Tuesday, 6 July 2021

TUESDAY, 6 JULY 2021

TUESDAY, 6 JULY 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

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

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

SPEAKER: A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Alexander Woods requesting that the House urge the Government to better protect Crown land by improving the prevention and detection of the dumping of clean fill and rubbish into and onto Crown land.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Electricity Authority:

Statement of Intent 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2025

Statement of Performance Expectations 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2022

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority:

Statement of Intent 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2025

Statement of Performance Expectations 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2022

Ministry for the Environment, Natural and Built Environments Bill Parliamentary Paper on the Exposure draft updated

Tourism New Zealand:

Statement of Intent 2021-2025

Statement of Performance Expectations 2021-2022

AgResearch, Statement of Corporate Intent 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2026

GNS Science Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences Limited, Statement of Corporate Intent 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2026

NIWA, Statement of Corporate Intent 1 July 2021 - 30 June 2026

Te Māngai Pāho, Statement of Performance Expectations 2021-2022

Orillion Animal Control Products Limited, Statement of Corporate Intent 2022-2024.

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

Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Environment Committee on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill

reports of the Finance and Expenditure Committee:

2021/22 Estimates for Vote Audit

2021/22 Estimates for Vote Pike River Re-entry

the petition of Shane Lust

the Report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Central government: Result of the 2019/20 audits

reports of the Health Committee:

the petition of Sarah Macrae

the petition of Sarah Teare.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading. The report of the Controller and Auditor-General’s report is set down for consideration.

The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of a bill.

CLERK: Annual Reporting and Audit Time Frames Extensions Legislation Bill, introduction.

SPEAKER: That bill is set down for first reading.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

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

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government’s efforts in securing the economic recovery have led to a sharp rise in business confidence. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research latest Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion, released today, shows that firms are more upbeat about their own prospects and the wider economy in the June quarter. On a seasonally adjusted basis, a net 26 percent of businesses recorded an increase in their own trading activity in the quarter, compared with a net 2 percent in the previous three months. They also feel positive about the next quarter, with a net 28 percent of respondents expecting a pick-up in activity, up from a net 8 percent. There was also a continued recovery in firms’ confidence about the general economic outlook, with a net 10 percent of businesses expecting an improvement in general economic conditions over the coming months.

Dr Duncan Webb: What is the impact of the economy on businesses’ hiring and investment plans?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, according to the survey, firms are looking to expand to keep up with increased demand, which is reflected in an increase in hiring and investment intentions. A net 15 percent of firms surveyed increased headcount in the June quarter, up from a net 8 percent in the previous quarter. A net 22 percent plan to employ more workers in the next quarter. Firms are also looking to further increase their investment, particularly in plant and machinery. A net 20 percent of firms plan to lift investment in plant and machinery over the coming year. The Government is investing heavily in trades training and apprenticeship schemes and is extending the training incentive allowance, among other initiatives to support New Zealanders into work.

Dr Duncan Webb: What reports has he seen on Government support for the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, while confidence in the Government’s health response has underpinned the economic recovery, we do know that this can change quickly in a COVID-19 world, and the Government remains ready to support businesses and workers. Last week, the Wellington region went into alert level 2 for a week, allowing eligible businesses to take up the resurgence support payment to assist with one-off costs. I can report to the House that as of 1 p.m. today, 1,911 applications had been received and $2.63 million had been paid out to businesses to support them through this change in alert levels.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

2. 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 policies that came into effect on 1 July, last week, focused on keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19, accelerating our recovery, and making progress on longstanding issues such as climate change, housing, and child wellbeing. These include main benefits increasing by $20 per adult per week; reinstating the Training Incentive Allowance, which was taken away by the previous National Government, in order to support study for sole parents and carers and disabled people; preventing children being hospitalised by cold and damp homes, through the healthy homes standards, which will require landlords to provide properties with insulation, at least one fixed heating device capable of heating the living room to at least 18 degrees, and just ensuring of course that we have extractor fans in bathrooms and kitchens; increasing paid parental leave rates by 2.5 percent; security guards added to Schedule 1 of the Employment Relations Act, helping protect their employment conditions; and, of course, decisions around migrant exploitation and efforts to prevent migrant exploitation. I am proud of the initiatives that were implemented on 1 July.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with her Minister for social development that 4,000 kids living in motels with gang members is “not ideal but we are doing what we can”, and is this, in her view, an acceptable approach?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course, we want to make efforts to ensure that children and families are in the safest possible environment. I would acknowledge, and I hope the member would as well, that it was a National Government that brought in the framework where we are using hotels as temporary accommodation, and because—

Nicola Willis: Four thousand!

SPEAKER: Order!

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —and because of the way—

SPEAKER: It goes through here and rebounds.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: —and because of the way it was structured, of course, that funding and that support followed the individual rather than being in a position where you were taking over, for instance, entire facilities, which allowed us to better manage who is placed where and ensure that those are appropriate decisions. We are trying to turn that situation around, and you can see that in the way that we’re operating in Rotorua, in particular.

Hon Judith Collins: So when will the number of children living in motels reduce back to, and lower than, the 2017 levels that were around a third of what’s happening today?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because then children were in cars. I do not want children living for long periods of time in motels, but I absolutely do not want children living in cars. Our goal is to move them out of temporary situations. We, of course, are building public housing and have funded public housing places to the number of 18,000. So far, over 7,000 have been built. But I will not be lectured by a member who sold those public houses, then opened motel spaces, and now seems to have a problem with the fact we’re dealing with the consequences.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Can the Prime Minister confirm that New Zealand now, under our Government, has over 4,000 permanent transitional housing spaces, more than double what there were when we came into Government?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I can, and I can also confirm that we are increasing public housing supply. The stark reality is that when you come into office having inherited an environment where a Government not only didn’t grow public housing, they sold it, we are still dealing with the consequences of that.

David Seymour: How many of the 4,000 children currently living in hotels came from previously living in cars?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We do know that, in some situations, there’s a range of issues. Some will come from violent relationships and come and leave in an emergency situation, but if the member is suggesting that none have come from a situation where the housing is inadequate, it would be wrong.

Hon Judith Collins: Is she aware that, as at March this year, there were 433 people stuck on the housing wait-list who were living in cars?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, as I’ve acknowledged, people have been in inadequate housing, and I would rather they be safe and housed than remain in an inadequate situation. I would also rather that they were ultimately in long-term housing, public housing; that they were in safe and stable housing; that if it’s appropriate and they need wraparound support, they’re with “CHiPS” or with NGOs. But the member’s solution seems to be to do nothing.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she have confidence in the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, Paul Hunt, after he donated $200 of taxpayer money to the Mongrel Mob Kingdom? Will she ask for his resignation?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In answer to the last part of the question, no.

Hon Judith Collins: Is she concerned that changes to civil hate speech provisions will open the door for advocacy groups to take civil legal action where people express an opinion they disagree with?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: No.

Hon Judith Collins: What does she say to people who are concerned that her $55 million Public Interest Journalism Fund, which includes numerous criteria for media to adhere to, is influencing the editorial decisions of media outlets in New Zealand?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would absolutely reject that. But, better yet, I would put the question to the media, and ask whether they agree with that sentiment.

David Seymour: What, then, would happen to a media outlet that received money under the fund and wanted to report a story deemed inconsistent with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, which is one of the requirements to adhere to?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I absolutely reject the idea that there is political influence in broadcasting and media.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. The question was: what would happen? I don’t think that’s been addressed, other than a very generic comment about media. This was a question about what the conditions are under this fund and how it operates, and we didn’t hear that addressed at all, other than a bland, generic statement.

SPEAKER: The member might regard it as a bland, generic statement, but I think it answered the question.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with Labour MP the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, who in 2010 said, on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “why have New Zealanders been prevented from participating in a debate on an issue that has a profound impact on the future … The Government has taken care to recognise that this document is aspirational and non-binding”? So why is her Government now consulting only with iwi, and not having the debate with all New Zealanders?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That statement is incorrect. We are consulting with all New Zealanders. We set out how we intend to do that. I note that not only do we intend to discuss the signing of the declaration and the implementation plan with all New Zealanders but that is in stark contrast to the National Government, who consulted no one and then did nothing.

Hon Judith Collins: What does she say to businesses across New Zealand who are now being asked whether they identify as Māori-owned businesses and are now unsure if they receive Government contracts based on their skills or to fill a quota?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would say that the current Opposition doesn’t quite know which issue they think is most important to them right now, based on this line of questioning at question time, first of all. Secondly, I would say that procurement policy that that member has raised has been announced in public for some time now. It was lifted from what has been done in Australia. It’s been very popular there, and I don’t consider it to be particularly groundbreaking in that regard.

Hon Judith Collins: So what is her definition of the legitimate use of a ute?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We have not set out anything that requires there to be a definition.

Hon Grant Robertson: In light of the previous questions from the Leader of the Opposition, does the Prime Minister have any views on weather forecasts, what might happen in the next couple of weeks in New Zealand—anything like that?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: All I can say is that, clearly, the caucus discussions in the Opposition have been clearly unfocused of late.

SPEAKER: I think neither the question nor the—no, I shouldn’t have let the Prime Minister answer it. And I will let the—in fact, insist on the Deputy Prime Minister apologising.

Hon Grant Robertson: I withdraw and apologise.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. Well, that was a fairly unedifying exchange. But in the circumstances, are the Opposition going to get any extra supplementary questions, given the deep use of irony in the Deputy Prime Minister’s supplementary patsy question?

SPEAKER: And what’s the point of that point of order?

Chris Bishop: To ask for more supps.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m sorry; I witnessed the House a couple of weeks ago where there was a very clear indication from the Opposition that they didn’t like increasing or reducing supps.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: No, no, that wasn’t what they didn’t like.

Chris Bishop: No.

SPEAKER: And the members just interjected—both of them—while I’ve been on my feet. The Hon Michael Woodhouse will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: I withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: I’m not going to insist that Chris Bishop does, but I am considering, now, taking him at his word and applying the reductions which I didn’t apply last week because I wasn’t applying them.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. I think the point, sir, is we just want to know what the rules are. When you were not here, sir, Deputy Speaker Rurawhe did not apply the up-and-down rules. If it is now the case that you’ve moved away from the up-and-down system—for want of a better phrase—when it comes to the order in the House, that’s fine; we will take that on board. But if it is the case that you’re going to continue to apply it, we’d like to know that. We just want to know what the rules are.

SPEAKER: Right. Well, what I’ve been doing for the last week, in case the member didn’t notice—which I’m slightly surprised at, as shadow Leader of the House—is that I was making a note of whether or not numbers would go up and down, but not applying them. If the member wants me to apply them, as he has insisted, I will, but it will result in a net loss to his side. Thank you.

Question No. 3—COVID-19 Response

3. Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA (Labour—Takanini) to the Minister for COVID19 Response: What recent progress has been made on New Zealand’s COVID19 vaccine immunisation programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Very good news. I’m pleased to report that on Sunday afternoon, we received the largest delivery of Pfizer vaccines to date. The shipment of 150 doses touched down in Auckland on Sunday, two days earlier than expected, and staff worked very quickly to make sure that they were unpacked and repacked and distributed to district health boards and vaccination centres around the country. I’d like to pass on my thanks to all those involved in doing that. The vaccination programme continues to ramp up.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: How will this delivery support DHBs with the roll-out of the immunisation programme, and when can DHBs expect to receive them?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The vaccine deliveries that we have received over the weekend mean that we’ve now got sufficient vaccine stock, together with the deliveries that we are expecting in each week of July, to enable us to scale up and continue to confidently deliver vaccinations over the next four weeks. The first deliveries of the new doses started last night, with the consignment dispatched to the South Island on a 7 p.m. flight last night. From this morning, these doses have been arriving at vaccination centres right across the country. As I’ve mentioned before, the Government is planning to have vaccinations out of the freezer and into people’s arms as quickly as possible. This latest shipment will allow us to continue to do that.

Dr Anae Neru Leavasa: What other deliveries are we expecting from Pfizer in the coming weeks?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: More good news. This is the first of four shipments that we’re expecting to get over the month of July. We know that the quantities in the scheduled deliveries over the next month will continue to increase. I understand the next delivery will be similar in size to the one we received on Sunday, and then the other two deliveries we’re anticipating will get us to the 1 million doses that we’re expecting to receive in total this month.

Question No. 4—Finance

4. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: What concerns, if any, have businesses raised with him around the economy and their ability to operate over the next 12 months?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): A very timely question given the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research Quarterly Survey of Business Opinion today showed “a sharp improvement in both business confidence and demand in firms’ own business.” in the June quarter. Over recent months, businesses I’ve engaged with have highlighted the benefits for them from the Government’s approach of going hard and early against COVID-19 and the investments that the Government has made, such as the wage subsidy scheme. However, given the negative tone of the member’s question, I can report that businesses do have concerns linked to the stronger than forecast economic activity we are seeing. These include labour supply issues, global supply chain issues, and whether the stronger than expected economy might lead to earlier than expected interest rate rises. The Government is aware of these concerns. We are working with businesses on them, and we are supporting businesses in the next stage of the recovery, including through initiatives such as free apprenticeships and targeted trade training. Having said that, the largest concern among businesses remains the potential impact of COVID-19, which is why we continue to take a strong and careful approach to the border and our elimination strategy.

Andrew Bayly: Why is the Government not using the 2,000 managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) rooms that are reportedly sitting empty each day to bring in workers that businesses say they desperately need to continue to operate?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In reference to the first part of the question, that should be directed more to the Minister for COVID-19 Response—

Hon Chris Hipkins: It’s also wrong.

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: —and he informs me in the House, somewhat loudly, that the member is wrong. In answer to the second part of the question, we have brought thousands of critical workers in through our MIQ system.

Andrew Bayly: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: Order! Before I let the member go on, there are some rules and understandings around authentication which are applied very strictly to primary questions, but there’s also a reliance, when a fact is asserted, that it can be substantiated if asked. If the member has the evidence, that’s fine. Actually, there was no need to put the number in the question. The question would’ve stood on its own without the number. Again, if I was interfering more than I currently do, I would’ve asked the member to rephrase the question. So I’m just going to ask the member now to ask his next supplementary.

Andrew Bayly: Just a point of order, Mr Speaker. So, two things, just in response to that: first of all, I used the word “reportedly” quite deliberately. That was in reference to a One News article only published on 3 July, and I took that figure directly from that article. So that’s why I used the word “reportedly”, and I was very clear about that.

SPEAKER: OK, right, well, the member can ask his next question, but I’ll just reiterate: none of that was necessary for the sense of the question.

Andrew Bayly: What does he say to restaurant operators in New Zealand who are switching off their lights today in protest at the Government’s failure to use the large number of empty MIQ rooms to address the critical worker shortage?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, obviously, I reject that part of the question that the member is using there at the end. What I do say is I know how hard hospitality businesses in New Zealand work. Many of them have had a very tough time over the last year. The Government has been proud to stand alongside them and support them, to the tune of, for example, from the wage subsidy scheme, over $1.3 billion. We continue to work with them, including extending the 10,000 working holiday and supplementary seasonal worker visa holders’ time in New Zealand. We’ve given open work rights to those supplementary seasonal employer work scheme visa holders, many of whom work in the hospitality industry, and we have increased the duration of the Essential Skills Work Visa for jobs paid below the median wage from six months to 12 months. So we are working with that sector, within the constraints of COVID. I do note that the Government’s response to COVID has enabled those hospitality businesses to be open during periods of time where their equivalents in other countries have not been able to open.

Andrew Bayly: Is it fair that in areas where the Government is the employer, like education, labour shortages are dealt with by allowing 300 teachers in, but despite the large number of empty MIQ rooms, businesses are forced to shut up shop for lack of workers?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’ll repeat what I said to the member in an earlier answer. We’ve had around 17,000 critical workers come through MIQ. Part of that is in the education sector, but large parts of that are in other parts of the economy as well.

Andrew Bayly: What is he doing to address the Employers and Manufacturers Association’s concern that the piecemeal way the Government is handling labour shortages is making it difficult for businesses to operate and plan to grow their businesses?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I just think the member needs to consider what he’s asking. The New Zealand economy is now operating at levels higher than before COVID. These are the problems of growth. I thank the member for highlighting the growing economy under this Government. We will keep working with all sectors of the economy to bring the labour that they need into New Zealand while training New Zealanders at the same time. But we do have to remember: the thing that’s got us to the point of a growing economy is being careful about making sure COVID-19 doesn’t get in. That still remains the number one issue that businesses raise with me.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Minister of Finance confirm that there has been record growth in the number of apprentices under this Government, that will help to ease the skill shortages businesses and employers are facing?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely, and this is a genuine partnership with the business sector—over 135,000 people benefiting from free apprenticeships and targeted trade training. This is about getting the balance right, making sure we protect New Zealanders from COVID-19 and support businesses to have the skilled staff they need.

Question No. 5—Social Development and Employment

5. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What announcements has she made regarding the regional skills leadership group?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): Last week I announced the first set of appointments for the permanent Regional Skills Leadership Groups (RSLGs). The first step in setting up the groups was to appoint an iwi Māori co-chair and a co-chair selected through an expression of interest process for each region. By mid-August, the co-chairs will be joined by regional stakeholders from iwi, Māori, businesses, unions, and their communities to form the membership of the groups. They will continue the work of the interim groups to identify and support better ways of meeting future skills and workforce needs for each region. This is an important strategic initiative: Government working with the leaders in our regions to address the regional labour force needs.

Angie Warren-Clark: What feedback has she received on the work of the interim Regional Skills Leadership Groups?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Last week I visited Nelson, where I met the chief executive of the chamber of commerce, Ali Boswijk, who has just been appointed as the co-chair of the permanent Nelson Tasman RSLG, alongside Justin Carter. Ali was highly positive about the work of the interim group and highlighted the success of initiatives like Pick Nelson Tasman, a campaign the group contributed to that helped fill jobs in the region’s horticulture and viticulture industries. I’d like to thank the members of the interim groups, who have provided a great deal of support to the Government over the last year. The quality of the interim group members has been recognised, with nearly half of the permanent co-chairs being chosen from the interim groups. The permanent set-up will now take us forward.

Angie Warren-Clark: What will the permanent Regional Skills Leadership Groups do once they are fully operational?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The permanent groups will initially be focused on projecting labour supply needs in the regions and identifying local activity that addresses those needs through the regional workforce plans. The plans will inform Government activities and decisions across the education, welfare, and immigration systems, including investment decisions. They support the Government’s joined-up approach to regional economic development and labour market planning. As we look to reposition our economy through improving tertiary and vocational educational outcomes, reducing reliance on low-skilled migrants, and strengthening employment support, the role the permanent groups will play is more important than ever.

Question No. 6—Justice

6. SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga) to the Minister of Justice: Does he think it is acceptable for the Chief Human Rights Commissioner to give a $200 donation to the Mongrel Mob, and does he have confidence in the Chief Human Rights Commissioner?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House) on behalf of the Minister of Justice: The Chief Human Rights Commissioner has an explicit duty set out in the Crown Entities Act to be independent and free from the direction of Ministers or Government policy. Section 19 of the Human Rights Act also requires that the Human Rights Commission act independently in performing its statutory duties and functions. It would be inappropriate for the Minister of Justice to exert political influence on the Chief Human Rights Commissioner in exercising those responsibilities. To do so could have a chilling effect on the role, given the commissioner’s legislative responsibilities to independently promote human rights.

Simeon Brown: Point of order.

SPEAKER: Order! No, I’ll deal with it now. I think if it’s a different point of order—there are two parts to the question; the second part.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the second part, I believe it would be inappropriate for me to do so.

SPEAKER: To express confidence, right?

Simeon Brown: How can he not either express or not express confidence in the Chief Human Rights Commissioner after he gave taxpayer money to an organised criminal group which was recently caught up in a trans-national police operation targeting organised crime?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Chief Human Rights Commissioner is independent. The decisions they make are independent of the Government. They do not answer to the Government for each of the individual positions that they take or who they meet with.

Simeon Brown: Will he be asking for the Chief Human Rights Commissioner’s resignation, and, if not, why not?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The grounds under which the Human Rights Commissioner could be removed from office would include that the Governor-General would have to be satisfied that there was just cause, which would include misconduct, inability to perform the functions of office, neglect of duty, and breach of any collective duties of the board or of the individual duties of members. This Government follows the law.

David Seymour: Does giving taxpayer money to a criminal organisation meet any of those thresholds or is it hakuna matata?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Chief Human Rights Commissioner acts independently. If the member wants to have a legal opinion on whether or not the actions of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner is fulfilling their legal responsibilities appropriately, then he can get one.

David Seymour: Point of order. The Minister just gave the statutory conditions that must be met. Cabinet issues directions to the Governor-General. How can the previous answer be in order if he’s not accountable for whether an action meets that threshold? He’s just evading the question.

SPEAKER: Well, the member did ask for a legal opinion. It’s very clear under the Standing Orders that there’s no obligation to give one in the House.

Simeon Brown: What message does the Chief Human Rights Commissioner’s donation to an organised criminal group send to victims who’ve suffered harm at the hands of gangs?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I’ve already indicated in my answers, the Chief Human Rights Commissioner is independent of the Government of the day. The positions that they take will sometimes be positions that the Government of the day disagree with, and the members opposite should think carefully if they want to end up in a position where the Chief Human Rights Commissioner can only express views or take actions that the Government of the day sanctions.

Simeon Brown: Has he met with the Chief Human Rights Commissioner to discuss the appropriateness of giving a donation to an organised criminal group, and, if not, why not?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In answer to the second part of the question, I refer the member to all of the previous answers I’ve just given.

Rawiri Waititi: Does the Minister think that the Opposition’s interpretation of donation is very different to the interpretation of koha—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, he can’t ask that question.

Rawiri Waititi: —is the first part of my question. The second part is: Don Brash sitting on an educational trust with the Mongrel Mob; does that sound like hakuna matata? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! I’m just trying to work out whether the member—

Rawiri Waititi: It’s a wonderful phrase.

SPEAKER: No, no. The member doesn’t interject when I’m on—I’m just trying to work out whether he was deliberately breaching Standing Orders, and I think he was. I think he knew that that question was out of order. I think he’s been here long enough to understand that. Now he will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Rawiri Waititi: Withdraw and apologise.

SPEAKER: And can I just say to the Hon Mr Brownlee, getting running advice on me intervening, from the second most senior person in the House, is not helpful.

Rawiri Waititi: A point of order, Mr Speaker. The first part of the question actually was a very genuine question around the—

SPEAKER: Yeah, yeah. Well, just hard luck—hard luck! You know, you had maybe a good question—there’s a bit of debate around that—and you tossed away the opportunity.

Question No. 7—Environment

7. Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green) to the Minister for the Environment: Will the Government’s plan to clean up Aotearoa’s rivers and lakes within a generation include setting a dissolved inorganic nitrogen limit of 1 milligram per litre or lower; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Last year, the Government agreed to “reconsider the possibility of a [dissolved inorganic nitrogen] bottom line of 1 mg/l (…likely with exceptions” and, in doing so, revisit the environmental and economic implications. When making a recommendation on a dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) bottom line to Cabinet, I will be considering the expected effect of current policy requirements, the marginal environmental benefit of a DIN national bottom line, the marginal economic impact of such a DIN national bottom line, and whether the science behind a national bottom line of 1 milligram per litre of DIN has become clearer since May last year, when we last considered the question. I would also note, as I have done previously, that the periphyton attribute, carried over to the current National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management, effectively provides for a DIN level below 1 for gravel-bottom rivers. The outstanding issue is muddy-bottom rivers, and I don’t want a DIN of 1 to effectively become a target for gravel-bottom rivers.

Hon Eugenie Sage: What is his view on recent research by Dr Adam Canning, Professor Russel Death, and Dr Mike Joy, which suggests that to support macroinvertebrate diversity in rivers, “suitable nutrient criteria would set median dissolved inorganic nitrogen concentrations at ~0.6 mg/l”?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Those are the sorts of issues that I’m taking advice on, but I would note that there’s already a lot in the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management relating to excessive nitrogen contamination, including requirements that council plans prevent further decline of the water quality or ecosystem health, direct management of nitrogen concentrations in rivers to 2.4 milligram per litre or less of nitrate, setting specific targets for dissolved inorganic nitrogen and phosphorous in rivers to ensure that bottom lines are met, and to achieve health in the macroinvertebrate index.

Hon Eugenie Sage: For what reasons, if any, is he considering not setting a dissolved inorganic nitrogen limit, when he has acknowledged that the regulation of nitrogen in muddy-bottom rivers is an outstanding issue and his own Ministry for the Environment recommended a DIN limit of 1 milligram per litre last year?

Hon DAVID PARKER: The balance of reasons would be as described in the answer to the primary question.

Hon Eugenie Sage: What does he have to say to the residents of Dunsandel, where recent testing found that water in four local bores has nitrate nitrogen levels above the maximum acceptable value of 11.3 milligrams per litre, and 75 percent of samples were above the level that a Danish study has linked to potential risk of bowel cancer?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I would say that the matters relating to human health are for the Ministry of Health and the responsible Minister, Dr Ayesha Verrall.

Hon Eugenie Sage: Has he received advice about the impact on farmers, growers, and fertiliser companies of setting a DIN limit of 1 milligram per litre; if so, what did the advice say?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I received advice on that last year, before we took our decisions in respect of the National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he agree that there should be greater Government funding available for farmers to transition their farms to regenerative and organic practices, which use less synthetic nitrogen fertiliser and actively restore degraded land and water?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I agree that some farmers have been applying excessive levels of synthetic nitrogen. It’s one of the reasons why the Government regulated a limit of 190 kilograms per hectare per annum, compared with the practice in some areas of over 300 kilograms per hectare. I also agree that it is appropriate that the Ministry for Primary Industries continues to support research into regenerative agriculture.

Question No. 8—Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques

8. IBRAHIM OMER (Labour) to the Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques: What progress has been made on the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the terrorist attack on the Christchurch mosques?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques): Al salam alaikum, Mr Speaker. We’re at the start of a long process in terms of implementing the royal commission’s recommendations, but I can report to the House that significant progress has been made to date. This has focused mainly on three key areas: supporting our diverse communities, tackling harmful behaviour and discrimination, and keeping New Zealand safe and inclusive. In this respect, I can report, for example, that we have established Kāpuia, the Implementation Oversight Advisory Group, which had its first meeting last week. We’ve established the Collective Impact Board, that operates from Christchurch and provides ongoing support to victims of the mosque attacks. We held He Whenua Taurikura, New Zealand’s first hui on countering terrorism and violent extremism. My colleague the Hon Priyanka Radhakrishnan launched last week the establishment of the Ministry for Ethnic Communities, and next week we’ll also see the Ethnic Communities Graduate Programme kicking off with a first cohort, and the New Zealand Police have established Te Raranga, The Weave programme for reporting hate-motivated crime. All of this is alongside a range of other measures, including reviews of legislation, as recommended by the royal commission.

Ibrahim Omer: What role will Kāpuia, the ministerial advisory group, play in the Government’s response?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Kāpuia, the oversight advisory group, has been established in response to recommendation 44 of the royal commission’s report. That group will provide independent advice to me as the lead coordination Minister for the Government’s response. The group’s work will include advice on work programme priorities. Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu chief executive Arihia Bennett has been appointed chair of the group, which currently comprises 28 people. The group membership includes affected whānau, survivors and witnesses of the attack, representative communities, civil society, local government, and the private sector. The group also has representation from all New Zealand’s diverse communities.

Ibrahim Omer: What does this progress mean for New Zealand and New Zealanders?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The royal commission, when it was doing its work, spoke to many minority faith and ethnic communities, and reflected on the extent to which many expressed the view that they are not always made to feel welcome in Aotearoa New Zealand. The work we are doing is about creating a New Zealand where all people feel safe, have equal access to opportunities, and do not experience discrimination, where all New Zealanders are valued for what they bring to our rich and diverse society.

Jan Logie: Given the Federation of Islamic Association’s report last week, showing that not all victims and families are getting the help that they need, will the Minister support extending ACC to cover all victims?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No—and two parts to my response to that question. First of all, we’ve established the Collective Impact Board in Christchurch, which was one of the recommendations of the royal commission, and that is about ensuring that the various forms of support that can be provided by Government agencies continues to be provided and is coordinated and is overseen by a group that includes representatives of the victims’ families and the wider Muslim community. And I just make this point: that member’s question I would take a little more seriously if the Green Party had actually sent along just one representative to one of the 33 hui that we held earlier this year to engage not only with the Muslim community in Christchurch and around New Zealand but every other ethnic community.

Question No. 9—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes.

David Seymour: What advice has she received from the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group, chaired by Sir David Skegg?

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member has asked a very general question, and I’m going to let it run, but I’m going to ask him in future to relate his supplementary questions to his primary question. That one doesn’t, but we’ll take a British approach and let the Prime Minister answer it.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Establishing the group is a Government policy. I don’t understand why I wouldn’t be able to ask a question about it.

SPEAKER: That’s right, and if it was about setting up a group, it would have been fine, but it wasn’t; it was about the advice from the group.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again, in keeping with what Mr Speaker has outlined—that that is a group that’s been established and is undertaking work commissioned directly by Dr Ayesha Verrall—when it comes to the advice that we’ve received, that is something that I intend to share publicly once it’s gone through a bit more of a fulsome process amongst Cabinet colleagues. But very much we’ve been of the view that as we work towards reconnecting New Zealand, as we work towards changing up our settings, at every point we discuss not only the scientific advice, research, and evidence that we receive and that form the basis of our decision making; we also allow the public to have good notice of the decisions we’ve made and why.

David Seymour: Has she seen Australia’s national plan to transition Australia’s national COVID-19 response, which ends with Australia managing COVID-19 consistent with other public health management of other infectious diseases, and if so, when does she expect her Government to produce an equivalent plan?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, I have. I’ve also seen the Canadian Government’s recent decision to open up to those who are vaccinated without quarantine. I’ve also seen the UK Government’s decision to lift all of their restrictions that they’ve had in place from 19 July, and statements that Boris Johnson has made telling the public to prepare for upwards of 50,000 cases a day as a consequence. Everything that we’re seeing around the world at the moment is experimental. At the moment, we don’t necessarily have an evidence and research base to draw on. Countries are trying new things as vaccines are rolled out. The advantage New Zealand has always had is that we’ve looked outwardly to the world, drawn on that evidence, and made decisions in New Zealand’s best interests. My final note would be we actually set out some of our views around reopening prior to the Budget. I note that Australia’s plan and the phase that the member has spoken to they haven’t put a date around, but, obviously, based on what they have said, they’re looking into well beyond mid-2022 for their decisions.

