharete on this block. I was born on it, but have lived at Ōkataina and Ngaharete, two places on it. The greater part of the lands of Rakeiao and Apumoana was outside this block. All this land was one, and the forest given to Huikai had its boundary at Karamea and Waitangi, outside this block. Ōkataina was awarded to the descendants of Rakeiao, Ngāti Tarawhai, descendants of Ngātoroirangi; they are not Tūhourangi. They are descendants of Rangitihi. Tūhourangi laid down the western side of this block as their tribal boundary. Ngāti Rangitihi are not a hapū of Tūhourangi but an independent tribe of chiefs. At the fight of Te Tumu, Ngāti Rangitihi and Ngāti Tarawhai were not considered hapū of Tūhourangi. Rangitihi was the father of Tūhourangi.” It’s that point that I wish to make when we go into the Māori Affairs Committee and we consider who this settlement is for and why it’s important for Ngāti Rangitihi to have acknowledged in cultural redress and in their statutory acknowledgments the importance of Ngāti Rangitihi mana as being separate from that of their cousins.

The third point I want to make very briefly is—after making that point about their independence—the collectivism of Ngāti Rangitihi, and it’s something to be celebrated. It’s evidenced in the Central North Island (CNI) Forests Iwi Collective settlement, affectionately known as the “Treelords” deal, following the Sealord deal. That settlement is unique in that it’s eight iwi in the CNI, but procedural problems have meant that Ngāti Rangitihi hasn’t been able to assert their cultural interest in the forest as other iwi have. This settlement represents a significant step forward in that process, and it’s important because those cultural rights are significant. Statutory acknowledgments are meaningful, and the value of those is immeasurable. They’re things like the whenua rāhui over the lakes, but they’re also the acknowledgment of Ngāti Rangitihi’s relationship with the central North Island forests going back many generations. That has practical implications for things like the discovery of taonga. The deed of settlement creates a protocol for Ngāti Rangitihi to claim those taonga which are found on public and private lands within lands that they have a cultural linkage with. And the effect of having those taonga—of not having to fight for those taonga to be returned to them—cannot be underplayed.

So it has been a long process. And to those in the gallery, I want to acknowledge each one of you for coming along today to see what is a historic step. Now that we go into the select committee, I want all of you to feel welcomed and to feel a part of the process, because it is your process, particularly those young people who have come here today, because for you, this is the oranga of the iwi and this is your future. Tēnā tātou katoa, ngā mihi mahana ki a koutou.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. I too would like to mihi to the people from Ngāti Rangitihi who are in the House today for all of their work to bring their settlement to this point for their people. I acknowledge that this has early origins of 1860s that this process today can whakapapa back to, and that even for the negotiation of this specific agreement that has been reached with the Crown, the mandate was sought in 2010. Here we are, in 2021—11 years on—and the slog of that work, when it’s about the very essence of who you are and the future for your people, I really think needs to be acknowledged.

I stand here as the Greens’ spokesperson on Te Tiriti o Waitangi. In first readings, we always acknowledge and put on record that the Crown and the representatives have breached Te Tiriti o Waitangi—and continue to—and that, from our perspective, this process is another breach of the sovereignty of hapū. We believe that there must be resolution and restitution that does honour to the harm that was done and that continues to be done, which is why we never believe that these settlements, as hard fought for as they are, should be considered full or final. This is a step in our history of partnership, and we have a vision of a fuller and more honouring partnership in the future where we truly acknowledge the sovereignty of hapū.

In this speech, I want to be specific to the experience of Ngāti Rangitihi. I want to start by acknowledging the points that guided the negotiation as articulated by Ngāti Rangitihi, which were the aspirations for kaitiakitanga, manaakitanga, rangatiratanga, and the desire to restore the mauri—the health and spiritual wellbeing—of all those places in their rohe that contribute to the healthy environment for their people; to restore the health and wellbeing of the Tarawera River system, which is synonymous with the health and wellbeing of Ngāti Rangitihi; and to take an integrated approach to the management of our natural, physical, cultural, and historical resources. I want to start by acknowledging those guiding principles and the contrast between those principles and the historical actions of the Crown to seize land, to have that philosophy of man over nature about economic output at the cost of all else, and facilitating, in effect, at the heart of it, the destruction of the land that supports us. How much we could learn from actually taking our guidance from those aspirations and that world view, as so beautifully articulated by Ngāti Rangitihi.

I want to acknowledge within that too the really obvious generosity of taking those aspirations as the starting point within the negotiation, which required being able to set aside the pain of seeing the land that you are part of destroyed to the point where Tarawera Awa was considered dead, the people and the atua desecrated. To set that pain aside with the aspirations and the hope for the future is phenomenal generosity and extraordinary leadership that I really wish would filter in to the thinking of everybody in this House, and I acknowledge how much I have to learn in that process.

So to touch on just a few of the points in terms of the history that are acknowledged in this settlement, one of the starting points I want to acknowledge is that Ngāti Rangitihi were part of the Te Arawa inter-hapū hui that agreed not to sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi at the time or to accept the authority of the Crown, while they still actively engaged with the emerging colonial economy. I want to just remind people that may think that Māori have benefited from colonisation and that things have come out super-well—just on those points right there—Māori were able to have sovereignty and engage in the economy and trading, and were global participants, which is not quite what’s been represented recently.

Then, in 1866, there were large-scale Crown confiscations, and I also want to point out that there are several key things for me even in this settlement where the use of language is, I believe, important. As a voice for responsible Kāwanatanga, I want to put on record that “confiscation”, which is what the phrasing is in relation to public works taking, is trying to put lipstick on a pig. It was theft. I believe that a true apology would be honest about what has happened, and to refer to confiscations when my association with confiscation is when I had been really badly behaved in class at school and the teacher had confiscated the thing I was messing around with because I’d done something wrong—that was not the scenario. This was Crown theft of Māori land, and I really look forward to that future we will have where we can be honest about our history and we will be able to shape a different future.

In response, the pathway that was offered for Ngāti Rangitihi and other iwi and hapū to be able to try and resolve or address or complain about those confiscations was the Native Land Court. That was an institution established by the Crown that was putting out results and rulings that benefited the Crown, which, again, for me brings back, too, a fundamental problem with this House signing off and having a final say on settlements. When sovereignty was not ceded, why does this House have the final say? I do believe that we need to have that constitutional conversation and consideration of the recommendations in the work prompted by Matike Mai to work to a process that actually enables settlements to be truly agreed and finalised by the relevant parties, being hapū and the Crown.

While it was mentioned by a previous member that this is about historical breaches going back into the 1800s, actually, we know that those public works takings were in the 1900s and that a huge amount of land was taken at that time. Then the Rangitaiki Swamp was drained in the 1910s. That had a massive impact on the food base, as well as damaging urupā and the mauri of Te Awa o Te Atua, and that cannot be ignored. Even then, in 1954, Crown legislation allowed Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. to discharge waste, with heavy pollution of Te Tarawera Awa and Lake Rotoitipaku. These are not way back in the mists of time. The breaches from the 1800s are carried by people today, and the breaches are far more recent than so much of our discussion in this country would suggest.

The Greens are very happy to support this as the best that is possible at that time, and we call out to our fellow tangata Tiriti to consider the process to do better. But I want to thank, again, Ngāti Rangitihi for their generosity and leadership.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well, thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT on what is a very special day. We want to support the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill, as ACT has always supported these bills. The reason for that, very simply, is that we believe very firmly in due process, the rule of law, and private property rights. We acknowledge that in the case of Ngāti Rangitihi and many other iwi up and down New Zealand over two centuries, we haven’t done a particularly good job in following due process, respecting the rule of law, or protecting private property rights. Bills like these go a tiny way to redressing that. I note in the legislation it tells us that there are around 5,000 people who are claimants of this settlement. There’s around $11 million that is being transferred in terms of value, and if you put that together, it’s simple mathematics: it’s around about $2,000 per person. That may sound like a lot of money, but, actually, it’s important to remember it’s for eternity, and it’s for some fairly large injustices over time.

People sometimes say these Treaty settlements have transferred so much money to Māori; why can’t Māori stand on their own two feet? To put it in context, if you were to take, for instance, healthcare spending, that’s about $4,000 per person per year in New Zealand; education about $3,000 per person every year. This Treaty settlement for Ngāti Rangitihi is $2,000 per claimant, roughly, for ever. I just want to put that on record, not to in any way diminish the settlement—it’s very important—but to answer some of the criticism I sometimes hear, that these settlements have transferred large amounts of resources. Actually, what they’ve done is restored respect, dignity, and mana to people who have lost a lot of that by a failure to uphold the rule of law and due process over a long period of time, and given some compensation in terms of some of the value lost.

I also note that 92 percent of the claimant community ratified this agreement. Now, hailing from Ngāpuhi, I can only imagine or dream of such near unanimity amongst an iwi, but it’s not a bad example to be followed. Clearly, it shows that a good process has been gone through, and a process that goes back many, many years. It was only in 2015 that a mandate was given to actually start negotiating this particular settlement, but the real process started many, many years before that.

So I see this as a very positive initiative. I think it’s something that ACT is very pleased to support, and I think it is something uniquely New Zealand, that we have dealt with quite serious conflicts and differences and managed to resolve them in a way that has been done, mostly, for the last century or so, at least, entirely legally with respect for due process and the rule of law. That is a real achievement for all New Zealand, that we’ve managed to settle differences that way.

I would say I believe that some of the settlements that have come to be in recent times have blurred the lines between private property that is owned and introduced co-governance over areas that many New Zealanders consider to be collectively owned. An example of that would be the collective redress in Tāmaki-makau-rau of 2014, which introduced, amongst other things, co-governance of Auckland’s volcanic cones by the Tūpuna Maunga Authority. Now, since that legislation was heard, I’ve heard Chris Finlayson, the then Attorney-General and the Minister responsible for many of the settlements done under the previous Government, say, actually, he regretted some of those arrangements. It certainly created a lot of difficulty with the governance of the maunga and the common use of them, and many of the people that use them have been unrepresented and there’s been a lot of friction in the set-up of that organisation. But that caution is with an acknowledgment that we are arriving at the end of a long settlement process, and so we’re not going to allow ourselves to oppose this piece of legislation for Ngāti Rangitihi, for example, because there is a worrying drift towards Treaty settlements that, rather than restoring property rights and giving back what is rightfully owned, are actually creating ongoing co-governance arrangements which may lead to more difficulty than they solve in the long term.

With that caution, I think it remains only to say that we think this is a wonderful day for New Zealand. We’re really pleased to see Ngāti Rangitihi, after a long process, get this settlement passed into law by this Parliament, and we hope that the provisions in it, the resources transferred and the arrangements put into law, will allow a platform on which Ngāti Rangitihi and their mokopuna, for many generations to come, will be able to build the mana and success of the people in that place. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou, tēnei te mihi o te wā. I stand, somewhat nervously, today to speak to this bill. I say that I stand “somewhat nervously” because this bill means an awful lot to not only the people of Rangitihi but also those of us here in the House who have the opportunity to speak. As tangata Tiriti, and my people have been here since 1842, I can say that it is an honour to speak in the redress of your claim. It has moved me and it feels to be a huge honour to stand here to do so.

I want to very quickly put on record, once again, what the apology says. I think it is important that we do that, because I feel a little bit like we’ve strayed from the purpose of being here today. So “The settlement contains [the] Crown acknowledgements of, and an apology for, well-founded breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles. The Crown acknowledges it breached … Treaty obligations when it failed—to protect the tribal structures of Ngāti Rangitihi … act in good faith when leasing and purchasing Ngāti Rangitihi land blocks … protect Ngāti Rangitihi from becoming virtually landless … protect the Tarawera River … actively protect te reo Māori and [to] encourage its use … protect Ngāti Rangitihi from the impact of high survey costs … [and] act in good faith by taking excessive land at Te Ariki for public works purposes.” The importance of saying those words over and over again will not be enough, but, as we all know, here in this House, it is incredibly important that we say these things and that we learn the history of our country—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and we acknowledge and we seek redress.

I want to acknowledge Ngāti Rangitihi for the work, for the years and years of advocacy, and for the grace that you have shown in coming again and again and doing what is tika, and working the processes and the laws of this land in order to seek redress. I thank you for your grace. I thank you for the efforts and for the people who have gone before you and for your loss. I thank you for telling the stories and laying the story of your loss out for us. It is so very important that we as a nation come to understand what happens in this country when we have loss. It is generational and it is painful. I want to say this small quote: “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” May you understand that we will become that empathetic witness and that we will hear you.

I also want to acknowledge the Minister who’s brought this bill to the House. I want to also acknowledge my friend the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who, because of the Matatā connection, would have been here and would have spoken, but for her illness. So I want to just acknowledge my friend Kiritapu Allan and acknowledge that she is not here today to do this task—probably a better job than what I’m doing, to be fair!

I read the settlement and I read the bill, which is quite long and technical, but this is my understanding for those people out there who do not understand the history—and this is a very brief history; my apologies if I do a disservice. So in the 1860s, with a change of land title from collective to individual title, Ngāti Rangitihi were required to pay the fees associated with the cost of surveying and title registration. The Crown leased Ngāti Rangitihi lands before that title had been awarded. Then the Crown stopped paying for those leases. The Crown then treated those lease payments as advance purchase payments, acting as a monopoly purchaser. During this time, Ngāti Rangitihi suffered the devastation of the eruption at Mount Tarawera in 1886. So with the approximately 110 people killed in the eruption, that was not the best position to hold in negotiation, and the devastation of the land, the terraces, and the loss of life resulted in wholesale movement to Matatā. Ngāti Rangitihi had to sell the land that they would have otherwise wanted to retain. In 1910, the Crown drained the Rangitihi swamp, which is a great source of kai, and further degraded the awa. In 1954, the Crown legislation allowed the Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. to discharge into the Tarawera River.

These are the things that build over years and years of history. These are the things that people can never, I guess, understand the links and the losses that you’ve suffered. But one of the ways that I think of it is that if something like that had happened to me, how I would feel; so, I think, I can have some empathy to understanding some small part of your story. I think it is so very important that we, here in this House, stand up and say, as representatives of the Crown, that we are sorry, and that this should not have happened. It has happened, we must acknowledge it, and I do so today. Ngā mihi nui.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Kia ora, welcome back to the House—I call Harete Hipango.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Tēnā koe, tēnā koutou. E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karanga maha, nau mai, haere mai, ngā uri o Ngāti Rangitihi.

[Greetings to you, greetings to you all. To the powers, to the voices, to the many lines of descent, welcome, welcome, the descendants of Ngāti Rangitihi.]

Tō koutou pire [your bill], Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill, is having its first reading.

Madam Speaker, and to members in the gallery, Ngāti Rangitihi, ko au he uri nō Whanganui [I am a descendant of Whanganui]. It is a privilege to return to this house today and particularly a privilege to be able to speak for the first time on my return to those who have gathered here of Ngāti Rangitihi. May I share the last time that I spoke in this House: in fact 11 months ago today, I stood and spoke in this House and addressed those who had travelled from Ngāi Tūhourangi and Te Arawa for the New Zealand Māori Arts and Crafts Institute Vesting Bill third reading. So, Madam Speaker and those of us here today, it’s by sheer good providence, serendipity, that I happen to be back in the House and I happen to be speaking to the uri of Ngāti Rangitihi, to the waka of Te Arawa. Tēnā koutou.

I hold in my hand the mere pounamu of my tupuna, and in my right hand I hold the Bible, both of which I carried into this House today to be sworn in and take the oath. Today at this first reading of this bill, holding both of these items of taonga, those of us of our Māori ancestry, as mana whenua, tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand know full well, as we held these through the journey of other peoples coming to this land, that it was the stroke of the pen, it was the legislature and the legislation, that was mightier than the sword, mightier than the mere, mightier than the patu and mightier than the good word. And so it just happens to be that with my colleagues and members in the House today, we stand here as agents of the Crown to make amends for the power of that pen, mightier than the sword.

My call today is brief. I’ve talked about the good providence of now being a returned member of Parliament, standing representative as an agent of the Crown to convey to Ngāti Rangitihi the acknowledgment of the history that your peoples have travelled. You have gathered here today. That history will be captured in the law when it passes into the Act. That apology will also be inscribed into law. And it’s important that the members of the public who will be tuning in and listening to not just this first reading—I invite New Zealanders to listen to the second and to the third readings, because this is the shared story, histories, and herstories of Ngāti Rangitihi. These are the mamae stories that have forged Aotearoa New Zealand. We are back in this House for the first reading of this to select committee to hear more kōrero, to hear more stories, for us to make sure that we put right into the final writing and passage of law at the third reading.

The apology, which is something should I again have the fortuitous opportunity to address the House and Ngāti Rangitihi upon, is significant, and when I’ve had the good fortune, again in the past, to speak, I have referred to the written scribed word of the apology, which is so critical and important.

Today is a day to whakamana and to whakanui the kaupapa of this first reading as the bill again traverses through the stages to its final passage. I do not know if I will be a member again on the Māori Affairs Committee. What I do know is that I will ask to sit in and to listen, and that I will tune in. But in saying that, I invite members of the New Zealand public to do so, so that we know the depth of the mamae but also the traversing into a future of hope and fulfilling aspiration and possibilities. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Tēnā tātou e te Whare. Kua kite mai koutou, e ngā whanaunga, e rima meneti noa iho ki a au, ā, tekau mineti ki te katoa o tēnei Whare, nō reira kia tere rawa taku kōrero ki a koutou.

Te Arawa waka, tōia mai ki uta, Te Arawa māngai nui, upoko tūtakitaki, ko wai te taki tangata kei runga? Ko Tamatekapua, ko Tamatekapua. Inā te kōrero, te kūrae rā ko te kūraetanga o taku ihu. Inā kaha kainaha, Te Arawa e, i, e.

Aha, Te Arawa e, i, e,

Aha, ko te whakaariki

Ko te whakaariki

Aha, tukua mai kia piri

Tukua mai kia tata

Kia eke mai ki runga i te

paepae poto o Houmaitawhiti.

Ngā pūmanawa e waru o Te Arawa, whītiki taua. Rangitihi, tangata maranga mai rā, Ngāti Hinehua, Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Ihu, Ngāti Mahi, Ngāti Whareiti, Ngāti Titonga, me Ngāti Tūtangata, tēnā koutou.

Nei rā tō mokopuna e mihi nei, e tangi nei i te āhuatanga o ā tātou mate. Ngā mate kua whārikihia ki mua i a koutou i tēnei rā. Tangihia rā, ngā mate putaputa o te wā, koutou e ngā mate, haere, haere, whakangaro atu rā.

[Greetings to the House. You have seen, my kin, I only have five minutes, and the whole House has only 10 minutes, therefore my address to you must be quick.

To the canoe of Te Arawa, paddle in to shore, Te Arawa of the resounding voice and strong determination, who is the leader on high? It is Tamatekapua, it is Tamatekapua. The narrative says, yonder headland is the headland of my nose. Such is your strength Te Arawa.

Indeed, oh Te Arawa

Indeed, it is the invading army

It is the invading army

Indeed, let it attach

Let it come close

To advance onto the

threshold of Houmaitawhiti.

To the eight beating hearts of Te Arawa, hold strong. Rangitihi, the person who rose up, Ngāti Hinehua, Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Ihu, Ngāti Mahi, Ngāti Whareiti, Ngāti Titonga, and Ngāti Tūtangata, greetings to you all.

This is your grandchild greeting you, lamenting the circumstances of our deceased. The deceased who have been laid before you today. Grieve for them, the many deceased of this time, to you the deceased, go, go, go well.]

I stand here as a descendant of Rangitihi.

Kia mōhio mai te pouako e Cathy, ehara tēnei i a Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau-a-Apanui noa, engari he uri anō hoki nō Rangitihi, nō Kawatapuarangi, nō Pikiao. Ko Tēpōreihua, ko Hinetamatepiki, ko Parehina, ko Ariariterangi, ko Te Roro-o-te-Rangi, ko Kerei Whenua, ko Ureonepū, ko Te Umu Iti, ko Amohia, ko Te Koha, ko Hori Kawa Kura, ko Hoani Kerei, ko Kirimātao, ko Mānihera, ko taku pāpā heke iho nei rā ki a au.

[So that Cathy the teacher knows, I am not just of Ngāti Porou and Te Whānau-a-Apanui, I am also a descendant of Rangitihi, of Kawatapuarangi, and of Pikiao. There was Tēpōreihua, Hinetamatepiki, Parehina, Ariariterangi, Te Roro-o-te-Rangi, Kerei Whenua, Ureonepū, Te Umu Iti, Amohia, Te Koha, Hori Kawa Kura, Hoani Kerei, Kirimātao, and Mānihera, who was my father, and down to me.

I want to acknowledge Ngāti Rangitihi for your perseverance, for getting your Treaty claim settlement to the first reading, and we know how difficult this process can be. So I’m acknowledging you all today.

Leith, koutou, Rerepeka, koutou o te poari, Tipene, koutou kua tae mai nei i tēnei rā, tēnā koutou.

[Leith, Rerepeka, the board, Tipene, all those who have come here today, I acknowledge you all.]

I acknowledge the trustees and the commitment of your people; our ancestors, who endured so much; your negotiation team; your pakeke and kinsmen who have played their part for Ngāti Rangitihi today.

The Crown acknowledges Treaty breaches, and I’m not going to repeat, as I’ve heard them all today. You know them, you have made sure that they’re in your claim, so kei te aroha atu ki a koutou, kia kaha [so I commiserate with you, be strong].

Although our total due is worth 1 percent—and the Crown has paid more on COVID subsidies to the business communities that added up to more than all Treaty of Waitangi settlements paid out over the last 30 years in just one week—our whakaaro here, and we have shared this in many other of the claims by other iwi, is that the overhaul of the Tiriti settlement process and to end the “fiscal envelope”—would that have made a difference? Absolutely, in the amount that you have agreed to. We need to insert a relativity clause into all Tiriti settlements to ensure that all iwi have parity with Ngāi Tahu and Waikato-Tainui; make Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding on the Crown; implement all unaddressed Wai claims and recommendations; abolish “full and final”—although you’ve got 1 percent, the door must always be open to our mokopuna to fight for the other 99 percent; return all conservation land to whānau, hapū, and iwi Māori. Moana Jackson has often said, “Treaties are not settled, they’re honoured.” Te Tiriti is a document that is the foundation of the living, evolving relationship between tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti.

As a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, I look forward to playing an active part in this bill.

Nō reira e hika mā, kua tō te rā ki ahau, kei te mihi atu rā ki a koutou, i patua mai ngā rori, ā, te rangi kia tae mai koutou ki tēnei Whare.

