Thursday, 30 September 2021

Thursday, 30 SEPTEMBER 2021

Thursday, 30 SEPTEMBER 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

karakia/prayers

karakia/prayers

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Kia tau anō te rangimārie ki a tātou. 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.

[Allow peace to prevail over us once again. 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.]

Business Statement

Business Statement

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Today, the House will adjourn until Tuesday, 19 October. In that week, the House will consider further stages of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Legislation Bill, the Financial Sector (Climate-related Disclosures and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, and the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill; the first readings of the Digital Identity Services Trust Framework Bill and the Animal Welfare Amendment Bill; and the second reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill.

Wednesday, 20 October will be a members’ day. On Thursday, 21 October, the new Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, will be sworn in.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank the Leader of the House for that update and ask: is he in a better position this week to inform the House when it may expect to see legislation reforming the New Zealand public health system and how long that select committee process will go, and, if he’s not, would he consider sharing, perhaps, exposure drafts with other parties in order that they can prepare for it?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): What I can say is that the health legislation will be introduced by the Minister of Health when it’s ready to be introduced. In terms of a consultation around that, whether the party is interested in taking part in those discussions, that’s ultimately a matter for the Opposition to take up with the Minister of Health.

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

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

SPEAKER: No bills have been introduced. A petition has been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK: Petition of Edwina Hughes for Aotearoa New Zealand Campaign to Stop Killer Robots requesting that the House, as a matter of urgency: enact legislation to prohibit the development, production, and use of lethal autonomous weapon systems in New Zealand; and urge the Government to support negotiations on a new treaty to retain meaningful human control over the use of force by prohibiting such weapons.

SPEAKER: That petition stands referred to the Petitions Committee.

Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Annual reports for 2021:

Reserve Bank of New Zealand

New Zealand Schools

TVNZ, and

Armed Forces Canteen Council

statement of performance expectations for the year ended 30 June 2022 for TVNZ, and

the Treasury’s combined Statement on the Long-term Fiscal Position and Long-term Insights Briefing.

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

Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Report of the Education and Workforce Committee on the report of the Controller and Auditor-General, Accident Compensation Corporation case management: progress on recommendations made in 2014

report of the Privileges Committee on the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Bill, and

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the Report of the Ombudsman: Report on inspections of aged care facilities under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989.

SPEAKER: The bill is set down for second reading, and the reports are set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Immigration

1. Dr JAMES McDOWALL (ACT) to the Minister of Immigration: Is he confident that Immigration New Zealand can process the 2021 Resident Visa applications of up to 165,000 migrants within 12 months; if so, what does Immigration New Zealand plan to do differently to avoid creating a significant backlog?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Yes, because the criteria for the 2021 resident visa are clear and easy to assess. This will ensure Immigration New Zealand can manage the expected large volume of applications on a timely basis. Processing these applications will be a priority for Immigration New Zealand. Furthermore, the applications will be submitted online and will still be able to be processed by immigration officers anywhere in New Zealand should alert level restrictions be a factor. I will be taking a proactive approach in ensuring expectations around processing are met.

Dr James McDowall: Will he be setting performance targets for Immigration New Zealand and telling the public what “majority of applications to be granted within a year” actually means?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: When documents are released, it will show that around 80 percent of applications should be processed within 12 months of the application tranches opening, so that is somewhat better than the wait times that have been in place for some time. Again, I assure the member that I will be taking a proactive approach in ensuring that the expectations that have been set are met.

Dr James McDowall: What does the Minister say to the thousands of skilled migrants such as doctors, teachers, nurses, and their employers who have recently left New Zealand due to having no pathway to residency and being split from their families?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: We acknowledge that the issues that have been created by our closed border and uncertainty with pathways to residence have caused some people to make some extremely difficult decisions. I would balance that to the 165,000 people today who woke up to a clear pathway to residence because of their contribution to New Zealand over the last three years, the skilled work that they’re undertaking, or the scarce skills that they are offering to New Zealand at the moment.

Dr James McDowall: Does the Minister now admit that the Government’s immigration reset announced in May has been a total disaster?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The obvious answer there is no. What I do think is a success is the fact that the Government has taken a comprehensive approach to ensuring that skilled workers, settled workers, and scarce workers can now stay in New Zealand and build a future for them and their families, and also the employers who have concerns about their workers being able to maintain jobs in New Zealand can rest easy. I thank the member for his late-night posts last night helping me get the word out. I see his party has moved its priorities on to making sure that Britney Spears is free.

Dr James McDowall: Why did it take the Minister so long to sort this out?

Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern: Because it’s 165,000 people.

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Thank you very much, Prime Minister—my words exactly: 165,000 people now have a clear pathway to residence. It is a comprehensive solution to problems that businesses currently face because of the COVID pandemic. We are very proud that a comprehensive solution such as this has been able to be met and it’s giving the certainty to 165,000 migrant workers that they have been wanting.

Question No. 2—Health

2. TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North) to the Minister of Health: Kia orana, Mr Speaker. What recent reports has he seen on the implementation of the Budget 2019 mental health package?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Last Friday, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s (DPMC) Implementation Unit released their mid-term review of the landmark $1.9 billion investment this Government has made in the mental health system in 2019. I’m pleased to say that the report found most of the initiatives funded by the Government are on track to be completed by 2023-24. The report’s findings are an enormous credit to those working at the coalface of mental health and in the support agencies, including the Ministry of Health. In fact, just one item I can report progress on is that we have added 663 fulltime-equivalent front-line roles in just the last two years. However, no one should underestimate the challenge in building up from an incredibly low base. There is a long way to go to have the sort of mental health system that New Zealanders expect and deserve.

Tangi Utikere: What are some of the key findings in that report?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Some of the key findings are, firstly, that the Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission is now fully operational, more than 200 GP sites are now offering integrated primary mental health and addiction services to more than 11,000 people a month and providing coverage for an enrolled population of 1.5 million Kiwis, telehealth capacity has been increased by 58,000 contacts a year, 18 services tailored for young people are fully or partially operational across 14 DHB areas, and front-line staffing has increased across New Zealand, including in the regions encompassing hospital emergency departments, services to mothers and their whānau, and forensic mental health. There is much more in the report and much more to do, and I would encourage all members to read it on the DPMC website.

Tangi Utikere: Did the report identify any areas for improvement?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Yes. When it comes to infrastructure, the Ministry of Health has struggled to achieve as much as this Government would have liked. We’ve taken immediate steps to address that finding in the report. That compares to the complete failure of investment by the previous Government in any health infrastructure at all. The Ministry of Health, however, can now provide DHBs with funding for the planning, design, and consenting of infrastructure projects so they can be fast-tracked. An assurance group chaired by Professor Judy McGregor and including those with lived experience has now been established to oversee the implementation of the rest of the programme. We’re also simplifying overall infrastructure planning. Ultimately, like in so many parts of the health system, this is what happens when there is a sustained under-investment in health infrastructure for nine long years, including not one cent being invested in 2015 or 2016.

Matt Doocey: When the Minister championed the increase of mental health workers, what did his independent review say about the 40 percent of mental health workers who had resigned—from 634 a year to 875—

SPEAKER: Order! Order!

Matt Doocey: —over the last three years?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: There is no question that in the health sector generally there are major workforce challenges, and that is because, as I have told this House before, for 10 years the previous Government turned its back on the health sector, failed to invest, failed to support, neglected every major health issue that this country faced, and this Government is now cleaning up the mess.

Matt Doocey: Point of order, Mr Speaker. I asked what the report said.

SPEAKER: And the member added extraneous material to it, and therefore I’m not going to push the Minister to be more exact.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order. In respect of extraneous material, I wonder if you could check the last two answers to supplementary questions, when you get a chance, for their compliance with Standing Orders 396(2)(a) and (b)?

SPEAKER: I’m happy to check and I will do that. But I will sort of remind the member that when there are political questions asked, there is likely to be that sort of response.

Question No. 3—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular, I stand by this Government’s decision to offer a one-off resident visa for skilled, for settled, and for scarce migrants currently in New Zealand. This change gives certainty to many of our migrant families who have been in New Zealand through the pandemic, and it will provide certainty to New Zealand businesses so they can better plan for the future. It’s estimated that this includes 5,000 health- and aged-care workers, 9,000 primary industry workers, and more than 800 teachers. These are members of our team of 5 million and they’ve played an important role for our country, and now they can have the certainty they need to continue their lives here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Hon Judith Collins: At what vaccination rate will fully vaccinated Kiwis returning home from low-risk countries be able to self-isolate at home?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: There’s two stages to us moving to a model like that. The first is the use of the self-isolation pilot which, as the member will know, we announced this week, which trials the use of self-isolation for double-vaccinated New Zealand citizens travelling abroad. The second area where we’re looking to modify our border settings is the use of shortened isolation periods. We’re looking to draw on data from overseas countries as to the safe exit point for shortened managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ). On both those fronts, we’re looking to use those varied border settings from the first quarter of 2022, in keeping with our reconnecting New Zealand strategy, based on the public health advisory work of Professor David Skegg.

Hon Judith Collins: Why has her Government not delivered purpose-built MIQ facilities outside of the central business districts 18 months into this pandemic?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Well, obviously, we do have managed isolation facilities who do sit outside of those areas, and we’ve found that some of the ones that we’ve used throughout the pandemic have been very successful—one of which is the Jet Park, which has been our primary managed quarantine facility and has worked well. One thing I would acknowledge is that regardless of where they’re placed, what matters is also where you draw your primary source of workforce from, and so the proximity to airports matters but also proximity to workforce. So having facilities that—yes—meet all of the standards you need around ventilation and so on is important, but you also do need rigorous tests in place to ensure that the workforce continue to be safe, because they will live in proximity and around communities, which presents risk. So, all up, we’ve used facilities quickly that we’ve been able to access and lease. We are saying that we will vary up, potentially, whether we purchase those, going forward. We are exploring whether or not in the future it would warrant having additional purpose-built. But, as I’ve just said, we’re now trialling things like self-isolation and shortened MIQ, so there will be a change to the way we use MIQ in the future.

Hon Judith Collins: When will booster shots be available for those people in group 1 who received their vaccine over seven months ago?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: When our experts advise us that that is a space that they recommend us moving into. You’ll see that—yes—some countries have made decisions for older individuals or immunocompromised individuals, but this is still quite a hotly contested space. What’s important for us in the meantime is to preserve our position to do that. If our experts advise us we should, we are all ready to go. We do have additional vaccines that we would have available in the first half of next year, in part due to the fact that for five- to 11-year-olds, should they be granted in New Zealand the authorisation to be vaccinated, a paediatric dose is a third of—at this stage—an adult dose. That gives us extra quantity, and also the shelf life for our current Pfizer vaccines, which we’ll have surplus of, is now nine months rather than four. So we will have additional capacity for booster shots, should that be recommended.

Hon Judith Collins: Does the goal of the current Auckland lockdown remain elimination?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said many times before, our strategy all the way through has been a “stamp it out” strategy—a zero tolerance for COVID cases—but that does not mean we will have zero, and so we have said all the way through that we maintain that strategy while we are vaccinating New Zealanders.

