Wednesday, 22 September 2021

Volume 754

Sitting date: 22 September 2021

WEDNESDAY, 22 SEPTEMBER 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ā kāti rā, tēnā rā tātou katoa i runga i te tuku iho o rātou mā, te wāhi ngaro. Nō reira, 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.

[Well, then, greetings to us all of us that benefit from the legacy and care of those who have passed on. Therefore, 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

SPEAKER: No petitions, papers, or select committee reports have been presented. No bills have been introduced.

Speaker’s Observations

Interjections—Microphones

SPEAKER: Before we move on to oral questions, I do want to apologise to members for an incorrect comment that I made yesterday when I was under the impression that Mr Bishop had used the Leader of the Opposition’s mike in interjecting. In fact, I have been informed that the microphone was turned off at the time and that any amplification would have come from my microphones and not from the Leader of the Opposition’s. I also want to apologise to the staff whose job it is to make sure that the feed that goes publicly works well. I checked; it did work well. They work the volume controls in order for the outside feed, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t help me in here. As a point of compromise, and I’ll relay this to the member concerned, I’ve turned my hearing aids down. So if he’s in the same position, if he turns his volume down, we might get the appropriate compromise.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Prime Minister

1. 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. In particular, I stand by the Government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme that, today, has reached two important milestones: 80 percent of eligible Aucklanders have now received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and, nationally, 75 percent of eligible New Zealanders have received at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. That’s fantastic progress, but the job isn’t finished. If you still haven’t received your first dose, go out and get it today. If that one in four of us who hasn’t had their first dose is a friend or whānau member, talk to them today. Just like we all stayed at home to save lives, now is the time to get vaccinated and save lives.

Hon Judith Collins: Why was $12 billion of the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund spend on projects unrelated to COVID?

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

Hon Judith Collins: Well, what did the three waters policy—allocated $710 million from the COVID response and recovery fund—have to do with COVID?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We were very clear that the COVID response and recovery fund was about both the direct response as in, for instance, health measures and economic recovery, so there were absolutely—and we stand by it—projects that were contained within the COVID response and recovery fund to help industries either recover from the economic impacts of COVID or to create jobs. We know that the $750 million that went in there was around infrastructure projects which would help create jobs across New Zealand and also have the dual benefit of improving our water infrastructure.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that billions of dollars in wage subsidies went to businesses who are operating in areas that have nothing to do with COVID-19?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Absolutely, because our response to COVID has always been about, yes, the immediate health effects but also the economic impact of COVID, and the member makes the point, rightly, that therefore the COVID response and recovery fund was about acknowledging that across the country, the economic impacts of COVID were felt. If the members may choose to listen to the answer, they’ll hear that our response through the COVID response and recovery fund was much more directly targeted than that member’s proposal to fund roads from the COVID response and recovery fund.

Hon Judith Collins: Well, why did spending $26,000 on a novel about alpaca breeders have to do with COVID?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: If the member could repeat the question?

Hon Judith Collins: Very happy to, thank you. What did spending $26,000 on a novel about alpaca breeders have to do with COVID?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Let me explain the somewhat convoluted assumption the member has made here: the member seems to be attacking the fact that we have funded Creative New Zealand. Creative New Zealand determine the projects they fund. What we determined was—and rightly so—the creative sector was at the front line and continues to bear the brunt of COVID. When you shut down the ability for live performances and for people to gather, the events sector, the hospitality sector, and the creative sector are hit hard. So I stand by the fact that we supported Creative New Zealand to continue to support our creatives.

Hon James Shaw: What did the wage subsidy to the Taxpayers’ Union have to do with COVID-19?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member makes a very good point. We had a broad wage subsidy that enabled those who determined that their revenue was impacted by COVID to be supported. It’s up to each of those organisations, within a high-trust model, to demonstrate they were indeed eligible for it.

Hon Judith Collins: How does she justify spending an annual increase of $7 million from the COVID fund on Radio New Zealand?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In the way that I’ve already explained all the way through this answer: because the impacts of COVID on a range of industries were significant. If the member is now making an accusation that we should not continue to fund our creative or our broadcasters, then that is the member’s prerogative.

Hon Judith Collins: Since Radio New Zealand doesn’t receive advertising dollars, how could it have lost any advertising or income with COVID?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That wasn’t my claim.

Hon Grant Robertson: Has the Prime Minister seen reports of proposals to spend the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund on untargeted tax cuts, and what does she make of that?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, and I also saw proposals during the election campaign that would have seen a significant portion, if not all of it, spent on roading projects. The member can absolutely make her own judgment on whether or not she considers the projects we funded to be about an economic recovery from the impacts of COVID-19. But it would be somewhat—words that are unparliamentary—to make that claim when the member’s very own party policy was actually much worse in that regard, because they did not respond to the economic recovery from COVID-19.

Hon Judith Collins: How much, if any, of the COVID fund has been spent on increasing intensive care capacity in New Zealand hospitals?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will appreciate that I won’t be able to give a line by line if the member chooses not to put questions on notice, which I always encourage you to do, because I am very keen to be as fulsome in my answers as I can. But if she chooses to ask general questions, I’m somewhat limited on my line-by-line recall. What I can say is that we did fund, in the Budget, training capacity, because that is one of the issues. It’s not just about physical infrastructure or access to ventilators, which were vastly increased during the first outbreak that we had in New Zealand. It’s the ability to put staffing around those intensive needs in either high dependency units or ICUs. So we provided funding for DHBs to undertake that training for their staff to enable greater capacity alongside the hundreds of additional ventilators that were purchased as well.

Hon Judith Collins: Will she commit to spending at least some of the extra $7 billion allocated to the COVID fund on providing relief to struggling Auckland businesses to cover their rental costs?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The way the member has presented the question almost implies that that hasn’t been the focus of the funding as it is. We’ve had, for instance, under the wage subsidy scheme, $2.3 billion supporting over 300,000 applicants and businesses. For the resurgence support payment—and I highlight again for the member: the resurgence support payment is available for paying fixed costs, like for rents or anything else the business determines it to be for. First payment, 134,000 businesses received over half a billion dollars, and the second payment, 23,000 businesses received $138 million, and we’ve committed to continuing that on a three-weekly basis. It does support fixed costs. I can’t tell you how many businesses solely used it on rentals. That is a decision for them.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: What economic support has been provided to businesses since the Delta COVID outbreak alert level changes announced on 17 August?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The Government has moved quickly and decisively to provide significant support to protect New Zealanders’ lives and livelihoods in response to the Delta COVID-19 outbreak. The wage subsidy scheme and resurgence support payment were reactivated following the rise in alert levels, along with existing supports such as the leave support scheme, the short-term absence payment, and the Small Business Cashflow (Loan) Scheme. In total, since 17 August, the wage subsidy scheme and resurgence support payment have paid out over $3 billion to New Zealand businesses, made up—as the Prime Minister’s just said—of around $2.3 billion in the wage subsidy scheme and just over $800 million in the two resurgence support payments. This is about providing cash flow and confidence to help protect jobs and support New Zealand businesses. We recognise that this has been a tough time for many businesses, and we are here to support them.

Barbara Edmonds: What changes have been made to the support available to businesses?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have updated and expanded our support in response to the needs that arise. The resurgence support payment, which helps businesses with costs—like the cost of rent, for example—and is available at alert level 2 or above was amended to ensure that it included new businesses. The time required for a business to be eligible for the payment was lowered from six months to one month. Businesses can also apply for further resurgence support payments to recognise the effects of an extended period of alert level restrictions. The payment was initially intended as one-off payment, but we have now made it—as the Prime Minister has just said—into a three-weekly payment, in recognition of the pressure that some businesses are under. We will continue to work alongside sectors to ensure we provide support as we can.

Barbara Edmonds: What reports has he seen on how businesses are responding to Delta COVID-19?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Last week, the ANZ bank provided a preliminary look at business confidence in September, which found firms remained resilient amidst higher alert levels. Business confidence actually rose 7 points in September to a net 7 percent of respondents expecting the economy to deteriorate compared with August, while firms’ expectations about their own trading activity was mostly unchanged. Employment and investment intentions were a little softer but remain at higher levels. ANZ examined whether there was a split between Auckland and the rest of the country on these matters, but the differences were very small. This suggests that firms are well positioned to deal with this latest lockdown and are expecting a return to strong demand as restrictions are lifted.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: What does he say to Hospitality New Zealand CEO Julie White, who described the new condition on the wage subsidy as “cruel and heartbreaking.”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: What I’d say to Julie White—who I have met with in recent times—is that those conditions around the wage subsidy scheme have been in place since last year. It has always been the case that alert 3 and alert level 4 conditions are the determinant of the receiving of the wage subsidy scheme.

Question No. 3—Justice

Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): Point of order, Mr Speaker. Just under Standing Order 394, just to indicate that I’ve got authorisation from Julie Anne Genter to ask questions on her behalf.

SPEAKER: I had been informed of that, and I work on that assumption anyway.

3. Hon JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green) on behalf of Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green) to the Minister of Justice: Will he propose a law change to prevent New Zealand citizens living overseas from losing their right to vote if they haven’t been able to visit Aotearoa during the COVID-19 pandemic; if not, why not?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): As Minister of Justice, this may be one of many issues among the findings and recommendations of the Justice Committee’s inquiry into the 2020 election, which I understand will report back before the end of the year. I’m also aware that the issue was included in the Electoral Commission’s report on the 2020 general election. The Government will consider any necessary changes in this area after receiving the select committee’s recommendations in their totality. There could be a number of relevant issues that the committee identifies for further consideration, and it’s important to work through these issues in a well-considered way, as all electoral law changes should be. Obviously, New Zealanders choose to live overseas for a variety of reasons, but the Government does understand this doesn’t mean they lose interest in the issues that affect their friends and their loved ones who still live in New Zealand. We do recognise that the COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly disruptive to international travel, and this has had a flow-on effect on some people’s ability to return to New Zealand. This is why it is important to let the select committee do its work to consider this issue and to provide recommendations to the Government.

Hon James Shaw: Under the existing law, why do New Zealand citizens have to return to Aotearoa every three years, when there are no residency requirements on citizens’ voting rights in Canada, the United States, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Finland, France, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and Spain?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: All of those other jurisdictions have their own laws. In New Zealand, I believe the electoral law that the member has referred to is to ensure that there is a connection maintained to New Zealand in order to express the vote.

Hon James Shaw: Has he seen the reports that “If the law is not changed, it would be the largest disenfranchisement of voters in recent times”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: No, I have not. But I am aware of the issues that are raised by the Electoral Commission around the issues that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused for some people who are overseas, and the interaction with that with the current laws.

Hon James Shaw: Does he consider that the current law is consistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act requirement that any limit on rights must be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: There are always some of those issues that come into play when the border is closed. I guess one of the main issues for people overseas, obviously, is getting a managed isolation spot in order to return to New Zealand under the current law. As I say, the select committee is looking at these issues, and once they come back, the Government will consider them.

Hon James Shaw: Does he accept that the window of time to propose a law change before the 2022 local elections is narrowing quickly, meaning that tens of thousands of people could miss out on the chance to vote next October?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: What I would say to that, as I said in my primary answer, is that any change to electoral law should be careful and well considered.

Question No. 4—Education

4. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What decisions has he taken to ensure that senior school students in Auckland and around the country have a fair opportunity to attain NCEA in 2021?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Government’s providing additional support and credits for both Auckland and non-Auckland students. On 9 September, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority set these out for schools outside of Auckland who have had 16 days at alert levels 3 and 4. These students will be eligible to earn Learning Recognition credits at a rate of one Learning Recognition credit per five credits achieved through their regular assessments, up to a cap of eight for NCEA level 1 and six for levels 2 and 3. While the provisions for Auckland schools had previously been set on the basis of 20 days of disruption, I’ve today announced revised provisions to recognise the extended time these students are spending at alert levels 3 and 4. Auckland students will be entitled to one Learning Recognition credit for every four credits that they earn, rather than for every five, and the caps will be 16 Learning Recognition credits for level 1, and 12 at levels 2 and 3. That’s twice as many as the other students around the country.

Angela Roberts: What other supports are available to Auckland students sitting NCEA?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The threshold for Auckland students to be awarded a certificate endorsement will also be adjusted to 44 credits at merit or excellence level, rather than the 46 that it is for students who were able to return to the classroom sooner around the rest of the country. To be awarded university entrance, Auckland students will need to achieve 12 rather than 14 credits in each of three university entrance approved subjects. They’ll still need to attain NCEA level 3 and meet the literacy and numeracy requirements for university entrance. Put together with the Learning Recognition credits, these changes amount to a full reactivation of the support that was provided to Auckland students last year following their second lockdown then.

Angela Roberts: What other decisions have been made to assist all students sitting NCEA?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Students throughout the country will also benefit from the two-week delay to end-of-year examinations and most portfolio submission dates. That will provide those students with additional time for their learning and assessment, which will help them to earn their full entitlement of Learning Recognition credits.

Question No. 5—Health

5. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Health: Does he stand by his statements and actions around hospital resources?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yes. In particular I stand by this Government’s action to record a record investment in the health system of more than $24 billion in Budget 2021. I note that this is 45 percent, or $7.6 billion, higher than the National Government spent on health in its last year in Government.

Dr Shane Reti: Why, according to the Ministry of Health, do we have fewer ICU beds today than we did at the end of lockdown in May last year?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not sure where that member gets his figures from, and it doesn’t accord with figures I have received. Right now we have about 240-odd ICU beds available throughout the hospital network in New Zealand. That can be very quickly stepped up to about 326 beds, and with a little bit of extra effort can be surge stepped up to 550 beds. I’m confident that we can have ICU cover to meet any surge outbreak in COVID should that arise.

Dr Shane Reti: How many ICU beds were available at the end of lockdown in May last year?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I don’t have that figure available to me, but I do know that as a consequence of a review of the management of lockdown responses last year, the Ministry of Health supported DHBs to work on a programme to fund additional staff training, so more nurses were capable of working in an ICU environment. They funded additional ventilators, and they also worked with DHBs to provide more space, including negative pressure rooms, to manage the response to COVID.

Dr Shane Reti: Does he stand by his answer to written questions that a request from Auckland DHB to build negative pressure rooms prior to the latest outbreak was declined in favour of another project, and, if so, what was the other project?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I think the member is talking in cryptic terms. I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at. What I do know is that Counties Manukau DHB, for example, did actually invest in additional space. That’s why they have the available ward space for treating COVID patients in the way that they do. I know that Auckland DHB invested in equipment, or, at least, in furnishings, for some of their wards so that they could manage COVID patients, and I know that Waitematā DHB is able to manage COVID patients safely, as well.

Dr Shane Reti: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to table a written parliamentary question that’s not in public domain, to my understanding, that demonstrates that the ministry did turn down a request to build negative pressure rooms.

SPEAKER: I’ll put that to the House. Is there any objection to that? There is no objection to that. But I will, at the same time, remind the member of Speakers’ ruling 183/3, which requires the member, if he is to ask a specific supplementary, not to ask a general first question.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

Dr Shane Reti: Does he stand by his answer to written questions that in the four months since the Government’s public sector pay restraint announcement in May, the number of ICU nurses leaving Auckland ICU increased sevenfold compared to the same period the previous year?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: What I can say is that it is correct that the turnover of nurses across a range of disciplines in hospitals has increased, particularly in Auckland. That is a fact.

Dr Shane Reti: Are hospitals building negative pressure rooms during an outbreak and urgently seeking ICU nurses because he has been focused on health restructuring instead of preparing our hospitals?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I draw the member’s attention to an earlier answer I gave, which was that the programme to adapt more of our hospitals to effective responses to COVID started last year, following a review of last year’s COVID lockdowns. Hospitals have built, or at least equipped, additional space on their premises to respond to COVID. They have trained more nurses; roughly 1,400 more nurses have been trained to work in an ICU environment, compared to August last year.

Hon Member: Then why did we ask for 30 urgent ones?

SPEAKER: I don’t ask anything.

Question No. 6—Health

6. Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West) to the Minister of Health: What recent announcements has he made on the long-term pathway for mental wellbeing?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Today, I announced Kia Manawanui Aotearoa – Long-term pathway to mental wellbeing. This is the first 10-year plan of its kind that targets the cause of mental distress and also sets out how to achieve hauora—healthy—futures. We cannot achieve healthy futures if the health sector works in isolation. Kia Manawanui calls for all of us to work together, taking action from across Government to our communities through to individuals so that people who experience mental illness and distress can be better supported to have the resilience, tools, and support that they need to regain their wellbeing.

Dr Gaurav Sharma: What sets Kia Manawanui apart from the previous strategies?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Kia Manawanui is a new approach and way of thinking that requires Government agencies to work together and work with communities to promote and protect mental wellbeing. It sets out short-, medium-, and long-term actions to be taken across Government, with a focus on key areas such as technology, workforce, and investment, to make transformative change within the mental health and addiction sector. Kia Manawanui includes actions like addressing the social, cultural, environmental, and economic factors that can affect wellbeing; strengthening our focus to promote mental wellbeing for all New Zealanders; and developing different ways to commission services that enable joined-up investment and make it easier for providers to respond to complex needs.

Dr Gaurav Sharma: What will having this long-term pathway in place mean for New Zealanders?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: This Government wants all people to have their basic needs met so that things like employment, housing, and education aren’t causing them mental distress. We will see community-led solutions that will empower everyone to attain their own wellbeing—for example, people will be able to access advice and support to protect and to promote their own mental wellbeing in times, places, and ways that work for them. It might be, for example, that the local rugby club has information about managing stress or has links with the local pregnancy and parenting service that is working with local families to prevent addiction-related harm.

Question No. 7—COVID-19 Response

7. DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How will the Government ensure that Māori vaccination levels are equitable before moving out of the elimination strategy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): In answer to the last part of the question, the Government is not intending to move out of the elimination strategy. We continue to pursue a strategy of stamping out COVID-19 cases wherever we find them. The Government’s always placed equity at the forefront of our COVID-19 response, and the roll-out of the vaccination programme is no different. While we recorded an important milestone over the weekend, with more than 50 percent of eligible Māori having received a first dose, there clearly is still more work that we need to be doing. The Ministry of Health is using the data that we have available to drive an approach that’s focused on those populations who have lower vaccination throughout New Zealand, including Māori. The strategies are focused on ensuring the maximum uptake to measure progress, looking at ethnicity, age, location, and so on. It isn’t enough for us to rely on a simple, single measure. We have to look in a much more detailed manner, where vaccination rates are higher and lower, and the characteristics of those populations. Fundamentally, the elimination strategy recognises that vulnerable communities would be the hardest hit by any COVID-19 outbreak, so elimination remains the best strategy to ensure equitable outcomes.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Why did Cabinet choose to ignore the advice of Te Rōpū Whakakaupapa Urutā, who issued a press release calling for Auckland to remain in level 4 and be joined by the Waikato region until we are absolutely certain that the spread of COVID-19 is eliminated?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We haven’t removed alert level restrictions in Auckland; we’ve moved from alert level 4 to alert level 3. I think it’s useful to recall that we’ve managed previous outbreaks by only going up to alert level 3. We moved to alert level 4 because of the significance of the Delta variant and the fact that we know it is more transmissible, that it had a head start on us, and that we were therefore likely to discover potentially a significant number of more cases in the community, which we did. Moving down from alert level 4 to alert level 3 doesn’t mean we are not still pursuing a strategy of getting back to zero—that is absolutely what we are focused on. It’s just we are increasingly confident that we know where the risk is and, therefore, we can manage it at alert level 3.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Does he accept, considering the nature of the outbreak and that Māori have the lowest vaccination rates of any group, that the decision to move Auckland to level 3 presents far greater risks for Māori, and that the much safer approach would have been to wait until Māori vaccination rates were much higher?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Lower vaccination rates amongst Māori are a concern and they do leave Māori at greater risk of an adverse outcome from COVID-19. That is something that I think we should all be concerned about. I fully endorse and back measures that are targeting Māori communities, and I think that those who seek to undermine those are doing a great disservice to all New Zealanders as they do so. In fact, we should be targeting all of those pockets of our community where vaccination rates are lower. We should do that proactively and proudly.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Has he seen modelling based on current vaccination rates on who are the 10 percent of the population the Government is willing to sacrifice if, as the Minister of Health recently said, level 4 restrictions won’t ever be put in place again once 90 percent of the population has been vaccinated?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I addressed this very issue at my media conference earlier on today. When we talk about a 90 percent vaccination rate—and, bear in mind, the Government has not set a hard and fast target around vaccinations and we have persistently resisted calls for us to do so. When we talk about 90 percent, that would put us amongst the highest vaccination rates in the world, and that would be encouraging, but that is not an invitation to 10 percent of New Zealanders to say “I’m going to be part of the 10 percent that doesn’t get vaccinated.” We need every New Zealander who is eligible to be vaccinated to come forward and be vaccinated to offer the maximum possible protection against COVID-19.

Hon Grant Robertson: How does the Minister think that increasing the Māori vaccination rate will be helped by political leaders saying things like “Mutations of the virus are becoming less deadly. The way the virus is mutating, it’s more easily transmissible but fewer people are getting severely affected by it.”, as the Leader of the Opposition did today?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I think it’s really important that our overall message to all New Zealanders at this point should continue to be that COVID-19 is dangerous; that people die from COVID-19 and are dying in large numbers from COVID-19 around the rest of the world; and the best thing that all New Zealanders can do, and all those who are in New Zealand can do, is come forward and be vaccinated to protect themselves, to protect the people that they care about, and to protect everybody else.

Question No. 8—Police

8. GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu) to the Minister of Police: What recent announcements has she made regarding police front-line safety?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): Earlier today, the commissioner and I announced a new $45 million front-line safety package to keep our police safe. The package includes more than doubling the current annual tactical training for front-line officers, tactical prevention teams with advanced training to undertake warrants and other work involving higher risk, tactical dog teams, and an additional 78 constabulary staff and 28 intelligence analysts. The Government is committed to keeping our front-line police officers safe so that they can in turn keep New Zealanders safe. This is an investment in ensuring our police officers return home safely to their whānau every day.

Greg O’Connor: Why has the Government made this investment in front-line safety?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: Police are front-line workers who go above and beyond to keep our communities safe. I want every police officer to get home safely to their family at the end of the day. The Government is committed to ensuring police have the resources they need to keep themselves and our communities safe. That’s why we are providing immediate funding to accelerate Police’s new tactical response model, and that will increase the training and capability of front-line staff.

Greg O’Connor: What reports has the Minister seen on the front-line safety package?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I’ve seen from the Police Association that “this represents a really positive step forward, and I believe officers will welcome it. Our members have been telling us for a number of years that they want more training.”

SPEAKER: Any further comment?

Hon Member: Not at this stage, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, can I just say to the member that a number of members in the House have the habit of reading their supplementary questions. If the member wants that to cease and for us to have a policy not to do so, then the appropriate way of doing it is to approach the Standing Orders Committee for a change. I would like it.

Question No. 9—Corrections

9. Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) to the Minister of Corrections: Is he confident that the Department of Corrections’ policies are keeping New Zealanders safe from COVID-19; if so, why?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister of Corrections): Yes. As I outlined yesterday, it was Corrections’ health screening that helped us to identify that there was potential for COVID to have spread into the community. As I also noted yesterday, while Corrections have strict policies in place to stop the spread of COVID-19 in prisons, this case has identified that there are areas where we can look to create improvements around transportation. The transportation method in this case was outside of Corrections’ control, given the bail conditions were set by the courts. I can update that agencies and stakeholders, including Corrections, the Ministry of Social Development, police, the Ministry of Justice, and managed isolation and quarantine are working at pace to strengthen processes, following the Prime Minister’s request that when people are released from prisons in COVID-19 alert levels 3 or 4 and need to cross a border into a lower alert level to get to their address, someone from the lower alert level collects them from prison, or that Corrections transport the individuals from the prison over the border. I have requested an update from my officials on this work as soon as possible.

Hon Scott Simpson: So why was it that Corrections staff allowed a patched Black Power gang member to be permitted to be picked up by three individuals, when his bail conditions clearly stated that a specified family member was to collect him from Mt Eden Corrections Facility and return to the upper Hauraki?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Upon release, the court instructed that this person be picked up and transported by a specified individual. I’m advised the nominated individual was in the car, which was in line with the bail conditions.

Hon Scott Simpson: When were Corrections aware that the patched Black Power gang member breached his bail conditions by stopping at four separate locations on the way to his bailed address in the upper Hauraki and when did Corrections report this breach to police?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: There are about 1,500 people on some form of electronic monitoring at any given time. Monitoring is not live tracked, such as on an Uber app. However, if a person were to breach an exclusion zone in line with their conditions, this is flagged; if a person does not arrive at a destination within a certain time, this is flagged. I’m advised the route this person took and the time it took to reach his destination were within the tolerances.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order. The question was not about “how”; the question was “when”, and that was not addressed.

SPEAKER: Well, I’m not sure that a breach was established. I’ll ask the member to ask the question again.

Hon Scott Simpson: So, again, the question was: when were Corrections aware that the patched Black Power gang member breached his bail conditions by stopping at four separate locations on the way to his bailed address in the upper Hauraki, and when did Corrections report this breach to the police?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: I can repeat: I’m advised that the route this person took and the time it took to reach his destination were within the tolerances.

SPEAKER: I’m with Mr Woodhouse on this one. I’m not convinced that the question has been answered. There are some specific facts that have been at least alleged and I think have been fairly well publicised about the individual stopping on the way. I am assuming that at least, by reading the papers, Corrections would be aware of it, and I think it is for the Minister to answer that. It may be that it’s a police matter and that’s his response, but I think the Minister should address the question.

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Oh, yes. So it is a police—

Hon Member: Oh, how convenient—ha, ha!

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, it is for the police to monitor bail conditions, but following the address being deemed unsuitable and the individual returning to custody and testing positive for COVID, Corrections retrospectively looked at the electronic monitoring records. This is when they became aware. So they actually would have looked as soon as the address was unsuitable, done some checks then, and become aware that he had stopped at various places.

Hon Scott Simpson: So has he had any conversations with the Minister of Police about why police did not arrest the prisoner after Corrections notified them of the bail breach?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Myself and the Minister of Police talk about a lot of issues all the time.

Hon Scott Simpson: Does he therefore think it is unacceptable that no follow-up occurred for 11 days after the patched Black Power gang member breached his bail, which, as a result, saw upper Hauraki placed into an alert level 4 lockdown?

Hon KELVIN DAVIS: Well, again, the route this person took and the time it took to reach his destination were within the tolerances.

Question No. 10—Health (Māori Health)

10. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health): What recent announcements has he made about supporting Māori to respond to the impacts of COVID-19?

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Yesterday, I announced $36 million of funding to respond to the needs of whānau Māori and Māori health providers to support their ongoing work to respond to COVID-19 and to continue their hard mahi towards increasing the rates of Māori vaccination. The funding will see $17 million to be allocated to help providers adapt their services to support the COVID-19 response while also maintaining their other essential health services; $14 million will help whānau access health services, medications, and hygiene products, and it will also help provide greater reach of vaccination, testing, and other health services to hard-to-reach areas; $3 million will strengthen the Māori psychosocial response, ensuring whānau have access to mental health and wellbeing services; and $2 million will ensure providers have sufficient funding to manage the long tail of this response, sustain their efforts, and help them prepare for the possibility of future outbreaks.

Tāmati Coffey: How will this funding announcement support equitable outcomes for Māori across the COVID-19 response?

Hon PEENI HENARE: The Government’s top priority is to stamp out the COVID-19 virus. Māori are one of the most at-risk communities for COVID-19 and the impacts on whānau are far-reaching, and therefore require a comprehensive and coordinated response. This Government believes that by investing in our Māori health providers, their efforts will support equitable outcomes for Māori across the COVID-19 response. The funding announced yesterday complements the $39 million for COVID-19 support and response announced earlier this year. These providers adopt a kaupapa Māori and whānau-centred approach to service delivery which focuses on meeting the holistic needs of whānau. They place the needs of Māori and their whānau at the centre of everything they do. Because these providers are well connected to their communities, they play an important role in delivering communications about the COVID-19 response that is tailored for Māori communities. Lastly, these providers deliver services that are culturally safe for Māori, and we know that cultural safety is an important part of delivering high-quality services to Māori communities.

Tāmati Coffey: What wider announcements is he aware of that have been made to support Māori?

Hon PEENI HENARE: I can confirm that my hard-working colleague Minister Davis and Te Arawhiti have undertaken significant work with iwi. Throughout lockdown, Ministers held weekly calls with the National Iwi Chairs Forum and other iwi, as well as regular meetings with the Tāmaki-makau-rau Māori response collective. This approach is welcomed by iwi Māori and worked to ensure their voices were heard and allowed the Government to better respond to issues that Māori were raising on the ground. Te Arawhiti also announced a $1 million targeted fund to support iwi-led COVID-19 communications, support for vaccine uptake, and response planning. I can’t forget the hard-working Minister Jackson and Te Puni Kōkiri (TPK) who have undertaken, across the country, a number of opportunities and announced, yesterday, $2 million to assist Māori health providers who work directly with TPK to support community-driven local responses and to plug gaps in the vaccination roll-out. And, finally, the awesome work of the humble Minister for Whānau Ora, who recently announced $23 million to help whānau through Whānau Ora services, including accessing vaccinations, testing, and self-isolation spaces. This is a Government that listens to and supports Māori.

SPEAKER: It’s so hard to be humble, isn’t it? Question No. 11, Matt Doocey—you’re not going to read it are you, Mr Doocey?

Question No. 11—Health

11. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: What is his response to a study published in the International Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, which shows attempted suicides in New Zealand children aged 10-14 years increased from a baseline of 40 per month to a peak of 90 per month following the lockdowns in 2020, and what actions, if any, has he taken to address this increase?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): In response to the first part of the member’s question, I’m advised that the item in the paediatric journal was not a peer-reviewed article; it was a letter to the editor. It included data gathered by the authors. It is not possible for the authors of the study to establish or claim a causal link from the data presented. They are describing a potential association that has not been proven. As the member will be aware, there are a range of factors that contribute to self-harm and suicidal behaviours. I would also highlight that last year, the Chief Coroner was sufficiently concerned by the misreporting of the effects of level 4 lockdown on suicide prevalence that she issued provisional results early during the last lockdown. These showed that, in fact, the incidence of suicide had reduced. In response to the second part of the member’s question, we’ve learnt from previous lockdowns that they are particularly challenging for young people. That is why we boosted funding to Youthline by $275,000 at the beginning of the most recent lockdown. This was made alongside other investments in the youth mental wellbeing space, including the $1.4 million Youth Mental Wellbeing Fund, targeted specifically at grassroots community-led initiatives supporting young people through stress arising from the current COVID-19 Delta response, and targeted suicide prevention support for Māori and Pacific communities.

Matt Doocey: Is the Minister saying that he disagrees with the Ministry of Health data that the baseline levels of attempted suicide for 10- to 14-year-olds increased after the lockdowns last year?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No, I am not disagreeing with the Ministry of Health data; I am disagreeing with the conclusion that some people wrote in a letter to the editor drawing a thesis that has not so far been proven. Also, what I find disagreeable is that member’s attempt to use as a political football suicide and suicide prevention measures.

Matt Doocey: In light of the acknowledged Ministry of Health data that shows increased attempted suicide rates after the last lockdown, what actions has the Minister taken to prevent even more suicide attempts amongst that age cohort after the current lockdown?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I want to return to the question about data, because what the letter to the editor—the authors of it—did not draw attention to was the established trend in previous multi-year data that shows an increase in presentations to hospitals of people who have attempted suicide. There is what clinicians describe as a seasonal increase that appears every year. There is no reference in the letter to the editor to that incidence. On the point the member raises about additional support that has been given, I refer the member to my answer to his primary question. Significant additional support has been given to those organisations supporting young people who are finding this lockdown particularly tough.