[Therefore friends, my time is over, I greet you all, you who travelled today to come to this House.]

I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora tātou.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Can I open this afternoon, and just acknowledge Harete Hipango and her return today in Parliament from this side of the House, and how wonderful it is to have another Māori member of Parliament join us in this kaupapa and this journey.

Nō reira e te tuahine, nau mai hoki mai e te whanaunga o Whitikaupeka, tēnā rawa atu ki a koe kei raro i te pūtake, te ruruhau o tō tātou maunga. He maha ngā pā, ngā kāinga, ngā urupā, ngā kōiwi, ngā mahinga kai, pā tuna, taunga ika, mai i Kakaramea ki Ōkaro, Rotomahana, Te Ariki Maura, Tapahoro tae atu ki Te Kāhao o Rongomai, Te Auheke o Tionga, Te Awa o te Atua.

[Therefore sister, welcome back my kin of Whitikaupeka, many greetings to you at the base of, under the shelter of, our ancestral mountain. There are many fortified villages, villages, graveyards, bones, cultivations, eel weirs and fishing grounds, from Kakaramea to Ōkaro, Rotomahana, Te Ariki Maura, Tapahoro to Te Kāhao o Rongomai, Te Auheke o Tionga, Te Awa o te Atua.]

Beneath the base, the shelter of our mountain, there are many fortified villages, homes, human bone burial caves, cultivations, eel traps, and fishing grounds from Kakaramea to Ōkaro, Rotomahana, Te Ariki Maura, Tapahoro to Te Kōhao o Rongomai, Te Auheke o Tionga, Te Awa o te Atua. E ngā rangatira o tēnei iwi, Ngāti Rangitihi, ngā māreikura, ngā whatukura, ngā tāngata katoa, ka mihi atu ki a koutou, nau mai, haere mai, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

[From Kakaramea to Ōkaro, Rotomahana, Te Ariki Maura, Tapahoro to Te Kōhao o Rongomai, Te Auheke o Tionga, Te Awa o te Atua. To the leaders of this tribe, Ngāti Rangitihi, the supernatural females and males, all the people, I acknowledge you all, welcome, welcome, greetings, greetings, greetings to you all.]

Can I acknowledge the work of the negotiators, our rangatira that are here today, who stood firm by their commitment to achieve the best settlement that they could for their iwi, Ngāti Rangitihi, and we thank all of our whānau from Ngāti Rangitihi for their overwhelming support of the settlement, and I hear very clearly the journey that has been made to lead up to today, but also the steps that we still need to make over the Māori Affairs Committee process to get it through this House.

I start my kōrero today about why race relations in this country are so important. This bill is all about acknowledging our past so that we can move on together in partnership. Aotearoa New Zealand has shifted and it has been a great strength of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and our settlement process in Aotearoa that there has been today great cross-party consensus and support for the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill. I acknowledge the work of Doug Graham and Chris Finlayson and the work that they did to advance this process, just as much as I pay tribute to our own: the mahi of Sir Michael Cullen and the Hon Andrew Little.

I also acknowledge the challenge of recent weeks in this House—since I came into this House in October—and the challenges that we have faced as Māori MPs, and that’s why it has been so sad on many occasions to see this consensus that we have today being chipped away in recent times. We’ve had whistling about He Puapua, a report written independently of the Government, which provides the expert opinions on how New Zealand could give effect to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—the same declaration which this House signed up to. It was seen—the suggestion of the new Māori Health Authority—as racist and separatist; when in Government, others started Whānau Ora for exactly the same reason—the recognition that monocultural delivery of health, of hauora, and social services has not worked for Māori and that by Māori, for Māori services deserve to be given a chance, resourced, and a chance to work. And we’ve seen the racism online and out on the streets as a result of this.

They’re tired old tricks at play, and today this kōrero, the pūrākau, the story of Rangitihi, their journey, is an opportunity for us to connect and come into consensus and a way forward. It acts as a reminder for all of us of why partnership is important in the future of Aotearoa New Zealand. This bill aims to settle historical grievances for Ngāti Rangitihi and their claims with the Crown, and our whānau here in Labour are committed to completing all of our historic Treaty settlements, as outlined in our manifesto. But this bill is intended to give certain effect to matters contained in the deed of settlement, which was signed on 5 December in 2020 by the Crown and by Rangitihi, and I acknowledge that today.

But I also want to take time to put on record and remind this House of the journey of Rangitihi to get to this point and recite certain parts of history. In 1820, Ngāti Rangitihi doesn’t have much contact with Pākehā. By 1840, Ngāti Rangitihi were part of a Te Arawa inter-hapū hui that agreed not to sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi or accept the authority of the Crown at that time. During the 1840s and 1850s, this iwi successfully engaged with the emerging colonial economy. Following inter-iwi conflict in the 1850s, Ngāti Rangitihi worked to maintain peace in their rohe. In 1864, Ngāti Rangitihi decided to join a Te Arawa force fighting alongside a Crown contingent that defeated my relations in Te Tai Rāwhiti in support of the Kīngitanga. In 1865 to 1872, Ngāti Rangitihi forces assisted the Crown against Paimarire forces and other iwi including supporters of Te Kooti. The Native Land Court granted Ngāti Rangitihi a 300-acre block to settle these claims and several other blocks to reward the military service that their people gave so willingly to this country. In 1870 to 1890, the Native Land Court investigated the area where Ngāti Rangitihi claimed interests. The court system involved significant costs for Ngāti Rangitihi, particularly for surveying. Although the iwi rangatira protested the outcomes of many court decisions, the Crown largely ignored the complaints.

These continued, and what we see is, devastated by the effects of the 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption, Ngāti Rangitihi had to sell land that they may have otherwise wanted to retain. By 1900, they were virtually landless. And therein lies the effects of land confiscation, of Te Tiriti not being honoured. But despite the challenges that this iwi has faced, they are here today sharing their grievance—a reminder and an acknowledgment to this House that we have more work to do. We are still on a journey across that bridge; race relations is still a work in progress.

But I want to acknowledge Ngāti Rangitihi today—the work that you continue to do. I look forward in the Māori Affairs Committee to hearing more about your story, and no doubt my tupuna Henare Bennett—that we cross paths and that we get to whakawhanaunga at some point.

Nō reira, e mihi ana ki a koutou, te iwi o Ngāti Rangitihi, tēnā rawa atu ki a koutou.

[Therefore, I greet you all, the tribe of Ngāti Rangitihi, greetings to you all.]

I commend this bill to the House. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

TODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Kia ora, Madam Speaker, and can I add my words of support and acknowledgment to Ngāti Rangitihi, particularly those who have travelled here today to sit and listen to politicians from across the House seek to put, in our inadequate words, the importance of this legislation, the acknowledgment of the pain and suffering, and the recompense and apology that is in the legislation.

I think the contributions have been powerful. I do have to say to my parliamentary colleague Shanan Halbert that there is a time for reflection with respect to the elements that he covered that are better suited for general debates than they are when we have the people of Ngāti Rangitihi in the room and we are reflecting on their story. I felt that his contribution had veered to a disappointing level which, in my time, I have not seen happen when having a settlement bill reading.

The bill itself is in three major parts, and the first part is the reflection of the historical injustices that were perpetrated on Ngāti Rangitihi. I’m an historian. I did an English and history degree at the University of Waikato, and, actually, I think these elements of the Treaty settlement legislation—which honestly, harrowingly outline the experiences of tangata whenua and, in this case, Ngāti Rangitihi—are an absolutely critical part of lifting not only my understanding but my community’s understanding and the wider country’s understanding around the realities of our history. We should not ever seek to walk back from that, however uncomfortable it is.

But I do hope that in telling the history and the stories not only here in this House but as that occurs across the country and in school rooms and families, the patience, the willingness to look forward, the willingness to rebuild again an enduring relationship with the Crown, and the energy and the essence and the strength of essence that that requires for people to do that when they have been so negatively impacted in the past—I hope that gets captured in our ongoing conversations as a country.

It is critical to acknowledge the history, but I think it is also really important to acknowledge how peoples such as Ngāti Rangitihi have the courage and the will and the patience to be able to look beyond that past and rebuild again with the Crown. I think that should be acknowledged, because that should give us all hope in this House that you bring the best of yourself to this partnership and it behoves us to do the same.

Part 2 of the bill reflects, specifically, the cultural redress, and Part 3 the commercial redress. This is all in the legislation. We will look forward to hearing that in your own voices and stories and perspectives at the select committee.

I do want to support Tāmati Coffey, the chair. I sit also in the Māori Affairs Committee, on behalf of the National Party, along with Joseph Mooney, and I’m sure that we would be very supportive of his suggestion that we hear this on marae. We did have that experience on the Chatham Islands, and it was very well negotiated and immensely powerful. I think it’s all part of us as a committee understanding at a more deeper level, beyond the words on a page, beyond the voices that sit in front of us—actually, to be in your space, as well, I think adds an element to the depth of joint commitment to this, which is powerful and enduring.

A lot has already been said today. I just want to conclude with an acknowledgment, again, from the National Party of the importance of this process, the integrity of the process, the patience that you have brought to it, and a commitment that we, all of us in this House, will follow that with integrity through to the third reading. Kia ora tātou.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): E te iwi Ngāti Rangitihi, nau mai, haere mai, kia ora. It gives me great pleasure to be able to speak on this, the first reading of this bill in the House. I’m the last speaker for this and it gives me a sense of sadness to actually listen to all the speeches from across the House today which reflect the history of this iwi and its dealings with the Crown.

I want to start by acknowledging the Minister, the Hon Andrew Little, and his predecessor, the Hon Christopher Finlayson, for their work; Te Arawhiti; but also—and of course—Te Mana o Ngāti Rangitihi Trust for your negotiation; and Leith and your team up there and your whānau: kia ora, nau mai, haere mai, and welcome. Lots has been said already today, but I want to acknowledge your work, because this process, this settlement is the result of much hard work, and particularly for the tireless work done by members to achieve the very best settlement you could for your people and the iwi.

It’s interesting, I haven’t had lots of experience with Treaty claims, but recently, as has been said, in Wharekauri, Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands—and I’m responsible, I’m the member for the Chathams, and so that was my first experience, the first of three settlements which will happen for the people of the Chatham Islands. But it’s interesting, when you read a summary of the historical background to the claim, it’s quite a confronting read, I often think: “Is it this, the same Aotearoa New Zealand that we live in today?” Because you have every right to be sad and be upset, to say the very least. I’ve heard today that the negotiations with the Crown began in 2015, but when I read the historical background, it actually extends back to around the 1820s, when there had been minimal contact with Pākehā. But things got pretty rough after that. And you’ll see in the detail there that despite having a good relationship with the Crown, that still did not benefit Ngāti Rangitihi.

Many members of your iwi have submitted through the Waitangi Tribunal claims and are no longer with us, and I want to acknowledge them, and for all the people who have gone before and paid tribute to them. This settlement includes an apology from the Crown and, as has been said, recognises the many wrongs that have been committed against the iwi. But, more importantly, this settlement provides commercial and financial redress to you to ensure the people of Ngāti Rangitihi have a solid economic and cultural foundation for your people’s future.

In reflecting on some of this information, I think this is long overdue. It has taken many, many years, but when I look at some of the grievances suffered, there was certainly a failure by the Crown to act in good faith when leasing and purchasing land blocks. There are many examples there, as I said, even in the summary. I’m miffed at the way that the process went about in terms of, eventually, the forced sale of the land. There was also excessive confiscation of land under the Public Works Act. Not surprising, but surprising at how it went about, considering, as I said, the good relationship that you had with the Crown. But, worst of all, I feel that there was just a complete failure to provide or to lease sufficient land to support yourselves, particularly in the aftermath of the Tarawera eruption. These, in summary, have resulted in a real loss and displacement of the people of Ngāti Rangitihi.

It was interesting to read, and I don’t know the area well, but I have many friends and colleagues who hail from this area—but something I do know is the emotional and cultural connections with, of course, the site, the once world-famous pink and white terrace. Even going back to look at some images of that I thought “Wow!” It certainly was one of the wonders of the world, but the devastation of the eruption in 1886 made us lose one of our most iconic sites. The pleasing thing, though, is that the site where the Terraces once stood will be transferred back to the iwi, along with 18 other sites with deep significance to the iwi, including what I found here, what’s termed the so-called beating heart of Ngāti Rangitihi rohe, Te Tapahoro Bay. Kia ora for the return of that.

But returning these properties in the rohe will hopefully ensure that the people will be able to reconnect with their cultural and traditional roots. However, in saying that, I don’t believe it will ever erase the mamae for the people of Ngāti Rangitihi. But in saying that—I said at the start it will provide a strong commercial, and hopefully a cultural, future for the young people, the rangatahi of the iwi.

We’ve heard today that the redress will be valued at over $11 million—$4 million in financial redress, and $7 million through the Central North Island Forests Collective settlement, which Ngāti Rangitihi were party to back in 2008. I was surprised to hear today—but also read, initially—that the Crown, back in the 1950s, allowed the discharging of waste from the Tasman Pulp and Paper Mill, and others have spoken about that. As I said right at the start, things that we would never do today in this Aotearoa New Zealand that we now live in. But that was the time, and this is the time to put the wrongs right. I’m pleased, however, that there will be the establishment of the Tarawera Awa Restoration Strategy Group, which will oversee the restoration of the mauri of the Tarawera River catchment.

At this point, I’d like to acknowledge the work undertaken by the negotiators, to the chief negotiator, the team, and to Te Arawhiti, the Office for Crown Māori Relations. And we’ve heard, I think, the approval rate was nearly 92 percent of iwi members, that’s impressive, and that gives you a real mandate to move forward with confidence.

To conclude, I’d just like to reinforce a couple of points: this will never erase the mamae your ancestors suffered. It is an important step, however, towards healing and strengthening the relationship not only with your iwi members, but between Crown and iwi. I hope that we don’t let down the people of Ngāti Rangitihi like we did in the 1800s. We led them to believe that we were a partner, that we were in a relationship—they were conned. And today we put that right. The settlement also gives the people the opportunity to reconnect and re-establish their cultural and traditional roots, and to provide, as I’ve said, that strong economic foundation for the rangatahi, young people, of Ngāti Rangitihi, the people of Te Arawa, and future generations.

I’m looking forward to working with our chair and the good team that make up the Māori Affairs Committee lead by Tāmati Coffey. I believe that we’re experienced in working together collaboratively on such settlements, we do a good job for the Māori people of Aotearoa New Zealand, and I believe we’ll do a good job with this. I commend this bill to the House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Ko te Pātai, Kia whakaaetia te mōtini. Koutou e whakaae, kī mai Āe, ki te kore, Kāo. Kua Āetia.

[The question is, That the motion be agreed to. Those of the opinion will say Aye; to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.]

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is, That the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Permission has been granted for a waiata.

Waiata

Bills

Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill

Introduction

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): I understand it is the Government’s intention to introduce an imprest supply bill.

CLERK: Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill, introduction.

First Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill be now read a first time.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bills

Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill

Second Readings

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill be now read a second time.

This is one of the regular features of the House of Representatives where we deal with two matters in one debate, the first being that around the Supplementary Estimates for the 2020/21 year and then the first of the imprest supply bills. I thought it might be useful for the House at the outset to know exactly what these two bills are about. So the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill seeks appropriation by Parliament of changes to appropriations and new appropriations for the 2020/21 year, the year in which we have just completed, that the Government agreed to—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Not yet—eight days to go.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —well, still going; we’ve still got a few days left, Mr Woodhouse is correct—between April 2020 when the Estimates closed and early April 2021. These Supplementary Estimates, which I presented to the House on Budget day, contain a larger than usual number of new appropriations but fewer changes overall to new and existing appropriations when compared with the Supplementary Estimates for 2019/20. For those who are interested, the bill makes changes to 507 annual appropriations and 102 multi-year appropriations. Members may recall last year that due to the unfolding impacts of COVID-19 and our ongoing and rapid fiscal response, a Supplementary Order Paper was required to incorporate changes to the previous version of this bill that were made after the finalisation of the Supplementary Estimates for 2019/20, and the total number of changes was a greater number as a result.

Colleagues across the House will be well aware that the period that we are dealing with here represents a significant amount of the expenditure in response to COVID-19. Many of the appropriations included for the first time in this bill provide authority for spending from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund that the Government established as part of Budget 2020. Funding from that is reflected in the bill and includes many, many initiatives, and I’m sure my colleagues will speak to those initiatives over the course of this debate. What they encapsulate are the urgency of the Government’s response.

So a bill like this normally would be looking at matters that perhaps have arisen during the course of a financial year or times when appropriations either had not enough money or money had to be shifted around. This year and the previous one are different from the past, because we were needing to respond in real time, and that kept happening. And it’s interesting. When you look at the Supplementary Estimates that are here, you, for example, see the resurgence support payment. That was a payment that we had to bring into place as we learnt more about the impacts of COVID on businesses and workers. So that’s the payment that was paid out when there was any kind of alert level rise and is now available at any point in the future, God forbid, that we might need to have an alert level rise.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: How much is left?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: So that resurgence support payment was created. It was designed with business because, as Mr Woodhouse is no doubt applauding the Government for doing so, the wage subsidy scheme, parts of which are also contained in the Supplementary Estimates here, needed to be supplemented by something that moved beyond wages to some of the fixed costs that businesses had when there was an alert level rise. So the resurgence support payment was designed in consultation with the business community, and that is funded in here as well.

But the scale not only of the economic response and the rapidity of it that meant that we needed to use this mechanism for the funding—is also set in context here by the health response that took place. And so within the Supplementary Estimates, you will see items around personal protective equipment (PPE) purchase, items around the additional support and staffing that was required right across the health sector. We needed to do that in real time. I acknowledge my colleague, Dr Clark. I can remember some of the conversations that we had as we were trying to estimate what the cost would be of getting that PPE into New Zealand. Where were we going to source it from? Those decisions were needing to be taken day by day. And as I said and remarked at the time, what is reflected in these Supplementary Estimates is the kind of decision making that Governments of many different stripes over the years have struggled with: being able to make decisions quickly and deliver quickly. And we made some fundamental changes to deliver this support within the Supplementary Estimates—in particular, the number of decision points that a Government has.

So a Government has always traditionally had one decision point a week, and that is the Cabinet meeting. That wasn’t good enough in COVID. We had to have two and three and four decision points a week, and that required us to spend money in ways that was not envisaged in the original appropriations that we did. Equally, it required us to take a least regrets approach, and that was about saying we need to get this money out there. We need to support organisations and businesses, and if it wasn’t working or the design was not quite right, we were prepared to go back and say we will change it. And again, Governments have not always been as good as they might be in acknowledging when things don’t work, and that’s something that I think we’ve learnt through this process. So all of that adds up to the Estimates that are in front of us here today, and as I say, there are many, many different initiatives, which colleagues will no doubt delve into, that make up the money that is being sought via the Supplementary Estimates.

The second of the bits of legislation in front of us is the first of the imprest supply bills. The bill is needed to provide the sole parliamentary financial authority for Government spending in 2021/22 until the Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill is passed. As the deadline for the third reading debate on the latter bill is to be completed within four months of Budget day—that is, 20 September—this imprest supply bill is for the first three months of the 2021/22 financial year. In addition, it’s standard practice for imprest supply bills to cover the materialisation of fiscal risks and the uncertain timing and spread of expenditure, including changes to appropriations that might actually be fiscally neutral.

This bill also includes an allowance for the unallocated portion of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund should additional spending be required to respond to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, and members will be aware that at Budget 2021, we retained a buffer of $5.1 billion within the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund as a contingency in the event should there be—

Hon Dr David Clark: Very prudent—very prudent.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —resurgences of COVID-19 in the community. It is indeed, as Dr Clark says, both prudent and responsible, even though we are moving into an era with the vaccination programme where that is less likely to be required.

The imprest supply bill seeks to provide sufficient authority for the Government to incur a maximum of $35 billion in expenses, $5 billion in capital expenditure, and $1 billion of capital injections. Although this is higher than we would seek in a normal year, not least because of the ongoing impact of COVID and the COVID response fund spending, it is actually lower than what was provided last year. And I think there you can see the trend. When I look at the total amounts of various imprest supply bills, the first one I was responsible for was around $19 billion, then around $30 billion, then around $52 billion, and now back to a total of $41 billion. I think members can see the trends there that we are bringing that back down now to more regularised levels of expenditure, but in acknowledgment that we are still in uncertain and challenging times, we are still in a period of time where spending is sometimes harder to predict than it would have been in the past.

And I would seek to remind colleagues that this is the money that makes sure that we can spend it. It is not unusual in any means whatsoever. It is simply the way our system works so that the funding is available to be spent as it is required. As I said, while it’s larger than it is in earlier years, I do think the ongoing uncertainty of the economic environment requires us to have this in place. Most importantly of all, it is a limit not a target—something that I’m fond of saying to my colleagues on other matters as well. It is a limit not a target, and I believe, if I am correct, that last year only around a quarter of the imprest supply was actually required. So the pattern here is that the money is not always needed. But in order to make sure we do not go unappropriated, in order to make sure that we have the resources available to the Government to do what we need, we set out a limit to which we cannot spend beyond. But if we are tracking as we did last year, only a quarter of that was provided. So I commend these bills to the House. They are an important part of the way that we manage finances in New Zealand, and I look forward to the rest of the debate.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to be speaking on the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, and I have no doubt that every member of the House, certainly those who are going to speak on it, will have dived deeply into all 1,024 pages of the Supplementary Estimates of Appropriations, which, as the Minister eventually pointed out, has eight days to run before we reach the end of this. I must say I was super impressed with the Minister’s ability to gild the lily about this Government’s performance and then to portray himself as some kind of grinchy Minister of Finance, controlling the spending with really super-tight fingers on the Government’s purse. He said this is a limit, not a target. Well, actually, he should’ve taken some of his own advice.

Let’s start with the positive. We are now coming to the end of the most extraordinary period, fiscally, I think this country has ever seen, certainly in peacetime. It was necessary and appropriate for the Government to do a lot of things quickly and expensively. We acknowledge that. We supported those changes through, firstly, last year’s imprest supply, which basically wrote a blank cheque to the Government for about $50 billion. As the Minister points out, these were in areas that were vitally important: the wage subsidy, personal protective equipment, managed isolation and quarantine, the vaccine roll-out—matters that, as he said, were “in response to COVID-19.”