Hon Judith Collins: Did the Prime Minister just indicate that when vaccination rates are high enough, she will not be maintaining an elimination strategy?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ve actually said many, many times that we intend to move away from the alert level system that has often had to use restrictions in alert levels 3 and 4 in order to maintain a “stamp it out” strategy. So we’ve always said that with a vaccinated environment, you wear your individual armour. It means that you don’t have to isolate yourself away from COVID in order to maintain a strategy of stamping out COVID-19. It’s often been others who have interpreted elimination to be something more like eradication; that has not been us.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she then agree with University of Auckland epidemiologist Rod Jackson, who said today, that elimination is “always … a short-term strategy, but what Delta has done [has] made it much [more] shorter-term”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I actually really wish the member perhaps would engage in some of the dialogue that we’ve been having daily with New Zealand on this very point. We’ve long said that the reason that we’re maintaining this strategy in Auckland right now is because we need to vaccinate New Zealanders. Once you are vaccinated, New Zealanders, you have the ability to change the way that you deal with outbreaks substantively, and so that is what we have been saying for quite some time. But, for now, we continue to operate in Auckland with very clear public health protocols, isolating cases, and using the heavy restrictions that we have because we do not have a fully vaccinated population.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm that New Zealand has over a long period of time maintained an elimination strategy for a range of infectious diseases where vaccination is available and has been widely taken up by New Zealanders, without the need for alert level escalations and border restrictions?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes, and some of those tools are the ones that you’re seeing so widely in use now. Public health units have the ability, for instance, for even the management of flu to shut down some health facilities, if they need to. For the measles, they use contact tracing alongside other tools. But I guess the point that I would again make, referring back to the last member’s question, is a number of health professionals have been talking about the extra capacity the vaccine gives you to change the way that you deal with outbreaks, as have we.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she agree with epidemiologist Dr Rod Jackson and Professor Shaun Hendy, who today agreed: “Auckland is going to be in level 3 until we don’t have mystery cases”?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The judgments that we make around the movement of restrictions we base on the public health assessments that come through from the Ministry of Health. What I have said today is that there are a range of analyses that we’ll make to different restrictions, and consider whether or not those can be eased safely, and that’s the same consideration we make every time when we look at our alert level framework: what can we do safely to ensure that we maintain control of the outbreak that currently exists in Auckland?

Question No. 4—Local Government

4. ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour) to the Minister of Local Government: Does she stand by her comment on Three Waters that “the case for change is [well-made], compelling … and needs to be [understood]”; if so, what steps will she take to ensure feedback over the last eight weeks will be considered?

SPEAKER: Just before the Minister starts her answer, we seem to have an extra member, or some confusion, at the back of the House. Thank you.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): Xiexie, Mr Speaker. Yes, there is near universal agreement that the status quo is not sustainable. Our three waters assets are now liabilities, and we need to position the system in a way where they are best placed to enable an estimated $120 billion to $180 billion investment needed over 30 years. Without action, the situation for councils and communities is only going to get worse. Over the past eight weeks, I’ve received considerable feedback from councils which has included a wide range of issues such as governance arrangements, accountability and performance expectations, ensuring assets remain in public ownership, maintaining local voice, especially in smaller areas, and that consumer ratepayer benefits must be demonstrated. These are important topics, and I’m committed to keeping the conversation going on how we progress the reforms in a way that respects the views represented from councils on behalf of their communities. In particular, I’m alert to the concerns that positive, effective relationships councils have built with partners like iwi and business with regards to water are important and should not be lost in the process of reform. Indeed, such relationships should enhance this process.

Angie Warren-Clark: What core challenges of the reform proposal need to be understood by councils and the public?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Even with the best of intentions, the scale of the three waters challenge is too big for any one council to come up with a solution that can respond to a high-standards regime with comprehensive compliance, monitoring, and enforcement. Taumata Arowai, the dedicated drinking-water regulator, will ensure comprehensive implementation of health and environmental standards. That’s why this reform is not simply tinkering around the edges. It fundamentally addresses the long-term under-investment in waters infrastructure that will provide a more financially sustainable and resilient waters infrastructure network and will deliver vastly improved health and environmental benefits. Leveraging balance sheets at this level will give greater certainty to communities that their rates will be going to a higher-quality water network than what is currently the case. This approach, ultimately, is about the wellbeing of people, the community, and the environment, and the long-term economic growth of regions.

Angie Warren-Clark: Why is a nationwide, all-in model the best approach to address the significant affordability challenges for infrastructure investment?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I’ve consistently said that my preferred approach is to enable all communities within New Zealand to access the benefits of reform. As I’ve said before in this House, the Government cannot accept a solution for the three waters challenge that works for cities and leaves smaller towns and regions facing the same issues as they are now. In practice, a nationwide, all-in approach would require every territorial authority district to be included in the new water services entities. Several councils have raised concerns about cross-subsidising their neighbours, but an all-in approach means greater efficiencies for all councils and ratepayers through better capital asset management and more professional workforce procurement practices, innovation, and service delivery, and improved services at a more affordable cost to consumers and ratepayers.

Barbara Kuriger: How many more councils, like Taupō and Timaru, need to unequivocally oppose the three waters reforms before the Minister admits that she will force the reforms on the councils?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: It may be good enough for that member to raise how many people oppose, but the simple fact of the matter is that lot on that side of the House have no credible alternative. This issue has been around for a very, very long time, but let me explain: this hasn’t emerged overnight, this challenge for three waters. We have the advantage of a great deal of analysis from a wide range of sources, including from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, in their report that was tabled in the year 2000—and nothing was done. Also the Land and Water Forum in 2010—and nothing was done—the Auditor-General in 2017 and, again, in 2018, and many councils’ own reports, not to mention the recently commissioned reports under the tenure of this Government. It cannot be left to chance; something must be done. It is a challenging issue. At least on this side of the House, we are dealing with the serious issues that will underpin long-term regional economic growth, while that side of the House has no credible alternative.

Question No. 5—Health

5. Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National) to the Minister of Health: Why didn’t he add any new resourced ICU beds in Auckland in the year before the current outbreak, and what recommendations about ICU capacity, if any, were included in the two recent models he identified in his answer to written question No. 42142?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Significant work has been undertaken since March 2020 to provide for surge ICU capacity across the Auckland region and provide for longer-term security. Of the metro Auckland DHBs, Waitematā has surge capacity up from eight ICU beds to 28 and Counties Manukau up from 24 to 40, so the member’s assertion in his question is, in fact, wrong. To the second part of the question, my answer to written question No. 42142 described percentage models developed by specialists working in two DHBs that are not in Auckland. I’m advised that the models pertained to scenario planning for if New Zealand’s borders were opened and that neither model contained explicit recommendations. When considering models, it’s important to recognise that not all COVID-19 patients need to be in ICU or on a ventilator. The best way to keep people out of ICU in any model or under any scenario is to have as many eligible New Zealanders vaccinated as possible, and that is what we are trying to achieve.

Dr Shane Reti: What in-patient procedures are not undertaken under the surge model that he has just described for ICUs?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I’m not quite sure what surge model the member is referring to, except to say that when there is an outbreak there is necessarily disruption to health services. If it is contained and local, that disruption can be confined to the particular hospital or hospitals in that region. If it is more widespread, then other hospitals may be affected. The reality is in the response to a pandemic such as we have seen, when there is a risk or a reasonably high probability that there will be a high number of admissions to hospital and to ICUs, hospitals clear their planned care lists so that both space, or beds, and personnel are available to provide the care that is needed.

Dr Shane Reti: Does he agree it would have been prudent to use the past 16 months to add at least some persistent ICU beds in our largest city, given there is a global pandemic?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, that is in fact what has happened, and if you have a look at what Waitematā, for example, has done and what Counties Manukau has done, they have created extra standing ICU capacity for their hospitals. Other DHBs have done the same again. But the preparation that has happened since the end of last year, having reflected on last year’s lockdowns, is to make sure that across our hospital network there is additional capacity that can be brought on at short notice and additional surge capacity that can bring our ICU bed capacity to up to 550.

Dr Shane Reti: Will he commit to adding at least one extra resourced ICU bed in Auckland in the next month?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, that is already happening, because this is a Government that having reflected on what happened in the lockdowns last year and doing the work to prepare for the ongoing management of COVID-19, continues to support our health system to be prepared for the ongoing response to the pandemic, and when we get to the point of a highly vaccinated population and start relaxing the restrictions, including border restrictions, we will have a health system that is capable of responding to COVID wherever it turns up in New Zealand.

Dr Shane Reti: When he said yesterday that prior conduct is the best indicator of future conduct, does this mean he plans to add no significant new standing ICU beds, given he hasn’t added any in the last 16 months?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: No. That was a comment in reference to the appalling conduct of the previous National Government and its absolute and utter failure to continue to invest in our public health system to keep New Zealanders safe, because what we know about National Governments is they just do not care about our public health system.

Question No. 6—Immigration

6. JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata) to the Minister of Immigration: What recent announcements has the Government made to provide certainty for temporary migrants and their employers?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): This morning, the Government announced a one-off residency pathway to provide certainty to migrants and their employers. The 2021 resident visa will provide a one-off, simplified pathway to residents for around 165,000 migrants currently in New Zealand. We’re providing a way forward for our migrant families, who are being long disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, while ensuring businesses have the certainty they need to plan into the future to continue driving the economic recovery. This is something employers have asked for and the Labour Government is delivering. Employers will now have the opportunity to retain their settled and skilled migrant workers, reflecting the critical part that they play in our economy, workforce, and in our communities.

Jo Luxton: Who will be eligible for residence as a result of this announcement?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: The 2021 resident visa is available to applicants who have been in New Zealand on 29 September, yesterday, and must hold or have applied for one of the eligible work visas. They must also meet one of the criteria of either being settled in New Zealand for three years or more, being skilled so as to be earning over the median wage, or working in a role where workers are scarce. The visa will also be available for those who enter New Zealand as critical workers, and their families, for roles of six months or longer up until the end of July 2022. The member may want to know that 5,000 health- and aged-care workers are likely to be eligible, 12,000 manufacturing workers are likely to be eligible, 15,000 construction workers will be eligible, and I’m sure the member for Rangitata will want to know that 9,000 primary industry workers are likely to be eligible.

Jo Luxton: Excellent. How is this announcement being received?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: Oh, well, I am aware of some reports of this announcement being relatively well-received, other than from the member of the ACT Party who asked question No. 1. The Employers and Manufacturers Association said, for example, that this is “the most significant immigration change in decades” and it will be welcomed by business and a relief for migrant workers and their families. BusinessNZ have also said, “Residency pathways for critical workers and their families recognise the significant contribution international workers have made to New Zealand during the pandemic.”, and we agree with them.

Question No. 7—Finance

7. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) to the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by his statement on the Government’s economic response to the August COVID-19 outbreak, “We do know that there will be businesses unfortunately who won’t make it through this, but we also know that the rebound on the other side has shown that the New Zealand economy does well when we get on top of this, and businesses come back”?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I stand by all the statements I made to the Finance and Expenditure Committee yesterday in their context. That context includes the $3.6 billion in support that has been provided to businesses, since this outbreak began, to give cash flow and confidence. I would also note the context that we have modified our support through the outbreak by increasing the amount paid for the wage subsidy scheme and making the Resurgence Support Payment a more regular payment. In addition, as I said yesterday, we know from the experience of last year that the approach that we have taken has seen the economy swiftly and emphatically rebound, and this means an environment that businesses operate in where they can rapidly improve and come back to profitability.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he agree that businesses that fail are not going to be able to bounce back?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As was noted, I believe, in March 2020 by myself and by the member’s predecessor in the finance portfolio for the National Party, it is the sad reality of a significant downturn or a significant disruption to business that some businesses will not make it through from there. But the overall resilience of the New Zealand business community has been seen throughout COVID-19 and I am confident in the context of the recovery we saw last year that we would see a similar one this time, and most businesses will do well in that.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Has he seen reports from Deloitte that the number of businesses seeking help more than doubled during this lockdown, and does he agree with David Webb’s prediction that things could become worse for many of those businesses?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I haven’t seen those particular reports, but what I do know is that the resilience of the New Zealand business community is strong. Many of them built up their balance sheets very well over the course of the last year, where economic conditions in New Zealand were far more favourable than the rest of the world, where we had far fewer days of restrictions. This doesn’t discount that it is a tough time for those businesses. What I would indicate to the member in terms of real-time information is we can say that there were 34 company liquidations last week compared to 21 for the same time last year and 27 for that week in 2019.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Is he going to revisit the level of support to businesses, given that it’s much more difficult for many customer-facing ones to survive under the current Delta alert level 2 restrictions than it was under the previous alert level 2 restrictions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I’ve said many times in this House, we constantly look at the support that we’re giving and update it as is appropriate. I would note for those who are in level 2 in New Zealand at the moment that we are operating under the level 2 restrictions as we’ve known them previously.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Does he accept that more support for business from the COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund would’ve been a better investment than the $710 million paid from that fund to entice councils to support the Government’s three waters reforms?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Well, that comment from the member shows that he hasn’t actually looked very closely at what that funding was for. It was to support work to upgrade the water infrastructure of New Zealand and create jobs. Creating jobs is actually something that on this side of the House, we think it’s important, and it was a very important part of making sure that the New Zealand economy recovered. I should remind the member that when we went into lockdown last year, we were being told we would have double-digit unemployment in New Zealand. We didn’t: we’ve ended up with unemployment back at 4 percent. That, in part, is because of the investment made by this Government in supporting jobs.