Matt Doocey: With that significant support, how has that translated to new services on the ground that will address the increase in attempted suicides for 10- to 14-year-olds, as evidenced by the Ministry of Health data?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I point out to the member again, because I don’t want to get into some ugly debate about the incidence of suicide, and I draw the member’s attention once again to what the data shows on a year-by-year basis: a seasonal increase in presentations to hospitals of people who have attempted suicide. The authors of the letter to the editor have taken data for a single year and drawn a conclusion that so far cannot be established or proven. The measures that have been taken by this Government as a consequence of the most recent lockdown, in terms of additional funding, has allowed those organisations to put on additional staff and provide additional services for an increased period of time for those communities, particularly youth communities, who have found this lockdown particularly hard.

Matt Doocey: In light of published research studies overseas which point to an increased rate of self-harm and eating disorders amongst young people, what steps has the Minister taken to ensure services are available if that increase was to appear in New Zealand?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, what we didn’t do was what the previous Government did, and that is neglect mental health services as a general rule. We have put considerable additional investment into our mental health services, including responding to exigencies such as the lockdowns in 2020 and in 2021. We put additional funding in, provided additional services and additional support. We did it last year. We have done it this year.

Question No. 12—Police

12. CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT) to the Minister of Police: Is she satisfied with the current number of constabulary staff in the New Zealand Police?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS (Minister of Police): I am satisfied that this Government has invested over $450 million in our police, and as a result of this investment, the total police workforce now surpasses 14,000, with 1,223 additional constabulary and authorised officers on the streets since we came to office. I’m also satisfied that we are well on track to deliver the 1,800 new police, including 700 to be focused on organised crime, by June 2023. In addition, I’m also satisfied that my announcement of the new front-line safety programme earlier today will lead to an additional 78 constabulary staff and 28 intelligence analysts being deployed.

Chris Baillie: Is she concerned at the report of the Police Association that the Government has only delivered 1,133 constables of the promised 1,800?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I’m pleased that the member raises this issue. We are absolutely satisfied that we will meet our target by June 2023. We are well on the way. There may be some variances up and down. The Police have advised me today, in discussions with them, that they plan for such variances. It’s a slight dip, as according to the Police News, but I’m very confident that we will meet our targets by June 2023.

Chris Baillie: What would the Minister say to the front-line officer who wrote, “… the promised 1800 extra cops is starting to look like a pipe dream.”?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: I would say to that officer to not be concerned. Today, we announced an additional 78 constabulary plus 28 analysts to be part of the new front-line programme. But we are well on our way to meeting our 1,800 growth target by 2023. We still have some time for that to occur, and I’m really pleased to say that included in that is the 700 extra police that will go into working on organised crime.

Chris Baillie: Is she concerned that while gang membership is up 50 percent since 2017, the Police Association is reporting the Government is now further away from delivering on their promised 1,800 police?

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: What I am confident of is the Police Association support of our announcement today, supporting the investment into front-line safety. What I’m also confident of is us reaching our target for 1,800 by 2023.

Chris Baillie: What would she say to the person who responded to the news of 667 missing cops by remarking, “Who we gonna call?”

Hon POTO WILLIAMS: We have invested $450 million since we’ve come to Government, and today announced a further $15 million: $465 million into Police, and a lot of that has gone into ensuring that we can recruit the 1,800 police by 2023, 700 of which will go into organised crime. That member shakes his head, but we have done far more in resourcing our cops to do their job, to do their job safely, and to keep New Zealanders safe.

Hon Stuart Nash: Is it true in the last three years of the previous Government police numbers actually fell?

SPEAKER: Order! The member knows that’s not in order. He will stand, withdraw, and apologise.

Hon Stuart Nash: I withdraw and apologise.

General Debate

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business.

I want to begin today with a shout-out to all New Zealanders. The last 18 months have been difficult and tough and uncertain, and New Zealanders have overwhelmingly risen to the challenge that has been in front of us. We have stamped out COVID-19 time and again, we have made the sacrifices as a country that we need to make that have seen us enjoy some of the lowest levels of restrictions of any country in the world over the last 18 months, and that’s been the hard work and dedication of all New Zealanders that has achieved that.

I want to particularly say thank you to Auckland. Auckland has been at the forefront of our COVID-19 response. They’ve done it tougher than many other New Zealanders, and I say this as a proud Wellingtonian: I take my hat off to Aucklanders and I say thank you on behalf of the rest of the country for the sacrifices that they have made for our COVID-19 response and recovery.

I want to thank all of our front-line workers. Whether they’re at our border, whether they’re in our managed isolation and quarantine facilities, or whether they are out there day and night vaccinating New Zealanders to keep us safe, thank you to everybody that has been involved in all of those efforts.

I think New Zealand is well placed. We are well placed as Auckland goes from level 4 to level 3 to continue to stamp out COVID-19. Elimination of the virus is still within our reach, and that is what we will continue to drive towards. It is also possible that we could achieve one of the highest vaccination rates in the world in a relatively short space of time if New Zealanders continue to come forward and receive vaccination at the rate that they have been over the last eight weeks, and I fully encourage them to do so.

In these times, politicians have an opportunity to lead or to mislead, and I stand firmly on the side of those who are showing leadership through this global pandemic, because there’s been a lot of information that’s been shared lately, but it will have left New Zealanders confused and concerned unnecessarily. We saw more examples of that today, including the irresponsible claim that was put out there just today that mutations of the virus are becoming less deadly and fewer people are getting severely affected by it. Those claims by the Leader of the Opposition are simply irresponsible.

Thousands of people every day around the world continue to die from COVID-19. The last thing responsible leaders in New Zealand should be doing at the moment is saying “Don’t worry, it’s not so bad. It’s getting better.” at a time when we are saying to our most vulnerable communities, where our vaccination rates are the lowest, “Please come forward and protect yourselves and protect your whānau.” from what we know is a deadly virus. The last thing political leaders in New Zealand should be doing is saying, “Don’t worry, it’s all going to get better. The virus isn’t that bad after all.”, which is what we are hearing, unfortunately, from the Leader of the Opposition.

Then, of course, we’ve got the COVID-19 response spokesperson for the Opposition, who can’t quite decide whether he’s “Nostradamus” or “Captain Hindsight”, because in the “Nostradamus” stakes, almost every prediction that he has made has proven to be wrong. His prediction that people weren’t getting the full dose of vaccine because we were getting too many doses out of the vial—wrong. The prediction that we were going to run out of syringes to do the vaccine—wrong. The prediction that there were vaccines just sitting there in fridges waiting for someone because we were giving them to people in a timely manner—wrong. The prediction that the booking system and the inventory system was going to fail and it was all going to be a debacle—wrong. “Debacle” and “shambles” are words that he uses quite a lot lately. I suspect, sitting in the National Party caucus, they’re words that immediately spring to mind, but it is no way to describe the vaccine roll-out, which has been incredibly successful.

So when his predictions of the future fail, he then starts to adopt the “Captain Hindsight” persona, where he looks backwards, knowing what we know now, and tries to point out things that we should have done differently. When we look back in hindsight, there are undoubtedly going to be things that we could have done differently. We make the best decisions that we can make at the time with the evidence and the information that’s available at the time. Chris Bishop’s crystal ball today said that we should have just bought enough Pfizer to vaccinate everybody right from the beginning, despite the fact that the Opposition at the time were claiming that we should have put all of our eggs in the AstraZeneca basket. I recall answering questions in the House about why we hadn’t and why we were too slow in doing that. That was their ultimate answer.

Whether he’s being “Nostradamus” or “Captain Hindsight”, the Opposition spokesperson has been consistently wrong, as have the Opposition.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Today I want to speak about the “C” word. Don’t worry, Mr Speaker—I’m not going to be talking about my favourite “C” word. I want to talk about capitalism and how it’s failing us. Capitalism, I think people forget, is not a given. It’s not inherent in our political or economic system. It’s a decision to have an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. Free-market capitalism is an economic system that maximises supply and demand forces and minimises Government oversight, regulation, and intervention.

Capitalism sucks. And this pandemic and our housing, biodiversity, and climate crises have really brought that into sharp focus for many people in this country. We know that right now, there are people all around our country, but particularly in Auckland, who are living in really precarious and, frankly, desperate situations. Too many people in casualised and minimum-hour contract jobs, who have locked down for the wellbeing of all of us, have had to battle their bosses to try to get paid enough to keep a roof over their heads and be able to go to the supermarket. This is not an uncommon situation. Two out of five employees in this country work in jobs with hours that vary to suit their employer, not them. This is common in hospitality and also in community and personal services.

FIRST Union, being proactive and knowing what might happen, did a TikTok to reach their audience about their employment rights. They were overwhelmed—700,000 people seeing and responding to that. They had to employ more than two new staff members to answer the phone calls of, particularly, young people in this country calling to say, “You’ve told me my rights, but I don’t know how to access them.” What we’ve heard from multiple unions around this country is examples of employers who should know better, because the law is absolutely clear, and they have no excuse for ignorance, telling employees that they should be taking annual leave instead of being paid by their employer during lockdown. That is illegal.

But the chances for the staff members to fight back against that are really to have a conversation with them, worry about losing their job, pissing their boss off, getting fewer hours, or going through the Employment Court, which has a six- to 12-month resolution time frame. It’s not going to pay your rent in that time frame, which is what people are concerned about. Things are so out of balance, and our welfare system, which forces people to choose between the precariousness of that employment or a guarantee of poverty, is not helping. It shows the myth of employee power as exactly that.

Wages have been going up since we’ve had a change of Government—thank goodness—but it hasn’t been keeping pace with the cost of living. This really shows, and it’s driven by the fact that most of our essential services, like housing and electricity and transport and childcare, and a lot of our food, are part of the private, the free, market. They’re driven by the drive for profit and not our shared responsibility to each other.

We have to remember that while people are struggling at this time—and this is what we care about, in part—there are people who are doing really, really well. While our essential workers are putting their bodies on the line for minimum wage, or better than that wages, none of them are coming close to earning as much as an empty house just sitting there earning over $200,000 a year, just to feed that free market and individual wealth.

These imbalances aren’t just hurting our people. The free market is also hurting our environment, to the point where externalising of costs through businesses has led to 4,000 of our endemic species being at risk and our emissions going up. This is a global problem, but the tide is turning. Over 80 percent of Britons in the UK recognise the housing crisis as a fault of capitalism. We can change it.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I briefly want to endorse the work of teams of people around New Zealand and in particular in Auckland who are testing and vaccinating so that we can keep our communities safe. In particular, for those in Mangatangi and Kaiawa, I want to acknowledge the work of Te Korowai Hauora o Hauraki, who have risen to the challenge of ensuring that that particular community and those whānau can be tested and move towards vaccination. Securing our recovery means that we need to focus on the issues right in front of us, and that is COVID-19. As the Prime Minister has said, we need to ensure that every whānau within all our communities uphold the opportunity that they have to keep them safe and vaccinate.

But I also want to focus on the longer-term challenges, because we cannot drop our eye on the ball of some of the most challenging things in front of us. In my particular case, it’s the issue of water. Now, there are two programmes of work that we have in front of us. One has been going through the House, and that’s the Water Services Bill, and the other is a longer piece of work, which is our three waters reform. In reality, for most folk, whether we drink it, swim in it, gather kai from it, water is an important resource. It’s a taonga, and that’s why the changes that I’m seeking are going to make a difference now and into the future. The three waters work programme is set up to ensure that our waters infrastructure is fit for purpose, ensuring that we have safe drinking water, better environmental outcomes, and can ensure that the investment in infrastructure over the long term delivers real benefits to households and communities. What we know is that it’s important to meet the challenges ahead of us, because the cost of meeting higher standards will bear significantly upon councils.

We’re starting to hear opposition to what we’re trying to achieve, and at this late stage, three years after we’ve identified the complexity of the challenge, several campaigns have been initiated to try and undermine a simple fact. That simple fact is the status quo is simply not feasible. It is not financially sustainable. We have an inefficient investment strategy around infrastructure; communities, several of them throughout the country, on boil drinking water notices; 34,000 people get sick every year from drinking water; and during heavy weather events, we have stormwater outflows sludging up on our streets and into our waterways. This cannot continue.

Coming from the Waikato, I know how important it is to look after our waterways. We have the Waikato River there. It’s what sustains and grows us and contributes to the economic opportunities within our region. But we can do more and we should do more. So these programmes of action around three waters are put together to ensure that we meet this challenge and we simply do not say to communities, “Oh, it’s OK, if you don’t want it, you don’t have to have it.” It’s a serious challenge; it needs to be addressed, and that’s why I’m hopeful that the Water Services Bill, that will enable Taumata Arowai to undertake its role as a dedicated regulator, will work with communities and councils around safe drinking-water supply.

I want to thank the Federated Farmers and Irrigation New Zealand for their involvement in helping us to ensure that the workability of the bill is able to be achieved, ensuring that all aspects must be tailored according to the scale, complexity, and risk profile of suppliers. We’ve had really good input from those two groups as to how that can be achieved for rural community. This means that we are not applying a one-size-fits-all approach and there will be different arrangements for small and rural suppliers than for council suppliers in cities and towns. We’re going to have a debate later on in the week, but I wanted to send a signal that without the valuable input of communities who in practice understand what we’re trying to achieve and are looking for practical solutions—I’m mindful that their contribution to improving the Water Services Bill has been invaluable.

Let me come briefly to the Three Waters Reform Programme. The sector is at a very difficult juncture. To do nothing would be unacceptable. To expect rates to pay for infrastructure investment with the scale that will be required coming down the track is going to be a very difficult task for several councils, and that is the challenge. The decisions ahead of councils will take courage, but it’s what’s best for the nation and what’s best for councils that we need to be focused on, and, importantly, what’s best for the next generation. I’m hopeful, as people have an informed debate based on good information rather than disinformation, we’ll be able to get there.

SPEAKER: Just before I call the Hon David Bennett, I know that there are some members who are in the House this week who haven’t been here for the last couple, but I want to remind members when they’re wearing masks that they should keep them on in the House and if they’re having private conversations they shouldn’t remove their masks in order to do so. If they can’t hear each other, they should leave the Chamber and have their conversation outside.

Hon DAVID BENNETT (National): Yesterday, the Government introduced the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill which, effectively, is a tax on middle New Zealand, it is a tax break for the wealthy in New Zealand, and it is an attack on the most vulnerable New Zealanders. That is the net impact of a bill which gives a discount to somebody that is paying for an electric vehicle (EV). It charges somebody that is buying any other type of vehicle, and it really does create a distortion in the New Zealand vehicle market that will lead to only one major consequence, and that is the retention by vulnerable, ordinary New Zealanders of high-emission vehicles that are unsafe and will actually hurt our environmental prospects as a country.

It is bad law that is doomed to failure. It is law that is based on some premise of an understanding of the market that the Government does not have. It is a law that is based on some kind of perception of how people will actually act. It is a law that is not based on any concept of reality of what the supply of electric vehicles is, what the opportunity is for New Zealanders to get electric vehicles, and how New Zealanders will actually react in practice.

New Zealanders live in a country which is very diverse. It is a spread-out population. It is not a country which is solely part of one major city or two major cities; it is a diverse and spread-out country that relies on its transport networks. It relies on people having a vehicle to get around. It relies on people having a vehicle to do their job. A tradie and a farmer can’t catch a bus to do their job. They’re not going to be able to put their tools on the back of a cycle and cycle down the road to do their job. A farmer is not going to be able to feed their stock on the back of a cycle. We are living in a country in which the reality is that we need vehicles. This legislation will be an artificial constraint on the market, it will distort the market, and it will lead to perverse outcomes.

Most New Zealanders have a very limited income compared with the rest of the world. That is why we have a huge amount of second-hand used imports into this country. Those vehicles, now, will have a huge cost on them, and that will put it out of the reach many Kiwis that would be reinventing their vehicle by getting a newer vehicle every so often. That will force them to hold those older vehicles. There will be more and more repairs done on gas-guzzling vehicles that will not achieve environmental outcomes. Most tradies and farmers have no option for an EV because there are none actually being built, and most consumers that want to buy a vehicle under $80,000 will actually not find there is an EV because they’re going to have to compete with the Australians for those same EVs on the world market. Guess what! In Japan—which is the type of market where our vehicles come from—only 0.6 percent of that market is actually EV vehicles. So there’s, virtually, very constrained and limited supply of EV vehicles anyway.

It can only lead to one solution: New Zealanders will look at that Government legislation and determine their only option is to keep the vehicle they’re in now or they’re going to have to pay a tax to this Government. Either way, that’s the cost of living going up for New Zealanders. Ordinary New Zealanders—the most vulnerable New Zealanders—won’t be able to get the benefit of having an EV with lower costs of running their vehicle. They’ll be paying higher petrol taxes under this Government, they’ll be paying more daily to actually run those older vehicles. The dream that this Government has that we will suddenly all transition to electric vehicles—

Hon Member: Run by coal!

Hon DAVID BENNETT: —and that will all be perfect, and they’ll be run by coal coming out of Huntly, is the massive dream that they’ve got; it will not become the reality you will see in this country.

The Motor Industry Association have bagged this Government like you’ve never seen before—under this Government—in their press release, and there’s an interesting part of that as well. The actual protocol that this Government has determined to evaluate a vehicle is, actually, a European protocol, whereas all vehicles basically coming to New Zealand are from an Australian protocol which doesn’t use that protocol—an Australian approach. So their policy is ineffective, inefficient, it is a tax on New Zealanders, and will hurt the most vulnerable New Zealanders.

Hon PEENI HENARE (Associate Minister of Health (Māori Health)): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I join my colleagues on this side of the House in thanking the team of 5 million for the work that they’ve done through the most recent lockdown, in particular my own electorate, Tāmaki-makau-rau. Tāmaki-makau-rau have come together over the past five weeks to do their best to stamp out COVID-19. We have seen record vaccination numbers. We have seen record testing numbers. We have seen innovation. We have seen buses delivering vaccines, and today I want to acknowledge Ngāti Whātua, who are in the driver’s seat of one particular bus, and they’ve named their bus Shot Doy. “Shot Doy”—now, that must be one of those Boot Hill Ngāti Whātua ki Ōrākei nuances in their language, but it’s certainly working, and they’re getting out amongst their community to do the mahi. The bus yesterday, led by Manurewa Marae, is called Shot Cuz, and Shot Cuz was parked outside the Pak ’N Save in Clendon, where there is a large Māori and Pacific population. This is our Māori health providers and our health providers across this country doing what it takes to recognise the seriousness of the situation and vaccinate our population—not spread misinformation, not spread lies, and not bicker about things, actually, in a time when we want our country to be combined as a team of 5 million to get us through this particularly hard time.

I’ve talked about the innovation amongst our Māori health providers. Yesterday, I announced $36 million to continue to support that work. While we focus on vaccination and testing, which are hugely important, we also know that some of our, in particular, hard-to-reach rural communities are struggling just for normal healthcare services. Of the money we announced yesterday, $14 million will help Māori health providers provide those services to rural areas. We know some of them are access to pharmacies, access to medicines—medicines that they would take normally but can’t access because of the challenges we’ve had with the lockdown. I want to acknowledge our Māori health providers who have come to us and have told us about the challenges they’re facing, and I can tell them and this country that this Government is listening. The announcement yesterday will continue to support the work that they’re doing.

Another important part is the $3 million I mentioned earlier in the sitting of this House to support psychosocial support. We know there are a lot of challenges for our whānau out there. In fact, I hear it regularly, as I’m sure many members of this House have, that whānau are struggling with their mental wellbeing during these times. Staying home, looking after the tamariki, making sure that they can connect with their loved ones during a time where it’s difficult to connect has certainly taken its toll on our people. The $3 million announced yesterday I know will help one particular kaupapa that will look to support those with alcohol and drug addictions who have particularly struggled during the time of the Delta lockdown. And furthermore, we know that with huge amounts of alcohol sales during this most recent lockdown, there have been a number of challenges that have arisen in our communities and in our families. We want to be able to support the good work that community providers do on the ground to support them.

I want to tip my hat to businesses in this country. We know that the Government can do what it can do, we know that health providers can do what they can do, but we know that the private sector has a job and a role to play. Vodafone yesterday announced incentives to make sure that we can bring people forward for the vaccine. Waipapa Pine in Te Tai Tokerau has made the vaccine available to all of its staff, knowing full well that 70 to 78 percent of their staff are Māori. They have brought the vaccine centre into their workplace to continue to encourage their kaimahi to be able to receive the vaccine. Why is that important? Because we need our economy to continue. We need our economy to be strong and resilient. And these private sector organisations, they recognise that, and they are doing their part as a team of 5 million to make sure that we can get on with life as normal.

Last week was Te Wiki o te Reo Māori, and, as a passionate te reo Māori speaker, I’m encouraged by the work of millions across Aotearoa who have done a fantastic job to promote Te Wiki o te Reo Māori. Just a little friendly reminder for our friends on the other side of the House: Te Wiki o te Reo Māori starts on Manei, or Monday, not on Wenerei, Wednesday. It was a little while before the National Party actually clicked on that it was Māori Language Week, but they got there in the end, which is encouraging, but still disappointing in the week of the Māori language. I said, in my last contribution in the House, the beauty about being bilingual is the play between Māori and English, and I used a particular kōrero last time, which was, “Be a doer, and not a hua.” That’s about receiving the vaccine. The one I want to leave with the House today is, “Don’t be a tero, and get the wero.”

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to acknowledge the last Minister’s acknowledgment of rural New Zealand, and that’s where the acknowledgment is going to stop, because Labour has an insatiable appetite for amalgamation. We’ve seen the centralised and controlled agenda with planning and resourcing management, with vocational education and training, and with healthcare in terms of centralising or planning to centralise the DHBs. We’re now seeing it with the three waters reform, which the Government must dump.

The four regional water entities that the Government has proposed would strip power from our communities. These are assets that ratepayers have paid to own over decades. These would be surrendered from council control and bundled into new entities, with virtually no accountability—four entities where people don’t even realise or have any affinity to the geographical boundaries that are being suggested. And then what would councils have left to do when their water assets are taken out of their power? Tangi Utikere might understand this as a former councillor before he came to Parliament. If the water is taken away, what else would councils have left to do? Oh, I know, that’s part of the plan to grab something else and centralise further. We can see it coming. So what is a better, more accessible system: water assets controlled by your council whose meetings one can turn up to, or by a mega entity spanning hundreds of kilometres and multiple layers of decision makers? I know what the National Party prefer, and we prefer those people in local areas to have local control. This Government grabs everything it can, and what they can’t grab, they tie up in red tape.

We talk about centralisation on one hand, and then we go to the Water Services Bill, which we were debating last night. The Water Services Bill again emphasis how deeply out of touch Labour are with rural New Zealand, and that is why I commended the last speaker for mentioning rural New Zealand. But this is not just a rural New Zealand issue, because it affects marae, it affects bach owners; it doesn’t just affect farmers. The worst thing about it is that this bill is not an isolated new hurdle for farmers; it’s the latest in a flood of regulations that are being rained down on our rural communities.

Christopher Luxon and I started a petition. We were supposed to debate the Water Services Bill on the first Wednesday that we came back into Parliament but we were locked down in the interim, so it didn’t happen. So instead we started a petition and we did some live streaming and we ended up doing Zooms, talking to people, and today that milestone of that petition has just jumped over 15,000 signatures—15,000 people who do not want this Water Services Bill to happen. I acknowledge Christopher Luxon who is not with us today. He is Auckland due to COVID lockdown—

Stuart Smith: Restrictions.

BARBARA KURIGER: —restrictions—thank you, Stuart. So he wasn’t able to speak on the bill last night but he has been absolutely instrumental in putting this petition together. I really acknowledge that he can’t be here to speak on it but he has put a Supplementary Order Paper together, and he has put that together to ask that we restrict the regulations around the Water Services Bill to those who service more than 30 water source points. That is sensible because lots of people supply other people with water, and I can see those water pipes being withdrawn pretty carefully and pretty strategically before any of this is implemented, so that they don’t have to go through this red-tape strangulation—more of what this Government is trying to push our communities in.

We used to be number eight wire people, and now all we get is strangulation by red tape. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): I’m going to pick up the wero and not be a tero, as put down by our colleague the Hon Peeni Henare. In particular, I want to talk today and use this contribution to talk about the vaccinations. I want to acknowledge that there are many of our whānau at home that are still feeling a little bit scared. One of my relations put up a post on social media recently, and she said, “You know, look, some of us are still pretty scared about the vaccination. Don’t make us feel stink about it. Some of us probably have a lot of other things going on in our lives, and try to listen to us, and listen with wisdom, without judgment.”

My relation and I, we had a conversation about her post, and she said, “Cuz, there’s just so much information flying around online. One of my cousins is scared about maybe if they get the vaccination, it will cause heart attacks;”—that’s been some of the information online—“if they get the vaccination, they’ll become magnetic.”—we’ve seen spoons on the internet sticking to people’s arms. Sometimes we have a bit of a giggle about that, but the reality is that for some of our whānau, this is very, very real. So I will pick up Peeni Henare’s challenge to us all to pick up the wero and try and put my case as to why it is so important that our whānau right now get vaccinated.

Right now in Aotearoa, Māori vaccination rates are around about just over 50 percent, comparatively to the rest of the population at just over 70 percent—about 74 percent today. In 1918, the Māori death rate from the Spanish flu, as it was called then, was around seven times that of non-Māori. In 1956, the pandemic that it was then—it was called the Asian flu pandemic—our Māori death rates were around six times that of non-Māori.

I look up my coast, in my electorate of the East Coast, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui. Thirteen hapū that litter that coastline—13 mass graves of people that were buried during that 1916 flu pandemic. I look to Te Whānau-ā-Apanui because they are a tribe that has looked to their history in terms of—those mass graves are so much a part, woven into the story, of the remembrance of the people up that coastline right now. They have shown incredible leadership to destigmatise the impacts of the vaccination. They have this wonderful doctor there, Dr Rachel Thomson, who has built the trust over many years, working alongside the hapū up there. Their iwi tribal leadership have gone around, talked to the whānau, delivered crayfish, and whatnot. They will have one of the highest vaccination rates in Aotearoa per population because that 1916 memory is so alive in their DNA, wiping out almost a generation.

We only have to cast our eyes overseas. In particular I’m thinking of just last year at the start of the pandemic when things were really rearing their head—our relations over in North America, the Diné population of the Navajo Nation. The COVID-19 pandemic ravaged through that nation, unvaccinated at that time. The death rates were immeasurable. I was looking at a report earlier today, and it was called COVID-19—The Results by Colour or something like that. It was published in March this year. Again, if we look across the ocean to our relations in North America, those that have died the most: Native Americans; the second, African Americans; the third, Pacific Island Americans.

It would be wrong if we were to stand here in this House and not deeply be concerned about the impacts of COVID-19 on our whānau, and that is why you see so many people on this side of the House pleading for our whānau to go and get vaccinated. The brother talked about the buses and the whatnot. We’re thinking about everything we can do, because we are fearful that the misinformation being spread amongst our communities will prohibit our whānau from being vaccinated.

So with the very brief moments that I have left, my plea to our whānau is that our vaccinations protect us and they save lives. The polio pandemic that killed so many people—300 million people in the world—99 percent of that has been eradicated because of vaccination. Please, whānau, get vaccinated.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Two dozen daffodils bloomed on my desk just this week, and it’s hard not to smile when you’re looking at daffodils. They are beautiful. They’re beautiful flowers. They spring up at just the right time to let us know that it’s time to turn off the electric blankets, that it’s time to place our running shoes closer to the front door for that little bit of motivation for summer, and it’s time to start dusting off the barbecue for friends and family to come around and spend some time in the sun together. They represent new life, new hope, and resilience for a long winter that’s just past. But these particular daffodils, even though they’re beautiful, are hard to look at, and it’s because they’re different. I was outside of Parliament last week and I saw flower growers who were sharing their story of the struggle that they have faced not being able to sell their flowers under the alert level restrictions.

There are hundreds of thousands of flowers that have been dumped up and down New Zealand and have continued to do so in Auckland because they are the only primary sector producer and grower that is unable to sell their goods under level 4 conditions. They are really, really struggling, and that’s because they’re not considered an essential service. That’s a little bit hard for these people to stomach, especially when people are able to get ice creams and chocolate croissants delivered straight to their door. There are a whole range of different services, but these particular people have not been deemed essential.

We’ve heard from many other types of businesses that have been struggling because they’ve been forced to shut or they’ve been under restricted conditions up and down New Zealand, and they’re asking for more certainty and more logical rules for what is allowed to open and operate and under what alert levels. We’ve heard from butchers who are frustrated that people can go to their local dairy, pick up some goods, but they can’t pop just next door and pick up meat at the same time. They have to drive further distances, stand in line with more people at large supermarkets while these businesses suffer. And that’s just not right. It’s also surprising that the Government is not allowing these types of businesses to operate at the same time that they have an enquiry saying that there is not enough competition against the big supermarket chains. It does make you pause and question.

We’ve also heard from cafe owners who are struggling with the last minute changes that they had to alert level 2. Even though they can operate, the changes make it unprofitable even to do so with the minimum and maximum restrictions on how many people you can have. It appears that the Government just does not understand how businesses work and how they operate. The Government can print billions of dollars if it wants to, but companies and small businesses can’t do that. We know that there are a number of small businesses that took out loans in the last lockdown and don’t have the ability even now to pay those back. Their banks won’t allow them another loan.

The rules are illogical. How is it possible that you can send wine to somebody special under alert level 4, but you can’t send them flowers? Not only is it unromantic, it is illogical. We need to have a better wellbeing approach for small businesses. We need to have it set out that businesses that can operate safely can do so, not just using a blunt description of what is essential. The Government also knew about Delta months ago. They should have planned accordingly and not changed the rules at the last minute for businesses. They need to have these plans out in place earlier so businesses can plan their own business accordingly.

These daffodils, while a sad story, show a blunt problem for business. What does the future look like? Hope and resilience can so quickly turn into withering on a compost heap.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora. Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I think it is fair to say, as the last speaker pointed out, that the burden of COVID-19 in this Delta outbreak certainly doesn’t fall evenly. We need to be cognisant of that, recognising, for example, that our friends and colleagues in Auckland are doing it particularly tough and that some businesses are hit a lot harder. Some are able to work remotely; some are essential services, but others indeed struggle much more. There is a lot being done in that space with wage subsidies, with resurgence support payments, and I know that this Government won’t stop looking at how to help so that New Zealand has a strong and resilient recovery.

I know here in Christchurch we’re lucky. The rest of the country outside of Auckland and Waikato are fortunate that we’re emerging from this outbreak, but even then I do want to recognise that some of those businesses are still struggling. I’ve been speaking in Christchurch Central to cafes like Belle Cafe in New Regent Street, which is doing its very best to adhere to all the rules, and that’s how we get on top of it—and the theatres. Little Andromeda theatre, a great little theatre—but it is difficult. Good Times Comedy Club—again, a great little business in the centre of Christchurch. But I do also want to shout out to the Cashel Street pharmacy where not only are they managing to run a small business but they’re delivering vaccines as well, and Anabel Turley there is doing a great job running that pharmacy. And to all of those people who are delivering vaccines, I know how hard they’re working because I’ve heard from them personally. I know that they go home exhausted at night. I know that they’re at the front, the very forefront, of the battle against COVID-19.

But look, the daffodils are absolutely up in Christchurch. Hagley Park is looking glorious. And it’s great that people now, because we have stuck together and followed the rules, can get out and enjoy all of Christchurch and all of what’s going on there. So look, an absolute shout-out to those vaccinators. Vaccination absolutely is the key. There are so many good reasons to vaccinate. I was contacting some of my constituents, asking them for their stories, and I must say, I got a few cheeky ones about who people would like to be spending more time with. But ultimately, you know, first and foremost, we’re vaccinating for ourselves because COVID is a horrific disease, and to suggest that it’s getting in some way less deadly or less virulent is truly pernicious. We need to make the message very clear that this disease kills people. It kills people from all walks of life, from all ethnicities and all ages, and we need to address that. And the best way to address that is through vaccinations, but also for our whānau and our families and for our extended communities, we, by vaccinating, protect them.