David Seymour: What is it about Scott Morrison’s Government that allows it to produce and share with the public such a plan while her Government can’t?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I refute the premise of the question.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Did the Prime Minister set out in a pre-Budget address some of the thinking that the New Zealand Government has been doing about re-opening, and would she encourage members of the House to read it?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, I did. That was, in fact, in May. We also at that point pointed out that as new research and evidence emerges, we will continue to draw on that. That is why we created the group that Professor Skegg chairs, and as we see some of that new and emerging evidence around the difference that both a combination of the vaccine and a change-up in public health measures will make, we will share our view on how that will change up our border settings. We won’t be in the current state that we’re in for ever. It will not be the case that we have 14 days of managed isolation for every single traveller. However, I’m not in a position right now where I would hedge our bets on the way that New Zealand will definitively manage it, beyond, for instance, getting in place our vaccine roll-out, which is the most important thing we can do to change up border controls.

David Seymour: Why is it taking so much longer for her Government to publish a plan when, as she’s noted in earlier answers, other countries are publishing theirs and sharing theirs with the public of their countries?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said, I would characterise them as experiments. If the member is promoting that we have a plan like the UK, then that member is—absolutely, it is his decision to promote that as a plan. It is not in keeping with the strategy New Zealand has had. Secondly, at the moment, Australia’s decisions actually don’t have dates. They don’t have percentages for vaccines. We have since May been talking about what our intentions are, so, again, I wouldn’t suggest that somehow this is something that is particularly detailed beyond what we have already set out. The final point I would make is that at every point, that member has urged us to do something another country has done. We have carved our own path that has been right for New Zealand and, in my view, that is the reason why our economy and our health have been held in such high regard by others.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that following Australia’s decision to halve the number of international arrivals they are willing to accept into their country, New Zealand is accepting, on a per capita basis, three to four times the number of international arrivals into the country?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, I would point out that Mr Seymour is currently promoting a plan that does halve the number of people currently arriving in Australia, which would mean that New Zealand, on a per capita basis, currently has three to four times the number of people arriving at our border. If he is also supporting that plan, then he would be looking to the beginning of 2022 before they would restore the number of people that would be coming in under those caps. That’s actually not something we support. Our view is that we can manage the numbers we’ve had, and that is why we’ve had 150,000 people safely enter into New Zealand.

Chris Bishop: Why has the Government indicated they are now looking at purpose-built quarantine facilities, having previously dismissed the idea when it has been raised by other parties and public health experts?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When the party the member speaks of mentioned the idea of purpose-built facilities, it was seen as an alternative to what we were using at that time. The idea that purpose-built facilities at that time—which the member also promoted—be in rural, isolated areas away from a workforce would not have been able to cater for the 150,000 people we have since catered for. All we have simply said is, as we have more certainty around the way we’re likely to need to manage COVID into the future, that we will continue to look at the leasing arrangements we have into the future. That may well mean that we continue with some of our existing arrangements. It may involve more purpose-built. We’re keeping those options open.

Question No. 10—Environment

10. Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour) to the Minister for the Environment: What progress has been made on the removal of aluminium dross stored at Mataura?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): I’m pleased to inform the House that all of the 10,000 tonnes of aluminium dross by-product stored in Mataura’s old paper mill next to the Mataura River has now been removed. For too long, Mataura residents have been worried about the risk of that material giving off ammonia gas upon getting wet. The last dross was removed from Mataura last Wednesday and is being stored in watertight shipping containers at the New Zealand Aluminium Smelters site at Tīwai Point pending its further treatment or removal elsewhere for treatment or use.

Dr Liz Craig: How long have the issues with dross stored at Mataura taken to resolve?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Far too long. Dross has been stored at the old Mataura mill since early 2010, or thereabouts. The problems were exacerbated when the contractor hired by the Tīwai smelter to dispose of it went into receivership. This left the dross stuck in Mataura, with everyone denying ownership and responsibility—and, understandably, worrying local residents. Since 2017, we have worked to achieve a solution. We’re glad it’s been resolved. The efforts of many people need to be acknowledged. I’d like to particularly acknowledge the local residents; the Gore District Council; the local MPs, Dr Craig and Mark Patterson when he was here; Environment Southland; the Environmental Defence Society; Ngāi Tahu; Inalco Processing, who’ve been helpful; as well as, in the end, the smelter, for doing the right thing.

Dr Liz Craig: What are the next steps in dealing with the storage of dross and other hazardous substances?

Hon DAVID PARKER: Now that the Mataura site has been cleared up, the focus will move to the removal of material stored elsewhere in Southland. We will also continue to work with Rio Tinto and New Zealand Aluminium Smelters on the disposal of spent concrete cell linings that are stored at the Tīwai site. I think, perhaps, the wider lesson that we need to learn from the Mataura dross issue is that it’s wrong for companies to be able to disavow responsibility for the by-product of their own production systems, and over the next year or two the Government will be considering whether companies should be able to contract out responsibility for disposal of their own hazardous waste. We’ll consider whether legislative change is necessary to ensure that legal responsibility for hazardous waste rests with the producers of it.

Question No. 11—COVID-19 Response

11. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How many doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been delivered across each of the Government’s COVID-19 vaccine subgroups, and is he satisfied with the vaccine roll-out in New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Across each of the groups, 759,361 New Zealanders have received a first dose, and 490,835 have received a second dose.

Chris Bishop: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Firstly, the second part of the question was not addressed, and, secondly, the question was how many people in “each of the Government’s COVID-19 vaccine subgroups”—we just got a total answer for across the country.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Speaker. My apologies: in answer to the second part of the question, it should have been “Yes.” But, actually, the member’s question doesn’t ask about the number of people in each of the groups; it asks about the doses delivered across each of the groups.

SPEAKER: The member’s right, and if it was the way the member interpreted it, I think if there are—are there four groups?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yeah.

SPEAKER: Well, that would be five questions.

Chris Bishop: Well, point of order, Mr Speaker. This question has been asked previously in each of the last two weeks—including last week, exactly a week ago today—and the Minister has been able to answer across each of the seven subgroups: 1a, 1b; 2a, b; and 3a, b, and c. I don’t understand what—well, I know why he doesn’t want to answer it; it’s because he wants to announce the results tomorrow, on Wednesday, and not answer the question, the primary question on notice, today. But that doesn’t obviate his responsibility to the House to give us the answers today.

SPEAKER: Well, if the member had asked the right question, it would have been fine.

Chris Bishop: Well, point of order, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: No, we’re having no further points of order on this. Does the member want another supplementary or not?

Chris Bishop: Yes. Why has Canterbury, the country’s second-biggest region by population, only administered 4,400 first doses, or 2 percent, to those in group 3 of the roll-out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: In terms of the doses administered by priority groups, Canterbury have administered 19,342 doses in group 1; 74,933 doses in group 2; 7,143 doses in group 3; and 2,081 doses in group 4.

Chris Bishop: How can Cantabrians have confidence in the vaccine roll-out when their DHB has stated they expect to be vaccinating group 3 until mid-September and that “most vaccinations for people in group 4 in Canterbury will start from mid-September”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The Ministry of Health are providing to Canterbury the doses that they have asked for in order to fulfil the delivery plan that they have agreed with the Ministry of Health.

Chris Bishop: Has he seen the comments of the Prime Minister yesterday in relation to 75-year-olds with health problems that “we’ve been advised that at least they have received what they can expect and when they can expect to be vaccinated.”, and how does he square that with the comments of Simon Wallace of the rest home association that in a couple of DHBs, they have not even started vaccinating on their first doses?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: All DHBs have started vaccinating group 3, and did so some time ago now. In terms of communicating with people in group 3 about when they can expect to be booked in for a vaccine, as is now well-canvassed, notifications around that went out last week to individual recipients using the records provided by their primary health provider. If people in that 65-plus age bracket have not heard about when they can expect to receive an invitation to book in for the vaccine, their first port of call should be to contact their primary health provider, their GP practice. It could be that the contact details provided are out of date.

Chris Bishop: Does he stand by his comment that “New Zealand will be at the front of the queue” for the COVID-19 vaccine when, as of now, we are last in the OECD, with just 23 vaccination doses administered per 100 people?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes, in the context in which I made that statement. At the time, I was talking about the fact that no vaccines, at that point, had come to the market and New Zealand had advance purchase agreements with four different vaccines so that as they came to market, we would have access to them.

Chris Bishop: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to come back to my primary question and ask: how is it acceptable for the Minister to answer in the way he did? It is very clear: it refers to the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine being delivered across each of the Government’s COVID-19 vaccine subgroups, and we did not get the numbers for each of the subgroups.

SPEAKER: OK. Well, I’m pleased the member has raised this point of order, because it gives me the opportunity to indicate to him that the question he asked today was not the question he asked last week. Last week, he asked “in each of the subgroups”, and today he asked “across each of the subgroups”. There is a difference, and if the member wants a consistent answer, he should ask the same question.

Chris Bishop: Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Chris Bishop.

Chris Bishop: No, it’s a point of order.

SPEAKER: No, no, I’ve dealt with that. I’ve had enough of this. Is there a further supplementary? No? All right. OK.

Question No. 12—Building and Construction

12. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister for Building and Construction: What reports has the Minister seen regarding building consents?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister for Building and Construction): I’ve seen a report from Statistics New Zealand that shows an all-time high number of new homes consented in the year ended May 2021, at 43,466. This is an increase of 17 percent from the May 2020 year and a 40 percent increase on when this Government came to office. These figures show a strong pipeline for the residential construction industry to deliver the homes New Zealanders need at levels we’ve never seen before.

Tāmati Coffey: What does this data show about high-density housing?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Statistics New Zealand’s data shows that 1,380 townhouses, flats, and units were consented in May 2021 alone, the highest number since records began in 1990. Higher density and modular off-site manufacturing methods are key to helping New Zealand with the healthy, modern, and affordable homes we need.

Tāmati Coffey: How is the Government supporting the construction sector to deliver on these record consents?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Just last month we saw new building laws that will support housing supply and affordability and enable the use of new, innovative, and efficient building methods, such as off-site manufacturing. The building amendment Act now allows for new certification for modular component manufacturers, which will streamline the building consent process for new and innovative building techniques that have the potential to reduce building costs while delivering high-quality, affordable homes. The construction industry is doing a fantastic job of stepping up to the challenge of meeting demand, and our ongoing work with the accord will help ensure the sector remains resilient and that we keep building on capacity and capability.

Nicola Willis: Can the Minister confirm that the number of houses being consented now, which amounts to around 8.5 houses per thousand people, is much lower than the number of houses consented in 1973, at around 13.4 houses per thousand people?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I can confirm is that we can, from Statistics New Zealand, show an all-time high number of new homes consented in the year ended May 2021, at 43,466.

Questions to Members

Question No. 1—Regulatory Standards Bill

1. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: What is the purpose of the Regulatory Standards Bill?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): Our Parliament is on a long evolution towards better institutions for lawmaking. The first Parliament was prorogued amongst a fist fight, where the then Prime Minister actually decked a member of the Opposition; 130 years later, we had a Prime Minister who regularly suspended the Standing Orders. And it was only with the fourth Labour Government, through the Constitution Act and the Public Finance Act, that we’ve had better constitutional arrangements. However, when it comes to regulation, we still have, at best, anaemic measures for scrutinising the quality of laws and regulations made and their effect on regulations.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It is well and truly established in this House by previous Speakers that questions to members need to be quite concise, both in their question and in their answer. The question here is “What is the purpose of the Regulatory Standards Bill?” We’ve heard quite a bit from Mr Seymour, and he hasn’t mentioned the bill once.

SPEAKER: And he’s now going to mention it, tell us the purpose—all without taking a breath!

DAVID SEYMOUR: Mr Speaker, I was just giving a little bit of historical context, but as you wish. The Regulatory Standards Bill imposes a discipline on Ministers, chief executives, and members in charge of legislation, to ensure that we are asking and answering the right questions when laws are made, and if those questions are not satisfactorily asked and answered, citizens have a direct remedy for challenging poorly made laws.

Question No. 2—Regulatory Standards Bill

2. DAMIEN SMITH (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: Why is the Regulatory Standards Bill necessary if regulatory impact statements are already produced?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): That’s an excellent question. The Regulatory Standards Bill is necessary in spite of regulatory impact statements being produced, due to their poor quality. I recall, as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the now abolished position of Minister for Regulatory Reform, seeing—

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

Question No. 3—Regulatory Standards Bill

3. Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: What are the principles of responsible regulation contained in the Regulatory Standards Bill?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): Well, the Regulatory Standards Bill, under clause 6, sets out a series of principles for responsible regulation. That includes being consistent with the rule of law. It includes respect for persons’ liberty, personal security, freedom of choice. It includes not impairing or authorising the impairment of property without it being shown to be necessary in the public interest. It includes not imposing or authorising the imposition of a tax except by under an Act. It involves preserving the role of the courts in interpreting legislation, rather than having arbitrary interpretation by officials. It includes adhering to a series of further principles of responsible regulation-making.

Hon Members: Supplementary.

SPEAKER: No.

Question No. 4—Regulatory Standards Bill

4. NICOLE McKEE (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: What remedies does the Regulatory Standards Bill give to citizens?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): The Regulatory Standards Bill puts some real force and power behind regulatory impact analysis, which is currently often ignored by Governments. It allows members of the public or organisations that represent them to seek a remedy in proceedings where a court can issue a declaration that a Minister responsible, a chief executive of a department responsible, or a member in charge of a bill in Parliament can be declared to have failed to have adhered to the correct principles of good regulation-making, thus putting some real teeth behind regulatory impact analysis that is too often ignored by contemporary Governments of both stripes.

Question No. 5—Regulatory Standards Bill

5. KAREN CHHOUR (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: Does the Regulatory Standards Bill require cost-benefit analysis to be provided on all new legislation?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): Another excellent question. The Regulatory Standards Bill does indeed require cost-benefit analysis which identifies those—[Speaker stands] Point of order, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: The member has answered the question. Question No. 7, Mark Cameron.

David Seymour: Point of order, Mr Speaker. For the benefit of people watching—

SPEAKER: No, no.

David Seymour: —how is it possible—

SPEAKER: No, no. Order! The member will resume his seat. The member addresses the Chair; he doesn’t address his audience. If the member wants to continue with these questions, he will let me call the next one. If he doesn’t, he won’t. Question No. 7, Mark Cameron.

Hon Member: Point of order, Mr Speaker. It’s actually Toni Severin.

SPEAKER: Sorry? Oh, Toni Severin. Sorry, it just felt like more already.

Question No. 6—Regulatory Standards Bill

6. TONI SEVERIN (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: Does the Regulatory Standards Bill require consultation with people affected by this new legislation?

SPEAKER: Well, the member knows what the question says; we’ll go for it anyway, as written.

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Consultation of people affected by regulations and laws is extremely important. They often have insight into how their sector of society operates and what the costs and benefits of a particular law might be. It is therefore essential that when laws and regulations are made, people are consulted so that their insights can be acknowledged and their rights upheld, bearing in mind that under the Regulatory Standards Bill, they can seek to ensure regulations and laws are being properly made through court action. For that reason, it is certainly—and let me answer the question for you—a requirement of the Regulatory Standards Bill that before a certificate is signed by a Minister, chief executive, or member in charge of a bill, that person signing the certificate that the law or regulation has been properly made is satisfied that those people affected have been consulted. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Question No. 7—Regulatory Standards Bill

7. MARK CAMERON (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: What would the Regulatory Standards Bill mean for rural New Zealand?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): First of all, I want to congratulate the member on recently having his bill drawn, which would also mean a lot for rural New Zealand. But in terms of what this legislation would mean, it would mean that a numerical minority of New Zealand and yet an economic powerhouse—some would say the backbone of the New Zealand economy, rural New Zealand—have the ability to stand up to regulators, that often fail to understand the impacts of laws and regulations on their particular sector. For example, those farmers in Southland have recently had laws and regulations visited upon them, requiring them to plant their crops too early.

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member certainly hasn’t answered it, but he’s addressed it at greater length than necessary.

HansS_20210706_051780000#Q#HansDeb_20210706_20210706_14#3910

Question No. 8—Regulatory Standards Bill

8. CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: What would the Regulatory Standards Bill mean for small business?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): Like farmers and those in the primary industries, those who operate, own, and pay the bills at small businesses are also a very small minority of New Zealanders but extremely important to the economy. They often find that employment law and other types of regulation imposed upon them is extremely costly, and they have little recourse against those costs being imposed upon them without proper consultation or cost-benefit analysis. This legislation, the Regulatory Standards Bill, would allow those in small business to seek remedies in the court, or for their representative bodies to seek remedies, when they have their rights trampled. Mr Speaker, you’re gesturing to cut someone’s head off. I don’t think that’s appropriate for the House of Parliament! This bill would allow them to seek remedies when their rights are trampled.

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 9—Regulatory Standards Bill

9. SIMON COURT (ACT) to the Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill: Would the Regulatory Standards Bill prevent environmental regulations being put in place?

DAVID SEYMOUR (Member in charge of the Regulatory Standards Bill): I had prepared what I thought to be quite an erudite dissertation with reference to the “tragedy of the commons”, outlined in Garrett Hardin’s eponymous 1968 essay; however, Mr Speaker, I feel your patience for such a dissertation may be running thin. No, you’ve changed your mind? OK, let’s go.

As Hardin outlined, the tragedy of the commons is something that occurs when, as he said, all men rush to tragedy, calculating that if they don’t consume environmental resources, somebody else will. It is a classic market failure, where all people acting independently and doing their best have a habit of bringing about results and consequences that are actually not for the collective good. A classic modern example is fishers taking all the fish—that’s why we have fishing regulations. Somebody seeking to bring about environmental regulations that solve a genuine market failure—a tragedy of the commons, such as we see in fishing; such as we see in people emitting carbon dioxide—could be solved and justified under this law.

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

DAVID SEYMOUR: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Order!

Question No. 11 to Minister

SPEAKER: I call on Government Order of the Day No. 1.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Point of order. In relation to question No. 11 from me to the Minister for COVID-19 Response today, the language I used in my primary question is exactly the same language as the Minister used in his answer to the primary question on the same topic last week. So he specifically said, last week, “I can’t give you the percentage”—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! What I want now is, very quickly, a remedy that the member wants through this intervention, because the member has interrupted, now, another debate, and we’re not meant to go back arguing on a particular point when it was made very clear by me that the question that was asked was different; the fact that it related to an answer is actually not relevant. The member asked a different question—

CHRIS BISHOP: No, it’s not different.

SPEAKER: —and I am not prepared to entertain further discussion on this now.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, what is the remedy to make the Minister, who has the data, come to the House and answer the question?

SPEAKER: Ask the same question as he did last time.

Bills

Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill

First Reading

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

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

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

Taranaki maunga, Taranaki whenua, Taranaki tangata, Ngāti Maru iwi, nau mai, haere mai. He rā tino nui tēnei mō koutou, he rā tino nui hoki mō Aotearoa. Nā koutou te kaha me te manawanui. Nō reira, rau rangatira mā, tēnei taku mihi atu ki a koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou huri noa.

[Taranaki mountain, Taranaki land, Taranaki people, the tribe of Ngāti Maru, welcome, welcome. This is a very important day for you. It is also a very important day for New Zealand. You have had the strength and dedication. Therefore, my esteemed leaders, this is my acknowledgment of you, greetings, greetings, greetings to all gathered here.]

I’d like to begin by acknowledging the members of Ngāti Maru in the gallery this afternoon, and I say to them: thank you for travelling from your homes, from Taranaki and elsewhere, to be in Wellington for this significant milestone in your journey to final agreement on redress for Treaty breaches. Today, you will remember your leaders and loved ones who have passed on before they have been able to bear witness to today’s milestone. This settlement is a tribute to the dedication of those individuals who fought so tirelessly for the resolution of Ngāti Maru’s grievances to finally see justice after all these years. I’ve been honoured to host Ngāti Maru here at Parliament, particularly the negotiators, who worked long days and many nights to complete this settlement. Anaru Marshall, you and your team have been unwavering champions for your people. I also acknowledge chief Crown negotiator David Tapsell, who’s been unable to be here today.

Ngāti Maru is the last of the eight Taranaki iwi to settle their historic grievances with the Crown, and are involved in the collective negotiations, of course, for your tupuna Taranaki Maunga. Given that I lived for many years under the shadow of that great mountain, it’s my honour to begin today’s reading. Ngāti Maru’s history with the Crown is one characterised by loss: loss of land, loss of identity, loss of autonomy. Through conflict, confiscation, and Crown purchasing, Ngāti Maru has carried a long legacy of dislocation and dispossession. I well remember, when discussing Ngāti Maru issues in a Cabinet committee in the last couple of years, a senior Cabinet Minister of the time talking to me about his feelings about Ngāti Maru having been left virtually landless as a result of the Crown’s actions. This settlement acknowledges that hurt.

For the Crown, the most solemn part of this settlement is the apology to Ngāti Maru. The Crown formally and publicly recognises the hardship and heartache it has caused your whānau and hapū and to celebrate the resilience of your iwi in the face of such adversity. Under normal circumstances, I would have read the Crown apology to you when we signed Te Hiringa Taketake, your deed of settlement, in February this year. The reading of the Crown’s apology is a significant moment for Ngāti Maru and the Crown, and it’s a responsibility, every time I get the privilege to do it as Minister, that I take very seriously. But when COVID-19 restrictions meant many Ngāti Maru could not attend the signing ceremony in February this year, I committed to return to deliver the Crown apology at a later date so it could be heard by all your claimant community. After your third and final reading, I will uphold my commitment to Ngāti Maru and visit Te Upoko o te Whenua marae at Tarata to read the Crown’s apology to your people on your whenua.

The Crown apology builds on the understanding Ngāti Maru and the Crown have reached about our shared history, and I will reflect on that history in my speech to support the third reading of the bill. Today, I will provide an outline of this settlement for the record. The settlement provides for 16 sites of significance to be transferred to Ngāti Maru as cultural redress on settlement date. The settlement includes a joint management agreement between Ngāti Maru and the Taranaki Regional Council to improve the health of Te Awaroa, the Waitara River—the lifeblood awa of Ngāti Maru. A natural resources plan, Maru Taiao, has been provided for in the settlement, outlining the values and principles of Ngāti Maru in relation to this important area. The settlement also includes statutory acknowledgments relating to rivers, reserves, and conservation areas to reflect Ngāti Maru’s deep connection to these places. The total financial and commercial redress for Ngāti Maru is $30 million. This includes the right to purchase the Te Wera Crown forest licensed land, 31 properties currently held in the Treaty Settlements Landbank, and three school sites.

This settlement is a product of the determination and perseverance of Ngāti Maru and its rangatira and its many people. I just want to say, for the record, I have enjoyed the engagements that I have had with Ngāti Maru leaders, particularly Anaru Marshall, at Tarata and in my office, as we’ve worked through some of the trickier problems that this settlement has entailed. I have to say, all of those engagements have been respectful, even if they have been forceful, and the benefits of those engagements are now before us.

It’s the Crown’s wish that through this settlement, it can restore its own honour and atone for the injustices that it has inflicted upon Ngāti Maru. No settlement can ever compensate Ngāti Maru for the true measure of what they have lost, and all that they have suffered cannot be remedied. However, through this settlement, the Crown wants to lift the burden of Ngāti Maru’s heartache.

E te iwi o Ngāti Maru, today is the first reading of three, one further step of many we still need to take, and I look forward to hosting you back here again to support the passage of your settlement through the House. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): It’s a privilege to rise this afternoon as the member of Parliament for Southland and the National Party spokesperson for Treaty negotiations to speak in support of the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill. To the elders, leaders, and whānau of Ngāti Maru who are here in the gallery today or watching from home, I wish to extend a very warm welcome. This settlement, this bill, and this process is about you, your tūpuna, and your uri.

Maru hāhā, hāhā te whenua, hāhā te tangata.

[Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness, the land is deserted.]

The people are gone and gasping for breath. In this Ngāti Maru lament, we are haunted by the intense sense of loss, discontent, and disconnection that generations of Ngāti Maru whānau and hapū have borne. Ngāti Maru is an iwi whose area of interest extends from Mount Taranaki east to the upper Whanganui River, and north-east to the Waitara River. However, Ngāti Maru were left virtually landless and their people displaced and dispersed. It is those wrongs that we seek to acknowledge today and set right through the settlement.

I acknowledge that the signing of Ngāti Maru settlement, which took place in February, has been a long time coming for iwi, who have been in negotiations since the late 1980s. An in principle agreement was reached two years ago. I also note that this bill completes the settlement process which began under former Treaty negotiations Minister Christopher Finlayson under the last National-led Government. I also recognise the leadership and efforts of Minister Little, who is shepherding this settlement to its conclusion. We also owe a debt of gratitude to the settlement negotiators for the Crown and for Ngāti Maru, who through their efforts have shaped an agreement that helps to build a brighter future for iwi and subsequent future generations.

With every Treaty settlement bill, we turn our gaze in three directions. We look to the past, reflecting on traumatic histories and legacies that are very much a part of the story of our history as a nation. We look upon the present moment, acknowledging past injustice, and through redress we seek to make right the wrongs of the past. Finally, we look to the future with hope, trusting that a re-forged relationship between Crown and tangata whenua lays the foundation for our best days, which lie ahead.

The historical account in this bill turns our gaze to the past. For generations, Ngāti Maru cultivated the fertile river flats and drew resources from the area’s forests, rivers, and wetlands. Because of their inland location, Ngāti Maru had limited contact with Europeans during the 1840s and 1850s. Ngāti Maru were not involved in the land dealings which led to war in Taranaki in 1860, and were not directly involved in the subsequent fighting. Their involvement was limited to providing refuge to Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke, in accordance with the requirements of whanaungatanga. However, when the Crown confiscated huge tracts of Taranaki to punish the rebels—so-called—in 1865, approximately half of the traditional lands of Ngāti Maru were included. Many of their main kāinga, urupā, and wāhi tapu were taken, and some have never been returned.

Through the 1870s, Ngāti Maru suffered devastating land loss. Much of the remaining Ngāti Maru land was then put through the Native Land Court. Ngāti Maru had no alternative but to use the Native Land Court if they wanted a title that could be legally recognised and protected from claims from other Māori. A legal title was also necessary if Ngāti Maru wished to lease or sell land. However, the individualisation of customary title made the land more susceptible to alienation, and further damaged tribal cohesion. Ultimately, Ngāti Maru did not retain any of the land awarded to them by the Native Land Court. In the early 1890s, some Ngāti Maru were virtually landless and appealed to the Crown for help. The Crown’s response was slow and ineffective. Legislation was not enacted until 1907, and the land ultimately provided to Ngāti Maru was poor and of limited size. In many other ways, the Crown failed to protect the interests of Ngāti Maru in the context of accelerating settler migration.

The extensive loss of Ngāti Maru lands has eroded tribal structures, created severe poverty, and damaged the physical, cultural, and spiritual health of generations of Ngāti Maru people, and that is what this bill aims to redress. So it is in a spirit of remorse and with a genuine hope for reconciliation in this bill that the Crown acknowledges and apologises to Ngāti Maru for its acts and omissions which breached the Crown’s obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi and the damage that those actions caused to Ngāti Maru. These include acknowledgments relating to the wars in Taranaki in the 1860s, the Crown’s confiscation of approximately half of the Ngāti Maru rohe, its imprisonment of Ngāti Maru men without trial following their participation in protests initiated at Parihaka regarding the confiscation of Taranaki lands, and its subsequent invasion and destruction of Parihaka. The deed will also include acknowledgment that the Crown failed to ensure that Ngāti Maru retained sufficient land for their present and future needs, and that it failed to protect their rangatiratanga.

Ngāti Maru will receive financial and commercial redress valued at $30 million. Cultural redress includes the vesting of 16 sites of cultural significance, including Purangi and Tarata domains. While no redress can ever fully compensate for the destructive and demoralising effects of past actions, it’s hoped that this settlement will allow Ngāti Maru to realise their aspirations for a vibrant, economic, and cultural future and restore a relationship based on mutual trust, respect, and cooperation. I thank the people of Ngāti Maru for their generosity and commitment in being here today and achieving this settlement. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon WILLIE JACKSON (Minister for Māori Development): Tuatahi, e mihi ana ki a koutou Ngāti Maru kua tae mai nei i tēnei wā ki te whakarangatira i a mātou he Hōnore nui ki te tū i mua i a koutou i tēnei wā, tēnā koutou, ā, tēnā koutou, tēnā anō tātou katoa. Madam Speaker, it’s good to have the whanaunga from Taranaki here.

[Firstly, I acknowledge you, Ngāti Maru, who have come here at this time to honour us. It is a big honour to stand before you at this time, greetings, greetings, greetings to us all. Madam Speaker, it’s good to have the kin from Taranaki here.]

It’s good to have the whanaunga from Taranaki here as we get into this first reading. I was having a look over the agreement and I want to get into some of the intricacies of it, I suppose, in the third reading, but the joint management agreement, I think, in terms of the river, is an area that pleases me very much—and I’m sure it does all Māori members. The ironic part of it is it comes at a time when all kaupapa Māori issues are being critiqued very unfairly by the Opposition in this House. It’s really good when I listen to the previous speaker, Joseph Mooney, because when we come to times like this, we get a very humble and supportive Opposition. But when we talk about co-management and co-governance, we get an Opposition talking about apartheid, separatism, and racism. It’s ironic, actually—just half an hour ago—how the temperature changes and the tenor changes as our people come into the House. These very phrases of co-management and even co-governance take on a different form when we get into this type of setting. Our Opposition gives us a lot of tautoko and a lot of support, but in previous times they’re intent on scaring Aotearoa in terms of Māori issues, and they’ll do anything to increase their vote, including making allegations to us in terms of how we uphold tikanga.

That’s the latest allegation in terms of this Government: apparently, we’re major supporters of the Mongrel Mob. I say today on record: it’s not a matter of giving support to the mob, which we will not do; it’s about upholding our tikanga, which we will always do. It’s something we must continue to uphold, and we must make those points at every opportunity in kaupapa Māori settings and situations, and not all of a sudden get all hōhonu and forget what’s going on around us. This is about kaupapa Māori at all times. The Opposition needs to be aware of that—not all of a sudden forget all the terrible things that they’ve been saying about Te Ao Māori over the last few weeks. It is a disgrace what is happening in this House and happening outside. Constant allegations about kaupapa Māori, tikanga Māori, and te reo Māori, and all of us Māori members are getting sick of it—are getting tired of it. So I say to our whanaunga here today: I’m glad you’re here because you can move these messages on. Because it’s not just about our settlement bill; it’s about where we are going today in Te Ao Māori.