Question No. 8—Conservation

8. RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson) to the Minister of Conservation: What recent announcements has she made regarding Jobs for Nature projects on the West Coast?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Conservation): Great news for the West Coast because last week I announced a package of four Jobs for Nature projects across the West Coast, spanning business support, sustainable whitebait fisheries, restoration of the Arahura River, and tackling large-scale weed control. The projects represent an investment of almost $9 million into nature and the community, and are collectively expected to create 45 jobs and sustain up to 100 more.

Rachel Boyack: How is Jobs for Nature supporting businesses in South Westland?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Businesses in the heavily tourism-dependent area of South Westland have been supported by Jobs for Nature funding since July 2020 as part of the Sustaining the South Westland Community project. An additional $1.28 million has been committed to continue the support for the next two years, enabling 40 businesses to have their staff working on conservation projects throughout South Westland. This investment will continue to enable up to 100 people to remain in and contribute to their local South Westland communities through the impacts of COVID and it has already delivered 30,000 hours of conservation work spanning animal pest research, predator trap construction, surveys, weed control, and track maintenance.

Rachel Boyack: How will this investment support a sustainable whitebait fishery on the West Coast?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: There is $1.36 million being provided to the Sustainable Wild Whitebait Fishery Project, which will be delivered by the West Coast Regional Council and is expected to create 13 jobs over the next two years. This project aims to improve whitebait spawning habitat by removing weeds from 25 streams and installing 13 kilometres of fencing along 18 rivers, estuaries, and lagoons. Alongside the Government’s announcement of pragmatic changes to whitebait regulations earlier this year, these efforts will improve the sustainability of a threatened species while ensuring that Coasters can continue the tradition of catching a feed in their local river into the future.

Question No. 9—COVID-19 Response

9. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: Does he stand by all of the Government’s policies and statements in responding to COVID-19?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yes, in particular the Government’s decision to keep New Zealanders safe from COVID-19 over the last year and a half. As we announced at the beginning of August, we’ve got a plan to reconnect New Zealanders with the world and help as many New Zealanders as possible to return home. It’s a plan that continues the careful and cautious approach to balance the risks that we face with making sure that New Zealand comes through this pandemic together. New Zealanders can be proud of the approach that they’ve taken to COVID-19 to date. It’s one that’s left us in the position of having one of the lowest mortality rates from COVID-19 in the world, one of the lowest hospitalisation rates from COVID-19 in the world, and one of the fewest days of restrictions of any country in the world, and, relative to other countries, our economy has held up remarkably well.

Chris Bishop: Why did New Zealand only have a vaccination rate of 20 percent on 7 August, when Delta entered New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Vaccine supply.

Chris Bishop: Does he agree with the Prime Minister that—to quote her—“We have taken our rightful place in the delivery of vaccine.”, and does that indicate why New Zealand spent most of this year having the developed world’s slowest vaccine roll-out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m not quite sure what the thrust of the member’s question is. New Zealand’s vaccine roll-out has accelerated rapidly as the supply of vaccines has been available to New Zealand. In fact, we have delivered, on a per capita per day basis, one of the highest rates of vaccination of any countries in the world.

Chris Bishop: Does he regret saying last year that New Zealand would be at the front of the queue for COVID-19 vaccines in light of the fact that we have had for most of this year the developed world’s slowest vaccine roll-out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: That is of course one of those comments that was made in a particular context, including the fact that at that point there were no vaccines available on the market at all and New Zealand had an advance purchase agreement for four different vaccines. If you take the fullness of the quote, which was that as vaccines come to the market New Zealanders towards the front of the queue have access to them, it was absolutely true. We had access to the Pfizer vaccine from February; it was in relatively small quantities at the beginning, though. But I’d also remind the members opposite that in their crystal-ball gazing, they were encouraging us to buy vaccines other than the Pfizer vaccine.

Hon Grant Robertson: What does the Minister think would have been the consequence of the Government asking for vaccines to be given out before they’d been approved by our medical authorities?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Well, that is of course another one of the reasons why our vaccine roll-out was slower to start than some other countries. We made the decision not to use an emergency approval process but to make sure it was run through a regular, thorough approval process. When we made that decision, it is worth remembering that we were seeing research that suggested up to a third of New Zealanders were not willing to have the vaccine at that time. By taking a thorough and considered approach to the roll-out of the vaccine, we have reduced that number down to a much, much smaller number.

Chris Bishop: At what point will this current lockdown—which was promised to be short and sharp—end?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I reject the assertion in the member’s question. Our goal with every lockdown, where we’ve had to do them, is to make them short and sharp, but we always have to respond to what the testing during the early stages of a lockdown shows us, and that shows us that this particular outbreak was already well under way for at least a week before it was first detected and that, of course, does have an impact on the overall level of restrictions that we have.

Chris Bishop: Why is it still not mandatory for healthcare workers in COVID-19 work streams to be vaccinated against COVID-19 when many other countries did this months ago?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: One of the things that we have to bear in mind is that we need to keep our healthcare workers, and where there is a mandatory vaccination requirement put in place, you have to be willing for the fact that you might lose some of those workers who are unwilling to be vaccinated, and our health system is under a significant amount of pressure. We have found, as we found with our border workforce, that before moving to a mandatory vaccination requirement, it is best first to start with the “educate and encourage” approach, and you can get quite a high degree of the way there—potentially, a further way there—than if you start immediately at the mandatory vaccination - requirement end of the spectrum.

Question No. 10—Immigration

10. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Immigration: Does he agree with the Green Party open letter sent to him in June that migrants need to have clear and achievable pathways to residency?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Immigration): Can I thank the member for his letter of June. The letter itself included some measures that were aligned to the work we were already progressing on the 2021 resident visa and some others that were not. I do agree that providing temporary migrants with certainty over their future in New Zealand is a priority, and that is why the Government has announced a one-off residence pathway that will be available to up to 165,000 migrants. The visa will create a residence pathway for over 5,000 health- and aged-care workers, 9,000 primary industry workers, and more than 800 teachers. The Government is proud of this announcement. We’ve listened to calls from migrants and their employers, and I note the advocacy of the member.

Teanau Tuiono: Does he agree with the Pacific Leadership Forum who, in their petition for pathways to residency, called for an amnesty for overstayers?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I do acknowledge calls for action around overstayers. The Government has said that we will consider this alongside the wider rebalance of our immigration settings. I will note that with the residence visa announced today, around 5,000 people from the Pacific will be able to apply for it, and that’s what we forecast in terms of eligibility. We also acknowledge the work that we’ve done to open up a quarantine-free travel bubble in order to allow workers from the likes of Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu in terms of our commitment to the Pacific, and I also want to outline our commitment to the likes of the Samoan quota and Pacific access category, and when the borders are able to open more freely, our commitment to those quotas and a commitment to ensure that we backdate some of the capacity that we haven’t been able to have into New Zealand because of the border closures.

Teanau Tuiono: Will the Government grant an age waiver under the one-off residency visa for migrants who are over the age of eligibility due to the processing backlog?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: If people have aged out because they have been in the queue, the answer to that question is yes. The other thing I want to note and point out around the first wave of applications, which start in December, is that anyone who has an expression of interest application in at the moment with a dependent child 17 years or over will also be prioritised. We understand the difficulties that those people are facing in terms of delays but also that they want certainty for their children if they are to be domestic, fee-paying students next year.

Teanau Tuiono: Will he review the current health requirements that prevent people like Aisling Smyth, who has a mild multiple sclerosis diagnosis, from obtaining residency?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I understand that both Immigration New Zealand and the Ministry of Health are undertaking a review of those settings at the moment. It hasn’t come to Ministers for a final sign-off yet, but I understand some of the concerns that have been raised around some of those settings.

Teanau Tuiono: What is his message to people who have lived in Aotearoa for more than three years but are now stuck offshore due to the pandemic and may not qualify for the residency programme as a result of border closures through no fault of their own?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: I understand that because of the border closures, some people have been put in difficult positions. When you propose and announce a residence visa of the ilk that we have today, you do have to have some bounds in which to make people eligible. I think the fact that we’ve said to 165,000 people who are here in New Zealand already, contributing to our economy in our communities and becoming settled in those communities, and who have supported the economy in their communities over the last three years, and who have offered their skills or have scarce skills that we want to maintain in New Zealand, a new pathway to residence which is streamlined that is open to them for the next 10 months is a vast improvement on some of the concerns that they’ve had in recent months.

Teanau Tuiono: Does the Government consider migrants earning less than $27 an hour unskilled and, therefore, ineligible for the one-off residency programme, and, if so, why?

Hon KRIS FAAFOI: No, we don’t. The member will know that there are three kind of key criteria in terms of the residence visa that has been announced today: if people have been here three years, if they earn over the $27-an-hour mark, or if they are, in loose terms, scarce skilled labour. What we are saying to the 165,000 people that are eligible—an overwhelming number of people who are on temporary visas—is that we support you and your long-term future in New Zealand.

Question No. 11—Commerce and Consumer Affairs

JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East): Ni hao, Mr Speaker. Xiexie. My question is to the Minister of Immigration—oh sorry, the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Hon Kris Faafoi: Not another one!

JAMIE STRANGE: We’ll give the Minister of Immigration a bit of a rest.

11. JAMIE STRANGE (Labour—Hamilton East) to the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: What reports has he seen on the benefits of Government changes to KiwiSaver?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Good news: the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) released its annual report this week and it highlights how the Government’s recent decisions are positively benefiting Kiwis. Here’s a few examples. The Government changed KiwiSaver settings in March to allow people with congenital life-shortening conditions such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, Huntington’s disease, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder to withdraw their funds at the time that’s right for them. The annual report shows 14 people have so far taken up that opportunity. I also note that despite the COVID-19 pandemic, this report indicates an increase in overall KiwiSaver membership and an increase in members contributing to their accounts. KiwiSaver schemes now have over $81 billion in funds under management, and the average KiwiSaver balance was $26,410 as at 31 March 2021. Finally, I draw your attention to an article currently running on Stuff reporting ANZ is following BNZ, Westpac, and ASB in abolishing annual membership fees. That’s $18 a year it will no longer be charging its 650,000 KiwiSaver customers. Two days ago, the FMA slammed the membership fees in its report, saying there’s little justification for these fees to be charged by investment managers that have achieved scale. They know the regulator is watching. They know Government has asked default providers to sharpen their pencils, and now the market is clearly responding.

SPEAKER: Right, and I’m going to rule that that question was far too long. I will allow one further supplementary.

Jamie Strange: What further changes has he made that will benefit KiwiSaver members?

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: Well, it is also good news. The default schemes take effect on 1 December this year—the changes that were announced earlier on—meaning that 356,000 New Zealanders will be significantly better off at retirement. That, as an illustration, means for someone, say, who’s 18 years old, earning $50,000 a year, and contributing 3 percent of their income to KiwiSaver, it’s estimated they’ll have an extra $143,000 when they reach 65, and they’ll also pay $3,900 less in fees over the course of that savings journey. These are the kinds of changes this Government is making to make sure that New Zealanders get more bang for their buck when it comes to KiwiSaver.

Question No. 12—Corrections

12. RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori) to the Minister of Corrections: Does he have confidence in the Department of Corrections?

Hon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General) on behalf of the Minister of Corrections: Yes.

Rawiri Waititi: Is he aware of any inhumane treatment to the 16 inmates who protested at Waikeria, and are they being targeted?

Hon DAVID PARKER: If the member wanted answers to that particular area, he could have put that down in the primary question, and I’m sure the Minister would be willing to answer that in particular if it was.