So even if people have some hesitancy and for themselves wouldn’t make that choice, they should be doing it for the ones that they love so that we can get together and so that we can do things like go to funerals, go to weddings and so on. And a shout-out to Sam and Dayna, who got married recently. It was their third attempt, not third marriage, but third attempt of getting married to each other—twice cancelled. Third time they had a very modest wedding with 50 people strictly following those rules. But that’s the sort of thing where it would be great, if we’re all vaccinated, we can have those huge celebrations that we love so much. And of course, so we can travel, so that we can open up our borders, so that we can get people from overseas who we love to see and, of course, our fantastic tourism industry.

So, you know, what I say is: if you’ve got a hesitant friend, have a chat to them. And can I just say, don’t argue with them. It’s not about having an argument; it’s about engaging. It’s about listening. It’s not just about telling and preaching. It’s about listening and hearing concerns and addressing them, but with facts, not with falsehoods. And also, look to experts, not the internet. We need to make sure that our sources of information are trusted and not alarmist, because there is a problem out there, and each of us in this House need to be advocates to make sure that the misinformation is not spread, to ensure that those people who are persuadable, who might be wavering, who might be listening to the wrong people, are talked to and that that is addressed. But also, let’s just show compassion to others as well, compassion to those who are working so hard, compassion to some of those people who do things a bit differently. Some of our disabled community do feel under siege and I want to say: let’s make sure that they looked out for. But most of all, let’s get vaccinated.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d just like to carry on a bit of a theme from this afternoon about doing a little bit of myth-busting, and bring a little story of hope to the room. It’s great to hear the focus on securing our recovery, and vaccinations are a significant part of the plan, but we also need to have a look at the challenge. There’s been some suggestion the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund has gone to projects unrelated to COVID. The PM reminded us today that the fund is to help with economic recovery and create jobs. I just want to take you to a fabulous little Taranaki - King Country place called Ōtorohanga and show you how this fund, this investment, is helping not only with the recovery and creating jobs but helping us build back better our environment, our tourism industry, the development of our people, and our small towns. Significant aspects of funding are Jobs for Nature funding, the Strategic Tourism Assets Protection Programme, apprenticeship support, the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs, and infrastructure funds.

It isn’t just the funding, though. It isn’t just the cash. It takes people, relationships, and communities to make the most of the opportunities, to be ambitious and to dream. So at Ōtorohanga Kiwi House—fabulous little place, been around for 50 years, so many of us may have visited—they are embracing all of the opportunities. They’re supporting a range of new staff. They’ve got two extra trainee keepers. They’ve got an apprentice carpenter—so a big shout-out to Hayze; he’s doing some amazing work up there as they go to rebuild their Kiwi House. It isn’t just support for wages, for tools, for getting these young people to get their driver’s licences, but the mentoring needed to make sure that they don’t just get a job but they stay there and they become really great contributing citizens in the future.

They’re also providing training to Jobs for Nature workers from other projects, so they’re helping to lift our capacity and our capability as we rise to the challenge of improving our biodiversity and our environment. They’re helping to retain people in our local communities who may have had to leave as a result of the challenges on sectors such as tourism in Taranaki - King Country. They’re building the capacity of our critical conservation workforce.

The Ōtorohanga Kiwi House has used the significant funding to help them with the recovery, their conservation work that they do. Traditionally, this has been funded through visitors to the centre, so they’ve been able to carry on and actually grow their conservation programmes. They support seven recovery programmes, including breeding North Island brown kiwi, whio, tuatara, pāteke, North Island kākā, and the Mahoenui giant wētā—a fabulous beast, if you ever get to meet one. Communities around the country—local communities, farmers, backyard volunteers who are trying to restore the biodiversity and grow our predator-free landscape—are really, really grateful for the significant national contribution that the Kiwi House is able to sustain because of the support of this Government.

They have also been able to take on a commitment to a significant rebuild and extension of their physical spaces because of the capital investment and support from the local district council but the country as a whole. This will ensure 190 jobs as they do the rebuild, and they are going to literally build back better. These are amazing, ambitious people. They have undertaken a globally ambitious project of not only rebuilding and extending the Kiwi House but to participate and be the first zoo on the planet to get their accreditation for the Living Building Challenge, a truly ambitious green project. They are reimagining our tourism sector. They are building a quality visitor experience, education experience, and the provision of breeding and support for our biodiversity and predator-free projects around the North Island. I just need to shout out to them. They’re doing amazing work. This isn’t about centralisation. This is about supporting local people to be able to be nimble and effective in their responses. I think they’re amazing and admirable in the way that they have been ambitious and they can see a future, a bold and bright one, for our people, for our kiwi, and for our little towns. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wish to start by acknowledging the hard work of New Zealanders in the first lockdown and in this current lockdown. There’s something special about this country. The teamwork that the people of New Zealand have shown to get through this and to get to the point where we are now, where we have a genuine chance of eliminating COVID yet again must be acknowledged. At the forefront of that team are our frontline health workers. I want to acknowledge those that are working particularly hard in Auckland and those that are in Auckland that have done it so tough. But as the MP for Wairarapa, I wish to acknowledge the frontline health workers in my electorate, in Central Hawke’s Bay, in the Tararua district, and in Wairarapa. Wairarapa is leading the country in the rates of full vaccination and it is down to the commitment of those workers and it is down to the teamwork of the people that live there. That, I believe, needs to be commended.

We in Wairarapa know that whilst we are small, we are not immune. We were the first region to have community transmission in the country, but we were the first region to eliminate COVID at the last lockdown and we have not had a community case since then. That, I think, stands New Zealand out. But I think it is a shame that the Leader of the Opposition chooses to undermine that teamwork by coming out with, I believe, some outrageous statements today. It is utterly irresponsible for the Leader of the Opposition to suggest that there are new mutations of COVID that are less deadly. It is utterly irresponsible to suggest, in my view, that there should be no more lockdowns. What has stood New Zealand out from those overseas is that we have stuck together as a team. We have not protested in large numbers. We have recognised what needs to be done and just got on with it. What if half of the 6 percent of New Zealanders that want Judith Collins to be Prime Minister take this seriously and refuse to comply with the regulations? That is a not insignificant proportion of the country that could ruin it for the rest of us because they are listening to what she has to say. No wonder she has refused to attend Morning Report this morning. No wonder they have banned National MPs from talking to the media before coming to question time, because those comments and those views are utterly irresponsible and they cannot be defended.

I thought it was the reason to come down to Parliament. I thought the reason why they demanded to come here, to travel down from level 4 to come to Parliament, was to be able to have the opportunity to front up in front of the media. And today they refused their MPs and denied the opportunity to do so. I wonder if that’s because they polled 21 percent. I actually think it’s because they realise that their comments today are indefensible, that they undermine the COVID response, that they undermine the teamwork and hard work of so many New Zealanders. It was because of that teamwork and the lockdown and the elimination strategy that got New Zealand to the point where we had the largest economic growth in the OECD. It was because of that that got New Zealand to the point of having the lowest unemployment rate.

They say they stand up for business, but it is the strong health response of this Government that has delivered for business. It is their calls to loosen restrictions—and let’s not forget, they called for us to open up to China. They called for us to open up to Australia way earlier than it was safe. They even called for us to open up to Fiji, although I note they haven’t said that one for a while. All of those things would have undermined the achievements that the team of 5 million worked so hard to do. And I say that is why no one is listening to them, because when they are listened to, they say the indefensible, they undermine our COVID response. What if New Zealand legitimately needed to go into lockdown yet again because of their attitude, people say, “Oh well, this isn’t going to work.”? That completely unravels the teamwork and the structure that this country has built over so many months. We have an opportunity to eliminate COVID if people stick to the guidelines. But listening to that rot, people may consider that it is not worth it. And I say to the people of New Zealand: it is worth it, the guidelines have worked so far. Stick to it, get vaccinated. We will get back through this again. We’ll be in level 1 if you follow the guidelines and ignore the rubbish that that side is telling you.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, I’d like to start by actually acknowledging the great work—that Labour have finally come to the realisation that vaccinations are important. It may be nine months too late—certainly hope it’s not too late. It’s certainly nine months later than it should have been. They were slow to order the vaccines, slow to get it approved, and then they delayed the roll-out of the vaccine.

Kieran McAnulty: Not true!

STUART SMITH: It is absolutely true, and it’s a shame—it’s a shame. But, look, they’ve come to it now, and good on Peeni Henare and Kiritapu Allan for encouraging whānau to get out there and get vaccinated. I think that’s a very good message and one that we have been promoting for nine months at least. But I want to go into another matter, which I know you’ll be very concerned about.

Four weeks ago—just when we came back to Parliament—the Hon James Shaw said that he wouldn’t come to Parliament because “It would literally put lives at risk.” Then, a week later, he said he was going to the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow. Now, COP26 is a very important meeting—mind you, all those COPs are important—but he’s taking nine officials with him offshore.

David Seymour: How many?

STUART SMITH: Nine. That’s from here. He’s also taking five from overseas, but there will be 10 people going over there. Isn’t that going to put lives at risk as well?

For your information, Mr Speaker—I know you’ll be interested in this—yesterday Scotland had 2,870 cases of COVID. That’s a hundred times more cases than we had four weeks ago, when James Shaw made that statement. So these two things don’t match up. That’s about the same size population—they’ve got about 400,000 or 500,000 more people than we do in their population. You would think that’s a hundred times more dangerous. James Shaw doesn’t think that’s important; I think it is. Now, maybe he knows something I don’t. But he hasn’t old us that. All in this interim time, was he actually advocating for a Zoom component of that COP meeting? It’s a really important meeting. Maybe the lives weren’t at risk. If they were, then his first statement was, shall we say, not fulsome with the truth.

SPEAKER: Order!

STUART SMITH: Yes, I heard you, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: No, I think the member will withdraw.

STUART SMITH: I withdraw and apologise. He told Newshub yesterday morning that he was 15,000 on the list for a managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) space—15,000, right? And we know that, when it was opened up, there were 25,000 people in the queue for 3,000 spaces. So does Mr Shaw seriously expect us to believe that he’s planning a huge trip to COP in Glasgow and he’s relying on the lottery to get spaces in MIQ for him and for the other nine officials that are going over with them? I don’t think so. That is ridiculous. And then, of course, in the gallery presser before question time yesterday, the Prime Minister dropped him completely in it, because she was asked about this and she said, “Well, no, the delegation will get priority through the national interest criteria.” Did James Shaw not know about this? Did the other nine officials not know about this? I don’t think so.

And then, when you look—not you, Mr Speaker, as I’m sure you will later on, go and have a look on the website, the MIQ website—that national special interest criteria is very strict. It’s a minimum group of 20 people. So is James Shaw again not being fulsome? Are there actually going to be 20 people going to COP from here? Or is he just going to have 20 rooms? I don’t know. But I know every other electorate MP in this House, and, I’m sure, list MPs as well, are getting emails from people desperate to get back to New Zealand, desperate to get back to New Zealand for family reasons, for compassionate reasons—deaths in families, serious illnesses. People whose visas have run out are stuck overseas and they can’t get back in; they can’t get MIQ spaces. There are no spaces for them and yet James Shaw and nine officials, and perhaps another 10, are going to take up valuable MIQ spaces that those people could have.

I don’t think that’s good enough. I don’t think he’s thought about this. I think it’s disrespectful to the people of New Zealand, particularly those overseas with really heartrending stories—and I know; I have people sobbing on the other end of the phone trying to get an MIQ space. I think it’s just disgraceful, and he has to rethink his position—

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

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.

Bills

Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill

First Reading

JAN LOGIE (Green) on behalf of Ricardo Menéndez March: I move, That the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I—

SPEAKER: I’m just going to interrupt the member and say that she moves on behalf of—

JAN LOGIE: Oh great—thank you.

SPEAKER: —Ricardo Menéndez March. The member can continue now.

JAN LOGIE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

It is a huge honour for me to stand in the House today and present this speech for Ricardo Menéndez March, whose name this bill is in. Firstly, on his behalf and my own, I want to acknowledge former Green MP Mojo Mathers, who drafted this bill in 2015 after hearing from disabled people with disability assist dogs of the discrimination they faced. One of the stories that Mojo heard over five years ago now was the one from the late Murray Whittington and his dog, Frodo, who faced discrimination when looking for rentals. Murray spoke to the New Zealand Herald of his challenges, and we want to acknowledge him and the many others for sharing their stories and fighting for an accessible society.

It is a pretty simple bill, in fact, that will make a small but nevertheless tangible difference—as I would say, a perfect member’s bill. When Mojo first launched this bill, she said—and I quote—“We [still] have a long way to go to make New Zealand a fully inclusive, accessible country, where people who have disabilities can live free from discrimination. I was determined to create my … Member’s Bill after hearing stories of New Zealanders being denied rental accommodation purely because they have a disability assist dog. This sort of discrimination should not be happening in 21st century New Zealand. Finding somewhere to live is already hard enough, but to have your rental application turned down time and time again purely because you have a disability assist dog is just wrong.

“Disability assist dogs are more than just your average mutt. [They] perform many different tasks, such as retrieving objects for people in wheelchairs, or alerting deaf people to fire alarms or door bells—they are … critically important [to] their owners’ lives. New Zealanders with disabilities should not be discriminated against because they need a disability assist dog to make their lives easier and more fulfilling. The law should unequivocally support New Zealanders living with disability and prevent discrimination—my Bill is the next step in that process and I hope there’ll be widespread support for it [when] it’s drawn.” It has now been drawn and I am hoping for that support today.

This bill was written by Mojo to address discrimination for people with disability assist dogs, with an amendment to the Human Rights Act 1993 to include a definition of “disability assist dog” to make it clear that any individual, organisation, or business that discriminates against a person—for example, by denying a service to that person on the basis that they have or use a disability assist dog—then they are, in fact, denying the service to a person on the basis of their disability and, therefore, illegally discriminating against them. A “disability assist dog” is helpfully set out in the Dog Control Act as a dog certified by an organisation specified in that Act as being a dog trained to assist or being a dog in training to assist a person with a disability, and while the Dog Control Act says an assist dog can enter and remain in any public space, there’s no clear way to seek resolution under the Dog Control Act like there is with the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights Commission. Rentals are one of the greyer areas, as they are not a public space, so are only covered by the insufficient protection in the Human Rights Act. So this bill, in practice, replaces “guide dog” in the Human Rights Act with “disability assist dog”. It’s pretty simple.

At a high level, this change is needed because those disability assist dogs perform an invaluable service to many New Zealanders living with disabilities who rely on the skills of their disability assist dog to enable their participation in society on a daily basis. Trained disability assist dogs are able to perform a wide variety of tasks, depending on their owner’s particular disability. It could be that a dog alerts someone with hearing loss to noises such as an alarm clock, a telephone, kitchen timer, doorbells, or fire alarms; alerts or protects somebody who’s about to have a seizure or is having a seizure; or retrieves objects for a person who uses a wheelchair. These are just some of the examples of the many ways in which disability assist dogs play a critical role in enabling many New Zealanders to participate fully in society. Their purpose is quite different to a pet or everyday domestic animal, and because of their crucial role in the lives of many disabled people, it is essential that they are viewed and treated differently by the law.

The areas that will be covered by this amendment to the Human Rights Act will be Government or public sector services; employment; access to public places, vehicles, and facilities; provision of goods and services; land, housing, and accommodation; and education. So this bill would mean no person can be discriminated against while applying for rental housing solely on the basis that they have and use a disability assist dog. What Murray went through would be illegal and he would have had legal recourse to challenge those denials of his rental.

New Zealand signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2008. Back then, it reflected a shift in the understanding of disability from the medical model focused on disability as an impairment as the cause of social exclusion, to a human rights model. As the Human Rights Commission put it in a recent submission to this House, “This means seeing persons with disabilities as rights holders rather than subjects in need of protection.” While this bill won’t fundamentally change the landscape for all disabled people, it does help us recognise the rights of people with disabilities, and when only about 2 or 3 percent of our housing stock is fully accessible, it’s, I believe, particularly important to remove any grounds of discrimination that may present a further barrier to getting into one of those rare, precious spaces.

But it’s also clear that we need to do more than this—right?—and as Mojo and many campaigners have acknowledged to me, this bill is only but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to creating an accessible society. There is much more to do, but I do look forward to the support in this House for making this small but tangible and important change.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real delight to stand and speak in support of this bill. The Labour Party will be supporting this bill because it certainly aligns with our views and values. The Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill is a bit of a mouthful, but it is nevertheless quite a simple bill that does a very important small change to the legislation.

I want to acknowledge the member Ricardo Menéndez March for having this bill pulled from the ballot. I’ve got my own bill sitting in the ballot. It’s an exciting time and we all like to have these things happen. I also want to acknowledge Mojo Mathers, who originally put this bill in over five years ago—December, she put it in, five years ago. So it’s been a long time sitting there in the ballot, and I think it’s really, really important that we now have it drawn and we are now discussing it.

As the chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, I’m delighted that this bill will be referred to us for investigation and development. I’m looking forward to the community giving us lots and lots of feedback for us to support and enhance this piece of legislation in any way that we can so that it better supports our disability community.

What will this bill do? Essentially, I think the member Jan Logie has explained it extremely well in that this bill seeks to, I guess, modernise some language where we talk about a guide dog in the legislation and extend the definition of “guide dog” to include disability assist dogs. Now, one of the things that I’ve been particularly interested in is around this whole area of disability assist dogs in that we are now seeing more and more dogs that are highly trained—it’s somewhat expensive, but that’s because of the years of training that goes into them—being out there in the community. I’ve been quite interested in ensuring that those dogs have access alongside, I guess, their masters—I’m not quite sure, or their “person”; I think that’s the term—or their person so that actually these dogs can be the most effective and perform their function.

So, for example, recently I met with a family in Ōmokoroa, and that family had an assist dog. They called that dog a service dog, so I would be interested in looking at the different definitions. There are three kinds of definitions. There’s a service dog, a disability assist dog, and an assist dog. So we should have a look at the definition when we’re looking at this legislation.

But anyway, I met with this family and I got to see their new training dog. Unfortunately, the previous assist dog had passed away, and the family were very bereft and it was devastating to the family to lose that dog. The young woman has a diagnosis of autism and the dog calms her. The dog helped and supported her to be calm in public, to be relaxed, and to be able to carry out the everyday functions of life, which is tremendous, and this dog passed away. So the family were now needing to have a further dog given to them or purchased for them, and it was just remarkable to watch the difference that this young dog had actually made to this family. It was just, just lovely.

I had the conversation with them about how does it work at school, and the previous dog had gone to school really well trained. Many, many need, I think, at least two years’ training, and that dog was amazing in the school environment. It had not only helped and supported this young woman but it also helped and supported to keep the rest of the class calm and, in fact, other children read to the dog and were more comfortable reading to the dog, and that assisted their learning. It was quite lovely.

That started my journey around the thinking about what we’re looking at here, which is, previously, we just had guide dogs, and those guide dogs are amazing. My grandmother was entitled to have a guide dog, but she felt that she couldn’t properly exercise and care for it in a rest home, and so she chose not to have one, which I do think was quite sad. But I do know that the changes that that would have made and supported her to be able to see better would have been amazing.

Now, back to the bill—sorry, I was getting carried away there, Madam Speaker. So this bill changes the definition in the Human Rights Act to include disability assist dogs. The bill aligns with our values, as I’ve said, and changes the definition under the Dog Control Act. It protects the basic rights of disabled New Zealanders to live free from discrimination in that we must and should always support these families to have their best lives and to live the best lives that they can.

So what do these dogs do? The member Jan Logie has talked about that, and I certainly have as well. One of the things that I wanted to talk about, though, is the difference between an emotional support dog versus a disability assist dog. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen this, but in America, sometimes you’ll have a route they’ll be able to go on to—you know, a train or a plane—essentially as an emotional support animal. However, we’re not talking about emotional support animals; we’re talking about appropriately trained animals.

In reference to that, I’d just like to go through the organisations that have the appropriate accreditation in New Zealand for training of those dogs. So there is the Assistance Dogs New Zealand, the Hearing Dogs New Zealand for deaf people, the K9 Medical Detection New Zealand, the K9 Search Medical Detection, the Mobility Assistance Dogs Trust, the New Zealand Epilepsy Assist Dog Trust, Perfect Partners Assistance Dogs Trust, and Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind.

I think that what we could look at here is we could make sure that the appropriate training is in place. We should make sure that people aren’t, I guess, getting a dud dog or buying a dog that’s not fit for purpose, so perhaps we could extend some of what we look at to ensure that these assist dogs are fit for purpose. I think we could also maybe think a little bit about how do we identify these dogs in the community. Perhaps they need to wear a cape or they need to wear a vest, and they probably all do, but maybe we need to put that in the legislation. There are all sorts of parts to this legislation that we can actually explore.

I think it’s really important that when we go out to the community, we seek submissions from the disabled community, because I firmly believe in what that community says, which is “Nothing about us without us.” I think that that will in fact help us better shape this legislation as we take it through the select committee process. With that, I commend this bill to the House.

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

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it is an absolute pleasure to be standing here today to speak in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill in this first reading. I want to acknowledge the heartfelt introduction of it by Jan Logie, and I also want to acknowledge Ricardo Menéndez March and, of course, Mojo Mathers who first introduced this in 2015. Certainly, it must also be acknowledged that this was inspired by the late Murray Whittington and his assistance dog, Frodo. So it’s really important that we appropriately acknowledge all those people.

This is a very easy bill to support because it has that purpose of ensuring that all persons who need assistance from dogs are protected from discrimination on the basis of their disability by that simple act of changing the words “guide dog” to “disability assist dog” and then aligning the definition of “disability assist dog” with the Dog Control Act 1996. It’s really a small amendment, a small change in the legislation, but it will make a big difference to those that are affected by it.

I want to acknowledge, as Angie Warren-Clark, the speaker before me, did, those organisations who train an assist dog, and it’s really important for members of the public to know that these are dogs that are specifically trained by organisations that are listed in Schedule 5 of the Dog Control Act. So they are organisations that are reputable and do a wonderful job of training these dogs. There’s around eight of them, but within those organisations there’s hundreds of people and hundreds of families that take dogs in as puppies to train them for these roles, and you will often see them out training in the public. What an incredible selfless act that is—to take a puppy into your home, into your family, and spend a number of months or sometimes years training that dog, knowing you’re going to be handing it on to someone else. But what an incredible privilege to do that, knowing what a difference you’re going to make in someone’s life.

It’s really important that we acknowledge that we’ve gone further than just the guide dogs—that dogs are used as hearing dogs, mobility dogs, epilepsy dogs, assistance dogs, medical alert dogs, and those who are trained to do specific tasks. They are not pets, and they are not just companion dogs or emotional support dogs, as important as those dogs are, and we see that in a number of different ways, but they are beyond that. They are highly trained to specifically support people who are living with disabilities to live a better life, a more accessible life. So it is a small amendment, but with a much bigger aim.

I note that Mojo Mathers launched this on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities with the aim to create a more inclusive and accessible New Zealand, and I would have to say that we haven’t got there. I agree with Jan Logie when she has said that we haven’t got anywhere near there.

The COVID situation has stripped bare a number of the covers of how we deal with people with disabilities. When we had a situation of almost 70 percent of the general population that had been vaccinated for COVID, at that same time, only 37 percent of people with disabilities had been vaccinated. Arguably, those who had the most compromised health were left vulnerable. So we do not have an inclusive or an accessible New Zealand yet, and COVID has stripped bare that situation. Those people who have not had their COVID vaccinations have been held back—

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

Penny Simmonds: Oh, Madam Speaker, I think I may have had 10 minutes. Point of order, I think—[Assistant Speaker raises five fingers] Five.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a call in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.

We are living in strange times and Zoom is obviously a regular part of our lives, and I actually had a real panic 15 minutes or so ago when I couldn’t see him. I’d been in a meeting this morning with the Social Services and Community Committee with Ricardo Menéndez March and he wasn’t in the Chamber, and I was panicking—where was he? But, of course, he’s in Auckland, so our respect and our aroha goes out to you there in Auckland and to all the Aucklanders. So thank you very much to Jan Logie for hosting us this afternoon and for walking us through this bill, which is very simple, but it’s really meaningful. I also want to say thank you to Mojo Mathers, who we’ve already mentioned, who originally brought this to the House back in 2015.

This bill, as has already been said, is around building a more inclusive and a more accessible society for all people. It’s ensuring that people with a disability have the same rights and have the same opportunities as all New Zealanders. It’s around removing stigma. It’s around removing prejudice, as we’ve heard about, and it’s around normalising disability so that it’s just a part of everyday life. In fact, one in four New Zealanders has some kind of disability.

This bill is simple, and they’re often the best. It’s a really simple piece of legislation, and it does just two things. Obviously, as we’ve heard, it removes the words “guide dog” and changes that to “disability assist dog”. Now, this is really basic, but obviously it makes quite a difference, because when this was first brought to the House, when this legislation was first formed, obviously guide dogs were the main disability-use animal that was used back then. But now, it’s extended in many ways and spaces, and we’ve heard already around supporting people with different disabilities: those who have hearing impairments, medical conditions, mobility issues, epilepsy, and the list goes on.

So this piece of legislation just ensures that disability assist dogs are in the Human Rights Act, right there for them. Now, this fits in for me personally but also for us, as the Labour Party, in our values around protecting the rights of our disabled New Zealanders, ensuring that all New Zealanders in our disability community live free from discrimination.

I have a good friend in my electorate of New Plymouth—

Hon Member: Really?

GLEN BENNETT: —I do, I have several, actually; not just my husband—and he was the editor of the Taranaki Daily News. He was on the district council, and for a long time he has headed up the Disability Action group for New Plymouth, ensuring that New Plymouth is a disability-friendly city. Now, Lance Girling-Butcher—and this story is around a dog for a person who is blind or low-vision—has told his story around how he did struggle early on when he got Yogi, his beautiful Labrador, and people didn’t quite cope with this at times. But then, slowly, over the last 10 years or so, it became far more normal to see Yogi sitting around the council table, to see Yogi in meetings, and to see Yogi on Air New Zealand flights, to the point that when I was in a taxi going to the airport several months ago and the taxi driver was chatting away and discovered I was from New Plymouth, he said, “Oh, I know a guy from New Plymouth. There was a guy who used to come here and he used to bring his dog.” I was like “A dog in the car?”, but, of course, this was Yogi, and he’d been in the very taxi I’d been in.

So we’re in a place, and, no doubt, the Hon Carmel Sepuloni, the Minister for Disability Issues, supports us and supports all people. So I’m really excited, as the deputy chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, to be able to take this bill on to the select committee process, to take it on for submissions, and to ensure that all people are valued and all people are respected and that disability assist dogs are a normal part of our society.

TONI SEVERIN (ACT): I stand to take the call on the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill. This bill makes a very small change in the term from “guide dogs” to “disability assist dogs”. With many people in our community that have disabilities—more than just blind—that need the assistance of their dogs, it’s very disheartening to hear that people have been discriminated by having these dogs that people perceive are pets. As we all know, it takes many hours and a lot of money to achieve the training in these dogs.

We have a sad situation that this bill has had to be brought to the House to be put here, but one question I would like to know is whether or not we could have probably proceeded from just going through this whole process, and maybe have had a quick change with a letter to the Ministry of Justice asking if it could be amended via the Statutes Amendment Bill because it’s such an important bill. Maybe we could have got it through just a little bit quicker than having to sit and discuss—and, yes, there may be some more things that will come out of the select committee, but to speed the process up for people that may be disadvantaged. At this stage, it’s still going to be a process for us to get through.

So to go through all this, I am happy to say that ACT supports this bill, and we hope to see it get passed very quickly through select committee, so if anyone that is incurring any discrimination, it is done and got rid of fast. Thank you.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a good bill to talk about.

Earlier today, I spoke to my 12-year-old daughter, Livia, and she said, “What are you going to be doing in the House today, Mum?”, and I said, “I’m going to be talking about this and speaking in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.”, which really means taking the term “guide dog” and calling for the words to be put in that this is going to be for disability assist dogs. She asked the question, “What’s the difference between a disability and an assist dog?”, and my colleague Angie Warren-Clark spoke before and said that it will be good to talk about the difference in those names and what they mean.

But one of the things that Livia talked to me about was “Isn’t this a good bill to learn about how we go about things in Parliament?” We will see this go through with pace, but it’s also going to be a good bill for people to engage in. It’s one of those ones that I actually think that for people who are maybe even interested in Parliament—we’ve got Youth Parliament coming through—we might see the serious side as well around discrimination with disability.

Man’s best friend being a dog, I was surprised to actually understand when I read this that there was this level of discrimination in a time like this, where we can have dogs on buses, but to then hear about people who are looking to rent a property and being discriminated about because their disability assist dog can’t come with them. To me, man’s best friend does a lot of good work for us. They’re an animal that we have learnt over generations to guide us, train us, and work with us, whether they’re farm dogs, whether they’re guide dogs, or whether they are working in areas of even border security.

This is the first reading of this bill. It’s going to be one that I do think will get a lot of interest. It’s great to see in the House today that everybody is speaking in favour of this bill. It’s good to see those points that are going to come through: what this bill will practically mean, what it will mean for our wider conversation around disability and working with people and ensuring that discrimination is no longer. We do have a way to go, and this will be an opportunity to talk more and more about those issues, and as we go through that process, it will be good to see, hopefully, a few of the dogs come in to select committee. Wouldn’t that be fun? It would be good to see.

We have dogs in Parliament, and I’m sure that the people that come through will be welcomed with the dogs. We’re not going to the dogs. I mean, there might be some people across the House that are going to the dogs, but when it comes to this debate and this bill, it’s going to be one that’s going to bring unity to the House. It’s going to be one that I think we’ll see interest in from all walks of life, and that’s what’s going to be great about this bill.

In doing so, I know that when I go back and talk to Livia, it’s going to be one that she will watch with interest, because sometimes when we’re in Parliament we talk about very complicated matters, but Livia is going to enjoy this one. In fact, I’m going to encourage her and her friends to write a submission, because wouldn’t it be great? These 12-year-olds that are getting jabbed for COVID and protecting the country; next thing, they’ll be making submissions on things like this, and we’re going to see that younger generation engaging in good policy and practice.

It’s a good bill. I’m absolutely pleased to see that it’s finally come in here, that it’s been pulled out of the ballot, and that we can have a good, positive debate. Thank you for that. I’m looking forward to the Opposition, as well, taking part in this positively.

Thanks for this—thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend this bill to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I learnt to take my face accessory off a bit earlier today. I was really interested in the last speaker, because we are—

Hon Member: As long as your teeth don’t fall out.

Hon Member: Leave the dentures in, brother.

IAN McKELVIE: They’re very expensive ones. Now, I was just intrigued by the last speech. I think this bill, in all seriousness, is a very good bill, and I commend Mojo Mathers all those years ago for bringing it to the Parliament and I think it’s just unfortunate that she’s not here to see it on its way through the House. But, of course, if I was like the Greens, I’d oppose this bill on principle, because, in fact, I had a bill called the dog control amendment bill—which amends one of the same Acts this is amending, actually—which actually gave the power the courts have to some JPs to do some pretty simple work. The Greens voted against it. I don’t know why; they didn’t know why, but they did. So I would have thought that on the same basis, we’d vote against this too, but I’m not going to suggest we do that for a minute.

This bill, it does two pretty simple things. It amends the Human Rights Act by changing one definition in it, and it also amends the Dog Control Act 1996 by changing, basically, one clause in that. But the interesting thing about this bill for me is that it’ll be very interesting to see where it gets to at select committee because there is potential for it to go further than Mojo Mathers envisaged it going at the time, if you think about companion dogs and the use of companion dogs now, and there’s all sorts of other dogs that aren’t necessarily disability assist dogs but that have the same impact on people’s lives. I, in the Rangitīkei electorate, in Cheltenham, in fact, have a dog trainer who trains dogs to do all sorts of extraordinary things. So there are medic alert dogs and all sorts of things like that that, effectively, take the place of those little bracelet things that we wear with “MedicAlert” written on them, and the dog does the job for you.

So I think it’s pretty amazing what dogs can be trained to do, but, of course, they’re not only trained to do these jobs—so I think it was Penny Simmonds that said earlier that they’re not necessarily pets—but, in fact, they are, effectively, pets to the extent that they become companion dogs. So they’re extremely valuable to the people that own them. I remember not very long ago having significant arguments, again, in my electorate, with tenants of council flats who weren’t allowed to have dogs in the council flats. All those people in those council flats are, effectively, pensioners. Most of them, or many of them, are living on their own, so they’re challenged by loneliness and all sorts of things.