This settlement—I want to say, what’s so scary about this settlement bill? You see, the proposed joint management agreement is very clear: the Waitara River Committee was established by the New Plymouth District Council, and it’s going to give an opportunity to Ngāti Maru to oversee the river—oh, that must be racist and separatist! That must scare all of New Zealand because that’s what the joint management agreement says, but if you listen to the Opposition: “You watch out for those Māoris, they’re trying to take over.” This is something that’s been agreed on with National Party people, and all we’re doing is upholding it.

I was reading through it because I was trying to think what is so scary about all our agreements. What are we doing today that we were doing differently a few years ago? The reality is that we’re not doing things too much different; we’re just rolling things out. And that’s what a brave and courageous Government should do. And this bill is a bill that has to be rolled out and takes into account the history that Minister Little talked about, the history of the Native Land Court, that Kiritapu Allan knows all about—knows all about—that broke down our culture, that set out to break down every part of Māori society. That was the history of the Native Land Court: break down these communists, break down our whānau settings, break down the principle of how we lived. We know this. Kiritapu knows this. Harete Hipango knows this. Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer knows this. We come here to fix these wrongs. They used to call this—I think David Williams; what did they call it, Kiritapu? I’m just looking back on what they called it. Judith Binney described the Native Land Act as an act of war, and they described the Native Land Court as a strategy to take and disable and dismember Te Ao Māori.

That’s what we’re talking about today. That’s what we’re talking about today, and we’re rectifying all that, but we must remember that this is part of the whole fight for justice and partnership in terms of New Zealand and Aotearoa. I’m proud of the work that we’ve done, and I’m proud of the work that the previous Government did. Let’s not forget that. Let’s remember that the next time we start criticising kaupapa Māori. I ask all our speakers today to take that into account when they have their kōrero. I’ll make a further contribution in the third reading. Kia ora anō tātou katoa.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): Kia ora. He ata ki runga, he ata ki raro, he ata ki te whakatūtū, he ata ki te whakaritorito, he ata whiwhia, he ata rāwea, he ata tānga.

[The dawn light appears above and below, the dawn light is happening and the dawn sprouts, morning is here, the morning wraps around, the morning has struck.]

The dawn light appears above and below, and creates the bright red morning light. Its warmth blankets the land, emerging the gifts of a new day, whose symbolism inspires resilience and draws us to new pathways, new horizons, and new opportunities.

Ngā uri o Ngāti Maru, nau mai haere mai ki te pānuitanga tuatahi o koutou pire, Ngāti Maru Taranaki Claims Settlement Bill.

[To the descendants of Ngāti Maru, welcome, welcome to the first reading of your bill, Ngāti Maru Taranaki Claims Settlement Bill.]

I open with the words of Maru Ora, expressed within Te Hiringa Taketake, the deed of settlement, ratified and signed 27 February 2021 at Tarata.

Ngāti Maru, my kōrero to you today is to whakanui, to whakamana, to celebrate the passage, the first reading of your bill, through to its final journey, the third reading and Royal assent into law. I am not standing here to politicise other kaupapa; I am here to celebrate what we are gathered here for today. For today—Tuesday, 6 July 2021—emerges the gifts of a new day where upon Ngāti Maru draws to, and now strides, new pathways, reaches for new horizons, and seizes new opportunities. Tihei mauri ora.

I stand and I call as uri, as a descendant of Whanganui, with ancestral lands and waters connecting relationships, whanaungatanga, to Ngāti Maru, Taumatamahoe, Whitianga, Te Awa Tupua.

I speak as a member of Parliament for the National Party, returned with a list of much to do and much to give and serve. Today, I stand and I speak, privileged, to account for this moment in time, historic; to reflect and to account for past accounts; to acknowledge and to apologise. Ngāti Maru has endured and continues to endure the journey across generations, and, across the generations, has generated much in the way of grievance, injustice, mamae, long overdue, now due the time to put right the wrong, the wronged, and the wrongdoing, reconciling the past into the present and forward into the future with hope, aspiration, and potential to be realised, those new horizons.

The legislative pen at this first reading through to the Royal assent is to not erase the history but to inscribe into law; not to forget, not to rewrite, but to put right the his and the her stories, ngā pūtakenga kōrero [the sources of narratives]; to ink and atone for the blot and the blight of historical actions and omissions, the hara, to heartfeltly and properly remedy and make right, to make just.

In the time of today, this first reading, I’ve outlined the purpose of what a first reading is about. It is the introduction of the bill to the House for it to proceed to select committee, for further evidence, kōrero, to be shared, to be listened to, for the members of the Māori Affairs Committee, which I return to this House with the privilege to sit and reside there, to take that into full account as we bring the bill, your bill, back into the House for the second, and then into the third readings.

This first reading, however, is the opportunity, and it is the opportunity for all political parties, irrespective of their stance and views around other politics of the day, but the unique aspect of your bill and our Treaty settlement bills is that we unify. We unify because we recognise, we acknowledge, we apologise, and we atone for the wrongs of the past to put right moving forward into the future. So the first reading in this House, which is a chamber of remembrance, it is a chamber of all those who have lived lives and given their lives for what they hope to fulfil for our lives in the present and moving into the future. This Chamber is one to reflect on what our purpose is and what we strive to contribute, give, and gain. So, as I say, the first reading and going into Royal assent, Treaty bills are very unique and special—and they should be, because our nation has been forged and founded on many wrongs, many injustices, and it is our duty and obligation and responsibility now, as members of Parliament, to aid in making this right, in making this just, in making this proper.

I now turn to acknowledge significant persons involved in navigating the journey of negotiations for Ngāti Maru. We always mention our Ministers, and that is appropriate, but front of mind and top of mind for me is always our people who carry the heavy burden and mantel of leadership and responsibility. Anaru—I see you up there—Anaru Marshall and kaumātua and the trustees, you know who you are, and I will name you at another reading because my time is limited and I have still much to get through. But I acknowledge those present today, for your presence is a gift from our tūpuna, you as uri, we come from our tūpuna and many of them do not survive the endurance of the journey that they have started for us and we continue, and then through to our mokopuna and into the future. So I acknowledge the past, the present, you are that gift from our past and you are the gift into the future for our mokopuna. I acknowledge you all. I mention also, appropriately, Te Arawhiti for the work that is done there in bridging those differences and bridging and forging, help forge the pathway, moving forward with hope, with positivity, with potential, and with aspirations to be fulfilled.

This bill will be broken down and addressed by speakers to follow, the components of it. But, essentially, Ngāti Maru, as you well know, your bill comprises three parts. Part 1 sets out the purpose. That purpose talks of your historical accounts and that being inscribed, scripted into law so that it is never forgotten. The deed of settlement, your deed of settlement, has the fuller account. In returning to this House, I have sat down and I am reading and I have made the correlation of some of my whakapapa to Ngāti Maru whenua. When I was at home on the weekend, my kāinga is beside the Whanganui River, and I was reflecting not just on the journey that we of Whanganui have been with Te Awa Tupua but the journey that you have embarked on and the relationship that you have connecting to Te Awa Tupua. My reflection on the weekend was speaking to one of our Te Pou Tupua, with Tariana, as whanaunga we talk—when I go home, we talk constantly; not the politics but the whakawhanaungatanga, so intrinsic as to who we are, where we come from, and where we move forward to. So I acknowledge the whakawhanaungatanga that is shared amongst us.

In the short time—just a quick chronology, because I will address it for next readings—the acknowledgements, there are 16 of them that I have noted in the bill, and also, critically, the apology, which I will speak to at the third reading. But to wrap up, to say that the journey started in 1865, with the land confiscations, and it transpired through to the negotiations commencing and navigating from the late 1980s through to the agreement in principle on 20 December 2017, the deed of settlement on 27 February this year, and today with this first reading. It is a privilege for me to address the House, but more significantly and importantly Ngāti Maru. Tēnā tātou katoa. I commend the bill to the House.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā.

Tēnā koutou

E hoa mā

Kua tae mai nei

Ki tēnei wā

Nō reira rā

E hoa mā

Kia ora rā

Koutou katoa.

[Greetings to you

My friends

Who have come here

At this time

Therefore

My friends

Greetings

To you all.]

I wanted to start on a light note despite the heaviness of this conversation. My colleague Willie Jackson is right: we come here, we pour our heart out, we acknowledge the Treaty settlement legislation goes through here but it doesn’t sit in isolation; the work that this House does on Treaty settlements needs to be echoed in everything else that we’re doing. So by putting in place things like the Māori Health Authority, by putting in place Māori wards, by increasing Māori representation at decision-making tables, that is all part and parcel of why we’ve come to Parliament here to make those changes. And I wanted to acknowledge that, because he’s right: sometimes in this House we talk with one voice and sometimes we do it just for show, for the people who are watching. But, actually, if we’re going to be consistent, then I’d ask the Opposition to be consistent in making sure that Māori are continually supported around that decision-making table, because sometimes they haven’t been of that mind. And, now that I’ve said that, I won’t say any more.

Ngā uri o Taranaki maunga, tēnā koutou. Anei tētehi uri o Taranaki maunga e tū ake nei ki te mihi ki a koutou i tēnei rā whakahirahira.

[To the descendants of Mount Taranaki, greetings to you. I am a descendant of Mount Taranaki standing here to greet you on this significant day.]

I’m a Coffey from Rāhotu, and I’ve carried that name with me through the generations, all the way down to even now, and even my proud Te Arawa whakapapa couldn’t dilute the Coffey name—no! It stuck with me! And, for that reason, I carry it proudly. Our whānau were actually a whānau that left Taranaki back in the day, at the time of the Land Wars, and actually made our way down to Lower Hutt, down here in Wellington. And we grew up as uri of Taranaki but living down here in Te Awakairangi. So I acknowledge you, those of my whanaunga that may be sitting up there in the gallery today.

I first of all wanted to start by thanking your people that you put out the front—the negotiators that act on behalf of this settlement—because I know that they have done a lot of work, and I wanted to acknowledge them. They are actually listed in the bill; so, if anyone wants to go and see, check out page 22. I want to say thank you to you, Anaru Marshall, Nathan Peri, James Tuuta, Paretutaki Hayward-Howie, Rowena Henry—all on behalf of Ngāti Maru. On behalf of Te Kāhui Maru Trust and Te Iwi o Maruwharanui: Holden Hohaia, Tamzyn Pue, Bronwyn Puata-Koroheke, Eileen Hall, Samuel Tamarapa, Ray Tuuta, and all of those other people that were there on the signing of the deed of settlement on 27 February 2021.

It was a big day, and obviously that has led you to this House here. We still have a bit of due diligence that we need to do, and so your bill is going to come to the Māori Affairs Committee, of which I am chair. You should probably know that we’ve got all political parties represented around the table, and we generally do things quite nice—we play quite nicely on our komiti Māori, just so you know. But one thing that we do is we try and honour what you’ve signed in the deed of settlement that was done earlier on. So much gets you to that point where you sign that deed that there are only minor tweaks that we need to do to be able to process it through this House. So today is the first reading; then what we’ll do is we’ll open it up for submissions hearings. And, if you would like to send us an invite to come to Te Upoko o te Whenua, to come to the marae to listen to those hearings, send us an invite and tell us if that’s what you would like us to do. We would love to come and listen to those hearings, listen to the stories, the richness of those stories, which are actually acknowledged in the summary of historical account.

I’ve heard my colleague from the National Party read through some of that historical account; so I’m not going to do it here. But one thing that I did want to do is read out some of the acknowledgments, which is, in a nutshell, all of the reasons that have led us to this, all of the reasons that the Crown has failed Ngāti Maru in its life. And I wanted to also just acknowledge a comment that I had from one of my aunties, who came here for the Ngāti Rangitihi Claims Settlement Bill not so long ago. We had the first reading for them, but one of the things that Auntie said was: we iwi ngaro mātou. [we are a lost tribe.]

She acknowledged that, actually, because of the actions of the Crown, Ngāti Rangitihi are an iwi that need to rebuild from the ground up. There is so much work that needs to be done. Her aspiration was to build a hauora, not just for health but for the hauora o te tangata, the hauora of our reo, of our tikanga. She wanted to do that kind of stuff, and as I read through your account and the things that you’re aspiring to do, and the history that has led you to this point, I hear lots of similarities in there as well.

I wanted to acknowledge, Tamzyn, your comment on Stuff on 23 June 2020. The comment was from the heart. It said, “This deed contains the tears of my ancestors, the truths of the history that left Ngāti Maru landless with no reo, no tikanga, and no identity.” I hope that this will help to start to put Ngāti Maru back on to its own journey, as it should have been all those years ago. What we do in this House will never repay everything that has been lost, but one of the reasons that I’m here is to try and make sure that the Crown becomes a good partner to Māori now and into the future, and that we acknowledge what’s happened in the past and we don’t shy away from it, which is why I’m really proud that our Government has chosen to teach our New Zealand history in our schools so that, actually, we can learn about those stories—the bad stuff that happened to New Zealand, the impact of colonisation, the loss of our reo, the loss of our tikanga, the shame that so many of our Māori whānau carry because they’ve become disconnected. Think about it: if I’m one of the whānau that left Taranaki at the time of the Land Wars and we ended up down here in Wellington—and now I’m living in Rotorua, living in ignorant bliss—that illustrates to me a disconnection from my “Taranaki-tanga”, if you will. And, if that’s my story, how many of our whanaunga are out there with a similar story?

So I look forward to you putting in your submissions. Tell the whānau to chuck one in even if they haven’t put one in before. There’s a first time for everything. Put in a submission, write down those feelings so that we, the committee, can truly understand what it is that you’re bringing to the table. It’s easy to be able to stand here and throw out a dollar sign and say, you know, “$30 million—hey, boom, bang!” But, actually, the dollars don’t really—yes, they’re important, and they take the edge off, don’t get me wrong, but actually what matters also, just as importantly, are the stories that come with it, the depth of that emotion from the people with lived experience. And I acknowledge all of those people—our kuia, koroua—who haven’t been able to be part of this journey today, who ran the good race but weren’t able to be here to witness this. So I acknowledge them at this time. We pledge to—I pledge to, as chair of the committee—do it justice as we progress this bill through, and do it with respect, and I think I speak on behalf of all of our committee members when I say that.

One last message that I wanted to pass on was from my whanaunga who was also Crown negotiator on this journey, David Tapsell. I flicked him a message, and he was apologetic that he couldn’t be here today to be part of this, to witness this, because he put a lot of hard work in—but obviously so did you all as well. So I said to him, “Is there one thing that you want me to say?” And it goes a little something like this—here it is—he wanted to say that it was his privilege to work with Ngāti Maru. He wanted to acknowledge the skilled and dedicated team, who he is absolutely sure will serve Ngāti Maru well into the future. That’s from him. This is from me: tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, mauri ora ki a tātou katoa.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It is my privilege to rise and speak on behalf of the Green Party in support of the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill at this, the first, reading. We look forward to continuing that support through the process. I’d like to acknowledge everybody in the gallery today who’s made this trip down—I think with a very early start, from what I saw online—for this really significant point in your journey towards resolution and being able to raise your heads and look forward. I might have started with a song, like the previous speaker, but I don’t want to add to anybody’s pain in this room.

I do want to start my acknowledgment today by noting the Ngāti Maru lament that is outlined in the summary of the historical background, which is: “Maru Hāhā. Hāhā te whenua. Hāhā te tangata. Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness. The land is deserted. The people are gone and gasping for breath.” I really hope that this process comes to represent the Crown taking its knee off your necks so that Ngāti Maru can breathe again and that this may be a point in time of a severing of a path of treachery to a path of honour, which is what I believe settlement processes could represent for us as a country.

I really hope that for people who may not be familiar with this history—and I recognise the other speakers before me have gone through some of that history, but I will try and do that briefly again, just acknowledging Ngāti Maru. There’ll be many New Zealanders who, as part of our process of colonisation, won’t even know where Ngāti Maru is. Shame on us! So for those who don’t, it is the rohe from Mount Taranaki east to the upper Whanganui, to the north-east of the Waitara River—lush, rich land. A land that was lived in richly and where there was not much contact with the colonisers in the early years of colonisation in this country, which made the confiscation of land for harms against the Crown that were never committed by Ngāti Maru even more painful. And I do, whenever I say “harms against the Crown”—perceived harms, because actually I think self-defence, you know, should be considered as self-defence, not harm. And then to see that Ngāti Maru—that so much of the land was taken. Again, I will say “stolen”, because confiscation gives a sense of right and of punishment and the right of the taker to punish, which did not exist. This left people of Ngāti Maru basically landless, and when those treaties were made to the Crown, they were very slow in responding, and the harm was compounded by the Native Land Court.

When I was reading this part of it, which was that “the remaining land [that wasn’t taken through confiscation] was … put through the Native Land Court. Ngāti Maru had no alternative but to use … [that court] if they wanted a title that could be legally recognised and protected from claims by other Māori. A legal title was also necessary if … [they] wished to lease or sell [the] land.” However, this individualised the land and it was a complete cultural breach and an enforcement of an individualised, liberalised world view that has caused us so much harm as a country, for Māori and for everybody, I would argue. And, ultimately, at the end of that, Ngāti Maru did not retain any of the land supposedly awarded to them by the Native Land Court. So if we’ve ever had a case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”, I would argue that the Native Land Court was it.

Then in the early 1890s—so this is within just such a short period of time from being independent, autonomous, living rich lives to being virtually landless—Ngāti Maru appealed to the Crown for their help. The Crown’s response was slow and ineffective, and then eventually it got around to, in 1907, awarding some small parcels of poor and limited land that would not enable Ngāti Maru to support themselves or rebuild. And an agreement to consolidate individual awards into more economically viable and culturally appropriate family holdings was never carried out. Treachery upon treachery upon treachery. The harm of this has been severe poverty of spirit, of land, of body, and that lies with the Crown. And that it is very clear, through debates online and in this House still; how often we need to repeat that that harm is from the Crown’s action and not Māori inadequacy just infuriates me, when I read these settlements.

But I do want to move on and acknowledge the generosity of Ngāti Maru, in that context, to go into negotiations with that same Crown that has done over so many years so much harm, and to seek and accept a redress that was hard fought for and hard negotiated and that is, alongside every other Treaty settlement bill in this House, completely inadequate to the harm that was done. That does enable the return of land and 16 sites of cultural significance, though I will note that many of these lands still are subject to conditions, because, again, there is still not trust from the Crown of the generosity or the intent of hapū to be able to demonstrate manaakitanga or kaitiakitanga, and I believe that is something we need to do better on.

The Greens will—you know, I should be upfront and saying that we never believe these settlements are full and final and that we will never achieve the intent of Te Tiriti o Waitangi of being a living document until we actually appropriately recognise that sovereignty was not ceded and actually stand alongside the hapū in enabling appropriate decision-making to happen for hapū, by hapū. On that point, I want to reflect back that within this comes the joint management agreement for the health of the Waitara River, which is about seeking to improve the effectiveness of the Taranaki Regional Council’s Waitara River Committee by supplementing its functions to include a role for iwi and environmental monitoring of the river. That’s progress, but boy, in terms of the damage that’s been done, it just seems like the inability for the Crown and local government to relinquish the sense of being the ultimate judge—we still have a long way to go. But I want to thank Ngāti Maru for taking up that role, which will benefit all of us.

Finally, I acknowledge your values that have driven in this process: Maru Ora, Maru Pae, Maru Rota, Maru Taha, Mara Muri and Maru Tiketike, which really does demonstrate the hope of the future and also references the harm of the past. May we move forward together.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Firstly, I wish to acknowledge Ngāti Maru iwi—nau mai, haere mai—and Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Maru Taranaki trustees—nau mai, haere mai.

ACT supports this bill. We believe that it is important that the Crown acknowledge its failings—its acts and omissions—and the bill goes a long way towards setting out very clearly what were those acts and omissions and how they’re to be addressed. ACT supports this bill because this is the type of legislation that reinforces the value and importance of private property rights to people’s health and wellbeing—their long-term health and wellbeing—which is associated with their relationship with the land. The Treaty of Waitangi offered all New Zealanders to be equal before the law and to have the same rights and privileges and obligations as citizens of Aotearoa New Zealand, and we hope that this bill goes a long way towards addressing those rights which were trampled on.

Now, while the Treaty claims process proposes to address all historical acts and omissions, it’s clear that an Act of Parliament—a law—will not be sufficient to heal those wounds and to address all of those emotions that come with loss of land. That takes time—it takes a long, long, long time. When I look at the commercial redress offered to Ngāti Maru, it says that an exclusive right of refusal is granted over specific Crown-owned properties within the Ngāti Maru rohe for 179 years from the date of this settlement. That indicates the amount of time it might take to restore the economic sovereignty due to the failure of the Crown to protect the property rights and the human rights of Ngāti Maru. That’s why ACT supports this settlement bill. We support it to select committee, and we hope that those who wish to make submissions, if they believe there are still improvements to be made to the bill, will come forward and make those submissions.

To those who are concerned about how these types of settlements might erode the rights of other people, when I was looking through the bill this afternoon, there are specific clauses that state quite clearly that this bill does not affect the rights of others. This is a bill that specifically addresses the historical injustice, the loss of land, and the other acts and omissions by the Crown. For that reason, the ACT Party supports this bill and we look forward to seeing it come to select committee. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Te Kāhui Maru, te iwi o Ngāti Maruwaranui, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, huri noa i te Whare, tēnā koutou katoa.

[Te Kāhui Maru, the tribe of Ngāti Maruwaranui, greetings, greetings, right around the House, greetings to you all.]

I rise to speak on the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill this afternoon, and I feel uncomfortable. I feel the weight of responsibility and I actually asked myself the question: why am I standing here, speaking on this? Maybe I should be up there, and maybe you should be down here, speaking to us. How do I, as Pākehā, how do I as someone who carries my ancestors on my shoulders, the failings, what we’ve done, speak to you this afternoon on this piece of legislation? So I hope I do it justice, in some small way.

During this time of te Mātahi o te tau, the heralding of the Māori new year, I want to acknowledge the people of Ngāti Maru Wharenui, and all those who have gone before you, and all those who have gone before us, and those who have been part of this process to get us to where we are today, who are no longer with us. In this time of Puanga, in this time of Matariki, we remember them. And today we are here to acknowledge those people who forged a path for us to be here this afternoon, to reflect on the hurts and the harm, the confiscation, the injustice, the loss of culture, of language, of land. I stand here with the weight of this place on my shoulders. It was only 50 parliaments ago that laws were made in this place that meant that we almost erased you, your ancestors, your stories, your history, but we’re here today and I’m grateful for that.

There was a writer called L R Knost, and I felt it was appropriate to read part of this this afternoon. She talked about the dismay of brokenness in the world, and she talks about how many things and all things break—and it’s not your fault, I know—but she talks about how things can be mended, “Not with time, as they say, but with intention.” Not with time, but with intention. There’s been a lot of time, and a lot of waiting, and a lot of speaking, but it’s now that there’s intention that we can move forward together.

Your journey’s been a long one, I understand, as I read the history—not just a long journey from 6 o’clock this morning when you left Taranaki but your attempts at redress over the years. In 1891, some of your tūpuna lodged claims in this House, petitioning Parliament around the impacts of confiscation of your people. We’ve heard already in the House about 1881 and Pari’aka, and, again, about your people being imprisoned, being taken away from your lands. As I said earlier, 1865, when the Crown confiscated your lands, I guess we go back further to my ancestors, who arrived and were part of that. We can’t fix it, time won’t heal it, but intention—we hope—can bring about redress, can bring peace, can bring an exciting future for your people, and for our nation.

Now, at the signing of the settlement deed in February, Anaru Marshall, you said some significant words that stuck with me. I’d like to claim them for myself, but I thought I’d better acknowledge you because you’re sitting up there and I can’t. But you talked about the land losses of Ngāti Maru, you talked about the 118,000 hectares of land that was taken by this place. The Land Wars, the sacking of Pari’aka, the confiscation of your homes, the confiscation of your resources. You talked about your forests that were felled, that were milled, and that they were the timber that built the houses, that built the schools, for my people around Aotearoa. You talked about the mining of the coal from your lands that heated my people’s homes, that ran my people’s factories. You talked about the 93 oil and gas rigs that were used to drill on your land and take your resources. You talked about us as a new nation, as we were moving forward, as we were making progress, progress, progress, Ngāti Maru, your people, you were falling behind. Ngāti Maru’s loss was this nation’s gain. You were an unwilling partner in all of this, and today we are here to bring and be part of that healing journey, to acknowledge those things taken, to acknowledge the success of this nation on the shoulders of your people and your whenua. We never asked, we never acknowledged, and today we’re here—and this bill is here—to acknowledge the wrongs, to ask your forgiveness, and to demonstrate that you were part of building Aotearoa to what it is today.

I’m excited, as the MP for New Plymouth, that you are the eighth of eight of our Taranaki iwi to settle, and it excites me because we’re moving into a post-settlement region. For me, we’ve been in the past and we’ve had to reflect, and we’ve had to ask the hard questions. We’ve had to acknowledge the wrongs that have been done. We have to continue to remember. But what excites me is around the possibility, the hope, that this means, not only for your people but for all people in Taranaki, for all people here in New Zealand. As a post-settlement region, what does that mean for your tamariki and mine? What does that mean when the stories are about what is possible in the future, including acknowledging what has gone on in the past?

So, just in closing, the sacred lands of Ngāti Maru Wharenui, the memories, the history, the stories of your descendants, and the hope of many of your generations to come, we honour your commitment to the kaupapa of this bill, a kaupapa that is about restoration, it’s about relationships, and it’s about the wellbeing of Ngāti Maru—the people at the centre of it all. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.

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

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā hau e whā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. Ngāti Maru, tēnā koutou, nau mai, haere mai.

[To the authorities, the voices, the four winds, greetings, greetings, greetings to you all. Ngāti Maru, greetings to you, welcome, welcome.]

Before I begin, can I just quickly acknowledge the return of Kiritapu Allan to the House and just say it is good to have her back with all of her energy, and welcome back. I am honoured to take a short call on this Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill at its first reading. It’s a real privilege to do so, because these bills are especially significant, and they’re significant and they’re important because these settlements acknowledge the hurt that’s been caused by past wrongs, and they also look to the future to support iwi to realise their own aspirations and opportunities.

This settlement, as my colleagues have talked about, has been a long time coming. The iwi have been in negotiations with the Crown since the 1980s. There was an in principle agreement in December 2017, and then earlier this year a settlement was signed. I just want to acknowledge Ngāti Maru for their patience, for your goodwill, and for your graciousness. I’d also like to acknowledge the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, the Hon Andrew Little; his predecessor the Hon Chris Finlayson; those involved in the negotiations, both on behalf of Ngāti Maru and on behalf of the Crown; and all the officials that supported this settlement. I also do want to acknowledge Jamie Tuuta, who I can see in the public gallery, and say thank you for your leadership not just in Taranaki but also in a number of fields across the country.

Ngāti Maru are centred, as we all know, in the inland Waitara River valley. The area of interest extends from Mount Taranaki, east to the upper Whanganui River, and north-east to the Waitara River, spanning around 220,000 hectares, and that was whittled away to just 900 acres over history. My colleagues have spoken about that history, and I think it is very important to continue to put it on the record so that we never forget it. Significant tracts of land belonging to Ngāti Maru were confiscated by Europeans in the 1860s, and that included about half of the traditional lands. In the 1870s, the Crown tried to encourage European settlement on confiscated land by really paying Ngāti Maru token compensation, which then amplified the harm by dividing the iwi. Then much of the remaining Ngāti Maru land was put through the Native Land Court, and, of course, ultimately, Ngāti Maru did not retain any of their land awarded to them by the Native Land Court. By the early 1890s, Ngāti Maru were left virtually landless.

The response over decades from the Crown has been slow and inadequate, and that extensive loss of land has created severe poverty and it has harmed generations of Ngāti Maru people. This bill starts to give effect to a settlement package which includes several components: firstly, a Crown acknowledgment of and apology for historical breaches of our Treaty obligations, an acknowledgment that we didn’t ensure Ngāti Maru retained sufficient land for their present and future needs and failed to protect their rangatiratanga. It also includes an agreed historical account, cultural redress, financial redress, and commercial redress involving a right to purchase Crown forests, licensed land, and sites from the Treaty Settlements Landbank.

As many speakers have said and we’ll continue to say, we know that it will never be possible to compensate Ngāti Maru properly for the loss that they’ve sustained due to the Crown’s acts and omissions. No settlement package can fully right the wrongs committed against Ngāti Maru and heal the enormous harm caused by the seizures of your land, but we do genuinely hope that the financial and commercial redress provides Ngāti Maru with the resources to assist you in developing your economic and social wellbeing, and we look forward with optimism that today signals a new era in relations between Ngāti Maru and the Crown. We can’t overlook the pain, the loss, the significant injustice that has marred our country’s history, and we know that the quantum of the settlement can’t heal the harm and hurt suffered by Ngāti Maru, but we progress this settlement and this bill in the spirit of looking to the future. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. I commend this bill to the House.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori): Nei rā te mihi ōku whanaunga, ā, ka tū ahau hei te uri o Taranaki, hei te uri o Ngāti Ruanui, hei te kaiārahi mō Te Paati Māori. Tēnā koutou katoa.

[I greet you my kin, and I stand here as a descendant of Taranaki, as a descendant of Ngāti Ruanui, and as the leader of Te Paati Māori. I acknowledge you all.]

First and foremost I want to mihi to my whanaunga for your koha to this nation. There is no way that settlements in Aotearoa are fair or equitable. No one in this House has the right to congratulate themselves. I tangi with you, I mihi to you for your aroha, for your love that you give to this nation.

I also think about how of course Ngāti Maru would be the last to come to the table—you were too busy manaaki-ing and looking after all our rebellious rangatira, and for that I mihi to you again. What we have is the love of a people who have arrived here, who have given everything they can to achieve this. We have—not once, not twice—three times attempted this. I want to mihi to Tainui Tukatoa; I want to mihi to Charlie Hohaia, whose son is here; I want to mihi to Poi Pue; Whata Pue—I wonder what he would think; and to Tamzyn, who as a 16-year-old fought to stop the last time with her typewriter gathered from a garage sale. I want to also mihi to Pue—Matua Pue Wakaruru. I want to mihi to all those photos on ngā rongo, the wall, who weren’t able to see this today. What we have is a people who are so damn generous to this nation, they will come and do everything they can to make this happen. I want to also mihi to our negotiators, to their wives, to their children, to their hapū. I want to mihi to Holden, to Karl, to Jamie, to our grassroots fighter Anaru. I want to mihi to all of those on the side who championed them on when everyone else was sitting there looking at them: “What are you up to now, Māori?”