Rawiri Waititi: Can the Minister confirm that these 16 protesters have been targeted, again, with solitary confinement—

SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. The Minister made it very clear in his primary answer that he was not briefed on this specific matter, and Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings are very clear that if a member wants answers to a specific question, then one doesn’t ask a general question in order to get there. I’ve interrupted the member, so he’s only used one of his supplementary questions, not two, because it would have been ruled out. The member will have another go at seeing if he can ask it in a way that is in order.

David Seymour: Point of order. The Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings say that the member may not be able to expect an answer, but what you’ve just said is he’s not allowed to ask the question, and surely that—I don’t know any Speaker’s ruling or Standing Order that says you can’t ask the question.

SPEAKER: The member will resume his seat. I might be accused of coaching the member in order to attempt to help him get to the point where he can make a supplementary question where he can expect to get a useful answer. Now, this is a practice, I think it’s fair to say, that when I was in Opposition, I used to criticise the Hon Dr Lockwood Smith for doing—for doing some coaching while he was refereeing—but I think with a party with relatively new members and not the experience, I think in this particular case, me trying to be helpful shouldn’t be objected to by another party.

Rawiri Waititi: This is harder than I thought, Mr Speaker, today.

SPEAKER: So’s life, mate.

Rawiri Waititi: This one’s supposed to be easy. For the Minister—he’s not even here—is he aware of any inhumane treatment of the protesters in Waikeria, and are they being targeted?

SPEAKER: Oh well, I’ve tried to help the member, but it doesn’t matter. The Minister can answer.

Hon DAVID PARKER: I can’t answer the specifics of the question. What I can say is that the Minister expects the department to act legally in accordance with the law and the rules of corrections, and I can also say on his behalf that when he finds instances where that has not happened—for example, at Auckland’s women’s prison earlier in the year—he takes action.

Rawiri Waititi: Can the Minister confirm that those who are being targeted, and, again, with solitary confinement, since being moved to Waikeria Prison, to multiple other prisons, including one protester who, reportedly, has been locked in his cell for up to 23 hours a day; if not, why not?

Hon DAVID PARKER: I can’t confirm that.

Rawiri Waititi: I’ll throw the other two, Mr Speaker.

SPEAKER: All right. That concludes oral questions.

Bills

Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill

First Reading

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Associate Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage): Tēnei au te tāpae nei ki te aroaro o te Whare te tauākī ā-ture o Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o Te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill.

[I present a legislative statement on Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o Te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill.]

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

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: E mōtini, Au kia pānui tuatahitia Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o Te Kāhui o Matariki, Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill i tēnei wā. E tautapa ana au i Te Kōmiti Take Māori kia whakaaroaro i te pire ka whakahoki kōrero mai i mua i te 10 o Poutūterangi i te tau 2022.

Nōku te hōnore nui ki te whakatakoto i tētahi pire ki te Whare ka whakatū i tētahi hararei tūmatanui hei whakanui i a Matariki, Te Pire mō Te Hararei Tūmatanui o Te Kāhui o Matariki.

Kei te taonga ahau i whakairohia e te mātanga, nau mai. E haramai koe i te ao o Pūanga. E te huihui o Matariki i a Pareārau i a Poutūterangi, ka mutu, e hine, e tama, ngā whetū homai kai ki Aotearoa.

E ngākau whakahī ana tātou o Aotearoa i tō tātou mōhio ko wai tātou e tā tātou tū mō tā tātou e whakapono ai me te āhua o tā tātou rārangatahi ētahi ao ētahi ahurea kē ki te waihanga i tō tātou tuakiri ā-motu motuhake.

Kei te mārama te pire me ngā tikanga whakatū hararei tūmatanui hou. E kī ana te pire ka tū tētahi hararei tūmatanui mō Matariki. E kī ana āhea tū ai ka whakahou anō i te tikanga o te rā mahi me te rā pakihi rere noa i ētahi ture maha tonu. Heoi, ko te mea hiranga katoa ko te poua hōhonutia o ngā kōrero o te pire ki te mātauranga Māori. Nō reira, nō mātou te waimārie nui e arahina mātou e te Rōpū Arataki o Matariki, tētahi kāhui mātanga rongonui o Aotearoa mō ngā mātauranga e pā ana ki a Matariki me te maramataka Māori.

E reo rua ana te katoa o te pire. Kua tuhia ki te reo Māori me te reo Ingarihi. He mea nui tēnei ki te whakamihi i te takea mai o Matariki e te tūāpapa o te reo Māori. Ko te tuarima noa tēnei o ngā ture reo rua o tō tātou whenua me taku ngākau whakahī ki te tāpae ki te aroaro o te Whare i te wā ki a Mahuru Māori.

E kore e takoto te pire nei ki te kore Te Rōpū Arataki o Matariki. Ka nui tō mātou waimārie i ngā kupu ārahi a ngā tōhunga Māori rangatira o te kaupapa nei. Ko Rereata Makiha tēnā nō Muriwhenua me Te Arawa. He mahi nui e kitea ai e tētahi nui atu o ngā mātauranga mō te pūnaha maramataka, tēnā i a Rereata. Tokorua ngā kaiwhakatere moana e noho kaihautū ana i roto i ēnei mahi, ko Jack Thatcher tēnā nō Tauranga Moana rāua ko Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr o Tainui. Inā te nui o ā rāua wheako whakatere i te aumoana. Ka nui tō rāua mōhio ki te rangi i te pō. Ko Victoria Campbell ō kaitau anō tēnā. He kairangahau, he mātanga ki te tātai arorangi me ngā maramataka whetū. Ko Tākuta Ruakere Hond o Parihaka hoki tēnā e mārama pū ana ki te mātauranga Māori o nehe. Ko ia hoki tētahi ka kōrero mō te aranga o Pūanga. Ko Tākuta Pauline Harris o Kahungunu tēnā, ko ia anake te kaimātai ahupūngao arorangi Māori o te ao. Ka huri ki a Ahorangi Rangi Mātāmua, te toihau o te rōpū, te tohunga kōkōrangi o te ao Māori. Ka hia tau nei e takahi ana i te motu o Aotearoa ki te kauhau me te tuku i āna mātauranga mō Matariki me te maramataka. Kei aku rangatira, ka rere aku mihi nui ki a koutou.

He kāhui whetū a Matariki ka noho matua mai i ētahi iwi maha hei tohu i te taka o te wā. He tohu nui hoki a Matariki ki ō tātou tuākana rere i Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa mō te taka o te wā. Ko ētahi o ā rātou kupu mō te kāhui ko Mataliki, ko Matali’i, ko Matari’i, ko Makali’i.

Ahakoa ko Matariki te whetū taiaroha katoa o te kāhui, arā tū ana anō ētahi e hiranga tonu ana. Ahakoa hoki te rerekē o ngā whakaaro ki te rahi tūturu o ngā whetū kei te kāhui e whakarongona ana a Tākuta Mātāmua i te rangi nei, nō reira, me kī au, e iwa.

Waitī, ko ia te whetū o te wai māori me ōna tini katoa. Waitā, ko ia te whetū mō ngā kai ka kohia i te wai tai. Waipunarangi e hono ana ki te ua. Tupuānuku e hono ana ki ngā kai mai i te whenua. Tupuārangi e hono ai ki te kai kei te kauuru o te rākau. Ururangi e hono ana ki te ao urutapu me ngā hau. Pōhutukawa ko ia ka hono i a Matariki ki te hunga kua whakawhetūrangitia. Ko te whetū e tata ana ki te ngākau o taku whānau ko Hiwa-i-te-rangi, te whetū e tukuna atu ai ō tātou wawata, te whetū e tapaina nei taku tamāhine.

Kāore e māmā te tohu i tētahi rā kotahi hei whakanui i te hararei tūmatanui o Matariki. I ngā rā he wā kē a Matariki ehara i te rā kotahi. E kī mai tā mātou rōpū arotake kia arohia aketia hararei tūmatanui o Matariki i te Rāmere tata katoa ki te wā ki a Tangaroa i te marama o Pipiri. I te kore e hāngai pū o te maramataka Māori ki te maramataka Gregorian ka paku neke te rā haere he tau haere he tau, he rite ki te Aranga.

Ko te hararei tūmatanui o Matariki te wā e aro ai tātou ā-motu nei ki te whakanui i te Mātahi o te tau. Ehara tērā i te kī ake koia tūturu te rā e arohia ai e te iwi te huringa o te tau. Ki tēnā iwi, ki tēnā rohe, ki tēnā hapū me tēna whānau te tikanga mō te wā e whakanui ai rātou i te tīmatanga o tō rātou tau. Ko te mea nui o te pire nei ko te āta tohu i te rā kotahi o te tau e noho ai ko Te Mātahi o te tau te kaupapa hei whakanui mā te katoa o Aotearoa.

Ko te tūmanako ka mahara tātou ki ētahi tikanga e toru a Matariki. Tuatahi, te mahara ake me te whakanui i te hunga kua riro mai i te aranga ake o Matariki i te tau o mua atu. Tuarua, te whakanui i ēnei rā me te huihui tahi ki te whakamoemiti mō ngā painga kei a tātou. Tuatoru, te titiro whakamua ki ngā painga ka kawea mai ki tō tau hou.

E mōhio ana mātou kāore e tuku anōtia a Matariki me ngā mātauranga mōna. Kia mārama taku kupu kei te iho o te pire nei ko te ngākau pūmau ki te hononga o ngāi Māori me te Karauna mō te āhua ki te whakamahi, te tuku, te whakatairangi me te āta tiaki i te mātauranga Māori. He mea nui hoki te āta whakatinana i te hararei tūmatanui o Matariki i runga i te kauanuanu.

E ngākau pūmau ana tō mātou Kāwanatanga ki te tautoko i te rerekētanga o te whakanui i a Matariki me te Mātahi o te tau i tēnā me tēnā rohe. Ka mahi tahi mātou ki te iwi Māori e taea ai tēnei ingoa o te hararei tūmatanui o Matariki tuatahi ka tū ā te 24 o Pipiri o tērā tau.

He taka hanga whakamua hiranga te pire nei mō Aotearoa ki te whakatū i ngā āhuatanga o mua, e hīkoi whakamua ai tātou ki tō tātou anamata hei iwi o te ao hou o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa.

Kī pai ana taku ngākau i te tūmanako mō tō tātou tuākiri ā-motu i te tipu tonu nei me te rikarika anō kia kite i ngā iwi o Aotearoa e pārekareka ana i tetahi mutunga wiki roa ki ngā hoa me te whānau i raro i te karu o te tū o Matariki.

Matariki hunga nui, Matariki whakakotahi i a tātou. Mā te pire nei e pērā ai, ka tāpaea i konei te pire ki te Whare.

[I move that, Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Māori Affairs Committee to consider the bill and report back before 10 March 2022.

It is my great honour to table a bill in front of the House to establish a public holiday to celebrate Matariki, Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill.

I am in possession of the treasure, which has been fashioned by specialists in the field; I welcome you. You come from the world of Pūanga. To the cluster of Matariki, to Pareārau, to Poutūterangi, and the male and female stars that provide sustenance for Aotearoa.

We in Aotearoa are proud that we know who we are and stand up for what we believe in, and for the way we are weaving together different worlds and cultures to create our own unique national identity.

The bill and its rules about establishing a new public holiday are easy to understand. The bill seeks to establish a new public holiday to celebrate Matariki. It states when it will be and it also seeks to update rules about work and business days that run through many other laws. However, the most important thing is that the bill dives deeply into Māori knowledge. For that, we have been fortunate to have the guidance of the Matariki Advisory Group, a group of well-known specialists in the fields related to Matariki and the Māori lunar calendar.

The whole of the bill is in two languages. It is written in te reo Māori and English. It is important that the origins of Matariki are acknowledged from the foundation of the Māori language. This will be only the fifth law in both languages in this country, and I am proud to table it at this time, during Mahuru Māori.