So there’s a whole lot of things that could come up in the course of the select committee process which may well, I guess, change the original intent of this bill and, in fact, expand it, and there’s potential for that to happen. I find that quite interesting.

Now, the other challenging thing about dogs, and I suppose they’re pets, but many buildings around Wellington have a no dog policy in them. I know in the building I live in, there was a woman there for quite some time who had a very small dog, actually. She carried it down in her purse each morning, and you’d catch it sticking its nose out the top of the purse each morning she carried it down the lift. I’m pretty sure it was illegal—well, according to the building rules it was illegal—but, anyway, she carried it down each morning and carried it back at night, and it lived in her handbag and it was quite an interesting thing.

But I think, all nonsense aside, this bill is a good bill. In fact, in my view, it’s what the members’ bill thing that happens in this House was designed to do, because it enables a member like Mojo Mathers to bring something that was dear to her, put it into a very simple Act, actually, but actually make a difference to quite a lot of people as a result of it. So the National Party certainly supports this bill to the next stage and we look forward to the select committee process, which I think will be quite valuable.

Just one last word, I guess, on the disability sector, which, in fact, this bill is designed to assist. I spent quite some time, I suppose you’d call it, working in that sector, and it’s a challenged sector at the best of times, but there’s a whole lot of areas that will benefit significantly from a piece of legislation like this, so the potential is unlimited. So we commend the bill to the House, and thank you, Madam Speaker.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute in this debate about the incredible animal called the dog, domesticated from wolves an estimated 15,000 years ago. Look, it really is quite significant, the role that dogs do play in our lives, and so I think that it’s certainly important that we take the time on a Wednesday afternoon to talk through that, particularly in reference to this member’s bill, the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill.

I’d like to acknowledge the sponsor of this bill, Ricardo Menéndez March, who will no doubt be watching from Auckland, and I’d like to say congratulations to the member, building on the work that former MP Mojo Mathers did. I’d like to congratulate the member for having the full support of the House, which is often quite rare, but well done to that member.

I think this is a good example of the role that members’ bills play in this House, whereby there might be a piece of legislation which has either become outdated or may be an anomaly in the piece of legislation. I mean, legislation is seldom perfect. Society is constantly changing and evolving, and the member Ricardo Menéndez March has picked up on this small change, which will have a significant impact, as we’ve heard from previous speakers.

It’ll be interesting to hear the submissions on this bill. I expect, as the previous speaker Anna Lorck said, there will be quite a bit of interest in this bill from a wide range of New Zealanders. Also, Anna expressed interest in having some dogs coming to the select committee, which would possibly be an improvement on some of the language in the select committees, but we’ll certainly wait and see, and I’ll certainly welcome that as well. But, look, great to have that support across the House for this bill.

I’d just like to touch briefly, for the benefit of those members and those either watching or listening at home, on a little bit of the history of assist dogs. As I said at the start, dogs are incredible creatures with a huge propensity to undertake various tasks for humans. They’ve been called man’s best friend. In fact, in the 1700s, guide dogs were first used in Europe, particularly in Austria, and after World War II, dogs were employed to provide support to soldiers.

Hon Simon Bridges: How much did they get paid?

JAMIE STRANGE: Probably not a lot, Mr Bridges. Mr Bridges is asking how much they got paid. Look, it probably depended on which Government was in power at the time, Mr Bridges.

Hon Member: They would’ve got paid under us.

JAMIE STRANGE: Yeah, yeah, and I’m sure they were. There was some sort of union for the dogs, I would hope, Mr Bridges. But getting back to the bill, Madam Speaker—excuse me for that small distraction—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Grand idea.

JAMIE STRANGE: —after World War I, soldiers were supported. We move forward to today, where we have assist dogs providing a number of important support roles for humans: hearing impairments, epilepsy, autism, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even, as I’ve researched this afternoon, helping people to do practical tasks, whether it’s opening doors or whether it’s actually loading the washing. I actually just watched a video of a dog actually loading the washing. It was incredibly impressive. It was impressive, and I think I could do with one in our house when our children don’t always support with their tasks, but I’m not sure I’d qualify along those lines. But it was an impressive video, and I would encourage people to have a look. So we’ve heard about dogs in handbags and dogs loading the washing this afternoon.

This bill highlights the difference between a guide dog and a disability support dog. So the guide dogs have been with us for quite a long time. In fact, disability support dogs have too, but there’s been much more focus on the guide dog aspect rather than on the disability support dog aspect. So a guide dog is a dog that has been trained to lead a blind or partially sighted person, whereas the disability support dog—which is what, as we’ve heard from previous speakers, this bill brings the change in the legislation to include—is a dog that is trained to perform specific tasks for people with disabilities. I mentioned some of those tasks before, and, look, it’s absolutely incredible what these dogs do in society. Excellent piece of legislation, and I commend the bill to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): I need to thank the member Jamie Strange from the other side of the room for that short history lesson. It was fascinating, thank you. Oh, to be a Labour Party MP who can spend all day watching YouTube videos. Wouldn’t that be nice?

My first confession to this House is I’m actually a cat person, so I’m really going to struggle to extol the virtues of dogs for a wee while. Our former colleague Nicky Wagner, I think, at one stage held the disabilities portfolio—correct me if I’m wrong. This House may or may not know, but I’m actually blind in one eye, and I told her about this one day, and she said—

Hon Member: A one-eyed Cantabrian—I thought as much.

NICOLA GRIGG: I am a one-eyed Cantabrian, and I don’t shy away from that. But I told the former Minister this, and she said, “Oh, you could potentially get a guide dog.”, and I thought, “I don’t like dogs. I’d rather a pony, thank you.”, but I’m not sure that the pony would trot around this building very easily.

But, despite my obvious bias, we are here today to recognise that disability assist dogs do provide a valuable service to many New Zealanders who experience disabilities and other issues which require assistance, and like other speakers before me, I’d also like to acknowledge the work that Mojo Mathers put in all those years ago. She identified a shortfall in the law and has done the groundwork to go about making a change that really will impact many New Zealanders.

It is an amendment that just makes two very small changes, but I think the power in that is that they will have a great impact on very many people. I think, in this House, we must never forget that as legislators, we should take every opportunity we can to reform laws that do improve the lives of New Zealanders. Because words matter, the first is replacing “guide dog” as a prohibited ground of discrimination with “disability assist dog”, and I do agree with previous speakers that perhaps even that wording could be bounced around and changed a bit. Perhaps just “assist dog” is even easier, and doesn’t, therefore, have any derogatory connotations around people with disabilities. But that will be for the select committee to canvass and discuss.

The second amendment is aligning the definition of “disability assist dog” with the Dog Control Act of 1996 so that dogs trained to service other needs are included. We have heard that that will also include hearing dogs, mobility dogs, epilepsy dogs, assistance dogs, medic alert dogs, and dogs who are trained to specific tasks. Also, a disability assist dog is a dog who is trained by an organisation specified in the Dog Control Act as being a dog trained to assist a person with a disability.

So, all up, the National Party is very happy to support this amendment. It is a bill that will introduce the necessary legal backing to ensure that these highly trained service dogs are viewed and treated differently from pets and domestic animals under the law.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Speaker. As the co-chair of the cross-parliamentary PCAL, or the Parliamentary Champions for Accessibility Legislation group, I stand here in the House today in support of the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill put forward to the House by Green Party MP Ricardo Menéndez March.

Section 21 of the Human Rights Act lays out the prohibited grounds for discrimination enshrined at the heart of our human rights framework. Specifically, it identifies guide dogs under the clauses that relate to the discrimination against disabled people. This term, however, is very narrow. Disabled New Zealanders are assisted by a much wider range of support dogs than guide dogs alone.

The bill in front of us today amends the Human Rights Act 1993 to enhance the protections from discrimination for people who rely on disability assist dogs. Currently, section 21 of the Human Rights Act references guide dogs in its definition of disability. The bill here changes this wording to the broader term of “disability assist dogs” as defined in the Dog Control Act 1996, ensuring that those who rely on other kinds of disability assist dogs are afforded the protections that currently exist for people with guide dogs. This will help ensure that Kiwis are protected from discrimination under the Act.

Disability assist dogs provide vital support for the disabled New Zealand community that rely on them across a range of areas. The exact nature of the support is diverse, depending on the dog and its owner’s needs, as my colleague Jamie Strange mentioned. The exact nature might be related to, for example, a deaf person who might need help with hearing sound alarms or doorbells. There might be somebody with epilepsy who needs management with seizures, or somebody in a wheelchair who needs retrieval of objects for them. Disability assist dogs significantly enhance the quality of life of those they help and can support disabled people to lead more independent lives. In some cases, they can even save lives.

Now, if this bill had come into the House maybe last year, I would have probably wondered about whether I sit on the fence or not, because when I was three years old, I was actually bitten by a dog, so I’ve been quite scared of all dogs. But, over the last year, working during the election time, I got to walk the streets of Hamilton with quite a few of our members who had dogs, and I realised how good they are in terms of providing therapy, and none of those dogs were actually guide dogs. So it goes to show that there is a wide range of definition for dogs that are able to provide support to New Zealanders who need it.

I also want to mention that this specific Act also amends the section 2 of the Dog Control Act 1996, which outlines that a “disability assist dog” is one “certified by one of the organisations [the Act specifies] in Schedule 5 as being a dog that has been trained (or is being trained) to assist a person with a disability”. There are eight organisations outlined in the schedule as being able to certify dogs. It is important to note that this definition still sets a very high standard for a dog to meet the criteria to be included in the Human Rights Act. They must be certified by one of these eight organisations I mentioned and must meet specific criteria in order to be certified.

This Government is committed to building a more inclusive and accessible society and to ensuring disabled people have the same rights and opportunities as the rest of New Zealanders. Progress on disability issues continues to be realised through disability-focused funding across many Government portfolios such as ACC, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Ministry of Education, and I specifically want to mention Minister Carmel Sepuloni, who has done a lot of good work in the disability space, in between her various portfolios in this Government and in the last Government as well. In the disability issues portfolio, the Government aims to progress the rights and opportunities for disabled people through the New Zealand Disability Strategy 2016-2026. The strategy and the Disability Action Plan are the key mechanisms for progressing New Zealand forward and realising the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The Disability Action Plan is the primary vehicle for implementing this disability strategy over the next four years, and I believe that moving this bill forward will make a huge difference in the lives of New Zealanders who for a long time have been discriminated just because of the way the Human Rights Act defines the kind of dog they can use to get assistance with their everyday activities. So I would like to highly recommend the bill to move forward in the House. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): In reply, Jan Logie.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. What fantastic unanimity across this House in support of this very simple bill. In conclusion, I want to specifically acknowledge—we don’t usually acknowledge when members are not present. But these are unusual circumstances, so I do particularly want to do a shout-out to Ricardo Menéndez March—noting for people that there’s three syllables in the “Menéndez”, for future reference—but also to acknowledge that he chose for me to give this speech on his behalf because he wanted to see this piece of legislation come into law faster. He put his ego second to prioritise the needs of the community, and I think that’s worth acknowledging. It’s a special thing to get a bill drawn from the House and to have the mojo to do that, and to put that aside and let somebody else do the first speech I think is awesome.

Also, I know he wanted me to acknowledge all of the staff and volunteers working in the organisations who are certifying our disability assist dogs. That is a wonderful effort and they play a really vital role in our community. I also want to acknowledge the fact that, now that we have such unanimous support across the House, I’m going to anticipate the passing of this bill and acknowledge that this will be the second piece of legislation that Mojo Mathers drafted and then saw through into law, with the first being the election access bill, and to me, it’s a real power of lived experience and people holding that lived experience proudly in their work as a representative in this House. I want to acknowledge her for that and encourage all of us to do more of that kind of work.

What Mojo said five years ago resonates today still: there’s a long way to go to ensure the decisions made in this House help create a truly accessible society. Disabled people continue, rightfully, protesting outside this Chamber for better representation and outcomes. Only a few months ago, we had the hīkoi for hope where campaigners called for an independent body to be established to advise the Government on policy through a disability lens. Dr Huhana Hickey explained why she was calling for that, saying, “Give us the power to make the decisions in our lives, and let us drive what’s safe and what’s right.” So, really, that feels to me to be consistent with the thrust of this bill, and I hope that people with lived experience of having disability assist dogs will come in and submit on this legislation and help us make this as strong as possible.

I will note the enthusiasm in the House for having more dogs around the place—enthusiasm, while being a cat person, I also share for the dogs in this House. But I would remind those who may be watching and may not be familiar with disability assist dogs: not being pets, we really should not be talking to them or patting them when they are working. They are work animals at that time, and we do have to hold ourselves back.

I also just want to acknowledge, while we do not have anybody in the gallery today—and I know that there would’ve been people here if circumstances had been different. But within the parliamentary precincts, I know somebody—Joe Boon—has come in with his disability assist dog, and he is watching this speech in this House and has been supporting the progress of this bill right from the inception. I want to acknowledge how much this means to people who are affected. I look forward to this passing as it moves smoothly through the House, and also to seeing all the support that we’ve had this afternoon also translate into support for a much braver agenda to ensure the rights of all disabled people in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Human Rights (Disability Assist Dogs Non-Discrimination) Amendment Bill be considered by the Social Services and Community Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.

Bills

Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker, for this wonderful opportunity to speak to this bill in my name. This bill has the principal purpose to provide for better regulations for on-farm practices—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! I apologise to the member. The member should have some words, which he must say.

MARK CAMERON: I apologise, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. And I nominate the Primary Production Committee to consider this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. For the last 18 months, the rural sector has been treated as a metaphorical soft target, a tirade of forced change. All the while, as the Deputy Prime Minister says, the primary sector has continued to perform strongly. We have continually been targeted by regulatory overreach. Well, of course we have performed strongly: we’re Kiwi farmers, arguably the best in the world. Yet all too often we are faced with runaway regulation that often fails the logic or practical sniff test. It was never going to be hard to imagine the likes of Groundswell NZ getting much support from the rural sector and the urban sector alike.

What the rural sector has been asked to deal with never ends: the Labour and Greens’ continued song sheet that perpetuates a feeling that the Government has an animus to the rural sector, all the while praising us, whilst at the very same time impugning us. They’re constantly finding ways to further entrench central government over regional practices and people’s lives, all too often affecting the wellbeing of communities and economic on-farm models, ultimately affecting farmer morale and rural folks’ mental wellbeing.

Farmers are totally fed up, frustrated, and are being left with a sense of entrenched confusion of how to proceed and how to operate. Well, the ACT Party has come here to fix it and offer better solutions than the centrist mantra out of the Labour and Green caucuses. My member’s bill has a principal purpose to provide for better regulations for on-farm practices that will ultimately benefit all New Zealanders and regional environments. The bill targets the on-farm regulations that are most regionally specific and therefore are better regulated at a regional level, not out of the bureaucratic machinery of Wellington.

I have spoken to DairyNZ, New Zealand Federated Farmers, and Beef + Lamb New Zealand. They support this bill in principle. They said they agree that a one-size-fits-all regulatory approach across the country is not always best for the desired outcome for farmers and the wellbeing of the environment. In discussions, DairyNZ noted regulations need to be well designed and fit for purpose to support farmers and rural communities to succeed environmentally and economically. This means that regulations need to be practical, to be based on science and evidence, and to allow for the complex nature of individual farms and their regional environmental variability.

We all know that politicians like to play their political hand at central planning, but in this instance, as farmers and rural communities, we simply know, when it comes to regulating localised activity from the Beehive, as often as not, it simply doesn’t work. The centrist methodology being asserted on farmers has often left communities with untenable direction or the needed tools on how to operate. OVERSEER and its failure was a classic example of the Government, sadly, getting it wrong: not enough science, not enough localised understanding. Much of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management and how it affects localised communities and activities proves this.

This bill speaks specifically to excluding and managing the effects of winter grazing, the application of synthetic fertilisers, sedimentation control, and the exclusion of animals and livestock from various water bodies, and, importantly, from central government planning, and gives that oversight back to respective councils who have the capacity to set localised standards. The rationale is very simple. Localised activity and, more importantly, the effects on the environment are best understood by those that undertake it and the local councils that regulate it. After all, what works in Gore doesn’t necessarily work in Northland and/or Auckland. Comparatively, they couldn’t be any more different from each other, both in terms of their environmental impacts, but also the types of regional activity and needed environmental protection and mitigations. They are very regionally specific. This bill will prove better for farmers, for local communities, and for their overall environment. This, given that specific regulations will be better understood and set at a local level.

Just for a bit of banter, if I could, at the moment, my dear friend and fellow farmer, the Minister for Rural Communities, said that “We, the Government, are always prepared to make changes where there are faults and adjust when things are not practical.” He said this when talking about the national statement on fresh water. Well, on that basis, I welcome the support of the Minister, regardless of how the Labour Party votes.

Hon Member: Don’t hold your breath.

MARK CAMERON: Ha, ha! As an active farmer myself, and knowing there are, essentially, no practical operating farmers in the Labour caucus beyond the aforementioned, I’m intimately versed in how my own farming practices affect my own local environment, as does my council. Equally, this could be said of Auckland, Wellington when they’re setting standards for local rivers or beaches and the understandings of the effects on their environment. One could offer several examples. My own farm management is seasonally indicative, acknowledging the 1,300 to 1,400 millimetres of rainfall I get per annum. This is taking into consideration the month-by-month variations; the varying soil types, some of which are alluvial and other that are podzol clays; also, the limestone substructure—this is all on my own property, let alone 10 kilometres down the road, and in my local council they understand this. As farmers, we change our practices with seasonal, constant changes, giving consideration to the nuances of on farm and on-farm activities. All the decisions we make are premised on a myriad of localised variations.

If I may one offer one further example: in Whangārei, which is one hour of driving away from where I live, there is 300 millilitres greater average rainfall there compared to my home, with very different soil structures, substructures, topography, and types of soil erosion. Their environmental footprint and needed mitigations are different and the considerations different because of it. Regionally, Northland crop sowing dates to methods or environmental mitigations are principally better understood by those in respective regions. It’s a no-brainer. We are significantly different from Southland, comparative to them, as they are to us. Clearly, a centralised slate of national standards totally fails to accommodate the plethora of variations, the type of environmental protection methodologies and on-farm practices we should use.

To further encapsulate this narrative, I could offer other examples about nitrogen and the effects on the environment. One that the Green members often frequently reference, DIN, or dissolved inorganic nitrogen, levels, and the respective leaching, is highly respective of the volumes used, the farming conditions they’re used in, permeable soil aggregate to non-permeable soil aggregate and the differences between the two, what is needed in terms of mitigation therein, and also how to preserve the environment. Putting a one-size-fits-all set of regulations on such use fails to acknowledge retention levels. That’s why the ACT Party and thousands of regional members, farmers, and rural communities that support us see the logic behind this bill that we deliver: environmental protection and mitigation giving consideration to councils and their respective catchments, most of which are already employing environmental planning and implementing better regulatory standards in their regions. They are regionally specific, in most instances having considered better environmental outcomes.

This bill is a better step to a more practical, workable law that puts effect to better farming practices and gives consideration to local environmental impacts. It allows communities and councils and local industry the ability to work collaboratively, ensuring better environmental outcomes and, equally, better fiscal outcomes for communities. Farmers want tenable solutions that offer better community outcomes across the board, a better understanding of where their future in farming is going, and practices that go with tenable outcomes forward: a robust set of local environmental standards that are set locally. The premise of this bill has the principled support, as I previously iterated, of the bodies such as DairyNZ, Federated Farmers, Beef + Lamb New Zealand, and, equally, most regional councils. Therefore, I and the ACT Party commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Can I begin by saying that I think Mark Cameron and all the members of this place are good people, but I fundamentally disagree with what is proposed in this legislation, and I’m going to try in the 10 minutes that I have available to explain how we’ve got to the position that we’ve got to in New Zealand and why I think what’s being proposed is not the solution.

When you go back to the early 1990s, just about all of New Zealand’s waterways were clean. We had the occasional municipal discharge into our waterways and we had the occasional factory discharge—what we call point-source discharges—that were causing local pollution. But by far the great length of our rivers, and we’re blessed with some of the most beautiful rivers, in New Zealand—they were clean. We live in a country that’s a steep country, that is a young country, and that has a lot of rain. Therefore, we have great, flushing flows that bring gravels down from our Alps and we have these sparkling rivers that are cleaned every minute of every day by the rejuvenating flows that come from the mountains, and yet, somehow, in the three decades since the early 1990s, we’ve gone from that position to a point where the majority of the places that we monitor in New Zealand for swimming are not safe to put your head under in summer because the risk of microbial infection puts you beyond safe swimming levels, according to the World Health Organization, and also our turbidity levels have grown to be high. What’s—

Hon Member: Nor are beaches in Auckland.

Hon DAVID PARKER: And there are problems with beaches in Auckland—that’s a fair point. They need to be cleaned up, too. In fairness to the council, they’ve brought through close to $3 billion of expenditure to largely remedy that problem south of the bridge through the Central Interceptor project and other works that are going on in Auckland as we speak, and they should be congratulated for doing their part, even though they’ve got further to go.

In respect of what’s happened since, in 1993, the Uruguay round of the GATT concluded. That capped agricultural countries in their domestic settings. That had an effect on how much subsidy could be given by those countries to their agricultural producers, and what that, effectively, did was cap the amount of subsidised dairy products that was being sold into Asia, because there were rules that prohibited increases in those subsidies, and indeed they wound those subsidies back. In the decades that followed, New Zealand was the lower-cost producer of increased dairy output.

There were also increased improvements in farming technology. Much better electrical pumps were invented and became affordable; spray irrigation, or K-Line, was invented; irrigation trucks—fertiliser trucks, rather that airplanes, that were more expensive—became economic, and this rapid changing in technology meant that there was a rapid economic push towards New Zealand taking the economic opportunity of filling those growing demands for protein that came out of Asia, and, sadly, despite the fact that the Resource Management Act (RMA) said that we should be managing the environmental effects of the increased intensity of farming that flowed from those economic drivers, we dropped the ball as a country.

Not only have we got to the point that most swimming spots aren’t safe to swim in in summer; our estuaries—and this is a recent picture of the Ōreti estuary. It’s just out of Invercargill. It’s called the New River Estuary. That picture, if you can see it, has about a foot deep of recent sediments. I’ve got other photos here that show that the cockles are all dead. The cockles have gone. These are recent sediments.

Now, we’ve always had a lot of sediment in New Zealand since deforestation following colonisation, and that’s been a problem. But we have reached tipping points in New Zealand because of this recent intensification of land use, and we’ve all seen photos of intensive winter grazing carried out inappropriately.

Mr Cameron said the point that things are different in different parts of the country, and that’s quite so. The problems in the Kaipara are different. But central government and local government are, between themselves, with some help from landowners, spending over the next 10 years $200 million to stop the build-up of sediments in the Kaipara, which is the nursery of snapper for the West Coast of the North Island. It’s a juvenile white pointer - raising area, and there are recent mudbanks in the Kaipara that are 2 metres deep—2-metre deep recent mudbanks—and I’ve seen them. It’s terribly sad. Every tide, there’s another film of additional sediment. Some of it’s coming from inappropriate management of fill coming from subdivisions into the north of Auckland. Some of it’s coming from agricultural sectors, and that needs to be improved too.

So we set as an objective, basically, that we think that rivers should be clean enough to swim in. That’s a proxy for environmental health—you know, pop down to your local river, put your head under in summer without the risk of getting crook—and most New Zealanders believe that that’s an appropriate ambition, and they know that in order to get there, we’ve actually got to change the status quo, because the status quo is that you can’t.

Even the latest data that came out a year or two ago from the data sets that are collected nationally showed that just about twice as many—a lot more rivers—are still degrading compared with improving, according to the macroinvertebrate index. These are little critters that live under rocks, and if the water’s too polluted from sediment or from excessive nutrient, they die. We’ve got rivers in New Zealand that have lost more than 90 percent of their macroinvertebrates. They’re just about functionally dead in respect of those ecosystems, and that affects not just the macroinvertebrates but the eels—the tuna—which are the fish that feed on them, and, again, it’s another indicator of problems.

So what we’ve done to remedy this is we’ve actually said that, look, it’s no individual’s fault. Responsibility for getting it this bad is shared between regional councils, who should have done better to stop it getting this bad—they’ve had full delegated authority to do this ever since the RMA was passed. But it’s not all their fault, because it’s very hard and some of it is technical, and they needed help from central government that they didn’t get enough of. Farmers are partly responsible—you know, the “polluter pays” principle should apply here. These rivers don’t pollute themselves, and it is the increased intensity of farming that is actually the largest cause of these problems.

So how do you wind it back and how do you work with the local communities to do it? Well, you actually do need a combination of local regulation, national guidance for that regulation, farmer input, and investment by farmers but also investment by central government, and we’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the clean-up from taxpayers’ money, and those taxpayers weren’t the people who caused the mess. So we’re coming to the party and we’re planting out riparian strips, we’re subsidising catchment management groups, and we’re employing facilitators so that groups of farmers can come together and share best practice and put a bit of peer pressure on the ones that are the laggards. We’re doing all of that, but you do need some national direction.

You need to have some standards about what are appropriate microbial levels. E. coli is the thing that’s monitored as a proxy for other pathogens that cause illness, so you need limits on E.coli.

You need limits as to sediment and turbidity. How fast you get to those limits is for locals to decide, and under the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, it is regional councils that decide on those time frames. We set some objectives to get back to healthy river states that are driven by science, but we leave it to communities as to how they get back there over a generation. There are some interim steps in the national environment standard that kick in straight away, but that’s to stop things getting worse.

We know that if you have an increase in intensive winter grazing, you increase pressure—you increase the degradation of your waterways—and so we’ve said that it’s no longer a permitted activity to do that. If you want to increase substantially your intensive winter grazing area, you’ve got to get a resource consent to do it. That’s the purpose of the RMA, and if environmentally damaging practices like that are not controlled by the RMA, they’re not controlled, as evidenced by the degradation that we’ve already suffered in our waterways.

So I reject the idea that we don’t need national direction. I do think that this is a very radical bill, given the experience that we have had in New Zealand that I have explained, because it would, effectively, say that, notwithstanding the problems that are three decades old that haven’t fixed themselves and that haven’t been properly managed by regional councils or by farmers themselves, we should just stand back and say, “It’s somebody else’s problem.”

We don’t have that viewpoint in the Labour Party. We think that this is appropriate use of these tools. We are working with local communities and with local councils. We’ve got overwhelming support within society for that. I think this is an illustration of the sort of radicalism that the National Party would be driven to if they were in a coalition with the ACT Party, because I suspect that they’re going to vote for this bill as well, flawed though it is.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Congratulations, Mark Cameron, on having this member’s bill drawn—and, yes, the National Party is supporting Mr Cameron. Look, I would like to commend Minister Parker for setting out some of the issues that we are currently facing, and I don’t think Mr Cameron or anyone in the National Party denies that there are problems to be solved. But Minister Parker said himself that over the last 30 years, things haven’t got as good as they could have been, despite the Resource Management Act. So, therefore, we have a Resource Management Act, and I know there are—[Bell rung]—new ideas coming forward, and I—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, just sorting out the clock. Sorry for interrupting.

BARBARA KURIGER: Oh, OK. We know that we’re looking for improvements to that legislation. Farmers are actually number eight wire people. They know they’ve got a lot of stuff to solve. We are not actually hiding behind that, and I count myself in that because I am a farmer as well, just like Mr Cameron is. Farmers want to get out of bed in the morning and they want to put one Red Band in front of the other and they want to do something practical. They are very good at doing the practical things that will help solve their problem. The issue that they’ve had lately is that there are so many regulations and so much red tape coming at them, and so many things to sort out, that they are spending all of their time stressing about where to go, what to do first, and they actually need to be able to work by region, by community, and help—I understand that there’s got to be some underpinning things that go on.

But I use an example here: there was a press release (PR) that went out last week, where the Hon Damien O’Connor has put out a PR saying the “Government investment in farmer-led catchment groups sweeps past [the] 150 mark”. Now, this is a real example about how one catchment is different to the other catchment—Taranaki is different to what it is in Northland, to what it is in Southland. People want to get out of bed in the morning and they want to get out, put their gumboots on, and go and do something to fix this.

Now, just recently I was in the Wairarapa with a catchment group, and what is really difficult about some of those things when you get centralisation is that you’ve got a group here that wants to plant trees, they want to improve waterways, they want to do the right thing, and they’ve got six different entities that they’ve now had to form because of bureaucracy and red tape. They have to report back to the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment quarterly, and they don’t mind the accountability but they are reporting back on two different quarterly dates, right? So that is what happens here when we end up having too much centralisation—sometimes it’s the administration. They’ve had to employ somebody’s sister who could help them deal with the administration.

Look, there are ways of doing this. Look at the Pomahaka Catchment Group—and there’s a whole lot of other catchment groups I could name around the country that have been doing some good work. I used the example just recently about the winter grazing issue. I want to commend Bernadette Hunt for her stance in explaining exactly how winter grazing works. I commend you, Minister, for listening and taking in some more submissions around how this might work.

What I would urge the Minister and the Labour Party to do is to, perhaps, support this bill through the first reading, come into the Primary Production Committee, come and listen to some of the submissions where people are offering ways of fixing problems, not in a one-size-fits-all way but in a regional way where people can actually get out of bed and look at each—what actually happens is they get out of bed in the morning, they can see their neighbours, they look each other in the eye, and they are just willing to work together. They are not form-fillers. They are not people that are really good at the administrative type of work that they are being asked to do.

I wouldn’t think it would be too much to ask for an industry that has seen this country through all of our COVID lockdowns—thankfully, trade prices have kept up; thankfully, Fonterra and Silver Fern Farms and others have found ways through the shipping constraints to still get our trade out of the country. We do actually appreciate what farmers do when they get out of bed every day to help keep this country going. I think it would be really good if the Minister and others would let this go through to select committee and see if there are some things that we could solve regionally. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. I’m happy to take a call on this, and can I firstly congratulate the member Mark Cameron on having the bill drawn from the ballot—quite a feat to achieve as a new member, I know. I have to say that the member who’s just resumed her seat, Barbara Kuriger, I’ve worked closely with in select committee, and I appreciate her efforts for sure, but, on this, it may come as no surprise that we will have a divergent view than the one that she has expressed. I want to just note that my parliamentary colleague Rachel Brooking, who otherwise would be making comments on this particular bill—and I’ll try and perhaps channel some of her thinking in this particular space, shall we say.

But what I would say is that the Resource Management Act (RMA) has always actually provided for a nationally formed set of rules that, effectively, will provide some environmental standard. This bill as it currently stands doesn’t try to change any of the fundamentals of the RMA. Members opposite, I know, have, alongside me and others, just completed the first phase of a number of days’ worth of submissions, and that’s because the Environment Committee is currently considering an exposure draft which is part of a longer-term form of RMA reform. I think it’s really important that that is considered in the context of what is currently before this Parliament, because it has actually been a really insightful and interesting opportunity to hear from folk right around New Zealand, whether they be from the regions or whether from metro areas or elsewhere. They are certainly feeling free to share with the committee what their views are around that, but what I would say is that this bill as it currently is presented would actually permit a variation in standards across the region, where we’re hearing a desire for regional collaboration in that space. I think there is more thinking to be done in that particular space as well.

In terms of the role of regional councils, the assumption is, I guess, that there is a need for resource consent unless particular activities are largely permitted, either in a plan or, indeed, actually in an environmental standard. Nothing in this bill fundamentally will change that. Actually, instead, what the bill will seek to do is limit what a national environmental standard (NES) actually would do in terms of where it would apply. In fact, it goes further, in that it would, essentially, repeal part of a current NES. So if the rationale actually is to have decision making at a regional level—and I agree that, you know, regionalism and the importance of regional councils and others working together—this bill doesn’t actually provide for that, because there is, as my colleague the Hon David Parker has already indicated, actually a role for national direction.