I want to also mihi because I think people think that because we lost everything, we have nothing to stand for and we haven’t gained everything. You see, because what you have 150 years later is an iwi here, today, who every time you see them post, it’s about job opportunities. They highlight the partnerships they’ve been able to create despite everything being set up against them. During the COVID response, what I got to see was an iwi in Taranaki who was able to stand up and protect not only their people but everyone else’s people, feeding the masses. What you have is a people here who are active in our regional economic development strategy. What you have here is a people who hosted the largest Taranaki Tū Mai and ripped me off of my tautohetohe.

What you have here is a people who fought for Māori wards when they thought they weren’t going to give it to us in W’akaahurangi. What you have here, in this House, people, are masters of resilience, and I don’t want anyone to ever forget what today is about: it is about these masters of resilience and their absolute tenacity to go out and forgive this nation who doesn’t have the ability to see them for who they are. So I want to mihi as the only party with 100 percent membership here today, to tautoku you. And I want to also mihi to my whanaunga; I know that we only get given five minutes, but you know I’ll say so much more than that afterwards.

We don’t believe in full and final. We believe that you are generous in accepting 1 percent of everything that was taken so that our future generations can come back for 99 percent. We will tautoku you in every capacity, every breath we have, so that the breath of Ngāti Maru continues to thrive and strive. It’s a blessing to see our rangatahi here today, and may you continue to lead by example and show what it is that we can achieve as Māori katoa. I want to also make sure that you are aware of all the aspirations in the Crown and all these departments that are here doing a great big mihi to themselves, and actually that you know what you’re capable of achieving. We will be there beside you to make sure every aspiration you have is fought for, and to make sure every racist that doesn’t get how generous our people are in this nation are aware of it.

Ngā mihi aroha ki a koutou katoa, mō tō kaha, mō tō manaaki, mō tā tātou iwi katoa.

[Loving greetings to you all, for your strength and your care, for all of our people.]

I also want to make sure that we first and foremost humble ourselves to be kind to each other and remember what it takes to achieve settlements. They are divisive, they do everything they can to remind us of what we don’t have in common, and I mihi to you to hold on to the strength of unity, because that is what our rangatahi are going to need.

Nō reira i te āhuatanga o tā tātou tupuna, ngā mihi aroha ki a koutou katoa.

[Therefore, in the manner of our ancestor, loving greetings to you all.]

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, Ngāti Maru, tēnā koutou katoa. It is a very humbling experience to stand here as a member of this House and as a neighbour of your amazing, amazing bit of the country.

I want to just follow on from what Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, the previous speaker, quite rightly pointed out to the nation in pointing out your generosity. I want to thank you for not giving up. I want to thank you for my baby to whakapapa to the Waitara River and for fighting to have an influence over the care of that river. It is so important to so many of us.

I want to thank you for having enough ambition to get you here today and for the opportunities that are being opened up for our whole country because of what you have done. The tears of your generations that have filled the rivers will actually do so much for our future generations. It was wonderful to talk to Anaru Marshall this morning about the latest conversation with Te Kahui o apo Taranaki Maru and helping our schools around central Taranaki to really rise to the challenges that, quite rightly, are put in front of them to make sure that your children are served in the best way possible. I thank you for persevering.

I thank you for showing such leadership with the East Taranaki Environmental Trust—Pūrangi—and the work you’ve done for our kōkako and our kiwi, and the leadership in helping other landowners and people who care to do the right thing. So for that, I thank you.

I thank you for stepping up and making sure that our opportunities for our young people—to be ambitious and say that, actually, training our kids is not just in how to cut down a tree but how to look after each other while we do it, and how to be not just good at forestry but good employers and good forestry managers. All of that comes from Te Ao Māori, and that means our young people are going to be helping our country to be a better place. For that, I thank you.

For those of you who don’t know, we’ve had a lot of descriptions about the boundaries of your rohe. For those who don’t know, it is a spectacular piece of countryside: the hills and the beautiful little valleys, the water, and great places to grow kānuka, apparently. I’m just really grateful that you have quite rightly been restored as those who should be looking after it, nurturing it, and making sure it reaches its potential for your people, as it quite rightly should have been for the generations that it hasn’t.

So kia kaha, good luck, and I’m just really humbled to be in your presence. Thank you for all you have done, and I just wish you all the best for all that you will achieve in the future.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Nau mai, haere mai. As the member for Taranaki - King Country in Parliament, on a beautiful day earlier this year, we attended the signing of the memorandum. Due to COVID-19, which was happening at the time in Auckland—they were having a COVID-19 scare—it was a much scaled-back event, but it was such a beautiful day and, none the less, a very meaningful event. And I look forward to the day in the future when everyone in your hapū and iwi are able to attend the wider event and the full apology, which was actually delayed on that particular occasion.

So this is your story, and I hope I do some justice to it in the speech that I’m about to give today. Forgive me if there’s anything that—you know, it’s not my story; it’s your story, but I just want to give a bit of history and a bit of context this afternoon.

So because of your inland location, Ngāti Maru had limited contact with Europeans during the 1840s and 1850s. And in some respects, it may have been better for you all if it had stayed that way, because the contact with the Europeans wasn’t one of your most memorable occasions, as we can all imagine. None of us were there at the time, but it must have been an awful event for your people. Ngāti Maru were not involved in the land dealings, which led to the war in Taranaki in 1860 and were not directly involved in the subsequent fighting. Involvement was limited to providing refuge to Wiremu Kīngi Te Rangitāke in accordance with the requirements of whanaungatanga. And then it all changed. Because when the Crown confiscated huge tracts of Taranaki to punish so-called rebels in 1865, approximately half the traditional land of Ngāti Maru was included. So many of your main kāinga, urupā, and wāhi tapu were taken, and some have never been returned, and for that we—so many years later—are apologising to you.

So in the early 1870s, the Crown then attempted to promote European settlement on confiscated land by paying some Ngāti Maru compensation for the rights that the confiscation had extinguished. Now, one can only imagine how minuscule that probably was and what, I would imagine now, was probably only an insult to the events that had occurred prior to that time. So in the early 1890s, some Ngāti Maru were virtually landless and appealed to the Crown for help. The Crown’s response was slow and ineffective, and legislation was not enacted until 1907, and the land ultimately provided to Ngāti Maru was poor and of limited size. So when we talk about it being slow and ineffective back at that time, between the 1890s and 1907—we’re now in 2021—and slow and ineffective are words that have become so much more effectual now, given the time that’s passed and how slow and ineffective all of this has been for you and your people.

We know that the extensive loss of Ngāti Maru land has eroded tribal structures; it’s created severe poverty; and damaged the physical, cultural, and spiritual health of generations of Ngāti Maru people. The intense sense of loss and disconnection is expressed in the following Ngāti Maru lament—and I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t quite get the pronunciation right.

Maru hāhā, hāhā te whenua, hāhā he tangata.

[Maru of extreme loss and breathlessness, the people are gone and gasping for breath.]

Hopefully, during this settlement process, we can help to put some of that breath back into your people.

Settlements recognise and right the wrongs of the past. Now, that’s a statement that’s, I think, over spoken and over said when we talk about righting the wrongs. There is really nothing that we can do that will right the wrongs, and I always, whenever we’re doing a Treaty settlement, find myself in the position of saying thank you for the generosity of taking part, negotiating, and the acceptance in these settlements.

But the settlements will help unlock the economic potential, boost regional and provincial areas for your people. In 1865, Ngāti Maru had 220,000 hectares of land, and the vast majority of that land was illegally confiscated by the Crown or sold through dubious deals. And it was a terrible, terrible time for your people. The imprisonment of Ngāti Maru members between 1879 and 1881 for peaceful resistance at Parihaka was also a significant burden on the iwi. Something that I often think of—I went to primary and secondary school in Ōpunake where I grew up, and not that far from Parihaka. And, you know, none of us actually ever knew the story at that time. We’ve only come to learn many of these stories, which were not only the attempt to erase them from your memory but the attempt to erase them from our memory—it was a shocking time in our history. And I’m so glad that we are now able to at least rekindle that relationship and move forward together. So the Ngāti Maru settlement will forge a new relationship between the Crown and Ngāti Maru and be a real catalyst for positive change.

So, once again, thank you very much for your generosity. I wish you well. I know that later on, after the delay with the COVID-19 experience that we had earlier in the year, all of your people will come together for an apology. I know that you’re very excited about the new marae in such a beautiful part of the world. Speaking to Anaru earlier today, it sounds like the progress on the marae is going really well. So we can only hope, as we work through this process and as we come to the next stage of the event, that COVID will stay at bay and you’ll be able to have a fantastic event where all your people will be able to come along and celebrate with you.

So thank you for coming to Wellington and to Parliament today. Go well. I’ll be keeping an eye as the bill goes through the committee stages, and, as you heard earlier today, Tāmati Coffey will be the chair of the committee who’s in charge of the progression of your bill. So thank you very much, again. Thank you for your generosity in accepting this settlement, and, yeah, thank you very much.

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare, otirā, ka whakapiria āku mihi ki a koutou Ngāti Maru ki ngā mihi kua mihia kē ngā mema o te Whare nei. Nō reira koutou ngā whānau, ngā hapū katoa a Ngāti Maruwaranui, Ngā Ariki, Ngāti Hinemōkai, Ngāti Kōpū, Ngāti Kui, Ngāti Tamatāpui, Ngāti Tamakehu, Ngāti Te Ika, koutou katoa kua tae mai ki te Whare nei, tēnā koutou, nau mai, haramai, whakatau mai.

[Greetings, Madam Speaker, and indeed, I will append my greetings to you Ngāti Maru to the greetings already delivered to you by the members of this House. Therefore, to all the families and the subtribes of Ngāti Maruwaranui, Ngā Ariki, Ngāti Hinemōkai, Ngāti Kōpū, Ngāti Kui, Ngāti Tamatāpui, Ngāti Tamakehu, and Ngāti Te Ika, all of you who have come here to this House, greetings, welcome, welcome, welcome.]

We’ve heard a lot of kōrero in the House today, and as the member of Parliament for Te Tai Hauāuru, it’s my great pleasure to add to everyone else’s kōrero, and to acknowledge all of the kōrero as well. We’ve heard from a number of members, including the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, some of the historical aspects of this claim. We heard from Joseph Mooney and from Jan Logie as well, who read some extracts from the summary of the historical account, and, might I add, that’s a negotiated historical account. Everything in the settlement is negotiated, even down to the history. I suspect that every iwi that comes to this House to hear the pānuitanga of their bill knows that there’s other history as well that didn’t make the cut. I want to say in this House that it would be highly unlikely that that is the full story, as bad as it is—and it is bad. I recommend to every member that actually did read the summary of the historical account in the bill that they also go to the deed of settlement and read the full account, because there you will get a true understanding of the magnitude of what Ngāti Maru went through. I say that not only as an acknowledgment that there’s a lot more to this story but that what makes it to this House is as stark as the difference between redress and compensation, because everything in this settlement is redress, not compensation. If we were to have compensation, as my whanaunga Debbie Ngarewa-Packer stated in this House, we would have a different kind of settlement.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Willie Jackson as well in his contribution to this debate. He raised some very important issues that need to be acknowledged in this House, and, I think, not only on days that we have settlement bills, because they are important and we all support them, but here’s the thing: you see in these acknowledgments we have the historical account, and from that the Government, the Crown, makes some acknowledgments. In other words, they say what they’ve done wrong, and then they say they’re not going to do it again, and they do that with an apology. That apology means nothing if we as a Parliament—and I’m not just talking about the Government but the Parliament—continue to do the things that the Hon Willie Jackson talked about. OK? So, much as that is difficult to hear, we’re actually passing the first reading of a piece of legislation which actually addresses all of those things, but it’s stuck in a time. The key to success in the future is that we don’t do that anymore, that when we pass a piece of legislation in this House, it does not impact negatively on Ngāti Maru. When we make statements about what’s going on in the world and what policies we’re promoting or not promoting, if it impacts negatively on Ngāti Maru, then why are we passing this? That’s the challenge to every party in this House and every member in this House.

That’s my main message for today, except for: I hope the w’ānau have had a lovely trip down to Pōneke today, and that this is worthwhile. I want to encourage all members and all whānau to make a submission. We do not get enough submissions, and so the voices of many people—I want to acknowledge the rangatahi amongst you there. Rangatahi in particular: we do not hear your voice in this Whare, and we need to hear it on this bill. So I encourage you—it’s really easy. Go online—you can do it all online, and all you have to say is “I support this bill.”, or you can say what’s wrong with the bill, and that’s OK too. So I just want to encourage all of the rangatahi that might be listening as well. Nō reira, kāore e roa tēnei tū.

[Therefore, this speech won’t be long.]

You’ve waited long enough; I think I’ll finish here.

Nō reira, ka nui te mihi aroha atu ki a koutou mō ō koutou kaha.

[Therefore, many loving acknowledgments to you for your strength.]

I’ll do one more thing, because we’ve heard about generosity: it reminded me, because I was a negotiator for Ngāti Apa and it was the Hon Mark Burton, and I believe I’m quoting him correctly—he was the Minister for Treaty negotiations, and he said—I think he was the first one to say it—that every iwi that settles their historical claims performs an act of generosity to New Zealand.

Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ngā mihi aroha atu ki a koutou mō ō koutou kaha i roto i tēnei āhuatanga. Kia ora mai tātou.

[Therefore, greetings, greetings, loving greetings to you for your strength in this circumstance. Greetings to us all.]

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Ngāti Maru (Taranaki) Claims Settlement Bill be considered by the Māori Affairs Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

Waiata

COVID-19 Orders

Approval

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That this House approve the following orders made under the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020:

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021;

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021.

I should probably begin with a bit of an apology to the House for bringing things back down to this level after the very uplifting waiata that we have just had. This motion is the latest in a series of similar motions to approve orders made under section 16 of the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020, and it ensures that two of the orders made under that provision are not revoked. Under that particular Act, I, as Minister for COVID‑19 Response, am able to issue orders. Unless they are confirmed by the House of Representatives in this debating chamber, then those orders are revoked.

I want to thank the members of the Regulations Review Committee. As always, they have diligently gone through these orders, checking them against the rules to make sure that they all comply with the rules under which I have to operate, scrutinising them. I’m very heartened to say that, in the case of these two particular orders, they had no matters that they wanted to bring to the attention of the House. But I can also assure members of the public who may be watching on, that that’s certainly not always the case with the Regulations Review Committee, and they do take their responsibility to scrutinise these orders very closely very seriously, and they have made suggestions for other orders, including suggestions that the Government has accepted, around changes that should be made. So I’m heartened that in these two particular orders, they don’t have matters to bring to the House.

In terms of the two orders that we are confirming, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021 has a relatively simple purpose, and that is to add Air Chathams as a recognised quarantine-free carrier. Therefore, they join Air New Zealand, Qantas, and Jetstar in being allowed to fly the trans-Tasman as part of the safe travel zone. So we welcome the Air Chathams to quarantine-free travel. They are flying services between Auckland and Norfolk Island, and in order to do that, they have to be added to the list of authorised quarantine-free carriers. At the moment, there are only four, including Air Chathams. I hope that further airlines will join the trans-Tasman bubble soon and add additional competition to the trans-Tasman route. A lot of airlines would normally fly the trans-Tasman, and we’re down to only four at the moment, and, of course, I’m looking forward to the time when other airlines express an interest in coming back.

COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021 also has a relatively simple purpose, and that is that increasingly we’re seeing healthcare assistants, if you like, working alongside those doing the required testing at the border for COVID-19. So the order extends the same testing provisions that apply to registered health practitioners, who undertake testing, to any other health worker that may be assisting them in that task. So the other health workers assisting them in that task are currently required to be tested every fortnight. This brings them into line with the health workers in requiring them to be tested every week. These are the people who potentially are most at risk of exposure to COVID-19, and therefore they need to be put in that same cycle.

In anticipation, I know, of one of the issues that one of the members opposite I’m sure will raise, those who are subject to a weekly testing cycle are those who are being prioritised for eligibility for saliva testing on a more frequent basis, with less frequent nasopharyngeal swabs, which are recognised as one of the less comfortable ways of being tested, and I certainly expect to see the roll-out of that speeding up. All of the barriers for saliva testing from the central government end have been removed, and so I hope that there will be greater uptake of that to ensure that those who could have those tests—

David Seymour: Why’s it taking so long?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Sorry, what was the question?

David Seymour: Why is it taking so long?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Why is it taking so long? Well, that would be a question to ask those who are rolling out the saliva testing, as opposed to me, because in terms of the central government’s approval for saliva testing, that approval was granted some time ago.

I would like to see a greater use of saliva testing. It is more comfortable, although we are, as I’ve indicated previously, seeing some reluctance amongst those who can get it now, as of today—and there are people who can opt in now. The opt-in rates are very low amongst those who have the opportunity right now, as of today, but I hope that that will change over time. I think it is a potential change that will benefit the workers who are being added to this more frequent testing cycle under this particular order. So these are relatively straightforward orders, and I commend them to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank the Minister for his illumination of these two relatively minor, but still important, orders. We, the National Opposition, will support the approval of both of them. Just in relation to the first one, I had forgotten—I mean, this sort of sounds terrible, but it’s true—about the Norfolk Island flights, which perhaps is a reminder to me for something to do in the recess, potentially—

Hon Chris Hipkins: Beautiful place to go.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I’m told it’s a beautiful place to go. I have never been there.

David Seymour: Chris Hipkins will close the border.

CHRIS BISHOP: Ha! I have never been there, but, potentially, it is something that is available, and isn’t it great to see the mighty Air Chathams put on par with Air New Zealand, Qantas, and Jetstar? You know, as the Minister says—

David Seymour: It’s more a compliment for Air New Zealand, Jetstar, and Qantas.

CHRIS BISHOP: Ha! Yeah—well, as Mr Seymour says, it’s more a compliment for Air New Zealand, Jetstar, and Qantas. That’s potentially true. And I echo the Minister’s remarks—

Hon Member: Great Barrier Air?

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, I don’t know if Great Barrier Air is going to end up going to—I mean, I have been to Great Barrier Island, and it may as well be a separate jurisdiction. Sometimes it certainly feels like that, but I don’t think you need quarantine-free travel to go to Great Barrier Island yet.

David Seymour: Well, you probably should. What’s the Minister doing about that?

CHRIS BISHOP: You probably should. Nikki Kaye’s there, so—I don’t know what that says. But anyway, Air Chathams—we welcome them, and I echo what the Minister says around the return, potentially, in time, of other international operators to New Zealand, to operate that trans-Tasman route. Prior to COVID-19 coming upon us, we had Emirates and Singapore Airlines at various points, and other operators on that route providing freedom flights and competition on that route. You know, it’s not going to happen straight away, obviously, but—

Hon Chris Hipkins: One of the most competitive in the world.

CHRIS BISHOP: Indeed. The Minister says it’s one of the most competitive routes in the world, and he’s exactly right, and the prices at the time, prior to COVID-19, reflected that. That’s a good thing, but it’s also not just great for consumers but also in terms of freight and our freight connections and goods connections to the rest of the world—very important as well. So it’s not going to happen straight away, obviously, or overnight, but we welcome that in the future.

Just in relation to the second one, around the required testing amendment order bringing health workers into the principal order, we support that as well, for the reasons the Minister has outlined.

I do just want to make a point, because the Minister did raise it, in relation to saliva testing, which is that this is a sorry tale. With respect to the Minister, who says he’s in favour of it and the Government has made all the necessary changes to the orders and to the Cabinet approvals, he cannot duck responsibility for this. This is something that was recommended to Government in September 2020 by the Roche-Simpson report. It said that it should be a matter of priority and all steps should be taken forthwith to roll out saliva testing at the border. And here we are in July 2021, and we still don’t have a time line for the national roll-out of saliva testing. So it’s all very well for the Minister to say, “Well, I’m as frustrated as you are, and I want to see it rolled out further.”, but, at the end of the day, Ministers and the Government have to take some responsibility here. It’s not good enough, frankly, for Ministers to blame officials like they did back in August last year, when it turned out that what Ministers thought was happening on the ground in relation to the border was not actually happening. At the end of the day, ministerial responsibility has to start and end somewhere, and Ministers need to take some responsibility for the deficiencies when it comes to saliva testing. We welcome it. We’ve called for it for many months now, and it turns out that New Zealand’s had, for the better part of six to nine months, a private sector provider of saliva testing with the resources and the capability to provide saliva testing. In fact, they’ve been doing it in a private sector capacity at Auckland Airport for many months. In fact, I went and got a saliva test because I wanted to see for myself exactly what it was like.

Anna Lorck: What?

CHRIS BISHOP: You’d be lucky—you’d be pleased to know, Anna Lorck, that I passed.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I hope you didn’t smoke beforehand.

CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! No, no, no, no. You’d be pleased to know that I passed and it was incredibly easy. I bear in mind that, you know, not everyone wants to do the saliva testing, but there are a lot of people out there who do want to do it. That’s, I think, a good thing, and we encourage people to go out and do it and we encourage the Government to hit the go button and expedite the roll-out of saliva testing more widely. Thanks.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. The Green Party is very pleased to support both of these COVID-19 orders and we thank the Minister for his kind comments about the diligence of the Regulations Review Committee, because it is under the House’s Standing Orders that the Regulations Review Committee must examine all regulations, including legislative instruments and disallowable instruments that are not legislative instruments. The committee does that in a very careful way and is greatly assisted by the work of the committee secretariat and also legislative counsel. And, as the Minister noted, when the Regulations Review Committee has made recommendations about the change, perhaps, in the language of orders to ensure that the powers in them are clearly expressed and don’t unduly burden or trespass on individuals’ rights, those changes have generally been accepted.

The committee went and examined both these orders, the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Air Border) Order (No 2) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021 and the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, and did not have any concerns to report to the House. And the Minister has highlighted what the purpose of both these orders is.

While others in this House may be critical about the roll-out of saliva testing, I would really like to emphasise the Green Party’s thanks to everyone working in quarantine facilities, everyone working at the border, all of our health workers that the second order applies to, in ensuring that they need to undergo testing, that the work that they have done ensures that we are able to be here today under alert level 1, because of their precautionary approach and their attention to protection at the borders.

These two orders, while they may be relatively minor in terms of their impacts, have been closely examined and the Regulations Review Committee will continue to do that. It has to do that within 12 working days after the orders are presented to the House, and we will continue to do that. Thank you.

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

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party rises in support of these orders being passed into law and accepted. They’re both doing useful things, and yet the fact that they’re necessary—the fact that they’re being debated now—allows us to illustrate some of the broad themes and failures of this Government’s response to COVID-19.

First of all, nominating Air Chathams, the mighty Air Chathams, as a quarantine-free trans-Tasman, or “QFT”, carrier—fantastic. We do want more free enterprise, more businesses competing to offer the New Zealand customer a good deal. That’s a wonderful thing. But I would argue that this shouldn’t be necessary, because one of the great failings of this Government’s response to COVID is that it has failed to make sound rules of the game that apply without fear or favour. So, instead, we have a Government that is naming particular entities in its laws and regulations—particular businesses qualify if they get the Government’s favour—and that is not the way that we would like commerce to work in a free society. Actually, businesses that meet the criteria meet the criteria. That’s what it means to make rules based on the risk that we face from the threat of COVID-19 rather than the identity of the particular person. Nevertheless, the way the Government has chosen to write its legislation is that clause 4A(2)(a) of the principal order here requires us to name Air Chathams, and so it is right to name another airline as a QFT carrier so that New Zealanders can have more choice.

The second of the two orders is the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order 2021. Again, you cannot fault the outcome. It clears the way for greater use of saliva testing. As the Minister just said, 10 months after the Simpson-Roche report recommended the Government uptake saliva testing, all the barriers from the central government’s side have been removed for the greater use of saliva testing. Well, better late than never. A good thing that the Government is no longer standing in the way of saliva testing being used in our fight against COVID-19 infections. But hasn’t it taken a long time? And, again, one of the key things that the Government needs to do in response to an epidemic is make clear rules of the game that don’t discriminate and are proportionate to risk. They appear to fail to do this. But the Government is not only a regulator in the case of the kind of test; it is also engaged in the provision of tests. It has contracted an organisation to provide saliva PCR testing—polymerase chain reaction testing, that is.

And let’s just stop on that for a moment, because when the Prime Minister was answering questions in this House back in March, I think it was, she said the Government is not going to use saliva testing; it’s going to use PCR testing. Now, let’s just think about this; let’s just unpack this for a moment. PCR is the test that is used to detect COVID on the material taken from the person’s body. That material can be either phlegm or mucus taken from the nasal cavity, or it can be saliva taken from the person’s mouth. Now, to say “We’re not going to use saliva testing; we’re going to use PCR testing”, as the Prime Minister did, shows that, on one of the most critical aspects of the COVID-19 response—using good technology to test rapidly—the Prime Minister had no idea about the first and most basic elements of how this technology works. And, of course, it starts at the top, and the rot goes down, because we’ve just heard from the Minister that it’s not the Government’s fault there’s not more saliva testing.

And then we had another failing of this Government—again from the Prime Minister. When we had the February outbreaks—remember when it was the KFC worker? Remember when the Prime Minister, from the highest podium in the land, from a very great height, bore down on a person who had no platform other than, apparently, Michael Morrah in Newshub—and wasn’t it great that he got an award for standing up for that citizen against the Prime Minister? But the common theme here is that we’ve just heard the Minister for COVID-19 Response try to say, “No, no, no, we’ve removed all the Government barriers; it’s the people’s fault. They don’t want to.” We’re expected to believe the problem is, now, according to what the Minister said, that people are so eager to have a swab put into their nasopharyngeal tract that they’re refusing the saliva testing. That’s what he’s trying to tell us; just like the Prime Minister in February. When it’s all falling apart, blame the citizens of New Zealand. Don’t serve them, blame them!

I think the real problem is something else. He said it’s not the Government fault. He then said we should ask the people who are rolling out the saliva testing. Well, who’s that? The people that the Government contracted. Well, contracting out Government services is a big and difficult topic. It is, in essence, a principal-agent problem, where, as the principal that issues the contract, you’ve got to get the agent, the contractor, to do what you want. And if it’s done well, good procurement means that the people of New Zealand get good services, paid for by the Government, but it sounds as though one of the big problems with saliva testing is that something is not quite right with the Government’s contract. It sounds as though they’re not getting what they thought they were getting, and that’s why it will be a year, from September 2020 to September 2021, from when the Simpson-Roche report said the New Zealand Government should be using saliva testing to when it’s used in any great volume—a year, maybe longer.

And this takes us to another major problem and failing with this Government’s COVID-19 response: it’s inability to work with the private sector and augment its response to COVID-19 with better technology. First they told us they couldn’t have saliva testing because it wasn’t accurate—well, actually, first the Prime Minister didn’t understand what it was. But then, once we solved that problem, they started to say it’s not as accurate. And then Janet Pitman from Victoria University of Wellington said it’s just as accurate. Saliva testing is as accurate; it’s just faster and less inconvenient to the person giving the sample. That’s the result they’ve come to. And then they say, “Oh, but it doesn’t have quite the same sensitivity, depending on the particular stage of the infection.” Even if that was true—and it appears now that it’s not, but even if that was true—there’s a trade-off between the cost, the inconvenience, and the frequency of testing. If you want to make sure that you actually catch COVID-19 with a test, perhaps a less sensitive test might actually catch it if you apply it more often than a less sensitive test that can’t be applied as often because of cost or because of the inconvenience and people’s reluctance to have it.

The Government has never explained what that trade-off is, and this episode tells us how much trouble we’re in when it comes to the question of responding intelligently to COVID-19 and getting our way of life back. This crazy problem of trying to accept what the evidence is on testing, understanding what saliva testing is, contracting someone to deliver it—all of this has taken a year for a relatively simple technology to be absorbed. Now, can you imagine this Government as the COVID world becomes more complex, as we’re trying to safely reconnect with the world, as other countries are doing, to get our way of life back? This Government doesn’t have the ability to make rules that are proportionate to risk, that apply equally to all; to assess the evidence and use the best technology; or, apparently, to write good contracts and get the technology so that we can have a better and stronger response that’s more nuanced and can deal with COVID as the world begins to reopen and safely reconnect different countries.

That’s why this episode is such a good example of how this Government constantly fails, and it’s only fall-back is “Hallelujah! Thank the Lord that New Zealand is an island.” Because, if we were anything else, with this Government and its aptitude in responding to COVID-19, we would be in carnage. Despite that, we support the order. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Orders approved.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill.

Bills

Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Funding of certain early childhood services and certified playgroups

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jenny Salesa): Members, the House is in committee on the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. This is the debate on clause 4—Part 1 is “Funding of certain early childhood services and certified playgroups”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Madam Chair, and it’s good for the opportunity to have Minister Chris Hipkins in the chair to discuss elements of this hastily introduced and rushed-through-the-House legislation.

Just for the benefit of people listening in to this committee, normally when legislation is introduced to the House affecting New Zealanders—in this case, the owners and operators and staff in early childhood centres—there would be plenty of time for a select committee to consider what was raised in the bill and for people to make submissions and be heard, and to have plenty of time to have their say. What we have here is a very truncated situation: we had a couple of weeks, a few people had a chance to say something, but, as the Minister, I’m sure, will remember from the weekend, where I understand he had a fairly hostile reception from an early childhood education sector conference, there has been widespread despair in the sector over the introduction of this bill at such speed.

The sector was blindsided by elements of this legislation; I’m sure the Minister will stand up and say that he’s raised the issue of pay parity with the sector—pay parity being, ultimately, higher earnings for those working in the sector—over a long period of time. That’s true, but what this bill has before us, and what we’re discussing in this legislation, is beyond that. It goes beyond simple remuneration and allows the Minister to dictate employment terms and conditions for these private businesses. So there is widespread concern about what exactly that means.

Secondly, the other piece of feedback that, I understand, he received over the weekend was a great unwillingness by many in the sector to take up the option which is outlined or enabled by this legislation, because, ultimately, what they’re being asked to do is take on higher costs without any extra funding of any note. So the two most likely consequences of this legislation are either higher fees for parents, which is the last thing they need in the context of rising living costs—particularly housing costs, which are causing real problems for many households across the country—or lower teacher ratios, that is more kids per teacher. That’s the only way that the early childhood centres can make this operate. On average, we’ve heard figures of around an extra $40,000 per centre added cost being put on to them, and there is no miracle. I suppose the Minister and the Government just assume that the owners will just have less profit, less to invest, and they’ll just lump it, but that’s unfortunately not how the world works. What we’re more likely to see is higher fees and lower ratios.

A couple of questions I have as a start for the Minister is what feedback did he get from the sector on the weekend and at other opportunities that he’s had to hear from them; does he have a sense of how many are likely to take up this option; and is he concerned that a likely outcome could be higher fees or more children per teacher as a response to this piece of legislation?