This bill would not be being tabled if it had not been for the Matariki Advisory Group. It has been our good fortune to have the guidance of these esteemed Māori experts. Rereata Makiha is one, from Muriwhenua and Te Arawa. It would be very hard to find someone with more knowledge of the lunar calendar systems than Rereata. There are two ocean navigators who also steered the group, Jack Thatcher from Tauranga Moana and Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr from Tainui. They have immense experience sailing the open sea, and knowledge of the night sky. Victoria Campbell is another. She is a researcher, a specialist in astronomy and the star calendars. Dr Ruakere Hond of Parihaka is another, and he deeply understands the traditional Māori knowledge systems. Then there is Dr Pauline Harris of Kahungunu, who is the only Māori physicist and astronomer in the world. I turn now to Professor Rangi Mātāmua, the leader of the group, the expert in Māori astronomy. For a great many years he has travelled the country, lecturing and sharing his knowledge about Matariki and the Māori lunar calendar. I overflow with tributes to these great leaders.

For many tribes the cluster of stars that is Matariki is, first and foremost, a sign of the changing seasons, and this is the same for our Pacific relatives. Some of their names for the cluster are Mataliki, Matali’i, Matari’i, and Makali’i.

Although Matariki is the star most loved in the cluster, there are others as well that are very important. And, although there are some differences of opinion about the true number of stars in the cluster, I listened to Dr Mātāmua today and I can say there are nine.

Waitī is the star associated with all forms of fresh water. Waitā is associated with the collection of food from the sea. Waipunarangi is connected to rain. Tupuānuku is associated with food from the land. Tupuārangi is connected to food from the trees. Ururangi is connected to the natural world and the winds. Pōhutukawa is connected to the dead. The star close to the heart of my family is Hiwa-i-te-rangi, the star to whom we send our deepest desires, and after whom my daughter is named.

It is not easy to specify a particular day to celebrate the public holiday of Matariki. Matariki falls at a time, not on a day. Our advisory group told us that the Matariki public holiday should fall on the Friday closest to Tangaroa in the month of June. Because the Gregorian Calendar and the Māori Lunar Calendar do not exactly coincide, that day will move slightly from year to year, just like Easter.

The Matariki public holiday will be a time where we can focus as a nation on celebrating the beginning of the first month of the Māori year. That is not to say that it will be the exact day that all tribes will focus on the turning of the year. Each tribe, each subtribe, and each family have their own protocols about how to celebrate the beginning of the new year. The important thing about the bill is to clearly signal a single day of the year where the beginning of the Māori year can be celebrated by everyone in Aotearoa.

Hopefully, we will be reminded of three customs regarding Matariki: firstly, to remember those who have passed since the last rising of Matariki in the previous year; secondly, to celebrate the day with gatherings and giving thanks for our blessings; and, thirdly, to look forward to the blessings you can carry forward into the new year.

We know that we will not relinquish Matariki and the associated knowledge. So that my words are clear, in the heart of the bill we are steadfast about the connection between Māori and the Crown concerning the use, the release, the promotion, and the careful protection of Māori knowledge. It is also important the Matariki public holiday be realised with the utmost respect.

Our Government is also steadfast in its support of the regional variations in the celebration of Matariki and the Māori new year. We have collaborated with Māori to name the day of the first Matariki Public Holiday as 24 June next year.

This bill is an important, forward-looking proposal to instigate a new way, so that we can move together into our future as a people of the new world in the Pacific.

My heart is full of hope for further growth of our national identity, and with excitement to see the people of Aotearoa happily enjoying a long weekend with friends and family beneath the gaze of the risen Matariki.

Matariki of many people, Matariki who gathers us all. This bill will make it so, and I hereby submit the bill to the House.]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Ko te pātai kia whakaaetia te mōtini.

[The question is that the motion be agreed to.]

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Kia ora. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I want to commence my contribution on behalf of the National Party Opposition by acknowledging the very articulate contribution just made by the Minister Kiritapu Allan. I don’t have her skills in te reo, but I was listening intently to the translation of her speech. She gave a very fulsome, a very adequate, and a very good background to the reason why Matariki is an appropriate subject for the creation of New Zealand’s 12th statutory paid annual holiday each year. She went into some detail about the difficulties in terms of identifying a day each year that could be the appropriate day to mark this event on our calendar. I’m not going to reiterate that at all, other than to say that this piece of legislation establishes that 12th statutory paid holiday, and it will be a Friday each year, and the statute that we are considering today here at first reading prescribes what will be the date for the next 30 years, and that’s actually quite good because it gives some certainty and some focus on planning, if nothing else. So that’s all quite good.

Here on the National Party side of the House, we actually acknowledge and celebrate Matariki, and we do so because we underpin the values that go with it, and the Minister actually mentioned these in her address—that they are foundations upon remembrance, honouring those that we have lost since the last rising of the constellation, celebrating the present, gathering together and giving thanks for what we have, and looking towards the future and what the next 12 months may bring. Those are all worthy attributes and things that we, on this side of the House, subscribe to, as well as on the Government side of the House.

Can we acknowledge the importance of the seasonal calendar, because it’s a reality of our position as a cluster of islands on the globe and our relationship with the celestial constellations that make up so much of what positions us as people, as a society, as a nation, and as individuals. So it is entirely appropriate and it will be a uniquely New Zealand Aotearoa holiday.

We on this side of the House, however, acknowledge that to be uplifting and to shine a light on the celebration that this piece of legislation seeks to establish, there actually needs to be something more. It is the something more that the Minister didn’t speak about in her speech. The something more was that everybody likes a public holiday—everybody likes a public holiday. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t like a public holiday? I think that public holidays are not a bad thing, but there is an old saying that is probably very apt in this discussion, and that is that just as with lunches, there being no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as a free public holiday.

We will be, if this piece of legislation passes, establishing the 12th paid public holiday, and we think, on this side of the House, that the kai of our nation is actually sustained by more than just creating another public holiday. The kai of our nation is actually built on productivity; on enterprise; on hard work; on effort; and on contributions of individuals, of teams, of groups, and of businesses and their endeavours all around the country. Those are things that we should equally celebrate, acknowledge, and be grateful for because they are the enterprises and the businesses that provide us with the revenue and tax and funding that gives us everything else that is the kai that we collectively consume as a nation, and it is not just all about public holidays. So we need to be exemplars of the practical realities that go along with the responsibility that we have in this place of decreeing such things as public holidays.

Now, it’s all very easy to declare a public holiday; that’s the easy part. It is very easy to spend other people’s money; there is no real skill in doing that. So, on this side of the House, we do want to raise the issue that wasn’t raised by the Minister of who pays. In this case, sadly, it’s going to be New Zealand businesses. It’s going to be lost production and productivity that will occur from yet another day lost. Now, some would say that, actually, “Oh well, you know, people will be about and they’ll be spending money and they’ll be, you know, creating a bit of revenue, and it will all be going”—

Hon Member: Going to the Coromandel market.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Yeah, my colleague says that they’ll be coming to the Coromandel. Well, of course, they’ll be coming to the beautiful Coromandel, and that will be fine. But for each of those people that comes to the Coromandel and spends time and money in my patch, there will be people who are not being productive, not earning their way in the world, and actually not paying for it.

If the answer to growing New Zealand’s wealth and prosperity as a nation was simply to create public holidays, well, heck, why wouldn’t we have 365 of them? Why wouldn’t we do that? No, I think that that is the problem.

So the Minister didn’t address at all the issues that, really, a responsible Government should address, particularly at this time of COVID. Here we are, 18 months into an international pandemic, and our businesses and our commercial world and the economy have suffered more than many. So the question that, really, a responsible Government should be asking when they introduce legislation to create another public holiday should be: does this help or does it hinder business? Does this help or does it hinder the economy? Does it make the economy grow? Is it going to make the economy stronger? Is it going to make for a more productive, profitable, and a bigger pie from which we can all take a slice? The answer has to be a categorical no. That is the question that every responsible Government should ask of this: is this action, this legislation, going to provide more rules and regulations? Is it going to stymie, is it going to slow down, the economy? The answer is almost certainly yes.

In fact, the Employers and Manufacturers Association chief executive, Brett O’Riley, when this was first announced, said simply that it will be seen as another cost to business and it is unlikely to support the increased tourism, which was the original argument for an extra public holiday during COVID-19 alert levels 1 and 2. Certainly that seems to be the evidence that has been created as a result of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) advice to the Government on this piece of legislation.

It looks like the cost will be something in the order of $400 million per annum, and that is cost that has to be picked up somewhere along the line. Businesses across New Zealand are already in a fragile state. They have had to bear the burden of massive price increases on a whole range of things: cost increases, extra minimum wage commitments, extended parental leave commitments, the creation of an extra 10 days a year domestic violence leave, and a billion dollars of extra costs for an extra week’s sick leave. Those are all costs that businesses have to absorb. Businesses will do what is required to remain competitive and profitable, and if that means that they just have to be constantly on the receiving end of increased Government costs via proclamation, then they will inevitably do what all businesses will do: they will eventually pass those costs on to their customers. And who are their customers? We are their customers. We all pay. Sooner or later there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as a free public holiday; we all pay sooner or later.

We are concerned, on this side of the House, that notwithstanding the relative merits of creating a public holiday here, actually what a responsible Government should be doing, particularly given this time in our economic history and our history as a nation, is considering actually dropping a public holiday along the line. Maybe that is something that the Government should have considered. It was in the MBIE advice. We on this side of the House would suggest that, actually, the prudent and proper thing would be, yeah, sure, create the Matariki public holiday, that’s good and appropriate, but let’s consider getting rid of one, as well. I’ve got a good suggestion for being rid of one: let’s get rid of Labour Day.

Hon MEKA WHAITIRI (Minister of Customs): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Otirā, e ngā mema katoa e te Whare nei, tēnā tātou katoa. I’m very much pleased to take a call in support of Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill, and can I commend my colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan for presenting this bill in its first reading in such an eloquent way, particularly in our reo rangatira, so ngā mihi kia koe te tuahine.

This is a short bill in the sense that it’s got two parts and four schedules. The unique part of it is that it’s written in Te Reo and English, and that should be acknowledged. But in my quick research in preparation for supporting this bill, I looked at New Zealand’s very last public holiday, and it may be of interest to members that the last public holiday came from the Waitangi Act 1960, which declared 6 February as Waitangi Day, but unfortunately there was no public holiday. That was put through under a Labour Government, under the then Prime Minister, Walter Nash. It wasn’t until 1973 that we saw the first implementation of the public holiday associated with Waitangi Day, then under the Labour-led Government of the Rt Hon Norman Kirk in 1974. Unfortunately, some will say, it was called New Zealand Day, not Waitangi Day. But it wasn’t until—and here’s the interesting thing for my Opposition members—1976, under the Rt Hon Robert Muldoon Government, that New Zealand Day was changed to Waitangi Day. So my message to our Opposition is that you have played an incredible part in building the relationship between Crown and Māori in this nation, in so far as public holidays are concerned.

What I wanted to do is address some of the issues that the previous speaker, Scott Simpson, spoke on. I was listening right up to about five minutes into the speech, because I thought we might have had the Opposition across the line. I really did. He had us all going on this side, that the National Party might be supporting this significant piece of legislation, but alas it was not to be. It was not to be. No surprise there. When I did listen intently to that member to see what the issue was, the only issue I got was cost—cost. Now, for the future speakers on this bill, but particularly my message to those that may be at home and looking to submit on this bill—and I encourage them to do that—is that we have two public documents that are available when we debate this bill. One is called the departmental disclosure statement and the other one is the regulatory impact statement, and they’re both on the Table in front of us. There was some allusion to the cost to businesses by that member—around $400 million. He’s right, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) advice in the departmental disclosure statement talks about that, but what he forgot to mention was the benefits. He forgot to mention the benefits, so let me mention the benefits as per the MBIE report.

