Wednesday, 30 June 2021

WEDNESDAY, 30 JUNE 2021

WEDNESDAY, 30 JUNE 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

karakia/prayers

karakia/prayers

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

petitions, papers, select committee reports, and introduction of bills

petitions, papers, select committee reports, and introduction of bills

SPEAKER: No select committee reports have been presented. No bills have been introduced.

A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Ashley Jones requesting that the House review our current divorce laws and consider changing them.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Department of Corrections Ara Poutama Aotearoa, Statement of Intent 2021-22

Stats NZ Tatauranga Aoteroa, Statement of Strategic Intentions 2021-25

Institute of Environmental Science and Research, Statement of Corporate Intent 2021-26

Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, Statement of Corporate Intent 2021-26

Government response to the New Zealand Productivity Commission Report on local government funding and financing.

SPEAKER: I present the 2021/22 annual plan of the Controller and Auditor-General and the OPCAP COVID-19 report of the Ombudsman on inspections of aged-care facilities under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989. Those papers are published under the authority of the House.

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 swift and decisive efforts to keep people connected to their jobs and to support businesses in response to COVID-19 has been reflected in New Zealanders’ overall wellbeing. A new report by Statistics New Zealand on wellbeing shows that while the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the country, New Zealanders have remained resilient. While there were small changes over the year to March 2021, most New Zealanders remain satisfied with their lives overall, with a rating of eight out of 10, where zero is completely dissatisfied and 10 is completely satisfied. They also continued to find things they do in their life worthwhile, with a rating of 8.2 out of 10. Statistics New Zealand said that while the pandemic clearly had a major impact on the country, most people remained “happy, healthy, and satisfied with their lives, despite the challenges.” The report shows, however, that levels of satisfaction among groups were uneven and there are still ongoing challenges from the pandemic.

Dr Duncan Webb: What impact has COVID-19 had on New Zealanders’ financial wellbeing?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government’s efforts to provide cash flow and confidence was a crucial factor in underpinning financial wellbeing during an unprecedented time. The wellbeing statistics released by Statistics New Zealand show that financial wellbeing remained at similar levels over the year, though some New Zealanders still struggle. Some 70 percent of New Zealanders said they had enough or more than enough to meet their everyday needs, while 23 percent said they only just had enough, and 6.4 percent said they did not have enough money. These statistics show we cannot afford to be complacent. The Government is working to keep people safe and accelerate the recovery, including targeting to support where it is needed most—and I note that, this week, on 1 July, we have the first round of the benefit increases and the reintroduction of the training incentive allowance.

Hon Member: Oh yeah, that’ll help the economy.

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In response to the interjection from opposite, the export sector continues to support the recovery. Statistics New Zealand reported on Friday that exports of goods in May hit their highest ever monthly level, at $5.9 billion. That’s an increase of 8.5 percent on the previous month, and an impressive 28.2 percent increase on the same period a year ago. The main contribution came from dairy products, with gains in prices in sales of milk powder and fresh milk. Forest product prices and quantities also rose in the month. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: No? David Seymour.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I’m assuming you’re calling question 2?

SPEAKER: Yes—yes.

David Seymour: Oh, OK.

SPEAKER: I’ve sort of got to that point that I—

David Seymour: OK. I’d hate to be premature, Mr Speaker.

Hon Grant Robertson: For a father and son, you don’t communicate very well.

SPEAKER: No, grandson, grandson—just get there, you know. David Seymour, question 2.

David Seymour: Thanks, “Grandad”.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, in particular I stand by today’s announcement that this Government will continue its ambitious child poverty targets for our next three-year target period. Today, I announced that our next set of child poverty targets are to reduce child poverty by 2023-24 to 10 percent under the before-housing costs measure, 15 percent under the after-housing costs measure, and to reduce material hardship to 9 percent. Achieving our next set of three-year targets will keep us on track to meet our long-term 10-year targets, and would result in up to 80,000 fewer children living in poverty since we came into Government. Under this Government, all nine poverty measures have already gone down since 2017 and 2018, and we’ve exceeded our first three-year target ahead of schedule for the after-housing cost measure, by lifting 43,300 children out of poverty—but there’s more to do.

David Seymour: Which of her Government’s policies is more on track out of KiwiBuild and the vaccine roll-out?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We’ve had now over a million doses of vaccine delivered to New Zealanders, and when we take into account fully vaccinated New Zealanders, that brings us ahead of, say, the likes of Australia. If the member is looking for good base comparisons for where we are relative to other countries around the world, I would point not simply to a measure of income, as the member has done previously, but a measure of how well we’re doing relative to other countries with the same rate of COVID infection and death. We should also be looking at the developing world. It is simply not good enough that the vaccination rates continue to be persistently low in those places, because if we are going to be safe, we must all be safe.

David Seymour: When she became Prime Minister, did she ever think she’d be reduced to saying, “Hey, we’re doing better than Africa.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When it comes to global health and wellbeing in a global pandemic, how countries like those in Africa are performing is relevant to us. And, as a country who has a stake in the wellbeing of all nations, including developing ones, I imagine that’s a consideration most New Zealanders would be proud to take.

David Seymour: Does she stand by Chris Hipkins’ statement that New Zealand would be “At the front of the queue” for receiving COVID-19 vaccines; and if so, how did we get from the front of the queue to the bottom of the OECD?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I absolutely refute the premise of that member’s question, as we have secured the vaccine required to vaccinate our entire population within this year. I would also point out to the member there are very few countries that are also in the position to be able to roll out a single vaccine, which does present not only the benefits of a vaccine that’s holding up well in terms of its efficacy against variants but also reduces some of the logistical challenges. We are such a country. Israel is one of the other few countries who have access for a whole population against that vaccine.

David Seymour: Was it a mistake to rely on one vaccine, because we no longer have a diversity of suppliers; and if so, will the Government reverse that position by sourcing vaccines from other suppliers?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, the member is wrong in the premise of his question. We do still have supply from other vaccines. Those vaccines—AstraZeneca, Janssen, and others—continue to go through the Medsafe approval process. That process will only happen as quickly as those pharmaceutical companies provide the data that Medsafe requires. That’s the first point I’ll make. The second is that other countries who do have a mixed programme of vaccines—the likes of Australia—you’ll notice have had to change up some of their direction around who is able to access that vaccine; it does not necessarily mean their roll-out is faster. The third point: all pharmaceutical companies have been ramping up their supply in the latter part of the calendar year of 2021; the first half of the year, for most vaccine suppliers, has always been constrained.

David Seymour: How much vaccine—or how many doses of the vaccine—are currently on shore in New Zealand; and, at current rates, how many days does the Prime Minister expect that supply to last?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We do have some limitation around incoming supply, in terms of what we’re able to say, from the pharmaceutical companies; they have some requirements on us on what we say about our delivery schedule. However, for a long time, a number of weeks, we have been very open about the fact that we are currently, because we have outstripped our targets—the DHBs have outstripped the targets—if we maintain our current trajectory we will be able to continue to deliver vaccines for those who are booked, but if there is any slippage in the delivery schedule, there is likely to be constrained supply. But that is, at this stage, only if our pharmaceutical company does not deliver as they intended to.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister have a schedule of the dates and volumes of scheduled delivery from that pharmaceutical company, and will she publish it for the benefit of the House and all New Zealanders?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, but we tend to get them about four weeks in advance, rather than out to eight weeks or so on. That’s been something that’s been consistent all the way through, and we’ve been public about that. As I just said in my last answer, though, we have been open about the fact that we have some supply constraints, but Pfizer have been reluctant for us to give exact numbers around delivery schedules—that’s part of their commercial arrangements.

David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister concerned that modelling shows New Zealand would need to get to 97 percent of the population vaccinated to protect against new COVID-19 variants; and is she confident that New Zealand will reach 97 percent vaccination rate if that’s the case?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m really pleased in the change we’ve seen in New Zealanders’ willingness to be vaccinated. So over time, as we’ve been measuring and asking New Zealanders how they feel about being vaccinated, we’ve steadily been seeing that hesitancy reduce. So we’re up around rates of 80 percent of New Zealanders willing to be vaccinated. When it comes to the modelling, it is early days for some of that modelling, and I think we’ll continue to see those researchers do that work. Some of the modelling doesn’t take into account any other form of protection against the pandemic—you know, the use of, for instance, testing at the border or contact tracing and how that can reduce down risk. I expect the scientific community will continue to undertake that modelling for us—we’ve talked with them about that—to help inform our decision making. But my message to New Zealanders is: if we want to reduce the use of restrictions like lockdown, then the best thing we can do is get as many people as possible vaccinated.

David Seymour: Does the Government see its obligation as ensuring everybody has had the opportunity to receive a COVID-19 vaccine or ensuring New Zealand reaches herd immunity; and, if the former, then will the Government continue with the elimination strategy after every New Zealander has had the opportunity to have a COVID-19 vaccine?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I see our obligation as keeping New Zealand and New Zealanders safe. The best way that we can do that is to ensure as many people as possible are vaccinated. Now, I do see that we have some obligation because many people actually are just seeking more information in order to make a decision. We can provide that, we can provide that encouragement, so can experts in the field, and so can other members of the community. But what I’d also say about an elimination strategy: elimination does not mean that there will be zero incidents of COVID, and we already know that; it means, when it arises, you stamp it out. We already have infectious diseases in New Zealand where we take that approach, we use contact tracing; public health measures; and, in this case for COVID, measures at the border. I anticipate we’ll continue to use those in combination with the vaccine programme.

David Seymour: Point of order. The question was quite specific. Now, the Prime Minister has described why it’s important to be vaccinated, she’s described the technical definition of “elimination”, but she hasn’t said whether the Government would change from an elimination strategy if vaccination was to reach herd immunity level or what she would do if it hasn’t. It was quite a specific question, and a lot of people would like to know the answer. The Prime Minister hasn’t actually addressed it.

SPEAKER: I’ll refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 183/3.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

3. 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 work around three waters. In our proposal to establish four publicly owned entities to take responsibility of drinking-water, waste-water, and stormwater infrastructure across New Zealand, the data released today shows that our reforms will save ratepayers thousands of dollars, create thousands of new jobs. These changes are one part of a package of proposed reforms following the inquiry into the Havelock North drinking-water outbreak. We want to ensure that we have safe water infrastructure across the country to avoid situations like the campylobacter outbreaks we had in Havelock North, and this is crucial to that goal. As we undertake our economic recovery, these new entities will upgrade infrastructure for our most precious natural resource, which will not only help rein in increasing costs for households but provide local jobs while contributing to regional economies.

Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to Dr Bryce Edwards, who yesterday wrote, “It seems neither [the Prime Minister nor the justice Minister] have a good understanding of their own reforms, and their statements suggest that the proposed laws might have a chilling [effect] on society and political activity” in relation to her hate speech laws?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would absolutely reject that statement.

Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to Tova O’Brien, who wrote—[Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to Tova O’Brien, who wrote, “Jacinda Ardern is wrong about her own hate speech law. Completely and utterly wrong. Not only is the Prime Minister wrong about the basic facts of the proposal, she [is] wrong to shut down debate on hate speech”.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I also disagree with that statement and I also, as it happens, disagree with the member’s statement on Twitter that somehow it will become illegal to call someone a Karen. That is absolutely incorrect—and, I apologise, that means these laws will not protect that member from such a claim. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Judith Collins: Point of order. Sorry, I really meant to say—I’ve decided actually not to ask that point. I thought it would be cruel to ask it, so I won’t. I’ll just ask a supplementary, if I may?

SPEAKER: Well, I think Chris Hipkins has the next supplementary.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I wonder, if it’s acceptable to ask the Prime Minister what her response to a range of public comments is, whether it would be acceptable to ask her what her response is to a number of public comments made by Christopher Finlayson in the last 24 hours?

SPEAKER: Well, she has about the same level of responsibility. If Mr Finlayson was describing matters for which she does have responsibility—I think the quotes so far do relate to areas where the Prime Minister has responsibility. And I just do want to warn the Leader of the House: the more I think about it, the more I am considering the possibility that he might have known that his point of order was not one. I’ll be—

David Seymour: Overestimated.

SPEAKER: Who said that?

Ian McKelvie: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, I’m sorry. I’ll stand up so I’m—David Seymour might have been accurate in his interjection, which was inappropriate. I’m going to make the assumption now there was no mens rea involved, otherwise I would have taken it seriously. Supplementary question—

Ian McKelvie: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: I’m sorry—a point of order.

Ian McKelvie: Could I ask you to reflect on the last couple of minutes in the House over the next 24 hours and report back to us tomorrow on whether you think the debate has been constructive in any way to forming order in the House.

SPEAKER: Well, I think—the answer is: no, it hasn’t been. But I would look slightly to his right or a couple to his right and forward, I would look into the front row of his own bench and consider whether their behaviour on earlier questions, and actually their reaction while his own leader was asking—her questions were being answered, did, in fact, wind the situation up as well. So the answer is: I decline his invitation to report back to the House on behaviour. I will say, though, that I have had in the last—yesterday and on Wednesday last week, significantly more public reaction to misbehaviour in the House than I’ve had for some time.

Ian McKelvie: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: A further point of order.

Ian McKelvie: Point of order, Mr Speaker. With due respect, I, like you, have selective hearing, and I did not hear the issues you’re asking me to talk about. So maybe we should go through that again?

SPEAKER: I want to say to the member that my hearing aids are working very well at the moment. My hearing problems are sometimes selective, but they’re not selective today.

Hon Judith Collins: So what is her response to Audrey Young, who wrote, “She and Faafoi would have a much better chance of persuading the public if they a) got the facts right and b) were prepared to discuss hypothetical examples so the public had a good idea of what is intended by the proposals.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: And I think also the most persuasive thing we can do is anchor this entire debate in why we’re having it in the first place, and that is because the royal commission has rightly pointed out to this House, and to us generally, that currently our existing laws, which have been around for 50 years, do not include reference to religious organisations or those with religious beliefs, and does not provide them the coverage that our current hate speech laws do. So these proposals intend to extend that; we’re seeking public views on how widely. And, at the same time, we have narrowed some of the scope of the provisions, and I would welcome a good debate on whether or not that meets the public’s and this House’s expectations.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with the section in the royal commission report which says, “Further restricting and criminalising hate speech would be misconceived, as it is likely to drive hate speech underground, where it contributes to more radicalisation.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I take it from the member quoting from the report, the implication that she therefore supports where they landed, because so did we. That’s why we have taken the language that they propose. And I would answer by saying I also agree with their statement that “We consider that the concerns about freedom of expression are met with a high threshold for liability, requiring the prosecution to establish an intention to stir up, maintain, or normalise hatred towards members of the protected group and its specifically addressing explicit and implicit calls for violence against such a group.” And that is what the wording of these proposals does.

Hon Judith Collins: What is her response to Heather du Plessis-Allan, who wrote of the Prime Minister and the justice Minister, “neither of them understand what they’re proposing to do, which means they don’t know how bad this law is. They should take a look, because many of us who have looked are not comfortable.”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ll say what I said in the House yesterday: for those expressing discomfort with the current proposal, that would suggest to me that they have discomfort with our current laws, because there is (a), not only a lot of similarity in the threshold that’s required; there’s actually a narrowing of some of the language. The old language included things like “bringing into ridicule or contempt”. In the view of the royal commission, the use of the word “hatred” and the need to incite that hatred sets a very high threshold, and therefore protects New Zealanders’ expectation around freedom of expression.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with her Minister for Courts that addressing coronial inquest wait times “could take three years, could take 18 years”; if so, what is her response to distressed families who have said hearing her Minister say this shows that he has no idea about the urgency of the matter?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I reject that suggestion from the Minister—member. [Interruption] What I would also say—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —from Minister Sio is that I have seen and heard him advocate for the work that we need to do to ensure timely responses for victims.

Question No. 4—COVID-19 Response

4. ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What arrangements are being put in place to recommence quarantine-free travel with Australia?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yesterday, Cabinet agreed, in principle, that from 11.59 p.m. on Sunday, 4 July, New Zealand will lift the travel pause to allow travellers from South Australia, the ACT, Tasmania, and Victoria to travel to New Zealand. Yesterday’s decision gives airlines, passengers, and all of those affected time to prepare flights from those green zones when the pause lifts on Sunday night. People travelling will need to get a pre-departure test. We do know how important the travel bubble is, in particular for families and for businesses, but we also want to avoid a situation where we’re having to respond to a case or cases here in New Zealand.

Arena Williams: What additional measures will be put in place to help keep COVID19 out of New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: To be eligible to fly, travellers must not have been in New South Wales on or after 11.59 p.m. on 22 June, when our pause with New South Wales commenced, or in Queensland, the Northern Territory, or Western Australia on or after 10 p.m. on 26 June, which is when our pause with the rest of Australia began. We want to ensure that New Zealanders aren’t unnecessarily barred from travelling back to New Zealand where there is little or no risk of them bringing COVID-19 with them, but we will also be requiring people to have a negative pre-departure test within 72 hours before coming home to New Zealand, as an additional layer of protection.

Arena Williams: What factors did the Government consider in recommencing quarantine-free travel with Australia?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Cabinet carefully weighed up the evidence and considered that partially lifting the pause was an appropriate course of action, particularly when bolstered with the introduction of mandatory pre-departure testing. The health advice was that the spread of COVID-19 in these parts of Australia had been contained, there is robust surveillance testing and contact tracing to detect and manage cases, and adequate border controls in place to prevent the spread of new cases.

Arena Williams: What will happen in the event of another outbreak in Australia?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the reasons that we have allowed ourselves a few additional days is that we will be keeping a very close eye on developments in Australia between now and the end of the weekend. Detailed risk assessments will continue to be completed regularly for each state and territory, and we’ll be ready to make further decisions quickly if we need to do so. We will review the restrictions remaining in place for the other Australian states on or before next Tuesday, 6 July. Our system from here, of only opening up to the states that have been able to contain COVID-19, will help to ensure that New Zealand can remain at alert level 1.

Question No. 5—Revenue

5. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Revenue: Is the Government committed to removing the ability for interest expense to be deducted from residential rental income; if so, what is the expected increase in annual tax payable from the 2025/26 tax year for an investor who owns a typical rental property in Auckland?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister of Revenue): Yes, the Government is committed to this policy. It is part of our coordinated response to the housing crisis. It will ensure that first-home buyers and owner-occupiers get a fair go, and it will also head off the economic risk of an out-of-control housing bubble. Regarding the second part of the question, the answer will depend upon a number of variables, including the amount of rental income, interest rates in five years’ time, and the amount of debt, if any, an investor has over their properties. If an investor invests in new homes, there will be no increase. This is because new builds are exempt.

Andrew Bayly: Does he agree with the joint advice he received from the Treasury, IRD, and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, dated February 2021, that under his policy a landlord with a $700,000 mortgage would face a tax increase of $9,240 a year?

Hon DAVID PARKER: That would depend upon future interest rates—in respect of which, I note that upon the announcement of our policy, the New Zealand exchange rate immediately dropped because there was a baked-in expectation from the market that interest rates were going to have to be raised by the Reserve Bank to head off a housing bubble. As a consequence of what we’ve done, interest rates will be lower for longer than they would otherwise have been. I also note that Westpac reported, following their analysis, that removal of deductibility of interest would remove the 10 percent extra growth they expected in house prices over the rest of the year. So, in our view, on this side of the House, we’re actually doing something that’s working.

Andrew Bayly: Is it fair that a mum and dad landlord will have to pay $9,000 every year in additional tax, after an election where the Government promised no tax increases?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Well, that’s not necessarily true; it depends upon the factors that I’ve already outlined. But I would note that landlords did not decrease rents when interest rates dropped over the last decade.

Andrew Bayly: Does he realise that when a landlord is faced with a tax increase of over $9,000 a year, the likely outcome is that they will either put up the rent or sell their rental property?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I don’t think that’s necessarily correct.

Andrew Bayly: Is the objective of this tax policy to make people sell their rental properties?

Hon DAVID PARKER: No, it’s not, but if they didn’t, the house would not erupt in flames and disappear.

Andrew Bayly: What is the message to New Zealanders who will have to sell their one rental property that they have invested in for their retirement, because he’s increased the tax bill?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I think the majority of New Zealanders do not like the fact that an increasing proportion of New Zealand’s housing stock is owned by people who own many houses, and the rate of homeownership has been dropping. I also repeatedly had feedback from New Zealanders following this message that they’re pleased to have a Government that’s actually taking material steps to address the housing crisis across a number of decisions on both supply and demand side. They note that other parties call for change and then oppose every change that is proposed.

Question No. 6—Environment

6. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister for the Environment: What announcements has the Government made regarding the reduction of waste?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): This week, the Government has delivered on its promise to phase out problem plastics and some single-use plastics by 2025. We’ll be phasing out hard-to-recycle food and drink packaging made from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene and some degradable plastic products. We’ll be phasing out single-use plastic items such as drink stirrers; cotton buds; single-use produce bags; single-use plastic cutlery, plates, and bowls; as well as non-compostable plastic labels. We’ve made good progress over the last three years and there’s strong public and business support for the 2019 plastic-bag ban, which has meant that more than 1 billion fewer plastic bags have ended up in our landfills or ocean, and we know that New Zealanders are ready to do more.

Tangi Utikere: Why has the Government acted to phase out problem plastics?

Hon DAVID PARKER: In the case of PVC and some degradable plastics, they can’t be practicably distinguished and recycled compared with other alternatives. And so what happens in practice is they contaminate the recycling of other plastics, so we’ve got to manage them out of the system. Other single-use items often end up as waste in landfills or cause pollution. New Zealand’s not got a very good record in this regard, and we need to do a lot better. We’re one of the worst in the OECD in terms of the plastic waste per capita. We think that New Zealanders support change. We consulted on these changes, 8,000 people and businesses responded, and the vast majority supported the proposals. We think phasing out unnecessary and problematic plastics will help reduce waste, improve recycling, and move us towards a circular economy.

Tangi Utikere: How will the Government support innovation and research into alternatives to problem plastics?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The Government has delivered on a number of the Labour Party’s election promises at the time of the last election by launching the $50 million Plastics Innovation Fund, which will help support projects to improve how we make, use, recycle, and dispose of plastics. This will fund innovative New Zealanders to help identify the solutions that we need, and then help them to scale up so that we can get them into commercial use. The fund will find ways to use less plastic to make what we do recyclable for the benefit of the environment, but it’ll also have job benefits and support the economy. Projects designing out waste in products and packaging or to adopt and scale up existing technologies through to switching materials and developing recycling solutions not currently available can all be considered. We expect that the fund, which opens later this year, will attract a range of applicants from research institutes, businesses, and community groups. The Government’s committed to making good progress to a lower-waste, low-emissions economy.

Hon Eugenie Sage: In the absence of a Government decision to phase out wet wipes, will the Minister ask the Commerce Commission to investigate misleading advertising which claims that wet wipes are flushable when they are not; and, if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I haven’t given consideration to the Commerce Act angle—I’m happy to think about that. The member is right to point out that we do have more work to do in respect of wet wipes. They’re not only causing very significant, costly problems for local government and their sewerage infrastructure, if, as I’m sure the member knows, you visit natural places and tissue paper and toilet paper degrades in rain, but these plastic equivalents last forever, and we need to eventually phase them out. I think we will eventually phase them out, but we need alternatives that are biodegradable to be readily available so that people who have legitimate uses of these can get what they need. In the meantime, people using them should not flush them; they should dispose of them in rubbish bins.

Question No. 7—Justice

7. Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) to the Minister of Justice: Does he stand by all of his statements and policies on his proposed hate speech law changes?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Yes, because, as I said yesterday, we want New Zealanders to be able to have their say on the proposed changes to our incitement laws, and have been informed by the royal commissioner of inquiry. What we are asking the public for feedback on is whether more groups beyond race, nationality, and ethnicity should be protected under our existing incitement provisions, whether we should strengthen the penalties, and refining and organising the language and the wording of the offence provisions. I was surprised at the approach that the member took yesterday to hate speech, because back in 2019, when he was Leader of the Opposition, on hate speech he said, “I have no criticism of [this] … going through, albeit you have to be careful—”. That is exactly what we are doing by making sure the public can have their say through the discussion document.

Hon Simon Bridges: How could he say yesterday that his proposed hate speech changes do not lower the existing high bar for something to be considered hate speech, when his proposals document on page 5 makes clear its aim that any person with the intention of normalising hatred would commit a criminal offence if they merely insult a protected group?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I disagree with the assertion by the member. The proposals in the discussion document maintained the thresholds for incitement of hate speech, as they currently stand, and look to narrow the definition of hatred. And I would welcome that the member should take the careful approach that he talked about back in 2019, as Leader of the Opposition, and make a submission to the discussion document.

Hon Simon Bridges: How could he say yesterday that the high bar isn’t being lowered for hate speech, when his proposals document, again on page 5, makes clear that any person will face civil penalty for inciting discrimination if they simply encourage others to treat members of a protected group differently than others?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Quite simply because the proposals that we have put in a discussion document come out of the royal commission of inquiry, which said itself their proposals “would catch only extreme speech. We do not see the reframed offence as engaged by microaggressions, and so on. Nor would it be a mechanism for criminalising the vigorous expression of opinion on controversial issues.” I would also note that that member has been put in charge of his party’s response to the royal commission of inquiry. I would suggest he takes the careful approach that he talked about back in 2019.

Hon Simon Bridges: Isn’t it clear, given there has been only one conviction for hate speech under the current human rights law and its predecessor, and given that he’s proposing changes to simplify, lower the bar, and move the law to the top criminal statute, the Crimes Act, that this law change will result in many more police prosecutions and convictions?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Again, I disagree with the assertion from the member. We are maintaining the threshold that is in the current legislation for hate speech, which only pertains to people around their race, colour, or nationality. Again, I would stress to the member that the careful approach that he said he’d take back in 2019 should be taken in 2021 as well.

Hon Simon Bridges: How can he say the Government is just following the royal commission on the terror attacks hate recommendations, when he hasn’t started implementing any of its less vexed hate crime proposals, but he is moving to change and broaden the much more controversial hate speech ones?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: It’s pretty simple. Back in early December, the royal commission of inquiry made the proposal that we should change the hate crime laws. We are following through on the commitment to those communities, who have, even this morning, expressed that they would like to see these laws changed.

Hon Simon Bridges: What is just one way his proposed hate speech laws will prevent future terrorist attacks in New Zealand?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: This is about hate speech and inciting hate speech towards potentially expanding that to communities that aren’t protected at the moment. I think it’s pretty simple that if you are a group that is targeted by hate speech, because someone is inciting hatred against you and that turns into an act, I would hope that would prevent the kinds of things that the royal commission was looking at.

Question No. 8—Local Government

8. RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) to the Minister of Local Government: What information will councils have access to in order to consider the benefit of three waters reform and the impact on ratepayers?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Today’s announcement is the next step in our three waters reform approach that will save ratepayers thousands of dollars and ensure New Zealanders can have safe drinking water and sustainable stormwater and waste-water services into the future. Building on evidence released in early June, showing New Zealand was facing $120 billion to $185 billion needed to invest in these services, today I’ve released compelling evidence that shows every community will benefit from the proposed three waters reforms. The data shows that, without these changes, the average cost per household for delivering these essential services could be as high as $9,000 by 2051. Under our proposals, modelling shows that individual households across New Zealand will save thousands of dollars while enabling long-term investment in core waters infrastructure.

Rachel Boyack: What feedback has she received to date from councils about the reform proposals?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Councils have expressed a desire to see the data and evidence underpinning the reform proposals as it relates to their individual circumstances. Now that councils have received this data, they can assess the impact of these proposed reforms for themselves and, importantly, the impact for their ratepayers. For the vast majority of councils, these reforms will provide a significant uplift in their borrowing capacity to invest in their own communities. Councils want to know what the impact of reforms will be for them and that they will not be worse off as a result. We’re working with local government on an approach to support councils through this transition.

Rachel Boyack: What other decisions will help the councils consider the scale, significance, and merit of the reform proposals?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: As I previously have said, this reform will save every household in New Zealand money over the long term to ensure they’ll have safe, reliable drinking water and support our communities to have better freshwater outcomes. In addition to scale, other benefits include balance-sheet separation from debt-constrained councils, the ability to spread cost over a larger area and population over time, operational efficiencies of larger water service entities, providing for consumer voice, introducing an economic regulator, and meeting Te Mana o te Wai obligations.

Question No. 9—Local Government

9. CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany) to the Minister of Local Government: Does she stand by all of her statements and actions in relation to the Three Waters Reform Programme?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Yes. In particular, I stand by my statement “The case for change is compelling.” The member might want to take that line! The evidence is clear that all communities will benefit from the Government’s proposed three waters reforms. Without this change, communities are going to either face very large bills for water services or infrastructure will continue to degrade, with ongoing health and environmental consequences. Both of these outcomes are unacceptable. And, as I said, wider benefits will also include greater borrowing capability, strengthened governance capabilities, procurement efficiencies, operational proficiencies, smarter asset management, a more predictable pipeline of investment.

Christopher Luxon: Can she explain how there will be any efficiency or scale benefits in merging water assets on either side of the Cook Strait, other than creating a larger, more bureaucratic organisation?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: As I say, the benefit of scale is not determined by whether or not the water entity coverage, or network, is split between two islands. The modelling has been based on catchment, population, council boundaries, communities of interest, and iwi. There are benefits in scale efficiencies. The modelling shows that.

Christopher Luxon: What is her response to Waimate Mayor Craig Rowley, who called the three waters ad campaign “appalling, sensationalising, and showing a lack of respect and understanding from central government”?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I understand that councils may have their own views about the communications campaign. The audience is very clear: we need to demonstrate to ratepayers that the benefit of reform will extend to their household bill, and it does. The counterfactual is that the status quo situation of 67 territorial authorities delivering water that is inefficient, where we have pipes breaking down, we have intermittent water-boiling notices in various communities, cannot continue. That’s why we’re pursuing these reforms.

Christopher Luxon: Are her Government’s reforms predicated on strong relationships and scale benefits, and are they at risk if councils continue to opt out, as Whangarei District Council has?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: There are a couple of questions in there. Let me go to the second part, which is the issue of opt-out. The member has already heard me say in a previous response that local authorities that opt out pose a risk to achieving the intended reform outcomes. If a large number of councils choose to opt out of the reform process, the impact on scale benefits could include a reduction in the potential to achieve operating, capital, and financial efficiencies; compromised economic viability of the reforms; some communities missing out on the benefits of reforms, especially those with a lower ratepaying base; and the creation of a patchwork quilt of three waters owners and managers within a catchment. This is, in fact, the status quo. Given that local government and councils have already accepted that there is a compelling case for change, now that we have the data analysis and evidence to support that view, it would be useful for councils to understand the information that is being released today in order to help them make their decision. I find it difficult to understand why they would pull away from this proposal.

Christopher Luxon: Can she, therefore, guarantee that the three waters reforms will remain voluntary and that central government will not force or mandate councils to participate in amalgamation?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I can guarantee that the benefits of this reform approach are intended to reach every household, in every community across the country. It is a compelling case for change, and those councils who have made premature decisions, in the absence of having the information, may want to pause and think again, because, at the end of the day, if households are faced with the prospect of paying a tripling, doubling, or even ten times the cost for their water services going forward into the future, that is not an acceptable position to be in.

SPEAKER: The member can have another one if he wants. You know, looking at me like that doesn’t get him a question; he has to stand up.

Christopher Luxon: Does she agree with Auckland Mayor Phil Goff that the reforms are “complex, confused on governance, and lack accountability”?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: No. And I can reiterate, in terms of Auckland, that we do appreciate that, under their current model, greater financial flexibility is needed in the Watercare situation to unlock greater borrowing and opportunity for secured investment rather than a continual putting off of renewals, which they are currently in under their Auckland Watercare model.