It’s actually well accepted that there is that role in the Randerson report, which is forming part of this process around RMA reform as well. In this particular case, actually, the NES in question is important to actually go on and address the degradation of waterways, because we all want to have waterways where we can swim, where we can gather, where we can collect kai and have a wonderful time as well. So it will come as no surprise that that’s actually something that the Labour Party has held quite firm to over many years and is on a path to do something about. It is obviously part of the essential freshwater programme as well, and that’s an important piece of work, but so also is that sense of national direction. Whether it is, as Minister Parker has said, in the national policy statement space, in the NES space, or potentially at a localised level through regulations, they are very important.

What I would say is that this bill will allow for an exception to what, I guess, the NES could apply to. It would go on, potentially, to revoke regulations, particularly stock exclusion regulations of 2020, and parts of the NES that would relate to intensive winter grazing but also the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to what would be pastoral land. So in conclusion, I think it is important to acknowledge that farming activity is important, but it can also, at times, have adverse consequences, and therefore appropriate mechanisms, instruments and regulations, need to be put in place, but that they are considered to be fair, that they are considered to be consistent, and that they, at the end of the day, meet a need that is obviously there. So on that basis, I will not be supporting this bill.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. The Green Party is opposing the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill. I’m really puzzled by the contributions I’ve heard from both the ACT member and the National Party, because there is a widespread recognition that the failure to develop national policy and national standards under the Resource Management Act has been a problem. It has resulted in huge costs as regional councils and district councils around the motu seek to develop their own rules that are often challenged; that goes to the Environment Court. So there has been a huge amount of cost and unnecessary bureaucratic enterprise in each council attempting to develop its own rules and regulations and having those contested.

Then what that has led to, with the major intensification in agriculture and the incredible subdivision development on the edge of towns with earthworks and sediment loss from those, is quite significant degradation of our rivers and lakes. And it has been this Government in the last term under Minister Parker which led the work to put in place some certainty, some national regulations to prevent stock getting into waterways, to ensure that there are standards through the National Environmental Standards for Freshwater for sediment, for nitrogen, and the use of synthetic fertiliser.

What this bill will do will put it back to regional councils, to each work on their own, and not to have that efficiency of working nationally to have some consistent and clear standards. This is a very dangerous bill because it really highlights ACT’s attitude to the future of farming—[Interruption]—and the future of the environment, and you can hear the members getting quite excited. ACT goes round the country seeking to present a fresh face, but it does not care about a healthy environment. It does not recognise that a healthy economy and social wellbeing are based on healthy nature. It wants to scrap critical regulation that it has taken 30 years to get through a board of inquiry process, through public consultation, through working closely with the primary sector councils, primary industry organisations like Beef + Lamb, Federated Farmers—and instead it’s tossing that all out.

ACT doesn’t like regulation; we know that. But this is making it very clear that it’s quite happy to have dirty rivers and continued degradation rather than working on a path to clean up those rivers and ensure that our farmers who are working to replant their riparian margins, to protect gullies, to recognise what they can do in catchment groups to restore waterways and are getting on with it, as Minister Parker noted, with a substantial investment of funds from this Government, from this generation, to repair the damage that was done in the past. And as Tangi Utikere noted, on the Environment Committee we have been listening to dozens of submitters who want te taiao properly cared for, who recognise that Papatūānuku is essential to our wellbeing and that we need a new approach.

What does this bill do? It goes backwards. It’s giving the nod to continued degradation and to continued pollution because it will put it back on the regional councils and undermine all of this work that has been done in the national policy statement and the national environmental standards for freshwater to put in place some bottom lines while allowing councils to work with their communities.

So the funding support that this Government is providing to ensure that our rivers are swimmable is work that has been called for by the public for a long time. Yet National and ACT are going backwards. They are showing their contempt for nature, for water quality, for clean rivers, and just putting the load back on regional councils again. So it would be a very dangerous combination of National and ACT in the 2023 election if they got elected that would seek to roll back the regulation that we’ve finally got in place in order to protect water quality.

So this bill is a bad bill because it is a bill for dirty rivers, for increased sediment pollution, increased nitrogen pollution, increased degradation of our aquifers, and it’s not about protecting farming’s long-term future, because farming’s healthy future relies on a healthy environment. Kia ora.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a real pleasure to take a call today. I’d just like to acknowledge Mark Cameron for having his bill pulled from the ballot, and, as a first-term MP, it must feel very good. That’s probably all the compliments I can say in relation to this bill, but congratulations to you.

We have just spent 14 days, or approximately 68 hours, looking at the Natural and Built Environments Act. The Randerson report, which was written last year, has, in fact, outlined a whole series of needs and improvements that we can make. Essentially, what we’re looking at here is a system that recognises and acknowledges that our environment needs to be taken care of.

Now, I looked at this legislation, and I have to be quite honest: I was quite shocked when I read the wording of the section. So I’m just going to read it out for those who are listening at home, in regards to what the bill actually says, because, actually, I don’t believe that New Zealanders want what is in this bill. I think that we, as citizens of this country, all hold very dear the right to swim in our rivers and our lakes, and I think that all of us think that that’s really important. So, as a consequence, I’d just like to read out what this bill actually says, or is asking for. So it’s section 43 of the Resource Management Act that it’s seeking to amend, and it says, “(2A) Despite subsections (1) and (2), regulations made under this section must not prescribe”—must not prescribe—“technical standards, methods, or requirements in respect of the following matters: (a) excluding stock”—so you must not exclude stock—“from water bodies, estuaries, coastal lakes, and lagoons, and the margins of those water bodies, estuaries, coastal lakes, and lagoons”. So to all of that riparian planting that all of our farmers have been doing—all of that good work—this says, “No, don’t do it.” The next thing is “(b) managing the environmental effects of intensive winter grazing”. So it talks about these things and that they need to be regionalised, and that’s the effects of winter grazing. The next is “(c) the application of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser to pastoral land” and “(d) sediment control measures.” And it also just talks about the intensive winter grazing, and the definition of that means “grazing livestock on an annual forage crop during winter.”

I guess the reality is that, fundamentally, we believe in protecting the environment, and I want to really acknowledge our Minister for the Environment, the Hon David Parker, who today spoke very passionately and very clearly about—and, I think, articulated really well—the history of the Resource Management Act and the failure; that we, as a country, have managed basically to degrade our waterways and create an horrific response. I remember, as many of us here, as a child swimming in rivers, drinking from those rivers, and not getting sick. However, that has changed very much now, and it is really unfortunate that we have this wholesale degradation of our environment. I think it is so important that we continue to support the environment, and I think it is incredibly important that we continue to go on this path, with many, many experts and hundreds and hundreds of submitters talking to us in regards to the legislation and saying that, actually, we as a collective need to manage the environment in a better way. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to join with others from across the Chamber who have congratulated Mark Cameron on the bill that he has had drawn from the ballot. That is an achievement, even if it is a lottery achievement. It’s something worth debating. The whole purpose of members’ bills is that an opportunity should be given for members who are not part of the Government executive to bring to this Chamber, bring to the Parliament, their thoughts, ideas, and policy initiatives to change, make better, enhance, and improve the legislative environment within which we all live. That’s what Mark Cameron is attempting to do with this piece of legislation.

I reject utterly the Government’s point of view, backed and supported by their loyal sidekicks the Greens, that they should instantly reject whatever is in this bill simply on the basis that they don’t like it. Now, one of the fundamental principles of our parliamentary democracy is that we should be able to debate and discuss and engage with each other about ideas and principles and philosophies. None, I think, are more important than those that are impacting on our environment, on our beautiful natural environment, because as New Zealanders we are all connected with it and it means so much to us all. I’m one that thinks that issues relating to the environment shouldn’t be relegated to one side or the other of the political spectrum. I think that’s far too important. So I reject utterly the Government’s point of view that they know best and that they are not prepared to engage or listen or interact with anyone who may have the temerity to have an even marginally different, slightly different, view to their own.

One of the things that I found interesting from the speech from the Minister and the speech from the Green member who has now resumed her seat is that one would think that that they have held these positions, particularly around water and water quality, for ever. Actually, no. Labour and the Greens have been late starters, latecomers, to the debate about improving the water quality of New Zealand. I remember, during the nine long years of the Helen Clark Government, not one thing was done—not one initiative, no legislation, no regulation, no improvement at all. Yet the Minister stands in the House today and says these are problems that have emerged over generations, over decades. He was in that Government. He was in that Labour Government of Helen Clark, and he had an opportunity then to do something and he did nothing—he did nothing. Listening to him in the House today, you would think that it had been a lifelong, cherished ambition for him to improve the water quality of New Zealand’s fresh waterways. Sadly, that’s not been the case of history or the record of this Parliament.

It was actually my colleague Dr Nick Smith who introduced the first initiatives, opposed by the Labour Opposition at that stage, opposed by the Greens, who used every possible stunt that they could achieve to block and stop what he was trying to do. They thought that was all wrong, and then suddenly there’s a change of Government and oh, yes, a road to Damascus, a recovery and an aberration, and suddenly it’s all their idea. Well, that’s not what history tells us, because we know on this side of the House that the tradition of Labour parties, not just in New Zealand but around the world—it’s a socialist tradition, actually—is that there are only three policy initiatives that they have when it comes to any matter, whether it’s the environment, fresh water, or anything. Those three policy initiatives are either to ban it, make it compulsory, or tax it—often, a combination of all three.

We think on this side of the House that this is a bill that is not perfect. It has got some issues, it has got some faults. We, for instance, on this side of the House, we do support national direction. We do think that’s important, but we also understand and accept that water quality issues deserve attention catchment by catchment. We accept that. So we think on this side of the House that rather than just simply arrogantly rejecting out of hand this piece of legislation, it should go to a select committee. It should be the subject of submissions presented from people around the countryside, and it should be part of our democracy and it should be something that the Government should at least have the decency to listen to an alternative point of view and hear another thing on. If there’s one thing that this Government has to do, they really must begin to learn that when it comes to things agriculture, when it comes to things farming, they’ve got to learn to deal with farmers rather than dealing to them.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to stand and contribute to this bill, the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill, which is getting people a little bit heated tonight, I’ve got to say.

Look, first of all, congratulations to Mark Cameron, from ACT, for bringing this bill before the House—

Hon Simon Bridges: That must be the first talking point!

David Seymour: It’s bullet point No. 1!

TĀMATI COFFEY: I’ll take a moment of gratitude—that’s for you—and I won’t be distracted by catty little calls from across the Chamber. Thank you for that, Mark.

Can I just, first of all, respond to something that the Opposition person who just sat down before me, Scott Simpson, said. He said Labour were late—late—to improving our waterways, and, you see, some people might buy that because they don’t quite understand the investment that previous Labour Governments have gone and made, and I would say that that member is probably being quite selective about the history of being able to improve our waterways. And I want to take the opportunity to just talk about the commitment that was made under the last Labour Government to clean up the waterways around Rotorua. An announcement was made by the Rt Hon Helen Clark back in 2008 for a restoration plan around the lakes—$144 million was made to improve the water quality of four priority lakes: Lake Rotorua, Lake Rotoiti, Lake Ōkareka, and Lake Rotoehu.

So just that actually completely disproves what the person who sat down just before me, Scott Simpson, said, which was that this side of the House know nothing about the environment, we’re late to the party, we’ve been asleep at the wheel. I absolutely negate that, because actually we’ve been very careful about the environment for a very long time, and long have Labour also had the confidence of Māori too, and I would say that Māori, for a very long time, have wanted to have kaitiakitanga over our waterways and over our water bodies, and, unfortunately, this bill doesn’t quite cut the mustard when it comes to making sure that, especially from my point of view, the rights of Māori are looked after in this as well.

We have had many submissions to the Environment Committee talking about reform of the resource management system. There are a lot of people that want to be involved in the planning and the organisation—at a local level, granted; at a local level—of our environment. And, to those people who put in their submissions over the 15 days that we were sitting, I thank them for it. But what they said was, especially our Māori communities, “We want a say. We want a local say. We’re OK with setting national direction. We’re OK with also regional plans as well.” And I get what this is trying to achieve, but, as far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t quite get there. There is a lot of reform going on. I heard the previous member when he said that actually we should be still sending it to select committee, but I would say to that that there is a large body of work going on across all of our select committees across Parliament. In fact, we’ve been criticised by the Opposition for having too much on, and here he goes wanting to lump some more work on us. But, actually, this is a piece of work that I again thank the member for bringing forward but it’s not going to get support from me, from this side of the House.

What I look forward to is actually a continuation of the really, really good work that we are doing in the Environment Committee, specifically around looking after our environment. Te mana o te Wai, Te Oranga o te Taiao—these are all concepts that we are grappling with in our committee, and this is a lightly once over, this bill here. What I want is a good and robust debate, a good robust piece of legislation, where we can actually talk about all of those issues that have been brought forward by the various submissions, in terms of looking forward to the next 25, 30 years of New Zealand’s planning system. This doesn’t do it for me. The reform that we’re currently embarking on—that we will see to fruition—will be a large part of that, and the legislation that we eventually put through will be informed by all of those people who have come forward and raised their concerns, not just about one little slice of the pie but actually about how the whole of the environment works together, how Māori can participate in co-governance structures—as we should, as defined by Te Tiriti; as the Crown should be a good Crown Treaty partner—and that’s what I’m looking forward to. Unfortunately, I won’t be supporting this bill.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. And, again, congratulations to Mark Cameron—so early in your political career to get a member’s bill drawn out, well done. This is an easy bill for us to support to select committee stage, and what a wonderful opportunity it would be for the other side of the House to hear from some farmers and to try and work in partnership with those farmers. And on a cold, wet, miserable day in Wellington, I’d like to acknowledge our farmers and people right across the land that are working on the land. We’ve had a cold, wet spring in Southland. I want to acknowledge all our farmers and farm workers that have been out calving and lambing and worrying about how much feed they have, and I acknowledge how stressful that is for them—pity we couldn’t take some of the hot air from this Chamber down there sometimes!

New Zealand farmers are among the most efficient and capable farmers in the world. There are 350,000 people in this country employed in the primary sector. We feed 40 million people across the world, and 80 percent of New Zealand’s total export revenue comes from our primary sector. This is a big deal and, when the Government starts messing with it, they better think of the consequences.

If you took a world view, you would say the more food that New Zealand grows the better for the world. Our farmers are more efficient and create less carbon emissions than anywhere else in the world. But this Government has developed an astonishingly negative narrative around farming. We heard it from one of the members from across the House before; about a wholesale degradation of the environment in New Zealand. Do you honestly think, when people fly into New Zealand—and, granted, they haven’t been able to for a long time—they look out the plane window and say, “Oh my goodness, what a wholesale degradation of that environment in New Zealand.”? What a load of rubbish. Do you honestly think that having campaigned all through an election campaign on dirty dairying, farmers are going to want to rush out in partnership with you when you try and bring in regulations? Do you think that when you put up the most ridiculous slope maps or winter crop sowing dates that just don’t make sense, farmers are going to want to work in collaboration? The fundamentals of the change process is you take people with you.

Now, we heard that somehow everything had been going wrong until this Government and the previous Government came in and started to save the world, or save New Zealand, anyway. Well, I hate to break it to you, but people like Bryce McKenzie and Laurie Paterson in Groundswell were looking after the Pomahaka catchment group before you even knew there was such a river.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to interrupt the member and just—less use of the word “you” in the wrong—

PENNY SIMMONDS: Quite right, Mr Speaker, I take that absolutely on board.

Farmers were fencing waterways long before this Government thought that it was a great idea to do, and that’s because, first and foremost, farmers are conservationists. They know they want the land to be kept in a good condition. They know they want their stock looked after well. The reason why a group like Groundswell has come about is because this Government has been putting in place an avalanche of regulations that the farming community cannot deal with all at once and that doesn’t even make sense for them to deal with. So it would make much more sense to allow this bill to go to the select committee and work collaboratively with the rural sector to come up with solutions that will genuinely make a difference, because farmers know those solutions much, much better than people in Wellington do. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. First of all, like most people in this House, I congratulate the member for his bill being drawn. Again, it is the luck of the draw, but as a first-term MP, I acknowledge that, and that’s probably where I’m going to stop my acknowledgments.

Now, I’m not going to stand here as a previous tax lawyer and proclaim to be a farming expert. I’m not going to proclaim to be a grazing expert or an expert on the Resource Management Act (RMA). That’s not my style, as some would yell out across from the hall. But the thing is, though, probably an area which I have some sort of grasp of is children. My children hail from Northland, not far from where the member is domiciled and resident, I understand, for about 30 years. It is the winterless north; I absolutely agree with that claim. But one of my children’s favourite activities to do is in an area, a valley called Kāretu Valley. It’s about 15 minutes away from Kawakawa; it is right next to Waikare. From the Russell Forest there, the water flows into Kāretu River. It is one of my children’s absolute favourite pastimes to be able to go up in the summer and to be able to be where their family is from, their tangata whenua, and to be able to swim in that river. The problem has been, though, that children across the country can’t do that in their local rivers. We look at Kaitoke Regional Park, which is not far from here in Wellington. You’ve got to be able to check every time before you go for a swim there what the levels are, and that’s why there’s been a lot of investment in monitoring of our local waterways.

As a Government, we’re already working to ensure New Zealand’s resource management system is fit for the future and performing properly for our natural and urban environments. This is not just about farming; this is about all our environment right across the country. As part of that, in our first term, we undertook a review by Justice Randerson, and that report recommended that the RMA be replaced and be replaced by two particular bills. I just want to quote something from that report, because it’s incredibly important and because that review took through a number of submissions. So that was quite early on, that was in our first term. In that report it quoted: “New Zealand’s natural environment is under significant pressure: the way we use land and water has proved to be unsustainable for the natural environment. The quality of our freshwater, coastal and marine environments is in serious decline, and biodiversity is under significant threat.”

Now, the Minister earlier today talked about how since the 1990s, waterways—

Mark Cameron: When are you going to address the bill?

BARBARA EDMONDS: —were much more cleaner. But now we’ve got to a position of 30 years later and the majority of the places we monitor are no longer swimmable. And to address the member’s question: have I actually read the bill? Yes, I have read the bill, and my problem with the bill as it sits on the Table is that it’s piecemeal. The fundamental issues that you are trying to resolve with it are not done with this bill, which is why this Government committed to a review of the RMA. That’s why this side of the House committed to an exposure draft that has sought thousands of submissions. I acknowledge the comments by my colleague Tangi Utikere, the member for Palmerston North, who said they’ve had hundreds of submissions at the Environment Committee for it. So, again, I go back to the bill being piecemeal. If you fundamentally want to be able to give regional councils greater authority to be able to make those decisions around the standards—

Mark Cameron: You centrally plan and take it away from them. That’s right.

BARBARA EDMONDS: Well, first of all, have you read the RMA? Because, actually, the RMA allows all that currently. Section 44 means that the Minister, in order to recommend to the Governor-General to make these national environmental standards, has to actually have an evaluation report around those standards. What does that include? That includes advice—advice from regional councils, advice from local councils, advice from the community, but it also includes advice from iwi. So I have read the RMA. I have read that particular section, which your proposed bill tries to change. And again, it’s piecemeal. It makes it totally inconsistent with the current framework that we have, which is why this side of the House has gone for a much more significant, fundamental change of changing the RMA, and that’s why we’ve gone through the exposure draft process.

So I want to go back to my initial comments: I want my children to be able to go back up to Northland to swim. We might even come by your farm if you can show us what exactly you are talking about around this riparian planting, etc., but as a Government, we’re already working to ensure that New Zealand’s resource management system is fit for the future. This bill is piecemeal. It’s inconsistent, and that’s why we’re making bigger reforms.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Look, I just want to thank the various members for their concerns and various contributions. I noted that the Minister, the Hon David Parker, that spoke directly after me didn’t seem to actually address the bill at all and actually just spoke about the history of the quality of New Zealand water, the fresh water that we’re all concerned about and totally support.

This bill speaks quite specifically to regional nuances that have totally been overlooked by the centrist sort of Government overlay. I think, more sadly, I note that the Green member has this perpetual animus to the rural sector, and basically said farmers are the reason that environments across New Zealand have degraded to the level they have. Well, I totally repudiate that statement.

Firstly, the ACT Party, along with rural communities and aforementioned stakeholders, request that the Government give this bill the consideration and opportunity for scrutiny at select committee that the process deserves. All across regional New Zealand it has been widely acknowledged that the often well-intentioned central government planning model frequently fails. We see it time and again—the desired outcomes routinely failing. So many regions have established regionally indicative farm water fresh plans, environmental plans, put in place mitigations to protect against sediment loss. In many instances these farms’ plans have been developed over decades, taking all considerations into account, and are continually being improved and upgraded.

All regional specificity is given to consideration to mitigate the environmental impacts whilst undertaking respective local farming practices. Such undertakings taken by the likes of Pomahaka Water Care and Environment Canterbury, affectionately known as ECan, along with the likes of Hurunui trust, all the wonderful work they’re doing is totally obfuscated. They preserve both the environment and the area in which they live and farm. These endeavours are locally undertaken, they acknowledge regional nuances, giving consideration to such things as native plantings, freshwater preservation, understanding sedimentation loss and methodologies for certain things, as the member from the National Party mentioned, winter cropping and how to mitigate those environmental effects. These are regional endeavours that are mirrored up and down rural New Zealand. That’s why this bill is a better way to proceed.

It will put pause on national planning standards over regional specificity and give that oversight back to councils. It will give farmers and industry certainty as it is they who best understand how to effect the changes and create the desired outcomes, to preserve the environment whilst equally supporting the productive primary sector that routinely we hear the Minister of Finance laud and applaud. Most importantly, it will give some sense of direction to those that live in their rural communities on how to operate in their rural communities, and some sense of fairness in what seems to be an ever increasing unfair world. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Resource Management (Regional Responsibility for Certain Agricultural Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 77

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

Motion not agreed to.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, it’s come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. I will return at 7 p.m.

Sitting suspended from 6.01 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

Bills

Autonomous Sanctions Bill

First Reading

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I move, That the Autonomous Sanctions Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee to consider the bill.

This bill establishes a framework for the implementation of autonomous sanctions by New Zealand, to further its aims of enhancing New Zealand’s diplomatic capabilities and to enhance the concept of our independent foreign policy. This is a bill that once, if it were to be, an Act, would provide a significant extra tool in the tool kit of diplomacy.

New Zealand takes great pride in our independent foreign policy stance. We’ve shown it on numerous occasions. And while that independence means that we choose our friends and support a rules-based international order, we do so autonomously. We are among the first and founding members of the United Nations. There have been many, many positives come out of that organisation. But when it comes to expressions of disapproval of rule breakers, of human rights abusers, of those who perpetrate acts of aggression or conquest of others, the United Nations falls well short of what might reasonably be expected.

New Zealand relies heavily on the United Nations’ sanction process. That process can impose sanctions on countries through the Security Council. The process, which is the only mechanism through which the United Nations can make legally binding resolutions—and, therefore, New Zealand—is subject to veto power by the permanent five members: the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China. This undermines, in my opinion, its effectiveness, and I’ll talk more about that, immediately.

It often means that meaningful action against perpetrators of a break up of rules, of international bad behaviour, go unpunished. So if we look, for a start, at the Ukraine: following the 2014 cessation of Crimea to Russia, Russia vetoed attempts by the United Nations to declare that cessation illegal. So there was no commentary about that, and no consequence for that particular action. The resolution would have simply affirmed Ukraine’s sovereignty, its independence, its unity, and its territorial integrity. Has New Zealand ever affirmed that on its own? Not to my knowledge.

Then look at Syria. Since 2011, Russia has vetoed over 16 Security Council resolutions on the Syrian civil war and the humanitarian crisis that all too many of us have seen on the television sets, and all to protect Russia’s ally, President al-Assad’s Government. The resolutions were aimed at ending the civil war, providing diplomatic and humanitarian assistance to those who were most adversely affected by that conflict. We had nothing particular to say about that.

Then there’s Israel. Since 1972, the United States has blocked over 53 Security Council resolutions designed to get a greater degree of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. And more recently, there is Cambodia. What has ever been done for the total takeover of that country by its military?

And then, of course, the one that no one likes to talk about, and that I think the Government is most concerned about, is the situation in Xinjiang, in China. China refused to enter into talks on even the drafting of a Security Council resolution that called into question abuses against Uighur people.

In all these circumstances, it’s the citizens of the country in question that suffer from the United Nations’ inaction, and the political motivations of the permanent members will leave that always to be the case. When an autonomous sanctions regime is in place, action can be taken to assist in alleviating civilian suffering without the hamper of the interests of the five permanent members getting in the road.

So what are some examples of that? I’ll come to those in a minute. But, firstly, let me just say that if a country can’t sanction another country, then surely it can bring down some autonomous sanctions against individuals, against regimes, or against entities, where their assets might be frozen, their services dispensed with, their ability to enter this country denied, any interaction with them by citizens of this country also put into the “can’t do” list. And these are circumstances where it may be that the Minister of Foreign Affairs decides that there is a threat to the stability of the Indo-Pacific area and that there is a necessity for us to make a very tangible statement and action and bring down sanctions against some particular individual.

In recent times, the countries that do have an autonomous sanctions regime, often referred to as the Magnitsky regulation or law, can bring down sanctions. The United States, for example, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada impose some sanctions on actors alleged to be involved in human rights abuses in Xinjiang, China. The United Kingdom, in April 2021—that’s this year—sanctioned 14 Russian nationals accused of conspiring in a $230 million corruption scheme, as part of the Government’s anti - global corruption sanctions—regulations created under the UK’s version of autonomous sanctions. The United States, in June of this year, sanctioned three Bulgarian individuals and 64 countries over their involvement in facilitation of Russian interference in the Bulgarian Government. The United States, in July this year, sanctioned 22 Myanmar nationals, including Ministers, for their involvement in the country’s February military coup and anti-democratic attacks.

These are examples of what an autonomous sanctions bill can do. I said before that it’s known throughout the world as Magnitsky-type legislation. There is a great book out called Red Notice, and if anyone has an interest in how regimes that are totalitarian can operate and how much they can see lawlessness go under the radar, it’s worth a read. It’s written by a gentleman called Bill Browder. Bill Browder has been a tireless campaigner for Magnitsky-type legislation, because of the circumstances that he was put in. His Russian lawyer was a gentleman called Sergei Magnitsky. Well, Bill Browder was allowed to leave the country; Sergei was not. And, for various reasons, bad operators, bad actors, you might say, tortured Sergei Magnitsky and, ultimately, murdered him. Bill Browder went to legislators in the United States and said, “We’ve got to do something about these people. They’re thieves, they’re murderers, and they use the international system to protect their ill-gotten gains and to avoid accountability for their crimes.” And so the United States adopted Magnitsky legislation, named after Sergei because of the life that he lost.

That legislation has been replicated by Governments of a similar type to New Zealand—Governments and countries that value freedom, Governments and countries that don’t like the idea that lawless people can go about their activities without any account. And so this bill that I’m bringing to the House tonight would enable New Zealand to bring in a similar type of legislation.

If anyone does need any convincing about exactly what drove this legislation and what drives the desire to have it throughout the world, can I recommend you go to a wonderful podcast called The Backroom of Politics, by Gerry Brownlee. In it—

Hon Members: Ha, ha!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well, you’ve got to take your advertising chances. But in it there is a there is a great podcast—Minister Mahuta, you’d love it—with Bill Browder in which he outlines the dreadful situation that’s motivated him to put so much of his life into this type of legislation.

So can I conclude by saying that this is a bill that would give life to the independent foreign policy stance long claimed by New Zealand. It is an essential but simple tool in the toolbox of democracy, and I commend it to the House and do hope that the Government is not too frightened to vote for it.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Foreign Affairs): That podcast may be well worth a listen! I want to welcome the opportunity to speak on the Autonomous Sanctions Bill. While Labour won’t be supporting this bill to progress, it is important to set out our approach that we are taking and some of the shortcomings that we do see in the bill, with all respect to the sponsoring member, the Hon Gerry Brownlee.

New Zealand articulates its independent values-based foreign policy with a focus on human rights; an open and transparent democracy; upholding international rules and norms; a commitment to multilateralism; and promoting regional peace, prosperity, and stability. The world we are living in is very different, and when I consider that the genesis of this bill dates back, probably, to about 2012, so much has happened: a global pandemic, increased competition for scarce natural resources, the impact of climate change, armed conflict, economic coercion, and geostrategic positioning in our region that has caused us to reflect on the role that we might play at this time. Against this backdrop, we need to consider the place for foreign policy and diplomacy and the need for strong domestic legislation to platform what we value, who we are, and what we stand for.

I’ve said previously that the autonomous sanctions regime is a suite of tools that are used as a measure of last resort when diplomatic sanctions and diplomacy simply have not worked to the degree necessary. They are often characterised as a stronger set of measures that have economic and trade consequences. In the New Zealand context, we need to consider this element of how a sanctions regime might impact on our economy and exporting community.

We also need to consider the context of our values-based approach to foreign policy and to work collectively in the pursuit of our core interests, which include an international rules-based order which gives all countries a voice and provides frameworks that promote stability; keeping New Zealanders safe by promoting regional stability; international conditions and connections that aid our prosperity, including supply chain resilience; and global action on sustainability issues such as climate change. Aotearoa’s record on the world stage shows we are most effective when we take this approach internationally. We exhaust our diplomatic tool kit to influence and lead change. We build and strengthen our relationships that are with an independent foreign policy perspective that promotes strong relationships and acknowledges the mana of all countries. This is what we must bear in mind when considering this particular bill.

This bill was first drafted back in 2012, and while the bill has not changed too much, the international environment has. The challenges confronting us have become increasingly more complex: COVID has highlighted the impact of growing inequality; competition for scarce resources; climate change impacts; geostrategic competition; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; terrorism; human rights abuses; and the list goes on. This also reinforces the enduring importance of New Zealand’s belief in the use of multilateral avenues to be able to influence change and, over time, the international rules and norms that should be contextualised for the challenges that we are facing today. We do so because our voice is greater when we speak together with other like-minded States and because a rules-based order protects the rights and interests of smaller States.

I welcome the debate on autonomous sanctions. This is the first opportunity we have had to do so. We need to consider what is in New Zealand’s best interest. This Government is looking at how to provide greater support for human rights around the world. Since coming into Government, we have made progress on a number of fronts to strengthen our domestic legislative context, including taking action to tackle modern slavery with an all-of-Government action plan and a pre-election commitment to explore implementation of modern slavery legislation; progressing our counter-terrorism laws to protect New Zealanders and make us safer while bringing us into line with other countries; reviewing our export control regime to ensure it is fit for purpose and meets the values of this Government and our country; strengthening our maritime laws to prevent serious criminal offending and transnational organised crime. We also have our existing tool kit, including options like travel bans, redirecting aid, the Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Act, diplomatic representations, recourse through multilateral institutions, and the international rules and norms that we’ve so often spoken about in this House.

We are looking at the best way to utilise our tool kit and the options within. We need to understand what we have in our tool kit for responding internationally, not stand up a regime that is not fit for purpose. An autonomous sanctions regime would be an option of last resort and something to be used only after this full range of other options had been exhausted. It cannot be seen as a way of avoiding or an effective substitute for multilateral action; indeed, it should not be called upon by outsiders beyond New Zealand to strong arm our own interests.

I believe that the bill as it stands is unfit for purpose beyond what could be rectified through its continued consideration beyond first reading. Firstly, the bill fails to take into account the importance of any autonomous sanctions regime implemented today, facing the upholding of human rights at its centre; although much has been spoken about it in the introduction of the bill. In the case of this bill, human rights issues are not considered at all, in contrast with Australia’s recent consideration of how human rights could fit within its own autonomous sanctions regime. In addition to this, the bill’s focus on the Asia-Pacific region is likely too narrow. The effect of these oversights is that sanctions could not be levelled to respond to severe human rights abuses if they did not constitute a threat to peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region. The bill also fails to cover some emerging risks, such as threats to cyber-security. These omissions highlight the importance of taking the time to get this issue right, also to discuss with the public what the impact of an autonomous sanction regime would have.