He talked also, interestingly, about the Resurgence Support Payment for businesses, but, boy, they were led kicking and screaming into doing that, and still maintain that the wage subsidy was somehow a support to business. Well, actually, it wasn’t. Businesses were the agents between the Government and the employees who were out of work, potentially at risk of losing their jobs. It was a necessary and appropriate response, but let’s not pretend it supported business. It supported their workers, but even in service industries with high levels of personnel costs, that would still only constitute about 66 to 70 percent of the cost base of an average business. It was those non-wage costs that were killing business last year: the rent, the leases, the stock that was already on the water and eventually needed to be paid for but couldn’t be sold, the relatively high fixed cost for things like IT and insurance. None of those were being helped by Government.

The National Party called repeatedly for some support for business, because, after all, we had a $50 billion fund. We knew that businesses could collapse, and eventually the Government did, I think, come, albeit not to a party but at least to some form of rescue. But to say that the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund has only been used in response to COVID-19 is simply not accurate. In fact, it’s disingenuous, because there’s no doubt that that $50 billion fund was a slush fund for Government largesse and for matters that had nothing to do with COVID. I’m indebted to the reporters of Stuff, actually, for reminding me of some of the things that the COVID Response and Recovery Fund was being spent on. This was as early as August last year they were saying this, so goodness knows what the list might be by now.

But I wonder if members were aware that the ad campaign featuring two naked actors as porn stars, as part of a Netsafe initiative, was actually paid by the COVID Response and Recovery Fund. Like, what, did our kids spend six weeks off school watching porn because of COVID? A long bow to draw to say that that was a COVID-related initiative. That was one of 250 programmes which Stuff analysed and found had little or nothing to do with COVID-19.

Actually, we only need to look into the transport space, because I’ve been doing that quite a bit lately, and see in here the eye-watering amount of money, over $1.3 billion, being taken out of COVID Response and Recovery and put into the National Land Transport Fund. Now, it may be necessary to do that, because, frankly, the Government has made such a ham-fisted job of getting any of these projects up off the drawing board and into reality that over time, the costs of those projects have gone up. But let’s not pretend it had anything to do with COVID—$1.3 billion, and there are a number of examples right through the Supplementary Estimates of COVID being used as a slush fund to pay for other things.

As the Minister of Finance pointed out, $50 billion and 15 months later, we’ve got $5.1 billion left for a so-called resurgence. Who honestly believes that if COVID makes a comeback to the degree that it did in February and March last year, $5 billion would be anywhere near what we need? It will be chump change. The wage subsidy, I think, was $14 billion on its own, for the six to 12 weeks that that needed to be paid out for—$14 billion—and he’s trying to tell us that because they went on a drunken spending spree last year and left only $5.1 billion in the kitty, we won’t be back here with another urgent imprest supply bill if COVID hits again. Why? Because $50 billion wasn’t going to be enough, and the reason $50 billion wasn’t going to be enough was because it wasn’t spent on COVID.

Now, the other theme of these Estimates, as was examined by the Finance and Expenditure Committee over the last couple of weeks, was the degree to which certain things were not spent. I think this is an interesting study of the non-delivery of things that this Government has said it was going to do. Now, we’ve heard a lot about mental health today and over the last few days—five acute beds out of a $1.9 billion appropriation in Budget 2019. We are returning to the centre mental health services appropriations because the Crown has not got their act together. The response from Treasury was to say this money has been returned to the Crown as part of the Budget process so this could be redirected towards other high-priority initiatives or used to improve the Crown’s financial position. Well, those are weasel words for saying the Government didn’t do what it appropriated funds to do, and so it’s returning it back to the centre.

There are a number of health examples just like that. Maternity services: now, it was an interesting answer from Treasury about why we were actually returning maternity services funding, and it was because forecast demand didn’t eventuate. Now, it is true: we are having fewer children—in fact, a concerningly low number in our reproduction rate at the moment. But, actually, that’s not why this is being returned. This is being returned because lead maternity carers are leaving in their droves and are no longer claiming under section 88, leaving mothers struggling to find a lead carer and having to rely on the district health board for core midwifery services when they go into labour and birth.

Actually, what the Government could’ve done—should’ve done, and the previous Minister of Health is here and knows it—is that had he listened to the very report that was commissioned by the previous Government and recommended significant increases in maternity funding for lead carers, we wouldn’t have been in this situation, for two reasons. There would’ve been more lead carers still in the business, and those women would’ve been able to find a lead maternity carer and therefore this funding would’ve been spent.

So there’s two themes here: COVID as a slush fund, and some serious non-delivery by this Government, and, frankly, the worst examples of that are in our health system.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I am so delighted to stand up and speak in this debate on the appropriation bill, particularly as the member for Taieri, where we have got fantastic examples of wellbeing and the wellbeing approach, both in terms of the Hillside Workshops, but also some other work that is going on in Balclutha.

First, though, I just want to bring us back to what this Budget is about, which is recovery and safety. I was given a stark reminder of this during an all-night Zoom session last night with the women parliamentary leaders from around the globe. I was very privileged to attend that conference as the women’s parliamentary ambassador for New Zealand. I was aware, as many of us are in a kind of fuzzy way because we are quite immune from COVID here, that COVID is having a really negative effect on women and girls in countries where the virus has raged out of control. Last night brought that into a very clear focus for me, with the number of 47 million women and girls who will be catapulted back into poverty as a direct result of this virus. There was speaker after speaker from country after country who spoke very emotionally about the impact that COVID has had on women and girls in their countries, supported by very sound research and evidence. The speakers included people like the Rt Hon Helen Clark, Chlöe Swarbrick from this House, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and President Macron from France.

In the introduction to that conference, it was mentioned that the countries that had women leaders were outperforming those in the race against the virus from those who didn’t. It mentioned that there were a handful of countries, but only one leader was actually mentioned by name, and that was our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. That really brought that home to me—how lucky we are in New Zealand to have a response to COVID that put safety first, and a Budget that puts safety and recovery at the heart.

The women and girls in those countries will not only be catapulted back into poverty; it affects every level of advancement that we have made as women over the last 20 to 40 years around education, around the workplace, around health. We know that marginalised groups are impacted most when there are crises, and that is the same for COVID. We may not have felt it to such stark extent here, but it is happening globally, and I am so pleased that we have a Budget that ensures that our safety comes first.

On to wellbeing. I don’t know who was more excited about the $85 million announcement for the Hillside expansion, myself as the MP for Taieri, Grant Robertson as the Minister of Finance and a former South Dunedin boy, or perhaps the former trade union leader Jim Kelly. Jim, if you’re watching, I would like to tautoko you for the work you did. We were all enormously excited. To say that doing wagon assembly at Hillside amounts to doing Meccano lessons is, quite frankly, disrespectful. It is a serious business, assembling trains, and it will breathe new life into our region. It also shows that we are very serious about our climate response and that we are looking at much more responsible, more efficient ways of carrying around freight.

Now, Jim Kelly, whom I mentioned, former Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMTU) man, was not able to make it down for the exciting announcement about Hillside, unfortunately, so we invited his daughter, Lisa Kelly, to speak, and she represented him beautifully. It was quite a daunting thing to do. There were people from KiwiRail, there was the Prime Minister and the finance Minister, there was my predecessor, Clare Curran, who had done so much to fight for the revival of Hillside, and there were rail workers who had been in the job for many, many years, and Lisa spoke so well that she was asked to go on breakfast TV the next morning with John Campbell.

After the event, the finance Minister had a little bit of time before his next appointment, and he actually went up to Jim Kelly’s house to have a cup of tea and to talk about the old days in South Dunedin. Jim Kelly was sitting there with a Hillside mug that I had found him at an op shop down the road, and when I posted photos online, I got emails not only from constituents but from around the world saying how proud they were of New Zealand and comments like “Only in New Zealand”. So that’s why it’s been so exciting for us.

I just want to mention briefly my predecessor, Clare Curran. She did play an incredible role and was mentioned on that day in terms of reversing the National Government decision to close down Hillside in 2012. That was a devastating move for our region. It cost 90 jobs, and through her tenacity and the work of Jim and also the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and other advocates, she was able to secure $19.97 million from the Provincial Growth Fund, and that was to make Hillside into a mechanical hub and a heavy engineering facility. The opportunities for that are fantastic in terms of not only assembling wagons but also looking at engineering excellence across sectors. We have Telford farming school not too far down the road, looking at farming innovation. We have a marine sector and we’re very close to coastal beaches. The world is our oyster if we can get engineering excellence happening, and Hillside is the place to do it. It will also create 445 jobs both for Dunedin and Christchurch, 300 of them around construction and around 150 of those directly related to rail services. It is going to boost our Otago economy and it is going to make railway more self-reliant. And for anybody that says, “Oh, this is just looking after the boys. And what about the girls?”, the RMTU have some research that they put out in 2019, noting that there’s been a 14 percent increase in women’s involvement in the rail sector.

But not only are we delivering on our manifesto commitment to invest in rail and create jobs, we are also creating trades opportunities and trades training, and nowhere is that better seen than in Balclutha, which is also in my electorate. I was lucky enough to go there last night for an event around job opportunities. What does one get when one puts a job and an opportunity together? One gets “Jobbortunities”—and I did have to say that because I made a promise to those present—and 100,000 New Zealanders have gone into free trades training. What Jobbortunities does is it marries employers with those looking for jobs. So it’s a little bit like speed dating and is run by the indefatigable Ruth Carraway, who is an absolute taonga in our electorate. Not only is it about matching these skills with the opportunities; there is wraparound support, which is really important.

So, for example, in Milton, the trades apprentices meet once per week to do their paperwork together. They convene together. They support each other to get their important part of the mahi done. That programme, which has secured funding from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) under this Budget for another year, has created 104 jobs. That’s double the original target. I’d really like to acknowledge the forces behind not only Ruth but also the mayor, Bryan Cadogan, the Clutha District Council, MSD, employers, and job seekers. So those are just two examples of how the Wellbeing Budget that is based on recovery and that is based on safety are affecting my electorate, and I can tell that people in my electorate are very, very excited.

There is one other element that I seem to have time to touch on—and I will—and that is the announcement which will mean so much to so many people in Taieri, around lifting the weekly benefit rates. So that will be between $32 per adult and $55 per adult, in line with a key Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendation. This can’t come a moment too soon. As members are aware, the first changes of $20 per week will kick in very soon, from 1 July, and then will be implemented over time through to April next year. It is not only the right thing to do; it is the right thing to do by our economy. An economy that can close the gap of inequality is going to be better for everyone. Nobody knows that more than the people who live in Taieri, who work hard or who live there because they want to make the most of the flat lands because they are unable to work because of disabilities. They love this Budget.

I am so proud, as their member, to be able to stand here and tautoko not only our finance Minister and the whole team but also the people like my predecessor, Clare Curran, and the Jim Kellys of the world, who fought the good fight and have lived to see this day and this Budget. I commend the bill to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): This bill contains what the Government hoped would be their dirty little secret. That secret relates to the way that Ministers wanted to fund a land purchase at Ihumātao. I want to take the opportunity in the House today to set out for this House and for members of the public the disingenuous way that the Minister of Housing, together with the Minister of Finance, set out to, I believe, intentionally pull the wool over the eyes of New Zealanders about how the purchase of land at Ihumātao would be funded. What this bill does is it confirms Parliament’s authority for spending last year that was authorised in the interim under last year’s imprest supply bill. Contained within it is a specific new appropriation, a supplementary appropriation that was not contained in last year’s Budget, and that is a specific appropriation of $30 million to purchase land from Fletcher Building at Ihumātao.

Now, that line item almost didn’t make it to this bill, and I want to traverse why that was, because this is a matter that you would have thought was very straightforward if you were to simply interpret the press releases from the Minister of Housing, and the Minister for Māori Development, the Hon Willie Jackson, and the Minister of Finance, the Hon Grant Robertson. On 17 December last year, they put out a press release and they held a press conference on the black-and-white tiles here at Parliament about an agreement that had been reached on the future of Ihumātao. They talked about the purchase of the land. As you can imagine, one of the things that people were interested in was: “Well, $30 million, that doesn’t come from nowhere. Where are you going to get the money?”

And, of course, one of the principles of a parliamentary democracy is that Ministers aren’t laws unto themselves who can just write cheques from the taxpayer purse whenever they want. They can’t just dip into the taxpayer reserves and pay for whatever they wish to at any time. We have a formal Budget process. That Budget process requires the Government to set out line by line, in detail, what it is seeking funding for and how funding will be spent. We were all aware that there was no line item in last year’s Budget that put aside $30 million for purchase of land at Ihumātao.

The question was asked: how is this going to be funded? I will quote from the Minister’s own words in the press release. Housing Minister Megan Woods said, “the land is being purchased from Fletchers … under the Land for Housing Programme as the parties have committed that there will be housing on the site.” Now, if that were the case, then Ihumātao wouldn’t be in this Supplementary Estimates bill, because that appropriation already existed. It was part of the KiwiBuild appropriation. It had been set out clearly in the 2020 Budget. But members on this side of the House were fairly concerned when we heard that it was going to be funded from Land for Housing, because it simply didn’t stack up, because the Land for Housing Programme was set up as an appropriation with the purpose of getting more houses built at a quicker pace than would otherwise be achieved.

Now, in the case of Ihumātao, what we know is that Fletcher Building had been planning 480 homes on the site. So our question was: well, how can this purchase by the Government be accelerating houses being built, when they’re not even prepared to commit to a single house being built by a single date? And they still haven’t, by the way, detailed how many houses will be built or when they’ll be built by. So it was clear to us that it was a very big stretch to say that this money was being spent in a way that would get more houses built quickly. So that then raises a question: if the Government is saying in its public communications that it is funding something out of a particular fund, within appropriations, and yet it doesn’t seem to meet the purpose of those appropriations, then what should it do?

Well, that is why we end up here today, because the Government does have the ability to vote itself more money for projects that occur on an ad hoc basis, but it has to go through a very formal, rigid process to do that. That formal, rigid process is that it has to seek imprest supply. Technically, departments need to make that request, and then those extra appropriations need to be put in the Supplementary Estimates bill. And it was not until I wrote to the Auditor-General to say, “Hey, what’s going on here? Why is the Government claiming it’s using the Land for Housing fund for this purchase when it doesn’t fit with the purpose of that fund?” that the Auditor-General went and had a good look at it and said, “Well, actually, yes, you’re right; they’re not going to be able to use the Land for Housing fund, because technically it doesn’t meet the requirement.” So they’ve set themselves up a new appropriation.

Now, the Minister of Housing has tried a game, I believe, of wool pulling over eyes by saying, “Oh, look, this sort of technical thing happens all the time.” Well, she is correct in so far as that from time to time, officials forget to put things in the Supplementary Estimates process or imprest supply process. But she is wrong to suggest that Ministers forget to be up front with the public and say, “You know what? We can’t fund it from Land for Housing because it doesn’t meet the purpose. We have forked out an extra $30 million for it.” That is what happened. I put it to you, Madam Speaker, that Ministers hoped it would be buried in this bill and nobody would notice. Well, we noticed and the Auditor-General noticed.

Now, I want to highlight for you the fact that, actually, Ministers knew before they put that press release out in December that this was all going to be necessary, this process today. Now, the reason they knew was because Treasury had raised a red flag. Treasury had said to Ministers in advice earlier in December, “Look, you can’t use the Land for Housing Programme in this way. We do not recommend doing this.” Actually, it is because the proposal is at odds with the Land for Housing Programme’s intent, operating model, and scopes of appropriations. There is a risk that audit considers the expense does not fit with the appropriation scope and it is unappropriated spend.

Ministers had been warned. They got that advice from Treasury prior to doing their press release, saying that they would use the Land for Housing fund. So I do not accept that this was some technical error. Ministers had been explicitly told that they couldn’t use that fund, and yet, in their press release, they said that’s how it was being funded. I believe that that is disingenuous in the extreme.

Then, we have the next piece of advice, which is that, actually, if you want to do this technically correctly, you need to set up a new appropriation. Now, Ministers went ahead, and, according to the evidence we have from the Auditor-General, they did that in February. They set up a brand new appropriation that now finds itself in this Supplementary Estimates bill. They agreed to establish $29.9 million of delegated authority to sign the sale and purchase agreement. Now, that happened on 9 February, Madam Speaker, and you may be asking, as anyone would, “Oh well, when they made that decision, did they announce that to New Zealanders? Did they say, ‘Look, actually, we’ve realised this isn’t actually a Land for Housing initiative. We’ve appropriated an additional $30 million.’?” Well, I believe that would have been a transparent, upfront thing to do. It should have been what happened, but that is not what happened. The first we knew of the fact that there was this new appropriation was when the Auditor-General wrote back to us to spell out what had actually happened.

So I think that, yes, in this bill, there’s the technical issue that officials omitted to request the correct approvals to get the authorities from Parliament, didn’t do the requests for the new appropriation to be included in the appropriation bill. There’s all of that. But it would be wrong to blame officials, here, for technical errors, when what is really at stake is the fact that Ministers knowingly put them into that state of confusion by obfuscating about the way the Ihumātao land purchase would be funded.

And I’ll tell you why they were a bit vague on this: because they did not want to front up to New Zealanders and say, “We’re going to use $30 million of your money to buy a piece of land, and not a single house will be built.” I will challenge the Government: if houses are going to be built with the supplementary appropriation in the bill today, then tell us when, tell us how many, and tell us tomorrow.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on the Appropriation (2021/22 Estimates) Bill, and I thank Nicola Willis, the member on the other side of the House who has just finished and is sitting down, for her scrutiny of the actual bill, because it was really disappointing when the other side of the House didn’t even bother with a shadow Budget for this one, unlike other Opposition parties. But any which way, it’s good to see someone is scrutinising the bill—

Damien Smith: The ACT Party has an alternative Budget.

BARBARA EDMONDS: —and is actually paying attention, just in case there was an $11 billion hole. Maybe that’s why they didn’t do a shadow Budget. But, yes, I will acknowledge the member over there from ACT, who did have a shadow Budget. At least there is an Opposition here in the House today.

We’ve heard from previous speakers—particularly the Minister of Finance in the first reading and second reading of this bill—that Budget 2021 is about securing our recovery from COVID. It lays the foundations for coming out of COVID stronger by addressing our long-term challenges while making sure we can continue to grow our economy.

Now, last week I had the pleasure of sitting down in the Porirua City Council business growth forum, where the Minister took us through a number of the initiatives which are in this bill, and what was really interesting was that we had an independent economist come and speak directly after the Minister who took us through the growth figures for Porirua City. Now, Porirua City, for those who are not familiar, is the biggest city within my electorate of Mana. What they took us through and took the audience through was that there have been a number of indicators that show that, unlike some parts, Porirua City is growing. We had a GDP in 2020 of 2.8 percent, compared to 1.6 percent for the rest of New Zealand. Employment is up 1.9 percent, compared to 1.6 percent for the rest of the country. Productivity is also up. The reason why a lot of those indicators are up is because of the construction industry, which is the main industry that comes out of Porirua, and the reason why the construction industry is up is because of a number of the initiatives in this bill.

One of the biggest decisions that the Government made last term when they were hit with COVID was to keep the apprenticeships scheme going. We saw that there was a significant increase in apprenticeships, because what we saw with the global financial crisis was that one of the first things that were laid off were the apprentices, but, actually, last year we made a conscious decision to keep that apprenticeship growth scheme, which is a big part of the construction industry—again, going back to Porirua. But what we saw was that pre-COVID, only 14 percent of apprenticeships were actually held by women. The Apprenticeship Boost scheme has seen that contribution from women in apprenticeships increase from 14 percent to 30 percent. So that fits not only the investment that is in this bill but those decisions that were made last year.

I wanted to touch on some of the other initiatives which are in this bill for women which were in Budget 2021—in particular, women’s health. I’m really heartened to see our colleague and Minister, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who, yesterday, was out with her community, having a look at the floods, and some of the investment that is in here is very personal to a lot of us on this side of the House, such as for the cervical-screening programme, which saw an investment boost of $53 million. So that will go towards a new test which will replace the current smear test, and 1.4 million women between the ages of 25 and 69 will be eligible for this test. It’s a simple swab that can be done in the privacy of their own home, or wherever they want to take the test.

So, at this time, I just want to acknowledge our colleague—a big “Wassup!” to our sis. Hopefully, Kiritapu, you will be back with us soon, and we wish you well for the rest of your recovery post your treatment.

There was also an additional $66 million within this bill for a new breast-screening system. That’s a major upgrade of the IT infrastructure to establish a new system to proactively identify and enrol eligible women into this scheme. It is expected the upgraded system will reach an estimated 271,000 more women who are currently not in this programme.

So my biggest thanks as well to the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall for her advocacy in this area, and also to the Minister for Women, the Hon Jan Tinetti. You know, we have got the biggest women’s caucus on this side of the House, so with representation comes advocacy for these really important schemes, which we’re seeing in Budget 2021.

I also want to give my acknowledgment to another female Minister, the Hon Poto Williams. Now, there was some conversation on the other side of the House just before me, around Crown Māori partnerships and around Ihumātao. Actually, what Minister Poto Williams has managed to do is she’s expanded a really critical piece of Crown Māori partnership around Te Pae Oranga in the police-justice portfolio.

Now, Te Pae Oranga did start in 2013, when the panels were established in the Hutt Valley, Gisborne, and Manukau, and in recent years—back in 2018—the Hon Stuart Nash increased that number of what they call iwi panels. It was gifted the name Te Pae Oranga by the Māori King in 2018. It is an initiative that is widely supported by Māori leaders across Aotearoa, and there are currently 16 panels in different locations around the country. I’ve got on the list Moerewa, Waitematā, Auckland City, Papakura, Māngere, Hamilton, Rotorua, Whakatāne, Gisborne, Hastings, Taranaki, Masterton, Lower Hutt, Nelson, Christchurch, and Invercargill, and two more will be in place by the end of this month. So Budget 2021 has supplemented the appropriation for the current panels by giving additional funding for 12 more te pae oranga, or iwi community panels, taking it to a total of 30 over four years. What does that come down to? It comes down to the priority on this side of the House that we want to deliver on our commitment to reduce reoffending and keep our communities safer with this significant investment.

This investment works. An evaluation published in 2019 showed that the programme reduced harm from reoffending by 22 percent. That’s evidence-based. That is investing in programmes that absolutely work.

The programme provides an alternative resolution path where community leaders support participants to account for their offending and help them to make a plan to put things right. Those plans include restorative actions that participants must complete and conditions they must follow. It is a really big step when you have to, one, go on to a marae and be accountable not only for your actions but also be accountable to your aunties, to your marae leaders, and to your community leaders for the offending that you have done—so, first of all, they have to take account for their actions. Two, they have to take account for their actions in front of their community leaders, and then, three, they work through a plan to make sure they stop that reoffending, and, again, it has stopped that reoffending by 22 percent. So by understanding that what works for Māori works for everyone, Te Pae Oranga is a key enabler of a more humane criminal justice system through delivering tikanga Māori restorative justice services focused on accountability, education, and preventing of reoffending.