Question No. 10—Internal Affairs

10. NAISI CHEN (Labour) to the Minister of Internal Affairs: What recent announcements has the Minister made to support young people to stay safe online?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Internal Affairs): Earlier this week, we released the new interactive e-book called The Inter-Yeti, targeted at children aged five to 12 to help them safely navigate the online world. This interactive tool shows our children how to deal with bullies, strangers, and content that makes them feel uncomfortable online. This is the latest series in our hugely successful Keep It Real Online public awareness campaign to help educate children, teens, and adults on how to stay safe online. The Inter-Yeti e-book was co-designed with a fantastic team of five- to 11-year-olds who helped us create the content so that it was relevant and meaningful to them. From one 11-year-old quoted who said, “This makes a boring teaching moment fun and interesting.”

Naisi Chen: Why was this style of educational campaign chosen?

Hon JAN TINETTI: We know that 40 percent of Kiwis have online interactions with people they’ve never met in real life. We also know that our kids are growing up in a world that is becoming increasingly digital. While this brings many benefits, there are also risks, with online harms reaching kids as young as five. It is important that we created a campaign that was engaging but could also equip young New Zealanders with the tools to rebuff negative information and provide them with support to be safe online.

Naisi Chen: Where can young people, teachers, and parents access the content?

Hon JAN TINETTI: Members may have already seen the series promoted through ads on TV, on YouTube, posters, and billboards around the country. But the e-book series is available now on the Keep It Real Online website for everyone to check out. Resources such as colouring-in pages and stickers will be made available through the website to help children engage with the messages. The e-book isn’t time-limited, so this will be a resource that can continue to be accessed for years to come.

Question No. 11—Education

11. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Associate Minister of Education: What actions will she take, if any, in response to the finding in the Christchurch Girls’ High School survey on harassment and abuse that half of all students have experienced sexual harassment, and does she believe that Aotearoa’s schools have a sexual abuse culture?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education): I was extremely upset and concerned by the findings of this report. Sexual harassment is absolutely not acceptable in any form, anywhere in society—and particularly in our schools. I would like to take a moment to thank the young women who came forward to tell their stories, and for bringing to light the harassment and abuse they have experienced—that takes a lot of courage. In terms of the immediate actions, our focus has been on the young women affected. The Ministry of Education has made appropriate support available to the school and to all students. Ultimately, the seriousness of the issues that have been raised are a matter for the police. In regards to the second part of the question, there is no place for sexual violence in Aotearoa, but I think that this report has raised some systemic issues we must address as a country, which is why we now have a Minister for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, the Hon Marama Davidson, who has been leading work on a longer-term strategy to end sexual abuse and violence.

Simeon Brown: Meeting with the gangs.

Chris Bishop: How’s she going? How’s she going? She’s done nothing.

SPEAKER: Order! This is a serious matter, not a laughing matter.

Jan Logie: Will she direct the Education Review Office (ERO) to run a nationwide survey to ensure all schools understand the prevalence of sexual harassment and violence experienced by their students?

Hon JAN TINETTI: In its review programme, ERO regularly raises issues about student wellbeing with schools. ERO requires school boards to confirm that policies, procedures, and guidelines are in place around wellbeing, including providing a safe physical and emotional environment, anti-bullying initiatives, and internet safety. In terms of a more wide-reaching survey, I also know that Minister Davidson has recently launched a national engagement process around the elimination of family and sexual violence, which will be used as the foundations of a national strategy and action plan. Similarly, Minister Radhakrishnan has the first national youth health and wellbeing survey, What About Me, currently under way to look at youth wellbeing in New Zealand. That survey covers a range of topics such as self-harm, pornography, consensual sexual activity, unwanted sexual contact, and where young people go for advice and help about sex and relationships.

Jan Logie: Will any of those initiatives give individual schools the information on prevalence and how much abuse their children that they have care for have experienced to drive their response?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The surveys will give us an understanding of the prevalence of this really terrible issue within this country. New Zealand State schools are required to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for their schools, and the Minister of Education and his associates, including myself, expect schools to have policies, practices, and programmes which support a bully-free environment, including programmes which give attention to the elimination of homophobic bullying, transgender bullying, and sexual harassment. Clearly, there is more work to do in this area, and these are conversations that I wish to continue with the member, but also with the Minister the Hon Marama Davidson.

Jan Logie: Is she monitoring the implementation of the recommendations made in the 2018 ERO report, Promoting wellbeing through sexuality education, that depressingly found only 20 percent of schools were teaching sexuality education well; and if yes, what has changed for students on the ground since then?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The results of the 2018 ERO report were very concerning, and as a direct result of that report, guidelines from the Ministry of Education on relationships and sexuality education were implemented in 2020, that expect that schools will teach and develop in students knowledge of issues around coercion, consent, and safety in intimate relationships; effective and assertive communication skills; awareness of ethics and of their own personal values; and a respect for the feelings and decisions of others. In Budget 2020, we funded 40 curriculum wellbeing leads in the Ministry of Education to support schools in delivering this part of the New Zealand Curriculum. We expect all schools to be delivering on the requirements that sit within the New Zealand Curriculum, and in particular those around relationships and sexuality. I also expect to get detailed updates in that area.

Jan Logie: If Christchurch Girls’ High School has, with the Minister’s support, had to employ two more counsellors, provide additional support for teachers, bring agencies into the school to provide reporting options, and set up new reporting systems, doesn’t this suggest we need to properly resource whole-of-school responses to ensure all our students are safe and this violence isn’t tacitly normalised?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This Government has increased the numbers of counsellors in schools from the beginning of this year. We increased the full-time teacher equivalent number of counsellors into secondary schools, and announcements are to be made soon about counsellors in primary schools. There is a need to ensure that our traumatic incident teams are available at any time—which I know from personal experience they are—to be able to go in to support those schools and those young people most in need. What we do need to say, though, is, given the seriousness of what this report has brought to light, that this is not something that we can expect teachers to fully address themselves. We have a responsibility, every single one of us, to change attitudes, assumptions, and cultures around sexual harassment across our society.

Question No. 12—Housing (Public Housing)

12. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): What criteria are used to determine which Kāinga Ora homes should have first priority when ensuring State-owned homes meet the healthy homes standards?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Associate Minister of Housing (Public Housing): The approach in the first year prioritised homes with multiple young children, elderly, those with disabilities, and those who had been through the previous Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme who have been referred from district health boards. There is also an escalation process whereby customers that might need healthy homes intervention sooner can discuss their concerns with their tenancy manager.

Brooke van Velden: Does she believe it is acceptable that a terminally ill man living in a Kāinga Ora home has to fight to get a heat pump in the middle of winter, when private landlords, under healthy homes standards coming into force tomorrow, have been forced to install heat pumps?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: In answer to the first part of the question, do I think it is acceptable, on behalf of the Minister, no, that is not acceptable and that’s why Kāinga Ora have recognised this, rectified the situation, and apologised. In answer to the second part of the question, which seemed to suggest there was a differentiation between the requirements under the healthy homes legislation on Kāinga Ora than private landlords: of course, while for private landlords, ultimately, the last end date for compliance will be 2024, under some circumstances, Kāinga Ora has an end date, along with other community housing providers, of 2023 for compliance with the legislation.

Brooke van Velden: What does she say to the elderly woman who has been denied a heat pump multiple times and to the woman with severe asthma who has been in and out of hospital because her house, a Kāinga Ora house, isn’t insulated?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister, what I would say to those two tenants is there is an escalation process and if those cases have not been referred through an escalation process, I ask that member—as members of Parliament across this House on a daily basis do—to bring that to the attention of Kāinga Ora. But I do point the member to the fact that this financial year, 1,256 upgrades to healthy homes standards have been completed as a result of escalations either through the Rheumatic Fever Prevention Programme or escalations through tenancy managers for at-risk tenants.

Brooke van Velden: Can she guarantee that there are no other vulnerable people in Kāinga Ora homes suffering from living in a poor quality State home?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: On behalf of the Minister, no. That is why this is a Government that has put in place a requirement for us finally to provide housing, whether that be in the private or the public sector, that is healthy for people to live in. It is also precisely why, as we need the time to roll this out, as private landlords have, we have put in place an escalation process, so that if we do discover people that do require quicker interventions, we are in a position to do so.

General Debate

General Debate

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Prime Minister): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

Last night, there were two states of emergency declared in Wellington. One was caused by a polar blast and strong waves from the South, and thankfully it caused little or no damage to the south coast of Wellington. The other state of emergency was triggered by a northern polar blast, specifically one that emerged from the legal offices of Chris Finlayson Esq.

For those of us who served in Parliament with Mr Finlayson, it was a cheery reminder of his trademark subtlety and diplomacy. Declaring a state of emergency for the National Party is probably not before time, but Mr Finlayson made his reasons starkly clear. Reason number one: brand destruction, and I quote—I quote from Mr Finlayson—“I don’t think … ever …, in my life, [I have seen] brand destruction as devastating as that,” and, bear in mind, Chris Finlayson was around when Bill English took National to 21 percent, so he knows a fair bit about a terminal brand. Reason number two: leadership, or lack thereof. Quoting Mr Finlayson again, “[The National Party] is going through … [the] agonies [it is] because of the failure of the president and the leadership”. It’s Chris Finlayson’s empathy that I’ve really missed around here. To quote Mr Finlayson: “You’re talking to the wrong person if you expect me to express any sympathy for the current plight of the National Party, they deserve everything that’s come to them.”, and he told the journalist, “Put that in your article: they deserve everything [that] they’ve got.”

Now, to get to the origins of this empathetic love note from Chris Finlayson, we need to take ourselves back to last Tuesday evening. Just on 10 p.m., as Andrew Bayly was pulling his slippers on and putting on his Versace night-robe, brewing his extra-strong Milo and getting ready to put his trusted teddy to bed, word came through about an emergency caucus meeting. “Good,” Mr Bayly thought. “Finally, Judith is going to get me an oral question.” But, alas, it was, in fact, not that. It was the “Night of the Short Plastic Knives”. Someone had been mean about Harete Hipango, and it was time to find out who was behind it all. Now, given that there were approximately 33 likely and, frankly, quite justified suspects, this was going to be a toughie, but thankfully for the Leader of the Opposition, snitch-in-chief Barbara Kuriger was able to inform on Todd Muller, and he was gone. As Claire Trevett described the meeting, “There were allegations, betrayals, acts of revenge and cowards covering their … butts.” Such is the loyalty and sense of unity in the National caucus that Chris Bishop, Todd Muller’s numbers man and well-known shiver looking for a spine to run down, was there to kick his mate on the way out the door.

We’ve heard a lot about free speech today, but it’s clear to me the greatest threat to free speech in New Zealand is the Leader of the Opposition. She has told her caucus not to talk to the media, so Simon Bridges hit Instagram about how he was going to keep talking to the media. I can only think of that as a cry for help, and so on this side of the House we are ready to take up the cause: free Simon Bridges! Free him. Free Simon Bridges from the Collins cancel culture.

To be fair, though, Simon Bridges is right to be worried. Todd Muller called Harete Hipango a liability. Simon Bridges said that Maureen Pugh was “[rather] useless”, and if that isn’t National Party hate speech, I don’t know what is. But then the leader herself should probably be a bit worried. If the standard is “saying things that are mean about your colleagues”, Judith Collins is currently holed up in a floor-to-ceiling glass house. As one of her colleagues said on her election as leader, “It’s a bit rich to be lectured on loyalty by her, given how much leaking she did.” But then, on the other side of the coin, she called Bill English a poor leader, and Bill English in turn said that she had an unfortunately high estimate of herself, so it cuts both ways over there. But, as I’ve said before and I’ll say again, nothing screams “alternative Government” like late-night caucus meetings, resignations, scandals, disappearing lounge suites, and MPs being chased through airports, and long may it continue.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Five whole minutes from the Deputy Prime Minister, and not a single thing said about the Government’s good work! And there’s a really good reason for that: because there is no good work going on by the Government. But I’ll do Mr Robertson’s job for him; I’ll talk about the Government’s activities. I thought that the hardest task of a Minister in this Government was to do a worse a job in their role than Phil Twyford! Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner, and the winner in the “talk big but do nothing” stakes is his successor in the transport portfolio, Michael Wood.

I want to start with the car tax, because now we have hard-working farmers, tradies, and large families being taxed up to $5,175 so that well-off people can pay less for their electric vehicles (EVs). And we now know that for used EVs, at least, more than half of that tax is going to go to Japanese car exporters. The industry warned the Minister, and Treasury warned the Minister, and said that that was absolutely likely to happen. Three days after the policy was announced, a 2017 Nissan Leaf went up by over $2,200. More than two-thirds of the subsidy is going to Japan. This Minister is perfectly happy with a policy that takes money out of the hard-working pockets of New Zealanders and that gives it to overseas exporters. And if the subsidy runs out, because people do take up EVs, it is going to be paused. But what is going to happen if there is more money taken and all of that tax is not needed? Will that be given back to those hard-working tradies and farmers? Not on your life, Mr Speaker.

And whether they are electric or hybrid or petrol, these vehicles need roads to travel on. But every single transport document that Mr Wood releases shows how much he hates cars and how much he hates roads. The best example of that is the rort that is the New Zealand Upgrade Programme: $7 billion - odd of that was to go into roads—announced, I should say, by the previous National Government and then promptly cancelled by Mr Twyford, but at least he only did it once. The Government comes along, in an election year, knowing they are under pressure, and re-announces all of those roads. Five minutes after the election, we have a pause, we have a re-baselining, and the biggest projects in that are cancelled again. Papakura to Drury South, Whangārei to Port Marsden, Mill Road, Takitimu, and North Highway: all gone. And we know that the four-laning of State Highway 21 to Piarere didn’t even make the list; one of the most dangerous roads in the country still taking lives. But we know that Ōtaki to Levin got funded, and we know that the Melling Interchange got funded—and what do they have in common? Well, they’re marginally held Labour seats. Well, I tell you what, that’s a back-handed compliment to Mr Bayly and Ms Collins, because they don’t think they are going to win Papakura or Port Waikato, but they are worried about losing Hutt South to Mr Bishop—and so they should be.

That is not all of the roading projects that they’ve canned. Every single council up and down the country is hopping mad with this Government and this Minister for breaking the commitments that they made for regional road maintenance and improvements. I see Mr Mooney over there, his Southland district mayors are on a war path, with the dozens of bridges that are having weight restrictions or bypasses on them and roads that are having, actually, quite heavy freight on them, with Fonterra trucks and other dairy trucks, where the road-user charges are going to Auckland but the money is not going to Southland. And every single council, from Northland to Coromandel, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Balclutha, they are all saying that this Minister has taken money away from them, and they ask the obvious question: where is it going? Well, we know where it is going; it is going on a cycleway across the Waitematā Harbour—$760 million taken out of their pockets and given to the 2,000 cyclists on the North Shore that want to have a bridge to go over.

That speaks to the priorities that this Government has—and it ain’t roads and it ain’t cars and it ain’t freight trucks. They hate cars. They don’t want to fix these roads. They don’t want to improve road safety. And that Mr Wood has done what I thought I would never ever see, and that is make Phil Twyford look good!

Hon MICHAEL WOOD (Minister of Transport): Well, isn’t this timely. I think we can call that audition number one. And auditioner number one, well, he was looking very hard for the killer line. I think that as hard as he was looking for that, he’s going to be about as successful in finding it as he was in finding the homeless man last year!

I’m very proud to be standing up today in the general debate and to be able to talk about a Government that is getting on with New Zealand’s recovery. Eighteen months into the global pandemic of COVID-19, when that infection continues to rage around the world, when many other countries struggle with resurgent infection, New Zealand is on a roll. This Government knows that we still have challenges to face, but, because of the resilience of our economy, the resilience of New Zealanders, the hard work of our team of 5 million, we are doing better than pretty much anyone else around the world.

I’m very proud of the fact that this is a Government which is looking forward. Tomorrow, 1 July, is a big day, because much of the work that we put into Budget 2021 is coming to fruition. I’m very proud that our Government, as of 1 July, tomorrow, will be making sure that working people and those people on the lowest incomes in our country get a fair go. The first round of benefit increases, $20 a week extra for our lowest-income New Zealanders, coming into place from tomorrow, Thursday, 1 July.

Tomorrow, Thursday, 1 July, we are proud to welcome back the Training Incentive Allowance. Just as the National Party this week might want to reflect on the wisdom of one former member, the Hon Chris Finlayson, this week they might want to reflect on the somewhat late wisdom of the Hon Paula Bennett, who has acknowledged that the move of that previous National Government to remove the Training Incentive Allowance was one of the most significant mistakes they made. Not only was it a pernicious policy that punished some of the people who need the most support in our society; it was a singularly stupid policy that cut off from those people the ability to get into higher education and make a contribution to our country.

On 1 July, tomorrow, I’m proud that our security guards all around New Zealand will receive the protections of Part 6A of the Employment Relations Act, because, after years and years of those workers having their terms and conditions degraded and driven down, this Government has taken action to make sure that they get a fair go.

My colleague the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan will tomorrow very happily preside over the creation of the Ministry for Ethnic Communities: one of the most important recommendations coming out of the royal commission—

Hon Simon Bridges: That’ll change everything!

Hon MICHAEL WOOD: Mr Bridges—that this Government is proud to invest in, because we believe in working with our ethnic communities to make sure that people are safe and secure and have everything that they need to be able to contribute to our society.

Finally, I do want to address one of the other policies which will be coming into effect tomorrow, and that is the clean car and discount scheme, which will make sure that Kiwis get access to cleaner vehicles at a lower price. And New Zealanders are already lining up, they’re already there on Trade Me, they’re already talking to the dealers, getting ready to get into cleaner vehicles. I don’t quite know what to say about the National Party, because it’s difficult to actually understand what the position is, because just as we’ve heard Mr Woodhouse’s criticisms of the incentives scheme today, we heard the very day after the policy was announced that he actually, apparently, supports incentives to get Kiwis into clean cars. On the same day, we heard from the climate change spokesperson, Stuart Smith, who was entirely opposed to an incentive scheme coming into effect. And we only have to go back one National Party leader to have a statement on record from Todd Muller, saying that he entirely supports a “feebate” scheme and more action to get Kiwis into clean vehicles.

So we’ll let that side of the House sort out their position, and we hope they get to a united position at some stage on that issue and some other ones, but, in the meantime, this side of the House will get on with the critical task of making sure that we reduce our carbon emissions by getting Kiwis into cleaner vehicles. If there’s one issue which speaks to the total irrelevance of the National Party in 2021, it is their totally confused, head in the sand approach to climate change. That side of the House stood up in here and voted for an independent climate commission, voted to move to zero carbon by 2050, yet every time there is any measure on the table to actually do anything about it, they politic and they oppose and they have nothing to say about it. And if that party thinks that 22 percent in 2002 was nadir, then I say to them, continue taking that approach with the single biggest issue of our times and the issue that New Zealanders expect us collectively to take action on and 22 percent will look like the high point. This Government is getting on with securing our recovery and I’m very proud of it.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I want to start with a quote from a draft of a landmark report which is currently being prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be delivered later this year. A draft of this was leaked to Agence France-Presse, which reported its findings just a few days ago. The draft warns “of a series of thresholds beyond which recovery from climate breakdown may become impossible.” It warns, “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems … humans cannot.”

I just think the severity of the risk that we’re facing with climate change needs to be stated every single day in this House because there are clearly members who do not understand that it was 40 degrees in Seattle, Washington; that it’s 52 degrees in cities in Pakistan. Fifty-two degrees is a temperature at which the human body cannot survive for long and this will increasingly become the new normal if humans don’t get their act together and take drastic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve known about this for decades; the Green Party has been talking about it for decades. Although there are some members in the House who’ve finally come on board and realised climate change is something they may need to worry about, they still don’t understand how quickly we need to act and change fundamental aspects of how we live our lives in our society, how we produce food, how we get around, in order to survive this. So the Green Party will continue to raise this and proactive, productive policies that will help us all work together to respond to this challenge.

Now, the reason we’re facing this climate catastrophe at the same time as a catastrophic loss in biodiversity is because of an economic system that has exploited our planet and it has exploited many people. And we cannot address the climate crisis or the ecological crisis without addressing and changing this economic system and fundamentally improving equality between people, because a system that enriches a very small number of people is not good for any of us. So Government policy is central to mobilising our society and our economy to address both inequality and climate change. And I know that this Government means well and has set off a number of steps to take us in that direction but it is not fast enough. It is not going far enough.

Earlier this week in the House, I asked the Minister of Finance about whether or not he was really going to address the significant need to invest in infrastructure and, particularly, to address the housing crisis, because in our response to COVID-19, monetary policy has led to massive inflation in property prices and this is exacerbating inequality in our country and we have to do more about it. I know many of the steps that have been taken thus far are good steps: extending the brightline test, removing deductibility of mortgage interest. All of that will help but we have to address the housing supply issue and we have to do it in a way that is going to reduce emissions. One thing that really concerns me is that 90 percent of the housing that’s been built since 2018 does not have frequent public transport near it at all. So we’re building housing in the wrong places. It still costs too much. And we need massive investment in infrastructure, green infrastructure, that will enable our cities to house more people in a way that uses less energy, uses less water, and actually creates thriving neighbourhoods where people want to be. And this is entirely possible.

I just briefly want to talk about how, actually, it’s become very mainstream to look at the economic situation quite differently. I know the debate in this House is still kind of stuck in the 1980s sometimes where the Labour Minister of Finance wants to emphasise that he’s keeping a lid on debt. Well, keeping a lid on debt is not a responsible thing to do when we have record low interest rates and we have a need to increase spending to address inequality, child poverty, the housing crisis, and the climate crisis. We’ve got the leaders of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF; the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; and the World Bank all saying that this is a time for Governments to spend more money to address inequality, to spend more money on income support, to spend more money on infrastructure. This is not a time to worry about debt, and even the Secretary to the Treasury gave a very interesting speech earlier this week where she raised exactly this point. The right level of spending depends critically on the value of the spending initiatives and where they deliver high value for money, the appropriate level of debt will be higher. Now is the time for bold action to address these challenges.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa o te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. The Government is getting on with its economic recovery, or, colloquially, as some of us know, “doing the mahi”. That’s what we’re doing on this side—doing the mahi. I want to touch on a couple of the agencies that I’m really proud to lead in their contribution to the Government’s trade recovery, and that’s the New Zealand Customs Service, through its own economic recovery programme. I thought I’d take it down a notch and just share with all members of the House how it’s looking like on the factory floor, kind of speak.

The Customs New Zealand economic recovery programme is based on our free-trade agreements and our work with APEC 2021, particularly around the Secure Trade Lane with Australia, and, of course, expanding our Secure Exports Scheme. Can I just highlight the fact that while we were in COVID last year, and COVID is very much with us, the stellar work that customs officers did both at the airport and our ports—continue to do that to keep ourselves safe. But they also enable the facilitation of personal protective equipment, gear, and, of course, the Pfizer vaccine that is coming into the country so there is no hold-up at our border, and I want to thank them for that.

But they’ve been also working with our duty payers. During COVID 2020, many of our exporters were facing some challenges around paying of levies, and we were able to put them on hold until they were up running again. So of 350 companies back in April 2020—we did that in terms of instalments of levies—I can report to the House that come April 2021, 96 percent of those owing levies to the Government are fully paid. So I want to thank them for that. The Secure Trade Lane with Australia I mentioned earlier is, again, to ensure that when we are fully open with our Australian neighbours, our exporters can come freely across the border.

But also the Secure Exports Scheme—and it’s interesting to note the value of our Secure Exports Scheme of about $159 million in products that we export. About half of the exporters in this country actually are signed up to the Customs Secure Exports Scheme. It just enables another mechanism to get our goods and services to market a lot easier, through signing up on the Customs Secure Exports Scheme. So I couldn’t be prouder of the work that Customs do in that space.

Of course, we have e-commerce, we have industry partnering, and we have the reduction of administration penalties across the customs systems to ensure that we are enabling our exporters greater opportunity to contribute to the economic recovery that’s been led by this Government.

But I also briefly want to touch on my Māori agribusiness team that is centred in the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI); the Māori Agribusiness Extension Programme; the Māori Agribusiness Pathway to Increased Productivity; He Ara Mahi Hou, which is the Māori agribusiness workforce, skills, and training programme; and the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund co-funding pathways. Proud that MPI are working with iwi Māori land owners, farmers, food producers to increase productivity and, of course, contribute to the overall economic recovery of this country. I’ve said this before in this House, the Māori asset base is worth $68 billion and it’s a no-brainer that this Government and this side is actively working with our iwi Māori partners.

I also want to talk briefly on Stats New Zealand, the Mana Ōrite agreement, which is a partnership with iwi Māori data leaders and co-design of Te Whata. It is the first ever iwi platform information to enable the $68 million I touched on previously, in terms of investment and growth in that space. So I’m proud that this side is getting on with the mahi. I’m proud of the relationships we have built with iwi and Māori. And, at the end of the day, this side is delivering. We’re delivering gains for Māori, for all people, and that’s why I’m proud to be part of this Government leading an economic recovery for all, with all.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to speak about hate speech. I don’t want to use catchy sound bites or anything. I don’t want to talk about “woke-ism” or cancel culture or white privilege or Black Lives Matter or culture wars—none of that stuff. But I do want to say this: this is a bad law, a bad proposal, that the Government’s put forward. They could have, and they still could, I suppose, feasibly improve it, but, actually, when you’ve got a Minister who doesn’t understand it and a Prime Minister that doesn’t want to understand it, they should just scrap this bad proposal, this bad law, right now.

I want to make three points. The first point I want to make is that this is not about the royal commission. That’s what they’re saying. But the reality of it, if you look at what they are really doing with these proposals—which, sure as eggs, they’ll turn into law before the end of the year; they’ll slam them through this Parliament—they are doing a bunch of things that the royal commission didn’t recommend, and they’re not doing a bunch of things that it did recommend. The royal commission recommended hate crimes—that is, putting into law that if you assault someone with the motivation of racial hate, for example, it should be a higher sentence and we should enshrine that in law. Actually, I could go along with that. There’s a good idea. That is over half of the things around hate that the royal commission recommended. They aren’t doing any of that, and yet, in relation to the hate speech part, they’ve taken their chances and the opportunity to do a whole bunch of other things that aren’t in the royal commission.

The royal commission, if you read the report from back to back, is very reasoned—it’s quite humble, actually, about these vexed, complex, difficult issues, yet this Government, the Labour Party, has come in and said, “No, no, we want to do this. We’re going to take the opportunity to use the royal commission”—I think quite cynically, from Jacinda Ardern—“to do these hate speech changes.” The second point—

Hon Mark Mitchell: Sneaky!

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: It is sneaky, actually. I think the Minister doesn’t understand it and the Prime Minister doesn’t want to understand it. I think, sadly, she does, actually. She knows what she’s doing but she’s not being upfront with New Zealand.

The second point I want to make is that the Government’s in this ridiculous position, which, again—what did you say, Mark Mitchell? Sneaky—it’s sneaky. They are saying, on the one hand, “Look, we’re doing not very much; there’s nothing to see here. Actually, we’ve just got a tidy-up. There’s no big problem. We’re not actually changing anything.”, which is a ridiculous position, when you really think about it; if you’re not doing much, what’s the point of doing it? Or they’re saying, “Actually, it’s big and bold, it’s amazing, we’re following the royal commission, and that’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?”

Well, our view on this side of the House is very, very clear. They are lowering the bar in relation to hate speech. They are not having this at the level of speech that incites violence, that leads to terrible situations we can all agree on—through to, I accept, terrorism—but that’s not where they’re going. They have lowered the bar significantly here in their proposals, and that will result, tragically, in this country, in many, many more prosecutions by police. They will be instructed to do more prosecutions and more convictions. In the criminal area, now, under this proposal, all you’ve got to do is, with a bit of a racial slur or something, insult someone else. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with that; I think it’s terrible. But is it criminal? Should we be sending a 24-year-old to jail for stupidity? I don’t think so, and I don’t think New Zealanders do either.

In the civil area, it’s even worse, because, remember, in the civil area, if someone receives a civil penalty in this area, you know what’s going to happen? They’ll never get a job in New Zealand, and not anything decent, anyway. And there all you have to prove is discrimination, fundamentally, if someone’s treated someone to an off-colour joke or something.

So I say this: I’m really concerned—this is my third point—that off-colour jokes, that protests, that Facebook posts in the heat of the moment are going to lead in this country to more police complaints, more disputes, more polarisation, an American style of—

Hon Mark Mitchell: Weaponised.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —situation. Weaponise all of these things. That’s a tragedy, actually. I want to live in a country where people feel free to say what it is that they want to say, even if it’s ill-considered, stupid, maybe offensive, maybe insulting. If you just disagree, argue against what they’re saying—maybe shame them—but don’t criminalise it. That is not the Kiwi way. We’ve managed to avoid this for years and years and years, but Labour’s taking us down a dangerous, a slippery, an anti-freedom approach, and the National Party doesn’t like it.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Oh, it’s a pleasure to follow that speech from the next Leader of the Opposition. I support Simon. I think Simon would do a good job—

SPEAKER: Order! The member supports “Mr Bridges”.

JAMIE STRANGE: Mr Bridges, Mr Speaker—Mr Bridges! And I think when the next caucus meeting comes, Mr Bridges should sing that song “Yesterday, all our troubles seemed so far away, but now they know they’re here to stay, but I believe in yesterday.” So just a little bit of advice for the Hon Mr Bridges there.

But I’m not here to talk about the National Party. I’m here to talk about the economic recovery from COVID, because, as we heard from the Hon Michael Wood, when you compare the economic response that New Zealand has had, led by this Government, by our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, by Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, we are fairly well placed. Look, there are still a number of challenges that we’re facing, but when you compare it to the other countries of the world, we are in a way the envy of some of those countries. Now, we must continue to be vigilant and I encourage the team of 5 million to continue doing that as we’re on this journey together.

We have an economy that is doing well. When I look at some of the industries, particularly the building and construction sector—building and construction is booming across the country and the reality is they are wanting to scale up. There are challenges around the supply chain that, obviously, we are collectively working on some solutions there, but the demand for the building and construction sector is very strong, and that links into some of the aspects that the Government has done in this area.

First and foremost, I’d like to talk about housing.

Simeon Brown: How’s the Hamilton bypass going?

JAMIE STRANGE: Housing is a long-term challenge that we are dealing with. It has taken many years to get into this situation of this housing shortage. But we are working on—

Nicola Willis: How many KiwiBuild houses?

SPEAKER: Oh dear.

JAMIE STRANGE: —increasing that supply of housing, because the important aspect around housing is—people often say, “Housing, health, education—which one’s more important?”

Simeon Brown: How many KiwiBuild houses?

JAMIE STRANGE: But the reality is, if you don’t have people in warm, dry, healthy homes, then education and health aspects cannot be wrapped around that.

Simeon Brown: How’s KiwiBuild going?

SPEAKER: Order! Will the member resume his seat. There’s a requirement for interjections to be rare, reasonable, or funny. Simeon Brown’s meeting none of the criteria.

JAMIE STRANGE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. The housing acceleration fund announced by this Government is going to have a significant impact in this area: $3.8 billion across the country to fund infrastructure for new housing.

In terms of the context of the Waikato region, I’ve had a number of conversations with the councils in the area and they are speaking positively around this, because the reality is it’s difficult for rates to fund growth. The councils need money to put the infrastructure in the ground. So as a Government, we are partnering with councils, with developers, through Kāinga Ora, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, and other Government agencies to deliver housing at scale.

Now, who’s going to build these houses? Obviously, we need people to build them and it’s encouraging to see the trades and apprenticeships up across the country. For example, Wintec, the local polytech in the Waikato region, their domestic enrolments are up 28 percent, which is the largest single increase they’ve ever had. So that’s 28 percent. If I look at Waikato University, they’re up 10 percent in terms of domestic enrolments. Vision College, which is a private training establishment, their enrolments are up quite significantly, and particularly in aspects around the Youth Guarantee and working with young people who school hasn’t worked for and they’re bringing them into Vision College and putting them on trades courses. So we’ve got a lot of young people coming through, and not just young people; people of all ages coming through in the trades. And that’s really exciting to see, because previously people have often not looked at the trades seriously enough in terms of whether or not it is suited for them. I think there’s a lot of people who are very well suited to the trades and it’s encouraging to see them come through.