As mentioned earlier, as part of a values-based approach to foreign policy, it is incumbent on the Government to consider what more it can do to support the upholding of human rights around the world. This work will include what role an autonomous sanctions regime could play within this framework. So I’m not ruling it out; it is just that the bill falls short of expectations on that front. I look forward to having more of a say on this as we continue the Government’s process. However, we continue to favour multilateral collaboration and adherence to well-established rules and norms, whether this be in an economic, health, or humanitarian context; hence the particular need for security when a framework of unilateral action is proposed.

Again, while much of Mr Brownlee’s submission to propose this particular bill focuses on human rights, that premise is not as clearly stated at the heart and purpose of this particular bill. The bill falls short and fails to stand up to that level of scrutiny, and is why we won’t be supporting it to first reading.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. First of all, I rise to acknowledge, I believe, one of the participants of the aforementioned podcast, Golriz Ghahraman, who, along with Auckland-based MPs, are doing their bit to keep us safe in level 3 up in Auckland. So I’m subbing in, coming off the bench, so to speak—just like Sonny Bill Williams, except I’m slower, shorter, and have no athletic ability at all. But, nevertheless, I was excited, initially, to pick up this bill: I thought it said the “Autonomous Sanctuaries Bill”, and I thought, “Well, that’s very anarcho-syndicalist.” It gave me nostalgia for the Paris Commune of 1871. But I am still learning to get the glasses-and-face-mask combo happening and so the glasses were a bit fogged up and, actually, it was the Autonomous Sanctions Bill.

This bill seeks to introduce a legal framework in New Zealand for the direct imposition of autonomous sanctions on foreign individuals, entities, assets, and services, which creates a way for New Zealand to impose sanctions against others without action from the United Nations Security Council. We live in a world where we need more collaboration and more cooperation from the issues of climate change, biodiversity loss, solving the questions of world poverty and war and conflict resolution, and how that is increasingly connected to the obscene accumulation of capital. For every occasion there is a meme, and as I was reading through this bill, one passed my horizon, and that meme went: “If you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”—if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. So, yes, we need to go fast, but with the plethora of so many issues, we need to go far and we need to arrive together. Me is a name I call myself, but far is a long, long way to run.

Unilateral actions undermine the global rule of law. Autonomous sanctions apparently seek to remedy deadlocks in the Security Council sanction regime by setting a precedent, with each country going off and applying sanctions by their own standards and political context. This would undermine both international law and cooperation at the global level. The bill makes an approach that is counter to standing up for fair, cooperative, transparent reform of international institutions based on the rule of law. Instead, it encourages a global landscape where each nation acts alone to exert its own political and moral interests.

The bill also misses the point that the Security Council is not the only way for Aotearoa New Zealand to contribute to a global rules-based order of sanctions. For example, many sanctions go through the UN General Assembly by consensus of States working together or regional bodies that bring together closely linked neighbour States based on existing sanctions law. Allowing the application of unilateral sanctions will still protect the powerful global actors, and while the bill may appear to be about applying international human rights and humanitarian law without the impediment of the political antics of the Security Council, it creates further risk of politicisation of sanctions rather than fairness and equity.

We know that sanctions are only likely to be applied against nations of the Global South, so the power structures of the Security Council are likely to be replicated there, with the US and China, as well as the nations they seek to protect, remaining exempt. This bill will demonstrate, unfortunately, an unwillingness to engage meaningfully in reforming those power dynamics within legitimate international institutions. We should instead play a role creating a connected and compassionate world where the global community works together to address issues including climate change, human rights, and public health by upholding the international rule of law and promoting peace and shared responsibility.

The world is going through a period of instability with the impacts of climate change, COVID-19, war, international inequality, mass displacement, pollution and biodiversity loss, among the many challenges. Lack of political resolve to combat these challenges leads to poor outcomes for people and the planet. The lack of resolve can only be countered with the politics of cooperation and collaboration. We need to position ourselves to take on an independent and principled position on global affairs by addressing current and historic global injustices, strengthening international law, and championing disarmament. We need to support a world that provides international mediation and conflict resolution and be grounded in principles of environmental protection and restoration equity, human rights, shared responsibility, and non-violence. So we will not be supporting this bill, unfortunately. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

IBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. New Zealand is an independent nation with an independent values-based foreign policy which speaks volumes about what we stand for, what we care for, and why we want to work in our region, how we want to work in our region and beyond on issues that matter to us and to our like-minded partners.

The world is evolving, the world is changing, and we are facing considerable challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemics, geopolitical crises that are constantly shifting, and climate change, and the list goes on. To let our values-based policy go at this critical time is unwise. In fact, if we have to stick to it—this is the time to basically not to let it go but stick to it.

Since coming into Government, as the Hon Nanaia Mahuta said, we have addressed a lot of issues. One of those issues is modern slavery and counter-terrorism. We just had a bill a couple of days ago—in fact, yesterday—money-laundering, which is a big issue for all of us, and the Government has proudly dealt with this issue. So this is not the time to walk away from the way that we work traditionally and adopt a new system.

This bill disregards the human rights issue, even though the member has intended for this bill to address the human rights issue by imposing sanctions to international entities. We have seen this policy constantly causing issues and in fact, causing crisis. The United States and some other superpowers acted like an international police and it didn’t work. That is not what New Zealand stands for. It’s not like us and we don’t need it.

If we wanted to deal with international issues and the crisis, we’ve got our own tools, our diplomacy, which is effective. We have seen it in Afghanistan lately. When the crisis unfolded, we responded and things worked quite well, and our relationship with multilateral organisations works quite well. The United Nations, the Security Council, the International Criminal Court—these all work for us quite well so we don’t need this approach.

Countries that have adopted this bill, like Australia, have disregarded human rights. Then they realised that they made a mistake and now they are considering their ways, and they are working to adopt human rights back into it. This bill doesn’t include that.

To me, it’s quite simple why we oppose this bill. We oppose it because it disregards human rights abuse. It disregards and disrespects the multilateral organisations that we have a very good relationship with. It disregards our longstanding values-based approach on international politics. This bill does not provide for sanctions with respect to emerging areas of security risk such as cyber-security. This bill simply is not fit for purpose. In fact, it diminishes New Zealand’s place globally. Therefore, we cannot support this bill. On that note, I will just end it there and, because of the things that I have mentioned above, we don’t support this bill. Thank you.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the Autonomous Sanctions Bill and to support it at its first reading.

The ACT Party believes that our foreign policy should be to uphold the safety of all New Zealand citizens, but also to reflect our interests and our values. The ACT Party believes that the values of human rights, individual freedoms, and democratic liberties are of utmost importance. We take a lot of our liberties for granted, things like women’s rights, even being able to stand here in this Chamber; freedom of association, joining clubs and groups; being able to speak freely what is on our mind; and, importantly, to have freedom of religion, as well.

But we also recognise that we are a small trading nation, and for a lot of other countries, they don’t necessarily think of us as a big player, so it’s important for us to be part of a rules-based order. In order for us to maintain peace and security we need to work with other countries around the world to maintain rules that are fair and equal and provide peace and stability, not only for our country and our region but for the world. We do this mainly through diplomatic ties and advocating our values through those means, but also through trade liberalisation and signing free-trade agreements. We also do so through defence which, I note, is severely lacking when we’re not actually part of a new agreement with some of our strongest allies. But, mainly, we do this through the UN.

The Security Council has five main players, and, unfortunately, while it has been used in the past to maintain peace and security, we also note that, in some instances, the big players don’t seem to uphold peace and security within their own countries. Through veto powers, things don’t go as they should to have sanctions be put in place.

Now, the ACT Party is very proud that we brought a motion to Parliament earlier this year to condemn the severe human rights abuses that have occurred in the Xinjiang region of China against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities. But we also note that there was a gutless move from the Government to water down our motion, and I note, the Minister’s comments here today also sound gutless, talking about the fact that this bill doesn’t go far enough talking about human rights. Well, that’s absolutely obscene. If she has a problem with the bill, that is why you send it to select committee; if it doesn’t go far enough, send it to the select committee. Don’t go opposing this bill just because you might be scared.

We need to have a framework that sits outside what is the way that we sanction through the UN, and that is what this bill seeks to do. It puts in place a framework for us to do what is called an autonomous sanction, and I think that is really important, especially as we see today issues in Newsroom being announced about foreign interference in New Zealand’s media. It is time that New Zealand decided it was a sovereign nation. We shouldn’t shy away from the big problems; they will always be there, but we need new ways of upholding peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Thank you. I rise to take a call on the Autonomous Sanctions Bill. Can I firstly congratulate the member. It seems to be today that it’s customary to acknowledge members who’ve had their bill drawn from the ballot, whether you’ve been here for a short time or something longer—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Leave it—just give me your vote.

TANGI UTIKERE: —but I’ll acknowledge that it’s been drawn, none the less, to the member Mr Brownlee. What I would say is that Minister Mahuta has outlined a good position, and I intend to come back to that, but fundamentally this is an issue that is at the heart of our country’s foreign policy arrangements. And just in reflection on the comments and contributions from the ACT member who has just resumed her seat, Brooke van Velden, this is not a situation of being scared. It’s about what’s the right thing to do in a context that is always evolving.

The context really is around whether or not it’s appropriate to step outside or back from what are the current arrangements that are in place, and I guess it’s important, then, to take a look at what that current framework looks like. Fundamentally, it’s one that is significantly based on a United Nations one, and, actually, it reminds me of my days as a teacher. Perhaps, Mr Brownlee, as a former teacher, you’ll indulge me just a moment. I know that Mr—

Hon Stuart Nash: He was a woodwork teacher.

TANGI UTIKERE: Well, a teacher none the less—practical in nature, I guess, Mr Nash, and I know that Mr Tuiono always enjoys a commentary of history from me from time to time, as well. But it takes me back to where the option of choice was one of New Zealand’s search for security, 1945 through to 1985. A key part of that unit of work is really around the longstanding nature of New Zealand’s ties with the United Nations.

Members already this evening have commented on the different organs, whether it is around the Security Council, whether it’s the International Court of Justice, whether it’s around other UN roles in the Human Rights Council or the like. We have historically had a really strong connection to that organ. Actually, the member himself referred to us as a founding member. That indicates the strength there. And I guess it’s really that strength of connection that forces us to think about what actually would permit us to step outside of that current arrangement. I guess we could, but the question is, undoubtedly, should we, and, if so, what for?

The bill clearly has a focus on the Asia-Pacific region, and that is something that is important to all New Zealanders. The focus on Asia—the focus, for me, particularly on the Pacific region—is significant, and historically, we have had arrangements—whether it be a treaty of friendship with our Pacific neighbour, whether it’s around, you know, self-governing and free association, there are still options there, as well. What this bill seeks to do is indicate some amendments to the United Nations Act of 1946. Now, that is a significant piece of legislation in time. I’m not suggesting that we should not seek to amend legislation that is historical, but what I am suggesting is that there needs to be a really good reason as to why we would seek to do that.

I want to reflect on the contribution of my colleague Ibrahim Omer, because he makes a good point, actually: the fact that other countries that have explored this as an option or an approach have found somewhat the situation that there are some failures with it. As my colleague the Hon Nanaia Mahuta indicated, it’s about considering time and place, and also what the current context is all about. And so I do want to reflect on her comments, because it is about considerations in developing and maintaining an independent sense of a foreign policy outlook and what that looks like. This evening she talked about, as a nation, our focus, and as a Government, our focus on behalf of the people of New Zealand is on supporting that international rules-based order that gives all countries a voice—all countries, including ours.

And within that, we have a role to play. It’s around ensuring that there is stability, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, but beyond, as well, and, again, we have a role to play in that. It is, as she has said, about the safety of New Zealanders and what that looks like in an ever-changing context, currently and into the future. And, of course, it is about sustainability and the real pressures around climate change. So, as a country, New Zealand does exhaust our diplomatic tools in our tool kit, and at this stage, the view of members on this side of the House is that it’s not one to progress the member’s bill. And so on that basis, I won’t be supportive of it.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise today to take a call on the Autonomous Sanctions Bill before the House today. I want to start by acknowledging Mr Brownlee and for his bill, you know, being chosen from the ballot. I guess the most significant contribution from Mr Brownlee today was the conversation around his podcast, which I noticed is not in the top 100 political podcasts of New Zealand, but I have subscribed to it now.

Mr Brownlee, your bill proposes to establish a framework for implementation of international sanctions by New Zealand outside of the United Nations Security Council Chapter 7 framework. It is important to note, however, that—Mr Brownlee—it is wrong to assert that without this bill, New Zealand has absolutely no international control. Governments do have a significant area of tools that they can use to respond to security and human rights abuses, including diplomatic relations, statements, travel bans, as well as export controls and restrictions. But I do note that this Government and our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, continue to work in this space as they consider what more they can do to support human rights around the world. Part of that work, as I understand, is to consider what role an autonomous sanction bill like this could play. But to me, there are three key differences or issues currently proposed by your bill. These three issues include a lack of in-depth consideration of human rights issues, a lack of consideration of emerging risks, and, more importantly, a lack of playing as a team member with other members of the United Nations.

Mr Brownlee, you gave some really good examples of human rights abuses across the world. You talked about Syria. You talked about Russia. Yet your well-meaning bill fails to mention any human rights in clause 8 of the bill, which lays out a threshold for implementing sanctions that you propose. Not only that, the human rights are considered nowhere else in this whole bill. The bill also does not provide for sanctions with respect to the emerging areas of security risk. We have recently seen, in the past few months, many cyber-attacks on some of our very important institutions in this country. This includes the NZX, the ANZ Bank, and, in my case, even our local Waikato Hospital in Hamilton. It is important that we consider these emerging risks when we are proposing a significant bill like this.

In addition to this, as a lot of my colleagues have mentioned, the problem here is that we are a member of the international community. It is important that we take into consideration our already existing diplomatic relationship within the framework of the United Nations, because to go outside it means many more countries will move away from this, and then you get to a point where nobody is following a consistent rule of law. I understand that Australia has a bill like this already in place, but it has the same issues that your bill faces. The main one it includes is around the human rights violation, which it doesn’t cover, but also some of the new security risks that I’ve mentioned, like the cyber-security issue. At the moment, the Australian Government is looking at amending their bill significantly to address these issues.

In the current form that your bill has been proposed to the House it would need to go through a significant amendment process in going through a select committee stage, which would mean that the final bill would look very different from what you are proposing. Looking at all of that, it makes more sense to restart a new bill, if you want to, which will address some of these important issues. Because if you’re talking about human rights issues in Syria, if you’re talking about human rights issues in Russia, if you’re talking about human rights issues in China, then you do need to address this in your bill. As I said, the clause 8, which specifically mentions the sanctions and the conditions required for it, doesn’t talk about human rights at all, and without it, the bill just completely fails.

So I would urge the member to consider some of these important things because of which he has obviously brought the bill to the House, including things like cyber-security, as I said, because that is the future of risk that we are talking about, which many of us will face from time to time. So I oppose the bill, just like many other members of the House, in moving forward. Thank you.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): It’s a privilege to rise tonight in the House as the National Party’s associate spokesperson for defence and the member of Parliament for Southland to speak in support of the Hon Gerry Brownlee’s Autonomous Sanctions Bill. I congratulate the member for bringing this bill before the House.

There is no escaping the reality that we live in a complex geopolitical environment. It is imperative for us in this country to manage our economic and security interests in that increasingly complex environment. This bill aims to further enhance New Zealand’s diplomatic capabilities and our independent foreign policy, which the Government has very recently spoken about, by establishing a framework for the implementation of autonomous sanctions in New Zealand.

In recent days, we’ve heard a lot about New Zealand’s independent foreign policy, including from the Prime Minister, particularly in relation to our effective exclusion from the AUKUS trilateral security partnership. However, it is difficult to say that New Zealand has an independent foreign policy when we have extremely limited options in respect of placing sanctions on individuals who might be operating contrary to the best interests of this country. Currently, New Zealand must rely on the United Nations’ sanctions process, which imposes sanctions on countries through the Security Council. However, the UN, despite its strengths as a multilateral system, has some weaknesses in that it is reliant on the five permanent councils of the UN Security Council who can, and often do, exercise their veto power, and, in fact, often matters are not brought before the council because of those veto powers.

So our long history of independent foreign policy is, in effect, hampered by those veto powers. Of course, we would be very cautious in using these matters, taking care to consider the geopolitical scenario, and would only use them in extremely limited circumstances. But it’s important that we do have that tool available to us. Our Government should have the ability to make choices to sanction individuals in circumstances which are contrary to the best interests of our country and against our values and our system of Government, while minimising the consequential effect on the wider population. It is recognised that, in many cases, the practical impact of sanctions imposed by New Zealand would be limited by our comparatively small size and our geographic isolation, and the recognition of the fact that we are a small trading nation who is reliant on trade with many countries around the world.

Nevertheless, it is important that New Zealand can demonstrate its commitment to matters that are of concern to our people and our values. It’s important that New Zealand can emphasize the importance of our democracy, of commitment to human rights, the rule of law, and our fundamental freedoms. Aside from our traditional Five Eyes friends and partners who have adopted an autonomous sanctions regime, Japanese parliamentarians are also currently considering an autonomous sanctions regime of their own.

In 2017, in a regulatory impact statement on this bill, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised that New Zealand’s other Five Eyes partners all possessed the ability to impose sanctions outside of the United Nations regime, with a growing risk that New Zealand would be perceived as an easy target because of gaps in the range of sanction measures able to be imposed. The limited sanction type powers that are currently at the Government’s disposal are not seen either here or by like-minded partners as being sufficient to address situations of real concern, a perception which may have only increased in recent years. I note that our traditional allies—the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and Canada—all have their own regimes of this kind, and have the ability to impose targeted sanctions where appropriate.

The Hon Nanaia Mahuta raised the point of the rules-based international order and well established international rules and norms. Those are matters of great importance. She also noted that an autonomous sanctions regime would be a matter of last resort. I largely don’t disagree, or in fact, I don’t disagree with most of what she said. However, unfortunately, the Labour Government, by voting down this, removes the ability to have that last resort. In effect, the Hon Gerry Brownlee has passed the ball to Labour, and Labour, rather than carrying the ball forward and improving gaps they have identified, as they see it, in the legislation, have rather kicked the ball to touch, and that is deeply disappointing.

It is a great pleasure to rise and to speak in support of this bill, and unfortunately it will, obviously, be voted down by the Government. Let’s hope they see sense.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is traditional at this stage to congratulate the member whose bill was drawn from the ballot, but I want to go a little bit further. I mean, the irony of having been a recent foreign affairs Minister and to draw a bill from the ballot which is so close to the subject and the topics of that previous ministry must have brought much joy to the member when it was brought. He must have thought there was an irony in it. It’s the same joy, perhaps, of another bill being drawn out of the ballot by Sir David Carter when he drew the Electoral (Integrity Repeal) Amendment Bill, and then subsequently passed on to his colleague—now everyone’s ex-colleague—Nick Smith. Again, the eagerness in which they will have attacked that, because obviously it was topics near and dear to their hearts.

But this bill—and there’s a lot to like about it on first reading. However, like many members’ bills that come before this House, it’s very important that they be seen in their context, because what often happens—and we all, at different stages of our lives, often on our way here, have ended up having to deal with pieces of legislation. Sometimes they come back here for a fix because the full implications of the legislation we pass here, if the proper policy work is not done, and we don’t work through the real implications of it, and it is done in isolation—which, as I say, so often members’ bills, as they are now, do—then we end up with something that is not workable.

Now, this is an important issue, and it needs to be done properly. Multilateralism is something the world is lacking currently. If we have a look at the things that are bothering the world most at the moment—we’ll just have a look at Afghanistan, which was one of the more recent. OK, it was NATO that decided to go into Afghanistan, but it wasn’t UN sanctioned. I wouldn’t say it was quite a unilateral act, but certainly it wasn’t done with the sanction of the UN, nor subsequently was the invasion of Iraq. Both those things have left the world in a heck of a mess, and that, again, is why we really do need to be looking at multilateral response.

Even COVID—as I look across the House and see my masked colleagues, I can’t help but be reminded of this ever-present problem that is COVID. How much better would our response have been if we had been truly multilateral? But no, what we’ve done is each nation going into their shell, doing what is best for them, with little consideration for other nations. We saw today, news about how bad it is in Africa, how other nations are not working to ensure that we do get the remedy into Africa. Even our own selves, bilateralism certainly has enabled us to get our own COVID response up to where it needs to be, but a multilateral approach, which is really the antithesis of what we’re talking about here, would have been so much better for the world in which we exist.

So again, I’d say to the member who drew this, he will know from his previous role as a Minister of Foreign Affairs that to actually walk on the world globe, it is the multilateralism—the power and the strength of the multilateral approach—that enables New Zealand to be able to get to the table where it needs to be. And the trend that this bill epitomises, which is moving back towards each nation making its own decisions, each nation putting in its own sanctions, just weakens the response that we need as a world if we’re going to put it in a better shape than certainly it is now or we can expect it to be.

So what I’d say to the member is well done. As I say, there is a lot to like about the bill, but it’s something that really does have to be seen in the context of a desire and a need for a multilateral approach to the type of issues that it does seek to remedy, so I can’t support this bill.

ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour): It is an honour to stand and take a call on the Autonomous Sanctions Bill. I do it very respectfully, knowing the experience that you bring this bill to the House with as a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. I appreciate you were not the Minister of Foreign Affairs—self caught, Madam Speaker. So we really appreciate—other speakers have reflected on this—the intent behind this bill: the attempt to improve our ability to respond to issues of real concern on the international stage. But, unfortunately, this is the wrong solution to the problem. We welcome the debate. We welcome the expectation that these issues should be looked at carefully and thoughtfully because they are complex in an ever-moving environment.

We are living in a world of global uncertainty, the scale and pace of which we haven’t experienced before. We need to make sure that our kete, our tool kit, is nimble and effective. So that is why we welcome this debate, because it is really important that we make sure that our tool kit is a good one. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hit the mark. It is too narrow and it is short-sighted. The idea of attending to human rights abuses outside of the Asia-Pacific region is a missed opportunity. The idea of missing emerging areas such as cyber-security—and one thing that we have learnt is that issues like cyber-security remind us that our neighbourhood is not just those in the Asia-Pacific region or in the Waikato, but, actually, it is a global community with such issues. It is because of this pace and complexity of change that we have to make sure that anything that does get enhanced in our tool kit is able to be nimble and responsive.

So sending this bill to select committee will be insufficient because the changes that would be required, the intensely intricate policy work that needs to be done, would surely require changes to the bill that would sit outside of its scope. We are really pleased with the thinking that has gone into it. What we would hope is that experience and the challenges that have been brought to us with this bill mean that everybody across the House will pitch in and help to enhance the significant tools that we already have at our disposal, the significant international controls we already can utilise. We want to have a coherent approach that makes sure that we can respond to issues of real concern as they arise across the world. We’re futureproofed. We want to make sure that we can connect and enhance the tools that we already have and bilateral arrangements and multilateral tools.

We do have to come back to the classroom occasionally, some of us do remember those days. Many times over the years we’ve had model UN and, actually, World Trade Organisation debates in our senior classrooms, because it is really important for our young people to understand the significant connections and relationships that we have globally in order for us to participate in them. And very, very quickly—because, of course, you’d have to set up a rogue nation who would go off and do things on their own—you would find the students would very quickly understand the power of collaboration. That collaboration is so important, and we’re seeing it today in our response to COVID: a whole pile of different world views attending to problems. A whole pile of different voices attending to problems means we are more likely to be able to find real and lasting solutions that mean that we can attend to our absolute need for peace and security. We are really pleased that the issue has been raised, but we do not think that it attends or answers the questions, and these are the wrong solutions to the problems, and as such, I cannot be supporting this bill.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Can I start by thanking all members of the House for their contribution on this particular bill. Some of them I don’t agree with, obviously, but others have made pretty solid points. I want to just reflect for a moment on the speech by the Hon Nanaia Mahuta, in which she said that there is the prospect of the Government itself doing something more in the future. I think some of the breadth of what she indicated needs to be dealt with in terms of sanctions and New Zealand’s autonomous ability to raise sanctions was somewhat wide of the mark, because in this case I’m simply looking at a bill that will identify mainly individuals, mainly regimes, and mainly entities who offend against the laws of New Zealand and against our view of how the international community should behave. You know, there was the suggestion that we’ve passed anti-slavery law in this last Parliament, and that’s true—we have, and it’s a good thing. But let’s be very clear: there is no capacity in any law in New Zealand to go after an individual slaver. This bill would enable that to happen. We have a list of terror organisations. They are outlawed in New Zealand—can’t operate, can’t be here—but where is the law that lets us go after an individual terrorist? They don’t exist. So I think that there is an opportunity that’s lost here.

While the members have, I think, often referred to what their research notes might’ve said—that the bill is deficient in a number of ways, it would need a whole lot of work, a select committee would take too much time—it comes back to that statement that was pointed out by my colleague Joseph Mooney, the statement from Minister Mahuta where she said that sanctions like this or provisions like this should be a last resort. Well, doesn’t that imply, as Mr Mooney said, that there is no last resort at the moment? Doesn’t it, effectively, agree that if the United Nations isn’t on board with something that we find offensive, there’s nothing—no statement from New Zealand. And I gave that list to the House of where New Zealand has been, in my opinion, ominously silent.

Then there is the interesting comment, also from the Minister, that there are economic and trade considerations. Well, I would like to see those explained. I’d like to see why New Zealand’s foreign policy, its independent foreign policy, is constrained by economic and trade concerns. What does that mean? It means that the Government has made a conscious trade-off between making statements about things that we consider important as a nation and the dollars that come into this country. Now, that might make sense, but you can’t then say that, actually, we’re very good at getting alongside countries, very good at getting alongside individuals and using our vast range of diplomatic skills to negotiate through different problems, if there is no addressing of what the problem is.

I think there’s a bit of a head in the sand approach being taken by the analysis of this bill. If it was so wrong, but, as many of the speakers over there have said, good in other parts, why not adopt it as a Government bill? Doesn’t have to be in my name—could be in the name of the Government, could be rewritten by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). They could’ve moved a little bit in their views since 2012—although, sometimes, I wonder if that’s the case. Or it could’ve been perhaps sent to a select committee and then referred back to the House. There’s a range of things that could’ve happened. So many members over there called for debate, but then tonight this’ll be shut, and I’ll bet, Madam Chair—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Madam Speaker.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —that we do not, Madam Speaker—Madam Speaker—see another bill of this type from the Government in this term of Parliament.

There’s a timidness about this Government, and if it was ever on display and demonstrated as a view held by partner countries that we have had such long associations with, it was the absolute sidelining of New Zealand through the AUKUS arrangement that’s been put in place just recently.

Hon Member: Oh, come on! Come on!

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Now, there they go over there. They say, “Oh, come on!” We know—we know—that directly from MFAT the Prime Minister got called an hour before the public announcement, after the Australian, UK, and US media had all been told about it.

Hon Member: That member knows better than this.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That’s how good a friend we are. That’s how valuable we are. The junior Minister over there thinks he knows what’s going on at the seventh floor; he simply doesn’t. It is indicative of just how far we have slipped in international standing, and this defeat tonight won’t help it.

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

Ayes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Noes 77

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

Motion not agreed to.

Bills

Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill

First Reading

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

This bill seeks to amend the Local Government Act 2002 and better align the transparency requirements of local elected members with that of members of Parliament and the Executive Council. Can I, firstly, acknowledge my colleague the Hon Priyanca Radhakrishnan for her work in originally placing this bill into the ballot. As a new member, I was very comfortable to take this bill forward, and the reason for that is because the purpose of this bill is quite simply to improve transparency, but also to strengthen public trust and confidence in the decision-making process of and for local authorities up and down the country.

Local democracy is so important, and all members in this House will attest to that within their own local communities. Decisions around council tables can vary, whether it’s about lease arrangements for local facilities, whether it’s about the particular zoning, sale, or disposal of land, or whether it’s about what is a suitable rates rise when councils strike their rates on an annual basis. Local communities expect and deserve to know that all of those decisions and the many other decisions that local councils make are fair and transparent, because transparency is also important.

In the conversations that I’ve had with electors over many years, they have an expectation that there is transparency: transparency in the process, that the process is, firstly, understood, and, secondly, it’s fair; and transparency that those who are involved in the decision-making process declare what relevant interests they may have in making those decisions. And those, in my view, are not unrealistic expectations of those who make decisions at any level. This bill intends to provide an opportunity to do exactly that.

This bill provides a minimum standard of transparency for elected members to abide by. Prior to my election to this Parliament, I served as an elected member for just over 10 years as a Palmerston North city councillor and deputy mayor, and on an annual basis I was required to file an annual declaration around my assets and interests. In preparation for my contribution tonight, I managed to fish out the one that I filed last year, and I see that I was required to declare any employment that I was engaged in for any profit or gain; any company, trust, partnership of which I was a director, partner, trustee, or beneficiary; any land in which I had a beneficial interest within Palmerston North City; and other matters, including non-pecuniary relationships, such as affiliations with clubs, community organisations, and others. But I also, actually, note that I had to include those declarations as they also related to any of my close family members. So I commend the Palmerston North City Council on its high level of transparency in that regard. In addition, I was also required to disclose any gifts I’d received over a particular financial threshold.

Over those years, I simply assumed that these were requirements that were set for all councils in New Zealand. I have subsequently learnt that is not the case. In fact, it appears, as is the case with Palmerston North City Council, that often the requirement to declare certain interests, or not, rests upon whether councils have provisions that call for it in their internal documents, such as a council code of conduct. As it currently stands, depending on the council, local government representatives can keep their interests private as long as they do not discuss or vote on matters that they have a direct financial interest in. Again, this requires mayors, chairs, councillors, and members to voluntarily disclose their interests and stand aside from votes upon matters for which themselves, they feel, are compromised. This bill will rectify that. It will remove inconsistency in the approaches taken by councils by having a bottom line that captures the pecuniary interests of all local elected members.

Turning now to the specifics of the bill: firstly, a “pecuniary interest” will be defined specifically as “a matter or activity of financial benefit to the member”. A new section 42C in clause 4 outlines a number of interests relating to the member’s position. They will be required to disclose the name of each company within which the member is either a director or holds or controls more than 5 percent of the voting rights, along with a description of the main business activities of the company, to ensure that there is clarity and that they can be easily understood by members of the public. They’ll be required to disclose any other company or business in which the member has a pecuniary interest; the details of each employer, if the member is in employment; the name of each trust in which the member has a beneficial interest; any interests in organisations that receive funding or apply for funding from the local authority. When councils are making decisions around funding opportunities, it’s often very unclear as to the nature of relationships between those who are sitting around the table making those decisions and the group that is seeking funding. This requirement will avoid any doubt.

There is also a requirement around any organisational positions that a member holds by virtue of them being an elected member—for example, with a council-controlled organisation such as a trust, or a council-controlled trading organisation such as an airport board—along with any real property in which the member has a legal interest. A new section 42D of the Local Government Act in clause 4 of the bill relates to the interests regarding the member’s activities around international travel and accommodation, gifts, and payments. This will introduce a requirement for members of a local authority to disclose information on international travel and accommodation, but also the purpose of the travel, where those costs have been either partially or fully met by another person. However, the bill does provide an exemption where the contribution comes directly from the member themselves or a member of their family. So the requirement to disclose those costs will only capture those contributions from outside the member’s own family unit.

This bill will also require any gifts that are received to be declared. The threshold will be an estimated market value of more than $500. It will include hospitality and donations, but will exclude donations for expenses incurred in an election campaign. And finally, there will also be a requirement to publicly disclose any payments for other activities that local members undertake outside of local government salaries or allowances that the council members receive.

When looking at this bill, members may draw parallels with what is expected in their annual declaration to Parliament’s registrar of pecuniary interests, but there are some differences, and if the bill does proceed to select committee, I welcome some scrutiny and feedback in those areas. I am sure that one, in particular, will be the period for which disclosures must be made. For members of Parliament, it relates to interests held as at 31 January each year. This bill proposes that the disclosure period for local government relate to a 12-month window. So I look forward to hearing views on that.