Another really good initiative that was also funded through this appropriation bill was the $70 million to fund new rangitahi youth panels. I know that in Porirua, my home town, which is in Mana, there has been a rangatahi panel which was released last year.

The Rangatahi Courts are for young people who have admitted the charges they are facing—again, accountability. They have accepted that they are accountable for their actions, and then what happens is they go through a family group conference. So this is, again, bringing the young person, one accepting that they’ve done wrong and accepting their actions, and then having the community leaders, community judges, and then their family to work out a plan for how that young person can take responsibility for what they have done as well as working out how to make sure that that young person does not offend again, because in the end, it comes down to these young people. You could lock them up, but if you don’t give them a plan around rehabilitation and around recovery and they’re released, then they’re going to reoffend again.

So this investment of $70 million—$70 million—for rangatahi youth court is, again, around accountability and around plans for making sure that our young people are supported so that they don’t reoffend. It could be as simple as a driver’s licence course, because for a lot of people, we understand that the entry into the justice system is through not having had a driver’s licence course.

There is also funding within this bill for 35 fulltime-equivalent positions within police to support and enable these programmes Te Pae Oranga and the Rangatahi Courts. Funding has also been allocated to explore future referral pathways into this programme from Ara Poutama Aotearoa and the judiciary. On this side of the House, this Government is committed to supporting initiatives that will have a meaningful impact on an individual and that will strengthen its commitment to the Māori-Crown relationship.

So, once again, I’d like to commend this bill to the House. I’d like to acknowledge all the Ministers who have been involved in pushing this through for their advocacy for our women and for our young people. Kia ora.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. On behalf of the Green Party, I rise to support the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill.

I just want to start my contribution by emphasizing the importance of Government and Government spending to all of our wellbeing and our future. I believe that we are at a moment in time when it has never been more clear why we need a strong, accountable, democratic, and transparent Government that can help ensure that all people in our country have the basics of what they need, and that we’re able to work together to confront the incredible challenges that we are facing—COVID was just the beginning of that. Obviously, with this Supplementary Estimates bill, we see a lot of initiatives to help ensure that we were able to respond effectively to COVID. I think it’s worth noting that billionaires didn’t save us from a pandemic. Having more billionaires doesn’t help the world respond to a pandemic. Having private corporations—some of them were able to play a role, and that was useful, but ultimately it’s Government who can coordinate and act on behalf of the people. And when Government is transparent, accountable, and democratic, we are able to work together so that we’re all better off, because, as individuals, we could not stop a pandemic. We could not keep ourselves and our families safe from a pandemic without everyone else in the country also doing certain things to ensure that we could all be safe.

So, obviously, you hear a lot of debate in this House, sometimes quite critical of Government spending. I would like to say that in the private sector, if you talk to any venture capitalist, they don’t expect every investment they make to be a perfect success. In fact, the majority of them aren’t. But it’s important that they put the money in and they try. It’s no different when it comes to Government. We need our Government to be doing the absolute best it can, but we can’t expect everything to work perfectly. The amount of criticism that comes from those people trying to pick holes in various Public Service initiatives where things haven’t worked out perfectly, unfortunately, undermines the very concept that we need Government.

But I think it was very clear that New Zealanders understood just how important it is to have a competent and caring Government. That was pretty obvious at the outcome of the last election, when the Labour Party increased their vote, the Greens increased their vote, and we are parties that have a much more modern view of the role of Government in everyone’s lives and that it can be a positive contributor. Why? Because we need a public health system. We need infrastructure. We need housing. We need affordable housing. None of that can be delivered well by an individual, competitive, private market. We need Government to do that. When it comes to responding to climate change, it’s going to be 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times more challenging than responding to COVID-19. And I don’t know that everyone in this House really understands just how pressing and urgent it is that we respond to climate change.

Now, I want to acknowledge the Labour Government where they have recently made some steps in the right direction to respond to the Climate Change Commission’s advice to ensure that we do have policies that are helping us as a country, as a team of 5 million, reduce our contribution to catastrophic global warming, so that our kids and their kids have a chance at a future. We’re already seeing the impacts and effects of climate change. We’ve had three dry years in a row. We’ve had some parts of the country affected by drought. That’s particularly bad for a range of reasons. It’s not good for our farmers. It’s not good for people who live in areas where they have to have water restrictions. The drought is contributing to higher electricity prices and, ironically, more carbon emissions from our electricity because our lake levels are lower because there wasn’t substantial investment in an alternative to coal 10 or 20 years ago when we needed those plans to be made. Of course, the Government’s working on it now, but we are going to have to burn more coal in a dry year. Then, conversely, we have these periods of drought, and then we get hit by epic storms and flooding, which affects infrastructure in places around Canterbury and Ashburton.

Now, this is just the beginning, because, in fact, other parts of the world that are closer to the Equator are already suffering worse impacts of climate change. The economic and human consequences of climate change are going to be devastating. I’ve just been reading a book recently, and the latest reports coming out from our globally accepted institutions that have the best science are saying the window of time is running out to take action on climate change. Our kids, actually—it’s going to be too late for them. If we don’t act right now, it’s too late for them. So if you care about your kids, then this is something that we all have to take very seriously and work together on.

I think those parties—and there will be voices, of course, that try to stir up fear and anger. I’ve seen a lot of that in the last few weeks. Voices out there—actually, not just the last few weeks, the last few months. Whether it’s fear around recognising and finally taking action on our commitments under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, whether it’s fear and anger over practical policy responses in the transport sector to how we can reduce emissions, I have seen members of this House and others go out there and try to stir up anger, fear, and hatred—things that will divide our country and make—

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

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —that will make it harder for us to respond to climate change.

In this Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill, I just want to call the attention of the members to one thing: energy and resources, oilfield decommissioning—an additional $200 million almost. I think this is a perfect example of where Government has to come clean up the mess of the people who have privately invested in fossil fuel extraction and profited from it, but then left a mess for the public to deal with. This is another really good example of why we need Government. We need Government setting the rules and regulations, monitoring, ensuring that private industry is playing its role, and we need Government ensuring that it’s addressing inequality in our society, because unless people have enough resource to have a warm, dry, affordable home, to put food on the table, they’re not going to be able to care about environmental issues, they’re not going to be able to worry about climate change and respond to it, and that’s where climate change and inequality—responding to these two twin challenges together is absolutely essential.

While I think the Labour Government made a good start with the Budget in 2021—the increase to benefits is long overdue and happy to see that. Of course, the Green Party would like to go further and faster, and some of the initiatives here in the Supplementary Estimates, of course, will be addressing that, but again, this is just the beginning. These are just baby steps. If we’re truly going to meet the challenges of the next decade and the decades after that, we are going to need a much more bold and transformational approach, and we are going to have to work together. But we’ve shown that we can do it. We did it with COVID. We’ve had literally the best result of pretty much any country in the world in our response to COVID, and that was coming from a pretty difficult situation, because, of course, we had nine years of underfunding of our health system—total decimation of public health from the previous National Government. And the previous coalition Government was taking the steps to rebuild the Public Service after it was rendered quite impotent under the last National Government—building it up and were able to step it up in a really short period of time in 2020. And although it wasn’t perfect—of course nothing’s ever going to be perfect with humans—I’d say it’s as good as it could have been. We need that kind of national pride and spirit and togetherness in how we approach climate change.

Climate change and responding to inequality must be central to our economic strategy in the recovery and from here on out. Of course, we see many other countries doing that. The United States has made responding to climate change absolutely central to their economic strategy. There’s no point thinking we can get rich in the short term by continuing to do things the way we always have done when, in fact, it’s going to cost us heaps more. Five, 10, 15, 20 years from now, our trading partners are not going to be looking at us and wanting to deal with us if we aren’t pulling our weight in the global fight against climate change. And there will be severe economic consequences to those parties—God forbid they should get into power, because they’ve made it very clear in the last few weeks they’re not going to do a God damn thing to respond to climate change. They’re going to complain and they’re going to fight for the status quo every step of the way, and they’re going to try and make people very, very angry, but luckily New Zealanders can see beyond the fear, they can see beyond the anger, and I know New Zealanders are up for this fight.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): In the normal course of human events, people who do a thing over and over get better at it, or at least that’s what I believed until I heard Julie Anne Genter give a speech and reflected on the fact she’s been in Parliament for 10 years and that’s what we got. It might have been difficult for people listening at home to tell from Julie Anne Genter’s speech, but this is the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. It’s part of the Budget cycle. It’s legislated as a requirement under the Public Finance Act 1989. It requires that if the Government spends money and then its Estimates turn out to be wrong, it bring this new bill to Parliament, and this bill is about all the changes from what the Government budgeted to what it actually intends to spent.

I think it’s really good that we have in this country a principle that people spend money on behalf of taxpayers only with the permission of this Parliament. To put it in its most simplest form: no taxation without representation. There’s a process where the people can vote for and examine expenditure by the Government, and, actually, all of the changes in the new appropriations—the Supplementary Estimates, as they’re called—are laid out here in these pages for all to see. That’s open and transparent government and a very good thing. But at the same time, it is extraordinary to note how much expenditure has gone up in this year’s Supplementary Estimates and on what.

To take something extremely simple, you have a look at, I don’t know, say, what do we have here—actually, I’ve got to find some better examples. Hang on, I’m on a page where they’ve actually saved some money. We’ll go back to the start: Agriculture, Biosecurity, Fisheries and Food Safety. Implementation of COVID-19 Assistance for Primary Industries: $4,682,000 extra spending. COVID-19 Assistance for Primary Industries: $13,985,000. In Fisheries: Aquaculture Settlements, they spent $11 million less than they thought—not a bad thing. Settlement of Litigation: $40 million more. Subscriptions to International Organisations: unforeseen $330,000 of expenditure. If you go through the next ones, $16 million more, $81 million more, $22 million more, $11 million more, $952,000 more. As you go down the page—and I’ve just picked the first page—you see the Government spending far more than it had intended—

Hon Dr David Clark: Didn’t like the second page.

DAVID SEYMOUR: —just about every step of the way. David Clark says why don’t we look at the second page. Well, what does it say there? COVID-19 - Cultural Sector Response and Recovery: $35,257,000 more than they thought when the Budget was passed last May. Cultural Sector Response and Recovery: $12,928,000—two identical lines, a total of $48 million in additional spending. Next line: $2.25 million extra, $1 million extra, $268,000 saved. Line after line, we see a Government that has spent dramatically more than it had budgeted. The fact of the matter is that this Government has gone spendthrift in the middle of a crisis.

Here’s the facts: this Government has had $100 billion—$100 billion—printed by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, $60 billion that has been borrowed fiscally by the Minister of Finance, and that’s why the economy is running hot, but it’s busy and stalling. It’s an economy at the crest of a slump, on a short-term sugar hit from enormous expenditures, enormous money-printing, and enormous borrowing. Those are the realities, and this Government—what has it done? Well, it’s been incredibly fortunate that it’s had not only low interest rates and lots of borrowing; it’s also been incredibly fortunate to have had a very simple response to COVID-19. It’s among the most successful countries on earth in dealing with COVID-19, along with other countries that are islands.

In fact, I asked the Minister for COVID-19 Response can he identify another country in the world that had more natural advantages in dealing with a pandemic than New Zealand. Now, any of the members on the Labour benches who were shouting out before—can they tell me which country their Minister for COVID-19 Response named? Which country had more natural advantages in dealing with COVID-19 than New Zealand—anyone?

Hon David Bennett: It would have to be North Korea.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Silence. Silence from the Labour Party. David Bennett says North Korea, and that’s where he’d like to retire, you know. He’d be amongst friends. That’s where he’d love to retire. But the Labour Party, they yap, yap, yap. They shout away, and then they get asked a simple question: did any country have an easier run into COVID with more natural advantages? Silence. Silence from the Labour benches, and that’s the problem. They’re never good at answering the hard questions.

Here’s the difficulty they face: the COVID challenge is becoming more complex. So all of this money-printing and all of this spending has happened in an environment where COVID was relatively simple: “We’re an island. Lock ‘em down, lock it out, and we’re going to be OK.” But the rest of the world is moving on. There’s vaccines, there’s variants of the virus, there’s new technologies, there’s COVID fatigue, and as we move into this “COVID 2.0” world, they actually are going to find it a lot harder to deal with it. So far, we’ve had monetary policy, fiscal policy, and the fact that we’re an island that have kept things going and allowed this enormous spending.

But here’s the next question: what is this Government doing to ensure the New Zealand economy will be productive into the future? What have they done? Well, here we go: central planning of the economy through carbon emissions, a zero carbon Act that will not reduce by one gram New Zealand’s carbon emissions, and here’s the reason why: the Treasury is giving the advice. The Treasury has said every gram of carbon saved by the zero carbon Act will free up carbon units to be emitted by someone else. So all this banning and taxing of different technologies and trying to work out what sort of utes Toyota is producing and the Prime Minister getting herself in a tiz is all for nothing, but, ooh, it’s going to have an effect on energy prices. It’s going to have an effect on the economy. It’s going to deindustrialise New Zealand and send those high-paying jobs to Australia. That’s what it’s going to do.

What else is this Government doing? Jim Bolger had a bit of a mid-life or, shall we say, later-life crisis and said, “Let’s bring back compulsory unionism.” The National Party said, “That’s going to take us back to the 1970s. They’re wrong. The 1970s was a great time. This legislation, this proposal, is going to—

Angela Roberts: Yeah, I was born in the 1970s—a great time.

DAVID SEYMOUR: Angela Roberts is arguing, and I can’t argue back, because I wasn’t there and she was. The fact is that this compulsory unionism takes us back to 1894, the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, an Act where 1 percent of a workforce, such as a thousand workers in hospitality, can force compulsory union agreements on a whole sector, even if everyone involved votes against it twice. That’s why these extra Estimates and these appropriations are not ultimately affordable, because you’ve got an economy on a short-term sugar hit, a Government that is constantly attacking hard-working people just trying to build a home, family, and business out of their own efforts—attacking them with new rules and regulations and policies that will make them poorer, and when the short-term sugar hit of monetary and fiscal stimulus runs out, then the chickens will come home to roost.

But, of course, there is a better way—there’s got to be a better way. The ACT Party is alone in this Parliament as having produced an alternative Budget that shows us how we could cut the middle-income tax rates to 30c for all those hard-working middle New Zealanders, how we could balance the Budget by 2025, and do it without reducing expenditure on public services such as education and health. We wouldn’t reduce it one cent, and then we’d respect the businesses that pay the bills and make this country go. That’s a better alternative. This is profligate waste. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Sitting suspended from 5.59 p.m. to 7 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ā, kāti rā, tēnā rā tātou. The House is resumed. Members, before the dinner break, we were debating the second readings of the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill. It’s call No. 8.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I must say, if you recall just before the dinner break, I think Mr Seymour was speaking and, frankly, I don’t know what economy he is living in. Do you remember Marvin from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? He made him look cheerful, he really did. What a naysayer. What a doom and gloom merchant. Here were are, we’ve got an economy which is humming along quite nicely, particularly given current circumstances. We’ve got Treasury and the Reserve Bank for the first time agreeing with each other that things are going well, with GDP growth projections which are outstanding. We’ve got projections that job growth’s going to hit 200,000, and yet he’s telling us we’re on some kind of temporary sugar hit. Nothing could be further from the truth. You know why? The reason is that this Budget is a carefully planned, sustainable Budget for the future.

As I was flicking through this glorious document, I stopped on page 34 and genuinely was just having a bit of a read, and it talked about the Ka Ora, Ka Ako healthy school lunches programme and the fact—and you can look at it and you can go to the Estimates themselves and look at what it’s going to cost. But I tell you this: to really put it in perspective you have to go and see it in action, so I did exactly that only last week. I went to two schools in my electorate. I went to Mairehau High School and Linwood College and talked to both of those schools about what the lunch programme was doing there. I didn’t just talk to the principal or the teachers; I talked to the kids themselves, and do you know what I saw? I saw with my own eyes hungry kids grabbing lunches. I saw one fellow look at me cheekily as he grabbed two, and I thought “That is bloody good.” because there’s a kid that’s hungry and he’s going to get well fed. Then, at the school gate as they leave or at the canteen as they leave, they’re there at 3 o’clock, and if they want to grab the three or four spare ones for their siblings at home or even their mum and dad—go for it. So there’s no waste.

People have come to me and they’ve said, “Oh what’s all this school business? What’s all this about? Surely, it’s all going to waste.” You know, I’ve got two things to say to that. If I had to make two school lunches so that one hungry kid gets fed, I’d do it anyway, and, secondly, they’re not getting wasted; they’re getting eaten, and it’s a fantastic initiative. The fact that those teachers tell me that those kids come to school, they stay longer, they turn up more often, and they learn better—that is what this is about. That is why we are absolutely committed to relieving poverty, because poverty causes barriers like that. Look, can I just say what a fantastic job our Ministers have done around poverty and education.

I’ve got to speak about period poverty because, you know, I think it’s time some of us blokes stood up. I haven’t got any daughters. I’ve got three sons, so I’ve never had to spend too much time talking about it. But if there’s a young woman and there’s a barrier and her barrier going to school is period products, I’ll be the first to say we should absolutely be supplying those period products so that she can come to school and learn on the same footing as anyone else. So I’m absolutely in favour of it. Jan Tinetti, great Minister, good friend—fantastic job in getting that in place. I would have recognised Willow-Jean’s work in there as well, and her sister, who’s done a lot of work in the period poverty space as well.

Of course, this isn’t even touching on the fact that we’ve managed to get rid of school donations in many of our schools so that people can send their kids to school, engage in all of the activities and what have you, and not have to struggle finding whatever it might be—150 bucks a year, when they actually can’t find it—and, of course, NCEA fees are gone. So we’re absolutely committed to free—genuinely free—education, to removing barriers, and that’s just part of this Government’s commitment to eliminating poverty.

It was great to hear the support of Julie Anne Genter. Of course, Julie Anne Genter is going to say it’s a good step in the right direction, but the lift in benefit level is a huge change to the lives of many, many New Zealanders, and I absolutely endorse the fact that people need to be able to, even if they’re living on a benefit—the fact that they’re living on a benefit should be no bar to leading a meaningful life with choices. Vocational education, adult education, reinstating adult education, saying to people, “We want to give you opportunity.”—that’s what this Budget is about. It is building our human infrastructure, making sure that people can grow and learn, and that doesn’t even touch the sides of the physical aspect of it. But I do want to say that this is part of the wellness Budget framework. So those aspects of the Budget go straight to the heart of saying that we want people to be able to live the lives they choose, the lives that they define as flourishing, and to grow in that regard. That’s a critical aspect of the philosophy that underpins this wellness Budget.

But, of course, the other thing we’re doing—Megan Woods. I think it was in Auckland today that she was announcing the housing infrastructure package, the accelerator fund: $3 billion to unlock city councils. We can talk about some of our city councils perhaps not managing their assets as well as they could, not rolling out that infrastructure, but we’re not here to lay blame. We’re here to move ahead. We’re here to give opportunities to people. So if we need to help councils to fund infrastructure, whether that be roads, whether it be drainage and three waters, or whatever it is, we are very much prepared to partner with others, including the private sector if it works, to unlock that land so that more houses can be built. Only today, I read a report of a senior economist saying that by 2022 we will have a surplus of houses in Auckland because, for the first time in a generation, we are building more houses than the growth in population needs. So at last, this Government, from all the work it’s done over the past four years, is catching up. The race was being badly lost by the National Government but this Government is catching up.

Of course, the other thing we’re doing in the housing space is making homes warmer. There is increased funding for insulation, and, coming from Christchurch, I can tell you it gets pretty chilly down there, and insulation is fantastic because not only does it make us warmer; it saves money and it saves energy, and that is a fantastic initiative as well. That is directed at the people who need it most. A very, very substantial subsidy to people, who can then go and insulate their homes, stay warm, save on the energy bills, and, of course, save on emissions at the same time, particularly if they’re using oil heaters and the like.

In terms of those main benefits, this is only the first step. In April next year, they are going to go up in keeping with the Welfare Expert Advisory Group recommendations, and some of those benefits over the term of this Labour Government will have gone up by 38 percent. Now, what that tells me is that prior to this Government, who has progressively raised benefits over its time, there was abject poverty. People—particularly people with kids—simply couldn’t get by. This Government is committed to changing that, and, of course, the other thing we’re changing in this Budget is the ability to earn—so the ability to earn whilst you are on a benefit is increased.

So here we have a Budget which, in fact, is building a foundation for the future. We’ve got an economy which is doing really well, but we know that in the future there are bottlenecks—infrastructure bottlenecks—and, of course, the climate change question that we must address. This Government is committed to making some of those choices, because the last Government sat on its hands and did nothing for far too long—nothing on climate change, nothing on infrastructure, nothing on schools, nothing on hospitals, and nothing on mental health—and this is a Government that doesn’t apologise for working hard, trying, and keeping going. We will continue to do so. A fantastic Budget that is putting in place a great economy for now and—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired. This is a—

Simon Watts: Mr Speaker, well, what an absolute—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! This is a split call. You seek the call now.

Simon Watts: Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Simon Watts—five minutes.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): What absolute self-gratification coming from the other side of the House after that speech, my goodness, what a lot of that. Duncan Webb mentioned the words “sustainable Budget”. Well, I tell you what, there is nothing farther from the truth when he said that in this Government’s Budget.

I rise on behalf of the National Party and as the MP for North Shore to speak on the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill and Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill. National opposes both of these bills.

The last 18 months have been unprecedented, and these bills here provide the formal mechanisms to authorise Government to incur expenditure, both operational and capital. As the Minister outlined, it impacts some 507 different appropriations, which is a large number.

I want to acknowledge the COVID-19 response costs which are actually included within these bills, and while I’m on that, I want to acknowledge those healthcare workers, those police, and those defence and ambulance staff that worked during the COVID-19 response to keep us, as Kiwis, safe and the work that they continue to do. We are very proud of you, and we appreciate all that you do.

In simple terms, these bills provide the authority for the Government to spend taxpayers’ money—money paid out of the pocket of Kiwis in this country—and Kiwis deserve that money to be spent wisely and not to be wasted. Well, this is where the train comes off its tracks. Hidden within these appropriations are about 250 Government pet projects, as outlined by Michael Woodhouse before. In effect, it’s a slush fund to cover expenditure that should have been under the geyser of COVID-19-related, but isn’t, and includes, for example, $276 million for operational DHB deficits and the Ihumātao land deal that my colleague here mentioned before—in effect, sandbagging.