The other element is why he chose, rather than using the attestation mechanism, which is the process through which higher teacher salaries have been achieved in the past—why he didn’t go for that approach, but instead came for this legislation, which grants the Minister much wider powers to ultimately interfere with the employment terms and conditions in this private business. The broader consequences of that is, of course, an increase in general uncertainty or regulatory uncertainty that the owners of these businesses face.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Very happy to respond to that contribution, which seems to have demonstrated nothing other than that in the brief period of time that the bill was at the Education and Workforce Committee—and I acknowledge it was a brief period of time—the member who just spoke, Hon Paul Goldsmith, made no effort to read it or understand it. It’s only a couple of pages, and so I would encourage him to pick it up and have a look at it, because he made some extraordinary claims in that brief, rather boring contribution, including that centres were being asked to take on extra costs with no extra funding to meet those costs. The whole point of the bill is so that the Government can provide centres with the extra funding in order to meet the extra costs that the requirements will put in place. So I think he might have missed the whole point of what the legislation that we’re debating is about. He also asks why we’re not using the attestation mechanism to do this. This bill means we can use the attestation mechanism in order to achieve the thing that the member is speaking about. So I’m not sure he’s clearly been listening.

But he did raise some serious questions, and so I’ll respond to those. What feedback have we had from the sector? The feedback from the sector on the bill—as opposed to on the issue around sufficiency of funding to meet any potential requirements for pay parity—has been relatively limited. And the feedback from the sector, basically, is: would we envisage any circumstances under which we would use this to achieve an employment-related outcome that didn’t relate to pay parity? And I have given the sector an assurance that that is not the Government’s intention. So in terms of the legislation, that is the key piece of feedback on the key question from the sector. Most of their other feedback and other questions don’t relate to the legislation but relate to the potential application of the legislation, which is, particularly, what will the funding rates be, and what would be the conditions that would be attached to those rates.

In terms of what percentage of the sector might take it up, it is voluntary, and so, ultimately, we will know what percentage of the sector take it up when they have that option and they have the opportunity to exercise it or not.

Does the Government believe that this should lead to higher fees or changes to ratios? That is, of course, a difficult thing to predict, because all of the models that are in existence in early childhood services now—and it’s private sector entities; all of the different models that they have in place at the moment—lead to different cost structures.

It was interesting in the weekend, when I had a very robust conversation with representatives of the sector, many of them were saying, “We want to be like kindergartens. We want the same funding as kindergartens.” When asked if they wanted the same conditions as kindergartens, there was less appetite for that particular discussion. So, I guess, the point I would make is: Government is not telling these centres how to operate their businesses; ultimately, we are giving them the option of additional funding, and we’re saying that if they want to take up that option of additional funding, the condition will be that that funding flows through into better pay for their teachers. Those centres have been reporting now, for several years—as a result of the nine years that National was in Government, where early childhood education service funding was frozen—that they have been having difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers because they cannot afford to pay them sufficiently or pay them a competitive salary. So we want to step towards pay parity with kindergartens so that they can recruit and retain teachers. The gap between what they have now and what they will need to get to parity would not be as big if the funding had not been frozen for the nine years that National was in Government.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I want to ask the Minister a couple of questions about this bill. The first is I’d like him to put on the record in the Hansard to clarify exactly why the current legislation, which allows for the Minister to make grants subject to any conditions that the Minister specifies in writing—and it sets that out in section 548 currently—why an Act which says that when those grants are paid for any purpose or service that the Minister sees fit and requires that the service provider must ensure that it’s subject to those conditions, it actually meets those conditions—why these amendments are necessary.

Then, turning to the detail of these amendments, and accepting that the Minister may have good reason why he has had to add additions, I want to look at the detail of this wording, because if we look at new section 548(5A), which inserts a new—if we look at the new subsections in clause 4 that will be introduced, here we have a new power for the Minister: that he is allowed to apply conditions or purposes that relate to employment matters like, for example, remuneration. My question is: if the reason the Minister is making these amendments is because he thinks that it is necessary in order to set pay parity levels, then why not just limit it to remuneration, why does it need to be wider and relate to employment matters more broadly, and why, in new section 548(5B), has he gone to the detail of saying that the “conditions or purposes may be specified by the Minister to help achieve aims that are, or include, employment relations aims.”?

The reason I’m asking this question, Minister, is, really, on behalf of all the early childhood services out there who are saying, “What is this? It’s not what was written on the tin. We were told that this was about pay parity, but this seems to be the Minister reaching his hand into our business in some sort of union drive in which he’s trying to have a whole bunch of detailed employment conditions that he can now impose on us as a condition of funding.” I ask the Minister: why is it not limited to what’s in the current Act? Why, if he wanted to add an extension, did he not limit it to remuneration? Why does he have this broader power around employment conditions?

Finally, I want to ask the Minister this question, which is: if he is so confident that an optional scheme leaves genuine choice for service providers, then who does he think are the services that are most likely to be able to afford to opt in to a scheme that may well underfund these employment conditions? He’s been with the services at the weekend. He knows what they’re all saying. They’re all saying, “Well, you’re going to tie our hands behind our backs and say that ‘The only way that you can get more funding to pay your teachers is if you opt into my scheme.’ ” The Minister is saying that you have to opt in to this scheme in order to get the additional funding, but the additional funding may not actually cover the cost of that.

So what I would put to the Minister is that the services that will be able to afford to make that choice are the services that can then turn around to mum and dad and say, “We’re going to increase the fees.” So what I would say is that the services who are going to be able to pay their teachers more under this scheme are the services that probably already are the most able to attract and pay their staff well. I am concerned that we’re going to see a situation where services in some of our lower socio-economic communities, where their families and communities don’t have the resources to pay more fees, are going to be faced with a stark choice, which is to opt in and be worse off, or to stay out and have a great struggle attracting staff because they can’t compete on paying the wages. I would really appreciate it if the Minister would address those three points.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. The latter of the points relates specifically to the rates of funding, which, of course, are not covered by this bill.

In terms of the member’s first question—why is section 548 insufficient as it stands now?—the advice that the Government received was that there is some ambiguity there as to whether or not a condition that relates specifically to pay parity could be attached, because of the relationship between section 548 and the purpose of the Act—bearing in mind that the purpose clauses of the Act have only recently been inserted. They were inserted when the Education and Training Act was passed last year that rewrote the previous Education Act, which didn’t have a similar purpose clause. So those purpose clauses in the Act relate to education—educational quality, educational outcomes—and there was some ambiguity as to whether or not an employment condition could be attached to the funding and be consistent with the overall purpose of the Act. So to remove that ambiguity, we are doing this particular legislative change.

The second question is: why not simply limit it to pay parity? Why use the broader language of, you know, employment conditions, if you like? That is because many of the issues that are related to pay parity do flow through to some slightly wider issues—not much wider, but slightly wider. So if you include step-based progression, for example—so, after a length of tenure each year, you step up a step on the salary scale—it’s arguable that you could argue that parity only would be going wider than that. We want to be able to deliver parity as the sector understands it, including the centre managers, which is that you step up each step, each year, which is what happens with kindergarten, primary, and secondary schools. We’re offering an equivalent in the funded sector, which is the education and care sector, which includes a diversity of provision.

In terms of those wider issues around will centres be better off or worse off, that will depend on the funding rates that are determined by Government, or offered by Government; they have not been finalised, and they are not part of this bill.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): So do I take from that, from the Minister in the chair, Chris Hipkins, that not only is this bill intended to provide a vehicle for the Minister to introduce minimum pay rates but also to dictate to early childhood education services the conditions under which they must promote and pay a teacher more? The reason I ask that is that this is something that is quite jealously guarded by employers, the idea that they get to choose which of their staff they offer a pay rise to, under what conditions, and the idea that, actually, there may be circumstances in which they wish to pay someone more despite the fact that they haven’t had the length of service of another teacher. They may believe that one teacher is a great performer and deserves to be paid more than another teacher who’s actually been there longer but isn’t performing as well. So I would seek from the Minister clarification that what I understood to be his answer to the last question is that he has widened the conditions or purposes here in order to allow himself as the Minister to dictate those step changes and those salary conditions.

The second question I’d like to ask the Minister is, even putting that to one side—so this issue of wider step changes and his ability to dictate that—even if that was all he wanted to do, why do we find these words in this bill: “[These] conditions or purposes may be specified by the Minister to help achieve aims that are, or include, employment relations aims.”? Those words seem extremely broad; those words seem extremely vague. “Employment relations aims” could capture all sorts of things, and I would invite the Minister to give us some examples of the sorts of employment relations aims he would expect to be covered and to give the sector some comfort that that will be limited in some way.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. In answer to the latter part of the member’s question, employment relations in this context, in terms of the way the Government intends to use this, relates to pay. In terms of the member’s suggestion around whether employers should be able to promote people or not, that is not something the Government intends to interfere with in any way. If someone is promoted, that is completely a matter for their employer. The intention of the Government is to specify minimum rates of pay. There is absolutely nothing stopping centres paying their staff more than the minimum rates of pay.

In terms of annual progression, which is pay progression as opposed to a promotion, our intention is to use this provision in a way that brings the rest of the sector into line with the kindergarten teachers’ pay conditions, which means that a person gets a pay increment every year up a stepped salary scale. Stepped salary scales are not at all uncommon in employment relations agreements.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that clarity, Minister Hipkins. It kind of crystallised a whole lot of the questions that I had. My question is around certainty. I mean, we support this bill. It is a small, technical bill and it helps to achieve a whole bunch of things, and we know that the early childhood education sector has been waiting for pay parity for some time. We know that the differential in pay levels between those in kindergarten and those in non-kindergarten places can be huge, and that helps to exacerbate the teacher-workload issues and ratios and all of those things, as well. But I was wondering, around the issue of certainty, in terms of trying to get to full pay parity, certainty around what you think you will be doing in the next Budget and the Budget after that—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member won’t bring the Chairperson into the debate.

TEANAU TUIONO: Oh, sorry. Yeah, so the question is around certainty and the sorts of anxieties that are being expressed from the sector but also from the teachers, as well. So I wanted to see what the thoughts were around responses to the sector and providers, in general, but also responses to the teaching sector, as well, within this Budget cycle, the next Budget cycle, and the cycle after that—moving, hopefully, to fuller pay parity.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): In answer to the member’s question, the Government has set out to the sector that we intend to implement pay parity in a stepped way, and that is through instalments, if you like. This year’s Budget provided funding for the second instalment. Last year’s Budget lifted the minimum rates of pay out to the equivalent of the kindergarten teachers’ collective agreement or the kindergarten teachers’ pay scale; this year’s Budget maintains that minimum rate of pay—so created a smaller increment to keep up with the increase in kindergarten teachers’ pay and started to step further up the pay scale, up to step six on the pay scale; it is about a 10-step scale.

The commitment that we’ve given to the sector is that, over time, we will continue to step up, so we will continue to add extra steps. But I also was able to clarify for the sector, in the weekend, that opting in to this particular block does not commit a service to opt in to future increases, if they don’t wish to—they won’t have to opt out and go all the way back down to the bottom if they don’t want to opt in to the next increments, for example.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I just want to tease out Minister Hipkins’ comments about—I mean, the issue here is the uncertainty that the sector faces around a piece of legislation that we’re talking about here, which appears to be broader than what is required, and talks about applying conditions and purposes to employment matters and employment relations aims, and the Minister seems to be saying, “Don’t worry. Trust us. It’s not the Government’s intention to go further. We’re just going to do what we say, which is just focusing on pay parity.”

So the obvious question is: why should the sector trust this Government on this score, when there is every reason to suppose that there is a broader agenda which is hostile, frankly, to private sector involvement in education full stop, and hostile to private sector involvement in education in early childhood education, and when this is the same Government that’s made all sorts of commitments recently? The latest one, just as an example, is that there won’t be any new taxes, other than the higher income tax rate that has been introduced this year, and yet, of course, there are tens of thousands of potential ute owners who will be paying higher taxes.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: No, I’m using that by way of example to say this is a Government that wants people to trust them when they say it’s not the Government’s intention to meddle further than pay and conditions, and I’m wondering where the Minister gets his confidence that people will trust him.

Secondly, particularly given the fact that this legislation creates a deal whereby a provider opts in for the extra resources but doesn’t yet have a clear idea of how much it’s going to cost the operator long term—and there’s all sorts of uncertainty around that and what it means if a pay parity scale was to be imposed on operations. That could have very significant impacts on the pay structure. Where individual people start on the pay scale is an area of uncertainty, and it is an intrusion into the management and performance management of the firm. So it’s an intrusion in terms of the management style, but it’s, secondly, a great uncertainty around the cost structure.

So, I guess, the question I have for the Minister is: is he not surprised that there is a degree of uncertainty in the sector, as a result of this piece of legislation, and how will he reassure the sector that his intentions are narrow, beyond just a bald statement that that is indeed the case, given the history that we’ve seen from this Government?

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I’ll give Minister Hipkins an opportunity to reflect on my colleague’s contribution, because I think that the Hon Paul Goldsmith really got to the nub of things, which is that there is concern that a condition like this in the bill gives significant power to the Minister that may not be matched with the funding through the Budget process that would allow these conditions to be set in a way that’s perceived as fair.

But my question is a separate one, which is about this phrase “employment relations aims.” It is a technical point, but I think it’s important, because what I am trying to understand is why we wouldn’t just leave it at “Subsections (5B) and (5C) apply to conditions or purposes—(b) that relate to employment matters (for example, remuneration).” Why is it that we’re clarifying that the Minister may be trying to achieve employment relations aims? I would put to the Minister and to this committee that if we are trying to achieve employment relations aims, generally the place that that’s done is in an employment relations Act and it is done between an employer and their employee. It is not something one would expect to see in the Education Act, which is about educating people. So why are employment relations aims in here, when it would seem that, for the technical point that the Minister is trying to achieve, simply clarifying it down to remuneration would be sufficient?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): In terms of the contribution that the Hon Paul Goldsmith made, none of the matters that he raised in his contribution relate to the bill.

In terms of the issues that Nicola Willis just raised around what employment relations aims would the Government use here, the employment relations aim is quite a simple one: it is pay parity.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I struggle to understand why Minister Hipkins says in the debate that we’ve just had about this bill, where he assured the House that his intentions were good and it’s not the Government’s intention to do X, Y, and Z—and I’ve asked him, “Well, why should the sector trust him when he makes that statement?” I fail to understand how he then says it doesn’t relate to the bill—but anyway, that’s how he operates.

The second question I have is, when we talk about employment relations aims—so the new subsections 5B and 5C apply to conditions or purposes: “Those conditions or purposes may be specified by the Minister to help achieve aims that are, or include, employment relations aims.” I’d just like to list some potential employment relations aims that he would have in mind, because when I think of this Labour Government and their employment relations aims, I think higher union penetration might be an employment relations aim for this Government. That would probably be the number one employment relations aim that they have. I presume—well, I can’t presume whether or not that is indeed his aim or not. So I’d like to know what he has in mind there and why he needed that particular clause in this piece of legislation.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Associate Whip—Labour): I move, That the question be now put.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Transitional, savings, and related provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we now come to Part 2. Part 2 is the debate on clause 5 and the Schedule—“Transitional, savings, and related provisions”. The question is that Part 2 stand part. Is the member going to take a call?

NICOLA WILLIS (National): My apologies, Madam Chair. I did want to take a call on Part 2 because the Minister made a comment in relation to Part 1 that has a consequential result in Part 2, which was that he said that the employment relations aims referred to in Part 1 would be pay parity. So my question is: did he consider inserting into Part 2, or elsewhere in the bill, some sort of a definition of “pay parity”, or a clarification that the employment relations aims that he sought were narrowed down to that, and did he consider advice about whether or not that should be narrowed in this part of the bill or elsewhere in order to be crystal clear that this was not to be a vehicle for the Minister to be able to implement his broader employment relations aims as they may apply to union membership or as they may apply to other goals that he or any future Minister may have and may be able to use this bill as a vehicle to achieve?

Part 2 agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Schedule agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): We come now to clauses 1 to 3, the debates on the title, commencement, and principal Act.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well, just on the commencement, the obvious point to make, given the fact that this piece of legislation has been rushed into the House without proper time for submissions to be made and considered—I would suggest that we would be better to give the sector longer to prepare for this and to carry on the conversation. I wondered whether Minister Hipkins had given any thought to a slight postponement of the commencement date, in recognition of the very poor process through which this piece of legislation was introduced.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I can indicate that, no, the Government doesn’t intend to delay the commencement of this. This particular provision does not implement pay parity. It does not specify what funding will be available. It does not specify the conditions that would be placed on that funding. It simply allows those discussions to happen and then those rules to be put in place.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 2 agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The committee has considered the Education and Training (Grants—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Maritime Powers Bill

First Reading

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: I present a legislative statement on the Maritime Powers Bill.

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

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I move, That the Maritime Powers Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021.

The bill creates a comprehensive regime for the exercise of law enforcement powers in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory, including our exclusive economic zone. It responds to an increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment and ensures that we can keep our maritime environment secure against threats, including drug trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking. It includes a number of important safeguard measures to ensure that the law enforcement powers it confers are exercised in a fair, reasonable, and proportionate way that is consistent with our human rights obligations.

Keeping our maritime environment secure is a critical component of our national security and prosperity. Aotearoa is an island nation with an extensive maritime domain and historical connections to our ocean. We have more than 15,000 kilometres of coastline and one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world. Our search and rescue region extends from Antarctica to the equator and halfway to South America. We are a trading nation with a significant, growing marine economy and a domestic market increasingly reliant on the connectivity the sea provides the global supply and value chains through shipping routes.

Sea transport is the most common mode of transport used to import and export goods to and from New Zealand. We also have deep and sustained national interests in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. We may once have regarded our geographic isolation as providing protection from maritime security threats, but we must remember that, once upon a time, our tīpuna and ancestors navigated across the oceans searching for our new lands and found the islands we now call home. Increased activities by transnational organised crime networks, which smuggle people and goods, including illicit drugs and arms, by sea, has the potential to threaten our community’s health and wellbeing. Wildlife trafficking is one of the largest illicit economies in the world. Aotearoa has experienced considerable trafficking of our taonga native reptiles. While New Zealand does not have the same experience of human trafficking by sea as some countries, it is a serious and persistent risk that we need to respond to, especially given the significant global rise in human trafficking and the increasingly connected world we live in.

There is a critical need for Aotearoa to be able to respond to all of these threats, which impact New Zealand’s safety, security, economy, and environment. The Maritime Powers Bill is designed to meet that need and ensure that we are able to protect New Zealand through enforcement of our criminal law in international waters, the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory. Currently, New Zealand does not have adequate statutory powers to enforce our criminal law in international waters. Although we have the right to exercise maritime powers under international law, there are gaps in our domestic arrangements which create uncertainty for New Zealand in exercising those rights. The bill closes these gaps and establishes a transparent and comprehensive regime of law enforcement powers in international waters for serious criminal offences where New Zealand already has jurisdiction.

The bill does not create any substantive new criminal offences. By way of example, if a murder or serious assault occurred on a New Zealand ship beyond our territorial sea, the bill would enable New Zealand enforcement officers to stop the ship, board it, search it, arrest and detain subjects, assist the other passengers, secure evidence, return suspects on board to New Zealand for prosecution, and return the vessel to New Zealand so that it can be searched for evidence—everything we would expect to happen if such a crime was committed on land, but under our current law, it is not clear that Aotearoa would be able to respond to such a situation, potentially allowing for further offending to occur, evidence to be destroyed, and the offender to flee.

Other situations where the powers in the bill would be able to be used include offences where New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction, like drugs trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking, in order to enable an effective response to wildlife offences on board New Zealand or foreign ships. The bill specifically includes Department of Conservation rangers and endangered species officers as enforcement officers, in addition to police constables, customs officers, and members of the armed forces.

Finally, the powers would also be available for serious offences that are committed in New Zealand where the suspected offender or evidence of criminal offending is located on a New Zealand or foreign ship in international waters. So, for example, where a person committed a serious offence in New Zealand and fled the country by ship, the maritime powers enacted by the bill are those that New Zealand already has under international law, in particular the powers derived from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the United Nations drugs trafficking convention, and the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime and its protocols. The bill is consistent with New Zealand’s rights and obligations under those conventions and under international law more generally, including New Zealand’s international human rights obligations. The key purpose of the bill is to clearly implement these international law powers in our domestic law.

The bill contains a number of important safeguard measures to ensure that the powers it confers are fair, proportionate, and reasonable. For example, the bill provides a clear evidential threshold, with the powers in the bill only available where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been, is being, or will be committed on board the vessel, or where there are reasonable grounds to believe there is evidence on board a ship of serious criminal offending. This is consistent with the evidential threshold under existing New Zealand law, in particular the Search and Surveillance Act. The maritime powers in the bill are only able to be used for serious criminal offending at sea, which are those punishable by imprisonment for life or by two or more years’ imprisonment.

All of the powers in the bill are consistent with existing powers under New Zealand law, particularly the Search and Surveillance Act and Customs and Excise Act. The bill is consistent with the rights and freedoms affirmed in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and has been reviewed by the Attorney-General. The bill requires enforcement officers to report on the use of any maritime powers to the Commissioner of Police or chief executive to the relevant agency and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade. With a few exceptions, the powers in the bill cannot be used in respect of foreign ships or in foreign waters without the consent of the flag State, consistent with New Zealand’s international law obligations.

In summary, the legislation will enable Aotearoa to effectively respond to the increasingly complex maritime security environment that we face in a way that is fair, proportionate, reasonable, and consistent with our human rights obligations. It will support New Zealand in securing our extensive maritime domain, which will advance our security and shared prosperity. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7 p.m.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Good evening, everyone. We’re still discussing the Maritime Powers Bill. The next call is a National Party call.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you. That slowness was not because I wasn’t sure which party I was part of. I’m just getting the protocols right. There’s now going to be questions about that. Hey, look, the National Party at this point is actually happy to support this Maritime Powers Bill, but it does come also with some serious reservations; so I’ll try to quickly outline that.

Look, the overall intention of this bill is very, very positive. Ultimately, and particularly for people at home, what it’s trying to do is extend New Zealand’s legal jurisdiction into international waters—not to usurp what is a longstanding run of conventions around the law of the sea but to ensure that, when necessary, New Zealand domestic laws will apply to events which happen on the high seas or the international waters. So, obviously, in New Zealand waters, any criminal or other action which occurs falls under our jurisdiction. But, at the moment, for argument’s sake, the New Zealand Police on international waters—they could, strictly, seize somebody. They could, strictly, go out and—well, not strictly; they could, in theory, go and do their activities. But actually, those activities would have very little to no—in fact, they’d have no standing in New Zealand law.

So the overall intention of this bill is very, very positive. It will make things a lot clearer. I know that we’ve had various changes to maritime laws through other bits of legislation. To pull this together into one will be particularly helpful. As I’ve mentioned, it’s going to apply to the likes of police. It’s also meant to apply to customs, members of our armed forces, conservation rangers—so that’s the Department of Conservation—and also those who are endangered species officers. I might just come back to that briefly.

Look, two observations. This has a lot to do with various elements of criminal law. The Minister, in the opening speech, obviously touched on the notion of drugs, direct criminal offences against other humans, but one thing he did touch on was around human trafficking. I would encourage the Government—they can’t directly do it through this bill, but it is to address the human trafficking side of things. Members of the Government may be aware of the report—granted, from another country, from the US State Department—that came out late last week, actually dropping New Zealand’s human trafficking status from tier 1 to tier 2. It’s the first time it’s happened, and a little bit shameful, first and foremost on New Zealand. So acknowledging the Minister who spoke earlier around this bill, attempting to assist with human trafficking—or to stop it, to be clear—that’s excellent. We certainly have a lot of work to do. Dropping from tier 1 to tier 2 in the eyes of the United States and others is embarrassing, to say the least.

Look, the caveat from the National Party is ultimately the extent of these powers in the maritime space. Giving powers to warranted people such as the police, those who serve in Her Majesty’s armed forces—we’re all well and good with that. Customs officials as well—that’s understandable. We are less supportive of giving, effectively, warranted powers, arresting powers, to endangered species officers and to conservation officers. We at this point feel that that’s quite a stretch—and that’s no disrespect to those particular people—but, actually, it’s giving them enormous powers, which they don’t currently have. I mean, to put it in really simplistic terms, most of us will understand—hopefully not through practical experience—being arrested by a police officer. I think fewer of us would be particularly thrilled to be arrested by an endangered species officer or a conservation officer. It’s just not the way it’s done. We’d be a little bit surprised. So the National Party, without trying to be too flippant, is just a bit concerned about the scope of these powers.

So we are happy, if you will, to support it to select committee. It’ll be a fine select committee, I think—he says humbly. It’ll be a fine select committee. I’m particularly confident in the chair of that committee. I’m not sure if I’ve strictly brought the Speaker into the debate, but you never know. But no, quite seriously, the committee will do a good job, and I think it’s going to be actually quite a thorough job needed, particularly to understand the scope of the powers and who they apply to. So with that caveat, the National Party is happy to support this at first reading.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): Anyone who saw the documentary Patrick Gower: On P will know that much of the methamphetamine in New Zealand comes across our coastal borders. I actually remember one of the cases that was referred to in that documentary at Ninety Mile Beach, where the boats got grounded, and I think people went aboard and offered cash to the locals, and the locals got suspicious, and there were 448 kilograms of P found in the back of the campervan, worth a street value of about $500 million. It was such a botched attempt to import methamphetamine that it’s almost funny—a comedy of errors, if you like—although it’s not funny, because of the terrible impacts that are so serious around our methamphetamine problem in New Zealand, and, in fact, one of those convicted in that documentary spoke about the fact that he was part of an international drug importation ring. He was very careful in how he spoke and he did say that he hadn’t had a hit on him. I bring this up because, for me, the powers in this Act will help to counter that terrible problem of methamphetamine coming in through the coastal borders.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and customs are doing excellent work in New Zealand with Pacific Island nations to stop that happening. In fact, we had an Estimates hearing just in the last couple of weeks with the customs Minister, Meka Whaitiri, who talked about the collaboration with Fiji and other nations to stop methamphetamine coming across the coastal borders. But there are still limits to what can happen, and that’s because the powers that we have in New Zealand to be able to make the search and seizure and so on don’t align (a) with the criminal law, and, secondly, with our rights and obligations at international law, and these were two things that we prioritised in our election manifesto; so we need to get on with it.

There is often an international dimension to crime which is limited to what is within our own jurisdiction. We’re limited in terms of maritime security threat, we’re limited in terms of criminal offending, and New Zealand is, in some cases, unable to act or disrupt criminal activity before it reaches our shores. I’m well aware of this because, a couple of years ago, I did a documentary called I Am Innocent, which involved a drug mule who was taking drugs to Argentina. We did some interviews with some legal experts who made the very clear point that it’s easier to catch the mules, who are the so-called bottom feeders, than it is to get the kingpins, and it’s an issue that is happening globally, in terms of the international nature of crime, the technologies that are rapidly changing. So goods and funds are going across borders, between countries, sometimes virtually or digitally, and it’s really hard for the law to catch up.

This doesn’t just apply to drugs; it applies to other offences. We’ve heard about human trafficking, and I’m really proud, actually, that the Labour Government in 2019 gave a Budget boost to prevent human trafficking. I’ve worked in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Vietnam, where human trafficking is quite visible, and we need to get ahead of this before it becomes a problem here. In fact, there’s already some evidence to suggest it’s a problem in the Solomon Islands and in Fiji. So I’m glad it’s on our radar.

As the Minister said in his opening remarks, we have a good problem. We have a large coastline—15,000 kilometres of beautiful beaches. We have another good problem in that we have one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones, but we also have a growing marine economy. We’ve got a domestic market that’s increasingly reliant on marine connectivity and supply chains—we’ve certainly seen that during COVID—and we’ve got the increased importance of shipping for importing and exporting and, of course, our natural interests in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. So, in relation to this changing world, we do need changing laws. They align with what was set out in the 2018 Strategic Defence Policy Statement, which said—and I quote—“Maritime security is fundamental to [New Zealand’s] national security.”, and that is around climate change, transnational crime, resource competition and the geopolitics of that, and, of course, irregular migration, which has been alluded to this evening.

So I’m really pleased that we are bringing this into the House. Our maritime laws need updating. We need to protect our coastline. We need to align with international law and with human rights. This brings us a strategic approach, and I’m personally invested in the prevention of methamphetamine and human trafficking. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. A great pleasure to be able to speak to the Maritime Powers Bill. Others have already set out some of the reasons that it’s really important for the New Zealand Parliament to take a keen interest in this domain, and I want to pick up on a theme, actually, that Ingrid Leary, who’s just resumed her seat, was touching upon in terms of the large coastal area that we have as a nation. I would go so far as to say that, in fact, New Zealand is a large nation, but it just so happens that a lot of that territory is water rather than land. Certainly, when you think about our sovereign interests as well as those needed to protect our more general interests—the protection of human rights and so forth that she and Simon O’Connor have spoken about—it’s very important that we are active and engaged in what’s needed to control this domain and this environment, and, of course, that’s the intent of the bill: to be able to give powers to officers of the New Zealand State to do exactly that.

My colleague Simon O’Connor has mentioned that National does support this bill at least to select committee. At that point, of course, we’ll be examining different issues that may arise, whether technical or even—just in my own case, certainly—to try and get a really good understanding of exactly what’s at stake.

There’s inherently a tension, I suppose, when one tries to extend the national jurisdiction to international waters, with “international”, of course, meaning between nations in a sort of metaphorical sense, but literally between nations, literally between territorial waters—lines on a map, if not in that actual ocean, of course—out at sea and, therefore, areas which perhaps are something of a grey area legally. To provide some clarity in that space, which is the intent of the bill, is a very worthy objective, but it will, of course, be important to understand exactly what that means in different scenarios where the ships are flagged with, perhaps, the insignia of another sovereign nation—and, to be clear, the bill does provide the procedures that will be followed in such a case—or perhaps unflagged, and so on. So a certain amount of detail has already been provided, and that’s valuable as far as it goes, but it will be interesting at select committee for those who are lucky enough to be on that select committee and to be able to interrogate the detail to just try to thrash out some of those issues.

One of the key themes, of course, that we’ll need to look at is the scope of the bill in terms of the types of officers who are given these powers. It’s been discussed already in terms of members of the armed forces, customs officers, and so on, as well as endangered species officers and conservation officers. There might be a pretty good argument on the face of it for inclusion of powers to a pretty broad range of enforcement officers, but, of course, we also need to consider whether we are sending them into an environment for which they are well trained and able to provide that kind of work. I don’t suggest, by the way, that that would be the case necessarily, but, again, I think it’s something that would be worth discussing and clarifying at select committee.