Under new section 42E in clause 4 of the bill, councils will also be required to appoint a registrar to compile and maintain the pecuniary interests register. However, it will not be the responsibility of the registrar to ensure that members file the returns. That will be the responsibility of each elected member, and rightly so, as this is consistent with the approach taken for members of this House. For someone who fails to comply with the requirement to file an annual return, upon conviction, they will be liable to a fine not exceeding $5,000. I have to say that in my discussions in my community and around the country, views on this particular point vary, with some calling for harsher penalties, including disqualification from office. The select committee may wish to consider submissions on this particular penalty provision. But given that the penalty provision, as it currently stands, includes a criminal conviction as a result of failing to fulfil legal obligations in their duties as an elected member, my tentative view is that that alone would be significant as a deterrent for a publicly elected official. It’s also important to note that under a new section 42A in clause 4, the bill also introduces a requirement for the register to be made publicly available, which would be on an annual basis.

Let me be clear: in promoting this bill, I am not suggesting that there has been any wrongdoing, but I am suggesting that there is currently an anomaly with the level of disclosure and transparency expected of members of Parliament and the level of disclosure and transparency expected of those in local government. And I don’t believe that there should be a difference. Electors deserve to know what could influence their representatives in the decisions they make, whether they be local councillors, regional chairs, deputy mayors, mayors, members of local boards, or members of Parliament. This bill provides another layer of transparency and will ensure the rules of open disclosure are consistently applied across all levels of government. I seek the support of this House for the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill in my name.

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

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’ve got rid of my “nappy” [face mask]. I’d like to congratulate the member Tangi Utikere on the introduction of this bill, the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. It’s interesting that the last two bills discussed in the House have actually been introduced by people who know what they’re talking about, which isn’t always the case with members’ bills. So I congratulate both of them on that. The member who introduced this bill would certainly know what he was talking about with respect to local government, as he was a former deputy mayor of Palmerston North.

I, of course, am really filling in for Christopher Luxon, who leads our approach to this issue and has done the work behind it. So I’m a fill-in, I suppose. Actually, I’m quite liking the Auckland lockdown, because I’ve had a few goes in the House since they’ve been gone! It’s given me a bit of a chance! I also have a bit of experience in this, having been a mayor for some time; so I do have a bit of experience in this area. The National Party does support this bill to select committee, at which stage we’ll be able to closely scrutinise the submissions on it, because there are a number of issues—and I will raise them in the course of this speech—that we are, I guess, interested in and think may cause some concerns as the bill goes the process in the select committee.

Local government is often criticised; however, in my experience of it, it contains many outstanding officials and many, many capable and very loyal local community people, who work extraordinarily hard, give up much time to serve on local councils, and get very little reward for it except for a bit of abuse often, and they’re criticised for all sorts of things. One of the other things they’re criticised for is the turnout at local elections, and local government members are often criticised for creating the result of the low turnout. I’ve got to say that, in my view, the low turnout at local elections is, to a large extent, caused by the fact that the only people affected by local councils directly are ratepayers, because no one else gets the bill. And so, effectively, if you pay the bill, you’re interested; if you don’t pay the bill, you don’t have an interest. And so, because a large number of our residents in a lot of our council areas are only indirectly affected by the activities of council, they’re not going to take much interest. So I think we’ve got some challenges with the way councils are set up and the way they’re structured, and that doesn’t help, in my view, to draw out voters at voting time. So that’s a bit of an issue, I think, that’s worth raising in the course of this bill, because I’ll get to the point I want to raise about it, and that’s the fact that there is much happening in local government at the moment.

There are many good councils, and they do a lot of good work with little resource, and this building and the occupants of it over the last 20 years, in my experience, have lumped a whole lot of issues and work on local councils that have created a lot of costs for them, a lot of resource required, and increased costs significantly to them. We’ve got to find new ways of funding local government and new ways of dealing with it, and I accept that this Government has got some activity going on at the moment in that respect, which I’ll get on to in a moment, but the really interesting issue is that, however you look at this, there is only two sources of funding for everything in New Zealand: they’re taxpayers and ratepayers, and, the rate this Government is going at, there are less of each of them every year. And so that’s very challenging for us, because that means fewer people have got to pay the bill, and so that’s one of the challenges local government has.

I want to talk a bit about the future now, because this bill is one of many that will impact on the activities of local government and, in fact, impact on what’s going on in local government at the moment, and this Government has a number of measures they are taking right now—three waters being one of them—that affect dramatically what might happen with local government in the future. And, also, the other issue that’s going on is a potential review of local government and how that works. Local government, to some extent, reminds me of our farmers and fishers; they’re under constant pressure. And this bill—one could be forgiven for wondering if we’ll have anyone standing for council in the future, because my personal concerns about this bill are that local people who have to expose themselves financially for all and sundry to see for $20k a year are not going to be particularly interested in standing for council, and I think it’s going to put a lot of people off being interested in local politics, simply because the rewards are so little and the challenges are so great. And, also, the fact that you’re exposing yourself completely—as we do in Parliament, and I’ll get to that in a minute—is quite a challenge, and I think it will be a real challenge for the future of local government and who might put themselves forward for it.

Comparing this to Parliament—local government to Parliament—is drawing a long bow, because we as ordinary MPs are paid more than almost every mayor in New Zealand, and certainly more than almost every councillor in New Zealand, and the other opportunity we have, of course, as MPs is there’s a fair chance you’re going to become a Minister, who’s then paid more than any mayor in New Zealand and making decisions that have dramatic effects on the future of everyone in this country and on all sorts of areas, whereas local government is pretty much confined to certain areas, and certainly confined locally. So I think there’s a very big difference between the responsibilities that local councillors and mayors have, or particularly local councillors have, and the people who occupy this building. And it’s interesting to note—and I’ll get on to the penalties in a minute, because Tangi Utikere talked about the penalties—that three of our members of Parliament couldn’t get their returns in on time. You’d wonder how that would happen, really, because that can’t be that difficult.

But, anyway, Tangi Utikere talked about the penalties involved in this bill, and I’ve got some, I guess, doubts about the penalty as well, and that a $5,000 fine—if you’re really into rorting your local community, a $5,000 fine is not going to stop you rorting your local community—and so I think that the penalties are an interesting issue and it will be one that, no doubt, will be very interestingly discussed when we get to the select committee. I think that penalty—I mean, obviously, it will be enforceable, because it will be an Act of Parliament, but it will, again, I think, put people off really wanting to become part of local government.

Now, there’s one other thing in this bill that I think is quite challenging for us as well, and it’s very different again to what happens in Parliament. The member has modelled the bill on the parliamentary pecuniary interests register to some extent, and another challenge I can see facing the select committee will be in 42C(1)(c), which reads: “if the member of a local authority is employed, the name of each employer of the member and a description of the main business activities of each of those employers [must be declared]”. Now, if you think about the piece of legislation that the Government is proposing to put into Parliament—and they’ve said they’ll put it into Parliament some time later this year—around a piece of labour law, I guess, it would be, it’s highly likely that contractors will become employers. And do you think that a courier driver, for example, who has maybe 150 employees is going to want to stick his client list out there in the public forum, on a council pecuniary register? Not likely. So I think it’s going to put a whole lot of people off standing for council for that reason as well, and I think it could apply to accountants, lawyers, or anyone like that, because it’s not defined in the bill. And I think there’s some work to be done on clause 42C(1) as well.

So I think it’s, in my view, fine for MPs who are full-time to be subject to pecuniary interests registers and made public, and I think Tangi Utikere himself talked about the Palmerston North City Council one, which, to the best of my knowledge, is not made public—and probably a very good model, actually—and I’m sure there are plenty of other councils who have varying forms of pecuniary interests declarations. The Mayor of Tararua felt that her council dealt completely adequately with it, and I’m pretty sure her councillors would be paid less than $20,000 each a year to be councillors. So I can’t imagine them being that keen on declaring their body and souls to stand for the council if this piece of legislation goes through.

So I think that there are some challenges in the bill. As I said, we support it to the select committee, and it will be very interesting to see where it gets to. So we have some reservations, but we will support it, and I’d just like to again congratulate, or commiserate with, the member on getting his bill through to the select committee, and we’ll see how it goes from there. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m going to break the I-worked-in-local-government party that’s going on here. I’ve never worked in local government, and I acknowledge the previous speaker, Ian McKelvie, in his time as mayor, I acknowledge the speaker before him, Tangi Utikere, in his time as the deputy mayor. But despite not being somebody that’s been elected at local government level, I’ve still got an opinion on this. I do believe this isn’t about central government saying to ratepayers, “You’re being rorted by your local member—your local elected officials—and we need to see a whole lot more transparency.” What this is trying to do is actually just create some consistency across the country.

What we do know is that councils have their own checks and balances; we’ve got to admit that. Most councils have got a way that they start the meetings; there’s often a conflict of interest form that they need to fill out—but that’s part of the problem, everybody does it in their own little way. Actually, we believe that there should be a lot more transparency in that process, and a lot more consistency to that process as well.

The previous member said that it might put people off actually standing for local government. To that, I say: I don’t think so. People that go into becoming elected officials on behalf of their community generally know what they’re going into. Obviously, the bigger the city, the more political this becomes; in smaller, more regional councils, sometimes it can be quite different. But I don’t believe it will put people off. I think that people that know that they’re going to be standing for elected positions, they know that there’s a job to do. They know that there’s certain things that they have to fill out, and, actually, a pecuniary interest form is just one of them.

I’ll encourage all of those people that are sitting at home right now and have no idea what a pecuniary interest form is—like me, a few years ago—go online and have a look. You’ll be able to see what all of us, as members of Parliament—you’ll be able to see how many houses—one—you might have; or how many trusts you might be involved in; businesses that you own. I think that’s really essential for transparency, for people—for ratepayers, for taxpayers alike—to be able to understand actually who your elected officials are and what interests they have. The more upfront and honest you can be, the more that you restore the faith of democracy across the country. For that reason, this bill is a good thing.

I want to thank my colleague Tangi Utikere for bringing this forward. I’m very jealous—I’m seething on the inside—because I’ve been here a few years longer than him and I’ve never had a bill pulled out. I’ve been waiting so long—so long, Tangi—but tonight is your night. I’m still very jealous. But, also, it just goes to show that when we come into this House, we come in with our prior experience. Tangi, with his work at local government in the good old city of Palmerston North, he saw a gap in consistency; he saw that here in the Chamber, us as members of Parliament, we have a very high bar with the pecuniary interests form, and he noticed that, actually, local governments do it a lot more ad hoc. So, Tangi, thank you for bringing this to our House. Many people would have thought that this already existed across the country; they would have thought that this was just standard procedure. It will be a shock for many to know that it’s not standard procedure, that there are differing ways that councils handle this. Through this bill, we’re looking to, as I say, bring a lot more transparency and a lot more consistency in, as part of that.

So I am in full support of this bill. I think that this will do a lot for New Zealanders to understand more who their elected officials are, what their interests are, what they have to gain from various entities that they might be associated with, and, of course, ultimately, how sometimes that might affect their decision making. I think it’s good for transparency, it’s good for democracy, and for that reason I support it to the House.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker, thank you. I’m very pleased to speak on behalf of the Green Party on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill and congratulate Tangi Utikere—having been in this Parliament for nearly 10 years and never having had a member’s bill pulled from the ballot, the luck of the biscuit tin definitely was with him in getting it pulled within the first 12 months.

It is a very worthwhile bill and it was really interesting in terms of just preparing to speak, having been an elected regional councillor of Environment Canterbury from 2007 till 2010, when the Hon Nick Smith and Rodney Hide summarily removed elected councillors and replaced us with commissioners, I think we did fill in a conflict of interest declaration then, but going through and looking at what other declarations councils had—the Christchurch City Council, for example, has quite a comprehensive pecuniary interest declaration that seems to be modelled very much on the one that parliamentarians fill in, whereas Environment Canterbury has a much more circumscribed one, and Nelson City Council has quite a good one as well. So I think that reinforces the point that the member made that the provisions across the country are not consistent and that this bill, therefore, will provide that consistency.

I think, back in the 1990s, there was quite a focus on increasing the transparency of council decision-making, efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. Legislation then—the Local Electoral Act 2001, the Local Government Act 2002, and the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002—did provide councils with more flexible tools, and the Local Government Act also requires, in section 14, that councils conduct their business in a clear, transparent, and democratically accountable way. The legislation means that all councils have to adopt a code of conduct setting out how elected members behave towards each other, towards staff, and how they use the information available to them as elected members.

So, certainly, councils do have codes of conduct, and then some of them have gone further in terms of pecuniary interests. So this bill is adding that extra layer of transparency. And also, I guess, there is the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act 1968, and that ensures that members are not affected by personal motives when they participate in council decisions, and it prohibits members from being involved in a council decision if they have a pecuniary interest other than one that they hold in common with the public generally, or unless they have actually sought and obtained an exemption or a declaration from the Office of the Auditor-General. That highlighting one thing, but what this register will do is make it much more obvious—the range of pecuniary interests that councillors will have.

Like other members, I think the submissions to the select committee—if it gets that far, and I hope it will—will be quite interesting, because the point Tangi Utikere made was: what period should the declaration cover? I think there may be some concern if it is going to cover a whole year or whether it is done as MPs do it: the interest that we have registered on 31 January each year, a snapshot in time.

One of the other issues is the fact that central government has put a lot more responsibilities on local councils and then not provided the funding to enable them to carry that out. I think that is a big conversation that needs to be had, particularly around things like three waters. Collating the declarations that councillors make for, say, 14 or so councillors may not require a lot of staff time and expertise, but, as Sir Maarten Wevers, who performs that role at Parliament—(a) he’s independent; (b) he said in his report this year that being a new Parliament, there were a lot more requests for advice that went to him. So I think there does need to be some thought as to who needs to be responsible for the collation: is it the council or is that managed nationally, and does central government help fund it to protect the independence of that person, as we have with the registrar here, Sir Maarten Wevers?

Most councils, where they’ve got a register, do have them on their websites, though they are sometimes quite difficult to find. But that may be—

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

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Thank you for allowing me to take a call this evening on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. To my colleague Tangi Utikere, MP for Palmerston North—now, I know this might not be interesting to many people, but I am the MP for New Plymouth, which is not Palmerston North, and quite regularly people get that mixed up and confused. But I’m OK because I have a charming colleague in my midst, so if they confuse me for the MP for Palmerston North, I’m quite happy with that.

Now, I will just continue, I guess, the narrative this evening with our speakers. I know that my colleague Tāmati Coffey brought it up, but we’ve had a mayor speak, we’ve had a deputy mayor speak, we’ve had now a regional councillor speak, and I’m not sure if I want to bring it up, but I’m probably not qualified—I’m not sure if my party knows this, but I’m actually a failed district councillor. Well, I’m actually a failed district councillor candidate, should I say—let’s get that right! I ran a really bad campaign. I had a busy life, I had a busy, busy home, and my $15 advertising budget failed miserably, but I hit the middle of the pack. This was 10, 12 years ago, when I was far younger, slimmer, less grey, more hair, all that kind of waffle. So I was committed to running for Labour last year, and so I ran. In fact, I didn’t work all of last year as I ran for the Labour Party in New Plymouth, and I was successful by a number.

Anyway, back to the bill—back to the bill. Let us focus right now. So I’m really pleased that this better aligns councils with us here as members of the House and of the executive here in Wellington, and, as my colleague, Mr Utikere talked about, it’s around that transparency. He talked about ratepayers deserving to know what could influence their representatives and that this provides another layer of transparency, which is what I often hear, and, I’m sure, we all hear talked about. I was more than happy in my first term here to declare all of my property and all the other things, which is very little, that I have. And I see that in our local government that it’s the same thing and it’s a great opportunity and a simple piece of legislation to correct that.

Now, as the MP for New Plymouth, sometimes, I think, maybe you could have a broader name to take and encompass the beautiful North Taranaki that stretches from Waitara in the north down to Ōpunake towards the south.

Hon Member: Good spot.

GLEN BENNETT: It’s a great spot on the West Coast, Mr Speaker—I know you know it well. I have two councils within my electorate: I have the South Taranaki District Council and I have the New Plymouth District Council. Now, I did some research into that and they both actually have implemented a register of declaration of interests. Now, South Taranaki, from what I read, it’s basically held on site. It’s something that’s there that just needs to be declared each year. And for the New Plymouth District Council, they only brought it into play this year. So this is the first time they had a declaration.

So I looked it up and I was quite curious to know who I voted for, who I didn’t vote for, and what their interests were or are. Four of them didn’t actually declare anything at all, and, obviously, with this piece of legislation, that’ll ensure that everyone does. But there were people who were part of the Taranaki Electricity Trust; the Waitara District Services and Citizens Club; Full Circle Bespoke Life Events—that’s like a celebrant, just so you know; of course, our wonderful New Plymouth Operatic Society; our Taranaki Chamber of Commerce; as well as people who are residential property owners, they were lifestyle block property owners; and our deputy mayor is the director—I just looked it up—of Fun Ho! Toys. Now, who doesn’t know Fun ho! Toys? Oh, geez. OK—

Hon Member: Tell us about it.

GLEN BENNETT: Well, Fun Ho! Toys is Inglewood’s, which is a fabulous—it was the sort of 1930s, 40s, and 50s when it was huge, those metal toys—everyone had a Fun Ho! toy.

Greg O’Connor: That’s not why we remember Inglewood.

GLEN BENNETT: Right, OK, let’s move on quickly, thank you, Mr O’Connor; I won’t go into that! Anyway, I support this piece of legislation, and I’m really proud of my colleague Tangi Utikere, who came into Parliament with me. I support this and I look forward to seeing how it goes at select committee. I commend this to the House.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT to speak on the Local Government (Pecuniary Interest Register) Amendment Bill, and I also congratulate the member Tangi Utikere for the introduction of this bill. I’m speaking on behalf of our local government spokesperson, Simon Court, who’s also stuck in Auckland.

The bill seeks to introduce requirements for members of local authorities to declare pecuniary interests to align themselves with the requirements of members of Parliament. However, there are already rules under the Local Government Act which require a declaration of a conflict of interest in particular decision-making. A number of other things will need to be sorted out through the select committee process. The bill adds to this and, in effect, makes it stricter for them than for members of Parliament.

It makes sense that elected officials—people chosen by the public and paid by the public—are accountable to the public. The public need to trust that the people who are representing them are honest and are working in their best interests. They need to be transparent and accountable. Unfortunately, these qualities are becoming increasingly rare.

The bill seeks to address conflicts of interest that local government elected members may have and currently don’t have to disclose. This is important when decisions need to be made about awarding contracts, approving or declining planning permissions—buying Christmas lights from China, for example—or all-expenses-paid trips to conferences and sister city meetings in Third World countries or Denmark. They work for the public and not their own agendas.

The bill will require members of local authorities to disclose gifts and payments which others might see as having an influence on their decision making. Formalising this process makes things more professional and allows voters and contractors and watchdogs to rest easier.

There are, of course, possible unintended consequences, some of which have been mentioned. Knowing the make-up of many councils, there is the real danger that those community-minded, hard-working people who may own small businesses or be farmers or, heaven forbid, be successful could well be put off putting themselves up as a candidate, knowing the potential for a pile-on by the woke activist councillors that pervade many councils—or maybe these are intended consequences.

Finally, the bill’s purpose is to improve transparency and strengthen public trust and confidence in decision making of local authorities. This is a noble aim that every New Zealander would unanimously support, and I think it’s important to remind ourselves of what transparency means. I’ll quote: “Transparency ensures that information is available that can be used to measure the authorities’ performance and to guard against any possible misuse of powers.” Where activities are done in an open way without secrets, so people can trust that they be fair and honest, “In that sense, transparency serves to achieve accountability, which means that authorities can be held responsible for their actions.”

As I said before, ACT has some reservations about this bill, and we will support it to the select committee. But I must note the irony of the demand for transparency and accountability from the least transparent Government in New Zealand’s history.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora e te Mana Whakawā. Thank you for giving me the call on this bill—an excellent bill, and I am sure it’s going to get a good working over in select committee, because it’s a very simple precept. The premise is very simple, that we want people who are making important decisions to be transparent about their interests so that they can be scrutinised in terms of the motivations they may bring to the decisions that they make. I do think that it is time for a good look at conflicts of interest at local body, and I know the Auditor-General did have guidance that, in fact, he withdrew from his website because it was a little outdated.

But one of the real problems is that there seems to be a lack of clarity around when people can bring their own strong personal views to a decision-making process—that is to say, a political point of view—and when that crosses over to being a personal interest where their own financial or other position will be affected by that decision. Certainly, there are places where a strong view is not appropriate in local bodies, and, certainly, hearing panels is one of them, where it’s a quasi-judicial decision-making process, but when it’s just round the council table, political views are grist to the mill. I’m a bit perplexed to hear that people think that being transparent and honest about the influences on your decision making might be a disincentive to standing for council. I must say, if people want to conceal what financial interests they have which might affect their decisions, then I’d be pretty happy for them not to be standing for local body politics.

This is a great bill, and I haven’t yet congratulated Mr Utikere for this—and I think it’s kind of weird to do so, to congratulate someone with having a number randomly pulled from a biscuit tin, but, anyway, good on you, mate. Well done for getting a number randomly pulled from a biscuit tin.

I note that the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act actually sets out what a “local authority” is in a somewhat dated way now—talks about drainage boards and all sorts of things. It may be that a definition section will be needed here, because, for example, the Local Authorities (Members’ Interests) Act actually identifies community boards as local authorities, and I’m not sure that they’re intended to be captured here. And, of course, we’ve got territorial authorities and local authorities and whether it crosses—I imagine it’s intended to capture both, but that may be a useful clarification in terms of regional councils, territorial authorities, unitary authorities, and so on.

But, look, I absolutely welcome the scrutiny that this is going to get. Certainly, in my own local authority, there are councillors around the table who have significant business interests who may indeed be contracting through an attenuated series of companies and business interests with council. And, certainly, there’s a real need for transparency there so that any suggestion that one day they can be communicating as business owner with council officials, and the next day they can be communicating with those same officials as an elected member, is really problematic. I think a spotlight can rightly be drawn and thrown on that kind of conduct.

I also think, in terms of the proposed new section 42C, there’s some thinking to be done about how far down the road you go. Obviously, there are things like managed funds where you may have interests but they’re not active interests—they’re not actively managed or purchased or sold by you, but, nevertheless, you do have an interest in companies or properties. But perhaps you don’t need to go into that level of detail. Certainly, the members’ pecuniary interest register makes some distinctions there. Obviously, the travel there: “family member” might need some definition, because, obviously, if a husband or mum or dad or wife purchases travel, that’s one thing. We need to make sure that captures all domestic relationships, whether that be what we might’ve once called a de facto partner—just make sure we don’t spread the net too narrowly there.

But, look, I think this will be a really good and interesting select committee discussion. I do hope there are lots of submissions on it. I do also think that we’ve got to be cautious about smaller councils here as well. Thank you, Mr Speaker—I see my time’s expired.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): It behoves us all to understand the history of New Zealand and see the part that vested interests played right from the start. I’m just reading a book about John McKenzie, or Jock McKenzie, and his land reforms. New Zealanders should understand that this country was the land that—other than the land that was left to Māori, the land that had been taken was owned by very, very few families in New Zealand, and those very few families, basically, wielded all the power. So anyone who wants to understand why vested interests should be controlled, I thoroughly suggest a read of that history.

I grew up on the northern part of the Buller, and as we waited for a school bus we used to see the Denniston incline working. Denniston incline, a magnificent feat of engineering, described as the eighth wonder of the world at one stage. It was shut. Not long afterward, the contract for delivering the coal down the hill by road was delivered by a local contractor who had been on the council, and the miners and staff were bused down the hill by a local bus contractor. Now, it probably was nothing untoward, and I certainly wouldn’t make any accusation to those, but it was certainly something that we grew up with wondering, shall we say. So it is always good to know those that are making the decisions and what may be motivating them.

However, I did hear the speech by Mr McKelvie, and, like all speeches by Mr McKelvie in this House, they are well worth listening to, generally built on some good experience. I certainly did note his concern that we need to be very careful that we don’t narrow, inadvertently, the number of people who not only will be prepared to stand for council but are actually eligible to stand for council. I’m sure that bill—and, again, I congratulate my colleague Mr Utikere for drawing this bill, I’m sure that’s something that we can fix at the select committee.

Because the other thing that we’ve talked about before—most speakers have talked as though councillors are the people that make the significant decisions around councils. Well, we all know that that’s actually not true. I know one mayor who there was a major development taking place three doors from his place that he had no awareness of at all because decisions like that don’t go through, as we know—those day-to-day decisions generally don’t go through the councils. So there are a lot more people who are making decisions that affect us on a day-to-day basis around councils other than these councillors.

However, going back to my original point around understanding vested interest, I think we do live in a different age, and we welcomed John McKenzie’s land reforms, which meant that we did, in New Zealand, end up with a very entrepreneurial—a lot more land was purchased. Well, the compulsory purchase of the land meant that we did break up those estates and made New Zealand the land that it is today.

But going back to the bill, it is certainly important that on any decision—and any organisation I work for or have been a part of, any board I’ve been on, the interest register has always been an important part of it. I think there wouldn’t be anyone here who hasn’t sat on a board that wouldn’t know that the interest register is an important part of what they do. So the underlying point of this bill, the underlying desire or the strategy of this bill, is to ensure that those who are making the broader decisions that will filter down to the actual paid individuals, the paid officials, who will actually implement them, that we do understand that, because I’m sure those of us who have grown up, particularly, probably, more in the rural areas, have understood that rarely on a council was there not a major landholder who, often, was attracted to the board because of decisions they felt were impacting on them personally. Wasn’t to say that they weren’t there for the right reasons, wasn’t to say they didn’t end up very good. In fact, there was some research done that showed the reasons why people actually do go into politics in the first place, and, generally, one of the main reasons is an interest in politics, is one of the things. The other thing is actually a desire to get things done; fairly obvious. But in that research, it also showed the people that don’t go into politics are ones that are part of a group who are generally excluded from politics. So—

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! The member’s time has expired.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I stand, too, to speak to the Local Government (Pecuniary Interests Register) Amendment Bill. I’ll start by quoting part of the pledge, I guess, that MPs actually sign up to with their pecuniary interest. It says in there that “it is central to the democratic idea that the purpose of elected public office is to serve the public, not to enrich the office-holder”. And I can assure you that in the local government world—and I think my colleagues who have been in local government will attest to this—those who put their hand up to be elected on to small local councils do not do so to be enriched; in fact, it is usually a matter of social service. Very different from regional councils and from cities, their salaries are quite a lot different, but, certainly, in those small councils, it is a matter of public service only.

One of the things that has always been evolving in local government, from my experience there, was that you want to attract self-employed people, you want to attract successful business people, because they bring a certain set of skills; even retirees—and they usually do have quite a portfolio of assets and interests. And it will, as I think my colleague Ian McKelvie pointed out, be a barrier to people to want to disclose everything about themselves. When I look at the bill and I look at the contents of a pecuniary interest return, it says, “relating to member’s position”, and I think this is work that the select committee is going to have to turn its mind to because how do you define “relating”? So is that a business in the district, the city, or the region that the local authority is responsible for? Is it a business that might, that does, or that could be a supplier or have some business interest in a council CCO—a council-controlled organisation? So I think defining that is going to be very important.

But, also, in there, it talks to “relating to member’s activities”—“pecuniary interest return relating to member’s activities”. But that’s got to also be defined because “relating to activities” in carrying out their role, perhaps, but not in the broader sense of that person’s private enterprise or their interests outside of the council. So I think we’ve got to be really careful that we don’t capture everything that’s going on in a person’s life or business. And I’ll give you some examples: “a description of each gift (including hospitality and donations in cash or kind”, so the cash that may pass over—and I don’t know of anyone that actually gets cash passed across their palm, but you don’t want things like grandma’s birthday present or even grandma’s bequeath to you to be liable for a pecuniary interests register. Also, things that happen in small communities—so it’s a really good example right now: it’s whitebait season. Most people in small council areas know each other. What happens if someone gives you a feed of whitebait or half a side of mutton? You know, that sort of stuff happens a lot in rural communities. So is that going to be classed as “in kind” contributions and donations, or is that just something that happens in rural communities?

There’s a bit that needs to happen in defining some of this work in here. I do agree that there needs to be some consistency, but I don’t know whether the Government has even turned its mind to working with Local Government New Zealand and asking them to provide that consistency across councils across New Zealand, because there can be templates created. All this does is like Big Brother coming in over the top and saying, “This is how we want you to do it. Don’t work out your own system.” Perhaps this is going to be another one of those nails in the coffin for local government, because what’s going to happen—in the policy statement it says, “contribute to more robust decision-making by local authorities.” Well, actually, there’s not much decision making going to be left for local authorities by the time this Government’s finished with them.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m pleased that Mr McKelvie outlined National’s position on the bill, because if we listened on to that speech, you’d think that they’d be voting against it. But they’re not. They’re voting for it to go to select committee, because they want this bill to go through, admittedly with some improvements, but we’ve said no different. We’ve identified that there’s some areas that we would like the select committee to look into, but we’re actually just focusing on the issue here.

So what we’re being presented with is an alternative. It’s that if we bring in a requirement that people that are elected to public office have to declare the interests that they have, that’s going to stop some people from going into local government. I would ask “why?” Why would publicly declaring your conflicts stop you from standing for public office? If you were that way inclined, I think your answer is staring you in the face. I would take issue with the point that was made by the previous speaker, Maureen Pugh, on this bill. Yes, we do want people with business experience. Yes, we do want successful people. But we want people from across society representing our communities in local government. We don’t just want business people, just like we don’t just want retired people or we don’t just want men. We want a cross-section.

In my electorate, there are five district councils, and I note that there are six in Mr McKelvie’s council, which are considerably more, I think, than most of the other electorate MPs that have spoken to this tonight. Every single one of those councils are full of people with integrity that are committed to their communities: South Wairarapa, Carterton, Masterton, the Tararua District, and Central Hawke’s Bay. I note that they each have a different way of declaring potential conflicts. Some do it before a meeting. Some register it before they meet—etc., etc. I think that’s the key element there, though: it’s the inconsistency. Ultimately, if the argument is, as has been said, that many councils already have something in place, wouldn’t it be therefore true that these councillors, the ones that we’re being told won’t stand for council, have to declare it through the nature of their business anyway?

So let’s just put that to the side and stop pretending that this is a major issue. Because people are committed to their communities, they will stand for council, and if they stand for council knowing that if they discuss something that’s relevant to their interests they have to declare it, then let’s make it consistent across the board.

Maureen Pugh: There’s going to be nothing left for them to do.

KIERAN McANULTY: Maureen Pugh, perhaps you might want to put your mask on. Perhaps you could book your vaccination at the same time.

So the thing with this is that it is, essentially, asking local government elected officials to do exactly the same as what members of Parliament are doing. I don’t accept the argument that’s been put forward that, yes, this is a full-time job, and some local body representatives are full-time representatives, and that there is a difference between city and rural elected representatives. I note that Tracey Collis, the Mayor of the Tararua District, a woman who I respect immensely and have a very good working relationship with, disagrees. She believes that the system is in place at the moment, but I know for a fact that the Tararua District Council probably does lead the way in ensuring that their members do declare interests before they go. But, I think, it’s also fair to say that some councils probably do not.

So let’s just make it consistent. Let’s vote for this bill, send it to select committee, and nut it out. We’ll get submissions from people across the board. We’ll get submissions from those involved in local government. Given that this is a member’s bill, this is not a Government bill, so there hasn’t been any consultation prior to this. Here’s their opportunity to come forward and put their view. We’ll also get representatives from residents’ groups, I’m sure, that want to know that the people that they’ve elected to their local council will have declared any potential conflict and that it’s out there in the open. It will be along the lines of the one that exists for members of Parliament, I’m sure. It doesn’t tell you to declare the exact amount that’s in your savings account; it just declares that you’ve got a savings account with an amount in there that’s over a certain limit. That’s all—that’s all.

Mine is very easy to declare. I don’t own a home. I was on The Golden Shears board; I’m no longer. I was on the Wings Over Wairarapa board; I’m no longer. But when I was on those, I declared them, because there was a chance that they might ask the Government for money.

Hon Member: Did you declare the ute?