But what is also included is the resurgence support payment and wage subsidies. While this absolutely helped Kiwis and Kiwi businesses to survive and to flourish through a period of significant challenge last year, I also want to acknowledge those businesses that were left outside and left in the cold because they didn’t receive the support from this Government that they required: 5,000 of those people working within our travel sector and commercial landlords who did not receive one bit of support from this Government, but did support out of their own back pockets Kiwis and did what they could do for our communities. I want to thank them for that.

Not only that, but this Government are also through these bills, in effect, authorising an open chequebook for $41 billion: $35 billion for operational spending and another $6 billion for capital spending. But we all know that this slush fund that they’re signing off, this open blank cheque will not go to the areas which it is required. Will it go to the Ashburton bridge? No. Will it go to Lake Road on the Devonport Peninsula to fix congestion? No. Will it go to stop sewage going out on to our beaches on the North Shore through fixing waste water and stormwater infrastructure? No, it will not.

This appropriation is larger than in prior years: $19 billion, $30 billion, $51 billion, and, this year, $41 billion. It is still significantly more, and the Minister tried to brush this over. But we are told that Government spending is hard to predict. Well, tell that to Kiwi households who are trying to make ends meet by working two jobs, by trying to balance the books who actually only spend what they earn. You know what? That’s because they understand what personal responsibility is—something that that side of the House do not understand, but something that Kiwis do.

Kiwis are sensible people. They expect a Government that is transparent. They don’t allow and they don’t want wasteful spending. They want a Government that understands the realities of the challenges of this nation. People want leadership, accountability, and delivery, and only a National Government will deliver this.

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

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): The people want aspiration, leadership, and delivery. That’s exactly what they wanted at the last election, and that is why they voted 50 percent for the Labour Party. That is why we have 65 seats in this Parliament, because at the last election the voters of this country saw that rabble over there and said, “They are not aspirational for us. They cannot deliver for themselves, let alone this country.”, and they know that that speech from that member sums up them perfectly. In the space of one minute, that member said that we should be spending less and then said we should be spending more, and that sums up the National Party right there.

It was exactly the same as their response to our COVID response, which this Budget builds on. At one point, they had one spokesperson saying we should open the borders; at another point, they were saying we should close them off. At one point they were saying that we should spend more on businesses, and now they’re saying we didn’t spend enough. I think that, there, sums up why they only have 33 members in this House and why they are focused on themselves, when we on this side of the House—demonstrated by this Budget—are focused on New Zealanders and rebuilding from our phenomenal response in COVID.

Now, don’t take my word for it. Look at the international organisations that have reviewed the respective COVID responses from around the world. Think about those countries throughout the COVID response that that side of the House urged us to follow—countries that have now entered their second or third nationwide lockdown. New Zealand stands alone in the developed world as a country that went hard and went early, and that is why we are now enjoying economic growth that, really, is the envy of the world. That is why, through this Budget, we are able to invest in our rebuild. We’re able to invest in our future.

I find it just incredible that that side of the House, when they were in Government, raised the minimum wage every year that they were in, and every time we do it, they say it’s a bad idea. They crow about the fact that they increased benefits, but when we do it, it’s a bad idea.

I think New Zealanders can see rubbish when they see it, and I think they can see it tonight. When that side of the House flicks through, stands up, and says they’re outraged, and then, like Mr Watts, spends two minutes explaining to New Zealanders what this bill is about instead of actually talking about what National would do, they haven’t given any ideas or any alternatives; they just don’t like it. It’s the party of “No”. “No-no National”—that’s all they are. What this Budget does is lift people’s opportunity.

The previous speaker had the gall to talk about families that have to work two jobs. Why are they opposing raising working standards? Why are they opposing raising minimum wage? Why are they opposing raising benefits when they know that for small businesses in areas like I represent—like Wairarapa—their turnover is dependent on people’s capacity to spend? Yet, in this Budget, which lifts thousands of people out of economic difficulty, they will finally have some disposable income, which will support small businesses. Those members do not care, because they do not like the idea of beneficiaries having dignity in the money that they receive.

They do not care about those that are wanting to improve their lives, and that is why they opposed the training incentive allowance. Do you remember that? Do you remember the training incentive allowance that brought the Hon Paula Bennett off the benefit and into work? The first thing she did as Minister for Social Development was pull the ladder up after her. She removed the training incentive allowance for other people to have those opportunities. We have reinstated that because we are wanting to give people hope again.

We know the value of work and we want to help people get back into work, earn money for themselves, and regain dignity in their lives because, on this side of the House, we believe in people. We want to give people a chance. We know that everyone has something to offer.

That is why I firmly believe the Labour Party won every single seat except Epsom in the party vote. That is why, despite last week at Fieldays, the National Party were crowing of being the party for the farmers, and they were disgusted by the positive comments that we were getting. They refuse to accept that we are delivering for the regions. We are the party for every New Zealander; this Budget sums it up, and they hate it.

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

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, it’s a Labour call.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Is it?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That was a Māori Party call.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: How’s that work—how did they get two in a row?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Because the Māori Party didn’t take their call.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, they’ve gone—that’s it. They don’t—you can’t swap it out.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, it—I’ll explain—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Well, we’re making new rules.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, that’s a determination of the Business Committee, and so that’s what the speaking order is. When the Māori Party don’t take their call, it goes to Labour.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise in support of this bill. It’s been a very interesting thing to listen to both the National Party and the ACT Party make such a plea and yet fall so far short of anything that they can say that’s positive about what has happened here. It actually does speak to a total lack of energy on the other side that they just cannot muster anything in this situation.

We’re in a situation where we have a Budget and a bill that’s all about vision. It’s about a vision for a better New Zealand and it comes after what was admitted by the Opposition to be one of our greatest economic crisis. This was a time which we could have actually very much failed at. Yes, we are an island, but the right calls were made at the right time, and as a result we have actually survived a very catastrophic event and we’re doing very well. This Budget doesn’t just look backwards to that but it looks forwards to what sort of society will be absolutely resilient in the future. So we have a Budget that actually looks at pulling children out of poverty and it looks at building jobs and it looks at actually changing the way that this economy works so that it’s environmentally actually sustainable, and I’m extremely proud of this.

What do we need to do to make those things happen? Well, we’ve heard my colleagues talk about things like Lunches in Schools, but we also need to get some of those fundamentals right. We need to make sure that families can sustain themselves, and that means we need to lift wages. It means we need to make sure that our hospitals are actually working well, and so are our houses—they need to be warm and dry.

I was talking to Dr David Gellar during the campaign in 2017, and he was talking about when he had started in his practice, he had started working in trauma, because that’s what happened in a hospital—there was a lot of trauma coming in—and by the time he had matured as a doctor, the actual reason people were coming into the hospital was different. It was chronic disease, and that chronic disease came out of things like bad housing. We had children with rheumatic fever and we were just ignoring that situation, and we had children living in cars. That was one of the reasons that inspired me to come into politics. It was actually being in a situation where a Government had turned a blind eye to the fact we had children in those kinds of conditions. So it is a holistic approach. It is about bringing children into stable housing, bringing them off the street, out of the cars, out of an underclass, and back into the mainstream of our society.

One of the things we’ve done with regards to that is we’ve put benefits up. We are going to have people at a dignified level right across the board, and, alongside that, the working class. Most people in our country are going to earn a decent living, and a lot of this is supportive of that so when people need retraining, they will get retrained. They will actually be able to do an apprenticeship in something that will be helpful. In addition to that, we will put work out there that actually makes this place a better place to be.

I’m extremely proud of the amount that’s being spent on infrastructure, because for all the hue and cry, there wasn’t actually money being spent on maintaining our roads and there wasn’t actually money being spent on looking forward to a situation where public transport would do what it must do in a world which is challenged by global warming. Now, we’re going to have a situation where we not only have better roads but we’re thinking carefully about how we use them, and we’re making the best use of things like public transport and we’re bringing back a sense of community. So when we are building things, we’re not just building them by rote.

Recently, there was a look at the infrastructure spend on roads. The Mill Road project got redesigned so that it is much more efficient. It is going to be one that builds itself around actually public transport, and our suburbs in Auckland will be built around transport hubs, and that will be a wonderful thing. One of the real roadblocks to that was that the councils were also being starved for money, so they are going to be helped by a huge package. It was announced in the Budget, but, actually, a lot of the detail was announced today. That is $3.8 billion of Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, and that will be something that is available to people to actually jump start a lot of housing in Auckland. As an MP based in Auckland, I am thrilled to see that, because it was stopping that growth.

This is a situation where we are going to apply that first $1 billion on the basis of criteria that were announced today. So money will be granted and it will be granted to councils or iwi or developers where it is going to mean that we can intensify greenfield or brownfield sites that we will be developing and giving money to groups that wouldn’t otherwise get it, so it would have been road-blocked. We’ll be spreading the projects into different regions and we’ll be making sure that it goes into situations where there might be co-funding by third parties, so it actually brings about enough funding for those things to happen. We’re very considering of things like the pipeline of work, so it will absolutely make a difference right now to the ability to build housing, and those councils and iwi and developers will be able to get that money if they want to do feasibility studies or design, and they will be able to build all of the infrastructure which is actually stopping them at the moment. So we will be actually moving in an area that’s extremely important to really bringing children out of poverty and creating a much better society.

So this is a Budget that’s all about vision. It has one at its centre. It’s not just wellbeing; it’s what wellbeing means. What wellbeing means to me is a much more equitable society where if you’re on a benefit you’ll be able to live—it won’t actually stop things happening—and where the children in those situations won’t be punished just depending on what kind of family they were born into. It’s a really important development, and it wasn’t happening before this Government actually took the reins. So that’s leadership—that’s what’s important. There’s a whole lot of money that really has gone into making sure that we have been protected as a society from COVID, and it was money absolutely well spent. But there’s also a lot of money that’s going into a vision for New Zealand and it’s a vision I’m extremely proud of.

Now, I just wanted to talk about walking and cycling in Auckland, because I, for one, am extremely proud of our commitment to build a walking and cycling pathway from the city centre into the North Shore, and I just wanted to point out to people something about that. That actually means that you’ll be able to get from Lincoln Road, which is in the west, and you’ll be able to cycle along—and I actually do cycle along. I go on my scooter along that pathway. You’ll be able to cycle right into the city. You’ll be able to go across K Road, right down, you’ll be able to go across the bridge, and you’ll actually be able to go as far as Takapuna. That’s a beautiful thing.

I think we forget that some of this is about having a good life, that that makes a huge difference to New Zealand, and when the original bridge was built, it was actually built without thinking about that stuff. People were basically living in two separate cities with the bridge connecting them. This is one city and it’s a very beautiful city, and it’s going to be even more beautiful after the announcements today that were made about the Hauraki Gulf and protecting it.

This is a cohesive plan, people, and that is what the Labour Party has. It has vision. It has a cohesive plan, and it’s about equity and inclusiveness and fairness and a good, good quality of life for New Zealanders—the ones who get the lunches at the schools and the ones who actually have parents working, trying to make those ends meet beyond that—because it’s become a very difficult thing and it’s got to become easier for all walks of life in New Zealand. I’m extremely proud to be part of a Government that’s doing that. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): There is nothing so comfortable as basking in the warm embrace of delusion, and that’s what we’ve seen tonight from successive speakers from the Government. Let’s be very clear: firstly, this bill is here because of a degree of mismanagement of the Budget. We’re only a few days away from the 2021 Budget kicking in, but there is a gap in the Government’s available spending permission, and so they’re now filling in—and Michael Wood throws his head back. Well, this is a guy who is really not at all in control of his portfolio—a man who is totally a victim of the maddest officials that are available in Government, giving him all sorts of wacky advice about how to reduce emissions from transport.

The last speaker, Helen White, just spoke about how lovely it is that you can walk from Lincoln Road all the way through to the North Shore somewhere or ride a bike, or perhaps an electric bike. Wonderful! The estimate is there’d be about 3,000 people a day who might use that. How much does that reduce the transport emission profile for New Zealand: 0.04 percent—0.04 percent—and at a cost of about $200,000 per tonne, $200,000 worth of the cost of emissions. For every one tonne of emission reduced, the cost of that bridge will be $200,000. Well, how many of the 4,000 families currently living in motels could benefit from some of that money? I don’t see too many of them skipping with delight about the prospect of riding a bike across the Auckland Harbour Bridge—can’t afford a bike, let alone an electric bike.

Then there is, of course, the 23,000 families who are currently waiting for a State house, five times the number of just four years ago. What’s gone wrong? Well, what’s gone wrong is we’ve got a Government that’s extremely good at making announcements—extremely good at making announcements—but very, very poor when it comes to anything like delivery. Where would you see a better example than in the area of mental health that’s been covered by the television coverage tonight and was a subject of the House today—totally deluded responses from the Government. Three years ago, I think it was, they put up $1.9 billion to provide better facilities for people who are suffering from mental illness. No one’s going to argue that that’s not a good idea, but it’s no good if it’s not delivered on, and in all that time of the $1.9 billion—$1,900 million—half of $1 million has been spent. The Minister comes out in front of the House today and on the TV tonight and he says, “Oh, I’m very worried about this. I’m going to have”—guess what?—“a review.” He’s going to have a review.

So the Minister of Health for four years has sat there never asking officials about what was happening with that money, never looking at his appropriations to see where it’s all going, never expecting a report from Treasury. And where were Treasury? One of the most useless Government departments in the nation. Where were they? Nowhere to be seen, because that’s not their thing. They don’t like that—they like saving money. So they’ve put that $1.85 billion now across to one side and let the suffering continue, and where was the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet? Where were all the bloated officials in that department who are supposed to be there to guide Ministers through their portfolios on that? Nowhere to be seen—nowhere to be seen at all.

If you go through all of the indicators for how a society should be working, you’d get no better description of the things that matter to people than was used by the great Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk. Quite apart from some of his more prosaic sort of statements, that actually weren’t written by him—I do know who they’re written by—he said that the key things are housing, health, education, personal security, and having a job. Well, let’s go through those. We’ve just covered off health, and what a mess that’s in. I’ll come in a minute to the debacle that’s out there over the COVID-19 vaccinations. It’s an absolute mess. There is nothing consistent about that roll-out from one end of the country to the other—

Hon Michael Wood: Into the conspiracies. Just ask some interesting questions.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —nothing consistent at all. Well, I’ll tell you what, Minister Wood. There may be a lot of consistency in the tiny wee world that that member lives in—tiny wee world that he lives in—but across the rest of the country there is no clarity whatsoever.

Then you look at the stats I just gave on housing—4,000 families in motels, 23,000 families waiting for a house—and then, of course, the debacle over the massive property price rise that we’ve seen under the watch of this Labour Government. Why has it happened? They’re scared to tackle the problem, which is land supply, better State regulation, etc. When we were in Government, they fought us all the way—all the way—on the Resource Management Act, fought us all the way on the special housing areas. Nothing was right, because they had a plan: “Just build 100,000 houses and everything’ll come right.” Well, 800 houses into it after four years. That’s not exactly a stellar performance—absolutely hopeless.

Then there’s the issue of personal security. Why have gangs and gang membership grown so much in New Zealand in the last four years? But I see the member over there laughing, because we know that a lot of them consort with the gangs. They go and ask them how they’re feeling about things. They invite them into their office to have a bit of a chat: “Why are you harassing people? Why do you commit so many murders? Why are you selling drugs in our community? We don’t like it, but, by the way, you’re OK. Carry on, and we’ll see what we can do for you.” That’s the sort of attitude that’s got us in big trouble.

So there’s four out of the five things that they should be getting right, and then you come to the issue of education. Look at the shocking truancy figures for this country. They are unbelievable. The member over there’s laughing, because, of course, you don’t need to go to school—just take a holistic view of life. Duck down to the road and have a talk to some people about the things that really matter, and what are they? Nothing. Drugs, a bit of gang membership, an electric vehicle, if you’re lucky—you don’t need any education. That truancy figure is a massive and black indictment on the current Government. Well, now he’s shaking his head, saying, “Yes, you’re right.” He’s suddenly woken up to what it’s all about. But that sums up the Government’s position.

We heard, of course, the speaker earlier on—the V8 ute driver from Wairarapa—was saying how important it is that we follow the Government’s lead on COVID-19. Well, COVID-19’s a thing that’s happening; it’s what Governments deal with. But then you see this situation developing this week where, suddenly, electric vehicles are going to be the salvation for us. Oh yes, the electric vehicles are going to be the salvation for us: every car manufacturer in the world listened to Jacinda Ardern last week and they are now planning mass roll-outs of electric vehicles in New Zealand. I don’t think so—I don’t think so. So what we’ve got is a very small part of society who are going to be able to participate in this wonderful new emissions-free society. But what will it cost others?

Here’s a question: what would you do if you knew that a country was the best in the world at producing protein—the country that can produce protein with a lower carbon emission than any other country in the world. Would you go to that country and say, “Produce more. We need more of that. We want to shut out the rest of the world from producing the same product with a much bigger carbon emission profile.”? Of course that’s what should happen, but no, not in New Zealand. We’re saying to our farmers, who are the best producers in the world and who are very conscious of the environment that they work in and work with, and telling them, “Produce less—produce less.”

Angela Roberts: No, we’re not.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: And if they’re—well, the member over there says, “No, we’re not—no, we’re not.” Well, I tell the member over there to catch up with what her Government is doing, and then she will be able to speak authoritatively on this matter, because that is exactly what’s happening. Stop production—a lower turnout of production off our farms.

This is an imprest supply bill that allows a ratty Government to continue very, very low-quality expenditure without achieving anything for New Zealand. Not one of those bad statistics is going to change as a result of the Government exercising their massive majority here tonight. I say to them: why so timid when there is such a big majority? It’s because they simply can’t deliver on what they’ve got and have no capacity to develop new ideas, least of all to deliver on them. Thank you.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry to interrupt the member. This will be less than 10 minutes.

ANNA LORCK: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I arrive as the final member of the Labour Party to speak on the appropriation bill, and I do so with extreme positivity and ambition. I am absolutely ambitious about what we are doing here on this side of the House. The thing I want to talk about the most is partnership—partnership—because when it comes to partnership, this Government is prepared to work with business, we’re prepared to work with the local councils, and we are working with iwi.

Hon Member: Yeah, right!

ANNA LORCK: Now, this side of the House say, “Yeah, right!” and I say, yes, sir, we absolutely are. We are talking about—I’ll bring it back home. I’m going to bring it back home to Hastings, because in Hastings, where it’s happening, right on the housing front, we are building houses. We are building hundreds of houses.

I want to take you back to an interesting story that I had when I was earning the privilege to be the local member of Parliament for Tukituki. I talk about an area in Raureka, in Campbell Street, where for years the National Government left this land with empty State houses to wrack and ruin. The neighbourhood in Campbell Street was so distraught about what was happening there that they called a neighbourhood meeting and we stopped the sell-off of that State land, and when Labour came in, guess what happened? We’ve now built a whole community of housing there in Hastings. I was there when the first shovel was turned and I was there when the first family moved in. This is a neighbourhood that’s been recreated through investing in housing.

It takes innovation and teamwork to build houses. We also are growing jobs through building houses. We are working together.

As a local person who’s lived in Hawke’s Bay all my life, and in Hastings, I have never seen so much investment coming into our region. It’s because of this investment that we are growing jobs, and it is because of that that we’re able to keep a really good pathway forward for young people coming and wanting to live in Hastings. Yes, because we’re building houses, affordable homes, we’re seeing young families wanting to return to Hastings.

I want to talk about a couple of examples in our region where housing development has been accelerated through investment and infrastructure. I’d like to talk about an area in Flaxmere. Waingakau it’s called, and there the Government has invested $16 million into infrastructure—that’s stuff that you need to get under way to be able to build the houses. Again, I was there when the first soil was turned and, again, I was there when the first family moved in. That’s the difference that we’re seeing. That’s how we can keep rebuilding and focusing on what truly matters in our region.

Another project I’d like to talk about in Hastings, back on the home front, is one where we went through shovel-ready COVID response and recovery. We were given $9 million by this Government towards redoing an area of State highway for safety. As part of that, we had local businesses who were able to turn in and get some more jobs going. We saw people being redeployed and brought in to start on contracting work. We had tradies—tradies who are really big and important in our district. They were building and they were getting the roads under way. Topline Contracting invested in 11 new apprentices. Those people who didn’t have work came in on the ground and started working. That’s the type of opportunity and that’s the type of investment and ambition that I’m talking about.

Now, I’d like to talk about the regional housing programme, where in Hastings we are making real progress. The development has accelerated again: 40 more houses being built in Kauri Street, right in Mayfair. I know that there are members over there who try to turn up and tell me that that’s not happening. Come along, come and visit, come in—I’ll happily take you to Kauri Street and knock on those doors and you’ll see those houses going.

We have got a fantastic council that’s working with us and iwi and building homes. That’s what’s happening in Hastings right now. On the ground we are delivering and we are accelerating the housing project. We are accelerating housing, and that’s where we’re building. I’d like to say that we had 534 building consents issued in 2020—the highest level of homes being built in our history. The previous high was 390 houses back in 2006. Now, this major new building programme includes Government investment in public housing for 180 public houses being built over 2020 and 2021, with purchasing intentions for a further 488 homes. These are real, real numbers. These are real homes, real houses, being built here.

Now, let’s just make sure I clarify for you, again, that it comes down to the best thing about this building programme and accelerating the infrastructure fund is it grows jobs. It grows more jobs. It also creates more business, because in Hastings our economy is absolutely booming. This is a region going forward. I am so proud of Hastings, because that’s what we do. We get stuck in, we work with Government and with iwi, council, private developers—everybody working together. That takes partnership, and that’s what this Budget is about. It’s about investing in really hard-working New Zealanders, growing jobs, lifting wages, and going forward.

That is where Hastings has been one of the standout success stories in this country. It’s because we’re built on a backbone of investment, and when things are going well, we also see significant investment in our region. We’ve had Rockit Global just open a multimillion-dollar new horticultural plant, we’ve had Heinz Wattie’s come and invest, and we’ve just seen the opening of the Tomoana pet food company.

More jobs every day are coming through, doing it hard because we have a region of hard-working New Zealanders, and this is what this Budget is truly about. It’s about backing hard-working New Zealanders, backing businesses, going forward—because this Budget is delivering and will keep delivering. This is a recovery I’m proud of.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill and the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) 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.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Point of order, Mr Speaker. My apologies, can I correct the vote? There should have been two votes cast in favour for the Māori Party.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You need to seek leave to be able to put that.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE: I seek leave to put that there should be two votes cast for the Māori Party.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There appears to be none. That will be added.

Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill read a second time.

Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill read a second time.

Bills

Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill

Third Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Appropriation (2020/21 Supplementary Estimates) Bill be now read a third time.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill

Third Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I move, That the Imprest Supply (First for 2021/22) Bill be now read a third time.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Social Security (Financial Assistance for Caregivers) Amendment Bill and the Fair Trading Amendment Bill.