One of the pieces of background to the bill is that we don’t really have a good feel for the extent to which such crimes and offences are being undertaken at the moment—beyond the horizon, so to speak—and, of course, that’s the usual tension when we are giving powers to find out the extent of a problem as well as to solve the problem. We don’t really know necessarily what’s happening out there, because we have not given our officers the ability to find out such things, to search and seize, and so on. And, similarly, we get the tension, at the individual vessel level, of not knowing whether a vessel or its crew has committed some kind of offence until a search is undertaken. Of course, we don’t want to have in New Zealand’s name searches carried out that are unnecessary; so I see that the threshold will be that there will need to be reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been committed or will be committed. So that sounds reasonable, again, as far as it goes, but we’ll look forward to working through that detail as the bill makes its way through the House.

I would just raise one further issue, if I may, before resuming my seat, and that’s just the sensitivity around laws that give to itself powers, to one sovereign nation, in an area where freedom of navigation is considered a crucial value, and, of course, it will be officers of the New Zealand State—the New Zealand Government—who will be carrying out such searches and so on, even if, from the New Zealand perspective, it is for entirely benign purposes. So we’ll just need to think about how that all plays out in terms of international law and how our relations are with other State and non-State actors. But, with that caveat, to use the elegant phrase, as always, of Simon O’Connor, I do reiterate, as he said, that National supports the bill, at least for now. We look forward to moving forward to the rest of the debate, accordingly.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): A pleasure to follow that elegant contribution from the previous speaker, Chris Penk. I rise alongside members on both sides of the House, obviously, who are supporting this Maritime Powers Bill. It’s easy to support it, because, of course, this bill is aimed at preventing serious criminal offending at sea. As we heard from the Hon Aupito Sio when he kicked off this debate with his first reading speech, that’s an important aspect of our national security because increased criminal activities have the potential to threaten our community’s wellbeing. We heard from my colleague Ingrid Leary about the dangers of methamphetamine coming in through our coastal borders. Human trafficking has been touched on already, and I know that two more of the talented class of 2020 will be speaking on this, no doubt: Vanushi Walters and Ibrahim Omer. I’m looking forward to hearing your contribution on human trafficking.

Now, this bill allows New Zealand to respond to criminal activities in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand’s territory. One of the previous speakers has mentioned already our 15,000 kilometres of coastline and our being one of the largest exclusive economic zones in the world, and so it is really important that we do everything to protect that particular domain. It’s a complex security environment; so it’s important that New Zealand is able to respond to these criminal activities that threaten our security. Whether that is about smuggling methamphetamine or other illicit drugs, arms, humans, or, in fact, wildlife, including our taonga native reptiles, it’s important that we do everything we can to make sure that we protect against that happening.

The previous speaker mentioned some particular words in this bill when it comes to reasonable grounds to believe, which, as he rightly pointed out, seems a reasonable thing to have. So that is the threshold that an offence has to reach for evidence on board a ship in international waters.

Our Labour Party manifesto points out that New Zealand has a proud tradition of an independent foreign policy, with focus on promoting multilateralism, human rights, and the international rule of law. What this bill does is build further on that principle, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do want to stand and acknowledge, as others have done, that New Zealand, in particular the defence forces, has the responsibility of monitoring what is a fifth of the world’s oceans. That’s huge. It’s a huge responsibility. I do, on behalf of the Green Party, want to acknowledge and commend that. That happens to be the biggest deployment; the biggest focus of our defence forces is environmental monitoring of a fifth of the world’s oceans. We’re very proud and happy to have contributed last term to a Government that did actually pull our defence force combat operations out of where they were to focus on that monitoring.

Having said that, I do want to acknowledge, also, that international rule of law must always be the deciding factor when we’re talking about law enforcement. This isn’t a foreign policy bill; this is about international criminal enforcement. Just as domestic law enforcement has to focus on upholding the rule of law and rights mechanisms that balance out what we hate—which is violence and crime and others have mentioned, you know, the things we’re trying to stop through this bill, which is human trafficking, the introduction and smuggling of class A drugs into our borders and other heinous social ills—I want to also notice that preventing those harms can never be at the cost of upholding the rule of law and our safeguards for due process.

So I want to notice that this bill introduces the exact same wording and standards of the Search and Surveillance Act that the National Party introduced in their second-to-last term in office and that we all opposed on this other side of the House. I want to notice also that we’ve been proven right, because, through our criminal justice system, the mechanism of allowing the discretionary search and seizure powers that that bill introduced and this bill furthers have been proven to be applied rampantly with prejudice and in contexts that have created chaos in our criminal justice system. So this bill furthers that same standard, that same discretion, that same—dare I say it—lawlessness when it comes to search and seizure powers. It extends those powers beyond the police force—that have a very specific type of training in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act—to our defence forces, who don’t, and to our customs officials, who don’t.

So, in the law, we have a saying that says, “Bad cases make bad law”, which means that the precedent system often produces bad legal standards where we are faced with the highest level of prejudice, and often sympathy, when it comes to us facing some of the most serious crimes. We produce terrible precedents in the criminal justice system because we just want to shut that one thing down. But, actually, we’re looking at a whole system. We’re looking at the rule of law in the fifth of the world’s oceans. We do have a high responsibility for monitoring those oceans, but we also have a very, very high common interest across the globe for upholding the rule of law when we do that. This bill lowers that standard, as did the Search and Surveillance Act that was introduced by that last National Party Government. We know that; we have the evidence.

So, actually, when we come to looking at drug trafficking and human trafficking and what has been called “irregular migration”—and maybe I’ll pause here and just think about that: people are actually allowed to approach our borders by sea and seek to migrate here; there’s nothing irregular about that. But say we’re talking about human trafficking, let’s call it that rather than irregular migration, shall we? We still have to uphold a human rights - based order. We still have to apply the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act as being supreme to our desire to stopping crime. We have to do that because that is the only way to stop that slippery slope that we could go down where we do actually throw out our own standards, our own safeguards, our own rules-based order in our desire to sort of look like we’re tough on crime.

So it is sad for us as the Green Party that this Government is going to further what has been proven in our criminal justice system to have eroded the rule of law, to have increased prejudice and lawlessness and search and seizure through this new bill. So we can’t support it. And I stand with regret not to support this bill, because I do want to notice that at least one part of it, when it comes to the smuggling of endangered animals, is something that is very close to our hearts and we do want to stand for nature when it comes to that protection. But we can’t do it in a way that erodes what’s actually really, really important to us as New Zealanders and our value system and what we normally bring to the international rules-based system. This bill doesn’t do that, and so I can’t commend it to the House.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the first reading of the Maritime Powers Bill. The purpose of this bill is to put in place clear powers for the enforcement of New Zealand’s law in international waters or foreign waters. I think it needs to be quite clear what this bill is actually hoping to achieve. It’s not about expanding our laws and creating new criminal offences. It’s about ensuring that we can have the power to enforce the current laws that we have in those international waters through detection, searching, and detaining.

This bill, when you are looking through it, provides a range of mechanisms to help with enforcement of New Zealand’s laws in international waters, and it’s things like requiring a ship to stop, boarding a ship, searching a ship for a person that’s suspected to have committed an offence in New Zealand, detaining a ship, and arresting a person. I think those are all very adequate enforcement options when you’re dealing with crime that’s committed in New Zealand and then needing to be stopped in international waters.

I think it’s also quite important to note the advice that we received from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) as background to this bill. It said that we don’t have adequate marine powers. This limits our ability to respond to security threats and criminal activity. So there’s clearly an error where we’re not allowed the enforcement mechanism that we need to protect New Zealanders and enforce the rule of law within our own country and in those international waters. So this law would ensure that we can enforce our own criminal law when it comes to shipping.

In particular, this is of importance when it comes to transnational crime in the cases of drug smuggling, migrant smuggling, firearms trafficking, and wildlife smuggling. We are an island nation and our criminal jurisdiction extends outside of New Zealand into our own waters, and that is already recognised in the law. I mean, if you look, for example, at the Fisheries Act, the Maritime Crimes Act, and the Customs and Excise Act, we already have bespoke areas of law where we accept that our criminal law needs to go into those international areas, into waters.

But it provides a problem where if you have, for example, a ship that has come to New Zealand, brought illicit substances, illicit drugs, into our country, and then leaves out of our waters into international water, there is a problem where you can detain that ship for drug smuggling but what happens with the problem where you might end up with illicit firearms found on that same ship? You don’t, under these current laws, have the ability to detain and find those illicit firearms, because our law is so bespoke for those particular areas. So what this law seeks to achieve is to ensure that we have a range of provisions for what may be search and surveillance in international waters, and it would simplify so we don’t end up in situations where people cannot enforce New Zealand criminal law.

MFAT looked into specific regimes to bring some of those criminal elements into line, creating specific regimes for wildlife, firearms, and migrant smuggling. But I think we can all acknowledge the importance that the law needs to be clear and simple to follow. And I think what this law hopes to achieve is to ensure that there is one law for all of these provisions, rather than bespoke for specific areas like the Fisheries Act and the Maritime Crimes Act. Having everything in one would drastically simplify the process and make it a lot easier. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Maritime Powers Bill on behalf of the Government. This bill as introduced aims to prevent serious criminal offending at sea, including transnational offending and organised crime. It would allow New Zealand to respond to criminal activities in the oceans and seas beyond its territory, including our exclusive economic zones.

We are a trading nation—quite obvious—and with a significant growing maritime economy and a domestic market that is increasingly reliant on connectivity and sea. Sea provides global supply and value chains through shipping routes. Therefore, keeping our maritime environment secure is critical and the main component of our national security and also prosperity.

The above facts make the maritime security environment very complex and dynamic for New Zealand, and we must face it by establishing a comprehensive regime for the exercise of law enforcement powers in the oceans and sea. This means that our critical jurisdiction often extends outside of New Zealand to make sure that we can detect, disrupt, and prosecute criminal activities. It is also our law enforcement agencies—such as the police, the New Zealand Defence Force, customs, and the Department of Conservation. So that these agencies can be able to do their job, the law enforcement agencies must be provided with clear powers to enforce New Zealand’s criminal law in international waters and uphold New Zealand’s rights and obligations under international law.

Now, given agencies like this, it can be a worry—I think we’ve heard it from some of our colleagues, and, therefore, we must have a high threshold for the agencies to stop, to check, and to detain boats and suspicious individuals. That is very important and fundamental. To exercise powers in this bill, an enforcement officer must satisfy legal tests, including reasonable grounds to suspect and reasonable grounds to believe, which align with well-established criminal procedure standards in New Zealand law—in particular, the Search and Surveillance Act 2012.

If left unsecured and unprotected, our maritime territory could cause a serious threat to our national security. Some of the risks that we could potentially be facing are—I mentioned it in my introduction—transnational organised crime in networks such as my good friends Ingrid and Marja already mentioned, illicit drugs, migrant smuggling, and human trafficking. This is a very significant threat; the International Labour Organization estimates it reached about $150 billion per year.

Now, I’ve heard Golriz expressing some concerns. I agree to some extent, but I also disagree because human trafficking is not just about human rights but also it goes both ways, because what the criminals and human traffickers are doing is using unsafe, broken ships and overloading them, and that is costing a lot of lives. Just two days ago, a Tunisian coastguard found about 60 people drowned on the coast of Tunisia, and the Mediterranean Sea takes thousands of lives every year—this is well documented by the United Nations and other rights groups; so that is not what we want to see.

Firearms trafficking is another emerging risk, as well. Obviously, something that’s dear to all of us, wildlife smuggling is a serious threat to our biodiversity, as well. There are many examples where States either fail to act to protect their maritime security or are simply too weak to do so, and either way the results could be catastrophic. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the National Party in this first reading debate on the Maritime Powers Bill. As has already been indicated by a couple of my colleagues earlier in the debate, the National Party will support this bill, at least to select committee, so that it can undergo the benefit of select committee scrutiny, receive submissions, and have the benefit of a parliamentary process. But, in doing so, there are a number of issues that we, on this side of the House, have with this bill and matters that we will want to tease out at select committee and that we will want to hear from submitters on, and they relate particularly to issues surrounding civil liberties.

Now, there are several basic, fundamental principles that the National Party adheres to, and has done for more than 80 years now, and one of those is to recognise and enshrine the inalienable rights of human beings. We also always rise to protect the sanctity of our unwritten constitution, and we celebrate the history of the democracy that is our liberal democracy. When we see legislation coming from a socialist Labour left party that is advancing the powers of the State and giving to a range of interested people powers of search, seizure, and detention, we want to know why and for what justification. No one on this side is arguing that we should not be policing carefully, thoroughly, and diligently our vast marine exclusive economic zone. We are blessed to have one of the largest marine footprints on the globe, and it would be a whole lot easier if this Government actually passed the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary legislation that’s been sitting on the Order Paper now for nearly four years. It’s had a select committee process; it just needs a second reading and a third reading, and we would be away. But no, this is a Government that pays lip service to marine protection and to a sanctuary that could be the fourth-largest marine sanctuary on the planet.

So we are worried about some of the civil liberties issues, and extending powers of the State, when they are extended, should be done carefully, with full consideration. This is a bill that would give powers of arrest, search, and seizure, and powers to detain, to people as diverse as conservation and endangered species officers. Now, I’m just concerned and wonder whether they are the appropriate people to be enforcing our vast marine area. Yes, we should extend those powers to warranted and sworn officers, who have gone through thorough and detailed training. And so I would have thought—and this would be an interesting point to hear at select committee—that we, as a sovereign nation, would have been better to actually ensure that marine protection services were better resourced, better manned, and had the ability to do what is being asked now of conservation and endangered species officers.

So we’ll be looking, at select committee, to see whether there is sufficient justification for this. And it’s bizarre: it’s a long time since I studied law at the University of Auckland, but the people that taught constitutional law—and I’m thinking of Tim McBride, for instance—would be just apoplectic at the thought that a Labour Government would be introducing laws of this sort that extended the powers of the State to what appear to be unwarranted, untrained officers, and to give them such wide-ranging powers. It used to be the socialist Labour left that were the ones who were the apparent bastions of civil liberties and human rights and the protections that the State should not extend into people’s lives. So, yes, by all means, protect and police and make sure that our marine space is guarded, but do it with people who are appropriate, who have been properly trained and properly resourced. So we’ll be looking at those sorts of issues closely at select committee, and we will support it through to select committee.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. In light of the last member’s opening remarks, I encourage him to just reflect for a moment on question time today and the question that he put on the floor and potentially the inclusion of Te Tiriti o Waitangi in the National Party constitution.

But, tonight, we are discussing the Maritime Powers Bill. I would like to make a contribution, because parts of it are of interest to what has been a journey for my whānau over the past 15 to 20 years, and what we’ve seen is the impact of methamphetamine and class A drugs across Aotearoa New Zealand and amongst our communities. This evening we’ve heard in multiple speeches the challenges and the echo of those concerns. In that, this bill is so relevant, because, obviously, while we have some good outcomes at the moment—and I refer to Operation Worthington, where our New Zealand Police managed to seize 44 kilos of methamphetamine—there is a way in this country that particular drugs are being smuggled in. And no doubt that they’re coming from multiple channels, and we need to address many, many of them, but we do need to strengthen the laws that enable both New Zealand Police and the New Zealand Defence Force and the Department of Conservation to strengthen security practices out on our waters.

And so what this bill does is it responds to the increasingly dynamic and complex maritime security environment and ensures that we can keep our maritime environment secure against threats. This does include drug trafficking, as I’ve spoken about; wildlife trafficking; and, of course, human trafficking. But the bill will give power to the police, the New Zealand Defence Force, Customs, and the Department of Conservation, and it will provide powers to respond to a range of criminal offending in our international waters. These will include offences that take place on board a New Zealand flagged vessel in international waters, it will include the offences that take place on board a foreign flagged vessel or stateless vessel in international waters for which New Zealand has extraterritorial jurisdiction, and it will include situations where an alleged offender or evidence of criminal offending is located on a New Zealand, foreign, or stateless vessel in international waters.

The parts in this bill are: Part 1 provides the context and the legislative exceptions, Part 2 outlines the powers and grounds for exercising powers, and Part 3 outlines the offences themselves. Now, it does sit within Labour’s plan. It is within our manifesto that says that New Zealand has a proud tradition of an independent foreign policy with a focus on promoting multilateralism, human rights, and the international rule of law, and this bill builds on that.

Lastly, I just want to acknowledge that this is also part of the briefing to the incoming Minister of this Government and keeping the maritime environment secure is a crucial component of New Zealand’s national security. We’ve got a lot of work to do, but this is taking steps towards strengthening our security systems to address our challenges around the access and smuggling in of drugs into Aotearoa New Zealand and the impact that it does have on our communities. So I commend this bill to the House.

VANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to rise to take a short call in relation to the Maritime Powers Bill, which I support.

In 2018, Greenpeace released a report about human trafficking, slavery, and abuse on board international fishing fleets. Now, the report actually concerned international waters outside of Taiwan, but the authors were Kiwis. They were New Zealand investigators who highlighted some of what I would call the shadows in terms of the laws that operate on land versus the laws that operate on the sea. And New Zealand is no exception in terms of enforcement provisions that sit in those shadows. What this bill does is it allows the flow of enforcement powers that are applied on land in New Zealand out to those powers applied in the oceans and seas beyond New Zealand territory, including our exclusive economic zone. In short, it keeps our environment secure against threats, including drug trafficking, wildlife trafficking, and human trafficking.

I want to specifically touch on the impact of the new proposed powers where it’s suspected that serious offences such as trafficking or human rights abuses, serious human rights abuses, are happening. As many in the Chamber will know, we already have human trafficking as an offence under the Crimes Act, in section 98D. We’ve ratified the Palermo protocol on trafficking. We participate in regional anti-trafficking efforts. But we’ve made these commitments with a lack of comprehensive enforcement powers at sea, which really restricts the ability of our enforcement officers to be able to act.

And I think it’s important to note that these aren’t just hypothetical scenarios we’re protecting against; some of my colleagues have spoken about the human trafficking that we see in terms of data and numbers. But there are also significant human rights violations that happen on the sea as well. In 1997, there was the first proceeding alleging abuse on a foreign charter vessel brought in New Zealand courts, where 10 Indonesian crew of the Korean flagged Sky 75 vessel fled at the port and then made claims with the New Zealand Police about human rights violations. We saw it again in 2010 when the Oyang 70 sank, killing six crew members. The surviving crew members then revealed that they had been subject to serious human rights abuse. In 2011, we saw it again when crew members of the Shin Ji and Oyang 75 alleged that they’d been subject to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, and suffered inhumane conditions. So we know that this is happening, but in those cases we know it was happening because those crew members reported it at port. There weren’t the search powers at sea.

We did have a partial response from this House with the passing of the Fisheries (Foreign Charter Vessels and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2014, which gave New Zealand courts full jurisdiction over crew members and foreign vessels. But, again, we did not have the extension of those enforcement powers to sea. So, in short, we do have much of the substantive legislative architecture in place that’s intended to protect people from these horrific human rights abuses, but we do need to extend these enforcement provisions. I commend this bill to the House.

TIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Great to take a call on this bill, the Maritime Powers Bill, in its first reading here tonight.

Now, as has been identified by most previous speakers, we are seeing an increasing number of challenges in our international waters, particularly around drug trafficking. That’s something that I’m, I guess, partially impressed with—the innovation, the complexity, the varieties of manner in which these people who are acting illegally choose to try and get their products into our country. So we need to ensure that we are adapting and evolving with that and providing our enforcement officers with the most appropriate tools possible to minimise the likelihood of those particular products accessing our shores eventually. Aside from that, though, and as spokesperson for oceans and fisheries, I have a very strong interest in the marine protection space as well. And I’d just like to expand a little on some of the comments that the Hon Scott Simpson made in his fine contribution to this debate as well.

Marine protection is an area that we are seeing increasing pressure on as well, as international operators, in some instances acting unlawfully, seek particular types of marine species for significant profit in the market so they can move those into. So protection of that is absolutely critical for us. One of the ways that we have traditionally protected our marine areas is through marine reserves, for example, and the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary, in particular, is one opportunity that so far has not been captured by this Government. As Mr Simpson mentioned, it is sitting there on the Order Paper; it’s ready to go. So, whilst this legislation is good in that it brings in some additional powers and helps with some of those protections, actually some of the more simple things that we could do, some of the lower-hanging fruit for this Government, would actually be to enact the likes of the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary.

Interestingly, the nearly four years under this Government is the longest period since 1990 in which no new marine reserves have been established in New Zealand.

Hon Scott Simpson: Really!

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: None whatsoever since—

Hon Scott Simpson: Not a single one!

TIM VAN DE MOLEN: That’s the longest period. And I think that’s pretty disappointing for most New Zealanders. So this is a good step, absolutely, and we do support it. The Kermadecs, though, would have been a massive opportunity for the Government to show that they do actually care about our environment, but, sadly, they have let New Zealand down in that regard.

So this particular bill, as I mentioned, we do support through to select committee at least. It is good to see this bill going to select committee, because there are many recently that have not, as the Government has chosen to simply ram them through under urgency with a “Government knows best” approach. Already, actually, we’ve heard on this bill they are truncating the committee process. So I guess at least we’re lucky to be having one. But one day, perhaps, they’ll give us the full select committee process and enable the public of New Zealand to actually consult or be consulted or have their say on a piece of legislation in its entirety.

Having said that, we will be very much looking forward to that discussion as it progresses through, because we do have some concerns around the reach of these powers, particularly in relation to the endangered species officers and the Department of Conservation rangers. I have absolute admiration for the work both those groups do, but providing powers of arrest, for example, is a significant expansion of what they would normally do in their daily operations. So there are real concerns around their competence in terms of those particular aspects of what this legislation would enable, and that is quite different to the competence you would expect to see from our police force or our New Zealand Defence Force or Customs, who are all trained more in those particular areas, so we would have much more confidence that they can act appropriately in that manner. But I look forward to hearing the select committee discussions on this to consider whether or not that extension of powers is appropriate, because we have seen actually, again, from this Government over the last few years a willingness to extend powers well beyond what is probably necessary.

This happened in terms of the NAIT legislation, the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme, where warrantless powers were given to officers to just enter farms and houses, farm properties, to consider whether compliance was happening. That was really a gross overreach. Also through the COVID lockdown—again, warrantless powers to enter premises if there is suspicion of too many people gathering for a family birthday party, for example. Really, the Government needs to be very careful about granting these sorts of powers, and analysing it thoroughly at select committee is absolutely crucial. So it is disappointing that they are truncating another select committee process. But we are at this stage supportive of the bill to first reading and will be scrutinising it closely through select committee. Thank you.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be speaking in the final slot for the Maritime Powers Bill. Look, I want to acknowledge the work of those in law enforcement agencies who have really been clamouring for something like this to take place for some time now. I know that the Government has a maritime security strategy, which underscores the importance of such a robust authorising mechanism to deliver the appropriate security for our coastlines.

I want to just acknowledge too that, representing a seat in New Zealand that has a coastline and two islands, I am aware constantly of what might be out there, so to speak. But what I do know is in terms of protecting our taonga, people—and the fact that this party, which turns 105 tomorrow, has a proud tradition of independent foreign policy. So therefore I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That Maritime Powers Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 110

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

Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The question is, That the Maritime Powers Bill be considered by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Bill referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee.

Instruction to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee

Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Minister for Courts) on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs: I move, That the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee report the Maritime Powers Bill to the House by 11 November 2021.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee report the Maritime Powers Bill to the House by 11 November 2021.

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.

Bills

Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I present a legislative statement on the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I move, That the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021. I intend to move that the committee have the authority to meet at any time while the House is sitting except during oral questions, during any evening on a day in which there has been a sitting of the House, and on a Friday in a week in which there has been a sitting in the House, and outside the Wellington area, despite Standing Orders 193, 195, and 196(1)(b) and (c).

We know that decommissioning costs are an increasing concern, both in terms of health and safety and environmental risk. Decommissioning can cover many things. It can include removing infrastructure, plugging and abandoning wells, and undertaking site remediation and restoration. The activities required to decommission a particular operation vary hugely from field to field. The costs also vary according to field to field—there is no one size fits all when it comes to the decommissioning requirement for our oil- and gasfields, but these costs can run into hundreds of millions of dollars. These costs fall firmly within the responsibility of the permit or licence holder. However, if a permit or licence holder cannot afford to carry out this work, then the Crown may be left as the only party that can fund the decommissioning. When it comes to decommissioning an oilfield, this is not a choice about whether or not it is done; it is something that simply has to be done.

This is not a hypothetical risk that policy makers have dreamt up; this is all too real. In April 2020, the Crown took on the responsibility for the decommissioning of the Tūī oilfield after the operator, Tamarind Taranaki Ltd, went into liquidation. To protect the marine environment, the Crown stepped up as the provider of last resort to decommission the Tūī infrastructure. The Crown initially set aside $155 million to do this, based on a 2015 study commissioned by the previous permit holder. While we have made good progress on decommissioning, those costs have far exceeded those initial estimates, and further funding was necessitated through Budget 2021. I am proud of the team decommissioning Tūī and what they have achieved, and there are some silver linings to be found there. But when you consider the costs involved to the taxpayer, I am very clear: we cannot let this happen again. We’ve already taken the necessary steps—well, some of the necessary steps—to avoid a repeat of the situation that we find ourselves in with Tūī.

We changed the legislation in our first term of Government to close the loophole that allowed us to get into this situation in the first place. When that change came into law in 2019, I signalled my intent to go further to strengthen the regulation of decommissioning. That is what the bill that I am introducing today does, and what it is intended to do. At its core, this is a very simple bill. It is about making clear what was always expected, that those who undertook and profited from petroleum activities would pay for the cleaning up—not the Crown, not landowners, and not taxpayers. The bill does that by introducing an explicit obligation on petroleum permit and licence holders to carry out and fund decommissioning. There are three pillars to the proposed regime that this bill introduces: a clear and consistent obligation to decommission, greater monitoring powers, and a requirement to obtain and maintain a financial security to carry out that decommissioning.

The first pillar, setting this clear and consistent obligation, clarifies to permit and licence holders what is expected of them. That is, who the obligation applies to and what they must decommission. Failure to fulfil this obligation will attract a civil pecuniary or criminal penalty, depending on the circumstances. The potential criminal penalty reflects the high level of public interest involved, and the potential health and safety and environmental risks that are associated with this work. As part of this obligation, I’m also introducing the concept of perpetual liability, which is a trailing liability, meaning if somebody transfers their interest in a permit, they will continue to be held liable for the costs of decommissioning in the event that the current permit holder fails to fulfil their obligations.

The second pillar of the regime allows us carry out more effective monitoring. It is designed to enable us to build a more accurate picture of a permit holder’s decommissioning liabilities and the associated financial plan that the holder has to meet those obligations. A permit holder’s financial position can change, and better monitoring means that we can work with permit holders and better understand the current or the emerging risks that are associated with that permit.

The final pillar of the regime requires a permit and licence holder to maintain a financial security. We hope that we do not have to access these funds, but this requirement provides a degree of assurance that money will be there if it is needed. In deciding the type and the amount of the security that will be required, I will keep a degree of flexibility in the decision making so that the specific requirements can be tailored to the individual circumstances and minimise the impact on businesses where possible. These three pillars, in combination with clear consequences for failure to decommission, are the basis of a more proactive regime.

The provisions of the bill that is being introduced tonight also bring New Zealand more into line with other countries which have, over the years, been increasing their ability to more effectively manage the risk to their taxpayers. We’re not alone in recognising the need to make this change. In 2020, the Australian Government announced it would step in and decommission the Northern Endeavour field after the field was sold from a large industry player to a smaller company. Australia is now also making change to enhance their framework for decommissioning.

In preparing this bill, I also became aware of the need to think of the future and the legacy that decommissioned petroleum fields present for the Crown and for the taxpayer, and the potential need to pick up the tab for any remediation work. Even if a well is plugged and abandoned to the highest standard, there does remain a possibility that problems can arise over time. Materials can degrade, there could well be a leak, or a natural disaster could change the integrity of a plugged or abandoned well. There have fortunately been very few examples of this, but the likelihood of an abandoned well leaking increases with their age, and, as we know, we are entering a phase where that could become a real possibility. If there were to be a problem with an abandoned well in the future, there is no guarantee that the company that drilled it would still even be operating in New Zealand, that they would have a presence in our country. So I propose to change this by requiring permit and licence holders to make a payment, or multiple payments, towards any post-decommissioning work that is required. I intend to consult on the factors that should be considered when setting this amount, and this could include things such as where the well is located and the type of hydrocarbon that it contains.

It’s important to note that this bill does not entirely eliminate the risk of the Crown having to step in and fund decommissioning, or pay costs related to post-decommissioning activities. There are further costs to the Crown as a result of the existing petroleum regulatory regime in the form of royalty refunds that will likely need to be made to some permit and licence holders. We know this. This is part of what is currently in people’s permits and the basis of which they are carrying out their activities in New Zealand. I have asked officials to put some time and some effort into looking at what that total royalty liability with refunds is likely to be there. We have consulted on these policy processes—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Unfortunately, the Minister’s time is up.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on this bill tonight, one that the National Party will be supporting through first reading to select committee because we are a party of personal responsibility, and when people set out with intentions of exploring, of course their intention would be to tidy up before they leave. Although, one would actually note in the timing of all of this, we could be suspicious and say this is the Government’s “Chased Them Away, But Make Sure They Pay Before They Go Bill”, in terms of the calls that they’ve made around oil and gas permits.

So as the Minister said, decommissioning is the process of taking petroleum infrastructure and wells out of service, which may include removing the infrastructure, plugging, and abandoning wells and undertaking necessary site restoration activities. We know that the New Zealand petroleum sector is maturing, an increasing number of petroleum fields are nearing the end of their economic life, but we also know that these assets are going to be used for some time to come in terms of producing gas for our transition fuels to the future. But we, too, believe that the clean-up process is important and the Crown Minerals Act currently does not explicitly provide for petroleum permit and licence holders’ decommissioning responsibilities for the length of time which they are responsible, or the consequences of failing to carry out the decommissioning. One also wonders what the cost of decommissioning this Government’s impact from 2023 onwards is going to be.

But that aside, this is a real issue. I have seen some of the decommissioning of the Tūī infrastructure as I’ve been down at Port Taranaki as that clean-up process was unfortunately left to the Government due to the situation with Tamarind. There is quite an effort going on in cleaning that up and it’s no small feat and it is important.