The aspect around Māori housing is an important one, and it’s an aspect that this Government are tackling head on. We know that Māori are less likely to own their own home and are more likely to face homelessness. That’s why we’re delivering a thousand additional new houses for Māori, funding repairs for whānau most in need, and partnering with iwi to accelerate housing projects. In terms of the local context, the Tainui iwi, they’re just about to start the inland port project and they’ve got aspiration in terms of the housing area as well. They’ve got some capital and they want to link in with the Government. That’s just a local example. But there’ll be a number of iwi who will link with Government to help deliver housing. I could go on, but it’s probably enough for now.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Has there ever been a Government that has promised so much and delivered so little? Has there ever been a Government that makes itself look so good in the PR spin and so poor in reality? Has there ever been a Government that has announced so much and delivered so little? And that member from Hamilton, Jamie Strange, chose to talk about this Government’s record in housing. So let’s just talk about that, shall we?

Let’s remember that these are the people who, in 2017, promised New Zealanders they would solve what they said was a housing crisis. Well, what’s happened since then? We have seen the fastest increase in housing prices in history. We have seen average rents go up $100 a week. We have seen declining rates of homeownership such that the lowest proportion of New Zealanders are in their own home. We have seen a Government promise 100,000 KiwiBuild homes—in fact, it’s KiwiBuild’s birthday this week, ladies and gentlemen. And this is the week when the Government was meant to be delivering the first 16,000 KiwiBuild homes. So how are we tracking against that milestone? Well, those people over there, who say they’re doing such a great job in housing, have delivered the grand sum total of 923 KiwiBuild homes. And Jamie Strange thinks that’s an achievement and got up to show off about it.

We are now in a situation where those members opposite were lamenting the fact that the Government of the day was spending $90,000 a day making sure that people didn’t need to live in their cars, putting them in motels. The Government said, “That’s far too much. It’s a disgrace.” So how much is this Government now spending on emergency housing across this country? One million dollars a day. Hang your heads in shame. There are now more than 4,000 families being forced to raise their children in motel rooms and campgrounds, and Jamie Strange gets up and says, “What an achievement.” We are now in a situation where there are four times as many people—

Jamie Strange: So what are you going to do?

NICOLA WILLIS: Jamie, you need to listen to this, because—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

NICOLA WILLIS: —I don’t think you’ve been talking about it in caucus. We’re now in a situation where there are more than four times as many New Zealanders in such desperate need of housing that they are classified as at risk by the Ministry of Social Development and are waiting for a State house, and they are waiting now, on average, more than 200 days to be housed. And that’s all happening under Labour. Thanks, Labour! Jamie Strange thinks this is a great result. We’re now in a situation where the Government, who promised healthier homes, has said to its own housing arm, Kāinga Ora, “Hey, don’t worry. The standards don’t apply to you. We’ll give you another two years.” So that New Zealand’s most vulnerable citizens living in our State homes are the least likely to be in a home that’s insulated and warm. What a disgrace.

And so what did they do to solve it? Well, in November 2019, the Government’s housing arm, Kāinga Ora, said, “It’s time we fixed the headlines. What are we going to do?” And did they come up with a plan for building more homes quickly, at scale and pace? No, no, no, they’d already tried that and failed. So what they did was sign a contract for $25,000 a month to buy a few headlines. And this sneaky little contract, where they get paid advertorial online, on the OneRoof site—did they declare on the site that they were paying for it, that actually taxpayers were paying for it? No, no, they did not disclose it, in a clear breach of advertising standards guidelines. They decided to do the sneaky, and when I asked Minister Woods about it, she said that there was no agreement in place. Until a few weeks later, when I proved it, and she said it was a clerical error not to tell me that. This is the same Minister who came down to this House and said that she had proactively released all the information about the Government’s housing policies when she had not, and she had to apologise to this House for that. There is a pattern of behaviour.

So what should this Government do? Talk to National. We have provided you an emergency response bill with urgent measures that would solve the housing crisis, and if you don’t believe that releasing that land is what’s needed, listen to your own officials, Minister Woods, who said in their last briefing to you: “Availability of suitable land remains our biggest challenge” —

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

HELEN WHITE (Labour): It’s a pleasure to speak on this bill, particularly after the passionate speech by Nicola Willis, because it does give me a little bit of material to work with. The first thing I must repeat from previous speeches that I have made is that it just strikes me every time that the speeches that come from the Opposition at the current time just utterly lack positive vision and leadership. When I hear those kinds of comments about emergency housing, I can’t help but ask the obvious question that most New Zealanders will be asking: what possible excuse was there for leaving people in cars? For ignoring the fact that we had families at maraes, in haphazard dangerous situations, because they didn’t have a plan at all? What was the possible consequence of that? What the consequence was was a mess. That is what Labour has been cleaning up. It’s been cleaning up a mess created by a total lack of leadership and vision for quite a considerable length of time.

We have had, in-between, an incredibly dramatic crisis, and that was COVID. All it has done is it has focused this Government on what it needs to do to recover and build in a better way, and that is actually what this debate is about. We did not hear from the Opposition’s last speaker anything about building a recovery, so I want to devote the rest of my speech to that—because that is a positive thing.

Now, I can tell you that when I came to Parliament, I came—I stood in 2017, and I stood at a time when I was an employment lawyer. I was very concerned, because I’d grown up in Auckland Central, and I was concerned that I was in a city that was in crisis and it wasn’t even being acknowledged. We had John Campbell on the radio talking about homelessness, and we had people not turning up from the Government at that time on John Campbell’s show, because they had somehow decided it was not to be even talked about. That was the world that I was living in, and at my work I was watching people’s incomes drop and drop and drop, and their access to justice drop and drop. I was very concerned about the place that I was living in, so I stood for this role, and I’m lucky enough to be here when very visionary things are happening.

So I want to talk about what those look like for Auckland Central. We have got a crisis over homelessness, and we have had for some time. That doesn’t come out of one thing; it comes out of many. It comes out of the rundown of our health sector, so that we haven’t had the mental health support people need. It comes out of people actually just trying to make ends meet and failing to do so. It comes out of alcohol addiction, it comes out of unstable work, and that sort of thing leads to broken people. And when people break like that and end up on the street, it actually takes a lot of effort putting them back together. So you have to build a whole lot of resources that have been run down—one is we have to build a workforce in the health sector. Luckily that work had started before COVID, otherwise who knows where we would have been, because our health system was able to respond to that crisis.

I wanted first of all to acknowledge that the work is not just that of the Government but of the community in general. We have had a response that is right across the board, and in my role as a list MP based in Auckland Central, I meet with people in the area who are doing jobs that aren’t paid that well, and they’re doing valiant jobs, they’re zealously arguing for their community and the things they need right now to make it better. So I’d like to just put out a thankyou to groups like the business associations that work for their communities, and they don’t just stop at their own community of businesses. In a place like K Road, the business association—and, actually, the Heart of the City is another one—these groups actually put in a real effort to making sure that they are welcoming and inclusive to the people who are living on their streets, or return to their streets because they have nothing to do in the day. They actually start to work differently because they’re thinking differently—they’re thinking as a team, they’re thinking inclusively, and they’re very good people and they do a very good job. There’s a lot of work being done at the ground. But the Government has a leadership role too, and one thing that it does is—[Time expired]

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I just spent the last five minutes here listening to Helen White, the member opposite, and she told us we were going to hear the visionary things that she stood for in Auckland Central. I guess the visionary thing that she stood for in Auckland Central was the $785 million cycle bridge across the harbour in Auckland, which has meant that transport projects across New Zealand have been cancelled, and up my way, we’re wanting to know why the Eastern Busway and the Reeves Road Flyover have been delayed by two years because the Lycra brigade got what they want for 3,000 people on a bridge.

But there is one thing this Government has delivered, and that is they’ve delivered more gang members than police officers here in New Zealand. New Zealanders are feeling sick and tired of the increasing gang presence in our communities, and they’re feeling less safe. The Government has delivered more gang members than KiwiBuild homes in New Zealand. They’ve delivered 2,500 gang members and less than 1,000 KiwiBuild homes. They should hang their heads in shame.

Just last week, the Napier City Council released a survey of the residents of Napier and their feelings of safety in the community. The survey undertaken in February this year found that 44 percent of locals did not feel safe in their city—44 percent of people in Napier did not feel safe. That compares to 17 percent last year and 19 percent in 2019. It is a fact that under this Government, New Zealanders are feeling less safe.

The question needs to be asked: who represents the seat of Napier? Oh, it is the Hon Stuart Nash, the former Minister of Police. I remember when he stood up in this place and he said, “Labour will smash the gangs.” Well, I would like to tell you that in the eastern district, where the city of Napier is, gang membership has increased by 56 percent under this Government.

Hon Todd McClay: Oh, that’s smashing it.

SIMEON BROWN: Well, that’s smashing it—it’s smashing those targets in a different way, isn’t it? It’s not quite the smashing that the people of Napier were quite expecting when Stuart Nash said he was going to smash the gangs.

Which then gets me to the question: what is this Government actually doing to tackle the challenges of gangs in New Zealand? They promised New Zealanders 1,800 new police on the beat in three years. Well, on 1 July, tomorrow, it is four years since the increase in police started under the last National Government, and what have we got? We’ve got an increase of 1,300 of the 1,800 police officers. Where’s the last 500 of those officers? Seven hundred of them were to be tasked with tackling organised crime and gangs, and they haven’t even yet delivered 300 of those 700. They haven’t even got half way to the target of delivering 700 new officers focused on targeting organised crimes and gangs.

The most worrying and concerning fact in this survey is that 55 percent of respondents said that gangs were the greatest safety concern in the Napier City Council area. Gangs are what are causing the problems, gangs are causing New Zealanders to be unsafe, and this Government has done very little to address these challenges.

Almost two months ago, we had the Minister of Police and Minister of Justice announce to New Zealand that they were going to introduce tough new measures to tackle gangs in New Zealand—two months ago—and we still haven’t had any of that legislation come to the House. They said, “We will be introducing legislation to bring into force firearm prohibition orders.” Well, we asked the Minister last week at Estimates, “Where is that legislation? When’s it going to be introduced to the House?” “Oh well, it’s very complex. We’re working on it. It’s going to take time. Hopefully we’ll have something this year.”, were the answers.

Well, that’s not good enough. This Government was recommended by Police in the briefing to the incoming Minister, the Hon Stuart Nash, in 2017 that that legislation was needed, and we’re still here waiting for this Government to wake up to the problem that there are major challenges around law and order in New Zealand that need to be addressed.

This Government is soft on crime. This Government is soft on gangs. New Zealanders are feeling less safe. New Zealanders want tougher action, and they want it now. Thank you, Madam Speaker—Mr Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Mr Speaker—Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Naisi Chen.

NAISI CHEN: Can I first—

SPEAKER: I’m just going to say that that pair of members have not distinguished themselves in the last week. Naisi Chen—starting again.

NAISI CHEN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just before my colleague Helen White walks out the door, can I introduce—to the member over there, Simeon Brown, who’s just resumed his seat. This is my colleague, the beautiful Helen White, who is an absolutely amazing list MP based in Auckland Central. We’ve got, equally, an amazing MP based out in Taranaki - King Country called Angela Roberts, who, unfortunately, isn’t in the House this afternoon, because she’s just been—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member is not allowed to draw attention to the absence of a member.

NAISI CHEN: Sorry, Mr Speaker. So Helen White is in the House, who has just taken a call.

It gives me immense pride to take a call in this general debate in regards to securing our recovery. I still remember, on my first day of work here in Parliament, that I shared with my colleagues that I have four areas of New Zealand that I’m extremely passionate about, which are extremely close to my heart, those two sectors being the digital sector and the arts sector, and two communities being rangatahi and, also, the migrant community. Throughout this year and since COVID has started—actually, since we’ve become Government—this party, the Labour Party, has really delivered for those four communities. We supported 80 organisations in our arts sector during the COVID relief fund. We spent $4.5 million to make sure that our creative sector did not fall over during the hardest times in maybe their whole entire career.

We’ve supported our migrant community, because tomorrow we’re going to announce and we’re going to launch the new Ministry for Ethnic Communities, and this is so exciting. On the back of the recommendations that we received, this is going to be a milestone for us. For the rangatahi, for our students and young people, we have boosted $3.3 billion to their benefits and student loan support. That is amazing. So that our students can truly just be students and that they don’t have to worry about more than just their studying. They don’t have to worry about their income.

But today, I just really wanted to speak about our support to the digital economy. I saw a member saying to my colleagues on the first day of work that I’m really passionate about e-commerce, not just because I contribute a lot to it every single day with my internet shopping, but because I believe that is where the future is at.

I sit on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, where we have to hear from New Zealand Post every year as part of the State-owned enterprise portfolio that the committee oversees. I still remember New Zealand Post coming to our select committee and saying that they had to deliver 3.5 million—3.5 million—parcels during alert level 3 of the lockdown we had last year. They had been seeing absolutely historical figures of 200 parcels per minute. That is absolutely astounding, that they have to deliver 200 parcels per minute. We know that is where the future is heading in terms of economy.

Right now, New Zealanders are spending more than $5.8 billion—we spent that in 2020—online. That’s about $1.2 billion more than in 2019. That is an amazing and astounding growth rate in our e-commerce sector, and what is this Government doing, you may ask, to support this economic growth, to actually excel New Zealand into that trend? Well, for a start—and just keeping to New Zealand Post—we’ve invested $170 million into infrastructure, especially here in the Wellington region, where we’re building a hub so that our parcels can be delivered more efficiently. Who doesn’t want to get their parcels faster—right?

Hon Member: Right.

NAISI CHEN: Yeah, so this is exactly where we’re heading. Not only is it a global trend, but for New Zealand, this is the trend of our country. Right now, online shopping takes up about 11 percent of all of our spend, our shopping right now, but right now, compared to global, the UK, the US, and China are spending over 20 percent of all its spending. They’re doing it all online. So we can see that is the global trend.

I’m proud to be of a Government who is actually investing in the future, because in the 2021 Budget we have put $44 million into supporting our small to medium enterprises. We are supporting them so that they become more savvy in this digital economy world. We’re supporting them to enable small businesses so that they can actually take advantage of all the opportunities in this e-commerce world as we all recover from the global impacts of COVID-19. We know that is so important, so that’s why I’m proud to be on this side with the Government.

KAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to stand here today. Unfortunately, I can’t stand here and say I’m proud to be speaking at the moment. Today, I’m standing to talk about the care of our children within the State and some of the things that have been going on in the background. Unfortunately, yesterday, it was brought to our attention that some things are happening within the State care system that shouldn’t be. I was saddened, disappointed, and angry at what I witnessed on that video yesterday. I had the opportunity to talk to the Minister in the Social Services and Community Committee this morning, where he stated he was not there to defend the indefensible. I understand that, but the buck stops somewhere, and does he realise that he is in charge of what he is saying is indefensible?

It doesn’t matter about what the venue is where this happened. These children are put there for a reason: because they’ve grown up in households with things happening to them that the average New Zealander could not even comprehend or even survive. These children have known nothing but despair, fear, and anger, and they have learnt to react in these ways. We have stuck them in these facilities because, unfortunately, they are not safe in the community on their own. They are in danger of either hurting somebody else or hurting themselves, and we have a responsibility to care for them. We are also teaching them that they have a place in this world and that there are ways to deal with their anger. How are we teaching them there are better ways to deal with their anger if we in the State care are reacting in the same way that they have been treated growing up?

Given the multiple name changes, failures, restructures, chief executive (CE) departures, and the commission of inquiry into State care—and, as we know by watching that news video, it’s still happening—I wonder would the Minister consider a cross-party discussion that could focus on what’s in the best interests of our children, because at the moment, it doesn’t seem like what we are doing is in the best interests of our children.

There are multiple issues going on here. There are issues with the fact that the internal complaints system obviously isn’t working within Oranga Tamariki (OT). How is it that in an environment where the focus is on making sure our children are cared for and making sure our children are safe, the people working within that organisation do not feel comfortable coming forward with concerns about what’s going on, and they are feeling like they have to go to the media to get attention? It has got so bad that the new CE has given out his number so people can contact him personally. Surely this organisation should be held accountable and be told to do their job properly.

The other issue is we are getting more and more articles from reporters that are being approached by workers within the organisation who are too scared to show their faces. Now, if I was a worker in an organisation speaking out to protect the children in this country, I’d be holding my head high. I would be fighting for the children, because if we can’t fight for our children, what can we fight for? But these people are hiding behind fake voices and blurring their faces because they are scared for their jobs. They are scared for their jobs when they are standing up for what is right for our kids. That to me is disgusting, and we should be ashamed of that.

We have had articles in Newsroom ranging from June, when we had a foster worker that was talking about “We are reacting to things going on in the community since the Hastings uplift.” This social worker has said that because of the Hastings uplift, we’ve had five inquiries into the behaviour and the practices of OT, and none of them have looked good. This social worker says that because of that, they cannot do their job without fear of public backlash, because they’re being seen to be doing something wrong, instead of standing up for the best practice—

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

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

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

Third Reading

ANAHILA KANONGATA’A-SUISUIKI (Labour): I move, That the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

It is an honour and a privilege to have been custodian to shepherd this bill in this House. This bill started with a conversation with Mr Soane Foliaki, a senior solicitor at the community law centre in South Auckland. In 2019, Mr Foliaki shared with me the experiences of a man with a disability who was a judgment debtor and that the court bailiff turned up to seize his mobility van and that it was put up for auction, and it was through Mr Foliaki taking the matter to court that his van was returned. A story about a disabled person from whom the District Court bailiff seized a mobility van to be sold at auction to pay for a debt had touched my heart. Without hesitation, I agreed to bring this matter to Parliament, to champion it, and to take it as far as I can to change the law.

Mr ‘Epalahame ‘Una Tanginoa has given his approval for his story to be shared. He had two wishes: one, that this would never happen to anyone again, and, two, an apology from the District Court. Mr Tanginoa at the time was in receipt of the invalids benefit and he could not afford a taxi, nor had he the means to attend his medical appointments. He ended up in ICU, in hospital, and he needed surgery.

I would like to thank the submitters whose views helped the committee with the enhancement of this bill. One of the submitters, the Disabled Persons Assembly NZ, said to me yesterday—and I quote: “We are pleased that the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill is having its third reading and will be passed into law. We strongly support the bill, and we are pleased to see the suggestions we made around the disability communication and assisted technology systems were added to the bill.” I would like to thank the chair, Ginny Andersen, and the Justice Committee for their collegiality and due diligence in the scrutiny of this bill. They have enhanced the bill.

At present, the principal Act requires good judgment to be exercised and the bailiff to act fairly and reasonably. The Act does not prohibit the bailiff from seizing property that enables independence of a disabled person, such as their mobility vehicle. Mr Tanginoa’s experience has proven that good judgment and acting fairly and reasonably has failed to protect a member of our disability community. Today, I am supported by all members of this House, and we will no longer leave it to good judgment. Instead, the bill will amend the District Court Act of 2016 to protect people with disabilities who owe money under a court order—a judgment debtor. It comes into force the day after the date on which it receives the Royal assent.

In the committee of the whole House, the member Nicole McKee asked for clarification on clause 4, the amendment to section 167, and which I will now clarify because it is really important that I do that. It is about warrant to seize property. In the new section 167(2)(a)(iii): “if the judgment debtor is a disabled person or is a principal caregiver for a disabled person, any item that is necessary for the care, support, or independence of, or to promote the inclusion and participation in society of, the judgment debtor who is the disabled person or, as the case may be, the disabled person for whom the judgment debtor is the principal caregiver (for example, without limitation, any mobility device, specially adapted motor vehicle, or medical equipment);”. It also covers any item necessary for the care, support, or independence of a disabled person who is in the care of a judgment debtor. It is important to understand the example provided, that it is without limitation; it means that this example given does not limit it to these examples. Therefore, it also futureproofs any new technology that is yet to be invented.

The committee recommended amending the proposed definition of the “disabled person” to align with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This would allow for the wider disability community to be included in the group that the bill will provide protection for. The committee noted that the rights of persons with disabilities definition focuses on how an environment can be disabling for a person with impairments rather than framing it in terms of a disability alone. The definition is provided in new section 167(5): “ ‘disabled person’ includes a person who has long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments that, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society”. I’m also pleased that in clause 5, amending section 168(2A), a motor vehicle to which section 167(2)(a)(iii) applies may not be immobilised under this bill.

In the spirit of working together, I am grateful to the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and our Labour caucus for approving this bill to go into the ballot.

I’d like to make special mention of the Hon Simon Bridges, who, without hesitation, at our first meeting, agreed to take this matter to his caucus. Thank you, Simon Bridges, for your leadership and for gaining the support of your National Party caucus for this bill. In 2019, New Zealand First’s support was dependent on whether or not National was in support, so, again, thank you, Simon Bridges.

Thank you to Jan Logie and the Green Party for their firm support of the bill, and I am grateful that the member has spoken at the first and second readings of this bill, and I have appreciated her contributions.

I am grateful for the ACT Party’s support of this bill. Thank you to Nicole McKee for asking me that question, which led to me today clarifying some parts of section 167. Also, kia ora koe, Te Paati Māori. Thank you for your tautoko. You have arrived here in Parliament and you too have lent your support to this.

Although they are no longer here, I just want to thank Darroch Ball and the New Zealand First Party, who also, in the end, after Mr Bridges’ support, said that they would support it too. It is an example of it being possible to work together in this House.

I have heard from Mike Potter, CEO of Disability Connect Auckland, and he said, “the loss of equipment and technology essential to the daily lives of disabled people and their families, no matter how brief, is debilitating, dehumanising, and, in some consequences, life-threatening. Recovery from the setback of not being able to access healthcare, support, or respite takes much longer for disabled people and can be a trigger for long-term dependency.” He continued to say that he is grateful for the protection that this legislation offers to vulnerable children and adults from being further disabled by the impact of financial difficulties. Hopefully, it will support communities to be better placed with wellbeing and belonging.

The journey of this bill has, as I said before, restored my faith that members of Parliament can put differences aside when we believe it is the right thing to do. This is an example of that. I have enjoyed my relationship and engagement with members of Parliament from conversations on this member’s bill.

Mr ‘Epalahame ‘Una Tanginoa had two wishes: that this would not happen to anyone else, and, secondly, he wanted an apology. I hope that the passing of this bill with agreement of all members across the House can suffice as an apology. Thank you, ‘Una for allowing your story to be shared. This is your bill. Mālō e Fakakoloa ‘o Aotearoa.

I did, on the second reading, conclude with the New Zealand Disability Strategy: “New Zealand is a non-disabling society—a place where disabled people have an equal opportunity to achieve their goals and aspirations, and all New Zealand works together to make this happen.” It has been an honour to add my voice to enable protection of people with disability in Aotearoa. Mālō ‘aupito. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, if National was minded to change its view on this bill, we couldn’t after all those nice words, could we. In seriousness, National will be supporting this bill, as we did at first reading, through select committee, and the committee of the whole House, and now the final hurdle—although not much of one—for this bill. I showered the member in charge of the bill with praise at the earlier reading. I even quoted Scripture. The only thing I think I didn’t do was dance a jig, so I’m not going to do—

Ginny Andersen: Away you go.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: Well—no. So I’m not going to go through all of that again.

It’s a well-intentioned bill and New Zealand is a compassionate society. We’re still a relatively prosperous society, noting, of course, there are disparities and inequalities, and I believe—and I’m sure many members do—that we judge a society, and one measure at least is on how it treats the least, and that certainly includes those with disabilities. As I say, we could see that from the member who’s just spoken, who was at times, and understandably so, emotional talking about the story of one of the people who is part of the genesis of this bill, if you like. So I say, again, it’s a well-intentioned bill that shows and reflects what a compassionate society New Zealand is.

Of course, the substance of the bill—it’s actually not lengthy. It’s not complicated. This bill has five clauses and what it does is, effectively, say that, look, in the case of collecting debts, bailiffs may not go after certain items that are around communication and the ability for a disabled person to live a fulfilling life. We can all obviously think of those pieces of equipment—a mobility scooter, a medical device, a Braille communication device, for example—which this bill will clearly cover.

There was discussion at select committee, though, as you, I suppose, in a sense always get—but certainly particularly with this bill—around the possibility for unintended consequences, or for side effects, if you like, from the medical prescription we were putting in place, if we can use that as a metaphor. There were issues that we were interested in somewhat—I wouldn’t say “hugely”, but somewhat concerned about. Would this mean—and we had submissions from the finance sector—that there would be less credit going to disabled people? That would be an unintended and indeed a very regrettable consequence if it were so through the provision or the making of this bill into law.

How would the bailiff know, actually? I know it may sound obvious at one level, but it isn’t necessarily in every instance. How would they know whether the person in question that they were going to was disabled, in fact? How would they know what they could and couldn’t seize? It’s not the case here that we’ve given a comprehensive list, a shopping list of things you’re not allowed to take. What we’ve instead done is been more—as we are in modern times in the law—values-driven here, but that does lead to some grey areas and some issues around these things.

So there were these disputes—or not disputes, but issues that were present with the bill. Where we got to, I think, in the end is that we worked—as the member said herself—collegially through those issues in the bill and, in some cases, we found workarounds. In some cases, perhaps they weren’t the issue that was a problem, or in the end, actually—I think really in relation to most of the ones that I have discussed—it was probably a case of, well, even with a few of these problems, possibly unintended consequences, overall this is a good bill. It will work at a level, and so it is worthwhile. It is good to pass it, and that’s the position that everyone on the committee and all of the parties, in fact, in Parliament—not even all of which were represented on that committee—have come to.

So it’s a small, not perfect, but well-intentioned and well-formed proposition. I don’t need to talk, really, any further. I mean no disservice to the bill or the member. It is a discrete one. It deals with the issues I’ve discussed, and National is happy to support it.

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the third and final reading of the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill. First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the member in charge of the bill, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. She has been a passionate and strong advocate for her community, and I think examples such as this bill really speak to the heart of what democracy is: it is a member of Parliament being able to represent his or her community and to identify gaps in the law that cause everyday people difficulties or problems or obstacles that they cannot counter without a law change.

So to have people like ourselves, no matter what side of the House they sit on, to be able to be in our communities, working alongside people, to identify opportunities such as this one is exactly what we are here for. So I would like to acknowledge Anahila—her emotion today is apparent for the fact that a small change can also mean a huge amount. It confirms to people at home, in everyday life, that you do matter, and if there are things that prevent people from having inclusion and full enjoyment in society, they are the sorts of issues that this House is here to remedy.

So what the bill does is it makes a small but necessary change in order to provide that inclusion that we need to enable. We really heard at select committee many submissions that confirmed what the initial thoughts were—that there needed to be an express prohibiting of seizure of goods from a judgment debtor if there was someone with a disability who relied upon that item for inclusion, and who relied on that to be able to engage in the community and live their life.

So what was interesting is that while it was a small legal change, one of the points that I would like to pick up on is that we actually heard from the front line of bailiffs who have that role of knocking on somebody’s door and having a court order which they are required to enforce. When you are a bailiff, you are operating under operational guidelines, and sometimes it’s at the discretion of the bailiff to determine whether it would be appropriate or not to uplift a certain given item. It is always a discretionary call at the time; it is difficult to understand.

So one of the reassuring things for me through this bill is that we heard from bailiffs that as a result of Anahila’s bill, there would be a rewriting and a review of those operational guidelines.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will use the member’s full name.

GINNY ANDERSEN: Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki—apologies, Madam Speaker. We heard the requirement in this bill that there would be a review of those operational policies to make sure that those front-line people who are undertaking the work of uplifting goods would be paying full attention to the requirements.

So, essentially, what this bill has done, what this member’s bill has achieved, is really codifying and reinforcing certain rights that we knew were there, that we know exist, whether they be human rights or other undertakings through disability conventions that exist. It codifies those areas to really make sure that we are providing people with those rights, but also, on the front line, making sure that when the law is being enforced, all of those parts are being taken into account.

Existing operational practice in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act already provides some of those protections, but what this this bill does is it essentially codifies the protection of disabled judgment debtors into the District Court Act. It will ensure that bailiffs respect the rights and needs of disabled New Zealanders, and that is an important thing to be able to do.

I’d like to also reflect upon how this bill contributes to a body of work that’s been taken over the years to continue to push for greater inclusion and for greater accessibility for those in the disability community. I would like to particularly pay tribute to the Hon Ruth Dyson, who was a champion for many years in this space, and to acknowledge her recent acknowledgments in the Queen’s Honours List. Ruth was one of the people who has championed pieces of legislation such as this in the past.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will use the member’s full name.

GINNY ANDERSEN: Hon Ruth Dyson—sorry, did I say “Ruth”? Ruth Dyson—apologies, Madam Speaker. So I think it’s important to take this bill as not standing on its own, but it contributes to a body of work.

A similar member’s bill under the name of Chlöe Swarbrick, formerly Mojo Mathers’ bill, enabled greater inclusion in terms of standing as a candidate in the general election, to be able to enable full inclusion and accessibility to the disability community in those aspects. I’d also like to acknowledge that work has been undertaken through having a disability strategy in New Zealand and being able to make sure that we continue to push for greater inclusion in those areas.

In the select committee process, we heard some excellent submissions from a range of people. We heard from Age Concern New Zealand, Auckland Disability Law, and we had the Disabled Persons Assembly. The Human Rights Commission gave an incredibly helpful submission in terms of enabling the committee to consider what was to be done next. Based on these submissions, and the consideration that the committee gave it, we unanimously recommended several changes to the bill in order to make sure that its objectives were successfully achieved, and I think that it was good to do that, with the full agreement of the whole committee.

There were no arguments in terms of what was right or wrong. There was always a strong sense that this needed to be done, and the committee worked collectively to enable that to happen in the best way possible.

As I already mentioned, the submissions from Age Concern looked particularly at this issue—Auckland Disability Law also argued the same—where we could have a scenario where something essential for the care of a disabled person was uplifted by a bailiff because the caregiver was owning that debt. So that was an important extension that was agreed by all members—that if there was a caregiver to a person with a disability, it would also apply in that context, because uplifting it from the caregiver would also have an impact upon the inclusion of the person with a disability within the wider community. So it was important to extend it to that further level.

In terms of where the next steps are in terms of this bill, I think it’s important to note that this House has a strong record of always working collectively on issues that affect the disability sector—making sure that when we see issues such as the one that the member in charge of the bill has identified we are able to pick up on these issues, engage with them, and make our law fit for purpose to enable full inclusion in New Zealand society and community. I think that the more that we are able to do this, and work collectively, the stronger our community will be. I know that those people who submitted on behalf of the community impacted and affected, and who have to work and continue to be a part of our community with a disability, acknowledge when legislation is specifically passed to promote inclusion, and I’m proud to see that we have a bill that continues to do that.

I would like to conclude today by acknowledging that this is not kindness. This is not in any way a do-good thing in general; it’s the right thing to do. We know if there is an ability for someone to be prevented from being included, we need to amend that law, and that is exactly what this bill does. It is not a major legislative change, indeed, but it will make life a lot easier so people can live and be assured that items that they rely upon for inclusion cannot be uplifted by a bailiff and that they cannot be prevented from being included in New Zealand society. I commend the bill to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill, third reading. May I start by congratulating the member in charge of the bill, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki.

Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki: Oh, mālō, Simeon Brown.