House in Committee

House in Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the House is in committee on the Social Security (Financial Assistance for Caregivers) Amendment Bill and the Fair Trading Amendment Bill.

Bills

Social Security (Financial Assistance for Caregivers) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Substantive and consequential amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): We come first to the Social Security (Financial Assistance for Caregivers) Amendment Bill. This is the debate on Part 1—clauses 4 to 6F—and Schedule 3, the substantive and consequential amendments. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’d like to start this call in this debate at the committee of the whole House by, first of all, thanking the Social Services and Community Committee for the work they’ve done to bring the bill back to the House.

We know that many caregivers are under financial pressure and that caregivers need more support to care for tamariki. We also know that financial assistance is inequitable for caregivers caring for children outside of the State care system. We know that some caregivers outside of State care are not able to access financial assistance simply because their care arrangement is short term or they don’t know how long it’ll be for. That’s why this bill in clauses 4 and 5 will extend eligibility for the orphans benefit and unsupported child’s benefit to caregivers in these kinds of situations. This’ll ensure that caregivers who have stepped up to take on the care of a child whose parents are unable to care for them will be financially supported to do so, despite the care arrangement being short term or for an unknown or uncertain period of time.

To help address equity issues in the payments that caregivers receive, the bill establishes, in clause 6, a holiday and a birthday allowance for caregivers receiving the orphans benefit or the unsupported child’s benefit. These allowances will support tamariki to celebrate and enjoy the significant events in their lives. They’ll also help caregivers to provide the tamariki in their care with the same experiences as other tamariki throughout Aotearoa.

So to summarise, the key changes in the bill are in clauses 4 and 5, extending eligibility for the orphans benefit and unsupported child’s benefit to caregivers who expect to provide care for less than 12 months or an unknown or uncertain period of time by removing the requirement for a caregiver to be likely to be the principal caregiver of the child for at least 12 months, and, in clause 6, establishing holiday and birthday allowances for the orphans benefit and unsupported child’s benefit. I believe that there’s pretty much support across the House for this bill. It is an excellent bill that goes to making sure that caregivers who are looking after children who aren’t their own have the best financial support possible. Kia ora.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Chair. I thank Minister Davis for his acknowledgment of the select committee’s work on this bill. As he’s alluded to, it’s been something that everyone has supported.

There was one issue though, Minister, that came up that the committee was not able resolve or find a solution to, and that was in relation to the name of the orphans benefit. Now, normally when you think about the word “orphan”, it relates to a child whose parents have died, and so they are parentless, but in the case of this bill, the term “orphans benefit” or “orphan” refers to children whose parents have died, but also captures children whose parents are missing, or perhaps have a long-term serious disability. So even though the committee did turn its mind to finding an alternate name for the orphans benefit, we were unable to resolve that.

I just wonder, Minister, if you and your team would consider putting some time or some consideration into finding an alternate name, or an alternate descriptor, that would capture that group of children, because it was felt that the terminology around “orphan” was inappropriate, given the breadth of the audience that it was hoping to capture. So just wondering if the Minister could give some consideration to that as we progress through the bill, because it will have an impact, of course, on the terminology that is used in this particular piece of legislation. Thank you.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): The advice I’ve received is that that is out of scope. I understand the descriptor does just seem not quite right, because you would anticipate that both the child’s parents were deceased and that’s not necessarily the case here. But the proposal would pre-empt advice that we prepared as part of the long-term work programme agreed by Cabinet to reform the system of financial assistance and support for caregivers. The work programme includes considering a modernised name for the orphans benefit and the unsupported child’s benefit.

[Ricardo Menéndez March stands]

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Are you seeking a call?

Ricardo Menéndez March: Yes, thank you.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Ricardo Menéndez March.

RICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. In relation to Part 1 of the bill, I wanted to also tautoko the points around the unsuitability of the current naming of the benefits. I know we touched on the orphans benefit, but I also want to talk about the unsupported child’s benefit and how that name in itself doesn’t reflect the realities that whānau experience, particularly when we think about clause 4 and talk about the fact that we need a breakdown in the family and that, you know, we inherently talk about the child being unsupported as a result, and that speaks to a welfare system that strips away people’s ability to be with their community and their whānau.

So I commend the Social Services and Community Committee for addressing some of the gaps in these benefits, and some of these are already being addressed in the bill, such as the ability for caregivers to look after a child for less than 12 months when that is required. And I think this is exactly why the idea of calling a benefit an “unsupported child’s benefit” and requiring a breakdown in the family in some ways contravenes the intent that this bill is trying to create, which is to ensure that, whenever possible, a child can remain with their communities, and this is why we’ve put forward two Supplementary Order Papers, one which does aim to insert new clause 4A around the need for a breakdown in the family, and to support families with whāngai arrangements to look after the children.

So I do hope that we take the opportunity throughout the last stages of this bill to ensure that children have an opportunity to thrive and that they can remain within the communities. I’d be interested to hear from the Minister whether he thinks that the current settings around eligibility criteria beyond the time required to look after children are fit for purpose.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): The question is that Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment to insert new clause 4A, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 42, be agreed to.

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

Ayes 12

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

Noes 108

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendment not agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Ricardo Menéndez March’s amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 43 is ruled out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Transitional, savings, and related provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we now come to Part 2, the debate on clauses 7 to 9 and Schedules 1 and 2, the transitional and related provisions.

Part 2 agreed to.

Schedule 1 agreed to.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Schedule 3 agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, our final debate is on the preliminary clauses, 1 to 3. The question is that clauses 1 to 3 stand part.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

Bills

Fair Trading Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Main amendments to principal Act

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, we now come to the committee stage of the Fair Trading Amendment Bill. This bill will be debated in parts. We come first to Part 1, the debate on clauses 4 to 20, the main amendments in the principal Act. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): It’s a real pleasure to bring proceedings on Part 1 of the Fair Trading Amendment Bill. It does provide new protections against unfair practices which unfairly harm, potentially, businesses and consumers.

Some of the key features of Part 1 I’d like to just quickly speak about at the beginning of my contribution. Clause 6 introduces a new prohibition on unconscionable conduct. Now, that mirrors largely what’s already in law for unconscionable conduct with respect to consumers but makes it also for businesses as well.

Clause 7 extends prohibitions against unfair contract terms to small trade contracts, and clause 9 empowers consumers to direct uninvited sellers to leave their property—the do-not-knock stuff, fundamentally. At the moment it’s true that these don’t have any legal effect. Members of this House will be pleased to know that politicians are carved out of that, as are charities. So that’s really intended for people who are unfairly harassing folks who choose to put do-not-knock stickers at their gateway, clear messages that they don’t wish to be harassed or sold items through pressure sales.

There is a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) which makes a number of small important changes to slightly adjust the threshold for businesses covered by the unfair contract terms protections to allow more businesses to benefit from these protections. There’s some technical matters also that are covered in that SOP to clarify things, to avoid any ambiguity in the law and the interpretation thereof. Essentially, the bill prohibits unfair contract terms in small trade contracts where the contracts are worth less than $250,000 in a 12-month period, and so the SOP makes sure that the prohibition—well it currently covers related parties and, unfortunately, the ambiguity in that could mean it’s complex to enforce and complex to understand for those who are caught up in it. So we want to remove that ambiguity. It means it will apply slightly more broadly, which we think’s a good thing.

Ultimately, with this legislation, those who are engaged in fair trade, in fair conduct, and are contracting fairly have nothing to fear from this legislation. It really is already the case that, for example, in Australia they have similar legislation. There’s plenty of law there which shows that the system works. Those who are trading well and trading fairly can get on with their contracting. Those small businesses, certainly, where we’ve heard anecdotes of them being given unfair terms are freed of that, and can get on with the business that they’re engaged with. So I don’t want to spend too long at the outset. Looking forward to questions from all sides of the Chamber about this useful and important piece of law. Thank you, Mr Chair.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the Minister for his welcoming of questions as I do have a couple. I think when we were on the second reading of this bill we did discuss unconscionable conduct quite a bit and I might come back to that later, but my question actually relates to the expected total value of less than $250,000 in a 12-month period. I think they welcome, coming up with a number, and my question really is around the validity of that number. Is that the total value of the transactions between two parties or is that the expected profit or margin from companies? There is quite a difference. Some companies, of course, have quite a sizable contract between them but with very low margins. The $250,000 sounds a lot, but if it’s a very small margin—let’s say it’s $300,000 worth of transactions between them, or contract, but there’s only a $10,000 or $20,000 profit or something like that. So we’d like some clarity around that from you, Minister, if we could have that.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): The $250,000 is the total value of the transactions.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m wanting to ask about clause 6, which inserts new sections 7 and 8, and which relates to one of the main provisions in this bill, in so far as it changes the Act, which is around the creation of a new offence of unconscionable conduct. In reading the departmental statements about that, the regulation review of this by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and in reading the summary of concerns raised by the Ministry of Justice, it leads me to a couple of questions for the Minister. Because, of course, the principle of any regulation is that it needs to provide, wherever possible, clarity, certainty so that those who are affected by that regulation can know what is required of them in order to comply with it and can go about their business accordingly. It is not good regulation if it is subjective, if those who are having to operate under it aren’t sure how to interpret it, lack clarity about what would or wouldn’t be allowed for by the regulation, and where that regulation creates uncertainty.

So it is of concern to me that the Minister’s own officials, when advising him on these clauses in the bill, said that this was not their preferred option—to create this offence of unconscionable conduct. They, instead, preferred a different option, which was the prohibition of oppressive conduct, and the reason that they, according to the documents released to us, had that preference was that they saw a particular threat of the potential for uncertainty associated with the new offence of unconscionable conduct. They said that they thought there was a risk that prohibiting that kind of conduct could lead to the courts either interpreting the prohibition too narrowly, which is to say that it wouldn’t capture the range of offences that the Minister may or may not have in mind, and of course the reverse is also true: that, where things are ill defined, they may be interpreted too broadly and may end up as a prohibition of a much broader range of conduct than the Minister has in mind.

So my first question to the Minister is why he rejected his officials’ advice here, of not using this offence of prohibiting oppressive conduct rather than the unconscionable conduct. And my second question is around the precise words that are being used here—factors such as “conscience and norms of society” that could be referenced under an unconscionable conduct prohibition. Apparently, that is what has been followed in the Australian case, and I just would like the Minister to clarify for us why he was happy to leave it so vague as to what this regulation actually contains and why he rejected his officials’ advice on that matter.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, and I thank the member. These are, in my view, good questions that get to the nub of the important issues in this bill, quite frankly. And the conversations I have had with officials have gone backwards and forwards on this. In the end, the advice shaped by officials that has gone into the Supplementary Order Paper does rest on a belief that, actually, the unconscionable conduct, by not defining it too specifically, is actually, on balance, the best approach. The Australian courts have found a way of interpreting that, looking, as the member says, to the conscience and norms of society for guidance instead of defining too narrowly and risking a piece of legislation that’s stuck in time and no longer fit for purpose in a few years’ time if things change. It’s been preferred to go with a slightly more flexible approach that sets out issues, factors a court can consider when determining whether the conduct is unconscionable, and that includes the following: the relative bargaining power of the parties; whether unfair pressure or tactics were used; and the extent to which the parties acted in good faith. Now, the bill is meant to address serious misconduct that goes beyond what is commercially necessary or appropriate, and by not defining unconscionable conduct, it means that the risk of a narrow definition unduly limiting the circumstances in which the protections could be used is eliminated.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I thank the Minister for addressing that question. I would invite him, if he would, to comment more specifically on why he rejected the alternative option put forward by officials, which was to prohibit oppressive conduct. Because to the point that the Minister has just made, officials advised that the definition of oppressive conduct already has a body of case law associated with it in New Zealand, and to quote the officials, “that appears to strike a suitable balance between prohibiting conduct that is grossly unfair, while not unnecessarily intervening in everyday, reasonable commercial conduct.”, whereas the lane that the Minister has chosen to go down with unconscionable conduct creates this risk of interpretation from the courts. So I’d invite the Minister to comment on that if he would.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Well, the advice that I’ve received on this is that the Australian courts have found their way to putting good case law together that our courts might well look to for understanding unconscionable conduct. And that test there has proven to be a useful one. It retains the flexibility—and obviously we’re wanting to be on the side of consumers and small businesses here, to make sure that they are protected, that the law is not too inflexible to enforce their rights, and to make sure that there are not unfair terms of contract.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I thank the Minister for sharing with the committee his reasoning there. I would invite him to comment on what consideration he gave to advice he received from the Ministry of Justice about this provision, because I understand that that advice raised concerns about the potential offence, because there’s actually a fairly high bar for what unconscionable conduct brings with it. It is not only a civil offence but it is a criminal offence. The Ministry of Justice, as I understand it, specifically raised that the provision could capture an overly broad range of conduct, and their concern was with the significant penalties that individuals would face on conviction. Given the lack of clarity here, it appears that those concerns were elevated.

I also note in particular that the Ministry of Justice raised a concern about the fact that there would not need to be any explicit mens rea element to the offence. Now, I was not one of the many members of Parliament who received a law degree before coming into this House, but I do know enough as a bush lawyer to know that mens rea—this idea of intent—is pretty important, generally, in criminal law. So it does strike me that having a definition of an offence that carries criminal liability but doesn’t require intent to be proven is quite a significant step. I note the Ministry of Justice raising these concerns, and I’d invite the Minister to again address why he rejected the advice on that.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Look, I’ve asked my officials just to put that advice in front of me again so that I can give the member an exact response to the exact advice. But I think I can comfortably speak to the broad point, which is that there is already guidance in our current system which points to grey terms already, so that businesses can identify what might be unfair terms in their contracts. And here we have a situation where, if businesses are trading fairly and are being respectful and fair in their terms, they really do have nothing to hide.

So in terms of a mens rea test, I imagine we’re talking about a pretty high bar here, and I’m expecting that the way this will be interpreted will be to look to see whether the intent is unfair—whether those grey terms have been explored or brought into question. Those who are going nowhere near this really will not be affected by it, of course. This is really only to address the obvious or just unfair terms where they are present in contracts. And we know that the majority of businesses want to trade in a way that is fair, because they rely on the relationships in their business trading. They want to have good outcomes for the people that supply them, as well as the people that consume their products. So what we’re talking about here is protections against those who would deliberately go out of their way, ignoring the advice that’s already available around grey areas, ignoring the law cases that have been interpreted, and would still go ahead and seek to have unfair advantage because of their size or scale in dealing with smaller players in the market.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I thank the Minister for that response. I note that his officials are bringing advice to the table, so perhaps we’ll get a bit more of a discussion of that Ministry of Justice advice and how it’s responded to.

But just a question here, because I think the Minister and I can agree that while unconscionable conduct may exist in one person’s mind, it may not exist in another person’s mind—which is to say that it is subjective—and that does create regulatory risk for individuals and businesses. So has the Minister had mind to what guidance may be published for small businesses? I am sure that the Minister would not want a situation in which small businesses are facing considerable legal risk and uncertainty and are having to take their own legal advice about what may or may not count as unconscionable conduct where they will lack clarity on that, so is there an intention for guidelines to be issued about this, or is this something that will simply develop as a matter of case law over time and, therefore, small businesses can expect to live in a jungle of uncertainty until the courts work this out?

Again, I’d put to the Minister, given the Ministry of Justice concerns and given his officials’ concerns: has he satisfied himself that this isn’t going to impose an unreasonable burden of regulatory uncertainty and cost on small businesses?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I thank the member. Firstly, I’ll address perhaps the second part of her question which she’s just raised, and I’ll come back to the Ministry of Justice concerns, and the officials have duly supplied me with a brief outline of how their concerns have been taken into account.

The “jungle of uncertainty” has a certain poetry to it, but I would say that that’s probably an unfair characterisation. There are already, as I say, the grey areas outlined in the contracts with consumers, so by extending this to business to business, businesses can take some guidance from that existing law and practice that’s already in place. So I don’t think there really is a jungle of uncertainty per se. We do want as much confidence for businesses as possible about the environment they’re in, but I would note again, as I have previously, that this is an on-balance approach, and it allows the flexibility for future situations that haven’t been considered now for the courts to be clear on addressing any unconscionable behaviour based on the norms and expectations of society.

But I come back to the member’s previous point around the Ministry of Justice’s concerns. I might even read this out—it’s very short, the way in which the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment has responded to those concerns. It’s noted that, firstly, “parallel civil and criminal remedies are an existing feature of the Act, as well as a range of other commercial legislation;”—so that’s not a new thing—“the level of penalty is consistent with the existing penalties in the Act, and reflects the serious nature of unconscionable conduct; and while there is no explicit ‘mens rea’ element to the offence, unconscionable conduct is inherently conduct in which a level of intent is likely to be necessary for there to be breach of the prohibition.”

I think, actually, in this conversation, the member is drawing out a degree of explicit description that might help businesses that are at the margins of this or that are concerned.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Minister, with regards to this bill, we’re about to pass a bill where there’s no actual definition of the term that is at its very heart. I’ve found it interesting that the financial markets conduct bill actually has a definition of fair trading, yet we can’t seem to come up with a definition of what unconscionable behaviour is. Now, I don’t know what your advisory team is doing, but I’ve just found one in Australia.

As Russell McVeagh says, this is a very serious move which will transform the landscape of consumer law in New Zealand, and this will result in people either going to jail or losing lots of money, and at a practical level there is some doubt whether the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in its research, actually proved the case that this was actually needed in the first place. Now, with my learned colleagues’ assessment of oppressive behaviour, the famous matrix has been pulled out of the pack of papers, which does show that oppressive behaviour is probably more formed and designed than unconscionable conduct.

Now, with unconscionable conduct, we know that business dealings and consumer dealings—this is effectively a conduct-focused response. Now, with conduct leads to all sorts of anomalies, and leads to all sorts of misinterpretations. We think this bill should go back to the select committee for more work—it’s not too late. We believe that it’s not made it in its current context, and we’d like to get it right because of the implications that it has on New Zealand consumer law.

So the perfect example of this would be to have a regulatory standards bill where this would be filtered through it, and it probably wouldn’t pass the sniff test at all. We believe, at the ACT Party, that the Minister has given his intention to proceed with option 1A, and in relation to that, it’s not much better than doing nothing, or the status quo, which his own advisers have pointed out. So why are we doing it? Option 2 extends the protections to businesses with a value cap of $250,000. We request, at the ACT Party, that this be raised to $450,000, to help the transport industry, where a lot of cases of this nature appear and are defined. So it’s not just a case to just cover the market; it has to actually cover real transactional and commercial law disputes

So we are a bit confounded with regards to why some laws can have a definition. You’re asking us to pass a law which has no definition in the area of law in this country, i.e., consumer law and commerce law, which actually is the most definitive and tightly webbed, knitted together set of laws that we actually have. So we believe that it’s going to lead to relative uncertainty in the courts. We actually know, from the definition of your own matrix, that there is no case law at all at the moment to provide for this, although it is creeping in as a term, but it’s not clearly defined. So we need to go hand-in-hand with New Zealand, take them along with us on those two questions. To conclude, from the ACT Party’s point of view, we’d have liked to support this bill but we can’t, because we can’t get a definition of “unconscionable”, and that cap needs to be raised, because in this day and age, $250,000 is not a huge sum with regards to those disputes. We’d like, potentially, for the Minister to just embrace those two points and see if there’s any common ground. Thank you.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I thank the member for his contribution, and I would note that we may end up agreeing to differ on these points. We are determined to be on the side of consumers and small businesses, and as a Labour Party we are concerned that unfair practices shouldn’t disadvantage those groups. The member be asking for a higher cap, that protecting the interest of bigger businesses, or may have a more liberal approach to what’s fair or unfair. We believe that the majority of businesses want to behave in a fair and ethical way, and they shouldn’t be stiffed by those businesses that want to behave in an unfair way. That is why we’re changing the law.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Chair. I wanted to kind of pick up where Damien Smith, the previous speaker prior to the Minister, left off. I too was raising concerns about the transport industry in particular, but lots of other industries, I suspect, where the transaction value may exceed $250,000. I think what we are, essentially, talking about here is a solution to a problem of what will in some cases be buyer’s remorse. That is a grey area, and the unconscionable conduct clause or definition, while it is being claimed as widely accepted in the legal fraternity, the reality is that what we are actually talking about here is someone who doesn’t feel they’ve got a good deal.

Now, no one in this House, I think, would stand on the side of people who indulge in unfair business practices or unfair terms of a contract. However, that is incredibly difficult, at the margins, to actually define, and that is why we are in the situation that we are in. So, I think, what we have here, in part, is a well-intentioned solution looking for a problem, in some respects.

But I want to focus particularly on the Supplementary Order Paper No 39, on clause 7, replacing new section 26D(2). I think this really comes back to the whole $250,000 question, because under replacement section 26D(2) it says, “Trading relationship, in relation to a contract, means a relationship consisting of—(a) that contract; and (b) any other contract (whether current or prospective)”. And what my question would be is: what happens if a dispute arises partway through a contract and it is lower than $250,000? It says here, quite clearly, “whether current or prospective”. And various actions along the way in the contract trigger further an expansion of that current contract, and it ends up being $252,000 or $300,000 worth of transactions that therefore falls outside of this bill. What happens then to that particular action? Does it fall over because it then falls outside of the bill? And there will be no case law, of course, to fall back on. If the prospective amount of the contract exceeds $250,000, do you not even get past the first base if you have an issue and an issue arises?

I can think of lots of instances. The previous speaker mentioned transport, for example. It could be a $400,000 contract if all of the prospective agreements go through, but we could be partway through the year, say, or the length of that contract and a dispute arises, they start to trigger this action at $200,000, say, and then we continue on and, because of the contract, the business has to continue, the contract exceeds $250,000, then the whole thing falls over.

I’d like a lengthy and fulsome response from the Minister, please, rather than a yes or a no. I want to actually know how this is going to work, because this is so nebulous, this bill, quite frankly. We need something on the record that we can all sheet home in the future, when this comes up in court. Thank you.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I just want to pick up on something that the member Damien Smith raised before, because I think I misinterpreted something he said, and I do want to apologise to the member. He was suggesting raising the cap to have a wider cover for unfair contract terms. I think he was disagreeing with the definition that we were putting forward, but actually suggesting a wider group, if I understand him correctly—and, if that is the case, I do apologise to the member because it is a slightly more nuanced argument that he was making.