It’s about recognition and celebration of Te Ao Māori. It’s about strengthening the Māori/Crown relationship. It’s about whanaungatanga, close connection between people and whānau. It’s about revitalisation of Te Reo Māori. It’s about reaffirmation of our connection to the natural environment. It’s about increased wages for employees working on the public holiday. It’s about increased tourism and spending, and additional leisure time for employees and their families. If we’re going to tell the story, let’s tell the entire story. So I encourage members on that side to have a read of the departmental disclosure statement. Where it talks about the impact on businesses, I want to draw the House’s attention to the regulatory impact statement—again, on the Table in front of us. I want to acknowledge the extensive external consultation that has gone about with this bill, particularly with Business New Zealand and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions. It’s interesting to note the comment from the tourism industry, where they say—and I want to use their quote—that they noted that visitor spending “over a long weekend is two to three times a standard weekend because it gives people the incentive to take a trip to other parts of New Zealand”. So I’m really disappointed that the member from the Coromandel doesn’t actually value tourism in the Coromandel. Because, on this side of the House, we actually welcome tourism to our neck of the woods, whether it’s the mighty Tai Rāwhiti or whether it’s from Te Matau-a-Māui because they come, and not only do they come but they spend—they spend. So I want it really clear, in standing in support of this bill, that we recognise the financial benefits from this public holiday bill, as well as some of the challenges and costs that’s prevailed in some of our business sector.

This is the first reading. It is going off to select committee, and we are assured that a full six months will be given to this bill so all New Zealanders—all New Zealanders—can have their say on this particular bill. I want to just encourage people who may be watching this to absolutely submit, because I’d like to hear what people’s views are, whether it’s the business people or whoever feels strongly about what we are debating in the house at the moment.

For the time I’ve got remaining, I want to acknowledge those who have consistently celebrated Matariki around the country. I particularly want to acknowledge by own iwi of Ngāti Kahungunu, who has been for approximately 15 years celebrating Matariki each and every year across the six taiwhenua. They’ve done it and embraced local communities, Māori, non-Māori, Pacific people, to their celebrations of Matariki. I want to acknowledge not only the iwi but councils throughout Kahungunu, through the six taiwhenua. I think the fireworks has always been the appeal to the Matariki celebrations across the rohe of Kahungunu, and it got so inspired by people’s participation that I do know Wainuiōmata invited them to come over and run their fireworks celebrations down there, and also Auckland City Council. So I want to acknowledge all iwi throughout the country who have celebrated—and continue to celebrate—the importance of Matariki and what it means for our people. Each iwi, as we know, has their own interpretation of Matariki, sees Matariki at different times, and I just want to acknowledge the cradling, the nurturing, of the meaning of Matariki for our hapū and our iwi across the country.

This is an exciting piece of legislation we’re debating here at first reading. It goes towards the merging, strengthening of our relationship between the Crown and Māori. It does allow us to share with the rest of this nation, as we have done on numerous times, something that is significantly important to us as Māori. It is part of our DNA, it is part of our mātauranga Māori, and I’m pleased to be on this side of the House, standing in support of acknowledging a piece of our identity, our Māori identity, our Aotearoa New Zealand identity, and sharing it with the world. Because I can see that this will be another attractor for a lot of our people, domestically and international, to come and celebrate the joys of Māori mātauranga here in Aotearoa New Zealand. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Can I just say, before I talk to the bill, how appropriately and strikingly attired Meka Whaitiri is today. I really very much admire the top she is wearing, and appropriate for the bill that we are debating.

I must confess that before I came to this place, I had very little knowledge and nearly no understanding of Matariki, and I don’t particularly think I was any more out of touch than the average Pākehā New Zealander. I have to acknowledge my former colleagues Georgina te Heuheu, Nuk Korako, and especially Hekia Parata, my good friend and fellow 2008 intake, for their promotion of Matariki as an important cultural event, not just for Māori but for New Zealand. Particularly in Hekia Parata’s case, as Minister of Education—one holding that role doesn’t directly influence the curriculum in that way, but she was very encouraging of schools, early childhood education schools, and our institutions like museums and Te Papa actually creating a resource that would enable our young to be able to understand the cultural significance of Matariki, the celebration that goes with it, and then to actually use that knowledge as a learning tool, whether it was astronomy or mathematics or our history. On history, I was interested in Ms Whaitiri’s comment about that being significant in her iwi for only 15 years. So I wonder, actually, if it’s a case of this being a cultural tradition that perhaps had become a little bit lost in our modernisation through the 20th century, and it’s really nice to see it come back as a strong and growing event for New Zealand.

It is true that with any public holiday, for whatever reason, there will be a benefit: a cultural benefit, a social benefit—a financial benefit to the good people of the Coromandel, probably—and indeed there is a financial benefit. But the net effect—and I don’t want to sound like the Grinch, but I am the shadow finance spokesperson—there are no benefits on public holidays without there first being a cost, and in and of itself the cost may not seem overly significant at $400 million - odd, but I do think this is sort of a case of stacks on the mill.

In the last four years or so, we’ve had a number of these $400 million costs, actually, and some much, much higher, and all of which, I have to say—all of these individually—have merit, certainly were felt meritorious by this Government: the increases in paid parental leave; David Clark’s good fortune in Monday-ising public holidays, which I think had a lesser cost because they don’t happen so often, but indeed there is a benefit to those who hadn’t previously benefited from public holidays when they fell over the weekend; and sick leave has gone up from five to 10 days, and while the regulatory impact statements on that said, well, it wouldn’t affect those people who were already on 10 days, I know that those employees who were then asked for 15, and so that cost ripples through, and that’s also the effect of the substantial increases in the minimum wage, which now stands at $20 per hour. Again, the previous Minister for workplace relations tried to convince the House that that was raising the floor, not having any impact through pay scales—wrong again. The relativities of somebody who wasn’t on the minimum wage but then ended up there because of these statutory increases was certainly—the reaction was to then go and seek a higher hourly rate.

Then we’ve got some more ubiquitous costs on small business, with things like increasing the regulatory environment, and, again, these are individual cases where they may well have merit: the healthy homes standards, the increase in the top tax rate. Ultimately, small businesses’ profits are paid by the individuals that own those companies. I could go on about a number of others.

I think I’ve made the point that this is a case of trees in a forest—that the cumulative effect of all of these added costs on small business against the backdrop of a very, very difficult and challenging environment because of COVID makes it, I think, difficult to support something which has such merit. Matariki could well be, and should potentially have already been, a recognised holiday in this country, but what National says is that if that is the case, that should not add to our holiday environment. We rank around the middle, I think, of the OECD in terms of the number of paid public holidays that we have, and with 20 paid annual leave days, we rank not in the upper quartile; probably in the upper half of the OECD for paid leave. So it’s not as if we’re already at the maximum and this is even more generous; it’s more about the whole impact of all of these individual costs on business.

Now, the Government is a reasonable proportion of our economy, and growing. It’s gone up from about 28 percent to around 34 percent of our economy that is now State or local government, and Government doesn’t have any money. It doesn’t have any money except the money it takes out of the pockets of those small businesses and their employees, and so—

Maureen Pugh: Oh, is that where it comes from?

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Yes, it is. It’s a revelation to some in the House, Ms Pugh, but that is where it comes from. There is no golden tree at the end of the lane, and so, effectively, small businesses are paying 1½ times. They’re paying for their own costs that have been imposed and for their employees—all good—but they’re also having to pay for the State employees, because that’s where the salaries come from. They come from the pockets of hard-working New Zealanders earning through their small businesses.

So we would have supported this had there been some kind of trade-off, and there’s still an opportunity at select committee to hear from the submitters who are going to be paying for it, and whether or not that sways the Government—I doubt it—we’ll probably be back here in six months’ time debating the merits of it, having heard from those submitters.

I hope we hear more about why Matariki is so important, because, as Minister Allan laid out so eloquently in her first reading speech, there is a lot we can learn from this celebration of our whakapapa, our history, and our future. But, in essence, our position is that we, regretfully, cannot support it, even though we strongly support the principle of the celebration.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēna koe e te Māngai o te Whare. E ngā mātāwaka o te motu tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou aku rangatira tēnā koutou i tēnei rā nui whakahirahira, ā, ko tēnei te rā e whakamana i te ture hou mō te rā o Matariki ā-motumotu i tēnei pānuitanga tuatahi.

Ka rere a Puaka ki runga o Aoraki, ka rere a Matariki, ka rere whānui.

E ngā mate huhua o te wā, haere, haere atu rā, kua whetūrangitia koutou, āpiti hono, tātai hono. Ko te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, āpiti hono, tātai hono. Ko tātou te hunga ora ki a tātou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Greetings, Mr Speaker, to the tribes of this land, greetings. Greetings to the esteemed members, greetings on this important day where we will validate the new law concerning a national day for Matariki in this first reading.

Puaka rises above Aoraki / Mount Cook, Matariki rises elsewhere.

To the many who have passed, may you rest in peace. You have become stars, the lines are unbroken. The dead to the dead, the lines are unbroken. To the living, greetings, greetings, greetings to us all.]

I’m delighted to speak to and to wholeheartedly tautoko this significant bill for Aotearoa, Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki, or the Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill. This is a really historic bill, and I want to acknowledge my tuahine and our Minister Kiritapu Allan for shepherding this bill and leading this bill through the House, as well as our colleague the Hon Michael Wood, the Minister for Workplace Relations and Safety. But I also want to acknowledge the work of our Government, because we took it to the motu that we would be creating a new public holiday in celebration of Matariki, and here we are today, fulfilling our commitment to the motu through the first reading of the passage of this significant bill.

So I’m very proud, because this bill is going to make a difference in the lives of all New Zealanders for all the years, moving forward. I want to acknowledge the mātauranga that sits behind this bill and that has been enacted by this bill, and the work of the Matariki Advisory Group especially, who are the experts that came together to provide that mātauranga Māori—that traditional knowledge—which underpins the authenticity that we are putting into this legislation in the enactment of this holiday. So I want to acknowledge that mātauranga Māori, because this isn’t just any old public holiday that we’re enacting. We are voting on a Māori public holiday—a Māori public holiday—and one that is for all New Zealanders to share in. That is wonderful.

This acknowledgment gets to the heart of this bill, because we can talk all day and night about the cost to businesses and what it might cost, and we can talk all day and all night about the benefits of a public holiday and what that might confer on working people and their families, but this bill is so much more than a cost-benefit analysis. This bill is about honouring who we are as a country. This bill is about acknowledging that we are a multicultural country but we are founded by cultural roots based on a Tiriti between the Crown and te Iwi Māori. That is what is captured by this bill, and that’s what we can celebrate through the celebration of this Matariki holiday.

We are honouring who we are as a country. We are a Pacific country, we are anchored in the Southern Hemisphere, and our calendar should reflect that fact. We aren’t a European country and we aren’t part of the Northern Hemisphere. Before anyone had heard of Pope Gregory and his Gregorian calendar, we had a calendar. We had a calendar based on mātauranga Māori. Māori signalled the new year through the rise of the stars in the southern skies, and that’s what we want to celebrate and capture through this public holiday.

As my time is brief, I want to acknowledge the work of the Matariki Advisory Group and all of the esteemed members who were part of that: Professor Rangiānehu Matamua, Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, Rereata Makiha, Victoria Campbell—my whanaunga from Ngāi Tahu—Dr Pauline Harris, Dr Ruakere Hond, and Jack Thatcher. As the Minister has outlined in her speech, I want to acknowledge their work and their contribution, because Matariki is a celebration for all, particularly across Māoridom, and we have our variations.

We have variations which we do have, and that’s another thing that we can celebrate through this holiday period. In the South, in Te Wai Pounamu, we celebrate kōanga or paunga. That ushers in our seasons around mahinga kai, around our tītī, and around the heke of the tuna, and it also marks, with Matariki, the changing of the seasons and the rising of the frosts. So we all have our unique stories and our unique celebrations that we have all had, and this public holiday is an opportunity for us to share and to share, and to wānanga on this mātauranga that we have.

So this is a special, special holiday, and it’s so much better than the public holiday that is the day after the New Year’s Day, which doesn’t even have a name. This is so much better than that. This is a Matariki public holiday, and we should all be proud of that.