So New Zealand’s petroleum regulatory regime is based on a principle where those who have benefited from the environmental activities bear the cost of any associated remediation and clean-up activities. However, this principle is currently only explicit in relation to the lifetime of a petroleum permit or licence. So what this bill does is it provides an explicit obligation on petroleum permit and licence holders to plug and abandon petroleum wells and decommission any infrastructure left in situ after production is ceased. There are no market incentives for petroleum permanent licence holders to factor this residual liability into their economic decision-making. So really, as the Minister did touch on before, one of the bigger challenges comes once the well has been abandoned because the likelihood of an abandoned well leaking increases with its age. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that the company that drilled the now abandoned well will be still operating in New Zealand at that time.

But what we are a bit wary of, and why National’s supporting this for first reading and want to take it to select committee, is because we are really interested in what the public of New Zealand and the experts have to say around this. And I’m just going to make one comment to begin with tonight, from John Carnegie of Energy Resources Aotearoa, who said—

Hon Scott Simpson: He’s a good man.

BARBARA KURIGER: He’s a very good man, Mr Simpson. He’s an excellent man and he understands this industry—

Hon Scott Simpson: In depth.

BARBARA KURIGER: In depth, absolutely. So he talks about this bill having good intentions, which we would agree. The intentions around this bill are good, but they require careful work to avoid unintended consequences. With this Government we’ve seen a number of pieces of legislation already that have had unintended consequences, and we want to be very careful to work our way through this bill just to make sure that there’s nothing hidden in here that’s going to jump back and bite us, or bite Parliament and Government in the long term.

So these conditions are changing partway through to a retrospective liability and this could encourage earlier decommissioning. That was a comment that John Carnegie made and that could have a huge impact on energy security in this country, because, as we know, there’s already quite an impact on the energy security of this country from the decisions that the Government have made to date. That transition time, which is currently called a just transition, but doesn’t appear to be a transition at all because there is no plan.

So, on the impact summary, there’s a couple of things that would concern us on the National side of the House. One of the things that it talks about in the impact summary is the constraints on data on which to assess the risk. So there are some constraints to assess the risk for the Crown of potentially having to step in as a provider of last resort. The specific costs of decommissioning petroleum infrastructure in New Zealand is uncertain and can vary significantly depending on the timing, location, extent of removal required, and other factors. And so some of the numbers around this, it’s going to be a pretty hard job to make the predictions and to set the costs in place by the admission of those who have done the impact summary. So, certainly, the only certainty around this is the uncertainty, and that is something that, maybe during the select committee process, we could try and get a bit more information around so that when this job is done, it can be a little bit more accurate, if you like.

The second part of the impact summary talks about the limitation on consultation. So the consultation took place from 19 November 2019 to 27 January 2020 as part of the Crown Minerals Act review, where the feedback was sought from Cabinet that they agreed in June 2020 to undertake this. So there hasn’t been a consultation on the specific options that are being proposed here with industry or with other stakeholders. It’s anticipated, it says in here that “there may be some concerns which are further detailed … However, we note that all stakeholders will have a further opportunity to comment on those through the standard legislation change process.” Now, I did hear the Minister say before that I think it was 14 November or a date in November, if I’m correct, which doesn’t sound to me like it is quite the standard legislative process, although it’s a faster legislative process. Although compared to some, or a substantial number of other pieces of legislative processes that this Government has put through, this is what I’d call a medium-term one, because most of them being quite short, because this Government doesn’t have a history of wanting to go out and consult and listen, because someone might tell them what they don’t want to hear. There doesn’t seem to be too much openness and transparency around consulting with the public.

So having said that, I’m going to leave it at that for tonight, and just say, yeah, we do have our reservations around some of the details in the legislation, but we are supporting it to first reading. Thank you.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is one of the bills, when I was reading it this morning, that—you know, lots and lots of titles came up in my head—

Hon Member: This morning?

NAISI CHEN: —in terms of why are we doing something like this that is so important? Why are we only doing it now when there’s been such a problem for such a long time? One of those titles that came up in my head this morning—and this is probably my third time reading it, actually, to the member on the other side, because this bill has come up. As I was refreshing my memories on this bill, one of the titles that came up was “Labour Party not afraid to get into the details”—Labour Party not afraid to plug a gap in the legislation.

The other side may laugh at this, but their mistakes or the hesitancy of the previous Government not actually legislating this bill meant that the taxpayer has lost out. The taxpayer has lost out so much money at the Tūī oilfield. This bill is not just something that we’ve imagined, that officials have dreamt up. No, this bill is based on a real story. Taxpayers have already had to fork out $155 million to make sure that we decommission this field properly.

Another title that came out is that the Labour Party is ambitious in our environmental initiatives, but, at the same time, we make sure that the economy gets looked after. We know how important the energy sector is, how important sustainable energy is to our nation, and this is one of the steps that we will take to make sure that we look after the environment, that these oilfields get decommissioned properly with regard to the environment that they’re part of, and, at the same time, that we still get the energy that we need from the ground.

Another title that just came to my mind this morning as I was reading is actually a quote from the Hon Michael Wood. The Hon Michael Wood likes to say—and I think he said in this House plenty of times—that the market has failed; it’s time for the Government to step in. This bill is another example of where the market has failed and the Government needs to step in. So this is, once again, one of those bills that we’ve had to make sure that those users who have made money from our land, made money from our environment, and have, obviously, served our economy—they have made a profit and they should also be responsible for cleaning up after themselves.

As the deputy chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, we really look forward to hearing all of the submissions in coming months. The energy sector hasn’t been a sector that is a stranger to us. They have come to us on many occasions and engaged with us very constructively in the past, on many bills before this House. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, Madam Chair, thank you very much. Speaking to the first reading of this Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, I’m staggered. Fancy having to follow a speech like that. So the revelation tonight has been that Labour Party backbenchers are now required to go away and learn by rote the quotes from the Hon Michael Wood. Now, I’ve got a vision of the book—the book of quotes—probably about 100 pages; 99 of them will be blank, but there will be one page with one or two quotes mostly about a walking cycleway across the Auckland Harbour Bridge—

Chris Bishop: That’s right, a little red book.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —and no—yes, it might well be a little red book, who would know? It probably will be a socialist Labour Party little red book, “Famous Quotes of the Hon Michael Wood”! And there we go, it will be a fascinating thing. What will be interesting is to hear other Labour Party backbenchers quoting from the little book of the Hon Michael Wood’s famous quotes—“The Little Red Book of Michael Wood”—

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

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Well, I’m responding, Madam Chair, to the revelation from the previous Labour member, Naisi Chen, who was telling us what her bedside reading was, and the quotes that she has committed to memory. But this is a bill that warrants more serious consideration than the last Labour member has given it.

It is a problem because here is a situation where a company has defaulted on their environmental and corporate responsibilities in terms of decommissioning and cleaning up a gasfield off the coast of New Zealand, and, sadly, it’s been the long-suffering New Zealand taxpayer that has had to foot the bill for the tidy up, for the clean-up, and that is as a result of a hole in our law—not only a hole in the gasfield but a hole in our law. The challenge is to get the fix right, because this stuff is expensive. And, actually, the companies who trade in this area, in terms of gas exploration and extraction and oil or whatever kind of mineral extraction it is, they understand the costs involved. For many of them, the cost of exiting is a very significant portion of the total cost of their operation and of doing business.

Now, what particularly worries me about this exercise—and we will, no doubt, hear the details in select committee—is that the company that eventually went into liquidation and ceased trading, Tamarind, were a company that purchased what was left of the field, back in September 2019. Now, there is more than a hint, more than a suspicion, that, actually, Tamarind did not purchase that site, that facility, until near the end of its life. They are a company that, we are told, specialises in end-of-life gasfields and exiting them. I suspect that there is a real potential that an international organisation of that sort knew more about the loopholes and the intricacies and the costs than we did as a New Zealand Parliament and/or Government of the day. I think that there is a real potential that that purchase of their rights towards the end of the life of that field by a company that specialises in the operation of end-of-life oil and gas wells, they knew more about it than the unsuspecting New Zealand taxpayer. What is particularly galling is that this company, having gone into liquidation and ceased trading, their parent company actually continued to trade.

So the issues around the intricacies of company and corporate law are at play here, and not least of which is the intent and, indeed, the undertakings of an international parent company that sets up a smaller company that ostensibly comes into to do the end-of-life stuff, then falls over, for whatever particular reason, leaving the New Zealand taxpayer high and dry.

Now, this is not only a problem in terms of this particular case at hand but today is the second time that we’ve heard of a similar—not completely separate in terms of the style of a situation of this sort of thing occurring, where the New Zealand taxpayer has had to intervene to clean up an environmental mess left by a company that has either failed in its moral and corporate obligations or, in fact, has actually fallen over in terms of its liquidity and insolvency. I’m referring to the situation of the dross at Mataura, in Southland, and the taxpayers had to pick up quite a lot of that bill. Finally, New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd has done what, I think, is the morally correct and proper thing to do and sorted it out, but not after a long number of years of putting the people of Mataura at significant risk, because the dross was liable to be exposed to water, which would have created a toxic mess, and that would have put people’s lives and health at risk. So, in that case, the aluminium smelter contracted out the removal and disposal of the toxic dross to a company that, in turn, stored it at Mataura, and then that company fell over, as well, leaving the toxic mess sitting there and no obvious owner of the obligation to put it right. So, after what is nearly a decade, or maybe even more, finally it has been—or at least it is now back on the site at the aluminium smelter at Bluff.

So the parallels to this legislation in terms of decommissioning Crown mineral sites and what has happened there just highlight, in my view, the kinds of potential loopholes that exist and the risk that exists for the New Zealand taxpayer if this sort of legislation is not right and detailed and correct.

So, at select committee—and we are going to support this legislation through to select committee—we will be wanting to make sure that this well-intentioned bill, because I’m sure that it is well intentioned, is actually not going to result in any perverse outcomes, that the well-intentioned objectives of the bill are going to be fulfilled, and that the detail will ensure that the situation that has happened concerning Tamarind will not happen again. That is where the trick is in terms of getting the drafting right, getting the wording right, getting the intent right, and getting a complete understanding, because we’re dealing with international companies, large companies with huge amounts of capital, big numbers of dollars at stake, and, for them, the potential of finding a narrow loophole that absolves them from fulfilling their moral, environmental, and legal obligations to New Zealand taxpayers and cleaning up end-of-life gas- and oilfields, without that correct analysis and making sure that the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed in this legislation, then we run the risk of having exactly the same situation occur again.

So, as my colleague Barbara Kuriger has mentioned in her contribution in this debate, we’ll be looking very carefully, at select committee, to ensure that the detail is analysed. We’ll be looking forward to submissions from people like John Carnegie, who is well versed in expertise and has expertise in this area, because he is a person whose judgment I value, and his experience, I know, will be of benefit to the select committee. So those are the issues that concern us.

There is one final matter that I do want to raise in this first reading speech and that relates to the question of whether or not this legislation is going to be retrospective. Now, on the reading of the bill at the moment, that question appears to be moot and it is a little bit unsure. But if, in fact, it is to be retrospective, then those businesses—

Hon Andrew Little: What rubbish. The member should sit down.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: —will want to be taking an even closer look at it. So this is a fair thing. It is obvious this matter has struck a raw nerve with the Minister who’s on duty tonight. He didn’t get a chance to have a go earlier on. He’d be better to tend to his papers. But it is interesting when the Minister does get a little bit roused up. So the question of retrospectivity is, obviously, something that will be teased out at select committee. So we’ll have a close look at it at select committee and we are going to support this bill through to first reading. Thank you.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you for allowing me to take a call on this piece of legislation. Thank you to the National Party for, I think, supporting it through to the next stage. I look forward to it, and I feel like just because two of my colleagues across the floor have already mentioned John Carnegie, I’m also happy to talk about my relationship with John Carnegie at Energy Resources Aotearoa. We meet regularly and have robust discussions around issues like this, and very constructive conversations, less so than our previous speaker, Scott Simpson. I was unsure where we was going, but he was going somewhere, I’m sure, to at least support us vaguely on this piece of legislation, the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill.

I also heard earlier, Barbara Kuriger, that you were asking about us having no direction—you were questioning us around the just transition. I believe we’re making progress, investing finance and money into that—just under $14 million in the last Budget—for the next three years around the just transition. We’ve had Taranaki 2050. We have Ara Ake. Venture Taranaki has the offshore wind strategy. We’ve got, obviously, green hydrogen with Hiringa Energy. There’s a lot of work going on in this new space, in this clean energy space, and for that member to say that we don’t have a plan disappoints me, because, for all of us, we are passionate about our regions and our communities and we want to see right done.

It reminds me that earlier in the day there was the Ngāti Maru settlement, the first reading, which I was proud to speak on, and I was really surprised when I was meeting with local iwi recently that, for Ngāti Maru, on their whenua, 98 oil and gas wells they have had dug over the past 100 or more years. I look at this piece of legislation and think how important it is to ensure that the taxpayer, that landowners, that the Crown does not have to pay when it comes to a company like Tamarind, like others, who may fail in terms of that space. So we need to ensure that legislation is in place. Being on the select committee, I look forward to speaking and listening, as I always do, and having another coffee with John Carnegie and hearing his opinion. So I commend this next reading to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I’m very happy to stand and speak in support of this legislation, and I have to say that the Green Party is thrilled to hear the National Party members making such positive remarks about this and acknowledging the important responsibility that people have to look after the moana and the whenua. If they are exploiting it or resources like oil and gas, we should at the very least be held responsible for decommissioning and clean-up afterwards, because what I take from that is most New Zealanders absolutely care passionately about our environment. We want to see it looked after, and we expect those who are extracting resources to do so in a manner as responsible as possible and to clean it up appropriately and not leave it to the people of New Zealand to fund the decommissioning.

Now, how it is possible that Tamarind was in the situation where they were able to just pull out and leave the cost of decommissioning to the New Zealand public is a question, given that the National Party had such an explicit oil and gas strategy in the last term they were in Government. I mean, I remember back in 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon crisis happened in the Gulf. The Green Party was asking questions of the then National Government, saying, “What is your plan, if we’re doing all this oil and gas exploration offshore, to respond to that type of crisis here in New Zealand?”, and the answers were completely insufficient. In fact, there was no thought or effort put into how we would plan for a contingency like that—how we would respond to it—and, apparently, there was not even an explicit statutory obligation for petroleum permit and licence holders to carry out decommissioning activities and meet the full financial costs.

Of course, even if that was the case that that responsibility existed and they had the statutory obligation, they were able to get around it, and so this work should have been done sooner. If anything, the Green Party will be asking questions at select committee about whether it goes far enough and about whether the penalties that are proposed in this bill are sufficient that it won’t simply be in a company’s financial interests to simply pay the penalty, which won’t cover the cost of decommissioning, and so that will be a question that we will ask. But it’s really good to hear—so far, anyway—across the House a consensus that petroleum permit holders should be held responsible and that there should be consequences or even criminal penalties if they fail to meet their obligations to our environment. This is the very least we can do. The oil industry, unfortunately, has a long history of lobbying Government to reduce their responsibilities and their moral, ethical obligations to the world, and we can see this very clearly.

Now, obviously, the transition that we’re in now to clean energy from fossil fuels should have happened 20 years ago. It could have happened 20 years ago, were it not for the very well-funded, powerful international oil lobby basically seeding confusion amongst people and lobbying politicians to not take action to transition to cleaner energy. Unfortunately, because we haven’t taken action sooner, it will be more expensive and more difficult, and there is a serious risk that we don’t have enough time to get off fossil fuels to avoid some pretty serious, damaging consequences for life on this planet.

I’m sure that members here will be really aware of what the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science is saying, which is that we have record heatwaves in North America happening right now, in 2021. Imagine what that’s going to be like in 10 years or 20 years. As we’ve continued to emit fossil fuels, that traps carbon in the atmosphere, which is like a blanket suffocating the planet. It’s basically heating it up. Most of the extra heat that’s been generated by human-induced greenhouse gas emissions has gone into the oceans, and we’re looking at serious consequences for life in our oceans because of ocean acidification and changes in the temperature of the ocean, not to mention overfishing.

So, basically, humanity is at a major turning point right now. Either we’re going to take the actions that we need to take to enable life on this planet to thrive, or we’re going to continue doing what we’ve always done, and most people wouldn’t agree with that. Most people want to do the right thing, and they want to look after the environment and they want to leave a healthy moana for their children and grandchildren. But, unfortunately, most people don’t have the power that huge multinational oil companies have to influence politicians, and most people don’t feel that they have that power, but they really do—we do.

The voters have the power, and you can continue to elect parties that will be firm in the face of that lobbying and that will do the right thing. The role of Government is to ensure that these private corporations are not allowed to just run amok, exploiting our environment for their own shareholders’ personal, short-term financial returns. But, rather, we can find a way of working together to ensure that we’re looking after our natural environment and that we’re looking after our people.

All of this that has been done in the name of “economic progress” hasn’t really benefited many, many people at the bottom. It has enriched a very small number of people and it has had enormous consequences for the environment, which affects all of us and—

Simon Court: And we’re all much better off with all this cheap energy—I mean, we are living this life because of the cheap energy, aren’t we?

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I’ve an ACT member on my right who’s firmly in the denial camp. He doesn’t understand that his life and the life of his children is deeply related to the health of our water, our soil, our air, and our atmosphere and that the consequences of just pumping the pollution out into the atmosphere will be dire and severe for all of us. Of course, I’m not even going to go into the issues with plastics, and how plastics are affecting our health and the health of many other animals that we share this planet with. It’s really time for us to be responsible.

Most people want to do the responsible thing, and most people understand that in order for us to do the responsible thing, we need to have a strong, transparent, democratic government system that is able to regulate and hold these companies to account, and to tell them no sometimes—“No. No you can’t do that because it’s not in the interests of the New Zealand public.”—and I really wish that some people had said no in the past. When it comes to the way that this fossil fuel exploitation has happened in New Zealand, it has cost the New Zealand public, and we’re very fortunate we haven’t had a catastrophic incident like they regularly have now in the Gulf of Mexico, where we have pipelines bursting and catching fire. We haven’t had a severe catastrophic incident, but we have had many, many oil spills, and there are consequences for our sea life because of that.

So the Green Party is happy to support this bill. We will be looking to ensure that it is as strong as it needs to be and that the penalties are sufficient to get the behaviour that we want from these companies, and, of course, we want to see a faster transition away from fossil fuels, because that is the only way that we’re actually going to be able to respond to climate change.

The gauntlet has been laid out for us. It’s increasingly clear that we are running out of time, and we have to work together. We can work together to transition away, but not if we listen to the lobbyists, and definitely not if we listen to the big companies who want to keep doing things the same way they always have, and not if we listen to politicians who are in total denial about the state that we are in.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Madam Speaker, thank you. The ACT Party supports this bill. We’ll be supporting it to select committee. This is an important piece of legislation that allows us, for the first time, I think, since the Resource Management Act (RMA) was passed, to actually explore issues about legacy liability for environmental contamination and what you do with orphan sites. What’s the balance of responsibility and accountability between the private sector, who operates oil- and gasfields—and I do note that the Green Party member has left without actually waiting to hear—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member may not refer to the absence of a member, even though she isn’t absent.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Chair, for that reminder. I know, but some truths are inconvenient. So I just want to talk about some of the risks that this bill presents to Government and to our energy security, because the businesses that are involved in delivering energy in New Zealand—in the gas sector, in the oil sector, but also in the electricity sector—rely on having access to a secure supply at affordable prices and to be confident that the environmental issues are well managed.

It’s important because businesses in New Zealand, almost without fail, are socially responsible. We’ve come a million miles from that time 20, 30, 40 years ago where businesses thought it was acceptable just to liquidate and leave, and the issue that this piece of legislation aims to repair or address, the abandoning of the Tūī oilfield and leaving those decommissioning responsibilities with Government, was a surprise to many—a $350 million bill and counting, we see. But it’s not a surprise to all of us, because in a previous life, in a previous role, I led environmental decontamination projects at some of New Zealand’s worst legacy contaminated sites, where chemicals like 2,4,5-T had been manufactured and where very, very harmful timber treatment chemicals had been manufactured and used, so I do have some insights which I’d like to share with the House.

It is important to recognise that businesses that start off with a consent or with a permit that says “You must pay forward a bond or into an after-care fund because something might happen and we don’t know what will happen in the future.”—it is commonplace that those arrangements are made at the time of consenting large long-term operations like landfills, for example, like waste-water treatment and other types of sites which actually handle quite harmful materials, where, if something went wrong, it would be local government or central government that picked up the pieces and paid the bill. We’ve seen that a number of times over the past few years.

This Tūī oilfield is not the only example of this. We saw the awful Pike River disaster, which not only was a terrible loss of human life but has led to the Government, for a number of reasons, feeling it was necessary to commit tens of millions of dollars to remediate that site and make it safe. We’ve had the Rena disaster in the Bay of Plenty, where a freighter—not an oil tanker but a freighter—ran aground and caused significant environmental damage, and that cost was covered by the insurer but also significant costs had to be covered by the local authority and central government. We’ve seen the Whakaari / White Island disaster. We still don’t fully understand all of the reasons that happened, but it’s clear that the Government will have to bear significant cost in some way for that terrible, terrible event.

So when we think about what this bill is trying to achieve in order to offset the risk of a potential future liability for cleaning up oil- and gasfields where the operator leaves or goes out of business or somehow abandons their operation without fulfilling their environmental obligations—and remember, they already have resource consents if they’re onshore, and they have other permits under the RMA and issued by the Government through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment if they’re offshore. So it seems remarkable that in 2021, we’re talking about having to create new legislation to address these issues.

We know there are a number of different ways to do it, but some of the risks that have been identified in developing this legislation have already been covered this evening, so I won’t cover them again. But what was interesting from the Government’s own regulatory impact assessment was something I’d like to describe here. It said that it does identify a risk of implementation: that the proposals need to be implemented in a way that does not precipitate or exacerbate the very financial problems they’re designed to safeguard against. In other words, scaring the horses, those New Zealand - based or international investors who we depend on to keep the gas flowing, to keep the lights on this winter in fact—actually scaring them, so they decide that they would rather pack up, leave New Zealand, and take their chances in the courts, because that is a very, very real risk.

If we think we’ve got a problem now with projections that New Zealand will burn over 1.5 million tonnes of coal this year, just wait until one of these big gas producers decides it’s not worth being in New Zealand based on the behaviours of this Government and their approach to regulation. It’s too uncertain. It’s too scary. They’d rather go and work somewhere else, like Victoria—that Australian state—which, after having had a moratorium on gas exploration and bringing new gas on stream, just last week announced that their moratorium was lifting, because they want more gas. They see it as the best transition fuel from coal and other high carbon emitting fuel sources, the best pathway to a low-emissions future.

So it’s surprising that while we’re here talking about all the terrible things this industry might do or might have done or could do and how we need to protect the New Zealand Government and taxpayer from that, actually there is still no recognition at all by this Government of the very important role that the gas sector plays in securing New Zealand’s energy, energy affordability, and making sure that not only do we keep the lights on but we have high-paid jobs for people from sometimes very remote communities and regions that have no other economic activity to speak of—high-paid jobs that mean they keep food on the table, their kids have shoes on their feet, they can pay their bills, and they can go to work for companies that actually treat them well and do observe all of the normal social responsibility practices we would expect from multinationals in New Zealand’s biggest industries.

So thinking a bit further about the risks of scaring those businesses and those jobs away, another regulatory risk identified by the Government’s advisers was reducing the attractiveness of New Zealand as a petroleum investment destination. When I read that, all I could think of was, “Ha! This must be a surprise to some people writing this paper.” But petroleum investment destination—I don’t think New Zealand currently has that brand. I think that we scared off our best chances of attracting that foreign direct investment some years ago, and we don’t know how we will ever return to that level of certainty.

But I want to give you an example of how the Government, in bringing this bill to the House, is actually acting quite duplicitously. It’s not sharing the full facts. In fact, some of what is written in the regulatory impact statement almost sounds like utu, particularly when you look at the way they’ve responded with this legislation to a court decision around whether a permit holder was likely to comply and give proper effect to their work programme. That was when the Government was successfully sued by a petroleum company and was then forced to admit, in fact, they hadn’t followed their own processes. Then, just a few days ago, the Government’s own radio station, Radio New Zealand, reported the Government was prepared to shell out millions—tens of millions—of dollars to Rio Tinto to help offset their costs of clean-up.

So it’s quite clear that the Government is prepared to play favourites and to buy silence when it has to, but sees an opportunity to go after an industry here that is already suffering from poorly thought-out regulation, and to go after them. That’s why the ACT Party supports this bill going to select committee: so we can start to hear some of the real, honest submissions from people who would be affected by what looks like a half-hearted, half-arsed attempt at legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I call the next speaker, could I ask the member to remove his coloured box from off the benchtop. Thank you.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Kia orana, Madam Speaker. Look, I have to say it’s not just a pleasure to follow the member who has just resumed his seat, Simon Court, but it is always a distinct pleasure, particularly because he started his contribution in the House tonight by actually conceding and acknowledging that this Government is introducing a bill that will be an important piece of legislation. There we have it, folks: an important piece of legislation. I have to say that he started his contribution in the House so well, and then it just headed further south thereafter.

Look, this proposal before the House tonight is a piece of legislation that will, in effect, strengthen the responsibility for permit holders, for licence holders, in two areas: the first in terms of their financial responsibility, and the second in terms of their legal responsibility. In doing so, what this bill does is it therefore decreases the risk that the Crown, property holders, taxpayers, and others will have to pick up the tab, pick up the cost, to remediate a failure to decommission. I actually think that ratepayers and communities all around this country will think that that is a good move. No doubt, when this bill moves through to select committee, we will hear as a Parliament from those communities of interest, and we certainly look forward to that.

I want to, in taking this brief call this evening, commend the Minister of Energy and Resources. Her initial reactions around this and in terms of the next steps that have been signalled need commendation, but they shouldn’t come as any surprise. This legislation will ensure, actually, that permit holders, licence holders, are in a position where they simply cannot abrogate their responsibilities and expect others in this community to pick up the tab. This will also, as has previously been mentioned, bring us into line with other global jurisdictions. This is a fantastic bill, and I certainly am pleased to support it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Call Simon Watts—five-minute call.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Madam Speaker, thank you very much. I rise on behalf of the National Party and as the member of Parliament for the North Shore to talk in the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill first reading.

National supports this bill through to select committee. As we heard this evening, the process for decommissioning of petroleum infrastructure is one that is significantly expensive and one which is absolutely critical and necessary, as we have seen through failures in the past. This legislation will play a part in order to ensure that we, hopefully, avoid that situation and, in particular, ensure that the burden of the cost to decommission and tidy up once these works are undertaken is borne by the entity which undertook those works and not the people of this country paying for it out of their pockets, being the taxpayer.

We’ve heard the concept before from Barbara Kuriger, around the concept around personal responsibility. I think it’s really important—and this is something that is, obviously, a core principle of the National Party as well—that this, in effect, is something that we should expect. From what I understand and from what I’ve read, businesses on the whole across our country also acknowledge that when they do their business in this country, they derive economic gain, but there also comes with that obligations, ensuring that the way they leave our country is in the state in which they received it. So that is good.

I guess I do want to reference a couple of aspects around this, which I think, as it goes through into the select committee phase, will be important for that committee to consider. And particularly that is around the nuanced nature of a permit holder that basically assumes a liability for decommissioning, but through that process may transfer that permit to another party. But the way in which the legislation is currently drafted, the responsibility, if the party which receives or purchases that permit fails, will go back to the original seller.

I think that creates a certain—well, it’s an element of complexity that I think we’re going to need to look into from a practical aspect. I know Russell McVeagh have raised similar concerns in regards to some of that nuance, because you can imagine a director of a company—that the original company that sells the permit and then basically the company’s wound up, potentially under this legislation, those original directors may carry the liabilities in terms of their personal liability and also their director liability, both criminal and also civil, for potentially the failure of the entity that has purchased that payment.

Coming from a banking and financial background and having an understanding around the due diligence process required when purchasing organisations and entities, I think the emphasis around the due diligence required by the seller—actually, in this instance, around ensuring that the buying entity does have the financial capability not only to trade across the medium term, but also have the financial viability and sustainability to be able to afford to pay the decommissioning costs at what could be a reasonable point in the future. So I think that’s some of the element that will be worked through, and I’ve got confidence, I’m sure, that the select committee will consider that.

I think the other aspect as well is just in terms of the actual costs elements as well. So when you sell that permit, obviously the person buying it’s going to take off the costs that they expect it’s going to be to decommission. But again, if that company then subsequently collapses, then the original buyer may have, in effect, paid twice or had, in effect, a bit of a double cost on them. So I look forward to seeing this proceed through the House.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): As we transition away from a fossil fuel economy, as we know we must, that does leave us with the problem of ageing infrastructure and how we manage the moving-out process from the companies who have been running our fossil fuels companies. How do we then go on to deal with the ongoing issue of pipelines under the sea, of aged and remaining infrastructure that may continue to cause us problems in the future? It may be, as our friend from ACT has said this evening, that most companies are responsible. One would certainly hope that they were. It is certainly a fundamental principle of ordinary morality that when one makes a mess, one cleans up for it.

But, just because we put out there clear guidelines as to the expectations of both sides of an arrangement, as to what the liabilities and responsibilities will be, is not a disrespect to either side of the equation. When we rent a house, we pay a bond against the possibility that we will not be honourable renters. When we sue someone, there are occasions when we are required to pay security for costs so that an ultimately successful person on the other end of our suing is not left out of pocket. It doesn’t mean that we are behaving in a dishonourable fashion to be clear about the responsibilities of both parties. This is straightforward, simple legislation. It creates a clarity of obligation on both sides; it gives financial security for costs, should the company not fulfil its responsibilities; and it enables effective monitoring of their finances so that we can find out whether that is in fact going to be the case. I commend this bill to the House.

RACHEL BROOKING (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s been very pleasing today to hear this issue addressed both in question time and then in almost every speech today about the problem we’ve often had with older legislation not providing for things like bonds and financial instruments when an environment is left degraded. So we know that orphan sites and legacy contamination are issues and, as I said, it’s great that everybody across the House agrees that this is a problem.

So what does this bill do? Of course, it amends the Crown Minerals Act, and that Act applies to petroleum, which is a Crown mineral. The purpose of the Act includes the effective management and regulation of Crown minerals and good industry practice. There’s a regulatory scheme, and that includes some key framework tools, such as providing minerals programmes, which are done through public process, setting out how powers will be exercised, and then there’s a permit process as well. There’s three types of permits: prospecting, exploration, and mining. And here that interest is on mining. An application for a mining permit for petroleum includes a proposed programme of work. That is part of the focus of this amendment.