But to come to Stuart Smith’s point, larger strategic contracts would be subject to due diligence, so if the contract goes to a larger amount, then it is treated in the way of a larger commercial contract, and those protections would not necessarily apply in the same way.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): I, firstly, wanted to thank the Minister for being here and being able to answer the questions. I’ve got two specific questions, building on those that my colleagues have raised, and I guess the first relates to this law. We’ve talked a lot around the unconscionable conduct aspect and the fact that the definition is not there. So I guess the question I’ve got is: is this, in effect, a symbolic law? Is this, in effect, going to be unenforceable? And I guess, to that concern, I’d like to know from the Minister what, if any, advice has he received, particularly from Crown Law, around the actual ability for this law to actually proceed through the court system and for someone to actually be found guilty or not guilty under this area.

The second question I’ve got, Minister, relates to the cost implications of such changes of legislation on our small-business community. Obviously, when we’re implementing a law such as this, which has, in effect, an undefined aspect to it—you know, there’s a lot of unknowns that our businesses will have to work through in terms of that and considerations, advisers, etc. So what I’m interested in, from the Minister, is if he could give us a little bit of comfort around the consultation or the advice around the impact on our business community. Because I do cite my understanding that Business New Zealand are opposed to this legislation, and they represent a significant element of that community. I guess I’m looking for a degree of substantiation around where the Minister sees the advice that balances out the fact that our largest representative of our business community is against this legislation. Thank you, Minister.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): To address the member’s point around unconscionable conduct—will it be unenforceable—no. Of course it will be enforceable. The Australians have a similar set-up and there’s some expectations, some principles—we already covered this off in the debate—that point to the kinds of factors a court would be considering when it’s determining whether conduct is unconscionable. That includes—just for the member’s benefit—the relative bargaining power of the parties, whether unfair pressure or tactics were used, and the extent to which the parties acted in good faith. So there are some bits of guidance already in place around that. Of course, where there’s contracts in place for consumer contracts with consumers, there’s some good understanding around the law already in that respect.

The member had another question around perhaps costs on business. I think, arguably for those businesses caught up in this arrangement, it will lower their due diligence costs and so on, because they’ll be able to expect that the people they’re dealing with are acting fairly and that they can be prosecuted in a court of law. So, you know, that may, in fact, reduce business costs in many cases for those smaller contracts, because there is an expectation that people will be dealt fairly with. They won’t have to be reading the fine print on every part of the commercial contracts. So it may well lower costs in that respect.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Minister—you’re giving a good go at these questions, anyway. But I want to go a little bit further on the contract and the $250,000, because I think it’s a really important point. So I want you to imagine for a moment that there are contingencies in a contract and the contract is less than $250,000 and the contingencies actually take it over $250,000 at a later date. What happens then? Similarly, what happens if there are penalties in a contract? We all know there are significant penalties in contracts when certain clauses in the contract are not met, and that happens particularly in the building industry, lots of our other industries as well, and they could easily imagine the contract blowing out over the $250,000. I appreciate there’ll have to be an arbitrary number, but I go back to the point that was made earlier when I first arose in this debate that actually a lot of business is carried out with very large transaction costs but very low actual margins and while $250,000 might sound like a lot of money, it could be a very small margin.

I’m not sure how this number was arrived at and I’m not sure there is a really good number. I don’t have a suggestion, although I think $250,000 is too low, but it wouldn’t matter what the number is, you’re always going to have the possibility—well, not you, Madam Chair, but we all can imagine a scenario where a contract with contingencies or with penalties blows out over the $250,000 after a claim has been made. I think, particularly if it’s something in dispute in the building industry, that is most likely to occur. So I would like to know what has been—what evidence did the officials look at to deal with this? What advice did the Minister get on this particular subject—both the penalties and contingencies can be quite different—so I really look forward to hearing your response.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): The contract value threshold is based on an expected annual value at the outset of the contract and I expect—the member, when he described contingencies said, you know, build in contingencies because you expect them to go over. In that case, you’d expect that to be the number that’s used, so there’d be reasonable case law around this.

I guess the other thing is if there’s some debate about whether it’s going to go over or under, companies might consider not putting unfair terms in, just to avoid the benefit of doubt.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Well, actually, Minister, that’s not correct because the contract could be worth $180,000 and the penalties could be blown out over $250,000 if the supplier didn’t meet certain criteria. If the building fell over, for example—if it is a building—I don’t know what the scenario would be. But it’s quite a common thing for these sorts of things to happen. I’m not talking about the cost blowing out; I’m talking about a penalty clause coming in to action because of some unforeseen thing which may not have anything to do with the disputed payment in the first place or the dispute over payment in the first place.

I think these are really important things that happen all the time in business and it sounds very much like this has not been thought through. This will be, I would wager, the first major case that will come up when something like this occurs and the front-page headline will be how the business that could and should have been able to get redress through the courts can’t because the penalty clause has come in and it’s blown it out over $250,000 and the whole thing falls over. So I respect you had a good go at it, Minister, but it wasn’t quite good enough, so I’ll give you another chance.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): I appreciate the member’s faint praise. Look, to be clear, and if he’s talking about penalties per se rather than contingencies, penalties will not count towards the threshold as they are not to be expected.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): So I’ll have another go. So if we imagine building a house and there’s a subcontractor that has done the substructures and the builder who’s building the structure above the substructure has a dispute on a contract and then the substructure collapses and you get a third party. The penalty clause goes into the builder, it takes the builder over $250,000, and then they are not able to claim under this law. So have another go, Minister, because I think you’ve missed the point and it seems like this is why we need a much more fulsome process to get these things through because clearly this hasn’t been teased out in the select committee process. So I think there’s a lot more thought needs to go into this because this will turn into a shoddy bit of law and we’ll end up with people being significantly disadvantaged from it. Exactly the people this bill seeks to serve will be the ones that are served very badly by it. So I think a lot more thought needs to go into this.

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Thank you, Madam Chair. I clearly have a great deal more respect for the member’s colleagues than he does, given that the National Party held the balance of power on the committee that dealt with this bill over the normal period that one would expect to deal with a bill, and a departmental report was produced and considered by members, and I consider that the advice that they passed through to be quite good. Now, I’ll leave that for the member to discuss with his own colleagues if he thinks they’ve done a shoddy job in that select committee process such as it was. I actually think the outcome and the advice that’s come through from officials to be pretty sound and I can spell it out again for the member that penalties will not count towards the threshold as they would not have been expected.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): It didn’t get to this stage so I think that speaks for itself.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 39 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendments agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Transitional, savings, and related provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to Part 2, the debate on clause 21 and the Schedule, the transitional and related provisions. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Part 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, we come now to votes on the Schedule. The question is that the Minister’s amendments to the Schedule set out on Supplementary Order Paper 39 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Schedule as amended be agreed to.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Schedule as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, our final debate is on the preliminary clauses, clauses 1 to 3. The question is that clauses 1 to 3 stand part.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 2 agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That clause 3 be agreed to.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

House resumed.

Report of Committee of the Whole House

Report of Committee of the Whole House

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): The committee has considered the Social Security (Financial Assistance for Caregivers) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. The committee has considered the Fair Trading Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill

Second Reading

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I present to the House a legislative statement on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I move, That the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill be now read a second time.

This is the second in the trilogy of Reserve Bank pieces of amendment legislation that have been worked on over the last 3½ or so years. To recap, for those who haven’t been following along at home closely, the first of those pieces of legislation was the one that modernised the objectives of the Reserve Bank. This was that they maintained their core objective of price stability, but we added to that the objective of achieving maximum sustainable employment—a very important shift to recognise those key indicators in our economy are all about the health of our economy. We also changed the decision-making processes around the monetary policy work of the bank to have a monetary policy committee, which is relevant to this bill, as I will talk about in a moment.

The third bill, which is beginning its work and we have released information about, is the deposit takers Act. That is a piece of legislation that will have some significant changes to the way that banks are regulated, but, in particular, it will introduce a deposit guarantee scheme to New Zealand, something that we have not ever had; something that is beyond time for us to have. That is in the future.

For today, we have the second, as I said, of the three pieces of legislation, and as much as anything I would describe this as the institutional Act. This is the Act that is about how the Reserve Bank operates in order to achieve its objectives in a modern way and creates a series of changes that I will work my way through.

Before I get too deeply into that, though, I do want to thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for their hard work in putting this bill through. All members of the committee contributed, and while there were some issues on which there was not able to be found agreement, I think that, overall, the bill is improved for the work that the committee did as it worked through it.

As I said, primarily what this bill does is create institutional arrangements that give effect to the overarching purpose of the bank, and that is to promote wellbeing and a productive economy, as well as the specific economic financial policy and central bank objectives that the Reserve Bank contributes to. The bill ensures that the bank can operate efficiently and with legitimacy and will continue to do so into the future. At its core, it has a number of key provisions. The first of those is the establishment of a proper governance board for the bank and, as a result, the strengthening of its accountability. The change to this is significant. It fits with the change made in the monetary policy committee and in their role, and it makes it consistent with the way that Crown entities work in New Zealand and also the way that central banks and regulators tend to work around the world. As a result of this, the powers and responsibilities of the Reserve Bank, other than monetary policy, will now sit with the board rather than the governor alone. This is a shift, as I say, that’s consistent with what we’ve done with the monetary policy committee, to create a committee-based structure to move away from that single decision-maker model.

The kind of board arrangements we’re talking about are familiar in the sense that it looks like a Crown entity board but it is one that, obviously, has some differences to it. One of those differences—and it was the subject of discussion at the select committee—is around the membership of the governor of that board, and it is a pretty unique set of circumstances for a Reserve Bank Governor, or a central bank governor, and therefore that is reflected by the fact that they are actually a member of the board. This is, again, not unheard of, or not uncommon, in terms of other central banks around the world, to have the governor as a member of that governing board. I personally don’t think the way we run monetary policy, the way we run financial policy in New Zealand, would work if the governor was not a member of the board, but, correctly, the committee analysed this idea quite closely and came up with some provisions that support how the governor can fulfil that role.

Secondly, the bill reframes—and this is an important change—the financial policy objective of the Reserve Bank, and that is to protect and promote the stability of the New Zealand financial system. This is a clear mandate, and it’s one of the things that arose out of the consultation—and a great deal of consultation publicly was done on all three bits of this legislation—to give absolute clarity for the Reserve Bank to deliver on its role as New Zealand’s prudential regulator. It is consistent with best practice. It’s consistent with the guidance that the International Monetary Fund gave to the previous Government, actually, in 2017, when they did their assessment, and I do believe that clarity of that objective will be helpful to the bank into the future.

There has been some criticism of this aspect of it, because of where the concept of efficiency sits within what the bank does. The advice, again, internationally here, is that efficiency being in a primary objective like that is not necessarily normal—that efficiency is better delivered via the way in which the bank goes about its work. In particular, in the case of this, that will be the deposit takers bill, and then Act, and the various insurance and prudential work that the bank does. That’s where efficiency is best reflected. Having that clarity of objective of protecting and promoting the stability of the financial system, I believe, is the correct approach.

Other major and significant elements in the bill include the creation of a financial policy remit. So this is to mirror what we do on the monetary policy side. Everybody is familiar with the monetary policy remit, which, again, is a creature of the first piece of legislation we did last term. People previously called it the “Policy Targets Agreement”, but this is actually an understanding and agreement between the Minister of Finance and the bank about how they will operate.

When it comes to financial policy, rather than monetary policy, financial policy has grown in the bank’s responsibilities in a very ad hoc way. So monetary policy was the core of what the Reserve Bank does, and is still the core of what the Reserve Bank does, but iteratively over the 30 years that the Act has been in place, the bank has adopted a number of financial policy roles in our system. It is important that there is a very clear understanding between the Government of the day and the bank about how financial policy will be delivered, and that is what the remit is about. It is not a direction; it does not affect the bank’s ability to independently determine its strategic intentions and financial policy. However, just as they do with monetary policy, they need to have regard to the Government’s policy priorities and intentions. I think the remit will provide a great deal of certainty.

Another critical element that I want to mention here today is that the bill provides for statutory recognition of the Council of Financial Regulators. Again, this is something that is important, I think, for a proper functioning, coordinated financial system in New Zealand. The Council of Financial Regulators includes, obviously, the Reserve Bank but also the Financial Markets Authority, the Commerce Commission, and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment in their regulatory role. Between those agencies, they play a critical role in making sure our financial system has integrity and has consistency, and I would like to see the Council of Financial Regulators play far more of a role in providing that coordination. What we do in this Act is ensure that they now have a statutory function for that coordination work that they do, and I think that will strengthen the financial system as well.

As I said, I’d like to thank the select committee for their work and Dr Webb for his chairing. I’d also like to thank the 21 submitters who took the time to submit on the bill. For some reason or other, the Reserve Bank Act doesn’t seem to make the headlines! I cannot understand why! It is something that I think we need to see more of in the news, but those 21 people have made a significant contribution to it, and as I say, some changes were made, including, as I mentioned earlier, that the governor becomes a member of the board. The Minister can direct the bank to maintain a minimum level of capital. The bank needs to request new functions before the Minister can direct the bank to perform those new functions. That’s an important part of maintaining the operational independence of the bank and that there is an ability to amend the monetary policy remit without an Order in Council. That was really an interesting change that the committee has made based on what’s actually occurred in the time since we created the initial monetary policy remit in legislation last term.

So I think this is a strong and important part of our framework of financial policy, backing up the monetary policy changes we’ve made. I think it will give the Reserve Bank the proper level of governance while maintaining its operational independence. I think it continues to respect the role of governor within a central bank and gives us now a clear framework for financial policy rather than the iterative way in which financial policy has found its way into the Reserve Bank’s mandate. I thank the committee again for their work. I look forward to further discussion on this in later stages of the bill, when we can get into the detail of a number of the changes, but I highly commend this bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thank the Minister for his acknowledgment of the very good work that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has done generally, but particularly on this bill. And I want to join him in thanking the officials who work very hard to try and articulate the Government’s preferences and, in some cases I think, their own for improvements to the Reserve Bank Act; also, to the 21 submitters who made submissions on the bill.

This is quite technical but, I agree with the Minister, it is extremely important. Certainly, I think there are pieces of legislation where, when there are changes and reforms being made to them, it is desirable that that has bipartisan support across the aisle. I regret that National did not support at first reading this bill—and I’ll explain why and what’s happened since—and cannot at second reading.

One of the things I didn’t have the time or the opportunity to do prior to the first reading in, I think, December was to go back and have a look at the Hansard of the things that were being discussed when the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill was introduced some 32 or 33 years ago, because it’s quite illuminating to see what the objectives of the bill and the Act that has actually, I think, stood the test of time. When it was first introduced, it was moved by the Minister of Finance, the Hon David Caygill, in the fourth Labour Government. I’m just going to quote a bit from the Hansard, because I think it’s quite telling in respect of what the goals for the Act were and whether or not—I want to consider whether or not some of the changes that we’re making to the bill in this bill, the Act in this bill, are actually commensurate with those initial goals.

He said in his first reading, “It will place the Reserve Bank on a more independent basis to improve the credibility, consistency, and effectiveness of monetary policy.” He went on to say that it “places the bank on a more independent, but also more accountable, legislative basis” than it was at that time. He said, “The Reserve Bank is required to have regard to the efficiency and soundness of the financial system”—note the term “efficiency” was initially a goal of the legislation—“and to advise and consult the Government and others … Therefore, the bill provides that the bank can be diverted”. Oh, and then it went on to talk about clause 11 of that bill, which is about changes to and the degree to which the Government could direct the Reserve Bank in implementing other things apart from monetary policy.

But it was quite clear to the original architects of the legislation that if those changes were to take place, it had to have a level of parliamentary scrutiny. Mr Caygill said, “Therefore, the bill provides that the bank can be diverted from its price stability objective only by Order in Council”, which was the instrument that would have been used at that time. I think that’s quite telling.

He did go on, I think, to say, which is something quite interesting, and I’m not quite sure he’s right, but we’re going to find out in the future I think: “The continued maintenance of stable prices”—which is, effectively, inflation and one of the principal goals of the Reserve Bank—“will, in turn, enhance the Government’s ability to fight its other major economic problem—unemployment.” Now, that’s quite an interesting nexus. What Mr Caygill was saying, back in the late 1980s, was as long as we maintain price stability, we will maintain optimal employment levels. Now, as the Minister of Finance of today has just told us, part one of the trilogy was actually not to trust the process, but to provide this Government with an ability to add an extra task of the Reserve Bank, that is sustainable employment. Now, the original architects, basically, said that you maintain prices, and unemployment should be kept under control. Now, I’m not quite sure they were right, but I’m also not sure that specifically mandating the dual roles of price stability and maximising sustainable employment is actually achievable just by dint of remit.

So we opposed this bill in the first reading, regrettably. We were somewhat concerned that we didn’t have bipartisan support for such an important legislative thing, but we were certainly open to being able to be convinced to support it at remaining stages. The biggest concern we had was the reach of the Government into what was the independence of the Reserve Bank by some of the changes that were being made. And I regret to inform the House that rather than making changes in the bill to maintain the independence between the Government, having set its remits and its financial strategy and then leaving the Reserve Bank to do its job, something of the opposite has happened. Indeed, these changes were made after the submissions on the original bill had been heard. Officials, apparently of their own volition, but, I think, the quiet hand of the Minister of Finance, who decided that even the interference and the fingers in that he was seeking when the bill was introduced wasn’t quite enough, actually made more changes to quietly increase his influence over the ability of the Reserve Bank to do its job. It’s for that reason, rather than maintaining the independence that was initially foreseen by this Act, and, actually, that has stood the test of time, we are quietly eroding that independence.

I’ll give the House examples of those concerns. So the Minister has mentioned that the governor is now going to be a member of the board. Now, I’m not opposed to the strengthening of the governance provisions of the Act, but I am generally not a fan of executive members of boards in a commercial sense; certainly, not in this situation, because what it does then is it gives the Minister the quiet influence over the governance and—through the fact that the governor is a member of that governance board—some influence over the things that the governor should have sole prerogative to determine, not the least of which is interest rates, and monetary policy more generally. So we have a bill that, then, closed the independence gap and, then, closes it further after the submissions were heard. We are very concerned about that.

Now, I go back to the term “efficiency” that Mr Caygill referred to. I am quite surprised that the Government doesn’t see fit to maintain efficiency as a core function of the Reserve Bank. It kind of dismisses it as if to say, “Well, you know, because we have these other remits, efficiency isn’t necessary”. But, as I’ve just pointed out, the Reserve Bank must have regard to efficiency and soundness of the financial system. That was its basic premise. The officials told us that they were unable to provide a clear sort of definition of “efficiency”. Well, I’m sorry, pick up a dictionary. I don’t want to sound critical of officials, but it’s not that difficult to work out, and I don’t think it’s inconsistent with the other changes that we’re making to maintain efficiency in the banking system. So we oppose that change.

The third significant change that we oppose is the ability of the Minister to add functions. Now, firstly, we support the issue that if the bank comes and asks for more functions; that’s an appropriate response. Thirty years ago, when the Act was first passed, no one had heard of cryptocurrency. Now, the bank has the sole prerogative to print currency, but, actually, we now know that digital currencies are very much going to increasingly come into an aspect of our economy. If the bank went and requested that the Minister give them functions in order that they manage that, I think that’s appropriate. But he’s also, after the bill was considered, given himself the ability to issue a monetary policy committee remit, for example, at any time, whether or not any remit advice has been given. And that remit would not have the scrutiny of this House. We believe that was the original intention of any change to bank functions and we think that a disallowable instrument or some other Order in Council process that does bring it before the House is appropriate.

We will be moving motions, amendments to the bill in the committee of the whole House to the effect that it will improve, I think, the independence and objectivity of this Act. But I don’t hold my breath that they will be supported.

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

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): The Minister of Finance suggested that this was the second, or said it was the second, of a trilogy of pieces of legislation reforming the Reserve Bank. In that case, if it’s the second it’s either—perhaps it’s The Two Towers, could be The Empire Strikes Back, the more modern term might be Catching Fire, the second book and movie of The Hunger Games trilogy. I say that for a reason, to cast back to a book—The Two Towers—that was published in the 1950s; The Empire Strikes Back, of course, came out in the early 1980s, and Catching Fire in the 2010s. Things move along, things change, new things come along. In fact, that is what has happened with the Reserve Bank.

I want this House to cast its mind back—those of us who can—to the 1970s and early 1980s, and the spectre of rampant inflation; absolutely rampant inflation. It was the bogeyman of the age. Not only did we have rampant inflation in our economy here in New Zealand and elsewhere in the world but we had here in New Zealand, in particular in the early 1980s, a Prime Minister who was also the Minister of Finance at the time, had very direct control of the economy, and some extraordinary things like a wage and price freeze imposed overnight, and so on. It was a very different time, and there was a real need for reform. A real need for the sort of the reform that would give our institutions much more independence. That is the background that the Reserve Bank Act that we have had up until now was born out of. It did actually come into being much earlier, but there was substantial reform in the late 1980s.

In fact, in a very thoughtful—though, I think, mistaken—speech from Mr Woodhouse, he made substantive reference to the debate of the time about the need for independence in the Reserve Bank. But that Reserve Bank Act that was passed in the late 1980s has been in place for, I suppose, close on 40 years now with very little amendment since then, with some changes but not many. The world has moved on. The world has changed. If, in the 1980s, this House was legislating in the shadow of rampant inflation and of an interfering Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, in this decade we are legislating in the shadow of the global financial crisis—a crisis where banks ran amok; where the world teetered on a precipice and was only saved by the most massive Government intervention into economies. We are operating in a different context, in a context where we need to have a different relationship with our Reserve Bank, and that is the world we are operating in now. The pieces of legislation that—this trilogy of pieces of legislation is oriented at operating in this world; the world where we need that greater control.

So this piece of legislation does, in fact, modernise the relationship. It does change it. Now, Mr Woodhouse was very, very concerned that the independence of the Reserve Bank was going to be compromised. It is for this reason, he says, that the Opposition will not be joining in support of this bill. He is worried about the independence of the Reserve Bank. He feels that we are going to compromise it. However, I suggest that this is not a compromise; in fact, it is a changing of the relationship in a way that is appropriate for the times. In fact, there is still plenty of independence for the Reserve Bank. But what there is enabled by this is ways for the Minister of Finance and for the Reserve Bank to interact more, to do so by adding objectives to what the bank can do, to asking the bank to have a real position in terms of managing our economy that is not related solely to an inflation target, but instead ask the bank to have a more holistic approach to understanding how our economy works and how it might operate within that economy. So it is a closer relationship. But that, is at this time, a good thing—that is what we need in this current time.