So I wholeheartedly support this bill, and I acknowledge my colleague Tāmati Coffey and the Māori Affairs Committee, who will be doing their wonderful examination of this bill. There is much to celebrate in this bill. I wholeheartedly support it, and I’m looking forward to 24 June 2022, when we will all be coming together to celebrate it.

Nō reira, e aku rangatira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, kia ora tātou katoa.

[Therefore, to the esteemed members, greetings, greetings, greetings to us all.]

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Hurō, kotahi tonu te kupu, hurō, hariruia, ngā āmene katoa, ngā whakawhetai o Te Runga Rawa ki tenā ki tēnā o tātou ki runga i tēnei o ngā ture.

Kua hahae ngā hihi o Matariki ki runga i tēnei Whare Pāremata i tēnei wā. He wā anō mō te kaikarere o te taiao. Ko Matariki he wā anō mō te kōrero, mō ngā pūrakau me te hokinga mahara o rātou mā kua hinga atu.

Heoi anō e hurō ana tēnei pāpā i te mea, me kī nei, e hurō ana ngā mātua katoa, e tiaki ana i ō rātou nei tamariki e haere ana ki ngā kura kaupapa Māori i te mea kei te whai wāhi tātou ki te hararei. I a au e whakaaro ake ana ki ngā pō Matariki ki ngā kura me whiri ngā mātua ko wai kei te whiwhi i te annual leave kia tiakina tamariki. I kutikuti toka pepa mātou. I ētahi o ngā tau i hinga rawa atu ai, ko au anō e noho ki te kāinga ki te tiaki tamariki. Nō reira, nā runga i tēnei kaupapa i kitea tēnā āhuatanga he hararei anō tēnei mō tō tātou nei ao Māori.

Heoi anō, i rongo kōrero au kāore ētahi e hiahia ki tēnei hararei, kāore ētahi e tino hiahia ki tēnei hararei. Nō reira, ka āwhina ki a rātou tēnā pea, ko ngā mema kāore e hiahia ki tēnei hararei, tēnā pea, me whakarite koe tētahi rārangi mahi kia hoki mai ērā mema ki tēnei Whare Pāremata ki te mahi i ngā mahi. Tēnā pea me taea e rātou te peita te pātū ki tō tari, tēnā pea ko ētahi o rātou ka puta atu ki te kutikuti i te pātītī kei waho i te forecourt. Tēnā pea me kaha rātou ki te rongo i te ao o te marae. Tukuna ki a rātou ki te horoi i ngā rīhi, ki te whakapaipai i ngā wharepaku i te wā e whakatā ana te motu ki raro i ngā hihi o Matariki.

Ehara tēnei i te hararei noa, ehara tēnei i te hararei noa. Me kaha tātou ki te whakaako ki ngā tamariki i te katoa o te horopaki o Matariki, ōna piringa ki te taiao, ōna piringa ki ngā kōrero tuku iho a ngā mātua tīpuna i te mea kei pōhēhē rātou he hararei pērā i te Kirihimete, ki te pōhēhē anō rātou tēnā pea ka tāria e rātou mō tētahi momo Hana kōkō, te Easter Bunny rānei pērā mō Te Aranga. Heoi anō, ko te mea nui me whakaako anō hoki rātou ki roto i ngā kōrero tuku iho a ngā mātua tīpuna.

Kia waiho ake ngā perehana mō te Kirimete, ngā tiakarete mō Te Aranga, otirā ka waiho ake ngā mātauranga Māori mō te wā o Matariki.

I tērā tau i karangahia e tō mātou rangatira wahine, a Marama Davidson mō tēnei o ngā whakaaro, kia utaina tētahi hararei e hāpai ana i te mātauranga Māori ki roto i ngā āhuatanga o Aotearoa whānui. Nō reira, me mihi au ki a ia mō tēnei o ngā kaupapa.

Tautoko katoa ngā mihi ki ngā mātanga mātauranga Māori rātou anō i taea te pānui i ngā āhuatanga o runga, ā, tae atu ki te whakamahere i ngā āhuatanga o raro.

Nō reira e hoki ngā mahara ki te wā i whakarite te Hau Tapu ki Te Papa. I reira a Tākuta Rangi Mātāmua e kōkiri ana i ngā kaupapa. E rua ngā kaupapa i maumahara ki taku pīnati i te wā kia tae atu ki tēnā o ngā hui. Te tuatahi, te reka o te kai, tino pai te reka o te kōhua kai. Te tuarua, i noho tahi rātou me te whakaaro ake he aha te rerekē o te tikanga o tērā kokona o te motu o tērā kokona o te motu he aha ngā mea ōrite. I mea mai ia, e toru ngā mea e ōrite, te whetū, te marama, te wāhanga anō o te tau. Mēnā kei te whakaae anō ki tērā ka taea ko te wairua, ko te mauri o ngā āhuatanga o Matariki, he ōrite.

Me te mea kotahi tonu tō tātou nei ao. Ahakoa ngā tini piringa, he piringa anō tēnei o te taiao, te maunga ki te wao, te wao ki te awa, te awa kei waho ki te moana, ko tēnei wā o Matariki he wā mō te hokinga mahara ko tātou anō kei raro i ngā tirohanga o Pōhutukawa tērā. Heoi anō he wā anō tēnei mea mō te whakamahere, tēnei mea mō te whakamahere rautaki mō tō whānau, whakamahere rautaki mō tō hapū, whakamahere rautaki mō tō hapori. Nā runga i tērā he nui ngā akoranga ka taea ki tēnā, tēnā, tēnā o tātou.

Heoi anō ka paku kōrero au ki ngā rerekētanga hoki, i te mea kei te wera aku nei taringa i te mea i te wā i tae mai tēnā kōrero mō Matariki i kōrero au ki ētahi o aku nei whanaunga nō te Nōta me te mea atu, ahakoa i pēnā ai te Matariki he rerekē tō mātou nei taiao, he rerekē tō mātou nei āhua, nō reira kua rerekē tō mātou nei tikanga katoa mō Matariki. Nō reira ahakoa i pērā me rite anō ngā mātāpono me rite anō te mauri o te hāpai i tēnei kaupapa nei mō Matariki.

Me pēnei ana te kōrero e tautoko ana ngā kōrero a te mema nō Te Wai Pounamu me te kī atu i te mea he rerekē tō rātou nei kīanga mō Matariki. Ko aku nei whanauka mai i tētahi atu mauka ko tō rātou nei ingoa e whai ana rātou ko te whetū ko Puaka. Kei te whakaaro ake o tātou nei whanaunga e whai ana ki raro i te maunga Tītōhea e kīia nei ko Puanga. I te mea mēnā ka noho koe ki te maunga he rerekē tō takiwā, mēnā ka noho koe te whārua he rerekē tō takiwā, mēnā ka noho koe ki tātahi he rerekē anō tō takiwā, i te mea nā tō taiao anō i kōrerohia ki te ngākau o te tangata ki te ngākau o te hapori.

Nā runga i tēnā, i a mātou Ngā Kākāriki e whakaaro ana ki tēnei kaupapa ka hoki ngā mahara ki te wā e haere ana au ki ngā hau tapu ki ngā hui nui mō Matariki ki ngā ahurea o Matariki o mua. I whakarite mātou, me whakarite ētahi rauemi kia pakari ai tēnei mātauranga ki roto i o tātou nei kura. Kia pakari ai tēnei kaupapa ki roto i ngā kura kaupapa, ki roto hoki i ngā kura kaupapa Māori. Mā runga i te marau, tērā te mahi i te mea he wāhanga anō tēnei mea te Matariki ki te pūtaiao, te tikanga ā-iwi, ki roto i te reo, ki roto i ngā mahi ā-rēhia. Heoi anō e roa ana mātou e noho ana ki roto i tēnei momo hapori e hāpaitia ana ngā āhuatanga o Matariki.

Me aro anō tērā wairua ki roto i ō tātou nei kura auraki i te mea ko te nuinga o ō tātou nei tamariki Māori e noho ana i ngā kura auraki.

Nō reira ko tāku nei ki ngā mema ki tērā kokona kei a tātou ki roto i ngā āhuatanga o te huringa āhuarangi kei te matemate haere ngā ika ki roto i te moana. Nā runga i te ako i te piringa o te tangata ki te taiao me ōna ngākaunui ki ōna kaupapa katoa kei reira te oranga mō tātou katoa, kei reira te oranga.

Nō reira me kaha tātou ki te kuhu i tērā āhuatanga ki roto i ngā marau ki roto i ngā rauemi kia hāpai kia āwhina i ngā pouako.

Ko ētahi tāngata kāore i te, tēna pea āhua toru tekau ngā tau i haere au ki ngā kaupapa o Matariki. Ko tētahi o ngā wā tuatahi i tau ki tōku nei pīnati i tēnei wā, i tae au ki Tāneatua. I karangahia e Ngāi Tūhoe ki a mātou ki te haramai i te mea i taua wā ko te Matariki he hui hou. I whai, i kaha a mātou nei e haere ana ki ngā tāone ki roto i a Tāmaki pērā te āhua, ki ngā āhuatanga o te Kirihimete ki ngā āhuatanga o Te Aranga. Heoi anō i tae atu au me te mīharo me te whakarongo ki ngā kōrero, ngā kōrero tuku iho mai i ō rātou nei kaumātua ki a tātou e haere ana ki tērā o ngā hui.

Nō reira me pēnei ana ngā kōrero. Me aro anō ki ngā whakataukī o koro mā o kui mā “Matariki ahunga nui.”, “Matariki hunga nui.”, “Matariki te Mātahi o Te Tau.” Kei te whakaae mātou ki tēnei o ngā pire.

[Joy, there is only one thing to say, joy, hallelujah, all the amens. May each of us be grateful to Almighty God for this bill.

Matariki rises and shines its light on this House of Parliament at this time. It conveys messages about the environment. Matariki is also a time for conversation, for story-telling and reflecting about those who have passed away.

However, this father is joyful because, well, let’s say that all parents who care for children going to Māori immersion schools are joyful because they get the chance to have a holiday. When I thought about the school activities around Matariki, parents had to choose who would take annual leave to look after the children. We played rock, paper, scissors. Some years I lost and it was I who stayed at home to look after the children. That was recognised in this proposal, and this will also be a holiday for us in the Māori world.

However, I have heard that some do not want this holiday; some really don’t want this holiday. Therefore, to offer them some help for the members who are against this bill, perhaps you should prepare a job list so those members can return to this House and work through the list. Perhaps they should be able to paint the walls of your office, maybe some of them could go outside and cut the grass on the forecourt. Perhaps they should get a good feel of what life is like on the marae. Let them wash the dishes and clean the toilets at the time the country is relaxing under the lights of Matariki.

This is not just a holiday; it is not simply a holiday. We should be keen to teach our children about the whole context of Matariki, her connections to the environment, her connections to the traditions passed down by our ancestors so that they are clear this is not a holiday like Christmas, so that they are clear they are not waiting for some kind of Santa Claus or Easter Bunny as with Easter. However, the main thing is to teach them about the traditions passed down from our ancestors.

Leave the presents for Christmas, leave the chocolate for Easter and, at the same time, leave the teaching of Māori knowledge systems for the time of Matariki.

Last year, our female co-leader, Marama Davidson, put forward the idea that a public holiday should be devoted to elevating Māori knowledge systems in the wider Aotearoa context. I want to acknowledge her for that idea.

I completely support the tributes made to the Māori specialists, who are able to read the skies above in relation to planning what happens below.

So I think back to the time a Hau Tapu ceremony was organised at Te Papa. Dr Rangi Mātāmua was there directing the proceedings. There are two things that come to mind at the time of that gathering. The first is the food was good, the food was very good. The second was that we gathered together and thought about the regional variations in customs and what the similarities were. He said there were three things the same: the stars, the moon, and the time of the year. If you agree with that, then you are able to see that the spirit and the essence of the customs around Matariki are similar.

It would seem we have only one world. In spite of the many relationships, the relationship between the mountains and the forest, the forest and the rivers, and the rivers out to the sea, the time of Matariki is a time for reflection under the gaze of Pōhutukawa. However, it is also a time to plan, to make a plan for your family, your subtribe, your community. By doing so there can be much learning for each and every one of us.