SIMEON BROWN: Thank you. But congratulations. It is impressive that you have brought this bill all the way to its third reading, and I think that deserves acknowledgment for the way that you have brought it to the House, brought a very important issue to the House, taken it through the select committee, engaged all the parties of this Parliament, and are now bringing it to a third reading and bringing it into law. And that is something that I think is very important. I think it recognises the importance of the member’s bill process in bringing issues which are important to New Zealanders and which make a real difference in their lives. This piece of legislation is important because it does make a meaningful change to protect some of our most vulnerable New Zealanders, and that is something which I think the member should be commended for doing.

This bill will protect disabled New Zealanders by prohibiting the seizure of goods of a judgment debtor with a disability where the item proposed to be seized is required for the judgment debtor’s care, support, or independence. This is critical to ensure that those New Zealanders who do have items which they rely on for their independence, their care, cannot have those items seized by a judgment, by a debt collector, in these instances. The previous legislation—or the current legislation, which will soon be changed—gives bailiffs the opportunity to exercise their own discretion and requires them to act fairly and reasonably. And, whilst that is something which, I think, is helpful, having it specifically laid out in legislation that they must not take certain items, I think, makes the law much clearer. And this piece of legislation goes a long way to improving that situation.

This bill also ensures that if the item is held by somebody else for the assistance of that person, that person cannot have that item taken off them if that is going to stop the other person from being able to be included in society. And, again, that is important, because we must ensure that these people are able to continue to contribute, to partake in society, without those items being part of what can be taken by a bailiff.

This legislation also includes the definition of disability that aligns with the Human Rights Act and also inserts a definition of “mobility device” that aligns with the Land Transport Act. So I do just want to say that this piece of legislation has gone through the select committee, and we’ve heard the submissions of submitters. Whilst we have raised some concerns—my colleague Simon Bridges has raised a number of questions—the new code, hopefully, will be able to address some of these issues. But, most importantly, this sends a very clear message to our disabled community that we will be standing alongside them and making sure that the legislation protects them from being penalised in these instances, and I think that is a very worthy and important goal, and I commend this bill to the House.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Tuatahi māku, e tuku mihi ana ahau ki te mema nāna i mau mai tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare Pāremata. Nō reira e taku hoa, e Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, tēnei te mihi nui ki a koe e te tuahine, e te tuakana, i mau mai tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare Pāremata, hei tirohanga, hei whakaarotanga mā tātou katoa. Tēnei te mihi ki a koe me tō kaha, ki te mau mai i tēnei kaupapa, ki te kōrero ki tērā atu taha o te Whare, kia whiwhi tautoko mō tēnei pire. Ka nui te mihi ki a koe e hoa. Ka huri ahau ki te pire ināianei

[Madam Speaker, greetings to you. Firstly, I give acknowledgment to the member who brought this bill into Parliament. Therefore, my friend, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki, I congratulate you, my sister, for bringing this bill into Parliament, for us all to examine and to think about. This is an acknowledgment of you and your strength, to bring this initiative here, to speak to the other side of the House, to gain support for this bill. I strongly acknowledge you my friend. I turn now to the bill.]

I did want to start my contribution by acknowledging my friend, my colleague, my tuakana for bringing an issue which—and I said this in earlier contributions. You know, as members of Parliament, we’re here to represent our communities, and it really is wonderful when you can bring an issue from the grassroots, in your community, here to the House of Representatives, to Parliament, and actually effect some change. Sometimes it feels like that process can take a really long time. Sometimes we are not able to achieve that. But I hope today—and I don’t want to jinx it—that we are going to be able to do that alongside of you.

I have listened to the contributions so far, and it’s quite early on in the debate, and I am just aware that for those that are listening in the gallery, maybe tuning into Parliament TV—and I’m always surprised when I meet somebody and they say “Oh! We’ve seen you. We watch the parliamentary debates.” So I thought I might, for their benefit, give them a little bit of background to, yes, what is quite a small bill with some quite simple changes. But those that might have been watching from the beginning may have seen the emotion in the member, because this is actually about real people and real people’s lives.

So I referred to the earlier contribution that this issue arose because a lawyer who was acting for a person with disabilities, Mr Sione Foliaki, came forward to the member with this issue and brought it to her attention. It was a very sad case. I think it highlights the importance of why we have used this House’s time, why the member put it in as a member’s bill, to address this issue. And I hope, as was the wish of the person who experienced this, that it now means that it will not happen to another person.

So that is talking about Mr Tanginoa. He was the person whose case, in 2016, came to the attention of us through the media. In his case, he had accrued rent debt to the amount of $5,117, unknown to him. The landlord had taken the debt to court to get recompensed for it and an order was given. Then what happened was that in his case his modified mobility vehicle was seized. First it was clamped and then it was seized. And what happened also in this situation was that his health deteriorated. And as we heard in the first contribution, he didn’t have the financial means to be able to get himself to the appointment with the medical specialist, and, in his case, he ended up in intensive care and his health was in a very precarious situation. And, really, it was just fortunate that he survived that ordeal.

So we are making changes to the law, which in this person’s situation was life or death. In other cases, it’s quality of life, and I think that that too is important when we talk about the members of our disability community. I do want to acknowledge that the Minister for Disability Issues has just arrived in the House too this afternoon, so e te Minita Carmel Sepuloni, tēnā koe.

So what then does this bill do? Other speakers prior to me have spoken about that already, but I’ll just give a brief summary and just a little bit more background and context. I think the reason that we ended up in that situation—and I’ll talk about bailiffs as well—is that for the bailiffs the law is not entirely clear. It is too vague currently. But with this bill going through, it will be clarified. It required judgment and discretion, and I think we have seen through this case that people can get that wrong and that it can have serious consequences. So when it is of such an important nature, I don’t think that we should leave it to judgment and discretion, and if we can provide that clarification and do that by amending the legislation, then that’s what we should in fact do, and that’s what we are here doing today.

So I wanted to acknowledge the bailiffs, and particularly the one in this case. They are just out there earning a living to provide for their families. They are doing what they have been directed to do by the courts. I don’t believe they go out there with malicious intent to make somebody’s life as difficult or as miserable as possible. That’s not what they get up to do when they go out to do their mahi every day. They are simply following a process. So what we have here today is the opportunity to provide more certainty, more clarity, for them so that they are not put in that really difficult position of having to exercise judgment and discretion.

So we are doing that by amending the District Court Act 2016 to protect disabled people who are judgment debtors, people who owe money under a court order, and it does so by expressly prohibiting the seizure of goods of a judgment debtor with a disability, where the item proposed to be seized is necessary for the judgment debtor’s care, support, or independence, or to promote their inclusion and participation in society. I do want to acknowledge the Hon Simon Bridges, who talked earlier about how he believes, and I agree with him, that we have a compassionate society. We are a compassionate society here in Aotearoa, and we approach this with kindness, but it’s also the right thing to do.

I was a member of the Justice Committee. I often subbed off the committee so that the member responsible for this bill could sit in and be part of that process. I didn’t hear all of the evidence, but I did hear enough of it to know—and was part of writing up the final report—that there were 21 submissions, the majority of which—18—were in support, and that there were eight submitters who presented orally. I thank all of those who took the time to be part of this process, and I really want to highlight the fact that by being part of a select committee process, putting in submissions, you can influence the ultimate decision that we make and the final piece of work that we bring back because, actually, in this case it was through submissions that we, as the committee and the member who accepted the recommendations, were convinced that we actually needed to broaden those captured by this piece of legislation. So it wasn’t originally intended to cover this group of people, but through the strength of the submissions and the select committee process, the select committee was unanimous and they saw merit in broadening those captured by this Act to include caregivers of those with disabilities.

So I’m really grateful to those submitters who are on the ground and work with this community and understand the issues through the strength of their advocacy, for being part of the select committee process. Our select committee was able to take on board that feedback in terms of the draft bill, and to get unanimous support around the table and include that into our final report. And that has been included here now in the final draft of this bill.

So, really, I just wanted to take this final 30 seconds to once again thank Mr Tanginoa and Mr Foliaki for bringing this issue to their local MP in the hope that she could come to Parliament and change things. She had the benefit of it being drawn from that biscuit tin—some get more luck than others, in that case. It has been through the full process of Parliament, and today we are here at the third reading celebrating, hopefully very shortly, its passing, and, as the person who experienced this, his wish shall be granted; it won’t happen to somebody else ever again. Kia ora.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’d like to start by thanking the member in whose name this bill has come to the House, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki—I hope I got that right; I practised.

Hon Member: Yes, you did.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Kia ora. I want to also stand here in this House and say what we don’t often enough say, which is disabilities rights are human rights. This bill is about rights. Others have said it, but I think it bears repeating: that this isn’t about charity or compassion—although there is a lot of compassion contained in the work that went into this bill—but these provisions and the changes that this will bring, and the changes that this bill will, in practical terms, bring to people’s lives who are impacted by it, are in fact upholding fundamental human rights for our disabilities community.

I will restate what the bill does, for those watching, which is that it prohibits the seizure of equipment or anything that anyone who suffers from a disability has that may be subject to a judgment debtors provision of the District Court Act, if that is something that’s needed by that person for their care, independence, participation in the community, or the support that they need in the healthcare system. That is to say that it’s about upholding our fundamental rights. I say “our” because I think that I speak on this bill as someone who has a very real chance of being impacted by it later in life, because I do suffer from multiple sclerosis (MS), and that’s a chronic illness that may, in future, mean that I need to access a wheelchair, a mobility support item, and other types of equipment or expensive measures that may otherwise have come under the legislation. When you’re diagnosed with MS now, because the treatments have gone so far in the past decade or so—and I’m incredibly grateful for that—you do get told repeatedly, at every stage of that diagnosis process and once you start on the treatment, “Don’t worry, this is a different kind of illness. We have different treatment for it now; you probably won’t end up in a wheelchair.” What I wish we said was that it’s OK, even if you do, because we’ll do everything we can as a society to make sure that you are, in fact, included, that your independence isn’t affected, that your health will be taken care of, and you will be who you are still.

This bill represents one of the very specific measures that we do need to take as a House of Representatives to acknowledge that our laws and our institutions have thus far marginalised those who suffer disability or live with chronic illness in a number of ways, that we have discarded their needs, that we have catered to the needs of the status quo, and that we have been ableist in the ways that we have applied—even in our justice system, even in this very specific way—our law. So I do thank the member for bringing that to the House’s attention, and I want to say that it’s also an acknowledgment that we, none of us, whether we suffer from chronic illness or disability, want to live in a society where our fundamental rights can be taken away, where our basic needs can be discarded, where we might not have access to life as we know it, whether it’s visiting friends or whether it’s literally accessing a hospital, because we couldn’t afford the next payment on a debt. We none of us want to live in a society where the courts can be weaponised against us to protect the profits of those whom debtors owe rather than those who need basic equipment for their daily life and their basic healthcare.

So this is a systems change moment, even though it is a very particular, very specific change. It’s about disabilities rights. It’s also about acknowledging, I guess, that we keep calling the disabled community the most vulnerable members of our community, and I agree—we are vulnerable. But we’ve been made vulnerable, and I want us to change that language. We need to call it what it is. We’re talking about a community that has been systematically and systemically marginalised, as others have been. Because my disabilities community is anything but passively vulnerable. They are active lobbyists, they are activists, they speak their truth as loudly as anyone ever can. It is just that they’ve not been heard, for so long, on access.

What I love about this is that, although this bill is—as we keep saying—very specific, it does something else that I think brings the voices of the disabilities community into this House as much as the substantive change that the bill introduces to the District Court Act, and that is that the change and expansion of the definition of disability goes further than the Human Rights Act. That came about as part of the work of the select committee. I really want to acknowledge the members of that committee for hearing the voices of that incredibly diverse community. There’s not just one kind of disability, one kind of person who suffers from disability, and anyone who does suffer from a disability doesn’t always suffer from just one type of disability. These are layered issues, and this definition, which I will read out, is now expanded to include people who have, “long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments that, in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”. This is a watershed moment in New Zealand’s law, because it is, for the first time, at least a step towards recognising the modern experiences of this very diverse community. Everyone across Aotearoa will know someone who’s impacted by this type of long-term—we can call it impairment or marginalisation. Because, actually, once we recognise that it’s our participation on an equal basis with others that’s hindered, and that that can be done through long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairment, that’s when we start to look at all of our laws—our education system, our housing, our roads, our system of justice—in multiple other ways beyond this bill. So it is a good day in this House, and I do commend the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The next call is a five-minute call.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very pleased, actually, to be standing here and contributing to the summation of what’s been a journey for this bill, the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill, on its way through Parliament.

Can I note the collaboration that’s been involved, because this stuff doesn’t happen by itself. There is a select committee process that needs to happen, there are officials that need to be appointed, and I know for a fact that we have our officials out the back, and they are a mixture of people from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, and they have worked diligently on making sure that this is the best piece of legislation that we can be putting through. It’s not part of the work programme of the Government, but this is what members’ bills are all about. Members’ bills are about opportunities for us, as non-executive members, to be able to bring something forward and put it on the agenda, albeit via a lucky dip ballot box. But that’s the process that we have, and that’s what’s happened right here: the collaboration from the officials but also from all of those members of the Justice Committee, who took the bill, saw the bill, considered the bill, listened to all of the submitters that came forward that were relevant to this debate, and came to a consensus, together, without too much compromise, about trying to sort out an issue that had come before my colleague Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. That kind of harmony where everybody agrees on a committee is rare in this place, so it needs to be acknowledged when it actually does happen. And it’s happened on this particular take.

Can I acknowledge the disabled community out there across Aotearoa who were part of this consideration as well. You don’t know about being disabled until you are landed in a wheelchair or you have something that affects your own abilities. I remember, actually—the Minister for Disability Issues is here in the House—the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, when she did a bit of an experience and she stepped into the shoes of our disabled community not long ago, a couple of years ago, and put herself into a wheelchair and got herself around our Parliament and realised just how inaccessible our Parliament is to those people that are in wheelchairs. You’re presented, as you walk into Parliament, between the foyer and heading up to select committee rooms, with the stairs there. You have to go the long way, and this is what disabled people have to do and have to build into their lives. They go the long way; they make those concessions because it’s what they have do. So can I acknowledge the disabled community who have been part of this conversation. Their motto, which is “Nothing about us without us”, continues to ring in my mind, and I’ve heard this adopted by Māori communities, by rainbow communities, by any kind of minority group that looks to get a say in the policies that affect them. And that’s what happened on this particular occasion.

When I tell the whānau back home what this bill is about, I say that it’s about doing what we can to protect our disabled whānau and their caregivers when the debt collectors come knocking. That’s what I say, and they get it really simply, because that’s, essentially, what it is. Anything that we can put in place to be able to protect our disabled whānau and their caregivers has to be acknowledged, and that’s what we’re doing here today. Previous speakers before me have gone through the nuts and bolts of this bill, and I want to thank them for that; so I’m not going to delve into that kind of detail.

It’s safe to say I just want to finish by acknowledging the hard work that’s gone on from my colleague to the right of me over here. Anahila is a hard-working Labour—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

TĀMATI COFFEY: Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki is a hard-working Labour Party MP. She is a worker for the labour movement and has been all of her life. And can I note this as well before I sit down: last night, I left this building at 11.30 p.m., after having done my readings, after having got through a bunch of emails, after doing the kind of stuff that we all normally do in this House. At 11.30, as I walked out the door, I saw, peeped, into my neighbour’s office and she was still there in her office preparing for today. Today is a very big day. It’s a very special day for her. This is the third reading of her member’s bill, and I want to congratulate her for bringing it to the House, for ushering it through the select committee process, and for bringing us all together today for the benefit of a constituent that came forward and asked for his rights to be looked after and represented. I commend it to the House.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, and can I acknowledge Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki and just begin where the previous speaker, Tāmati Coffey, finished, and that is to really congratulate my colleague on a fantastic piece of work here. I came into this House not knowing Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki and quickly learnt that she was one of the MPs who really knew the people of where she was from really, really well. She made no doubt that she was a person of the people and that she understood not only where she was from but where the communities that she lived, worked, and played in were from. So it comes as absolutely no surprise that a bill like this has come to the attention of the House.

I was excited when this was drawn from the ballot box, and I remember then saying, “What is your bill about?” And when she talked about Mr Tanginoa and went further on to say, “Look, this is the situation that has inspired me”—and the one thing I love about Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki is her desire to always fight for those who are most in need.

Hon Simon Bridges: What’s another thing you love about her?

PAUL EAGLE: You’re about to find out more. But I do want to say this: the thing that does underpin her value system is her strong Methodist roots, and I know that that is something—look, if you need to know where Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki is on a Sunday, it will be at the Onehunga Tongan Methodist church. I believe that that is what underpins her desire to get Mr Tanginoa’s issue resolved, and she explained it here in the House, the third reading, with some emotion. You don’t often see that with our friend—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

PAUL EAGLE: Ha, ha! There you go, Simon Bridges—that’s another thing I love about Anahila: she can show emotion when it counts, and she did today. But in all seriousness, this is a serious issue, and Mr Tanginoa, as we heard with her speech, said he does not wish this experience on anyone else. Secondly, he wanted an apology. Those are the things that underpin someone who is decent and acts with dignity, and that’s the Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki I know. I know that she’s accessible, she’s approachable, and she’s visible, Mr Bridges—three more things that make this bill one of the bills that I know mean so much. When you look at it on the surface, it looks so easy to do—and so it should be, because sometimes the people who are most vulnerable in our society don’t want much, but it makes such a difference to get that little bit more. Mr Tanginoa, I know, on behalf of many of those who are vulnerable, those who are disabled, those who don’t have much, will be really appreciative of what this bill encases.

The detail has been covered. There are many people to thank. I’ve most enjoyed the other parties from across the floor who have come not only with concerns but, obviously, with support, and that makes, I think, a really good bill. I want to finish, because today I’m wearing this wee badge, and I think the Auckland Tree Council gave one out to many MPs. I don’t know what this tree is, but in my mind this is the kahikatea. It’s the tallest of all of our native trees in Aotearoa New Zealand, and that’s what I think of Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. She is probably not the tallest, but I think she is this evening—

Hon Member: She is with that hair.

PAUL EAGLE: Sorry, with the hair counted, therefore she is. So there we are, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

PAUL EAGLE: Oh, sorry, Mr Speaker. I do want to finish with a quote that I think sums up this very well. “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long”—

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

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I stand to speak today in support of the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill and I’d also like to commend the member in charge of this bill, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki—well done. I’m going to take a little bit of a different approach and I hope that you bear with me while I explain a few things about the court processes and then move on to how it’s affected, or going to affect, this particular bill. So please bear with me while I just take a bit of a different stand on this—or stance, I should say.

I am part of the Justice Committee and we went through a process where we are now at the third reading where we’re going to make some legislative changes so that certain items cannot be seized under warrant if they are necessary for the judgment debtor’s care, support, or independence of that person or the person that they rely upon. We extended some of those provisions to take into account the item necessary for a person with a disability in the care of that judgment debtor. Then we aligned the definition of “disability” with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. So we got three things going on here, which are really minor but quite important.

Now, where I’m going to just defer a little bit is explaining to those people at home what this actually means for them in real time. So when you get to a point where you’re actually taken to court or a disputes tribunal for an unpaid debt, it has to meet certain thresholds. So for a threshold of $30,000 or less it goes to the disputes tribunal. If it’s up to $350,000 it goes to the District Court, and anything over $350,000 can go to the High Court. So what we have is all these different jurisdictions that are looking at debts and, quite often, for the person who is in debt, that in itself becomes quite harrowing for them because they don’t understand what’s going on.

At this stage I’d like do a shout-out to the community law centres out there because they give wonderful advice to people who are struggling to navigate their way through this system. And they also have an online facility that helps people to understand the processes and what they need to do. People often get confused in those processes, and the community law centre outlines and gives assistance on processes, procedures, how to fill in a claim, how to write a statement of defence to that claim if you’re the one that’s being claimed against.

There’s also quite a lot of different ways of enforcing a judgment debt and how to recover it. So first of all, there’s financial assessment hearings that allow a person to be able to come in and say, “Well, I can’t actually afford to pay off this debt. Let’s try and figure out how to work our way through it.” There’s attachment orders. So if you’re employed, the judge can order attachment to your wages so that money’s taken that way. There’s charging orders which can stop the sale of land and property, should that be the case until a debt is paid. And then if you cannot pay that debt, you also could be given community work, be ordered up to 200 hours if the court sees fit. And then there is the warrant to seize property. The warrant to seize property is where the warrant entitles a person to come on to your property to seize property. And this is where we are making a change, because, currently, we cannot seize items that are necessary for the tools of trade, necessary household furniture, and for effects like your fridge and your freezer, as an example—even your clothing cannot be seized—and the goods that are seized under the warrant to seize property can be sold to help pay off your debt.

The reason why I’ve gone into this detail is because I think it’s really important that we differentiate between a warrant to seize property and repossession. The warrant to seize property is what gives the bailiff the ability to come on to the property to seize but repossession is something different in itself. Repossession happens when there’s hire purchase goods or goods listed as security under a loan contract, and if a person defaults on that loan contract and payment of it, then those goods could actually end up being repossessed. The lender can take those goods because they don’t belong to the creditor. And it can also happen to the guarantors. I’ll give you an example. If a car has been smashed up—and this is about a vehicle, a mobility vehicle, that was taken away—in an accident but it’s subject to a credit contract and it’s written off, then that can be repossessed. However, if the car is not subject to that loan, then it can’t be. So the guarantors can be implicated in this way as well but the guarantors—for those people out there—can’t take your stoves and your fridges and your clothing either.

But repossession can only happen when there’s a credit contract that explicitly allows this to occur. Now, it is important that the creditors and the financial institutions are made aware of these changes that we’re about to introduce and that they fully understand the difference between the warrant to seize and the repossession because we’re, effectively, making a law that if a warrant to seize goods is given, then it is the intention of this Parliament that items that can be shown to be needed for the—and I quote from the legislation—“essential care, support, or independence of or to promote the inclusion of participation in society of a person with a disability” cannot be seized. But where there is a credit contract that has been signed, then those goods can still be repossessed. So we have not made any provisions to change that particular aspect of the legislation.

I’m very pleased to have clarity from Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki on the blind and hearing impediments that we spoke of earlier. During the committee of the whole House, I had queried whether or not those people with those disabilities could have essential items seized and we weren’t sure at that stage, but you’ve clarified that for all of those people today. That comes about from the change that I mentioned earlier that was made to “disability” because it actually now includes those with sensory disabilities as well. I am sure that those with the hearing and blind impediments will feel some relief that certain equipment that they need—like their cell phones to be able to blind read and hear and have directions on—will be safe under this bill as long as there is no credit contract signed to purchase it. We’ve upgraded that definition of “disability” so that it aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

So to summarise, those seeking loans, those that are guaranteeing loans, those that are lending—we have to make a slight change to what can be seized under a warrant to seize property. If an item is required for the care, the support, or the independence of the debtor or the disabled person the debtor directly cares for, or promotes their inclusion and participation in society, then that essential item cannot be seized under that warrant. Therefore, a disabled person or a caregiver of a disabled person should know the difference between their obligations when signing a credit contract and the obligations when taking a loan without a contract.

ACT are pleased to support a change in legislation that defines “disability” to make it more inclusive of a wider range of disabilities, to make change that supports those people with disabilities in a time of need for them, and to clearly differentiate between what can be seized and when it can be seized. Clearly, we ask those that are in debt, that are struggling, to get in touch with people who can help you. You don’t have to be alone and the community groups like the community law centres are there to help you. In that regard, again, Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki—well done, congratulations, and we are proud to support your bill.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora, te Mana Whakawā, thank you. And can I commend the last speaker, Nicole McKee, for her speech, which I must say is clearly well researched and covered, in fact, a lot of the material I had intended to cover—[Interruption] I know; I found it very good and very much on point. I absolutely agree that the distinction between a credit contract, seizure, repossession, and a warrant to seize is actually of critical importance, but, really, the day goes to Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. I think your community can be rightly proud of the work you’ve done here, but also, of course, a much wider community as well. I watched your speech today, and you choked up, and rightly so, because this is a piece of legislation which will touch the lives of many people.

I guess what I wanted to touch on, though, is that I think you’ve really hit a nerve. It wasn’t that long ago in New Zealand in real terms that people could be imprisoned for not repaying their debt. And whilst there’s still some powers under the legislation to detain, the idea of being imprisoned simply because you can’t repay something that you borrowed is rightly relegated to Charles Dickens. But we do need to think carefully about how we balance what goes on when someone has got themselves into trouble or, through sheer bad luck in these troubled times, can’t repay their debts. And this is one example: I mean, it did strike me as interesting that up until the passage of this bill, that we hope will be very soon, a tradie could keep his or her paint brushes and ladders or circular saws, what have you—the tools of trade—and yet, at least notionally, although we hope not in human terms, someone could have their wheelchair repossessed. That is a truly bizarre nation where we have that kind of situation happening.

I noticed in the select committee report there was a suggestion that the bailiffs had to act fairly and reasonably. I actually couldn’t find that anywhere in the legislation. It may well be that as a matter of practice, they do, or perhaps as a matter of common law they’re expected to, but I’m not sure that they have to go in and enter into some kind of deliberation over whether it’s fair or reasonable to seize goods once the threshold is passed that they’re not excluded in the legislation and they do belong to the judgment debtor.

So I think the larger question here is not simply that we absolutely should protect disabled people from having essential items for them participating in society seized, but a slightly wider question about how we approach debt recovery. As has been noted a number of times, this piece of legislation does not apply to a bank or second tier lender or loan shark that lends money on a motor vehicle. And so if any financial institution were to lend money on a motor vehicle that is specially altered for a person with a disability to drive, that is absolutely subject to repossession the moment a repayment is missed, and that’s something we need to think about.

The other thing that strikes me is that there’s a whole lot of other kinds of debt collection or enforcement methods, and some were mentioned by Nicole McKee—for example, garnishee proceedings: an old fashioned word, but basically it means that if one person owes money to the judgment debtor, then the judgment creditor can get the court to order the money to be paid to them; or an attachment order: an order which says to the employer of the judgment debtor, “Don’t pay the judgment debtor their wages; pay them to me.”

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. This is now at the third reading—a relatively narrow piece of education. I think I was pretty lenient with the previous speaker as to a general description of the law around it, but she at least kept on coming back to it. And while this is an interesting speech, it is beyond what is allowed on the third reading, and I’d say to the member, save it for a lecture and just focus on the bill. And I will remind the member: there’s no obligation to speak for 10 minutes.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: First of all, thank you for noting the fascinating nature of my contribution, but I will—

SPEAKER: If the member wants to continue, he won’t reflect again on one of my rulings.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, I commend again Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki for this bill, and just note, then, that I think a really good job has been done by the select committee in tidying up a couple of those particular items, including making sure that where the items in question are, in fact, owned by a third party—perhaps a family member or someone else living in the residence who may themselves have got into trouble and are unable to pay their debts—those items are still protected. So doing essentially the same job, notwithstanding the fact that, in fact, they’re not owned by the disabled person themselves, because, in many cases, of course, we can imagine situations where, for example, a child or a parent is under the care of someone else who actually may be owning those items. So that’s a good tidy up. And also, of course, it’s making sure that there doesn’t have to be some long and involved inquiry into what amounts to a disability and whether, in fact, this person is disabled. So as has been noted already, the fact that the definition of disabled has, in fact, been made consistent with that in the Human Rights Act gives a degree of certainty to that, and I think that is, in fact, a really important aspect of it.

I just will note that Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki has really picked up the torch here in some ways from Ruth Dyson, in terms of speaking for the disabled community and recognising that things need to be a little bit different for them, that we need to take a slightly different approach, and those are certainly big shoes to fill.

But look, the bill’s a very, very good one; it’s one which I think moves forward. I congratulate the member on it, and I only wish I was allowed to say a few other things. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Joseph Mooney: Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Sorry, I think I’ve just been accused of a breach of privilege, but—Joseph Mooney.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak in support of the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill, and I will take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank the member Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki on bringing this bill to the House. It is a relatively short bill in that the main amendment to it comprises eight lines, and then there’s a definition of four lines in terms of defining what a disabled person is. But it’s an indication that a short amendment to the law can make a big difference.

I don’t intend to spend too long speaking on this, but I’ll just say that this is an example of a piece of law that endeavours to achieve the right balance between competing interests. The interest here is the access of disabled people to credit—to lending—so they can purchase items, between the recovery of that debt. And the right balance, I believe, has been struck here, in that the debtor—i.e., a disabled person or a principal caregiver for a disabled person who is a judgment debtor—is protected from the recovery of items that are necessary for the care, support, or independence of that disabled person or principal caregiver for a disabled person and/or to promote the inclusion and participation in society of the judgment debtor who is a disabled person. It is an acknowledgment of the unique challenges faced by disabled people in our society. I certainly have had extended family members who have spent much of their life in a wheelchair. I’ve had enough accidents to spend time on crutches and know how tough it is to get around when you do have a disability—a physical disability, let alone a disability with sight or mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which are also acknowledged in this bill in the definition of a disabled person.

This is a measure, fundamentally, to protect disabled people from the seizure of items which are necessary for their care or to support their independence. I note one particular item that is protected: adapted motor vehicles, which are critical for the independence of many disabled people in our country. Across much of our country, there is limited public transport, and it is vital to have access to an adapted motor vehicle to be able to get to appointments, to get to supermarkets to buy food, to stay connected with whānau and family. So that is an important particular point that has been noted in this bill in the short eight words that have been used, but it is of significant importance.

Fundamentally, as I’ve said, this is a short bill, but one that will make a big difference to people. I would also just note the recommendation that lenders and industry bodies be informed about the provisions of this bill and what the rights and responsibilities of creditors and debtors are so that there is good understanding across New Zealand’s communities, and the understanding that Parliament has sought to strike the right balance between access to credit and also the recovery of items being excluded, those which are necessary for the independence of disabled persons or the principal caregivers for disabled persons. So with that, I commend the bill to the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to stand here today and, first and foremost, to acknowledge my colleague and friend Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. Mālō ‘aupito. Mālō ‘aupito for the work that you have done to bring this bill, the District Court (Protection of Judgment Debtors with Disabilities) Amendment Bill, to the House. This bill spanned across the 52nd and the 53rd Parliaments and, as a consequence, it’s been a long time coming—for something that is relatively simple, but something that is incredibly meaningful. So I do want to acknowledge you, and I also want to acknowledge the emotion that you brought to this House today. It made us all feel so very, very proud of you and proud of this issue being brought to the House. So thank you, my friend.

I’d also like to make a quick acknowledgment to the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) and the officials that supported and assisted this bill. As we all know here, a member’s bill is a slightly different process, and so the support and help that the PCO and officials gave was something that I think is really important to note. I’d also like to note, for the thousands of people out there listening tonight, that there is one in four people affected, or 24 percent, or 1.1 million people, with a disability in this country, and 14 percent of those people have a physical impairment that limits them in their day-to-day or everyday activities. So, while this is a small piece of legislation, it can have quite a huge impact across the disability community. I want to acknowledge as well each and every one of us here. We know people, and have friends and family, that are affected or could be affected by this legislation, and so, my friend, I thank you for that.

This bill protects disabled people from having their goods which are necessary for their care, support, or independence seized. I cannot imagine what it would have been like for your constituent when he lost his mobility vehicle because he was unable to pay his debts. I cannot imagine what that sense of helplessness and hopelessness must have been at that time, and in fact, we know that your constituent ended up in hospital, in ICU, because he was no longer mobile and able to get to his doctors appointments. That’s the kind of thing that we as a country should not allow to happen, and that’s why I am delighted that there has been this change, to ensure that that doesn’t happen.

I’m also really pleased, and I am going to take the opportunity to read out the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities definition that is now here in this bill, and I think it is really important to read this again so that people are aware of the broadening of the definition: “Disabled person includes a person who has long-term physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments that, in interactions with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”. The extension of that definition, therefore, doesn’t just talk about people with a physical impairment; it talks about the broadening and the wider, and so that is why it’s important to have that equipment recorded in this bill. It means that someone who is using a cell phone—or, in my nana’s circumstances, she was legally blind; she had a system where she would have talking books played. The loss of her talking books would have been tremendously negative on her as a woman trying to enjoy her life, as we all hope we should be able to do.