There’s other parts of the Act, of course, that relate to access to land, registers, enforcement royalties, offences, and regulations. But what this bill does is it does many changes to that framework, and that includes adding a function of the Minister to make decisions on decommissioning and requirement for financial securities. It adds new requirements for petroleum mining permits, and that is that they have to have a field development plan that details decommissioning work. It adds a new requirement for a notice of expected cessation and a notice of cessation. It adds new subparts, added that specifically address decommissioning requirements in some detail, and these were discussed by the Minister in her speech. And it includes assessment of financial capacity. It also amends the provisions around records to include financial and scientific, new infringement offences, and amendments to the regulations. It is an important environmental and also health and safety piece of legislation, and I wish the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee well with their submission process.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): We too are supporting this legislation, the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, through first reading to select committee, because we do want an opportunity for submitters to come and talk about how to improve this legislation and to get rid of any unintended consequences, or perhaps intended consequences, that stop the good function of business and instead don’t only focus on those where there might be a problem. We’ve heard other speakers in the debate talk about the Tūī field and the great cost to the Crown there. So it is important that we have legislation that prevents that. It means the taxpayer doesn’t unreasonably, unfairly, unnecessarily have to take up the cost of cleaning up after the decommissioning, and cleaning up the mess that may well be environmentally left behind after the exploration of oil and gas finishes.

However, I notice, when doing a bit of research on this, that there are concerns from the sector, from responsible businesses, about some of these consequences. And I noticed that Energy Resources Aotearoa have said new commissioning rules for natural gas- and oilfields have good intention but require careful work to avoid unintended consequences. Well, actually we want to hear from them to know what those might be, to ensure that’s not the case. One of the earlier speakers in the debate said that, as we transition away from using carbon energy, this becomes important. Well, actually, irrespective of that, it’s important to get it right. There have been very few cases where companies have not met their obligation when they have needed to decommission, and if indeed this is about when a responsibility or liability is passed from one party to another party through investment or sale, the responsibility should rest with the new owner of the permit, not the last one.

So it will be important that we look, when it comes to the Government wanting guarantees or deposits or things like that, that actually it is the new owners that take that responsibility on. It’s a little bit like, I suppose, in the case that someone, I don’t know, has a factory and they sell that factory to someone else, they retain liability for an extended period of time. Now, they shouldn’t be able to not meet their obligations. They shouldn’t be able to avoid them. But, in the normal transfer of a business and the conduct of business, it should be the new owners that have that responsibility, not somebody that many, many years before was involved but is no longer.

The other thing we need to make sure is that actually this is fair, and the reason for that is that this is a Government that have decided without any advice at all to stop the exploration of gas in New Zealand. This is the second week in a row that we are having a debate, or a discussion, on legislation brought by the Hon Megan Woods. Last week, it was about the measurement of gas in companies and so on, the reporting of it; this week, it’s around decommissioning. Last week, we didn’t support that legislation; this week we are. But Megan Woods, the honourable Minister, misses the point with this legislation. And the reason for that is that the Government have said they don’t want any more exploration of gas in New Zealand.

A speaker in the debate earlier, from the Government, said that’s why this legislation is needed: it will be needed much more in the future because we won’t have more exploration and the current assets will run out. But the problem we have there is that it’s extremely short-sighted of the Government, because this is a Government that, in the first quarter of this year, imported more coal than the last two years combined to generate electricity. It’s a Government that will import two million tonnes—two million tonnes—of coal this year from Indonesia to generate electricity. And I don’t agree with the member opposite when she said that this decommissioning legislation will be needed more in the future because the Government has made decisions that will exit New Zealand from exploration and from the production of natural gas. She’s wrong, but the sentiment around that is that, unfortunately, they’ve done that and therefore energy costs go up in New Zealand, electricity is more expensive for consumers, and gas that many parts of the world are using as a transitional energy away from heavy use of carbon or coal—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Just come back to the bill.

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, I am, Madam Speaker, but when people are listening and the member opposite said the reason this is needed is because we’re not going to be having any oil or gas exploration again in the future, that’s a point that’s important to address.

So the point here is that, as energy costs go up and as other parts of the world use gas as a transition away from more heavily used carbon energy production—i.e., coal—and move towards more sustainable, this Government has given up on that, and instead they’re focusing on how they hold parties liable when they have to decommission. That’s important; we support that, but at the same time they should actually be saying we want exploration of gas so that we can transition away. In fact, if we had companies here who thought it was a good business environment to be in and they were looking for gas, perhaps Megan Woods wouldn’t have to import two million tonnes of coal this year from Indonesia to generate energy for New Zealanders at such a great, great cost.

We are supporting this. It’s interesting because we’re hearing more noise from the Government now, when they are held to account for the importation of coal, that isn’t good for the environment or climate change, but when it came to this legislation, they’re taking the shortest possible calls I’ve seen. It suggests to me that last week, when they were taking full calls, they liked the importation of that coal. What they don’t like is looking for gas in New Zealand and to be used as a transition. We do support this legislation, but we’ll be looking to make sure it’s fair and that actually the responsibility for the cost goes directly to those who own the companies and it doesn’t unfairly burden those who, in every good faith, have sold their licence to somebody else and that they’re not held to account for things they aren’t responsible for. Thank you.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): You talk about fairness and unfairly burdening who?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

ANGELA ROBERTS: Sorry, I beg your pardon—the member who has just—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

ANGELA ROBERTS: I apologise, but for those of us who live in Taranaki, when you talk about the burden of this cost, it is not—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

ANGELA ROBERTS: Sorry, I apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

ANGELA ROBERTS: Of course. So the incredible cost, dollar-wise, to the taxpayer is not the only cost that is being borne by Taranaki. We have a whole pile of local contractors who were let down. We have had months of having a ship offshore with tens of thousands of barrels of oil in it, wondering if it would survive the winter, and we have had, for years, the ongoing experience of decommissioning the Tūī oilfield. For those of us for whom Taranaki is home, for whom those beaches are pristine and are really, really valuable, there is a cost. When you talk about—sorry, I apologise; when there are members on the other side of the House who talk about making sure that this goes to select committee so that we can talk to those who are being affected, it isn’t just the oil companies.

Hon Todd McClay: Anybody can submit.

ANGELA ROBERTS: Of course—they can and they will, and we remind you that this is about—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

ANGELA ROBERTS: I apologise.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This is now the fourth time the member has brought the Speaker into the debate. I’d ask the member to be very careful. Thank you.

ANGELA ROBERTS: The provisions in this bill are about increasing their ability to more effectively manage the risks to taxpayers but also to make sure our communities are safe. We’re really pleased that iwi have already been involved in the process, not just on the ground with decommissioning Tūī but in feeding in responses to the discussion document. As a result, we are really pleased that we are going to be able to take this to the select committee and really sort this issue out. I commend this to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be considered by the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Instruction to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I move, That the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be reported to the House by 11 November 2021.

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.

Bills

Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I move, That the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I want to thank all the members of this House who’ve contributed to the debate on this very important but very technical piece of legislation. I want to thank the members of the select committee that heard this legislation.

This bill is very technical in nature, as I said. It amends the Gas Act of 1992, which is the principal legislation for the governance of New Zealand’s gas industry. It amends that legislation so that we have an information and disclosure regime that provides the transparency and information that we require for a properly functioning market. It expands the scope of regulation-making powers under the Act to ensure that the regulated arrangements can be made and to ensure the disclosure and information about matters that may have a significant downstream impact or may contribute to the risk of a critical gas shortage.

These risks are not theoretical. We have seen a situation in New Zealand in the very recent past where there simply was not enough information that was flowing through, and that is what has driven the need for this legislation. It is important for ensuring that the appropriate regulatory requirements can be put in place for supporting security of supply and to improve outcomes for energy consumers, because it is those energy consumers that need to be the focus for us. The co-regulator, the Gas Industry Company, will first be required to make a recommendation to the Government before regulations can be made. This is consistent with the co-regulatory approach.

The bill’s transitional provisions also ensure that the work that the Gas Industry Company has done to investigate information disclosure will be considered valid for making a recommendation under this piece of legislation.

The bill also makes important changes to ensure the Act’s penalty regime is robust. It increases the maximum penalty for industry participants from $20,000 to $200,000 and addresses concerns about the low level of civil pecuniary penalty able to be currently issued by the Gas Rulings Panel. It also creates a new civil penalty instead of a criminal penalty for consumers who are not industry participants. This will align the penalty regimes for industry participants and non-industry participants, and it will be used to deter breaches of regulations by those consumers, which include some of the larger consumers of natural gas. That penalty, aligning with the other penalties, will be a maximum of $200,000 and will not apply to residential consumers.

The Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee made some valuable recommendations to this legislation, which we have discussed in other stages of this bill, to add a specific criminal penalty for breaches of a Gas Rulings Panel order by industry participants. The penalty is currently contained in regulations, but it will be repealed due to the repeal of the regulatory-making provisions for it, and this addition will add the penalty into the Act itself. So I want to thank the select committee for the work they did in that. That will help to ensure that appropriate incentives are in place for compliance with these rulings panel’s orders, and that is vitally important.

This bill does represent a major step forward in improving how information that may indicate critical gas shortages or significant price impacts is released to the market, which should help to improve our overall security of energy supply. It is an important move in New Zealand, starting to think of an energy system rather than separate electricity and gas systems, and how we bring these together and think more in an energy systems approach. It also helps to address the industry’s concerns about how their information is disclosed and helps to ensure that the appropriate incentives are in place for consumers and for industry to follow the rules. I commend the bill to the House.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill.

Now, the Minister just said as she started the reading of this bill that this bill is very technical in nature. It’s just a shame that Labour shut down the committee stage of this bill so that we were unable to ask all the questions that we wanted to. But I’m wondering how this bill gets to be so technical in nature when the industry had already set up a voluntary regime and had it working quite effectively to the point where there were no breaches. The Minister never got around to answering that question in the committee stage either, due to it being shut down. So I just wonder what the penalty is for not being open and transparent for the Government, as they are expecting from the energy industry—because the Minister also said in the committee stage that this is what she had to do because the voluntary regime didn’t work in 2018. What she omitted to say was that the voluntary regime came into force in 2020 and that there had been no breaches of the voluntary code. So, look, I would have liked to have seen the committee stage going a bit longer because I certainly had more questions to ask, as I know others did. I’m disappointed that that didn’t happen.

So National supports transparent disclosure around current, pending, or possible gas outages. But we need to remember why we’re here. We’re here because New Zealand is fast entering a gas supply crisis. The power outage wasn’t an issue of a lack of information; it was an issue of a lack of gas. There were some technical issues within that well which the company are currently working through and they are going to do some more drilling to work through the process where some water actually got into places which impeded getting gas out of the ground. So it wasn’t about lack of information.

The Minister did make a comment in one of the readings of the bill that they had to fly drones over to have a look. Well, if it’s actually under the ground and the water is actually the problem, it’s going to be pretty hard to see that with any sort of disclosure regime and, in particular, with the drone.

So what this bill will do—and we are supporting it because largely the industry was doing it anyway. They’re quite happy to volunteer what they have as long as there’s no commercial information disclosed. That was something Mr Court tried to get through with his Supplementary Order Papers in the committee stage, which the Minister wasn’t too fond of picking up either. But this bill will allow New Zealand to understand just how bad a situation Labour has put us in with gas. That’s why we support it—because, actually, when it’s disclosed, the decisions of 2018 will become very apparent. It’s important to see where we are, and it’s really important to see where we are, because this gas crisis is in part a direct result of Labour’s 2018 oil and gas ban. Whether they like to admit it or not, when they banned oil and gas Minister Woods said, “Don’t worry, we have 100,000 square kilometres of exploration already permitted,” she said. “We have permits that go out 30 years,” she said. “The sky isn’t falling in,” she said.

What she didn’t say or doesn’t understand is that gas doesn’t come out of the ground by magic. Businesses need to invest something called money and things that they call plant and equipment to get gas to our houses, factories, and electricity generation. Labour doesn’t understand how this works: businesses need to invest big sums of money. And so this has dried up and we’ve seen gas production fall 40 percent in three years. This has resulted in job losses at Methanex and timber mills, and New Zealand Steel have reduced production.

Huntly is burning four times as much coal and greenhouse gas emissions are up. Wholesale electricity prices are four times higher than they were in 2018, and this is from a Government that has declared a climate crisis. So not only is the electricity price up and energy security in jeopardy but the climate change results are at risk as well.

So measuring the gas could be a good thing, because it will show the damage that this Government has caused, because if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Now, remember, the industry was already measuring it and already managing it. The Government can’t manage it, so now they need to measure it. They don’t have a plan. They don’t have a transition as they claim to have. The Gas Industry Company says that existing wells will only get us to 2026 or 2027, and that’s not very long left to measure, given that we’re now in 2021. Once this bill is passed—and it will pass in the House, either tonight or next time it comes through the House—it needs to go back to the Gas Industry Company, and then it needs to go back to the Minister for final approval. That operation is going to have to be relatively swift, otherwise by the time it goes through all of that process, there won’t be anything left to measure.

We face an energy crisis in 2027 where we may not have enough gas to process milk, which is our largest export. The Gas Industry Company is investigating importing LNG—liquefied gas—so we can keep our factories going, and that’s a disgrace. That’s a disgrace in a country with multiple high likelihoods of basins off our coast, and we’ll be paying billions to Australia to import their gas. Somebody might want to tell me from the other side: what is the rationale around that?

So this is all evidence of a poorly managed transition. Gas is the key to our transition to our zero-emissions future, and the Government cancelled gas before they ever developed an alternative. They say a pumped hydro scheme is the answer, and without getting into all the problems of that scheme, that’s going to be at least 10 years away, the officials say. Yet our gas isn’t going to last that long.

I noticed recently in a press release Minister Parker said that Onslow pumped hydro was the answer to our renewable energy future. When I asked Minister Parker in a written question how long the Onslow dam would take to refill in year two of a dry-year risk, did he know? His answer was yes. Not forthcoming with any information, just saying yes, he did know. So then in passing, I said to Minister Parker, “You may like to finish the answer to your question.”, and Minister Parker said, “Well, come up and see me and we’ll have a discussion about it.”

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.

BARBARA KURIGER: Sorry. Minister Parker said, “Come up and see me and we’ll have a discussion about that.” Now, I’m still making an effort to get up to Minister Parker’s office so we can have that discussion, because it seems pointless to do away with the gas, to put in regimes that do away with the gas, to then put in a pumped hydro dry-year risk, when no one can tell me, if we have two dry years in a row, whether we’re going to solve our dry-year risk. So Minister Parker, I’m still after the answer to that question, and any time you would like to stand up and take a call, I would be very happy to have the answer.

So National is supporting this piece of legislation. I sat on the select committee for the submissions for this bill, and as I said, the industry is already doing it. They are happy to disclose. They already have a voluntary regime. They know it’s in their best interest, but they are very, very, very nervous about the commercial sensitivity of some of the information. So this bill needs to be done very carefully, and I ask more so the Gas Industry Company, actually, rather than the Government to ensure that this is commercially sensitive, watertight legislation so that we don’t have any oopsies in that department, because we know how easy it is for things to leak and things to get out when it comes to some of these regimes. We’ve already seen in the last couple of days all of the cyber-attacks that go on, and as an interest in the security of this country, we need to make sure that this regime is tight and that it works, and I leave that responsibility with the Gas Industry Company and the Government. Thank you, Mr Speaker. I commend the bill to the House—Madam Speaker, sorry.

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

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Tonight we’re amending legislation that was drafted and passed in 1992—

Glen Bennett: Were you born then?

NAISI CHEN: Two years before I was born—that’s exactly where I was going to go, I say to my good colleague Glen Bennett, here, who’s an awesome member for New Plymouth.

Tonight—and we’ve heard, and throughout the whole entire three readings of this bill—we’ve heard, calls being taken by the Opposition that had no vision for the future. Tonight you would have heard in the House that the Hon Dr Megan Woods talked about our future where there would be energy systems. Now, that is a vision for the future. That is a vision for our generation into the future, where it can be clean, green energy that will be able to look after the environment but would also realise ambitions of economic development for our generation.

I’m proud to support this bill, the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill, as the deputy chairperson of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, because this is a bill that industry has told us they support. This is a bill that will make sure that the infrastructure of our country keeps running.

Throughout the legislative process of this bill, unfortunately, we’ve heard many calls that don’t actually demonstrate a lot of knowledge about the industry. I am constantly reminded by my colleagues that since the year 2000—2000—we have never discovered offshore gas again. So this is not only about Government regulation but it’s about the industry. It’s about economies of scale. It’s about what is efficient for our economy and the companies that are actually involved in it. They have made a choice, the market has spoken, and so this bill listens to the market, it listens to the industry participants. Therefore, I’m really proud to support and commend this bill to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker, I wish we had the TV cameras rewind and listen again. I’m sure I heard the last member, Naisi Chen, say, “A clean, green energy future for New Zealand”. If she’d stopped to take a breath, she could have then carried on to say, “And we’re importing 2 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia this year”. They’re helping the Indonesian economy, they’re not helping climate change in New Zealand, because actually if there was more gas in New Zealand they wouldn’t have to import 2 million tonnes of coal. We may be looking at a clean, green energy future, but certainly not under this Government.

The reason that this piece of legislation is important, the Government says, is because of a shortage at the Pohokura gas site earlier in this term. In fact, they said it’s because they weren’t measuring properly; that’s not the case. It’s because of gas shortages that, actually, the gas was not available. So this isn’t a solution to not having gas. All it’s going to do is ask people to measure something that’s not there as much. I say it again; this is a Government that stands here and talks about their vision but where the rubber hits the road it is not happening. In the first three months of this year, they imported and burnt more coal than the last two years combined. Nothing to do with gas at all, and this piece of legislation won’t fix that. They will import 2 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia this year, on ships that run oil to get it here. They’ll take it off in the port in Hamilton, and they’ll then put it into trucks and they’ll drive it to Huntly, where there are three coal-powered boilers generating electricity, and we heard last week that in Huntly they turned on a diesel one as well. How can this be about a clean, green energy future for New Zealand? The Government can say it again and again and again, but their rhetoric runs short. All you have to do is go and stand by the port in Auckland and see the coal coming off as fast as it can to be burnt for energy.

The last speaker in this debate had a lot of energy. It’s almost as if she was involved in the Huntly Power Station she’d been gobbling the coal, because that’s the only way we’re getting energy at the moment—electricity—when it comes to what the Government says they want to do. Look, everybody in New Zealand wants a cleaner, greener future. They don’t want their costs to go through the roof unreasonably or unnecessarily because the Government decided a few years ago to ban oil and gas exploration and in so doing means that there is a shortage of gas and it cannot be used as a transition. Because here is the reality: if there was more gas available, then in Huntly they could be using that gas at the moment to be generating electricity, rather than coal from Indonesia. So when members opposite say they want a clean, green energy future, and when they say opposite that, actually, they are changing the way we produce energy in New Zealand and that they want to tax people that have utes but they want to give subsidies to use electric cars, what it actually means is more coal will have to be built to charge the batteries on those cars, which is worse in the short and medium term than it would be if there had been more gas exploration. This is something the Government don’t want to talk about. It’s something that they like to deny. But the statistics are there—2 million tonnes of coal this year imported from Indonesia. And you know what? The last piece of legislation we adopted, and this piece of legislation here that we’re about to adopt, does nothing for climate change, and as far as Indonesia is concerned—where the blimmin coal is coming from to go to Huntly—it might make them feel good here in New Zealand on that side of the House but it isn’t actually helping at all.

We are supporting this because it’s important we have measurement of gas, but the public should not listen and believe the Government’s rhetoric. It’s not actually going to do anything about climate change, it’s not going to actually do anything about gas supply, and it’s not going to do anything about energy security in New Zealand. It’s another piece of bureaucracy. What we should have done at the committee stage is add something to it that says Megan Woods goes and stands by the Port of Auckland and counts all the trucks that roll off as they head down the motorway to Huntly with coal on them to generate electricity for New Zealand. That would be a much more useful use of Megan Woods’ time, at least in as far as talking about climate change is concerned, because under her watch more coal is being burnt to create energy—electricity—which means we are worse off, not better off.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora koutou, Madam Speaker. Thank you for allowing me to take another call this evening; now on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill. Now, I just want to focus on the bill and the positive stuff around this bill, as much as I want to say things about the other side of the House, because, as I’ve said in the past, it’s that “c” word they love to talk about—that blinkin’ “c” word they keep going on and on about. But we know the reason they love playing the coal card is because Governments haven’t been ambitious enough. We’ve just had our heads in the sand and have continued to do what we’ve always done. We’ve got what we’ve always got, and now we are working hard on this side of the House to ensure a just transition, but we should have started this 20, 30, 40 years ago, and we did not. So we’re here doing it right now.

But here I’m talking about the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill, which obviously amends the Gas Act of 1992. The objectives of this bill are to strengthen the regulation-making powers in the Act to provide for enhanced information disclosure requirements for the gas market, and to ensure that settings around enforcement and penalties are suitably robust.

So I’m here to say thank you to those members of the select committee who were part of making this happen, to thank all of our advisers, and to thank all our submitters through the select committee process. There were 11 submitters; four were oral submissions from people who came and shared their views around this. And I’m glad that the National Party is supporting this piece of legislation, and it will go through and pass through the House, hopefully, tonight so that we can ensure that disclosures are undertaken. For me, I am committed, as the MP for New Plymouth, to ensuring our just transition to ensure that we move to a low-carbon economy, to ensure that my great-great-grandchildren enjoy a lifestyle even better than I have enjoyed in terms of ensuring that we have an environment to live in—

Simon Court: Tell that to the people of Waitara.

GLEN BENNETT: —and we have a place to live in. And the people of Waitara, who I support—I am very much in favour of this, and we’ll continue to work hard as we transition away from fossil fuels and we retain jobs. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I rise in support of the bill. I think, as I said earlier in this House, most New Zealanders want to do the right thing when it comes to climate change. They want to look after the environment, and they want a Government that is going to show leadership and help create a pathway to renewable electricity, to a more sustainable transport fleet and transport options, and to warmer, dryer homes that use less energy to heat. All of that is entirely possible with good public policy, but, unfortunately, for many decades, we didn’t have good public policy in New Zealand.

So, for the benefit of some of the members to my right in this House, I thought I’d just explain that the current situation with a shortfall of gas has nothing to do with the ban on new offshore exploration that was announced in 2018. It is amazing that the National Party—I guess they think that the people at home are really dumb, that they think that they can sell this line that stopping exploration for new gas, after nine years of an open door of exploration for gas, would somehow affect the supply in 2021. I know it is very hard for some of these people who haven’t worked in the industry, and probably only talked to lobbyists, to understand what is involved, but the chances that you would have found a new significant field offshore and somehow had it up and running and in production in 2021 is laughable, especially given that for nine years, under the last National Government, they were practically paying companies to come here and look for oil and gas. There were the tax breaks, they were rolling out the red carpet; not a word around responsible management of decommissioning, which they are supporting now that they have proof that it can cost the New Zealand public if you don’t have that sort of framework in place.

I’m glad that they’ve come on board this late in the piece, but it would have been better if they’d thought about that 10 years ago, when they were attracting all of the oil and gas people here to New Zealand, and put in place some of those protections before it cost the New Zealand public hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up an oil well. So just a little lesson in how political rhetoric is being used to try and scare people, from the National Party who have no ideas about how to respond to climate change, which they demonstrated in their nine years when their biggest energy priority was privatising our publicly owned energy companies rather than making a plan to deal with climate change. We wouldn’t be in this situation of having to deal with a dry year, not enough hydro production, not enough renewable electricity, and having to use coal if, 10 years ago—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: —people had done something about it.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order!

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Excuse me, Madam Speaker, I am responding to the points of debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I ask the member to come back to the third reading of this bill, which, by nature, is a summary of the contents of the bill. Thank you.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Madam Speaker, I would happily speak to the bill, but I think it is perfectly within the realm of the debate to respond to the points that other members have raised in this very debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK. The member will resume her seat. The member’s speech is expired.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s disappointing to be here tonight for this third reading of this bill, the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill, and to have witnessed what was an unedifying and extremely poor contribution to New Zealanders’ understanding of this important legislation. Now, there are some aspects of this legislation which ACT would regard as being important: clarifying what information is needed and why about the gas industry and about what gas we have available, yet it’s not enough. The measures proposed in this bill actually—while some positive—are outweighed, ACT believes, by the flawed and poorly thought-out instruments that are included in this bill. That is why ACT opposes this bill.

At the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, submitters raised some very real risks around the regulatory regime test being, essentially, invalid and they said that the collection of commercial information by the Government was simply not justified. Submitters rightfully pointed to the Gas Industry Company’s own website and their own many hundreds of disclosures about maintenance and operations activities that affect gas supply, and about the fact that the Ahuroa gas storage reservoir is monitored on a daily basis for the volume of gas that is pumped into it and what’s taken out. They also pointed to the fact that no one can have confidence in a Government that regularly loses people’s data and has such a poor record on information technology and information security.

That is why ACT opposes this bill, and despite proposing amendments in the committee of the whole House to address these risks, they were voted down by the Government. In fact, before they could be properly discussed and explored, the committee stage was collapsed, and the Government members and New Zealanders watching at home and reading about the passage of regulations through this House were not allowed an opportunity to better understand the benefits of the amendments that ACT had proposed.

That is why we oppose this bill, because we will not support legislation that, essentially, fails a regulatory impact assessment and doesn’t meet the ACT Party’s test for what is good public policy, and we stand by that. However, it is disappointing that the Government, with all of its numbers and with all of its professors and with all of its doctors and with all of its people from Taranaki that we’ve heard from tonight couldn’t find it in the bottom of their hearts to actually vote for amendments that made the bill better. They preferred to continue along the path that they had chosen.

So let’s just think about disclosure. The regulatory test the bill sets up is invalid. It is an arbitrary test for the cost versus benefits of a regulatory regime. It does not compare a regulatory regime to the very successful voluntary regime we have now, a voluntary regime where there’s been more than 300 disclosures published on the Gas Industry Company’s website, and where at any time of the day or night you can go on to their website and you can see how much gas has been dispatched from gasfields around New Zealand and which of the major users are using it at different times of the day. It tells you everything you need to know about whether New Zealand has enough gas or not enough gas on any particular day.

Then we come to the commercial issues. How safe is your data with this Government? This is a legitimate concern. A few weeks ago we learnt that patients and staff at the Waikato DHB had sensitive medical records, personal information, financial information, details about their homes, and other activities leaked onto the dark web while this Government sat and fiddled with an IT strategy they’d failed to implement four years down the track.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I invite the member to come back to the bill.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thinking about data security: the police lost firearm licence details, the gun buy-back data was available on a website, and only last year Budget 2020 was able to be searched—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! I’d like the member to come back to the third reading of this bill.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker, for that opportunity. So this bill purports to improve the knowledge that the Government will have about the amount of gas available now and in the future. It sets up a regulatory test the ACT Party believes is invalid, and it also proposes to take commercially sensitive information from gas suppliers and major gas users and have that sitting on a Government database somewhere. We are not confident—the ACT Party is not confident—that the Government has the capacity to protect that information. We’ve heard that having this information is important to help the Government plan its transition to a low-carbon future, a just transition we’ve heard about. Well, currently the just transition seems to involve importing very large amounts of solid energy from offshore to power Huntly rather than using the gas that is available here in New Zealand.

Now, the state of Victoria in Australia explored this concept of a just transition. They put a moratorium on gas exploration and with the information they collected over the three years of the moratorium, they decided to lift the moratorium and go back to gas exploration just last week. So, in fact, you know, while I don’t believe in unicorns, I have seen rainbows, and there is a possibility that with this information—not this Government, but a future Government with ACT sitting on the Government benches would, in fact, use this information to demonstrate the benefits of offering exploration permits again to get the gas that we have in New Zealand.

Now, there is a lack of a regulatory risk assessment, a lack of regulatory validity about what the Government has proposed here. It is another example of slogans over substance. There is nothing in this bill that will deliver more gas—having more information about the fact that the gas is running out, and that Government policy directs it to run out much faster, we’ve heard, than even the Climate Change Commission would accept is reasonable. The Climate Change Commission has told the Government that they’ll need gas out to 2040 or 2050. The industry, and even the Government’s own advisers, have said that there’s a risk that major users, including electricity generators, will not have access to sufficient gas from 2026 or 2027. That is a very significant risk that having more information about the lack of gas won’t help this Government solve. In fact, it’s more likely that businesses that rely on gas, rely on affordable energy, actually choose to leave New Zealand and take their high-paid jobs with them.

The average salary in Taranaki is almost double what it is elsewhere in New Zealand, and that is because of the energy industry that underpins those high-paid jobs and those communities, where even if the workers haven’t finished high school or gone to university or obtained a doctorate in some esoteric subject like the Government members have, they can still earn an extremely high-paid job. We know that many of the doctors on the other side of the House do practise medicine well, although some of them have appeared to have adopted a Cuban approach to medicine.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I ask the member to come back to the bill.

SIMON COURT: Thank you, Madam Speaker. We think they’ve also adopted a Cuban approach to energy policy. The ACT Party prides itself on doing our research, on identifying better public policy options to deal with real problems. We pride ourselves on finding a nuanced and informed understanding of how to solve problems and actually make New Zealanders’ lives better. This bill does not do that. That is why ACT would repeal the ban on gas exploration, set achievable and affordable climate targets, match our climate targets to those of our top five trading partners, and protect New Zealand jobs from carbon leakage.

There is nothing about this bill that would help New Zealanders in their day-to-day lives. It is simply a regulatory grab and an extension of the Government’s powers into the board rooms and into the financial databases of commercial companies. ACT opposes this bill.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Looks like I have the last word; maybe not. But can I just congratulate you for your firm hand and discipline over this House tonight, because there’s been a lot of hot air.

But tonight I’ll be talking about gas and only gas. [Interruption] No—just gas. And so I want to just acknowledge the select committee for their work, and, in particular, those who made the 11 submissions. What this bill does do is amend the Gas Act 1992, which is the principal piece of legislation for the governance of the gas industry in New Zealand.

And I note just three things—sticking to the topic at all times. What does the bill do? It expands the scope of the regulation-making powers to ensure and to enable gas governance arrangements to be made that provide for the disclosure of information about matters that may have a significant downstream impact. Secondly, the transitional provisions ensure that the work the Gas Industry Company is currently undertaking around information disclosure will be considered as part of the process for forming a recommendation for a new gas governance arrangement. Thirdly, it also makes changes to the Gas Act’s penalty regime. It does that by increasing the maximum civil pecuniary penalty able to be imposed by the gas rulings panel for breaches, and it gives that amount as going from $20,000 to $200,000. This new penalty limit will apply across all gas governance regulations.

I just want to thank all of those who have contributed to putting this together. It appears that there’s a high level of conflict here, but I can assure you on this side of the House, as I said, there’s no hot air, just peace. And I commend this bill to the House.

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.56 p.m.