KIERAN McANULTY: It’s not worth over 500 bucks. So I congratulate Tangi Utikere for getting this bill pulled. I wish him all the best, and I hope to see this improved and passed. Thank you.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. Can I, firstly, acknowledge the contributions from right around the House, and the support that at this stage appears to be provided for this bill. I do want to thank Mr McAnulty for reminding the House that this is a member’s bill in my name—it’s not a Government bill—and so those that have made some comments may want to just, perhaps, reflect on that.

I do want to just very briefly reflect on the biscuit tin, actually, because it seems to me that you do need to have either an element of luck or beginner’s choice, perhaps. But I know that, actually, in terms of the class of 2020 on this side of the House, the three members’ bills from those members are for the MP for Ōtaki, the MP for Whanganui, and now the MP for Palmerston North. So the DEKA biscuit tin might have a regional bias, perhaps, on it—who knows? Mr Bennett, MP for New Plymouth, might be up next.

But, look, I do want to thank members for their contributions. Mr McKelvie, my parliamentary neighbour, can I thank you for your contributions. Actually, Mr McKelvie and I served as local representatives together when he was the Mayor of Manawatū District and I was a new city councillor for Palmerston North. I do know that he did ask about whether or not the interests or the declaration that I made for Palmerston North City Council was public or not. I can confirm that it says here, “The declaration will be made available for public inspection at any time.” So he suggests that maybe Palmy city council is leading the way. Clearly, the information that they require is well and above what other councils, perhaps, are seeking. I expect to hear from members of our community, members from within the local government sector, members from outside of the local government sector, through the select committee process, and I expect that because we are talking about communities of interest up and down the country that will want to have, no doubt, an opportunity to express their views.

I want to thank Dr Webb for his contribution this evening. He actually reminded me about this dichotomy between personal views around a local government table and, also, the interests that a member might have. It reminded me, actually, around some of the comments that have been provided by the Auditor-General in some of those reports to the Governance and Administration Committee, which deals with a number of public-facing reports for the local government sector. Actually, Mr McKelvie, I need to congratulate the member on becoming the chair of that select committee, which I’m no longer a member of, but clearly he will get amongst it in terms of these submissions. There was concern expressed in the Auditor-General’s report around making available some information that’s publicly available, as well.

I do want to touch briefly on the role of the registrar, because the Hon Eugenie Sage, in her contribution this evening, touched on the desire for this not to be an additional administrative burden. That certainly is not the intention. The bill as it’s currently drafted specifies that that person may be the chief executive of a local authority, and it’s drafted in that way because those from the sector will know that more often than not it’s the chief executive who delegates that role, or a number of roles—well, actually, all roles, effectively—to officers of the authority. I do take the point, though, that perhaps, through the select committee process, there can be a conversation and some advice and feedback around what that might look like. But it’s really, really clear to me—and I want to confirm this point for the benefit of the House—it is not the responsibility of the registrar to do anything except, effectively, administratively receive it and make the information available. The bill as it’s currently drafted indicates that it is not the responsibility of the registrar to ensure or remind members of local authorities that they are required to submit. It is not their responsibility to double-check what is in their return. It is the responsibility of the elected member themselves.

I accept that, through the select committee, there are opportunities to look at some of the definitions that are in the bill, including tidying up the reference—when this was drafted, the Privacy Act was of a different numerical year, so that needs to be changed. But I am looking forward to the hard-working members of the Governance and Administration Committee progressing this, along with the community, and reporting back to the House. So, once again, I thank members for their contributions this evening and support for my member’s bill.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Bills

Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

First Reading

MAUREEN PUGH (National): I move, That the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

Firstly, I’m going to acknowledge the work of many councils around this country, the Tourism Industry Association, the rental companies, the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association, the Holiday Parks Association, the Department of Conservation, the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), and all of the other groups that I’ve worked with over the years on the challenges and solutions to freedom camping rules. Now, it is a challenging topic, balancing the freedom to enjoy New Zealand and its pristine environment with the need to protect the environment that they’ve come to visit. I would point out that I don’t believe that this bill is going to be working against any of the work that is being done by the Government at the moment; in fact, I think it will complement the work that is being done.

Now, my journey with the Freedom Camping Act began back in my local government days, when the pressure was on some of our special sites around Westland that were being fouled by the actions of a few people who were camping without access to toilet facilities, and, every day, I would travel along State Highway 73 and State Highway 6. Also, living in a rural area, it became abundantly clear that the pressure on some of our pristine sites was going to destroy the very thing that our visitors came to see and enjoy, and that is clean, green New Zealand. So I sought the support of Community and Public Health, and they undertook to provide me with a report. After surveying every layby, every pull-off point, and every picnic area along the length of the State highways in Westland and at other significant points like at rivers and lakes—and their work involved visiting every site during the off-peak season, noting what they saw there, and taking photographs—they repeated that exercise during the peak tourist season, and the bottom line revealed what most of us expected, which was there was a human health issue that needed to be resolved.

Now, this evidence led me to promoting the need for legislation that would give councils authority to control freedom camping in their districts and cities. So I took a remit to the local government AGM, where it was supported. Along with that was the prospect of the 2011 Rugby World Cup being hosted here in New Zealand and the anticipated influx of freedom campers that was being talked about quite a lot in those days. The then National-led Government adopted that concept, and the Freedom Camping Act 2011 was passed into law, sponsored by ACT’s Rodney Hide.

Unfortunately, though, the Act omitted to include Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) land and NZTA land, so the State highways weren’t captured in that legislation. Now, for places like the West Coast, where you’ve got a ribbon of State highway that runs along the length of the region, this was a major omission, and even more so for Grey District and Buller, who share, according to the Lonely Planet, one of the top 10 highways in the world, along the Great Coast Road, and there are many other examples across New Zealand, such as State Highway 1, up the Kaikōura coastline. So this bill that we are talking to tonight inserts Crown-managed land, LINZ land, and NZTA land into the Freedom Camping Act, and that enables controls over the use of that land for freedom camping.

Now, another issue with the original Act was the transfer of unpaid infringement fees to the rental vehicle company. This was an issue that was identified early on in the Freedom Camping Forum that I was a part of, and that was hosted by Geoff Ensor, when he was at the Tourism Industry Association. Now, there was initially a really good understanding that the rental vehicle company held the credit card details of anyone that did receive an infringement notice, but they often left the country without paying that. So the company could recover it, but the legislation had made it quite cumbersome to recover that fee but also, then, the rental vehicle company had to deal with their customers, they had to add on an admin fee for the recovery of that fee, and it wasn’t particularly good for their reviews. So that system was not particularly fit for purpose.

The original bill did give the ability for those companies to write into the rental agreement that they could add on some administration costs for recovery of those fees, but for the infringement offence for freedom camping, they had to, within five days, send a copy of the infringement notice off to the permanent address of that hirer. Now, if someone is touring around in a campervan, the chances are that they are not at their permanent address and not receiving mail. So this bill will address that process by authorising that a new infringement notice can be made out to the rental company, and the customer’s original offence notice would be then revoked.

Now, there is one issue that has been consistently raised within communities where freedom camping is more popular and that is an issue around the human waste, and that is the key focus of this particular bill. Now, there is a human health imperative in addressing freedom camping, and I suggest in this bill that non - self-contained vehicles must be parked within 200 metres of a toilet. Now, during submissions, I’m very open to debating that distance and whether people deem it to be appropriate or even workable, but for vehicles that are fully self-contained, then this requirement does not apply. This bill also gives powers to enforcement officers to enter and inspect a vehicle to make sure that it is indeed fully self-contained. I’m sure that most of us have heard stories of sleeper-van campers defending their self-containment status by saying that they have a bucket and a lid. This does not meet the standard and it does not meet community expectations.

The other issues that arise with freedom campers is the loss of access by locals to their special places and not being able to, say, launch their boats at the river or parking area, get to their fishing spot, or even walk the dog or go for picnics because the area is crammed packed full of campervans and sleeper vans. Now, if those areas are devoid of any toilet facilities, what this bill will mean is that those non - self-contained vehicles will not be able to park there, and that will, in turn, ease the pressure. Now, the mess that is left behind is something that irks local communities, and the tolerance for constantly cleaning up after campers is all but exhausted.

Now, I’d like to take note of an issue that was raised with me several times during the development of the original work on the 2011 Freedom Camping Act, and that’s the impact that it will have on families who want to enjoy our great outdoors with their family or their friends as part of a tenting holiday. These groups are not the target of this bill. We want Kiwis and visitors to be able to still continue to enjoy our back country experience. As we know, there is very little negative feedback received relating to this type of camper. They are the ones who traditionally leave only their footprints behind.

But with up to 250,000 people in 2019 who were spending part of their New Zealand holiday here freedom camping, we recognised that most of them do not cause any problems. However, when there is a human health issue that has been identified, it is, I believe, that we as a Parliament have a responsibility to respond and ensure that we include some of the most well-used freedom camping grounds and that we protect those pristine areas that people go to to camp. I believe that this bill does that by capturing LINZ land, Government-controlled land, and NZTA land, and it fills the gap that the original piece of legislation left. As a result, I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Tourism): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and, look, I would like to thank that member Maureen Pugh for supporting changes to a practice that I feel has very real potential to harm New Zealand’s “clean, green” “100% Pure” brand and is fast eroding or has already eroded tourism’s social licence to operate in many of our towns and our cities in our tourist spots around our wonderful country. This is something that I have spoken on often, both as the Minister of Tourism and in the past in Opposition and in other ministerial portfolios. It’s something I’m very passionate about, our brand, and this is something that I think we can do to help maintain and enhance our brand as borders open. We need to make changes now.

But the member must be very well aware—she must have been aware—that, as the Minister of Tourism, I am doing a lot of work around this area. She must have been aware when she put this bill into the ballot that discussion documents were out and it was very high on my work programme, as I have articulated right across the media many times.

But, having said that, her passion for this issue is commendable, and I thank her very much for supporting an issue that, as she knows, I am also very passionate about myself, and I’m making an assumption here—I hope I’m right. I’m making an assumption that the discussion document that we put out to a whole range of stakeholders on the change in freedom camping, the member submitted on—and even though I couldn’t find her submission, I’m sure she did—because what I did do was I put out a comprehensive public discussion document canvassing a number of issues on solutions on how we can deal with the problem that is freedom camping. We received a lot of feedback on proposed options for changing, and I’ve taken all these into account when designing a regime that I will take for Cabinet approval. It is a well-set-out and heavily consulted on document, and I believe the proposals will make a difference in an area that I am very passionate about.

Can I give the House some stats: only 74 percent of freedom campers and budget vehicles or purchased vehicles have access to an on-board toilet. Of those 74 percent of freedom campers that did have a toilet, only 28 percent used it. So they either used facilities—which this Government has significantly invested in, in partnership with local councils through the Tourism Infrastructure Fund—or they’ve gone outside. There is no reason for this, and the reason I say that is dotted all around our fantastic country, there are camping grounds and there are holiday parks, within easy drive of each other. There’s a whole network of them. The vast majority are very cheap, they’re accessible, and they have all the facilities that people need when they are travelling around our fantastic country on a budget holiday.

This does contrast with the premium end of the market, which has fixed toilets. These are the big campervans we see traversing our highways. They do have fixed toilets, and over 74 percent of the people in that premium end of the market actually say that they use the facility.

So whilst freedom camping is a wide area and has a very wide definition under the legislation, the area that we are really concerned about when we are looking at changing the law and really tightening it up are those vans that you see, and you see the little blue sticker on the back that says “self-contained”, and you go, “No way—that is not self-contained.” They often just have a bucket, I’m told, with some gladwrap over the top, and I’m also told that sometimes if they return this with the gladwrap still there, they get their deposit back—hardly an invitation to use the facilities and hardly self-contained, by anyone’s definition. This is what we’re looking to change.

In fact, I found out in the consultation that these are called sliders, and the reason they’re called sliders is in the middle of the night, you can hear that door slide open as they go outside to go to the toilet, and you can hear it slide closed again. Like I said, that’s hardly the sort of activity or the behaviour that we want to see right across our pristine country.

Certainly, when I went hard on this in the media upon becoming the Minister of Tourism, about 75 percent of the correspondence with my office was in favour of reform of this practice. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve gone very hard, and it is an issue that many Kiwis have a strong opinion on, because the last thing we want to see, if I’m to be quite blunt, is toilet paper in rest areas, on the side of streams, and on our reserves, and it’s one of the reasons where, only this week, the Napier City Council—and I applaud them for this—has banned freedom camping on the Westshore reserve, because there were too many instances of people defecating in this reserve, which is used by families and kids, and it’s a fantastic tourist spot.

The last thing we want is people using the Westshore reserve as a toilet, and no doubt those who are watching this have numerous examples of where they have been around this country and they’ve seen toilet paper and defecating in our forests, for example. It is the last thing we want to see, and apart from a health risk, as the previous member outlined, it is just a really bad look and there’s no reason for it. It’s the reason why we’re changing the rules.

We recognised that this was a major issue when, actually, we first came into Government in 2017. The previous Minister of Tourism, Kelvin Davis, in 2018, set up the Responsible Camping Working Group. It was a group of mayors and engaged stakeholders who provided a whole lot of information and feedback to the Minister on what he could do to implement changes around this freedom camping space, and, in fact, he put together a fund of about $25 million, which helped deal with the issues. I just felt, upon becoming the Minister of Tourism, we had to take things to the next stage. I felt that we needed a legislative solution.

Maureen Pugh, I won’t be supporting your piece of legislation. That’s not because I don’t believe there needs to be change, but, as the Minister of Tourism, I am bringing my own legislation on this. I have to take it to Cabinet. It is very well thought through, it is heavily consulted on, and it deals with a lot of the issues. It deals—

Chris Bishop: Oh, just—come on.

Hon STUART NASH: Oh, “Come on.”—Mr Bishop, you know how this works. You’ve got a member’s bill, which is really good in principle, but I have consulted widely with all the stakeholders. It is very well thought through. I understand the issues because I’ve been out to the people and I’ve heard what they’ve said, and I’ve come up with solutions to what all the stakeholders are talking about. It’s what we have done.

But what I can say—and I actually heard Mr Woodhouse speak very clearly and articulately on this in a forum I was at, and I see Mr Todd McClay over there, as the Opposition spokesperson for tourism. So what I am expecting is that when I do bring a bill to the House, very, very soon after it goes to Cabinet, I will expect the full support from the House because this is an issue we all know needs sorting.

So, Maureen Pugh, thank you very much for this, but my bill—[Interruption]—Todd McClay—is a bill that actually deals with the issues that all the stakeholders, up and down this country, and not just the West Coast but including the West Coast, because I’ve spoken all your mayors—a fantastic group of people who have engaged widely, and I applaud them for that. I really enjoyed my time with your mayors, but they’ve told me it’s a really big issue.

So I won’t be supporting this bill, but I support the philosophy and the premise behind it, and I fully expect Maureen Pugh, Todd McClay, Chris Bishop, and the National Opposition to support mine when I bring it to the House. Thank you very much. Kia ora.

Hon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Thank you. I’m pleased to speak on the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and congratulate Maureen Pugh for having the bill pulled and also for the thought that has gone into it. It is a serious bill and it does try to fill some gaps in the 2011 Freedom Camping Act.

Back in 2011, around the time of the Rugby World Cup, the number of freedom campers was estimated to be in the tens of thousands. Now, as others have noted, it’s more likely—before COVID, before the lockdown—to be in the vicinity of 250,000. That has brought significant problems, and I think one of the issues has been the way in which Aotearoa New Zealand has been advertised. These big motorhomes with blue sky, the wide expanse of the Mackenzie Basin—this notion that these big motorhomes are free to pull up anywhere, and even the term “freedom camping” suggests that. So I prefer to use the words “vehicle camping” because that is what it is. It’s either with a motorhome or with those sliders, the little vans that the Hon Stuart Nash was talking about.

So this vehicle camping has really undermined the social licence that tourism had pre-COVID because of the impacts it was having on communities—particularly areas like Queenstown, the Mackenzie Lakes, the West Coast—which were overrun by motorhomes using locals’ favoured sites to pull up for the night. The whole issue with poor toileting and faeces and not having adequate on-board facilities, and also the primary economic issue that in a number of regional centres you have motor camps and low-cost motels—those businesses were losing out because people were choosing just to park up anywhere and not pay for services they could get in a motor camp or a small motel.

I had the pleasure last term of working with the Hon Kelvin Davis as Minister of Tourism. From very early in the term, he recognised the issues around freedom camping, calling together a meeting of mayors to find out what councils were experiencing in those key areas, and then establishing the Responsible Camping Working Group which came up with a very useful report back in July 2018, and one of the key recommendations in that report was the need for investment in infrastructure. So, over the course of two years, there was about $27 million that Government invested in working with councils to ensure that there was appropriate infrastructure for vehicle camping.

In Queenstown Lakes, which is the second-most popular area after the Tasman District for vehicle camping, Mayor Boult had regularly had locals ringing him with issues around vehicle camping. But there, with the help of Government funding, they set up both in Wānaka and in Queenstown a facility where people can have showers, do their washing, get free Wi-Fi for an hour, and a washstand for washing dishes. That meant that the vehicle campers were able to use these facilities and were less likely to be found trying to wash dishes in local toilets. There was much better engagement with Te Papa Atawhai—the Department of Conservation—because if councils ban vehicle camping from local reserves, they tend to go off down the road to our public conservation land.

So that funding of around $27 million has been really helpful in providing response, on the ground, in terms of facilities. Minister Nash has carried on that work with the discussion document that was issued and people have responded to, but was interested in the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QDLC). It says that the review that Minister Nash conducted was a missed opportunity, that the recommendations are too narrow, and that they fail to implement a system-wide approach to change, and QLDC is hoping that there’s a review of the Freedom Camping Act in its whole and of the self-containment of motor caravans regulations and the Camping-Grounds Regulations 1985.

So the Green Party won’t be supporting Maureen Pugh’s bill, because we want to see that comprehensive solution that Minister Nash talked about. But we hope that the Labour Government listens to the concerns raised in submissions—particularly by groups like Queenstown Lakes District Council—and makes it more comprehensive. Kia ora.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and talk about freedom camping. I’m a converted freedom camper. I absolutely love going for a campervan holiday.

Four years ago, for the first time ever, my husband and I and our two kids, we got in a campervan—a self-contained campervan—and we hired it. We went away for three weeks and I had the time of my life, and, I have to say, I had a very, very happy husband. I had a happy husband because my husband loves surfing. He’s a great surfer. So what it meant was we could drive up to the surf and he’d be happy all morning or all afternoon, and I could just relax, read a book, hang out—tell you what, it was freedom. Right up north, all the way to Cape Reinga, we did all the beaches, and honestly, we just had a ball, and no arguments—no arguments—and that’s what freedom camping is all about.

So when I talk about camping now—[Interruption] Look, I’m speaking to Maureen Pugh, who started this off, but, really, the National Party’s just going to be going through the motions tonight because, as we have already said, we’re going to be voting this bill down, because we’re going to zhoosh it up even more. We’re going to make sure that this bill really does the business for New Zealand.

Now, when I read the bill, Maureen Pugh, I was pleased to see the stuff that was coming through, and one part that I took particular notice of was that the Attorney-General gave a report into a serious side of this where there would be automatic ways to just go in and do an inspection. An enforcement officer could come in and do an inspection, and under the Attorney-General’s opinion, he said that “For the reasons above”, he felt that it was “unreasonable to exercise this sort of unreasonable search grounds.” So that was something that I thought was quite interesting, and I think that will come through as we talk about the bill that Mr Nash is looking forward to putting through Cabinet.

Obviously, this is an opportunity to talk about some of those things that will be coming through. We don’t know what they’re going to be yet, but we know what was consulted on, and it was very, very timely this week because, yes, the Napier City Council—I read in the local paper, the Hawke’s Bay Today, the regional paper from the electorate of Tukituki and for Hastings, that they had decided to close down Westshore Beach Reserve for two years because people hadn’t been very clean. They haven’t been doing the business where they should be doing the business. That is what this bill has really hit home, and it’s just not good enough, is it?

So the serious side in zhooshing this up and taking this a bit further, Maureen Pugh, is what the Labour Party is going to be doing through Minister Nash. One of the things we consulted on was to make it mandatory for freedom camping in a vehicle to be done in a certified, self-contained vehicle. We’re making it mandatory for freedom campers to stay in a vehicle that is certified self-contained, unless they’re staying close to a toilet, and that makes sense, doesn’t it? That’s the part that I think is great.

Across my holiday, there were so many good spots that you could park up and there were good toilet resources, and I can tell you just another thing. There was a bit of a trick with our campervan trip, because the family said that we didn’t really want to clean out the self-contained ablutions, so we made sure that the first person who had to use it would have to have that job. So we made very sure—very sure—that we went and used areas where there were good toilet facilities.

I can tell you, go for a freedom camp. They’re absolutely brilliant—one of the best ways to see New Zealand. Unfortunately, though, I’ll be voting this bill down and looking forward to the next bill through the House.

Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank the previous member Anna Lorck for that graphic description. Anyway, I rise on behalf of the ACT Party to make a few brief comments about this bill. We do have some concerns on the details of this bill, but I think there is more than sufficient public interest and stories and things we’ve seen in the media of poor behaviour to at least send this bill to select committee so that it can get a fair hearing and the public can give some feedback, and councils, etc., because we don’t want people to be going around the country and ruining it for everybody else.

Despite the construction of new and upgraded facilities around New Zealand, concerns do remain. People still raise issues, and actually having a working enforcement programme might almost incentivise the construction of new facilities as well. So that could be interesting.

As I said, I do have a few concerns. There is the scope of discretion, because officers will inevitably come across a whole raft of scenarios and different situations, and in some cases a verbal warning is more appropriate. We need to uncover any potential unintended consequences where people might be issued fines when they’re not actually freedom camping—you know, the odd occasion where somebody might pull over in their van to get some rest and fall asleep in the middle of the night, and what happens there. We need to have a good look at the granting of power to officers to conduct a search of a vehicle for the purpose of ensuring compliance, and so the concern there is simply around privacy and whether or not this could be an avenue for wider prosecution if they find other things while they’re doing it.

I did want to query as part of this the issue of the notices being sent to rental companies. That was likened to what happens when you’re in a rental car and you’ve got a bit of a lead foot and you go for a bit of a hoon, you go past a speed camera, and then the rental company receives an infringement fee in the mail for $630 or $30, and then they send it to you. So that was interesting, because I would have thought for this regime it would be more likely to be on-the-spot fines as people are searching your vehicle, so that’s something that I was sort of querying.

So, as I said, I think it’s fair and reasonable for these concerns and others and for the public to have their say on this issue because, clearly, the problem still exists. It’s less of a problem at the moment because of the border situation and the pandemic, but I’m sure this will come back. I guess the last thing I would say is how did I know that the Hon Stuart Nash would oppose this, despite it being right up his alley. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): I rise today, yet another time, this time to speak on the Freedom Camping (Infringement Offences and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. When I first came to New Zealand as a young child, one of the things my family did was travel throughout the country, top down, visiting different towns and cities, trying to take in the beautiful sights of New Zealand. It’s something that we’re all very used to doing here in New Zealand, enjoying our beautiful landscape, but also what we’ve noticed is with the number of tourists increasing over the years, there has been a significant rise in people who do freedom camp.

In 2000, we had about 10,000 visitors a year who were freedom camping. This number grew to 54,000 in 2013 and on last count, in 2018, it was 123,000. So I’ll show you a little graph. I don’t know if you guys can see it from here—it’s a little bit small—but the numbers are rising. The numbers are rising and what this means is the impact of freedom campers on our infrastructure, especially in smaller towns, is getting worse, which means you see more and more people using the public toilets. You see more and more people park their cars in supermarkets, making it worse for small-town citizens, who then have to actually go around and clean up after these people.

So, in principle, I think we all agree around the House that something does need to be done about all these issues that have gotten worse because of our increased tourism, which is not a bad thing. But we do need to have a way of getting this under control, especially as the country opens up after this global pandemic is sorted out.

As the Minister of Tourism has said, the Labour Government has been working on this for quite a long time, and the key difference between what the Government is proposing and what the Opposition has proposed is that the Government has taken quite a comprehensive review of this and has involved various stakeholders and a full round of public consultation, which hasn’t happened in this space. That is quite important because these communities need to be able to get their word in on how the laws will be made around this, because it does affect these people in their various communities.

I’m just going to mention a few of the things that the Government has done already to make this more sustainable. So if we look at the establishment of the Responsible Camping Working Group, where the Government put in $25 million in 2018 to better manage the freedom camping system, there was also an introduction of a data and technology pilot to provide real-time information on the capacity of selected campsites, which saw over 20,000 people check the live availability of the trial sites at that time.

In addition to that, there were a lot of education campaigns run by Tourism New Zealand about responsible camping behaviours—[Pauses while another member listens to Parliament TV on his cellphone]—sorry, I was just waiting for the other member to finish watching his video—and in addition to that, there was provision of free access to self-contained vehicle standards, saving users around $70 each to allow people to see what was required for certification as a self-contained vehicle. There was also commissioning of research to better understand the number, profile, and value of visitors, both domestic and international, who go freedom camping throughout the summer.

As you can see, the Government has done quite a lot of groundwork already in addressing this issue, but the missing piece has been the public consultation, which the Government did start in April and, as I understand, it has now taken place, and all that information will be used in making this legislation even better. So while I do thank the member of the Opposition for bringing this bill to the House, I think there are lots of missing pieces which can be addressed and which the Minister himself has agreed to look into as we move forward.

So I would like to say no to the current bill as it stands, and I look forward to the bill that the Minister of Tourism will be bringing to the House in a few months’ time. Thank you so much.

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this bill this evening. There’s nothing like the last hour of a members’ day as we head towards the close and the final couple of speeches of the night. Hopefully, this speech will be sufficiently interesting that members will be focused.

Obviously, we’re looking at the freedom camping bill, and I’d like to acknowledge Maureen Pugh for her work on this bill. It has been widely acknowledged from all parties that there is a significant issue in this area that does need to be addressed, and so the member is certainly accurate in her assumption of the issues. We heard from the Minister there—the Hon Stuart Nash, the Minister of Tourism—around his plans, and his view was quite clearly that there are important issues in this area but that he does not want to block up the select committee process with this bill. But he will be bringing a bill to the House soon.

I’d like to touch on an aspect around tourism and just explore our brand that we have. We have a very strong brand in New Zealand which has been built upon by successive Governments over many years, and that brand is very much around “clean, green” pure New Zealand. We have built that brand very well. It’s been a consistent brand for many years, and, look, by and large, it is certainly an accurate brand. However, we can always do better, and I think most people in this House would acknowledge that, and the area of freedom camping is an area that we can do better, and those arguments have been quite clearly outlined tonight in terms of some of the issues. The member Maureen Pugh accurately highlighted some of them, and the Minister has also talked about those.

Now, this aspect around “100% Pure”—there is a rather unique opportunity that we have at the moment as a country in this COVID environment in that we don’t have tourists coming to New Zealand. Now, tourists will start coming again from overseas, hopefully, soon. We’re obviously all working together towards that, when it’s safe to do so, and when tourists do start coming back to New Zealand in a safe manner, we have the opportunity to look at what sort of tourism sector we want to have in New Zealand. Normally, there’s not an opportunity for a reset like this, so this is fairly unique. So I would like to acknowledge the work that the Minister is doing in this area to, effectively, reimagine tourism in terms of what type of tourist we want, where we want tourists to go, and, particularly, the impact that tourists have on New Zealand’s environment.

There is an aspect around the social licence as well for tourists, and this social licence is granted by local communities. We have heard from some local communities that that social licence prior to COVID appeared to be running a little bit thin, and, certainly, many of us heard that, particularly in this area of the freedom camping aspects. So there’s the aspect of a social licence and the aspect of the opportunity to reimagine tourism in New Zealand. There’s an opportunity for us to protect and restore our natural environment moving forward.

I understand that prior to COVID, we had around 800,000 people per year go through the Milford Sound. Now, when you go overseas, you often see that Milford Sound on the advertising brochures—it’s normally the Milford Sound in Hamilton on the advertising brochures that we see overseas, so these two areas are particularly important for our branding. Some members are saying that they haven’t seen that one. I can certainly assure all members that that’s certainly accurate when you’re overseas.

So, look, the reality is that having 800,000 people through the Milford Sound is not sustainable, so we must protect our natural environment. We must ensure we can deliver a high-quality tourism experience, and the Minister is absolutely committed to this. I’m sort of running out of time to go into it, but the Minister did a consultation document and the document received extensive feedback, and that will form the basis of the legislation he will bring to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well, thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s getting late on a member’s evening, as Jamie Strange, the last speaker, indicated, and it’s a time, I guess, when the Parliament is sometimes at its best and sometimes at its worst.

I want to commence my contribution in this debate by congratulating my friend and colleague Maureen Pugh for bringing to this Parliament a well-thought-out, well-considered, practical piece of legislation that can be implemented now if the Government decided to get off their high horse and stop being so arrogant and assuming that they know the answer to everything and that only they are the fount of knowledge and wisdom on all matters. If they took an occasional opportunity to seek the input, the contribution, and the wisdom of other members in this debating chamber, then they would be doing well for all New Zealanders in terms of solving what is a real problem.

I’ve got the honour and privilege of representing the beautiful Coromandel in this Parliament. Just as my friend and colleague Maureen Pugh has in her part of the country on the West Coast, we get an awful lot of tourists visiting the Coromandel when they come to New Zealand from overseas, when they’re allowed to, and we hope that sooner or later that opportunity will arise again. But, as other members have already indicated, there are ongoing issues in terms of so-called freedom camping, and I actually quite like the suggestion that Eugenie Sage had about the renaming of the system. It’s not too often that I agree with her, but occasionally I think she has a reasonable point, and I quite like the term “vehicle camping”, because that actually does more accurately sum up the issue that is at hand.

But one of the things that struck me from the Minister of Tourism’s contribution, apart from his natural and very obvious arrogance and inability to even consider for a moment the input and thoughts of other members who have gone to a lot of trouble and come up with a sensible, pragmatic, practical solution for an issue of the sort that exists in many parts of the country, including my own—around the beautiful Coromandel. It was that, actually, apart from some consultations and some meetings and submissions, nothing has been done. Not a thing—zip, nothing. Four years of failure—nothing has yet been done.

So where is the sense of urgency? Where’s the sense of passion that the Minister so eloquently and so energetically brings to the House, but he delivers, in practical terms, nothing—zip, nada, zero, nothing—and here my colleague Maureen Pugh has a piece of legislation ready to go. I would have thought that in the best interests of parliamentary democracy, the sensible thing to do would be to actually send this bill to a select committee to hear submissions, to have the benefit of a select committee scrutiny, to give it the justice that I think it deserves, and to give the credit to the member that she deserves for bringing it to the House and for having the good fortune to have it drawn from the ballot, particularly when the Government seems so slow to move at all.

Actually, that would be a good thing. That would add something to the net knowledge and net potential benefit for regions like mine and others around the country where there are lots of vehicle campers who move around and, frankly, many of them create an obscene, filthy, disgusting mess. It’s very obvious in some parts of the country, mine included, and it’s simply not good enough. The aspect of social licence has been mentioned by other speakers.

So I am very sorry that the Government has, yet again, decided to take it upon themselves to be the fount of all knowledge and to absolutely not consider the input of other members, and not to consider the input of other submitters, not to give this bill a select committee hearing, and not to use the process that this whole members’ bill system is designed to achieve of giving good ideas an airing and a thought.

Now, it may not be absolutely perfect, this bill. I think Maureen Pugh would be the first to concede that maybe there were things that could be improved by her bill, but I think to give it at least an opportunity for an airing and a hearing would be a good thing—get it under way, get something done, and actually achieve something. So instead of having grand, energetic announcements that achieve nothing—zero, zip, nada—actually do something practical.

So here we have, again, late on a members’ bill day, the Government—arrogantly, in my view—simply deciding that they know best and that the opinions of others in this Chamber are not worth considering. That will ultimately be the demise of this Government, because they do it on so many issues. This might be just a matter to do with camping, but it’s a signal of this Government’s attitude.

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

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.