Look, I’ve come now to the end of my short five minutes. I would just like to commend this bill to the House and thank the member.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): First of all, my acknowledgment to Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki. Ngā mihi nui ki a koe tuahine mō tō mahi, mō tō manawa, tēnā koe.

[I strongly congratulate you, sister, for your work, for your dedication. I acknowledge you.]

I’ve acknowledged the member for the work that she has put into this, which comes from her heart. It was quite profound for me to sit and listen to the members in this House, because I wasn’t present on the Justice Committee when this came before it for the decision to support the bill, with a few significant amendments. The profound element, may I share, is that, as members of Parliament, we’re here to represent the communities that we come from and the investment that they have in us to do so. So the member has well invested in this bill for the constituent that you have represented so steadfastly.

Reflecting on the purpose as to why we are here for a third reading, I’m always mindful of the members of the public who are listening in. As members of Parliament, we listen to each other time and time again, but for those who may be tuning in for this third reading, it’s a summing-up debate on the bill in its final form, and the vote at the end of the debate is the final vote in the House to either pass the bill or reject it. The kōrero this evening, this afternoon is clearly well in support of this bill, and so as it passes through its third reading, it will then go on for receiving the Royal assent for it to come and be enacted into law. Mr Speaker, in addressing you, I’m also mindful of addressing and extending the courtesy to the member Miss Kanongata’a-Suisuiki because this is the member’s bill, as I say, that’s been invested in from the heart.

Having returned to Parliament—and I am the last speaker for the National Party on the list and have returned as the latest on the list for the National Party—I won’t take the full 10 minutes of this, but listening to the kōrero this afternoon, my ear has tuned in and my lens also as a lawyer has tuned in to the definition of a “disabled person”. There have been a number of members in the House, both former lawyers—we still think and we still speak and we still look at the letter of the law through our legal lens—but also non-lawyers, laypeople. That’s the representative nature of this House and what we have to contribute there. So I was particularly interested in the definition of “disabled person”, because when I looked at the bill initially and then I turned to the District Court Act 2016, there was no clear definition around that. And then the Justice Committee’s report to the House obviously extended considerable time to that by making a comparison with a definition under the Human Rights Act.

I refer—and it’s been mentioned in the debate today—to section 21(1)(h) of the Human Rights Act. It there talks about the prohibited elements of prejudice and discrimination. In that, though, it outlines, from one to, I think, six points there, the detail of that. The full extent of that definition has not been captured in this bill, but what I’m leading on to is that the recommendation for the amendment by the select committee to the definition of “disabled person” was so that it aligns with the Human Rights Act, but also aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. So the definition under the Human Rights Act is way more expansive in scope than what is encompassed under this amendment to the District Court Act. But in saying that, it captures the intent of ensuring that those “disabled persons” align with those captured under the United Nations convention. It’s beyond more than someone who is just physically disabled. It looks at the impairment or the loss or the abnormality of the anatomical functioning, which is the disability, but it also captures, under the United Nations convention—which I would consider this amendment does as well, because it’s aligned to that—psychological disability or impairment and intellectual disability or impairment.

Now, I’m bringing this back to the days before many of us here in this House, when the Hon Dame Tariana Turia was the Minister for Disability Issues, and it was recommended that the first representative we had from Aotearoa New Zealand for our disabled community was a man called Robert Martin, now Sir Robert Martin, who had been recognised for the contributions that he had made in this space of disabled persons’ rights on a global scale at the United Nations.

SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to bring the member back to the bill now.

HARETE HIPANGO: Yes, yes, Mr Speaker. What my point is, is that the disabled rights element that’s been built into this law and the amendment is cognisant on a global scheme. That is just saying that we are up there in the world in recognising the importance and the place of our disabled persons within the community, and the importance, of course, in their role, should they be before the court and required as the judgment debtor to pay the bill, in the capacity not only as the disabled person but if they happen to be the caregiver, as well.

So I commend the member for bringing this before the House. I commend the members of the select committee for the diligence and the due diligence that has been given to this, and in commending that for this third reading, the National Party supports this passage to the Royal assent. Tēnā koe e te tuahine.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): What a joy to rise in a House so much of one heart and mind tonight—may that long continue. I rise to take the final call tonight—the final call, with great joy—to welcome to the world, I hope, a bill that was one of the first ones that I worked on as a baby parliamentarian. It was a bill that was well worked over, I think my colleague and my friend Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki will consider. It was so well worked over, in fact—so often did she attend our Justice Committee—that I began to confuse the Justice Committee and the Social Services and Community Committee on which I sit with the member, because we were so often together. To now rise to speak and have not only the chair of Justice have spoken but also the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee increases my confusion, but it also increases my joy, because this bill has been a fascinating piece of work.

It has been a large part of my pre-parliamentary work to look at ways for people living with disabilities to access the courts, and that was the background against which I came to this. I think the other thing we need to think about—and it’s something that’s been referred to a number of times by different speakers—is the experience of living with a disability. It was about 17 years ago that, as the result of a birth injury, I ended up on crutches for six weeks. It was an extraordinary experience to suddenly discover how my mobility was hampered. Fifteen years later, that baby suffered a major accident. My whānau have had, over the last three years, the experience of living with a child with a major physical impairment. Now, we are lucky. We are lucky that our son has recovered his full mobility. But we are also lucky because we were in good, strong financial circumstances. We were able to cope with the need to take time off to care for our child. We were able to cope with the difficulties physically, and we were able to ameliorate the difficulties alongside the truly wonderful ACC regime that we are lucky enough to have in this country.

But when my colleague and friend Ms Warren-Clark referred to the 1.1 million New Zealanders who identify themselves as living with a disability and the 14 percent of those who identify themselves as living with a physical disability, there are further statistics that we should take into account, and they’re ones that directly were brought home to me in my experience as the mother of a child who was suffering a physical impairment. The costs of caregiving for a child with disabilities are such that families often end up under severe financial strain. There is a significant percentage of children with disabilities who end up living in families who have a median wage under $30,000. That is to do with the costs of raising a disabled child. The cost of living with a disability in a society that does not fully accommodate disability at present is also that those children go on to have constraints on their lives as adults. So we are in a situation where 45 percent of disabled adults have no employment, as opposed to the 75 percent of non-disabled adults who are in employment. Thirty percent of disabled women have no educational qualifications, as opposed to 15 percent of non-disabled women. People living with disabilities are more likely to end up with mental health issues. They are more likely to be victimised through the criminal justice system—all of which is to say that while this is a small—and perfectly formed—bill, it is one which addresses a real inequity, and it’s an inequity that affects a considerable number of disabled people in the sense that they are more at risk of being socio-economically disadvantaged and ending up in a situation where they may, in fact, have debts they cannot repay.

The cost of having your vehicle, for example, seized is significant. When you look, for example, at the cost on children whose family own a vehicle that is repossessed, we see in fact that they are then limited in their ability to participate in sport, in ordinary extra-curricular activities, and in education. Those things all contribute to the problems that I’ve already outlined and the ongoing socio-economic, economic, and educational problems that many people with disabilities cope with. So it is fantastic that the member Anahila Kanongata’a-Suisuiki has seen through the normal tendency of us all to ignore what we do not experience and has brought this bill to the House to rectify a small but significant problem.

I want, as a member of the committee that considered this bill, to just dwell on a few things, if I may. The first is to thank those submitters. We had 21, of whom 18 were in support or strong support. Their contributions were thoughtful, they were extremely well put together, and they were extremely useful. They were so useful, in fact, that we made two significant changes to this bill that I think everyone agrees have made it stronger and better.

The first of those was to address the situation of the child who is disabled and whose caregivers own the property. So we amended the definition of debtor to include the caregivers of someone with a disability. Given the limitations that children living with disabilities face, this is extremely significant.

But the final one is, I think, the most significant aspect of what we did. I take the point from the member before that lawyers do tend to believe that the law is the most important thing, and we do tend to believe that our insights are significant. She made the point about noticing the difference between the definition of disability in the Human Rights Act as opposed to this one. She made the point that the Human Rights Act definition looks superficially wider than that in this bill. What I would say is that that is not so. The definition that we adopted—and it was brought to us by submitters, and I am profoundly grateful that they did bring this to our attention—the definition we have included now, is that in the UN convention on the rights of people living with disabilities.

The importance of that is that it changes the definition, it changes the model of disability we’re dealing with under the Act.

Hon Simon Bridges: I want to pass Anahila Suisuiki’s bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: I’m sorry, Mr Bridges, that you don’t find this as fascinating as I do. But, really, it is. Just listen for a minute. The social model of disability is what they call the UN convention’s version of this definition. It is a definition that focuses not on medical problems, not on disability as something to be treated, something to be fixed; it focuses on the idea that people with disabilities can live good lives, provided we facilitate.

Mr Speaker, you referred earlier in the House to the fact that you have a hearing aid. As is fairly blatant—

SPEAKER: Two hearing aids.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON: Two hearing aids. I stand corrected. I, as is fairly obvious, wear glasses. Were I to take them off—as I said, I think, in my first speech—I would be fairly blind. I might even have difficulty leaving the Chamber—something which Mr Bridges will clearly feel was a great loss to all of us. But with my glasses, I’m a fully functioning member of society. This model, this definition, is about changing our view from one that medicalises disability to one that sees it as simply something to be overcome so that people with disability can participate in society to the fullest extent. I fully, fully, fully commend it to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Bill

Referral to Justice Committee

KIERAN McANULTY (Chief Whip—Labour): Point of order. I move, That the order of the day for the committee stage of the Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Bill be discharged, and that the bill be referred to the Justice Committee in order to consider the Chief Justice’s advice on the bill.

Hon Louise Upston: Shame on you.

SPEAKER: Order! The member has been here for some years. The comments that she just made were out of order in at least two respects, and it is my expectation that now she is a front-bench member, a senior member, that she shows some leadership around the parliamentary system.

The question is that the motion be agreed to. Those of that opinion will say Aye, the contrary opinion will say No. The Ayes have it. Did somebody call a party vote? A party vote is called for. The Clerk will conduct a party vote.

Hon Louise Upston: Disgraceful.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! Louise Upston will leave the Chamber.

Hon Louise Upston: You guys will pay for this.

SPEAKER: Order!

Hon Louise Upston: I’m leaving.

SPEAKER: No, the member is now going to withdraw and—come back, withdraw, and apologise. No, come back, withdraw and apologise.

Hon Louise Upston: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Louise Upston withdrew from the Chamber.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the order of the day for the committee stage of the Rights for Victims of Insane Offenders Bill be discharged and that the bill be referred to the Justice Committee in order to consider the Chief Justice’s advice on the bill.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Debate resumed from 9 June.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take this short call to speak on the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill. Before I do so, I want to thank the member who introduced this bill, Terisa Ngobi, who happens to be also a parent herself. Thank you, Terisa, for introducing this bill to the House, which will help a lot of children and their parents.

The bill amends the Holidays Act 2003 to allow workers with children to take leave to attend parent-teacher interviews. It’s a simple change in the legislation that creates significant advantage to low-paid workers. It allows parents to attend interviews about their children’s educational performance that are held during their normal working hours.

This bill is structured in a way that does not—that does not—excessively burden employers, because we have heard a lot of concerns about the costs of this bill to the employers. It doesn’t cost much. Parents will no longer have to choose between their income and participating in their child’s education—which is very, very important—which wouldn’t be fair.

Why do we support this bill? In many cases, good and ethical employers already do this. They offer the leave to their employees. Therefore, this bill should not create any issue for anyone. In fact, we should all be pleased and happy with it. The refugee and migrant families that I come from tended to feel discouraged to ask for leave. Often they take up insecure and casualised work, which makes it really difficult for them. Employment arrangements to take leave is hard for them. This bill would ensure all parents have the opportunity to work in partnership with educators, supporters to support their child’s educational success.

Migrant families often come into New Zealand out of touch with the education system. Parent-teacher interviews, therefore, often is an important opportunity for these parents to discuss their child’s academic progress and to help them to integrate into a New Zealand education system.

There is a huge social cost associated with not implementing this bill. Children and their families would not be able to work together for positive educational outcomes—

Hon Member: What nonsense.

IBRAHIM OMER: It is true. The education sector is the glue for integration and the social cohesion that as a nation we are embarking to. Supporting this bill means we are wrapping up our arms around the families from all social and economic backgrounds. It takes a step forward into investing in our children’s future.

We know how COVID-19 has created some disruption for children and their families. It is important that the parents and teachers have the opportunity to discuss their children’s educational achievement, and how they can be supported to reach their full potential. Good educational outcomes for all our children are going to take all the stakeholders working together, working together in collaboration—that is, parents and guardians know what’s happening at school, and vice versa, and schools know what’s happening at home. This bill will help with just that. On that note, I highly, highly commend this bill to the House.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The National Party opposes this piece of legislation. This Government seems to live in a fantasy world where you can keep passing laws to offer another public holiday, double sick leave entitlement, now offer another half a day off a year to go to school interviews, thinking that it would have no cost and everybody would be happy. Well, unfortunately, the people that are operating a small business—a little cafe or a bookshop—and dealing with the difficulties of keeping afloat in business are having to foot the bill. And this is something that isn’t a problem that needs fixing. Schools and parents are quite capable of organising things so that they can arrange for parents to be able to come along to meetings. They’ve been doing it for decades, and they generally have opportunities outside working hours and flexibility in the system so that they can arrange to do it. Schools have been doing it for decades, they continue to do it; my schools do it. So this is another case of Labour pushing unnecessary cost and regulation without presenting any evidence whatsoever—no evidence whatsoever—of the problem that they’re trying to solve.

I haven’t seen long queues in front of my MP’s office of people concerned about this as an issue. Meantime, we’ve only got three out of five children attending school regularly. We’ve got a truancy crisis in this country, and this Government’s members seem to think the solution to it all is to make it easier for parents to attend teacher meetings. We’ve all worked out that we’re fully capable. It seems to be the impression that this Government thinks that New Zealanders and their teachers and their schools are incapable of working things out for themselves and that the Government has to come in and fix every single little problem with something else to put on to the shoulders of small business operators who particularly are struggling to stay afloat. So we, on this side of the House, oppose this as unnecessary legislation. We have trust in New Zealanders to be able to work it out for themselves.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): I’m really pleased to be able to stand and provide Mr Goldsmith with some evidence, all right? So I’m really pleased to be able to stand and support Terisa Ngobi’s bill, the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill, and we’re asking for resources, quite rightly, to be committed to something that shouldn’t just be because it feels good; it should be because the evidence is clear that it will make a difference.

So let’s start with the OECD in 2020. They talk about parental involvement in children’s learning as strongly associated with children’s socio-economic development, better reading proficiency and academic success, student engagement, and high school completion. And the way that connects with this piece of legislation is that they note a typical barrier to involvement is time constraints—“Inequality of ability to find, make, and take time to engage may increase inequalities in education.” So, to the member’s point about “Why bother?”, the evidence is very, very clear.

Let’s look a little closer to home, to the Education Review Office. They reported, in 2018, the benefits of such strong partnerships. Having teachers involving parents in setting goals and agreeing on next learning steps is critical. These conversations enable teachers to learn more about each student in the wider context of school and home, to develop holistic and authentic learning goals, and context for their learning. And it really, really helps teachers to become culturally responsive—critical when we are trying to address some of the inequalities in our system.

When this engagement is regular and honest, genuine and reciprocal learning partnerships happen, and that can only be a great thing for our kids. So when we value and work with whānau—not just a one-off speed date but ongoing relationships—it helps with transitions into school and between schools. We look forward to hearing all these voices come to select committee, and I urge you to support this bill.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Just to take a quick reply on this. First of all, I wanted to thank the members for your contributions, even those across the House. While we don’t all agree, maybe, for this bill, what we do agree is that education for all children is really important.

This bill is a game-changer; we’re asking for a proposed four hours per year for parents or caregivers to be able to attend their child’s parent-teacher interview. We know when parents, children, and their teachers come together, they’re able to develop a plan that is going to make sure that we set goals, so that those children—our future leaders—are able to get a good education, are able to have the same equal playing field as everybody else. That is the importance of this bill. You can talk about the costs—the minimal costs—but the employers I’ve talked to, good employers, are already doing this. They’re already supporting their staff to make sure that they get good education for their children and are able to support their families in whatever they need.

This is part of a bigger package for this Labour Government to continue to make sure that we lift our children out of poverty. This is one of those things that we can do to make sure there’s equality. This is one of those things to do. That’s the importance of this bill, and for that I commend the bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

The result corrected after originally being announced as Ayes 75, Noes 43 to include Te Paati Māori’s votes that were subsequently cast.

Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill be considered by the Education and Workforce Committee.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 77

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

Motion not agreed to.

SPEAKER: The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Education and Workforce Committee.

SPEAKER: Members, it is kai time. I will leave the Chair now and resume the Chair at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6 01 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

Voting

Correction—Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Point of order. I apologise; while I was on duty during the last vote, I didn’t realise that I was to enter proxy votes on behalf of Te Paati Māori, so if I could just enter their votes on the bill that was the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Just a moment, we’ll just get this right. If the member would care to seek leave to amend the vote.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: I do seek leave to amend the vote, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): And what is the member amending?

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Oh, sorry, the votes are two in favour.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Thank you.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): I move that the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry to interrupt the member—apologies. We’ll get this right. So I will call on member’s order of the day No. 4.

Bills

Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill

First Reading

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I move again, That the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

I’m pleased to lead off the debate tonight on this member’s bill, selected from the ballot a while back now. This is the second time I’ve had a member’s bill drawn in nearly four years. I know it’s not as many as some other members, but it always makes me smile to think of my ex-colleague, my dear friend Mr Tim Macindoe, who failed to get a single member’s bill drawn in 11 years.

Members’ bills are a chance to get something on the floor that wouldn’t otherwise happen because it doesn’t fit in with the Government’s agenda. So can I start tonight by acknowledging my ex-colleague and good friend Matt King. This was, in fact, his bill. As an ex-policeman of many years, he saw firsthand the problems caused by anomalies in the Crimes Act, and, indeed, the anomalies that this bill will attempt to fix. Matt King was approached by members of the police, who asked him to bring this bill, and here we are.

As you can tell by the lack of paper in the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill, it’s not a large or overly complex bill. The bill’s a very short and relatively minor amendment to the Crimes Act. But while small, it will make a big difference. In fact, the bill is just three words. Quite simply, the bill inserts the words “or unlawful taking” into section 234 of the Crimes Act. Currently, section 234 of the Crimes Act defines robbery as “theft accompanied by violence or threats of violence, to any person or property, used to extort the property stolen or to prevent or overcome resistance to its being stolen”. The definition of theft in relation to robbery is important in the context of this bill.

If we look at the definition of theft in section 219 of the Crimes Act, we can see that there are a few parts that must be proven to make the case for theft: was there a taking that occurred without consent, was the item taken dishonestly, was the item taken without claim of right, etc., etc., but importantly, was the item taken with the intent to permanently deprive the rightful owner of said item?

Section 219(2) states that theft or stealing is “An intent to deprive any owner permanently of property [and] includes an intent to deal with property in such a manner that—(a) the property cannot be returned to any owner in the same condition; or (b) any owner is likely to be permanently deprived of the property or of any interest in the property.” It’s quite easy, therefore, to think about a robbery in terms of a situation where a perpetrator grabs a victim, roughs them up, takes their wallet with $20 in it, and runs off. They have permanently deprived the victim of that $20 and the wallet, and, of course, there is the accompanying violence aspect, thus robbery is proven and there is a 10-year maximum sentence, and of course that is also a strike offence.

The problem arises when the item taken is a vehicle, in the form of a carjacking, for instance. So, for example, the perpetrator opens the door of the car, grabs the victim, threatens them, hauls them out of the car, shoves them to the ground, and then takes off with their $80,000 Kona—for argument’s sake. If the car is dumped by the perpetrator, as can often happen, and therefore can be returned at some point to the victim, then section 219(2), the intent to permanently deprive, cannot be satisfied, and the item can be returned to the owner in the same or very similar condition, so the owner is not likely to be permanently deprived of the vehicle or the interest in that vehicle.

So here we have a situation in a robbery where a victim can be roughed up, with their wallet taken—$20—that satisfies the definition of robbery, but if a perpetrator grabs someone, threatens them, hauls them out of the car, throws them on the ground, takes off with the car and dumps it, robbery cannot be proven. Of course, if the car is burnt out or written off, then robbery can be proven, but, if not, then robbery is off the table. This bill seeks to remedy the anomaly in the law.

This bill proposes to insert three little words that read “or unlawful taking” into the definition of robbery in section 234 of the Crimes Act, so that it would read, “Robbery is theft or unlawful taking accompanied by violence or threats of violence, to any person or property, used to extort”, blah, blah, blah. The words “or unlawful taking” brings—

Hon Member: Blah, blah, blah!

ERICA STANFORD: —Ha, ha! It’s a legal term!—the taking of the vehicle into the definition of robbery, and so there is no longer any test around intent to permanently deprive. So whether the perpetrator burns the car out, writes it off, or simply drives it and dumps it 200 kilometres away, robbery can still be proven.

The reason for this bill is multiple approaches to us from the police, asking for this small change to be made, because they could see the anomaly in the law and they could see the types of things that prosecutors currently have to do to try their best to work around the law. What typically happens in a carjacking case when it comes to the prosecution is that the prosecutors put up multiple charges because the crime doesn’t fit that one tidy crime of robbery. Some of the charges that are typically laid instead of robbery include demand with menace, if the perpetrator says, “Hey, get out of the car.”; threat to kill or grievous bodily harm, if they say, “Get out of the car or I’ll kill you.”; threatening behaviour, which is a summary offence; then there’ll be charges around the way in which the victim was touched: common assault if they just get their arm pulled, or aggravated assault, which is a three-year charge; and then there will be the charges around the taking of the car—unlawful taking.

The way these charges are put together is messy. There are multiple charges, multiple charging documents, which cost the taxpayer more. They are more complex, and often take a lot longer to go through the system. There’s normally more court time or more court appearances because of the multiple charges and the fact that the lawyers haggle: “Hey, we’ll drop this if you accept this and we might drop that.”, so it can take a much longer court time. But the prosecutors have to do all of this because of the anomaly in the law, where this is actually a robbery in the same way where a perpetrator grabs a victim, takes their wallet, roughs them up, and takes off, but the multiple charges that prosecutors have to lay in a carjacking scenario to get it anywhere near robbery gives us a situation that is far less than ideal. It’s, in fact, complex, it’s messy, it’s very lengthy, and it’s costly. And even with all of the above charges possible, it’s never possible to reach the same threshold of robbery, which is that 10 years is the maximum penalty.

The other thing worthy of note is that while we still have the three strikes regime, robbery is a strike offence, and those other mixes, even when cobbled together, aren’t a strike offence. So we can have a strike offence for someone stealing a wallet for $20 and roughing up a victim, but not for roughing them up and taking off in their $80,000 car and dumping it. The crime of robbery puts theft and violence or threats of violence in one charge—it’s clean and it’s tidy. We have the charge of robbery for the very reason of not having to charge the wallet robber with multiple charges, as we currently have to do with a carjacking. This bill would rightly allow prosecutors to use the charge of robbery for a carjacking when the car is dumped.

National will always put victims at the heart of the justice system, and this bill fixes that anomaly in the law that requires a car to be written off or burnt out in order to fulfil that requirement of permanent deprivation.

So as I’ve said, a very small bill, a very uncomplicated bill, a three-word bill to bring what is robbery of a car into the definition of robbery without the requirement to permanently deprive. I’m not sure of support from across the House for this bill, but I am forever hopeful, of course, that we can get it to select committee so we can scrutinise, improve the bill in any way we see fit, and, of course, to iron out any potential anomalies. So I commend the bill to the House.

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

GINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Madam Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill. Should we not pay tribute to Matt King? I think it’s sorry that he can’t be here to see this. Matt King—I think this bill is indicative of the fact that Matt King had a good idea but wasn’t able to follow through, and I think that lands where this bill is at.

So this bill broadens the definition of robbery by adding just three words—it’s a simple change—to the Crimes Act, and those three words are “or unlawful taking”. The intent of this change is to clarify that robbery need not have intent to permanently deprive someone of the car, such as particularly with carjacking, and thereby opening up the charge of robbery to be able to be used in carjacking cases. While on this side of the House, the Government thinks that the intent is good, the change is a very poor one. And the reason for that is it will not clearly achieve the bill’s objectives.

That’s for three reasons—there’s three reasons. First of all, it’s too ambiguous. Second of all, it misidentifies the issue. And, thirdly, it’s far too broad. And from formerly working in police prosecutions, I can testify that there were many front-line officers who came forward with bright ideas about how to change the law to make it easier to prosecute someone, but when you drill down and find out what its implications are with wider points of law, it doesn’t always work so well.

It was interesting that the member in charge of this member’s bill identified the very issue of multiple charges being brought, because—she’s quite right—in any given criminal incident, you’ll have multiple charges. They might be grievous bodily harm, threat to kill—there’ll be other issues relating to robbery on top of the carjacking. And what you often see is plea bargaining happening and those charges being whittled down in order for a prosecution to be brought. And so the question is: which is the strongest crime to prosecute and what best serves the general interests in serving that need to bring justice? So I think that the intent is good.

But I’d like to just unpack those three reasons why the Government won’t be supporting this piece of legislation. So, first of all, on ambiguous, because unlawful taking is not specifically defined in law. That’s a pretty significant issue. If you’re introducing three new words into legislation, the best thing you need to do, really, is to define it, and this bill fails to do so. Secondly, in terms of misidentifying the issue, in the current law, it blurs the current distinction between theft and conversion, which is actually quite problematic in terms of prosecution basis. And the third point—that is, being too broad—it redefines robbery for all cases, not just those related to vehicles or carjacking in this instance. So given the problems with this bill as it’s drafted and the significant, disproportionate impact that it would have on the House’s time, that is the reason why the Government will not be supporting this bill to select committee.

Although we agree in principle with the concept, it does not achieve the intent as outlined in the member’s general policy statement, which is in the bill available on the Table. The member in charge has argued quite articulately that it is difficult to make out the offence of robbery in the case of a motor vehicle, because the definition of robbery requires an intent to permanently deprive the victim of their possessions. But to address this issue, the bill proposes inserting three words to the Crimes Act, in the definition of robbery, which are those words “or unlawful taking”, and this is really a poor way of achieving the intent of the bill.

The wording of the amendment is too ambiguous and it won’t provide that greater clarity in law which the member is striving to achieve in order to facilitate that front-line ability to prosecute. It will not achieve that outcome. The wording of the amendment of the bill, “or unlawful taking”, provides no definition and no reference, furthermore, as to where we might find this definition. So it is leaving it to the courts or it is leaving it to be further divined, and that is not good legislation and not good use of this House’s time.

Unlawful taking is a heading in the Crimes Act, in the 1961 Crimes Act, but it is not specifically defined in that Act, referring generally to a whole category of offences. It is fundamentally unclear, therefore, that this amendment proposed in this bill would achieve the intended outcome. As the definition of “or unlawful taking” is unclear, the new offences that may be covered by the amendments such as carjacking, as illustrated by the member, are also very much unclear.

The bill misidentifies the issue in current law and blurs the distinction between theft and conversion. And I’d like to go on to explain that currently there is a distinction in law between theft—the permanent taking of any property, including a vehicle—and conversion, the temporary taking of a vehicle. The offence of conversion exists specifically because it can be difficult to prove an intent to permanently deprive someone of their vehicle—the issue at the heart of this member’s bill. Misidentifying the issue in the bill tries to broaden the definition of robbery so it includes temporary theft of a vehicle rather than simply adding in an aggravating offence for carjacking, which would probably be a better way of going about it. This blurs the obvious line between theft and conversion, is untidy, unclear, and potentially applies beyond motor vehicles, which creates a whole new class of problems that the courts would probably have to deal with. The approach taken by the amendment is simply just far too broad. It redefines robbery in all cases, not just as carjacking, as the intent of this bill wants to do.

Although the general policy statement specifies that the target of the law change is carjacking of motor vehicles, it is the legislative vehicle for the change that does not specify motor vehicles at all. Instead, it simply redefines what robbery is as a general concept and entails clarifying what it calls “or unlawful taking”. So given the charge of conversion already exists, this approach needlessly is just far too broad.

Therefore, although we agree in principle with the concept of the bill, as I’ve already said, we do not support this bill. It would be far more appropriate to consider this as part of a full policy process, considering it alongside other relevant parts of the Crimes Act, as this would be a far more effective way of utilising the legislative time of the House and would also be far more likely to actually achieve the intent of the bill and what the member is trying to do.

So what this bill amends—it’s quite simple: it is not clear and I’ve spelt this out in three main reasons. The apparent hope is that the less specific wording of “or unlawful taking” will somehow capture crimes where there is no intent to permanently deprive the victim of their vehicle, and that’s problematic for a number of reasons.

So what I would like to do is conclude by commending the member on identifying an area where there are some issues, but in terms of actually doing this in a way that is going to achieve the intent of the bill, it has failed to do so. I think there’s far more useful work this House could be doing in terms of a wider approach to law and order, in terms of how we can be working harder and smarter to keep our communities safer, how we can break the cycle of reoffending by trying to work within our communities and do good policing and activities, and how we can build an effective, inclusive, and humane justice system to better support victims and whānau, and doing this through a range of ways, including issues such as family violence, which is prevalent right throughout our communities and drives reoffending and revictimisation.

Thirty years of locking up more people has not worked and we will not continue on this way. I’m proud to be part of a Government that has made a commitment to reducing our prison population and I will continue to work hard to see that come to fruition, because I believe that is the best way forward for New Zealanders. New Zealanders know that we cannot arrest our way, and not imprison people, out of the current situation that we find ourselves, and that we need to work collectively and not just continue to arrest people as a way of responding to current law and order issues. That is why we’ll continue to do things differently, we will continue to use evidence-based approaches in all areas of our law and order system, in order to reduce reoffending, reduce victimisation, tackle the root causes of problems instead of just locking people away, and enhance community safety and the wellbeing of our communities. Hopefully, I have given all of the reasons why this Government will not be supporting this bill further. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is not a pleasure to rise and speak to this bill, the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill, tonight in the House. It is another example of superfluous, off-point, archaic policy by the National Party Opposition, especially on criminal justice. We know that the Prime Minister’s chief scientist, the very well respected Sir Peter Gluckman, after proper research last term, declared that imprisonment has failed. To push a failed policy that does not work to keep communities safe, that does not restore victims, that does not bring down crime rates, at great cost, both financial and social, has now gone past the point of being just bad policy-making, just bad politicking; it is callous.

For our nation to have a major political party sit there and say that the dream of our members—because that’s what members’ bills are; they are the one thing you can change—in the middle of a housing crisis, a climate crisis, a crisis in family and domestic violence, a pandemic, a crisis in child poverty, is to send people to prison for a little bit longer for taking a car, for property offences. It does not bring down crime. It does not keep anyone safe. Stop lying to this House. Stop lying to victims and communities. I know what happens in courtrooms, because I’ve practised—

Maureen Pugh: Point of order, Madam Chair. I don’t believe it’s in line with the Standing Orders for someone to refer to members lying in this House.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you. The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: I withdraw and apologise, Madam Speaker. So one of the unexpected consequences of this will be that if a 17-year-old takes a car and dumps it down the road with his friend, that will be upped to the crime of aggravated robbery, because there are two people involved. The tariff case that says how we sentence an aggravated robbery says that we have to send them to prison—have to—for three years. A failed policy that’s been costing our nation billions of dollars that doesn’t and will not bring down the rate of offending—now, we know that; we know that. And yet—

Hon Member: Judges have discretion.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: No, not on tariff cases, sorry; that’s not how precedent works. Having practised criminal law, I can tell you that. The tariff case says—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will keep the Speaker out of the debate.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So we have a political party whose members’ dreams, in the midst of all that our nation is facing by way of complex challenges, all that we can fix, not child poverty—no, that’s not a priority for the National Party; not the housing crisis, not the pandemic, no. We just want to send people to prison for a little bit longer, knowing that it won’t actually bring down crime rates!