Now, I do just want to address a couple of points there. In particular, Mr Woodhouse talked about some of the changes, but some of these changes, what they have done is they have ensured that the Reserve Bank has a real body of experts to draw on. The monetary policy committee gives the Reserve Bank more strength in its decision making around monetary policy. It would be a bold Minister of Finance indeed, or courageous Minister of Finance, who chose to try to interfere with what the monetary policy committee was doing. This legislation sets up a governance board, which has that financial stability responsibility. It would be a bold and courageous Minister of Finance who interfered with that body of experts. So I think that that collective decision-making enhances the standing of the Reserve Bank vis-à-vis the Minister of Finance.

I want to talk briefly about the financial policy objective, where, as Mr Woodhouse pointed out, it is no longer concerned with the efficiency of the banking system but we are now concerned with protecting and promoting the stability of the financial system. I suggest that, again, that is very, very important in the wake of the global financial crisis. It’s very important in this much more complex world we live in. It’s very important in this much more connected world we live in, this world where we do have cryptocurrencies. So that is one reason why we have gone to this move of promoting stability in the financial system. It doesn’t mean that efficiency will be ignored. The principles of efficiency will come through the deposit takers bill, through the Insurance (Prudential Supervision) Act, where, under those Acts and bills, the Reserve Bank will need to have regard for the principles of efficiency. So I think that’s a very important way of safeguarding efficiency.

Mr Woodhouse was concerned, I think, about the way that new functions could be ordered, could be added, to the bank. I was puzzled by this because in actual fact this is a way that the bank does preserve its independence. You see, the Minister can only add new functions to the Reserve Bank at the request of the bank. That reserves the independence of the bank itself. Now, of course, the Minister does have the ultimate power of legislating. That is what we have in this House, as we ought—as we ought. You see, our institutions are very, very important to us. They are part of our structure and the governance of our societies. We need our institutions to be independent, for our public servants to have the capacity to give independent advice for us, for the courts to operate independently from us, for the Reserve Bank to operate independently from us. But, ultimately, in this Chamber, we are the people who are responsible for governing this country, we are the people who are elected to do it, we are the people who retain that legislative power, and we are the people who are held accountable for it every three years—as it should be.

So, in fact, what you find in this bill is that it strikes a very nice balance. Between the independence of the Reserve Bank and the political accountability of this House for what actually happens in our country. So I think it’s a fine piece of legislation. It’s a very worthy second part of the trilogy. I’m sure—we’ll wait to see with bated breath, I’m sure we’ll all be waiting for the third and final instalment, as one always does for the third part of a trilogy. It’s an excellent bill, and I commend it to the House.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): That speech is the first time since the Rt Hon Mike Moore left the House that I’ve heard a Labour member speak glowingly of the changes that were introduced to the New Zealand economy post-1984. And I congratulate the member—Dr Deborah Russell—for recognising that that was a good time, and I would suggest that she spends more time with her colleagues bringing them up to speed with exactly how important those reforms were.

As a consequence of that at the end of that period, the member was right, the then finance Minister, the Hon David Caygill, brought the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act to the House. And it has endured since that time—some nearly 33 years—and done an extremely good job for New Zealand. The question that sits in my head is: what is broken about that that requires the law to change now? What is so all-important about this change that will make the banking system more secure in New Zealand, that will protect our monetary and fiscal systems, and that will ensure that there is an oversight on the monetary side of our economy away from a Minister? And I can’t see it.

So the idea that we are strengthening the Reserve Bank by removing the authority of the governor and placing that authority of an appointed board—a board appointed by the Government; a board appointed by the Minister—is somehow protecting, preserving, and enhancing the independence of the governor. Now, I think there are a number of little changes in here that the Finance and Expenditure Committee has sort of worked on, but, I think, underlying it all, they must themselves have wondered whether or not the purpose of the bill was truly to do that: provide for the enhanced independence of the governor. It’s not evident that the governor having to go to his board and go through the board process, where the great and good who are appointed by the Government of the day—in this case Minister Robertson—will tell him whether or not they are on the right track—that’s not an enhanced independence; that is enhanced oversight from the Government of the day, nothing surer than that.

And when you look through the various other parts of the bill, as I’m sure you have, there are aspects to this where there is a long verbiage in the preamble to the bill, the commentary, that is essentially not justifying anything, nor is it setting out a case for taking any particular kind of action. It’s one of those sort of situations where you’re left, when getting to the end of it, wondering exactly what the bill was setting out to do in the first place. And that leads you right back to the supposed purpose of the bill, which I’ve already explained can’t possibly be justified.

So the question that we’ve got is: if there was a need for a change to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act, then why wasn’t there a process for considering what that change might have been, or could be, or if it was necessarily that was not just something cooked up over in Treasury? Because I notice, sadly, that Treasury gets an enhanced role in the oversight of the Reserve Bank. My views on Treasury are very well known and very well stated. I think they are an organisation that has massively overinflated their own importance to the system. They are bookkeepers, and bookkeepers are no good at telling you how to run a business; bookkeepers simply tell you whether or not the ideas behind the business are producing good results.

So the Government in this bill is handing over a role for the bookkeepers to get alongside the bankers and tell them how they should be running their operation. Two extra layers of supervision being put on the Reserve Bank: firstly, the board, and secondly the Treasury’s new enhanced role. The question is, in my head, who was it inside the Reserve Bank organisation that annoyed the finance Minister so much that he felt he needed to bring in, under the guise of enhanced independence, this massive level of oversight? Maybe it is because in the last few years we’ve had an absolute runaway with housing prices. And the Government will be wanting to say, “Well, it’s largely due to low interest rates”, without recognising that when there is a shortage of supply, price rises. So rather than taking some responsibility for their own derelict action in creating opportunity for greater numbers of houses to be built, they simply want to change the law here and blame the Reserve Bank. That will be one of the things that comes out of this.

So we look forward to the committee stages of the bill, where we can—

Hon Phil Twyford: Gerry, are you saying credit doesn’t matter?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: I beg your pardon?

Hon Phil Twyford: Are you saying the supply of credit doesn’t matter in housing?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: No. Now, there you go. So there is a really interesting question put to me as an assertion—put to me as an assertion. He is asking me whether I disagree that the supply of credit has an effect on house price. Well, I tell you what, Madam Speaker, what Mr Twyford needs to understand—this is the architect of KiwiBuild, that magnificent failed programme!—is that supply drops price—supply drops price—and with the supply, there’s demand. And in that case, there will be an effect on interest rates. It is very, very simple; it is not hard to understand. Although, the four-year record of this Government, with regards to housing, would indicate that they’ve got no idea of how that system works. So, thank you for the question and, in that question, exposing what the real problem was behind getting the KiwiBuild programme off the ground!

So we look forward, in the committee stages of the bill—[Interruption]—No hang on. No, please, if you don’t mind. I hope you’re taking the next call, because I am just going to be riveted by every word that the member has to say—every word.

So we look forward, in the committee of the whole House stage, to hearing the explanations clause by clause, part by part, whichever way we decide to go, from the Minister, about how he sees this making such a huge difference to the arrangements that we’ve got at the present time. We’ll be trying to explain to him, through that process, how we think it is a massively significant change in the way the relationship works between the Minister of Finance and the bank—huge.

One question will, of course, be: how often will the board report to the Minister of Finance? No one over there seems to know, so that is something for them to think about over the next couple of weeks as we move towards that committee stage; I’ll bet that it is frequent. So rather than the discussions that might occur between the independent Governor of the Reserve Bank, there will now be the chairman of the board hauled into the Minister’s office to explain what is going on and to hear the Minister’s theories—

Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, you’re making it up. Where are you getting that from?

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —of what would be good to have happen. Now, Dr Webb over there, unfortunately—he’s a great guy, and I think he’s next up in the Labour Cabinet. My colleagues agree with me; they are all nodding their heads—oh, and so are his own colleagues; they’re very encouraging. Next up, and when he gets there, he will know that Ministers can have quite an influence on their departments, and this is changing the Reserve Bank into a department supervised by the Minister of Finance. It is, you would say, proved by the fact that my dear friends in Treasury now have a much-enhanced role in this particular structure—and that, I’m afraid, will not be good for this country.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you for those words of endorsement, Mr Brownlee. I’m now going to leave for my office to look at situations vacant. Look, once again, an entirely negative view, which doesn’t reflect what actually went on in the Finance and Expenditure Committee.

As we’ve heard, this is a modernisation of our financial framework, and a really important one, and the references to the Lange years were, essentially, pointing out that what occurred there might have had its place then in terms of the Reserve Bank reforms and the inflation targets, but it has no place now. Inflation was absolutely the scourge of the economy. We know that something had to be done, and the great economic innovation of the time, of course, was inflation-target signalling to let the market know that the Government, with the Reserve Bank, was committed to lowering inflation and it would take the steps necessary, and that alone had a very significant effect. New Zealand, in fact, was the first country in the world to do that. In those other countries where inflation was rampant, that was adopted as well, and we can be very proud, in fact, of that.

But in the current economy, if anything, inflation is sticky—right? Inflation has been at the lower bounds of the inflation target for some time and, at the same time, we’re trying to balance a whole lot of other variables, including housing and employment, and to suggest that the Reserve Bank should simply have a single target in a complex and multifaceted economy, such as the one we have today, is to throw half the tools out of the tool box.

But my real point is this: it was a really useful select committee process. We did actually have a really good look at the bill and, I must say, the report—and you should give it a read, Mr Brownlee—is well worth a read, and we did actually identify some of the things. Given that the Reserve Bank Governor is to become a member of the board, we looked at some of those issues. We looked at the decision-making processes. We identified the risk of conflict of interest. It was already in there in a sense, but we thought it needed some strengthening, so we did exactly that, and we made sure that, obviously, the Reserve Bank Governor didn’t have any role to play in things like the appointment of a successor and things like that. We also had a look at a whole lot of other things.

We did touch on cryptocurrency. I suspect that cryptocurrency doesn’t meet the definition of “money” at the current time. It’s not legal tender. It can’t be used in transactions with Government to discharge a debt owed to the Government—a critical feature of any genuine legal tender money—but we know it’s there. We know that there’s a potential that it could have a distorting effect on the economy in years to come, so the bill is equipped to at least monitor that, if not to actually address the issues that may arise, because at the present time we don’t know exactly what they’ll be.

Now, Mr Bayly, in particular, on the committee took a very active role, and had discussions both in committee and outside of committee on a number of fronts. It’s true that it was signalled that if he was given his way on all of these things, we might have had the National Party’s support. But, I must say, obviously, on a bill that’s important—essentially, constitutionally important—it would be nice to have that support, but, essentially, those things would fundamentally change what the bill would do.

So in the minority view, you’ll see that, essentially, it was objected to that the Reserve Bank Governor could be on the board. Now, that collective decision-making and collective responsibility is a key aspect of this bill.

The reintroduction of the efficiency mandate was also asked for by the National Party, but the problem with the efficiency requirement of an efficient financial system is that despite the apparent clarity of the word, it’s not clear at all. To ask what is efficient—even economists don’t agree. They’ll be able to spit out four or five different definitions at a kind of first-year level. Whether it be Pareto efficiency or Kaldor-Hicks efficiency—all of these different kinds of efficiency—we can’t actually apply a standard if we don’t understand what it is, and “efficiency” is an unclear word. So whilst, obviously, we want a well-functioning and a stable financial system, which is the critical part of this bill, to simply throw in the word “efficiency” is just a sop to essentially Chicago school economic theory, and we’re not interested in doing that.

So, look, it’s a pity that we haven’t got the National Party onside. The ACT Party also expressed its reservations along a similar vein, but it is prepared to engage in an ongoing discussion in supporting this bill, as I understand it. So I look forward to hearing from them.

This is a really good bill, and another great piece in the reform of our monetary system which will put us on a great foundation for years to come. I commend it to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. The Green Party will be supporting this bill, continuing to support the bill at second reading. I’ve found the debate tonight actually quite interesting. I think that, although it sounds incredibly boring, monetary policy—and what does it have to do with anything, the Reserve Bank?—ultimately, the way that we approach our financial system has impacts on everyone in the country. Although, for many decades, it’s been treated as though it’s some value-free institution that must be tended to by absolute experts, the reality is that the financial system, just like our society, has the potential to affect everyone, and we need some sort of broad and democratic oversight over it. I just think that’s fundamental to a democratic society. Obviously, the financial system is one part of our economic system, which is just a subset of our society, which is entirely reliant on the ecosystem for its existence. That’s something that Green Party founder and first co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons often spoke about, how you can’t balance the economy against society or the environment; fundamentally, the economy is a subset of society, which is a subset of the ecosystem.

Particularly as we face some of the bigger challenges, the biggest challenge—climate change—alongside a kind of crisis in inequality, which has been getting worse over the past few decades, due in large part to a certain economic policy dogma that needs to change, it is really important that we update the approach to the Reserve Bank and we make sure that it is fit for purpose. For a very, very long time, the Green Party was calling for broader governance, a more broad-based approach than just one single governor. Of course, even though prior to these changes it was the responsibility of the governor, in fact my understanding is that the way it was operating was more of a board approach, but what is really important is that we’re able to take into account different perspectives on how monetary policy and other policies impact different sectors of society and the economy. It’s important that you have those perspectives.

I wasn’t on the select committee, so I can’t comment on all of the submissions that were heard—that was my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick, who was sitting in the Finance and Expenditure Committee—but, basically, from my understanding of the report-back from the select committee and my discussions with her, this is still very much in line with Green Party policy and commentary for the last decade. We want the bank to be able to consider inflation, employment, external balance of trade issues, adoption of alternative targets for monetary policy, and looking at changes to encourage the financial sector to take responsible, long-term financial decisions and avoid excessive risk to economic stability.

I think, post - global financial crisis, one thing that has come out really clearly is that the financialisation of many developed economies has not been a good thing for most people. It’s been a great thing for people working in the finance sector, mostly, and when it’s run into problems, it’s been particularly bad for broader society as a whole and has relied on bailouts from Government and from democratic societies. So, I think, as we face this new reality post-COVID—still facing climate change, still trying to address inequality—it’s going to be particularly important that we take a new approach and a much more democratic approach to the institutions that govern the financial sector. We do want a stable financial system, but we don’t want the financial system, to be able to take over, create its own little reality over here that’s generating a lot of GDP and a lot of churn but no real value for society. And, definitely, the number of billionaires is not a sign of success of your society; it’s how many people you have living in poverty, or how few, preferably—how few people you have living in poverty, and how many people have enough to live a decent life, to make ends meet, and for us as a society to tackle our collective challenges like climate change.

That is another aspect which I think is really good about this bill, that the bank’s decision-making principles will include longer-term risks like climate change, and also expected to consider short- to medium-term impacts associated with climate change, as part of meeting its financial stability objectives.

Some of the other changes that have come about, not as a direct result of this bill but of the overall review of monetary policy and governance of the Reserve Bank, have been the requirements around deposit insurance. That was something the Green Party was campaigning on for quite a long time and was recently announced—really good outcome, I think. So, all in all, the Green Party is supportive.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): First of all, it’s an absolute honour to be in the presence of the future finance Minister from the Labour Party tonight. I can see that coming. The Government has chosen to pursue these reforms without majority support. The relationship between the Reserve Bank and the finance Minister is critical to the functioning of a modern economy. The roll-back of independence of the Reserve Bank is extremely concerning for the functioning of the New Zealand economy and the sound economic consensus which has proven to be kept with low inflation and a stable operating environment for business.

Something’s been bugging me since our last Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting. I locked myself away in a room in a padded cell and then spoke to my advisers, and then to caucus, and we came up with the conclusion that this bill is out of step and that the finance Minister in this Government is determined to bring us back to the 1980s, to the Muldoon economic period. A diagram presented here, which, from my research over the last five days, has shown these are the new rules of Gotham City—this is the love child of Grant Robertson and James Shaw: Batman and Robin. And surely from the formation stage from inflation in the good old days to bullying the Reserve Bank into potential stagflation today, if it’s not Batman and Robin it’s, as my colleague would say, potentially the Sons of Anarchy.

Control of monetary policy, foreign direct investment, high borrowing, micro-management of the economy, it looks like as of tonight these are all going to be front-page issues that Mr Robertson wants to be our natural daily digest, and that’s not what a functioning, efficient economy and banking system should actually be promoting; it should be not seen but unheard. Any change to this monetary policy and foundation should reflect the broad consensus and not just that of one or two parties. It’s that important.

National and ACT have raised a limited number of important concerns with this bill, which have been ignored. No one’s come back to talk to us. We proposed solutions to a number of these issues through questions to Treasury, and I have to agree with my learned colleague who has said that they seem to operate in a way that is different to the way we normally operate in the real world. We think that they would significantly improve the bills acceptability to the key stakeholders and would better serve the current and any future finance Minister, because these things have to endure long before and after we’re gone.

We both consider that the removal of the efficiency elements from the revised financial stability objective is poorly supported by analysis and by policy analysis, and does not improve the Reserve Bank. We should be reinserting “efficiency”. And even the Bankers’ Association in a memo that I’ve received, whilst supportive of the Act and its micro-views, see this as a major concern. This would address the significant concern for us and for those who made public submissions.

Moving on to accountability, under the new arrangements the board takes on an executive role rather than acting in an oversight capacity, which is common with non-executive boards. So we question under the rules of Gotham City, the new rules, whether governance is actually at the forefront of what is being thought about. This is a fundamental change to the model of decision making in respect of prudential policy and oversight of deposit takers and insurers. The proposed model relies heavily on finding suitable candidates to operate at an executive level on the board, and these people are hard to find with global views and simultaneously being able to understand what’s going on in New York and Frankfurt. Given the important role that the Reserve Bank plays in setting the country’s economic settings, ACT considers that Parliament should have a greater degree of oversight over the monetary policy remit and funding agreement.

I’d like to put it on the record that all parliamentary oversight on this bill, at an MP level and at a select committee level, will evaporate, and that is a very serious issue that we need to talk about at the committee stage. Such oversight need not impinge on the ultimate power of the finance Minister in issuing remit, we’re not against that. But we acknowledge that the cross-party interest in the central bank’s monetary policy objectives needs to be refined. Similarly, ACT considers that the Minister of Finance and the Reserve Bank should both have the ability to initiate changes to the functions of the Reserve Bank. However, in this bill, this may only occur upon request of the Reserve Bank, but is subject to agreement by the Minister of Finance. In our view, that changes its function. It should be subject to some oversight by Parliament, that such occurs with an Order in Council is also a confirmable instrument.

ACT also considers that the proposed measures which were introduced during the select committee process have not been publicly consulted on, and something of this magnitude should have a second round of public consultation. To enable the Minister of Finance to manage the fiscal risk to the Crown associated with the Reserve Bank’s activities, we think it falls short of what the Minister would require to properly manage the risks to the Crown’s financial position.

Modern monetary theory, which seems to be upon us, tells us that it is possible for central banks now, like the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ), to print money indefinitely with little consequence. RBNZ money printing has seen house price inflation rising 20 percent in a year. It supported the Government borrowing to spend money it does not have, and net Government debt relies on interest rates falling, yet the Minister expects them to be raised, in a recent statement in the press at the weekend, peaking at $180 billion in 2025.

This bill is out of step from this Government, and the finance Minister, who is determined to bring us back to an era where him and Mr Shaw decided that they would change the model to go beyond the business cycle management to looking at a remit that would place some emphasis and heavy scrutiny on the board of the Reserve Bank, and it is fundamentally different to what is anticipated. So, tonight, we’d like—the ACT Party—to put on the record where we think the thought process is coming from, and we look forward to the committee stage for working out the mechanics and the details. We would really love to see some conservative policy-making being reinjected back into this, and even though we supported this at the first stage, after hearing what we’ve heard, and after hearing and reading what we’ve seen in the press recently, we will be opposing the bill at this reading.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to be able to take a short call on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bill. I find it quite interesting that the previous member referred to the diagram on page 3 of the Reserve Bank bill, the commentary back from the select committee, as Gotham City. Well, number two of the Batman movie series is around Batman Returns and it talks about Catwoman and the process where Catwoman, Michelle Pfeiffer, passes away in it, and it talks about nine lives. Well, the interesting thing is that part of this commentary on the bill and National’s complaint in their minority view is around that Parliament should have a greater degree of oversight over the monetary policy remits; it shouldn’t impinge on the ultimate power of the Minister of Finance. Well, the other side of the House had nine years to make those changes. This legislation has been 30 years. It needed a review and so we’ve reviewed it and I’d like to thank the officials from both Treasury and the Parliamentary Counsel Office for a lot of their advice during the bill. So I just find a little bit of irony talking about Gotham City, nine lives, and nine years where people could have done something but they didn’t.

So I will go back to that diagram that’s on page 3 of the commentary. It sets out really carefully what the changes are in the bill that the select committee, by majority, are asking Parliament to consider. We put in the diagram because it was—based on what was previously done in 1989, some of the Hansard wasn’t that fulsome around why some of the changes were made, so that diagram sets out three particular things: when the bill was introduced; what’s currently in the bill, which is that the governor has the single decision-making power; and then when the bill was introduced—this particular bill was introduced. Now, the Minister recommended there be a board that was a non-executive governance board, and it recommends the governor appointments. Now, what the select committee is now recommending is that you still have that board but, actually, that the governor, the chief executive, should actually be a board member. That goes back to, during the debate in the select committee, two really key things for this side of the House. One, is around coordination and two, is around cooperation. So the reason for the majority recommendation around the lack of coordination is because—between the bank’s monetary statement in the financial policy the bill didn’t include an explicit mechanism for it. So that’s why the select committee on this side of the House, by majority, suggested that we increase that—so why we include that.

But also there is commentary that National talked about around the efficiency principle. The chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Dr Duncan Webb, who did a great job chairing, I must say, touched on it briefly around the efficiency principle and around that, basically, it’s such a subject of principle based on this particular proposed bill. So what this side of the House has suggested is that you don’t include it. We had a really good debate in the select committee around why you wouldn’t include it. And so it came down to, for us, that when, in 1989, the Reserve Bank bill was going through the House, there was nothing in Hansard on the intended meaning of “efficiency”, but that’s because back in the 1980s, this particular Act was really narrow. It was on the financial stability; the role was narrower. It was limited to the registration of banks. That’s why we have this bill coming to the House—because we’ve needed to extend it. It’s now doing a prudential role around insurance. It still has the bank regulatory powers. But we’ve seen that in the last 30 years it needed to be updated.

So we haven’t included the efficiency principle. We agreed, by majority, that it shouldn’t be in there and, actually, that the upcoming deposit takers bill, which the Finance and Expenditure Committee chair did touch on, is proposed to have some similar discussion as part of that particular bill, which is the trilogy. So my challenge really to the other side of the House is that, you know, Batman Returns had his Catwoman with nine lives; let’s have a think about what the trilogy is with the deposit takers bill and including the efficiency principle. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.