So the Green Party won’t support a policy like that. What we will support is investment in our communities, in whānau, in housing, in sustainable jobs, in public transport, and education, and inclusive education. We will invest in what will keep our communities safe, what will keep crime rates down, what will give us a thriving future that isn’t just politicking, that isn’t fearmongering. We will invest in what we know works, in evidence-based policy. So we do not commend this bill to the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to take a short call in relation to this bill. I don’t support the progression of this bill through the House, as I don’t believe that it’s the right way of addressing the issues identified. But I do believe that there have been some valid concerns identified, and I do believe that they deserve a response.

So I’d like to start with the problem identification itself. The member began by outlining this for us in terms of the fact that a carjacking is often hard to prove the offence of burglary because of the definition of theft within the definition of burglary, which includes the intent to permanently deprive a person of their possessions. The proposed change that the member is bringing today is to include unlawful taking within that definition. Now, the reason I think that this is problematic is that the criminal law ranks offences both on scale of the acts that have been committed and, secondly, on the intent or mens rea. It matches a particular actus reus and mens rea to define clearly and predictably the offences we criminalise. That categorisation also allows an appropriate scale of maximum penalties to exist alongside offences.

So this syncs quite well with what most people generally understand to be justice. It’s why we feel differently about someone spotting a bike in a school playground, riding it for a bit, and then leaving it there, versus how we feel about someone spotting a bike in a school playground, picking it up, riding around, taking it home, putting it in their garage, and keeping it there. What this bill proposes is to conflate two distinctly different mens rea components—

Erica Stanford: It’s about robbery with violence.

VANUSHI WALTERS: I will address that valid concern that you’ve raised about violence shortly, through the Chair. The intention to permanently deprive with the very different and much broader intent of unlawful taking—there is a conflation there. Those are two distinctly separate mens rea offences for a reason, and blurring the lines between the two offences results in a lack of clarity for New Zealanders, and may result in unintentional inclusion of other acts into the offence of burglary as well.

Now, I want to stop there and just acknowledge the member who’s brought the bill, her intervention. She was saying there’s violence as well; that’s absolutely true. There will be types of conversion that are so serious they should receive additional penalties—for example, where serious threats or assault and violence are present. I’d suggest there are two ways of addressing that; one, which the member and the chair of the Justice Committee have both addressed, is other penalties, so I suspect that one of the problems the member is trying to address is the scale of the penalty, but there may already be a solution to that. As the member herself has referenced, there are other sections within the Crimes Act that police can also charge under, including section 307A, threats of harm to people or property; section 306, threatening to kill or do grievous bodily harm; or section 193, assault with intent to injure. Then, of course, it’s up to the judge to decide the actual appropriate weight of the penalty.

There is another option as well, which I don’t think we have traversed yet, and it may be the more suitable one, and that’s to—oh, actually, the chair of the Justice Committee did refer to this as well; it’s to create a distinctly separate aggravated offence to cover this particular mens rea and actus reus. This is international best practice, and it’s actually already been done in Australia, where they inserted section 154C into the Crimes Act. The offence there is titled “Taking motor vehicle or vessel with assault or with occupant on board”. It carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. It would make much more sense to consider the valid issue that the member has raised as part of a broader policy process, considering it alongside other relevant parts of our Crimes Act, as this would be a more effective use of our legislative time. Thank you.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): I stand in support of this Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill, and I’m going tell the Speaker why. That’s because it reminded me straight away of a time in 2013 when I made the New Zealand women’s rifle team and we went to South Africa. We were told at that time to make sure that we locked our doors, to make sure that we did not at any stage wind our windows down, and to always be prepared to be hijacked, especially as we had firearms on board with us, ammunition, and we were a team full of women. It was quite enlightening to see the way that they behaved over there. And when I came here, back home, I was really quite grateful for the way that we behave here in New Zealand.

So when this bill first came out in April, when I first saw it, I thought, “Really? We can’t have that sort of problem here.” So I went about researching and investigating, because, really, if we’re going to introduce a bill like this, it’s got to be talking about and thinking about the victims of violent carjacking crime. What I found is this. This year, on Tuesday, 30 March, after a morning of crime, two suspects were arrested for carjacking a person at McDonald’s in Mount Roskill. On 4 January this year, a woman had her car carjacked at Foxton Beach. The car was written off by the offender. It was not insured, and through no fault of her own, she’s lost her mobility—her asset. On 6 May 2020, a carjacking occurred at the Whangārei service station with a five-week-old baby inside the vehicle at the time that it was taken. On 24 May 2017, a man was dragged from his vehicle by a suspect already on the run from police. Not only was he carjacked but when the offender reversed the vehicle, he also ran over the owner of that car.

But the following event that occurred on 18 November 2019 left me absolutely shaking my head, and excuse me, Madam Speaker, while I read this, because there’s a series of events here I don’t want to mislead or get wrong. A man named Dylan Brett attempted several carjackings on that day, 18 November 2019. He firstly jumped in front of a vehicle, forcing a driver to stop. Then he opened his driver’s door and told him to get out. The driver slammed the door and drove away. Not deterred, Dylan Brett then attempted to pull a driver from a second vehicle, but the driver resisted and the offender ran away. But the third attempt was successful. He carjacked a woman in her Nissan car in Christchurch. But, possibly like something straight out of The Goon Show, the offender drove off, leaving his co-offender running behind him. They later abandoned that car and then assaulted another man, carjacking his Toyota. They crashed the Toyota before accosting a fifth victim and carjacking her car.

But what I want to do is go back to the third victim, the first successful carjacking that day by Dylan Brett, the female victim who was torn from her car while her seatbelt was still on and was left bruised, confused, without a phone, without her keys or her car. She started to walk to the police station before a passer-by stopped and gave her a lift. Unlike some of the others, her car was found OK, and her wallet, her phone, and her keys were still there.

So moving back to this bill, it seems to me incomprehensible that this scenario of the victim having her car returned after a carjacking is actually what makes a successful prosecution difficult. Apparently, it’s hard to make out the intent of theft because of the need to prove that the intent was to permanently deprive a person of their asset. There is total disregard for the safety of people, of community, of newborn babies, or of even themselves. And if we’re able to amend the Crimes Act, then I think that we should. We would then be paying respect to the victims, all of those who experience violent carjacking crime.

If there are issues with the wording of this bill, then I suggest that it goes to select committee so that it can be sorted. The Labour Party, on the select committee, it’s full of lawyers. I would have thought that they would be competent enough to be able to address those issues and actually reword the bill to make it worthwhile for those victims. Or perhaps the National Party—they may make an announcement about an announcement that they’re going to do the same thing later on. Meanwhile, we’ll just commend this bill to the House.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I commend the previous speaker, Nicole McKee, for taking time to go through what was quite a litany of serious offences and evokes nothing but sympathy from everyone in this House for those circumstances. And, oh, that it would be so easy that we could stand in this House and pass a piece of legislation that would change any of that. The reality of it is it won’t. That offender has been caught, he will spend considerable time in prison—as he should do—for the protection of New Zealand society.

I used to train detectives at the Police College for some years. Quite a difficult part of training detectives was that the law was actually so complicated. If we wanted to trip them up, as instructors, we’d just give them a scenario and ask them to go through and do what we called a “criminal liability”, where they had to go through and try and select what the offence was and what the adequate charge would be. And, boy, it wasn’t easy, because when you went through the Crimes Act, most of the Crimes Act was full of add-ons. Generally, the Arms Act was actually worse, where every time there was an outrageous offence, someone would bring in—and I’m now learning that it would be in this House—an amendment like this, which would be very like another amendment, but you would end up with two offences, and it would just present nothing but confusion for these poor budding young detectives.

So when I came to this House, I was determined—and I know the author of this bill, Matt King; he and I had very similar careers and we got on well and we discussed this. There was an element of a solution looking for a problem. I did challenge him to say, “Do you know of anyone that avoided one minute of jail time? Do you know of one minute of avoiding of community service, or whatever, as a result of this law?” And I know the member is not here to defend himself, but he couldn’t—but he might do; it might do.

So what I will say is that there is something of an understanding needs to be required about how we arrive at this situation. Now, unlawful taking was actually something that was introduced; it was a lesser offence. It was actually really designed to deal with larrikin youths who did go out on a Saturday or Friday night—I know that when I was a young police officer up in Newlands, Johnsonville, my current electorate, it was nothing to see 20-odd cars taken up there in a night, joy riders—it was nothing like as bad as it is now; cars are just a little bit harder to steal than they were then. So it was really designed to be a lesser offence than theft. So it is quite interesting that we are trying to redefine an offence now that was actually meant to be a lesser offence.

Also, for some members, it would be very good to understand what “conversion” means, too. I see several speakers tonight have mentioned the word “conversion”. Conversion was always meant to apply to a situation where someone, perhaps, took a car for a test drive. It was given to them when they got in the car. There was no offence committed when they got into it, and, at some stage, when they intended to keep that car, that was when they converted the car to their own use. And that was a rental car—again, if you’d rented a car for a week, decided to keep it for two weeks, decided not to give it back, the time that you decided you weren’t giving it back, that was where you committed the offence of conversion. So this is an area, as I say, whenever I used to try to make it difficult for the detectives, then you would throw a question in around these circumstances.

So, going back to my original provision and my discussion with the original author of this bill—and well done, Ms Stanford, for taking this up on behalf of your ex-colleague—I go back to the previous speaker, Nicole McKee. It was a well-researched speech, but there will not be one minute of jail time that anyone will avoid from this bill not having been in place, and that is the test we really should apply.

I’m a great believer in the less definition around crimes, the better. In fact, something that my ACT colleagues have often spoken about is “do no harm”. And the more broad a defence is and a well-trained, well-directed judiciary who can actually take the facts of the case and it not to be quite so important around the definitions, and those who are going to be deciding on the charge—or, certainly, those who are deciding on the penalty—look at the facts of the case, as outlined by our colleague Nicole McKee, and look at those circumstances and apply the sentence based on the circumstances before them and not allow definitions. So I will not be supporting this bill to the House.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise to take a brief call on this matter. I believe I am one of the lawyers for whom the member Nicole McKee spoke earlier as being able to fix up this bill were it to go before the Justice Committee. So I actually want to go lawyer and take this through. Because I take the points of the previous speaker: the problem with this bill is it’s in search of a problem that doesn’t exist. Now, we all accept that carjacking is a pretty revolting crime. It is scary. It is often accompanied by violence. It often does lead to the damage to property. It is absolutely something on which we should be having a very hard line. But there’s hard lines already. If there’s one thing that I don’t think this country needs, it’s this House spending its time repeating the wheel, having a knee-jerk little bit of legislation that perhaps makes us feel good. It’s a sugar hit, and sugar hits are not good for any of us.

So what I want to look at quickly is just to recap on the definition here. We have a problem. We have a definition of a thing called robbery, which has 10 years; that’s theft with violence or threats of violence. Then we have this other thing called vehicle conversion, section 226 in the Crimes Act, which has the same penalty as theft, which is seven years. So how are we going to make up those three years, is, I think, the thought here. Because I think conversion in section 226 is primarily considered to be joyriding, a crime that involves taking a parked car on the street and being an idiot. Now, that’s a very different thing from a carjacking. It does not, obviously, involve the same degree of harm.

But when one is looking as a prosecutor, as I used to be, at someone who has suffered a carjacking, and one is looking at the defendant and wondering what to charge, there are a plethora of options within the Crimes Act already. There is absolutely no need for us to do anything else. So, let me take you through it, if you don’t mind. The first point is that we have the option of co-charging other offences. So you can charge for the conversion, which is the taking without intent to permanently deprive—because this is, for example, someone who is going to junk the car at the end of the ride and run—we can then charge for any violence. So violence charges start with a penalty of one year for common assault and it rises upward from there. So we’ve now got a crime that’s worth seven years and we’ve got a crime that’s worth one year.

Then on top of that, if you have only threats of violence, for example, under the Crimes Act actually a threat of violence is also an assault. So you can still charge an assault even if there is only a threat of violence. Then if you’ve got a worse assault, you can have, for example, the charge of injuring with intent. So when Ms McKee was talking about the poor woman who was hauled from her car and damaged by the seatbelt, it seems to me that is an obvious case of injuring with intent, which carries a sentence of I think it’s around five years, from memory. If then there has been an occasion when during that carjacking the driver or the baby, in the example that we were given, is confined in that car deliberately, however brief that might be, that is the offence of kidnapping. Even a brief deprivation of liberty is kidnapping. Police are adept at charging it. Kidnapping carries the penalty of 14 years.

So, in conclusion, when you are then in a situation where you have looked at your charges, if our police officer, our prosecutor, has forgotten the possibility of co-charging for violence or kidnapping or threats of violence, that police officer can still, at the sentencing stage, look to the Sentencing Act in section 9 and they can look at the aggravating factors. If an offence involves actual or threatened violence or the actual or threatened use of a weapon, that is an aggravating feature. We can look at the extent of the harm, the loss, or the damage, and we can also look at any known vulnerability of the victim.

In conclusion, this is a sugar hit. This is a short-term, unnecessary piece of legislation, and I do not commend it to this House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What disappointment we hear from the other side of the House tonight from this soft-on-crime Government, which isn’t prepared to make the tough decisions and actually take action against serious issues. If any of those members were actually good constituency MPs, they would be listening to their constituents and hearing what the issues are that are being faced, and they would know that this is the type of piece of legislation which the public expect Parliament to be addressing. They expect Parliament to be addressing issues such as carjacking and the violence that people are seeing on our streets in New Zealand.

But this Government is soft on crime, supported by a Green Party that hasn’t seen a crime they don’t want to decommission and take out of the Crimes Act yet. They want to get rid of jails and everything else. This is a soft-on-crime Government.

This bill actually addresses a very serious issue where we are having violent carjacking taking place in our community. The law does need changing to ensure that there are appropriate penalties and a message sent that that is unacceptable in New Zealand.

So the National Party will always stand on the side of victims of crime. I commend this bill to the house.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker. No softness on this side of the House. We’re here to bring out some of the hardliners, and so, all the way from Wellington’s south-east, here we are today.

Labour is not supporting this bill tonight, as many of my colleagues have already said. So that’s fairly clear. The reasons are fairly clear, too. I do want to commend the member in charge, Erica Stanford, who’s just left the House—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! A member may not refer to the absence of another member.

PAUL EAGLE: Sure. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I have had some time—many years—working in and for the New Zealand Police, serving New Zealanders, and it wouldn’t be unfair to say that that was probably one of my most interesting and favourite roles in terms of dealing with communities on the front line, on a whole range of different issues. The best part of the role, which is how the New Zealand Police sum it up now, is that “prevention first” mantra—so doing the stuff now that that side of the House are quite opposed to, in many ways.

I’m always stunned at how you implement initiatives that say this will prevent crimes even happening, yet when they’re put up, they’re deemed to be soft, and all the accusations come out. That’s saddening because, if you talk to those on the front line, those in police national headquarters who have done their time, they’ll often say, actually, that these are some of the things that should have and could have happened many, many years ago, and that’s my memories of working for New Zealand Police. There’s nothing soft with them; they take things seriously. They are some of the best men and women that New Zealand has put together and put on our front line, but there’s also those behind the scenes that do the mahi and do a whole lot of the work that needs to be done to free up the front line, so to speak, which often these get compared to when we start talking about statistics.

So I’ve had a brief look at this, and robbery involving motor vehicles is certainly at an alarming rate, and, look, that’s upsetting. I know, having had a vehicle stolen myself—or someone’s decided to use it for some other purpose, other than take another car, but they chose mine—that it was stressful at the time, and, luckily it was found in the process. Apart from some damaged locks and the ignition, I’m probably one of the lucky ones who got them back, and that was done by, actually, someone reporting the vehicle to the police and getting a phone call. I thought, actually, the whole thing was quite efficient, but a crime did happen. But I don’t think that this bill is going to properly address the problem.

So I agree with the concept behind the bill. I certainly think, however, that the changes envisaged to the Crimes Act will not achieve the stated objectives.

I looked at the general policy statement—the GPS—where the member argues that it is difficult to make out the offence of robbery in the case of a motor vehicle because the current definition requires an intent to permanently deprive the victim of their vehicle. And to rectify this, the member has proposed clarifying the current definition of robbery, proposing that aside from theft, the words “or unlawful taking” be added. But the problem is that the bill provides no definition of what unlawful taking is, thereby not offering any clarification at all. There’s no reference to where the definition of “unlawful taking” can be found, and that is really just the start of—really sums up for me—why Labour is not supporting this bill. In my look through it, I don’t think it stacks up and to be worthy.

But I have commended the member. I do congratulate her for being the winner for getting it out of the box. But tonight’s not the night, and I do not commend the bill. Kia ora.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I rise unable to support this bill, and I did look at the bill with an open mind. As a lawyer, I work in employment law and I don’t work in criminal law, but I did what I would consider due diligence. I thought about the purpose of Matt King’s bill, and, again, I congratulate Erica Stanford on winning the ballot. It’s a pity it was for this bill, because I’m pretty sure that she has things that are important to her that would have been good things to come out of this ballot. Unfortunately, when I looked at the bill and I looked at its intent, its intent is to deal, it looks like, with carjacking. Its grievance, its mischief, is that a person who converts a car aggressively—violently—is not actually treated the same as a person who steals a car with an intent to deprive the owner of it permanently and does so violently. That does seem to be the common-sense thrust of what Matt King was trying to achieve.

The reality is, when you read the statute, the definition of “theft” is one which by its very purpose is to encapsulate the intent to deprive permanently. Conversion is something that has been actually defined so that it doesn’t require that, and they both hold exactly the same penalty. So I ask people at home, when they look at this, to actually just look it up. Basically, the amount is a maximum penalty of seven years. That, as my colleagues have said, does change depending on what other offences have happened at the same time. So if there is the taking of something, as is proposed by this bill—by the way, absolutely no connection with cars in this bill, so it could be the taking of anything—and it’s taken in a non-intentional way, but violently, the actual violence is what we’re really most worried about. So if it’s something trivial that is taken, but it’s taken in a violent way, then the police are very likely going to focus on the violence, as they should. If a car is taken in a carjacking, the police are likely to recognise the significance of that—and I certainly do—and they will be adding the conversion charge to other charges, including violence. So these things all add up, and that’s a really sensible approach to the law.

The Crimes Act was actually created in 1961, and I take the point that my friend Greg O’Connor made that, actually, we have had a lot of little changes in law, and they often happen through members’ bills and agitation and people using dog-whistling kinds of tactics, like talking about “soft on crime”. That’s how they happen—they’re appealing to people. But, actually, what they do is they undermine the structure of an Act, and while there will be issues in something like the Crimes Act as things change, what we really need is a thoughtful and structural approach to such things, so that when we review the Crimes Act, we catch everything.

When I went through, I could see other sections in the Crimes Act which refer to and depend upon the idea of theft. So, for example, there’s a whole connection there to burglary. You go down to burglary and it’s a 10-year offence, because that’s actually going into a premises, deciding that you’re going to do something that would be an imprisonable offence. That could be conversion, it could be theft, but those things are all defined, and they’re actually created in the statute with a lot of thought. So what you don’t want to do is meddle with that and undermine it, because there could well be unintended consequences.

What you want is a sensible look at the entire law and a structural, thoughtful change, if necessary. What you don’t want is little changes that might make you feel good, and my friend Emily Henderson talked about a sugar hit. You don’t want those things, because they won’t achieve your purpose. What they will do is undermine certainty and they will stop the police doing their job, which is to focus on the actual mischief in the particular situation, and that will vary. That is why I cannot support this bill going further. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Erica Stanford—five minutes in reply.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you. I won’t take that long, Madam Speaker.

Interestingly, in the Crimes Act there is a thoughtful and structured approach: it’s called robbery. It’s theft with violence—accompanying violence. It’s nice and it’s tidy and it’s structured and it’s well-thought-out, and the crime of carjacking would fit perfectly into that if it wasn’t for this small anomaly. All we’ve had from the other side of the House tonight is misunderstandings of the law from multiple speakers trying to get around the fact that they just don’t want to support what is a nice, tidy, easy-to-understand bill that makes sense that brings carjacking under robbery.

I had a short conversation with my good friend Matt King from up North, who rang me in a little bit of a state to tell me that he has never had a conversation with Greg O’Connor about this particular bill. Actually, the case is that many police officers and many prosecutors have come to him with this exact problem, saying, “We’re having to do all of these other things just to try and cobble together a number of charges, which wastes our time and which takes more of the courts’ time. There are multiple documents, there are multiple court appearances, there’s haggling. It would be nice and tidy and simple and easy if we could just put it under robbery, because that’s where it fits.”

Instead, we had multiple speeches from the other side of the House confusing things, and talking about conversion, which requires permission. Golriz Ghahraman, who just wants to give hugs to criminals, was talking about the fact that if there were two people, then that would amount to robbery, which is completely untrue.

All we were trying to do with this bill was to take a situation like stealing someone’s wallet, giving them a punch, and running off with it. Clear, easy to understand—robbery. But in the case of doing exactly the same thing with someone’s car, but dumping it somewhere 200 kilometres away, you cannot prove theft and it doesn’t fall under robbery. You end up with prosecutors having to cobble together multiple charges, which never reach the same threshold, as much as they like to say that it will—never reaching that same maximum sentencing of 10 years, wasting the courts’ time, spending a lot more money, and it would be much more easy, simple, and straightforward if we could just bring it into robbery. It’s not difficult to understand.

Unlawful taking is already defined in the Crimes Act, as Greg O’Connor mentioned, so it would have been very nice. Any possible stumbling blocks we could have taken to select committee, as Nicole McKee said, and worked through those. But, unfortunately, because we are dealing with a soft-on-crime Government, as is always the case, those victims of carjacking will have to wait for change of Government.

Bills

Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill

First Reading

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): I move, That the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Education and Workforce Committee to consider the bill.

The main purpose of this bill is to restrict and regulate the sale, supply, and importation of synthetic urine in order to prevent synthetic urine being used in New Zealand to deceive all aspects of urine drug-testing. Nothing in this bill is intended to prohibit importation, supply, or acquisition of synthetic urine for legitimate purposes such as scientific, research, or industrial use.

If I can start with the obvious, I suppose when you have a name like “Synthetic Urine” in a bill, it is going to provoke some comment. I noticed when the bill was pulled from the ballot, Stuff and, I think, Luke Malpass put the headline “Doocey Taking the Piss”, and I accept that. Luke Malpass is actually from my home town of Rangiora. It’s a good, dry sense of Cantabrian humour, so I accept those gibes. But let us be very serious: this is a serious issue in New Zealand.

How do we have retailers openly selling synthetic urine but, not only that, openly advertising it as a way to cheat a workplace drug-test? Because I tell you what, our family will go to work tomorrow, and our neighbours, our work colleagues, and our friends. If they go to a workplace tomorrow, maybe with heavy machinery, and someone in that team has been smoking cannabis the night before or the morning of and passes a workplace drug-test because of synthetic urine, that could potentially kill someone we love. That could potentially hurt someone we love.

Now, I’ll accept it’s not that long ago I knew nothing about this, and that’s the beauty of being an electorate MP. Everyone in this House will know you do your constituent clinics for the day, you’ve got seven or eight appointments, you come in, you look through the notes and go, “Really? Is this taking the piss?”. Then they turn up, and then you actually think, “Hold on, this person’s actually quite credible.”, and that happened to me, because it was a constituent in my electorate of Waimakariri who came and met me.

He owns a large agricultural contracting business. He found out one of his staff passed a drug test using synthetic urine. He was alarmed, and then someone in his workplace showed him the websites where you can actually go into retail shops in New Zealand, or go online. Not only is it synthetic urine, but it’s warming pads so you can warm it. There’s actually phalluses so you can pass the urine through it as well. This is quite a comprehensive system that allows you to cheat a workplace drug-test. He was outraged, and I could imagine why.

The really disappointing thing is he genuinely, but naively, went to the media, and do you know what? This is critical of the media, but do you know what the media did? The first thing they said was “Oh, you’ve clearly got a drug problem in your workplace. We’ll report that.” That guy had spent his whole life building that workplace up, and now, because some person that he had trusted had let him down, his whole reputation of his agricultural contracting business was going to go down the drain.

So he couldn’t go down that route, so what he did—I mean, it’s serious. He called the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). They said it was nothing to do with them and to call the Ministry for Primary Industries. He called the Ministry for Primary Industries, and they said, “Nothing to do with us. Call the Ministry of Health”, so he called the Ministry of Health, who said, “Nothing to do with us. Go to the Department of Labour”. So he went to the Department of Labour, and they said, “Nothing to do with us.” So he called WorkSafe; he still hasn’t heard back from them. Then he went to the Department of Internal Affairs, who put him back in touch with MBIE, right at the start of the circle again. Finally, MBIE advised him that it’s not illegal to sell this product, so MBIE suggested “lobbying Government through MP” to make it illegal.

MBIE told him to go to his local MP, and that is the beauty of the New Zealand democratic system. You can pitch up to your MP in your local neighbourhood, get them on board, the MP goes to—and I want to acknowledge the Office of the Clerk legislative counsel, because when you ring them up and say, “Oh look, I’d like to put a member’s bill together around synthetic urine.”, they’re probably thinking, “Really?” But they put a lot of work into this and came up with the format and the legislation in the bill that’s proposed today around the regulation. So I want to acknowledge them.

Basically, it’s now in the ballot, and it gets pulled, which is fantastic. This person can now have their day to say, do we want to live in a country where retailers, because of profit, openly want to sell—and look, go online and have a look at these retailers. I will advise you just to be slightly cautionary, because some confronting images pop up. Go into COSMIC, the Hemp Store, Wicked Habits, VAPEVAPE. They’ve all got retail shops, all online, and they’re openly selling it. How can you openly sell a product and it says online, “Use this to go and cheat a drug test.”? That puts everyone at risk. Where is their duty of care? I just find that absolutely outrageous. How can we have this going on?

I do note that other jurisdictions internationally have banned synthetic urine for this use—the United States as an example. So other countries—[Interruption] Oh, the Hon Michael Woodhouse has just googled one of those.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: That’s something I’ll never unsee.

MATT DOOCEY: No—no. He’s looking at it now. So that is—

Hon Peeni Henare: On his work phone.

MATT DOOCEY: Ha, ha! Drug test tomorrow in Parliament—everyone’s scurrying down to COSMIC tonight! Hey, look, let’s have a bit of fun with this. Like I said, in the name, it does, but this is a very serious issue, I believe, because, in the end, what party in Parliament wants a workplace where there is a legal product to circumvent the drug tests?

I did go back to this person and say, “Is there much chance that this can be picked up?” Now, it’s interesting. I spoke to The Drug Detection Agency CEO, Kirk Hardy, who has come out in support of this. Just one drug detection agency alone—and there’s a lot of them in New Zealand—and they’re saying, on average, 1 percent of tests pick up synthetic urine. So, for them alone, it’s several hundred people a year that are testing positive for synthetic urine.

Not all testing equipment is of the sensitivity to pick up synthetic urine, and of course, like any game, once that product gets caught, they’ll change the component of it. I did ask why not do saliva testing, and he said that saliva testing does not give you the accuracy and the effectiveness of urine testing, and that he would not be moving towards it. That’s what I’ve heard from the construction sector as well, who also back this bill as well.

So what we have is one of those issues where just a genuine person encounters it and thinks, “Well, this isn’t right.” In fact, I haven’t met anyone yet who thinks it’s actually right to sell synthetic urine to pass a drug test and to retail it like that as well.

I started my speech to say that I wasn’t looking to outlaw it. It did surprise me a bit, but when I did my research, there is legitimate use—for instance, primarily for laboratory calibration of screening equipment needed for urine examination—and it goes on a lot of specific industrial and research uses as well. So I think this bill is quite well-crafted, and basically just stops the ability for someone to sell synthetic urine with the intent of the purchaser passing or cheating a workplace drug-test, and for that person to be doing it themselves.

I do hope this bill will get support tonight. I think it’s one of those ones that we will take to select committee and it will have legs of its own. It’s a big issue that I think we need to address, and why should we have this on sale in New Zealand? Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I’d just like to thank Matt Doocey for the opportunity to spend the evening talking about workplace health and safety, which is a really important issue. Before I go into the specifics of the bill, what I want to do, though, is just talk about the broader context in terms of workplace drug-testing and what it actually aims to achieve, and then think about whether this bill actually takes us further in that direction. If you go to Employment New Zealand’s website and you type in “drug testing”, you come up with their “Drugs, alcohol and work” page, and one of the key points it emphasises there is that, under law, both employers and employees have a duty to ensure that their workplace is safe. Then they go on to talk about using drugs and alcohol can lead to employee impairment at work, and they talk about some of the effects of impairment: poor concentration, carelessness, risk-taking behaviour, and errors in judgment. Then they also talk about how alcohol and drug use not only affects work performance and productivity, but you end up with higher rates of injury, fatalities, and absenteeism. So the key function of testing for drugs at work is to make sure that we’ve got a safe workplace, but it comes down to the impairment factor on that and, basically, the fact that that impairment then can go on and compromise the safety of the employee themselves, their fellow workers, and members of the general public.

So just thinking, though: who can test? Is it just something that any employer can request of the employee—and the situation there is no. Generally, an employer can only really ask an employee to have alcohol or drug testing if it’s a condition of their appointment and if it’s in the employment agreement or if it’s a workplace policy. So, basically, Employment New Zealand recommends that employers thinking about drug testing their employees seek legal advice because, basically, what you’ve got to weigh up are the risks and benefits versus the privacy and invasion of privacy for individual employees. Basically, if they’re thinking about it, why they might be doing it is to protect the safety of employees or the general public—for example, if the employee works in a safety-sensitive area or if their work directly impacts the safety of others, other colleagues or members of the public—and you’ve also got to balance that requirement about safety versus not creating unreasonable intrusion into the privacy of employees.

But then you’ve got other issues that you’ve got to consider if you are going to be looking at workplace drug-testing, and that is when you test. So the options there are you can look at pre-employment tests, random drug-testing, testing on suspicion of use, or after you’ve had a near miss or an accident. I think looking at safety-sensitive workplaces, pre-employment testing often can give a signal from the employer to the employee that they’re serious about managing the impacts of alcohol and drug risk within the workplace and so putting something in the job vacancy gives that signal to that potential employee that the employer is very concerned about managing those risks.

But then once you actually are employed, then you’ve got to go down the route of considering whether you’re looking at random testing or whether you’re actually looking at very specific testing in certain situations. Again, Employment New Zealand talks about, you know—their sense is that doing it for specific purposes is probably better than just doing random suspicion-less testing on everybody. So thinking about that, specific purposes, if you find somebody that looks like they’re impaired at work, that might be a situation where you might want to test or if you’ve actually had a near miss or been involved in a workplace accident.

Then there’s a range of options for testing and so urine testing—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Can I just draw member’s attention to the purpose of this bill, which is to restrict and regulate the sale, supply, and importation of synthetic urine, and invite the member to come back in her first reading speech to the purpose of the bill.

Dr LIZ CRAIG: Sure, OK. Thank you, Madam Speaker. So what I’m sort of laying out is the framework around the testing, but then we come back down to what the effectiveness of the bill is and where this bill would sit within that, because what this bill does is it aims to create a framework whereby the Director-General of Health can place restrictions around the importation, supply, and acquisition of synthetic urine, and allowing them to authorise those people that can bring that into the country, import, and make it available for specific purposes. So that’s about research, testing, etc. But the issue we’ve got is that urine is only one of those elements that can be tested for in workplace drug-testing. You’ve also got the options of saliva, you’ve got the options of blood, and you’ve got the options of hair.

The other issue we’ve got is if we go down this route and we do take that time to ban the availability of synthetic urine in the marketplace, the question there is we haven’t got a real sense at the moment of what the underlying prevalence of people faking their drug test with synthetic urine is versus just going in and saying to a mate or to a family member, “OK, can you please provide some urine for the purpose?” versus there’s a whole lot of detox products that are available on the same websites as those that are offering synthetic urine for sale. So, basically, the question is: what proportion of behaviour is going to be displaced if you end up with taking people away from using synthetic urine and moving on to detox products? The other issue is, basically, that active drug-testing also can create situations where there is the question around trust between the employer and the employee.

If we’re getting rid of just the synthetic urine, then the question comes back to: what are we doing about impairment? Often with these drug tests—for example, if you’re looking at, say, cannabis within a drug test with urine, that can be tested and positive in the system for up to four weeks when tested by urine. So the question is: if we’re then, again, banning synthetic urine products, what does that do about that whole focus in the employment situation around impairment and the culture of the workplace where the workers are identifying impairment among themselves or among others? Because I think it’s really important that we create that culture in the workplace that doesn’t focus just on a single drug test, but it focuses on having that shared employer-employee relationship, focusing on impairment and identifying the reasons for impairment in the workplace that can lead to injury or accident. In that situation, there’s a lot of other factors that may not be picked up by particular urine testing or other drug testing. For example, fatigue, stress—you’re looking at alcohol use and looking at other drugs that are not picked up by that testing.

So I think the issue we’ve got with this bill is that the Director-General of Health could go to a lot of trouble in terms of banning the importation and having a very narrow regime about who can import it for particular purposes. Then we think that what we’ve done is we’ve actually eliminated the risk of drug use in the workplace when all we may have done is potentially displaced that from, basically, the use of synthetic urine to other detox products, to then using friends or other colleagues to provide a sample. Yet we’ve then not then gone back and focused on that relationship between the employer and the employee and creating a positive environment where we can actually really focus on the particular sources of impairment that we get in the workplace. So, basically, I think what we need to be doing is stepping back and saying, “What is our broader approach to safety in the workplace?”, and then focusing on those factors in addition to drug impairment, alcohol, fatigue, and working out how we work together to identify where those systems are.

So basically, in summary, I think that this bill and the proposal that it’s doing would put in place a complex regulatory regime in terms of who can import and who can make the products available. But what it wouldn’t do, potentially, is address the underlying issues around impairment, and it wouldn’t make it any safer in terms of thinking through how that works, because I think, again, coming back to just looking at the various options for testing, if you look at urine testing, cannabis can be in the system for up to four weeks—which means that you may be getting a positive test there, but you’re actually not identifying impairment—methamphetamines, three to five days; other opiate-based, four to five days.

So again, it’s that focus on where we are going to put our effort in terms of ensuring we’ve got health and safety in the workplace. So I think where we do need to go, though, is making sure we have that focus on how we come together and look at impairment and how we can reduce the impacts of alcohol and drugs in the workplace. So I’m unable to support this bill. Thank you.

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

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is the second member’s bill by a member from the National Party that focuses in on a very narrow—well, for tonight—point of criminal law seeking to impose further criminalisation and further sanction for very specific types of acts in our justice system. It’s a little bit confusing that these are the hopes and dreams of the National Party members in their top wish-list.

So it’s about synthetic urine and we’re talking about authorisation of a scheme that allows the Director-General of Health to issue, revoke, or expire authorisation. Individuals who import or supply, or acquire synthetic urine will be liable for fines not exceeding $2,000. Body corporates will be liable for fines not exceeding $2,500.

The Green Party, and I think everyone in this House and probably across our great nation, is becoming more and more well versed in our focus when it comes to drug reform, which is harm reduction not further criminalisation, not further sanction, and not further imprisonment, because those things have failed, in particular when it comes to drug law reform. Surely, the reason that an employer would want to reduce the use of illegal drugs by employees while at the workplace, and thereby test to deter people from people from being at work or in places of employment whilst under the influence of illegal drugs, is to reduce harm and impairment. This bill does nothing to that end, because we know that further sanctions will do nothing to that end, because all of the data has told us that, all of the experts have told us that, and it’s really time to stop ignoring the evidence. What would be better policy is if we put effort, time, energy, and resource into addressing drug dependency when it is harmful, to ensure that we are catching impairment and helping people to access help to reduce the causes of drug offending.

Now, these fines are high. When you look at the range of fines that we can get for, for example, criminalised traffic offences, they are about $400 to $1,000. These are high, and in New Zealand, just to look at one of our biggest social problems, we are the second most incarcerated population per capita in the OECD. In New Zealand, people actually go to prison for unpaid fines. We actually have people being massively harmed in prison—we know that’s what happens. We have their whānau and their community harmed for unpaid fines.

We know that most drug testing takes place in the construction industry, and we know that the construction industry has a high population of Māori in it. We know that so too does our criminal justice system target Māori. We know that imprisonment rates are far, far higher when—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I’ve done this once before in this debate, and I’m going to again remind the House and this member to stick to the purpose of this bill, which is to restrict and regulate the sale, supply, and importation of synthetic urine. I would very much like the member to address the purpose of this bill.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So to sanction people for using synthetic urine, looking at it in the context of where it is most likely to occur, which is in industries that do drug testing—which the construction industry is one—and looking at the populations that are most likely to be fined and sanctioned by our criminal justice system, which is the purpose of this bill, we know that there will be certain demographics that will be most harshly impacted by the purpose of this bill and by the sanctions of this bill. We know that there will be certain demographics—and they are Māori and they are most likely to be male—that will be harmed by further sanctions, rather than resource being put in addressing drug problems. For that reason, this is a bad bill.

This proposes a bad law. It proposes an archaic approach that we’ve seen fail over and over again, and I think that we can all agree we’d rather rely on what works. It’s time to be little bit more forward thinking or, rather, practical about drug law policy. We don’t, as the Green Party, support yet another way to sanction people rather than to help support them reduce the harm that illegal drugs may cause.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to rise and speak on the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill. I’d like to say it’s a good wee bill, but it’s not.

There is no evidence that the use of synthetic urine to pass drug tests is a widespread problem in New Zealand, so the bill appears to be, again, a solution looking for a problem. I think there’s three main points that illustrate this. Firstly, Newshub reported that in one particular workplace last year, despite hundreds of workers being tested, only one person was found to have produced or used fake urine to provide a sample—one. Secondly, it looks as if there haven’t been any employment cases in New Zealand relating to this particular issue. Thirdly, I think that it’s also important to note that where a worker who has legitimately been tested has been found to use a synthetic urine product, they can already be justifiably dismissed in the workplace.

So no one is saying that the genuine impairment that results from drug and alcohol use in the workplace isn’t important or that that impairment isn’t of concern, but relying on drug tests as a means by which to uncover this impairment and relying on drug tests which are ropey, at best, as a means by which to expose this type of impairment just simply isn’t very robust. As my colleague who has just taken her seat has said, it’s often also not very fair. So let’s be clear: drug testing at work mainly exists as a pretty hit-and-miss method of deterrent, which this bill is now seeking to prop up, instead of looking at actual ways—actual, genuine ways—of minimising drug impairment in the workplace.

Thinking about drug testing in general, we know that most testing doesn’t test for a large number of drugs. We know that most workplace testing in New Zealand, the threshold for a positive test for the drugs that they do actually test for is so low that the mere presence of any drug, regardless of how it might or might not impact on impairment or workplace performance, would be considered a breach, and that that actually has real consequences to real life people.

We also know that drugs vary greatly in the time that they remain detectable in a person’s system. Cannabis, for instance, can be detected weeks after use and long after any impairment or long after any impairment that involves consideration of workplace performance has worn off. Actually, if the member who’s sponsoring this bill wanted to improve health and safety at work, as he’s claimed quite vigorously from his seat, then this bill wouldn’t actually be the vehicle for it.

I think we can all agree that we certainly don’t want to see other more dangerous methods of circumventing testing, like detoxification kits or people consuming huge amounts of water to flush out the system, start creeping into the testing system. Ultimately, there are other really accessible methods of actually faking urine samples, like simply just using a clean sample from someone else.

So, bearing these things in mind, as I said, drug testing, I believe, remains quite a ropey methodology, quite a ropey tool, to combat impairment. We’d have, certainly on this side of the House, I think it fair to say, preferred to have seen some more focus on policy and more focus on training and empowering employees rather than these threats of punitive measures.

So we oppose this bill both from a workplace relations perspective and also from a health perspective. The scale of the problem the bill seeks to solve has barely been demonstrated. The administrative resources to set up a regime to manage an issue we barely know the scale of just doesn’t make any sense. The efficacy of drug testing currently in use by employers is itself very debateable.

So, in short, there are much better ways to keep our workplaces safe, happy, and productive. There are many, many more ways that we should be advancing this, and much more aspirational ways that we should be conceiving of this issue. In and of itself, this bill is punitive, difficult to enforce, unlikely to address the real underlying problems, and likely to exacerbate other important problems as well. So, for these very reasons, we do not support this bill to progress further, and I do not commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to take a call on the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill. ACT opposes this bill not because we don’t care about drug use in the workplace or we don’t think drugs are bad, but because we don’t think this is the bill to solve this problem.

The assertion is that employees are using synthetic urine to cheat drug tests at work, and if this was rampant, we may have a different view. Drugs are a problem in New Zealand and the way we deal with them differs depending on which side of the fence you sit and the experience in life you’ve had. I’m interested to hear tonight about the various examples down south, because it’s very hard to find details and actual numbers recorded in New Zealand. How many tested positive with synthetic urine? Making laws based on anecdotes is fraught with danger. It’s a bit like blaming feral cats’ urine for killing dolphins. We need evidence.

Health and safety is a top priority for all businesses. Keeping their workers fit and healthy is in their best interests as well as their employees’. There are many avenues available to employers to guard against this issue of being drug-impaired at work: having a culture of trust and knowing your employees; having good managers or supervisors who can deal with potential issues and report to those who need to know where things can get sorted. It isn’t difficult to identify people who both take drugs regularly and are being affected by drug taking. As a secondary school teacher, I could walk into any classroom, or any house, for that matter, and point out very accurately the students who use drugs, mainly marijuana. They think they’re fooling you, but they’re not. I would suggest that any employee desperate enough to carry around a bottle of synthetic urine just in case they got tested would be easily identified. They obviously have a problem, and should have been identified well before any action was required.

The hiring process for all businesses is stringent. Criminal histories are asked about, and a police vetting service is available if an employer wants that security. All individual employment agreements have a provision about drugs at work. The ramifications are clearly explained on the contract, and from the businesses I speak with, including my own, staff are constantly reminded of what would happen.

In my own business industry, synthetic urine isn’t and hasn’t been a problem. Prior to this bill being introduced, I’d heard about it, but never really took much notice of what it was. The technicalities that would arise with the addition of a synthetic urine accusation to an employee would further embolden the no-win, no-pay lawyers, who would relish another set of reasons for a defence. Specific protocols, privacy issues, even race has been brought up in cases overseas. Especially today, when the business owner is up against it, the personal grievance process will become an even bigger rort than it often is already. ACT opposes this bill.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak this evening on the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill. I’d just like to start by thanking Mr Doocey for introducing me to some information and images that I can never unsee or unknow! I’d like to also apologise to my IST department for the use of my computer in accessing the information that I can now never unsee or unknow. I now know all about products like Monkey Whizz, which is available in dehydrated and hydrated forms, and I’ve also been introduced to the ScreenyWeeny, which is available in multiple different colours.

But, really, this is a serious issue, although I jest, because what we’re looking at is a bill which seeks to restrict access to synthetic urine, and working on the assumption that (1) we have a significant problem with cheating workplace urine tests, and (2) the second assumption is that cheats cheat with synthetic urine and, therefore, that banning synthetic urine will make workplaces safer. There’s a couple of issues that I have with that, because I actually see that the key problem is actually impairment at work. I think what we’re all trying to achieve is a safe workplace, and a safe workplace is going to be achieved by identifying impairment rather than using testing, which is significantly flawed, and experts do agree in many situations that they are significantly flawed in detecting drugs at a level which cause impairment. And, actually, impairment’s the issue.

So I would argue that we all know that the more safety sensitive the workplace the higher the risk of impairment causing increased accidents. So it is really, really important. So, moving to my point that identifying impairment isn’t necessarily achieved well by urine testing, I’d just give the example that I, for example, could trigger a positive result by taking a couple of Panadeine for a headache. And Panadeine, as we’re aware, contains codeine in small doses and used to be available over the counter. I could even have a large slice of poppy seed cake, which is slightly ridiculous because although I might feel bloated, I wouldn’t necessarily be impaired.

And we are looking at a genuine problem. We do have concerns around the drug testing positive of the occasional cannabis user, who will still be showing a positive result three to four days after actually using cannabis, which, whilst we would never support the use of cannabis before going into a workplace, you can’t argue that they’re going to be impaired at that point. So, for me, banning synthetic urine won’t solve the problem. The problem is actually easily gamed, if you like, by the user by, for example, just using urine from a producer, and I actually am surrounded by, I hope, suppliers of healthy urine. It’s really not hard to find, and unfortunately the banning of synthetic urine won’t stop the problems.

So what we’re looking at here is a core problem that we need to identify impairment at work. This bill doesn’t do that. Over this side of the House, we find ourselves feeling that this bill doesn’t solve what actually isn’t a really significant problem and it doesn’t address what is a problem. So I’m sorry to say that, although I really fully support the intent of making workplaces safer and the intent to remove drugs from our workplaces, I don’t feel that this bill would achieve that, and so I can’t commend it to the House.

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini): Fa‘afetai lava, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill. I also want to acknowledge the member Mr Doocey. I think this is probably my second time taking a call on a different member’s bill—quite a blessed man to have his bill pulled. I just want to acknowledge the purpose of this bill, as well: to address that some employers may be concerned about the use of synthetic urine to pass a test, also the use to pass workplace drug tests that reduces the risk for employers and employees, in terms of workplace accidents, and also trying to address the advertisement of these products, which the previous member, Sarah Pallett, has also mentioned. The bill itself is two parts and 15 clauses, so not a long bill, but I just want to acknowledge the intention.

However, just like my other colleagues have already mentioned, I just want to acknowledge that there are already drug-testing agencies that are trained to detect synthetic urine, such as that of The Drug Detection Agency—or TDDA—that have also confirmed that they are able to train their testers in terms of listening to a sample when they are pouring into a container, making a differentiation between normal and synthetic urine, also looking at temperature, as well, between 33 and 38 degrees Celsius, also acknowledge that, you know, you’ve got those warmers that come with those other kits. But other than that, there is another lever where, if there is some sort of discrepancy on those two levers, they can send it to an accredited lab that can also check on the composition and integrity of the urine sample itself.

I guess, as my experience with drug testing—not an employee or an employer sort of scenario, but as a sports doctor with athletes, elite athletes that get drug tested quite a lot, I go in with the athlete, with the facilitator, because we are aware of these sort of kits that people use, to make sure that athletes are not bypassing drug testing. And, again, it is quite a sort of secure sort of process. And, again, there are other levers which we can use to detect any other synthetic urine or other measures that they’ll be using to bypass testing.

I acknowledge that the Green Party, not only them but the ACT Party member, have mentioned harm reduction and impairment. And those are the two things that I think are really important. When we look at testing of our employees, it is, like the member from the ACT side has said, making sure that there is a safe but also open and trustworthy environment. Having these punitive measures where it is not actually looking at the issue of impairment, those are the things that can cause problems in the workplace.

I look at employment cases. We haven’t seen any employment cases regarding the use of synthetic urine in New Zealand. And also seeing the different ways that if we were to set up this authorisation regime to deal with this issue, given the lack of evidence of gaming in the workplace, experts think this is not going to sort the issue, as well.

There are other ways to bypass the system, like our previous member said. You can always borrow urine from some sort of member—

Hon Member: Happy to help!

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA: Ha, ha! Again, there are other ways that accredited lab tests are able to differentiate this, as well.

So I want to acknowledge the different reasons why we oppose this. And given that there is no evidence of cases, and that it is more about impairment and looking at harm reduction, that is why I oppose this bill. Thank you.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Well, I’m not sure about the previous member, but I haven’t been asking anybody for their urine for a long time. I must say, I’ve never seen Labour members, in my 13 years in this House, work so hard to oppose a bill they actually like. Dr Liz Craig looked like she was chewing a wasp, and I think we’re seeing a pattern emerging here where the whip’s sitting there, smirking away, because he knows Labour have been told—the backbenchers, the foot soldiers of this arrogant Government, have been told—to oppose every single good idea if it doesn’t come from them, and especially if it came from the National Party. We saw that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee this morning, Dr Webb—I don’t think he should be smirking for long.

Dr Craig tried to explain that this wasn’t good from a health and safety at work perspective. Well, I was the Minister that pushed, finally, that piece of legislation through in 2015, against significant opposition. But it was a damn good thing that we reformed our health and safety at work. For Dr Craig to say that this isn’t necessary, I think is quite wrong. Every employer is required to take practicable steps to ensure that their staff and their customers and other stakeholders in their PCBU are safe at work. One practicable step that this House can take is to make sure that the means of getting around a workplace drug test is removed.

It is a narrow bill, but it is a problem. The sponsor of the bill, my good friend Mr Doocey, is saying that by the best estimates from the drug-testing organisations, several hundred of these could be being used, a year, around the country using technologies that are not yet advanced enough to detect the fact that they are synthetic urine. So the members opposite are saying, “Oh, well, there’s no problem to solve.” There is a problem, and the existing techniques for most of the drug-testing agencies are not picking it up.

I have to say that Golriz Ghahraman—and I am a list MP, so I’m allowed to say this—clearly has never met a constituent in her life. Mr Doocey explained very clearly that somehow—what did she say? She said something like “It shouldn’t be what’s important to National.” Well, it’s not so much what’s important to National; it’s what’s important to the people that come through the office of our constituency offices. It’s very important to this employer; it’s very important to other employers who have a responsibility to keep their stakeholders safe and who may be having their urine tests for safety—random or if there has been a near miss or an injury in the workplace—usurped by this surreptitious product. That’s all it does.

The members who spoke from Labour should be ashamed that they cannot, as members of the Health Committee, see what good this can do. Actually, I think they do know what good this can do, and I’m interested in which Minister shut them down on it—probably Michael Wood, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. Heaven knows why. I can’t imagine Mr Little actually opposing this, because he’s a sensible fellow. But somebody over there told Labour members to talk against a good idea just because it’s a National bill, and that’s a crying shame.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): I’m not on the Health Committee, but I was the counsel in the Air New Zealand case, which was the test case on drug testing, and then I was also counsel on Toll, which was the second case in the run. So I do know rather a lot about drug testing. In the original case, I remember John Haigh QC, who was a very lovely man, and he described exactly the risk of what has been described here: that people would actually use inventive ways to get round the situation, and they would use synthetic urine, or somebody else’s. And actually, at that point, he was reassured by the expert witness, who was in favour of drug testing, that gold standard testing would mean that no one who did a proper drug test in a proper, robust way would actually be able to pull the wool over the eyes of an employer. So as long as an employer is paying for the gold standard test, that simply should not occur, according to the experts. What has probably happened is there’s been an insidious creep in this area, so that there are a lot of tests that aren’t necessarily up to scratch in terms of their science.

Now, the problem with that testing, of course, itself was evident to the full court. It is a very invasive form of testing, and we’ve heard a little bit about that today. It does involve, really, a balance between the employer’s interests or the public’s interests and the private interests of the employees. What the court warned in that case was that while drug testing at that point was accepted in quite prescribed circumstances, it was not for ever. In fact, what they said was that as soon as saliva testing became reliable, it should replace this form of testing, because it’s a lot less invasive. We now have actually really good saliva testing available. It’s going to be cheaper for employers. It’s way less invasive, because it is only saliva. It’s on the spot, so there’s a lot less chance that you can actually fiddle with the tests. And, also, it does something very important: it focuses on recent use. There’s all sorts of issues with testing with regard to picking up historical use—particularly of marijuana, because marijuana stays in the fat cells—and so it is actually a very bad indicator of whether there’s impairment in the workplace.

I have some concerns about drug testing in general because I think it does distract from the real issue, which is actually fatigue and other forms of impairment in a workplace. If you have people who are incentivised to work very, very quickly—it was happening on the port, and it has been discussed recently; if you have people who are very fatigued by the types of shifts they are on; if you have people on various drugs, or they’re just fatigued because their lifestyle is out of kilter, then you can have really bad accidents. And this kind of approach, where we focus on and demonise always the employee, actually tends to distract from some of the actual causes of workplace fatalities and serious injuries.

So I am absolutely in favour of workers turning up to work unimpaired, as I am in favour of them not being impaired by alcohol. But what I would like to do is see the wood for the trees in this situation, and the intelligent approach here is to look at saliva testing, if you have to, and look at impairment testing, ultimately, because impairment testing will actually focus on the worker who’s driving the forklift erratically or dangerously. It won’t actually tick the box that they are not impaired by drugs and put them back on the forklift. In my career, I have actually seen that happen, and it frightens me. It frightens me that we are misdirecting. This bill could be a costly one to supervise and to enforce, and it would be a waste of taxpayers’ money. I do not commend this bill to the House.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): On 28 April this year, I attended a ceremony to mark International Workers’ Memorial Day in my electorate in Dunedin, in Taieri. We put 56 crosses up, and each of those crosses represented somebody’s mother, father, son, daughter—a worker who went to work at the beginning of a shift and didn’t come home at the end of that shift. That was a really emotional ceremony, and it shows that work safety is an issue. Actually, the most dangerous industries that we have are the farming industries, construction sites, logging, and so on. I want to tautoko the unions and my hero, the late Helen Kelly, for the work that she’s done in this space. So I do have some sympathy for the intention of the bill and some sympathy for the member who has proposed it.

However, the logic simply doesn’t add up. It makes a huge leap from correlation to cause, and that is similar to what we saw earlier in the Crimes (Robbery) Amendment Bill. The bill simply doesn’t solve the problem that it seeks to address, and that is workplace safety. The bill seeks to heavily restrict access to synthetic urine to make workplaces safer. To go through the logic, if we look at the intention, the policy statement is that “Drug testing in the workplace is used to keep people safe and prevent accidents and deaths.” That policy statement says that employers are concerned. That’s a little bit of a red flag for me, because if this was a real issue I believe employees would be concerned as well. They are the ones who stand to lose if their fellow employees are impaired.

The logical framework links unsafe work; employers’ concerns about synthetic urine; risks of accident and death; the sale of synthetic urine; and the prohibition of importation, supply, and acquisition. And that’s a very seductive story. Yes, these things are all correlated, but it makes huge assumptions. There is a serious problem with workplace safety, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that that comes from drugs. There is no evidence of that. Cheating does occur, but the evidence shows that this cheating is what my colleagues on this side of the House have alluded to, which is more the case of somebody using somebody else’s urine rather than buying synthetic urine, which I would wager is possibly more expensive and not as common. So the third assumption is that banning synthetic urine will make workplaces safe, and that is flawed as well, because banning synthetic urine won’t magically solve the problem.

Another issue with this bill is that it does create a strict liability offence. So the intention is assumed, which means that the causality in my view needs to be shown even more than it does in a normal case. And here we have correlation, but no causality is shown. If we look at UK best practice, there’s a holistic approach around workplace testing. The approach is to consult with employees. There needs to be an assessment of safety-critical work that needs to be identified, policies developed, people would be tested, and there would be support for those with a problem. The issue here is the safety-critical work element. As has been said by my colleagues on this side of the House, the impairment is what is missing from this bill. The problem is the impairment. It is the impairment caused for whatever reason, be it drugs, be it tiredness or something else, it is simply missing from this bill. So logically, not all employees who have ingested drugs are impaired, which again speaks to the intent of the bill, and not all impaired people or even a significant amount will be rendered safe by this bill.

If I can just speak more broadly about the element of support for those people who may have ingested drugs, and that is that we see drugs as a health issue. Rather than pushing drugs underground or having employees turn to other drugs to avoid drug testing or perhaps try other means of avoiding tests, we really want to see harm reduction and we want to see that harm reduction and people being supported not to ingest drugs in the first place is going to do a much better job of making our workplaces safer.

So in summary, this bill is about workplace safety, but not about drugs generally. Impairment is important, and it’s missing. It doesn’t even mention the correlation between impairment and the non-safety, and it fails to address the very issue that it seeks out to support. I cannot support this bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Matt Doocey, five minutes in reply.

MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Well, well, well; we’ve learnt it all tonight. When this bill first got pulled, as I said, the media wrote a title: “Doocey Taking the Piss”. I think the title tomorrow morning will be “The Labour Government Taking the Piss”. Really? Are they saying they are happy to live in a country where retailers are openly selling a means to cheat a workplace drug test? That is what the Labour Government is saying tonight. They are happy for that. They are happy for a 16-year-old or an 18-year-old to walk into one of those shops, maybe not looking for a product like that, but think, “Oh, I’ve never thought of that before. Must be OK, because it’s being sold legally.”, and go back to the workplace, consume drugs, and then use synthetic urine to cheat a drug test.

Members said before that we haven’t heard about employees. Well, the reason I know about this issue is because the employer who brought the issue to me, it was other employees in the workplace that dobbed on their colleague when he had told them what had happened. The reason they dobbed on him was because they did not want to work in a workplace where people had cheated a drug test and put them all at risk. When I say all at risk, these are our family, these are our neighbours, and these are our friends. Any one of our loved ones, going forward from tonight, is at risk because this Labour Government did not take the opportunity to stop retailers openly selling a means to cheat a workplace drug test. What has happened in New Zealand’s social fabric that we can continue this to happen?

I hear from the members saying, “Oh, well, we haven’t heard of how much the issue is.” If they’d done their research—it’s called the Parliamentary Library; use the email system and the work’s done for you. Last year, November, in the Navy there was suspicion so they searched a sailor’s cabin. Along with the bong and plant-like material believed to be cannabis, they found an empty box of synthetic urine used to pass drug tests. There’s another case—in our Navy. We’re hearing these stories every week.

One of the reasons why we don’t know the totality of the issue is exactly what happened to my constituent. Because when he tried to raise it, he was threatened with the reputational risk of his business. Because everyone wanted to say, “Oh, wow. You’ve clearly got a drug problem. Wait till your customers hear about that.” That’s wrong. Hard-working Kiwis are working hard all their lives, trying to employ people so they can fund their kids’ education and their mortgage, and we’re allowing employees to go and cheat a workplace drug test? Really? Is that what the Labour Government has resorted to?

Each backbencher MP tonight is going to have to go back to their electorate and defend their decision that they are happy with people going into their workplaces, using synthetic urine, and cheating a drug test. They had an opportunity to stop that tonight, but do you know what they did? They toed the party line. Here are new MPs that worked their guts off, no doubt, in campaigns and put their personal brand and reputation up, and now they turn up to Parliament to make a difference and they get told that they’ve got to vote down a bill. The principle we are debating here tonight is: do you agree that in New Zealand retailers should be able to openly sell a means to cheat a drug test—synthetic urine? It’s a simple question, and the Labour Government has answered that question tonight. They believe it is appropriate. They’re the role models for the next generation. They’re the ones telling the next generation that it’s OK to go down to COSMIC, spend 40 bucks, and spliff up all night, and if you get tested tomorrow morning, at your heavy machinery workplace, just use the synthetic urine, and it’s OK—the Labour Government said it’s OK. That is disgusting.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Synthetic Urine (Prohibition on Importation, Supply and Acquisition to Pass a Workplace Drug Test) Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 33

New Zealand National 33.

Noes 87

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill

First Reading

STEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui): I move, That the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider the bill.

It’s a privilege and honour to be able to bring the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill to the House for its first reading, and I want to begin my kōrero tonight by acknowledging the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who, after meeting and talking with stakeholders across our primary industries, heeded their concerns about what they saw as a gap in the layers of protection at our borders and took the initiative to draft this bill. Thank you, Kiri, for your work to support our growers and food producers and for your efforts to protect our environment. We’re wishing you a speedy recovery.

I was pleased to have the opportunity to put my name to this bill because in the Whanganui electorate, we have a large number of farmers and growers who contribute significantly to our local economy and who, like farmers across the country, have played a big part in our export-led recovery. The farmers and growers in Whanganui, South Taranaki, and Stratford produce a range of foods for both our domestic and international markets, including milk, artisan cheese, berries, meat, and, more recently, quinoa. We also have beautiful forests, rivers, lakes, and national parks, all of which could be put at risk from a biosecurity incursion.

I grew up in the region, on a sheep and beef farm in the back of Waverley. I remember when we first bought that farm, we would sit up at night listening to kiwi call across the valley, but, sadly, those calls have disappeared over the years. So I know how important robust security measures are to protect our native species and to protect our ecosystems and our food and fibre sector. I know that if we faced a significant biosecurity threat in my electorate, it would take a significant toll on local farmers and growers, not just financially but on their wellbeing as well. It would also cause strain on their relationships with w’ānau and friends.

So the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill is a small bill but, I think, a common-sense bill. It will strengthen the layers of defence against biosecurity threats at our border, protect our food and fibre sector—that’s the livelihoods of our farmers and growers, and their families—and also protect our environment. It does this by inserting a new section into the Biosecurity Act 1993 which would require all craft coming into New Zealand to provide passengers with approved written and audiovisual information about our biosecurity. Videos must be approved by the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and be played in a prominent position that can be seen and heard by all passengers on the craft.

Currently, it’s optional to provide passengers with information about our biosecurity, and many conservation advocates and those from our food and fibre sector have raised concerns that only some of the airlines coming here are providing that information and that this creates an unnecessary biosecurity risk. This bill will fill that gap by adding another layer of protection, reducing the likelihood of a preventable biosecurity threat entering New Zealand with an incoming passenger. As well as making the provision of approved information mandatory, the bill will create a new strict liability offence under the Biosecurity Act for failing to provide passengers with approved information. It would also be an offence if approved information was not updated and were to become erroneous or misleading.

Our food and fibre sector contributes significantly to our economy. We are well-known for punching above our weight, and Aotearoa is the country of 5 million that feeds 40 million across the globe. In the last financial year, export revenue from this sector was around $47.5 billion. The tourism sector also contributes significantly to our economy, and the many visitors who, pre-COVID, came here to see our taonga—that’s our national parks, and our native birds, fish, lizards all in their natural habitats. So a biosecurity incursion that takes hold here would have a critical impact on our economy, especially our regional economies.

Requiring those operating a craft to provide approved information means everyone coming to New Zealand will be given common-sense information about what they can do to help us protect our biosecurity—information like “Do not bring fruit or vegetables or animal products into New Zealand.” and “Wash your shoes before you visit a farm or a national park here.” These small steps can prevent a biosecurity incursion here which could have serious consequences for our environment and those in our food and fibre sector.

Take the Queensland fruit fly, for example. The last time we had a small incursion of the Queensland fruit fly, in Northcote and Devonport, it cost us $12 million to eradicate. But if travellers are told on the plane not to bring in the apple that they’ve put in their bag, but to leave it on the plane or put it in an MPI bin at the airport, that reduces the risk of an undetected fruit fly or larva hitching a ride into New Zealand.

MPI estimates that 80 percent of New Zealand’s horticulture crops are susceptible to attack from the Queensland fruit fly. That would devastate our multibillion-dollar horticultural industry as well as our regional economies. Fruits and vegetables attacked by the Queensland fruit fly are inedible, and an infestation would mean we would face trade restrictions on our produce.

After having the good fortune to have my bill pulled from the ballot, I’ve so far been able to meet with biosecurity advisers from DairyNZ, Horticulture New Zealand, and Zespri, and I especially want to thank DairyNZ for their support, and Horticulture New Zealand, who I know were thrilled when they heard that this bill had been drawn. Each of these organisations, as well as many others who support our food and fibre sector, have a strong focus on biosecurity. They spend millions of dollars each year trying to understand the probability of a potential threat entering New Zealand and the potential for those threats to spread to a large number of farms or growers and the resulting impact that would have. By knowing which of these threats pose the greatest risk to their industry, they can develop targeted surveillance programmes to detect incursions sooner. It also means they can better support our farmers and growers to respond.

We don’t just monitor direct threats to our produce; we also closely monitor potential threats that could impact what we feed our livestock—in other words, pest or diseases that could threaten our pastures and crops. Last year, the fall armyworm, which feeds on crops and pastures, made it into Australia. If an infestation occurred here, it would devastate our pastures and crops, seriously impacting our growers and farmers, their livestock, and our economy.

Now, to those of us here in New Zealand who understand our unique environment, we know how lucky we are to be free of so many pests and threats that other countries battle, and that’s in big part due to our being located at the bottom of the Pacific. Being free from unwanted pests and diseases gives us a competitive advantage. It’s played a role in building our international reputation as a nation that exports high-quality products. The arrival of new diseases and pests puts that at risk. But for those who aren’t coming from an isolated country with few pests or diseases, it seems perfectly normal to pack some fruit for the trip, some honey as a gift, or some dried meat as a snack, and the boots they’ve just worn in a forest or on a farm. In fact, at an international airport overseas once, I watched as someone got a tree wrapped to take on the plane with them—a sight that would cause anxiety for many New Zealanders.

That’s why this bill is necessary. It adds another layer of protection for our industries by providing information to those new to our shores. Now is the time, while our borders are closed, to make sure that we’ve got the safeguards right to ensure that when the time comes to reopen to the world, we have a robust biosecurity system that ensures pests and diseases are kept out of Aotearoa and our environment and the wellbeing and livelihoods of New Zealanders are protected.

I’m looking forward to considering this bill with my colleagues at the Primary Production Committee, and I can’t wait to hear and read submissions from those in our food and fibre sector who want to protect our environment, and interested members of the public. This bill aims to protect our environment and the food and fibre sector through a strong biosecurity system which includes providing information that explains to passengers on their way here about the important role they can play to keep our biosecurity strong. Therefore, it is my privilege to commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is the worst ever Government that farmers have ever had to encounter in the history of New Zealand, and I want to run through some of the things that have caused that to happen.

First of all, the significant natural areas (SNA) land grab—and it’s great that we’ve got James Shaw here today. I wish that he would take a call and explain that land grab and explain how private property rights are being taken away from farmers by this very Government, and how they are using the guise of the SNA process—that is there for exceptional circumstances—to take away the personal property rights of New Zealand farmers. Explain that to the farming communities of New Zealand. We want to see you, James, stand up and explain that. The biodiversity rules that we’re coming to later in the year—we want to see James Shaw explain how they’re going to relate to that land grab we’re seeing through the SNA process.

Then let’s look at the freshwater approach, which is another complete failure—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —on behalf of the Government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Thank you. The member needs to speak to the bill. He’s been going for well over—well, that clock’s still ticking. So—

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well over what?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I mean, if you want to waste your time on me standing up and telling you’re not being relevant, that’s fine.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: OK. Well, the freshwater reforms. Today, we got David Parker coming out and saying that the wetland reforms are a disaster and won’t work in practice. We’ve been telling the Government that since the election. They will not listen, but farmers understand that those rules will not work. We’re seeing that in Joseph Mooney’s great electorate in the Southland area with the intensive winter grazing rules, which are another complete and utter failure.

Let’s have a look at the—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —labour supply of New Zealand.

SPEAKER: Order! A second warning; you’re not going to get a third one. Speak to the bill.

Hon DAVID BENNETT: Well, the labour supply in New Zealand is terrible. You look at the Recognised Seasonal Employer workers, you look at the dairy workers. This Government has not listened. It has not delivered the staff that are necessary for New Zealand farmers, and that will show through in animal health and mental health issues over the next few months as calving goes through our dairy sector.

There’s been a failure by this Minister to help out in any water storage issues in New Zealand for horticulture to grow in this country. There’s been a failure with the tax on utes that we’ve seen from this Government as well, directly impacting on farmers—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s call is terminated.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): Mr Speaker, thank you very much. I’m pleased to take a call on the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, and may I congratulate the sponsor of the bill, the member for Whanganui, Steph Lewis, in getting this bill drawn but also in her acknowledgment of the former author of the bill, our own colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan.

Farmers and growers around the country will understand the significance of this bill, as we do on this side. This is about protecting the food and fibre sector of this nation, the backbone of this economy, and it’s a no-brainer that we are now seeing a bill come to this House to do the very thing that informs all passengers—all passengers; all visitors to this nation, whether it’s by airplanes or whether it’s by boat—that we have standards here around protecting our biosecurity. So I commend the member for bringing this bill and for us debating it on the floor tonight.

The bill that we are debating tonight amends the Biosecurity Act 1993, and clause 4 inserts a new section 17AA. In that clause, it talks about crafts “en route to New Zealand territory from … outside New Zealand territory on a flight or voyage that is intended to include arrival in New Zealand.”, and on those vessels, there will be played a video and information to inform all visitors of our expectations to not bring any pest or food that can impact on our biosecurity system. That’s why this is a very sound bill, and that’s why this side of the House and, I’m hoping—and I’m yet to hear from the National Opposition, because we didn’t get that from the initial speaker as to where they sit. They purport to be supporters of farmers and growers, and that is what this bill is doing. It is a no-brainer. It is adding another layer of protection to a very, very important part of our economy, and that is why I’m standing in support of this bill.

The videos and the information have to be approved by the Director-General of the Ministry for Primary Industries, and it will need to be gazetted, so this is what this bill is intending to do. It is actually making it mandatory or compulsory for all vessels coming into this country to be informed of our expectations and the importance of our primary - based economy here in New Zealand. I think it is a common-sense bill. It is a common-sense bill that acknowledges the importance of our primary industry sector and the value it has to the economy.

Just by way of example, in the latest Situation and Outlook for Primary Industries (SOPI) report that was just released at Fieldays last week, it says that in June 2021, the value of our food and fibre sector to this nation was $47.5 billion. That’s what is at risk, and this is what this bill is intending to protect. That $47.5 billion, as per the SOPI—it’s called the SOPI—report, will grow to $49.1 billion in 2022.

We are protecting a critical part of our economy, the primary industry—the food and fibres—with this bill. It’s an absolute no-brainer, and I’m hoping that those that take calls—particularly the Opposition—calm down, look at the bill, as I have and as we have, and see how practical it is around ensuring all visitors to this nation adhere to the rules and regulations to protect our biosecurity in this nation and, therefore, our food and fibre sector.

Again, I stand in complete support of this bill. It makes sense, and there won’t be anybody out there—farmers or growers—that will see otherwise. This is a sensible bill, it needs to be supported by all members of the House, and I commend it to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Holy quinoa! I’ve been sitting in the House for a few hours now listening to bills that were solutions looking for problems, and it’s finally good to hear a bill that has found a solution. So I would like to congratulate the member for Whanganui, Stephanie Lewis, who lives right next door to me, actually—I’m in the rural Manawatū—and it’s great to see that you’ve had the opportunity to pull this bill out of the ballot.

Also, I want to acknowledge our mate and my good mate Hon Kiritapu Allan. She might be watching tonight, as well. There’s probably not that much stuff on the telly, and nothing is more riveting than Parliament TV. I wish her a speedy recovery and hope she gets back into the House soon, because I know she’s got heaps of energy for our rural communities and our provinces as well.

This bill, the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, would amend the Biosecurity Act 1993 to require that passengers on craft arriving in Aotearoa are provided with biosecurity information via writing and audiovisual recording. This would, essentially, mean airlines and ship operators would need to show a video and hand out a form advising passengers of their obligations before landing. To be honest, I actually thought we were already doing this, but I think I’m like a lot of the members in the House who actually haven’t gone anywhere for a very, very long time and don’t really remember what the little messages are on the plane as well. So it’s good to see some common sense and some practical solutions being advocated for in the House.

We like to take a precautionary approach in the Greens, particularly when we think about our farming and fibre sector as well. I’m also mindful of the environmental sector as well in making sure that people, when they land here, scrub their shoes before they get anywhere near our forests. I’m very mindful of issues like kauri dieback disease and the sorts of things that the member was describing earlier around fruit flies, and so on and so forth, so making sure that we stop those things at the border is incredibly, incredibly important. We think that providing passengers with biosecurity information before arrival would increase awareness of biosecurity risks, which is consistent with a precautionary approach, and that’s a great thing to see.

Something that I hope the select committee could focus on is around the issue around accessibility—so when the videos are playing on the screens, and so on and so forth, what sorts of languages that will need to be had while that’s playing as well. I’m also mindful of the need for having it in Braille and making sure that our whānau turi are able to understand those things as well, so maybe this could be handled in terms of the legislation, or possibly something in the regulations. So when this bill does come before the Primary Production Committee, that is, hopefully, something that they can pick up as well, to make sure that when folks get here, they can all understand—regardless of their situation—about the biosecurity information that we need for them to take.

So this is a very short call for me. I’m really pleased to support this bill, and the Greens commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on this Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge the member of Parliament for Whanganui, Steph Lewis, for having this bill drawn from the ballot. It would be very remiss of me not to acknowledge my friend and colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who first brought this bill to the ballot. I can recall being in Kiritapu’s office having a meeting with Mike Chapman from Horticulture New Zealand and a kiwifruit-growing group when this issue was raised, and Kiritapu’s ears pricked up. She’s been such a strong advocate, in particular, for the horticultural sector, and she went straight to work on putting this bill together.

I have to say it is shameful and disappointing, to say the least, that we saw the agriculture spokesperson for the National Party stand up and bag this Government when he’s supposed to be standing up for the farmers and being the champion for the farmers. Around this bill that will protect our primary sector, all he can do is bag this side of the House and not even discuss the benefits that this will bring to our primary sector.

This bill amends the Biosecurity Act from 1993, and it is going to require all incoming aircraft, ships, etc. that are bringing passengers and tourists to New Zealand to display an audiovisual video for them to watch, explaining the things that they cannot do or that they must get rid of when they land upon our shores. There’ll also be written material, and we actually owe it to these people who are coming into our country as tourists, who are going to spend their money on our shores, keeping our economy going, to ensure that they have the best information available at hand so that they don’t create biosecurity incursions into this country.

I’ve seen, particularly in my area—in my electorate of Rangitata—the devastation that can be caused by things such as the M. bovis outbreak that we have seen there. There is the huge extent of financial aid that has to go into trying to rid our country of these incursions, the cost to the primary producers—and, actually, our agricultural sector, our primary producers, bring in over $49 billion worth of money into our economy every year. That is the backbone of our economy, and so we owe it to them. We owe it to our country and our economy and our environment to ensure that we keep it as safe as we possibly can, because we know people want to come to our country and visit our shores and participate in our amazing tourist activities that we have, and that will be happening, I’m sure, when our borders open.

But coming back to the M. bovis incursion that we have had in my electorate, it has had a devastating impact, where more than 130,000 animals have had to be culled across the country. It has cost the dairy and cattle industries $222 million, and the Government has paid out $198 million in support and claims to our farmers. So this is just one example of what we see happening when we have a biosecurity incursion.

The other thing I want to point out is in response to what Mr David Bennett, one of the previous speakers, mentioned, which was that this side of the House—the Labour Party—does not support farmers. Well, the question I would have is: who cut funding to biosecurity when they were in Government, and what happened during that time? What happened during that time? What did we see? The incursion of Psa on our kiwifruit industry. Our kiwifruit industry was devastated by that.

So, in closing, I want to acknowledge, again, Steph Lewis and the Hon Kiritapu Allan—and I know she’ll be watching and smiling, as she does, watching this debate continue through the House. I look forward to having this come to our select committee and to continuing the good work on something that is going to protect our country, our shores, and our primary producers.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Oh well, I want to actually commend the member Steph Lewis for her bill, the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill, but in the ACT Party, we just can’t see this as being a big win. Now, I know everyone in this House will articulate a message in the public sphere that farmers are the leading part of the economy, and I am one of those. We’ve seen our National member go off on a tirade of why the Labour Government has failed miserably at assuring rural New Zealand, and I would probably agree with some of the things that he said, notwithstanding I also see the endeavour in this bill. But, that being said, I also see the huge bureaucratic layers of compliance it may add.

There’s a couple of things that I think we need to address, notwithstanding that the biosecurity in New Zealand through Air New Zealand and for marine activity is rigorous. It spends hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, I think we would all agree that we have a $47 billion export industry to protect, but there’s a couple of things that I want to speak to, if I can.

You know, this is a prime example in the marine industry. There have to be such things as, if I can quote, a Master’s Declaration for meat provisions and animals. Bio-fouling and ballast water reports have to be given routinely, a list of fresh produce and documentation of quality system to store the produce on incoming marine vessels, a voyage memo for the last two years has to be kept—I mean, these are the kinds of mitigations that I think this bill, potentially, has overlooked.

This is notwithstanding that on aircraft, there is CRMS, which stands for craft risk management standard, and this has already been adopted by the Biosecurity Act. We know there are many threats to New Zealand, and I think and the ACT Party would certainly support the narrative that we have spent millions and millions of dollars on that sort of biosecurity mitigation to do with marine life, terrestrial arthropods—and the member made iterations about mosquito incursions and marmorated stink bug and others. I think, notwithstanding the Ministry for Primary Industries is doing a marvellously good job, and I and the ACT Party just see this as a further layer of bureaucracy and compliance. Notwithstanding it will add additional cost to operators. So the ACT Party, I have to make the acknowledgment, cannot support this bill.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): I rise tonight to speak in favour of this bill. Labour is the Government for protecting our borders. We have protected our borders through COVID-19 and we will protect our borders from biosecurity risks. As we know, biosecurity is one of the greatest risks to our country.

Before I go and talk more about this bill, I want to reflect on the cuts that the National Government made in 2009—2009—to the biosecurity funding, and in 2010—in 2010—we saw Psa arrive in this country, with an estimated loss of $900 million under the National Government. That is what happened under the National Government. In a damning report in 2012, they said that the failure of this National Government—the party that claims to be backing farmers—to invest had shortcomings in biosecurity. When it comes to a Government that absolutely protects our borders, Labour is the Government that does this.

Now, when I was thinking of standing and talking on this bill, it gave me time to reflect back on some of the work that I’ve done at a grassroots level. In 2001, I was able to travel with a UK farmer across New Zealand when we ran a campaign around foot-and-mouth disease. We went and we toured the country and we talked to farmers about the devastation that happens with biosecurity risks, and as we did that, we learnt through farmers how public awareness is one of the greatest tools. Good communication is one of the greatest tools to absolutely educate the public. What we’re going to see is we’re going to have biosecurity videos under this bill that we are supporting being compulsorily played on every craft that enters this country.

Public awareness is by far our greatest way to save us from the devastation that comes from biosecurity risks like the brown marmorated stink bug. Now, that brown marmorated stink bug—I wonder whether Mr David Bennett, the so-called spokesperson for the “Agriculture Party”, or the National Party, even could say the word. He wouldn’t know what goes on in a farmer’s paddock, or, for the growers, what they want. They want strong biosecurity, and that’s what the National Government failed at.

The National Opposition seem to think that biosecurity and protecting our borders isn’t important. In fact, we don’t even know from the other side of the House if they are ever going to even support this bill, a bill that will protect our country from the greatest of enemies that we have for our growers and our horticulturists. Have you ever seen what the brown marmorated stink bug does? Well, they are pretty stink over there. In fact, I think that they should infiltrate the National Party, because maybe if those members actually got together and thought about protecting our borders, they might actually have something good to say, because there’s nothing coming from that side of House. You know, let’s say the brown marmorated stink bug, because we know how much that little enemy, that teeny little bug—that teeny, tiny little bug—can do to our country. It is vital—it is vital—that we protect our borders.

Let me say it again: under National, they cut budget to the biosecurity. Under National, in 2010, that’s when we had a $900 billion loss to this country because a National Government does not protect farmers. They talk the talk of farming, but when it comes to doing the walk, when it comes to actually getting down there in the grassroots, who’s backing the farmers? Labour backs the farmers. We protect New Zealand’s borders—

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

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Well—

Tim van de Molen: Are we going to hear some more alternate facts now?

ANGELA ROBERTS: Or the truth—more truth. You know, the interesting thing about the borders is it’s become a water-cooler conversation since COVID-19 and in places like Wellington, but it has long been an intense conversation at dinner tables and at the pub in my community. It is something really, really important. It is something that worries our farmers, and they are really, really happy when they know that we have got their backs. It’s really disappointing to hear a farmer on the other side of the House say it’s a little bit too inconvenient, a little bit too much compliance, to be asking a visitor to this country to take heed of what is important to us. It is really, really important to our farmers.

So when we look at our borders, we know we need to protect them. It’s a really complex border. We’ve got planes and ships, we’ve got freight, and we’ve got passengers. There was that small piece of fruit in the hand luggage that we heard about that brought the fruit fly to Auckland a few years ago, and the catastrophic impact it could have had, but, luckily, in that case we could focus on eradication, just like we are with M. bovis. We heard from Jo Luxton about the huge cost in herd replacement and in loss of income, but the biggest cost that I’ve heard about from my students and their parents on-farm is the cost to their wellbeing. Losing your herd isn’t about losing some milk; it is about something that’s really important. The cost that has been borne by our farmers is significant, and we acknowledge that by doing the work and bringing useful legislation to this House to help to protect them.

The best-case scenario is eradication, which is what we are trying to do. We have seen parts of the primary industry where management has had to be the strategy. Our apiculturists: when we talk about the mitigation costs and lost income because of the varroa mite, it is huge. It is ongoing. More than $11 million per annum of income has been lost to mitigate the hive collapses for our bee-keepers and our honey producers, and then the pollination that is provided across food and fibre. So this is why we need to take every step—every step—to protect food and fibre.

We are not all doing it compulsorily—OK—and the great thing is we’ve got fantastic technology. We’ve got scanners, we’ve got that wonderful old-fashioned technology called the beagle, and, of course, we’ve got our mighty inspectorate. But we do need to make sure we support our visitors and people returning home to do the right thing. Declaration: declaration is critical, and we need to make sure we support them to do that. The opportunity with written material and with audiovisual obligations means that we will be able to produce information in appropriate languages, as was, quite rightly, brought up by the Green Party. They will be culturally appropriate.

This is so important to us. It is part of our DNA. I remember coming home on a plane once, sitting next to a young backpacker. She was travelling from the Northern Hemisphere and she’d just come through a part of the world that has snakes. She was really excited about showing me the dead snake she had in her hand luggage. It never occurred to her that that might be a bit of a problem at our border.

It is about educating our visitors, who come here because they respect and value the things that we respect and value. As tourists, and as people who will buy our products overseas, we need to support our visitors to declare. We need them to understand what is so important to us, we need to make sure that we provide culturally responsive materials, and we need to make sure that we build a real awareness amongst our arriving passengers, because our beagles and our amazing inspectors and our scanners can’t pick up everything.

If we could get every visitor to declare everything they brought through, that would make a significant impact, and I’m really proud to be standing here and bothering to do something that will have an impact and will help to add to the huge raft of tools that we already have in our rebuilt biosecurity system. I am proud to stand here as a member of a rural community, knowing that our farmers—our food and fibre sector—are better protected because we can be bothered to do the work in this House. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I have to say it’s been an entertaining evening. Actually, firstly, I should acknowledge Steph Lewis, who’s put it forward. It’s not to take away from her work, but the irony has to be noted, and it’s not that the members responsible—this is a members’ day. The Government could pass this in five seconds flat through a statutory amendment bill, but, instead, they’ve decided to filibuster for an enormous amount of time, including bringing “Berocca” back into the debate, which is quite fascinating.

So we’ve ended up with a situation where they’ve been filibustering over, basically, telling people that they’re going to be given a piece of paper and verbally told not to bring certain fruits into the country. Now, that’s on top of us discussing the nature of urea, and the fact that comity between the courts and the Parliament has somewhat broken down tonight with Louise Upton’s bill. So, personally, I think it’s been a pretty weak evening of discussion, and in order to symbolise that, I’m not going to contribute anything further.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Doesn’t that sum it up—doesn’t that sum it up? The National Party had two calls on this bill. In the first one, their agriculture spokesperson—the person that industry bodies are pleading to the leadership to change—got sat down after three minutes. Their second call—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! This is not a general debate. Come back to the bill.

KIERAN McANULTY: That’s right. The Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill is a very important piece of legislation, and their agriculture spokesperson couldn’t even speak to it—couldn’t even speak to it. The second person that the National Party stood up, that well-known advocate for farmers from the depths of inner-city Auckland—all he could say was to accuse us of filibustering, and he then sat down. We don’t even know what their position is, and that’s how little they think of biosecurity.

But they have a record. They have history on this. I googled a very simple thing: “Government cuts biosecurity NZ”. The first thing: “Govt ignored biosecurity warning”, 2012—that’s them. Biosecurity cuts are “irresponsible”, 2013. “Scientist says NZ has gone soft on biosecurity”, 2013. The only thing here that came up from that search—and we know the most recent comes up first—was from 2021: “Federated Farmers welcomes biosecurity funding”. There it is.

Here we have a piece of legislation that will alert visitors to this country of the grave threat that bringing in matters like fruit and not-clean sports gear or boots or anything like that poses. All it is imposing is the requirement for airlines to put on a video to make sure that there is absolutely no excuse and that everyone is fully informed of the threat that they pose.

That side doesn’t care, and I encourage every farmer and every person that lives in every rural area, if they really want to see what the National Party thinks of them and thinks of their industry and thinks of our economy, to watch tonight—watch the pathetic, disgraceful, offensive display from David Bennett and the pathetic contribution from Simon O’Connor. I ask them to consider this: this Government and its friends in the Green Party are actually supporting what is a good idea. The National Party had an opportunity to join us and actually show the primary industries—those seats, every single one of them voted for the Labour Party at the last election. Every single rural seat voted for us, and now, tonight, it shows why, because we actually give a hoot. We actually care. That’s the thing.

They can say all they like. They can stand there and criticise this party of never supporting the farmers, but when the rubber hits the road, they actually get a chance to back it up, and they’ve failed. I pick that David Bennett’s days are numbered as the agricultural spokesperson, because when you’ve got outfits like DairyNZ overlooking their agricultural spokesperson and picking people that they’d rather listen to, I’d say that his days are numbered in that role, and I’d say that the primary industries in those areas that voted for us at the last election will actually welcome that.

Here on this side of the House, we care about rural areas. We care about regional economies, and that is why we’re planning ahead. We are the party that has a plan to increase agricultural exports by $40 billion.

They just laugh. They are complacent and they haven’t realised that there is a reason why they’ve only got 33 seats in this House, and that’s because they’ve been found wanting. I note that the likes of Tim van de Molen, who’s sitting there—an actual rural MP—are disagreeing with our statements about them cutting biosecurity when they were in Government. He had an opportunity to speak. Did he take it? Did he, my foot—of course he didn’t.

Tim van de Molen: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I made no such claim. The member is inaccurately quoting what I said. I did not make any reference at all to us not having made cuts; I referred to this Government having made significant cuts over each of the last years.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! That’s not a point of order. That’s a debating point.

KIERAN McANULTY: Thank you, Mr Speaker. If he’d bothered to take a spot, he could have made that point himself, but he didn’t, did he? No, because they gave it to Simon O’Connor. What a waste—what a waste. That sums it up.

This bill here will help us protect our borders from biosecurity threats. Those members might be satisfied with their record. They might be satisfied, under their watch, of letting in Psa. They might be satisfied, under their watch, of letting in Mycoplasma bovis. We are the Government that’s sorted that out—$350 million to sort that out. We are the only country—the only country—in history that is on track to actually eliminating that.

Now, it is very clear to the people of New Zealand that this is a very simple, non-contentious bill that will make a huge impact on the security of our primary industries. We’re taking it seriously; they are treating it like a joke.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Steph Lewis—five minutes in reply.

STEPH LEWIS (Labour—Whanganui): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I want to thank all of those who have made contributions to tonight’s bill—actually, most of those who have made contributions to tonight’s bill, because, unfortunately, it seems that the agricultural spokesperson for the National Party either didn’t have the time to read a three-page bill, or just didn’t understand what it was we were here to debate tonight. Such a disappointing and disrespectful effort from the National Party spokesperson.

It was also disappointing to hear, Mark Cameron from the ACT Party, that you’ve changed your tune from calling this a common-sense, pragmatic bill to, now, the ACT Party not supporting it. It’s—

Mark Cameron: I never said that. What I said was it had merit.

STEPH LEWIS: And you have said tonight about—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! Don’t bring me into it.

STEPH LEWIS: Sorry. The member said tonight that he was concerned about the additional layers of bureaucracy that this bill would bring in. Well, let me tell you, I worked at the New Zealand Customs Service and with the other border agencies like the Ministry for Primary Industries, and I can tell you that those agencies, our airlines, and all of the other incoming craft are well versed in how to provide information to passengers efficiently and cost-effectively, and they’re well-oiled machines. So I say to you, Mr Cameron, what price do you put on protecting our rural communities, protecting our primary industries, protecting our environment, and protecting our border and economy, because I can tell you that providing this information is going to be much cheaper than the $900 million that’s already gone into responding to Psa.

In the last 12 to 18 months, it has been a tough year for everyone, including our farmers, who face border closures. Even though they kept working right through lockdown, they haven’t been unaffected. They face disruption due to supply lines that have been delayed due to COVID, and this bill will add further protection to them. We owe it to them to provide them with this protection, as we’ve heard tonight from my colleague Jo Luxton.

Horticulture New Zealand and our primary industry bodies have asked for this bill. They want this bill. Horticulture New Zealand said they were thrilled when this bill was drawn from the ballot because they can see that it will protect our multibillion-dollar primary industries, our food and fibre sectors, our farmers, and our rural and regional economies.

This bill is going to add protection by requiring the provision of approved information to all incoming passengers to New Zealand, which will protect those food and fibre industries. It will protect our environment as well, and, as we’ve heard tonight, it is crucial to have this awareness campaign. That is what makes the biggest difference in terms of protecting our environment. Not everybody coming here to New Zealand grows up understanding the same environmental concerns that we do have, or the same issues around having delicate ecosystems and vulnerable natural species. So it’s vital to protect those species and our ecosystems that we run this awareness campaign and that we provide that information to everyone coming into New Zealand.

I also want to acknowledge the contribution tonight of the Green member Teanau Tuiono. I really thank him for his suggestion to consider how we make this information more accessible to all incoming passengers, and I have given some consideration around how we provide this information to passengers in multiple different languages.

I really look forward to being able to discuss this further in select committee with my colleagues from the Primary Production Committee, and I really encourage members of our farming communities, our rural communities, the food and fibre sector, and those concerned about protecting our border and our environment to submit to the select committee and tell Mr Cameron and Mr David Bennett what they think and why they want this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is, That the Biosecurity (Information for Incoming Passengers) Amendment Bill be considered by the Primary Production Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Primary Production Committee.

Bills

Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill

First Reading

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga) on behalf of Andrew Bayly: I move, That the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers (Electronic Records) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Mr Speaker—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You need to nominate a committee.

SIMEON BROWN: I nominate the finance committee to consider the bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Finance and Expenditure Committee—thank you.

SIMEON BROWN: The Finance and Expenditure Committee.

This bill is a bill on behalf of Andrew Bayly, and I want to acknowledge Andrew Bayly, my colleague, for bringing this piece of legislation to Parliament. This bill is something which has come about through conversations with the police and also very much an awareness of the serious issues that are facing New Zealanders on a day-to-day basis in regards to stolen property.

This piece of legislation is about updating and amending the Secondhand Dealers and Pawnbrokers Act to ensure that it is fit for purpose in the 21st century, to give the police the tools that they need so they can crack down on stolen property which is being put through second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers. It gives the police more tools, it helps them to be smart on crime, and it helps to ensure that more offenders who are stealing and robbing are actually held to account.

Stolen property is often disposed of through second-hand dealers. Second-hand dealers are prolific buyers of stolen goods and, in doing so, these second-hand dealers are facilitating dishonesty offending, and that is why we have the second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers legislation.

The legislation has a number of requirements upon second-hand dealers to ensure that they keep records of who is selling items to them. It ensures that they have to keep records of serial numbers so that the police can then go and take those details and hold offenders to account where there are identified people who have been selling identified items which have been stolen. But this legislation has not kept pace with the pace of change.

Currently, the legislation, whilst it requires a record to be kept, it does not require this record to be kept in an electronic form. This means that police are spending a significant amount of time dealing with handwritten records which they then have to put into their systems to check serial numbers against their records of stolen property so that they’re able to work out if it is a stolen item, and then to work out who the offender may be or may not be.

Over the past two years, police have logged 4,000 dealer checks nationally, which equates to an estimated minimum of 4,000 hours of police time—that is, police physically going to second-hand dealers, taking their written documentation, and then putting it into an electronic format so that they can then use it in conjunction with their other tools. The reality is this is taking an enormous amount of police time, and it’s something which needs to be changed. The solution here in this piece of legislation is to require the second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers to have that information in an electronic form.

In Counties Manukau, the police have already developed a tool which they’ve worked on in conjunction with second-hand dealers called SNAC, or the serial number automated checker. Working alongside these second-hand dealers, they’ve been able to get more of this information put into an electronic form, which they then are able to check against the system as to what has been stolen. This has allowed hundreds of investigations to be reactivated due to the SNAC stolen item notification system. There’s been dozens of new charges laid, hundreds of items returned to owners, and many investigations are still in progress. Examples include where there were bicycle thefts happening where the offender was caught, and by putting that into the tool, they were then able to find that that person had been dealing other bicycles and had been trying to do that through the system by going around different stores, selling stolen bicycles in these stores.

The tool has been incredibly effective and is something which this piece of legislation seeks to take to the next level by requiring the standardisation of these records across the country. It would allow more victims of crime to have their property recovered and returned to them. It would quickly identify known property-owners through the system who have stolen goods. It would help identify more offenders, as they often go from store to store, and when those systems are manual, it doesn’t allow police to be able to check in an adequately fast time to be able to understand who is going from store to store, dealing stolen items. It would reduce the risk of dealers inadvertently trading in stolen items and would increase the resolution rate that police have in investigating property crime.

This is a piece of legislation which, as I said, makes a real difference because it ensures that this legislation is up to speed and is keeping pace with the change. We believe, on this side of the House, that that is something which will make a real difference to the many thousands of New Zealanders who have had stolen items taken from them and who don’t often get the resolution that they actually need.

There may be some challenges which this could cause, such as shifting the trade for stolen items, and, of course, there would be some increased burden on second-hand dealers in terms of making sure that their systems are electronic and are able to be put across to the police. But what is important here is that we ensure that the systems and the tools that we provide to our police are the best possible so that we are able to reduce the number of items which are stolen being inadvertently traded through the system and there not being a resolution for the rightful owner of that property.

This piece of legislation is something which police, as I said before, have already been trialling in an initiative in Counties Manukau. It’s something which has been getting significant success and is something which does need to be rolled out on a national basis. The bill, which is in the name of Andrew Bayly, not only includes obligations on second-hand dealers but also, if they do not provide the information in electronic form, there will be appropriate fines and consequences for them for not complying with this piece of legislation, and that is to ensure that they are actually appropriately dealing with the goods that go through their stores.

This piece of legislation is endorsed by the National Party. We want to give our police all the tools that they can have and all the tools they need to be able to tackle property crime, and we believe that this is part of that solution. We look forward to all parties in this House supporting this bill to select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Members, this debate is interrupted and set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow. Pō mārie.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10.01 p.m.