However, I will also talk about the differences, because my ears are burning because at the time I heard that story about Matariki, I spoke to some relatives of mine from the North who said even though Matariki is like that, our environments vary, we are different, and so all of our customs around Matariki are different. And so, in spite of that, we must align the principles; we must align the essence to support the purpose of Matariki.

I must support the member from the South Island because our sayings about Matariki also vary. To my relatives from another mountain, their name for Matariki is Puaka. I think our relatives who live below Tītōhea say Puanga. When you live in the mountains your territory is different, if you live in a valley your territory is different, if you live by the coast your territory is different and so, your environment speaks to the heart of the individual and to the heart of the community.

On the basis of that, while we Greens were thinking about this proposal, we thought about the times I went to Hau Tapu ceremonies, to large gatherings for Matariki, and about the traditional culture around Matariki. We decided we must create resources to strengthen the learning in our schools, to strengthen this subject in the kura kaupapa, and also in the kura kaupapa Māori. Within the curriculum, that was the idea, because Matariki is a part of science, of varying tribal custom, a part of the language and of recreational activities. And so we spent a long time in this community supporting aspects of Matariki.

We should also focus on that spirit in our mainstream school, because the majority of our Māori children go to mainstream schools.

So I say to the members in that corner: here we are experiencing the effects of climate change, with decreasing fish stocks in the sea. By learning about our relationship with the environment and being enthusiastic about all its associated issues, there we will find health for all of us; there we will find health.

Therefore we must push to get these ideas into the curriculum and into the resources to support the teachers.

Some people don’t—it is probably for about 30 years that I have been attending Matariki events. One that comes to mind right now, I went to Tāneatua. We were called by Ngāi Tūhoe because at that time, Matariki gatherings were a new thing. We sought out and were keen to go into towns like Auckland to celebrate as though it were Christmas or Easter. However, I was blown away to hear the stories passed down by their elders to those of us who had gone to that gathering.

Therefore, I should say this. We should pay attention to the proverbs of our elders: “The great mounds of Matariki.”, “Matariki of many people.”, “Matariki, the new year.” We support this bill.]

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT to speak to the Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill. The purpose of this bill is to establish an annual public holiday to acknowledge Matariki. ACT opposes this bill, but certainly not because Matariki doesn’t deserve its own special day, but now that the true cost of creating a 12th public holiday is clear, $450 million, ACT believes the Government needs to identify a holiday to be removed from the calendar in its place.

It was interesting to hear before, the Labour member Rino Tirikatene speaking of the day after New Year’s Day which he doesn’t even know what it’s called—let’s get rid of that one and we’d all be happy. And listening to the Green member Teanau Tuiono just before talking about making a list of people who don’t agree with it and they can come and cut grass and paint the walls is, I think, quite divisive and certainly won’t be helpful in this debate through this process. It’s a shame that as a nation we simply just can’t afford to add more holidays. Businesses across the country are already fragile from the effects of COVID-19, not to mention the many impositions this Government has inflicted on business in the last few years—impositions that have had very little thought on the effect they will have on the success of a business, success that is necessary to employ and look after employees.

Employees are currently entitled to four weeks’ annual leave, 11 statutory holidays—that’s over six weeks. There is a bill going through select committee at the moment that will require business owners to pay their employees to attend parent-teacher meetings. I find it bizarre that someone’s child isn’t important enough to use annual leave, but that’s for another day. Where will it end?

Sick leave has just doubled at a cost of almost $2 billion to businesses. There’s family violence leave and parental leave. I was just discussing parental leave with an experienced accountant last week, and she laughingly reminded me that a large number of women who don’t return after their 52 weeks’ leave, resigning from their position, are leaving the business owner liable for four weeks’ annual leave. I don’t think that’s fair and I don’t think anyone with a business background would think that’s fair. The vast majority of business owners, male and female, get no leave at all. They’re too busy working on and in the businesses so it can survive and keep their employees in a job.

The minimum wage is something that vexes this Government, and that’s because they just don’t understand. With any pay rise, leave entitlement, or other changes in employee conditions, we must look at productivity to make sure we can pay for it, and, unfortunately, New Zealand doesn’t cut it. We constantly compare ourselves with other countries when it comes to the minimum wage, work conditions, leave provisions, but we constantly ignore productivity, the most important factor that enables this country to provide different conditions to employees. Paying people more while expecting no extra productivity is just naive. People who work hard should be paid more.

I’m sure we’ll hear that an extra public holiday will actually be beneficial, and we already have, to businesses—again, from those who never owned a business; the same people who tried to convince us that having more sick days increases productivity. But the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment reported quite clearly, and it states: “While the costs can be relatively easily identified and quantified, some of the benefits are more qualitative and subjective, particularly the estimates of and assumptions made around the value of people’s leisure time, which is a significant proportion of the benefit input into the net impact calculations.”

We have a Government that doesn’t like business, and that can’t be disputed. They believe business owners are nasty, self-serving people, and anyone who actually manages to be successful got there by treating their employees poorly, and they’re only after that terrible word “profit”. The daily spin around the COVID business support has been masterful, convincing many members of the population that the Government actually cares about business. I highly recommend a Bachelor of Communications degree! The wage subsidy is for employees, topped up by the employers, while more annual leave accumulates. The resurgence payment is totally inadequate for most businesses; four or five days’ rent in many cases. Businesses are struggling, going under, their stress is huge, and through no fault of their own.

Yesterday, Minister Faafoi read a letter espousing the virtues of the Government. He left out the last line, which read “Love from Grant”. Here’s a letter from a real hospitality owner in Auckland: “It is chilling thinking how little this Government thinks or cares about the 133,000 taxpaying hospitality workers in New Zealand. It has been said that they don’t want to provide financial assistance to the hospitality industry as they feel many businesses will fail. These small businesses and the jobs of many of their staff could be saved but this Government is deliberately choosing not to. That in my mind is not protecting its people, it is callous, grossly unfair, and certainly not kind.”

These are the businesses that these bills affect—good hard-working people who employ New Zealanders and keep so many industries going, and they deserve much more respect. ACT has employers’ backs, and by doing that we have all New Zealand’s employees’ backs. We know they need tax and regulatory relief and we will fight on their behalf for more sensible, sustainable, economic policy so that they can grow their businesses and employ more New Zealanders.

ACT appreciates the significance of Matariki not just for Māori but for all tamariki of New Zealand who have studied and observed it at schools throughout the country for a number of years. It is part of the curriculum. We appreciate the importance of everyone learning about and acknowledging the New Year and the various reasons for the celebration, and especially its use as a navigational tool in the migration of Māori to this beautiful country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Kia ora, Mr Speaker, thank you. I am very, very pleased to stand and talk in support of this bill that’s come before the House. I just love saying it, so I’m going to say it again: Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki. That’s right, this is a very significant bill. And coming off the back of that last speaker then, Chris Baillie, well, thank God we don’t need their 10 votes. History won’t look well on that speech, because you see, what we know about New Zealanders and their affinity to public holidays is they don’t like them touched.

You look at it—actually, if we do a little bit of a review of some of our public holidays that we currently have, there’s a few in there that are of questionable kind of reason. Here’s a pop quiz: ask yourself, how many public holidays have we got? Eleven. It may be surprising for some New Zealanders to know that, but let’s look a little bit deeper into that. Six of those are around Easter, Christmas, and New Year’s. Christmas, well, we’ve got a public holiday for Boxing Day. What’s Boxing Day all about? Who knows, but actually we celebrate it and we don’t want it taken away from us either. New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and then the day after New Year’s Day—and the previous speaker spoke about it; New Year’s Day, we get it, and then the day after is also another public holiday, otherwise known as just the day after New Year’s day public holiday. Then we’ve got Easter as well, which, of course, the number of migrants that we have to the country means that actually there’s a diversity of cultures out there at the moment, so what do the Hindus do, what do the Jewish people do over Easter, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, what do they do? Dunno, but they definitely spend the time with their whānau, and that’s what we know.

What we also know is that for the other public holidays—holidays like Waitangi Day, it’s been a day of tension, actually. As we look back on the chequered history between the relationship between the Crown and Māori, some people have wanted us to just move on from all of that hurt and pain, but actually for a lot of people it’s real and they use that day to actually mark that point in history. Anzac Day to our soldiers; Queen’s birthday, not even on her birthday—not even on her birthday, but we celebrate it anyway, and again, New Zealanders love it; don’t touch it. We also have Labour Day, and I heard the National Party member Scott Simpson talk about Labour Day. I’m a big fan of Labour Day. It’s a good day and we should never touch that holiday—that’s right. And also we’ve got regional holidays too, spread out all across the country. I’ve got my beef because we live in Rotorua and we hitch our wagon to the Auckland public holiday for some reason, so we just freeload off their one.

But anyway, we’ve got a history when it comes to public holidays here in New Zealand, and adding one meaningful—meaningful—public holiday that is ours, that celebrates the uniqueness that is Aotearoa, the position that we are in the world, our geographic location under this cluster of stars up in the stars which guided our indigenous population to these lands, that’s something to be celebrated. That’s something to think about and to remember. And I feel, actually, at a bit of a loss, because when I was going through school, we didn’t talk about Matariki—this wasn’t a thing. This is a new thing, but it’s an old thing, but it’s a new thing.

Actually, I think that we need to make sure that as we go through this process of turning this Matariki into a public holiday for New Zealanders, we must never cheapen the occasion. We’ve got a couple of public holidays that everybody will be thinking about already where things go on sale on Easter—for example, Easter sales; Christmas Day, Boxing Day sales. Let’s make sure that as we progress this bill through the House and as we embark on a new public holiday for this country, actually we hold true to the mātauranga Māori that’s encapsulated in it, the bringing together of people that was always intended through this. And it will be our Māori Affairs Committee that will hear this, so let’s make sure that we do hear a diversity of opinions. We’ve already heard a few of them in the House here tonight, but I hope that in some of those submissions, there are people that understand that this is an auspicious occasion.

This is something that should be celebrated. This is mātauranga Māori that was lost and is being regained. This is something that’s got a lot of potential for us and for nation-building in this land of Aotearoa that we call home. I support this bill and I commend it to the House.

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker, thank you. It is a privilege to speak on this bill at the first reading, and the reason for that is the question of the importance of Matariki is not up for debate today. On our side of the House, as with Labour and, I think, all parties in Parliament, the celebration of something that is uniquely New Zealand is important, and I’m very pleased the House can set time aside today to be able to discuss that and do so in a respectful manner.

National supports the idea of Matariki to be celebrated by New Zealanders, and for very many more New Zealanders, young and old, to learn about it. The last speaker in the debate, Tāmati Coffey, said that when he was at school, it wasn’t something because he didn’t know about it. And I know he doesn’t mean it has been made up; it’s just not something that was talked about widely, and it’s a good thing it is today. My children, when they were younger in school, and the kids that are joining school today, and our kindergartens, and our kōhanga reo—they talk about these things, they celebrate it, they paint the stars, and it has meaning for them. So there is no suggestion on this side of the House that it’s not important, it’s not something that should be celebrated, it’s not something that New Zealanders should be proud of, and I say to anybody that is unsure of this to go in and learn, to discuss, to listen.

But the one thing we also need to do is be mindful of all the decisions that we take in this House, and their implication. There is always a time for something, there is always a time for debate, but it is the decisions and the impact and effect that they have that we need to have an open mind to. And I must say that when we heard my colleague from ACT Chris Baillie, there was dissent from the Labour benches. This is a respectful debate, and it should remain so. This is a House where people can have different views and different opinions. We can agree on things but disagree on the way that they should happen, the way they need to take effect.

When we hear members opposite actually decide to interject on such an important issue I think it is disappointing, and it does a disservice, because there will be people at home that are looking for leadership from this House to understand why this is important, why Parliament is setting aside time to discuss it and debate it, and whether or not it should be important to them, because as with Mr Coffey, they won’t have known about it when they were at school.

National is not supporting this legislation, not because of the intent—that is accepted—but we do believe that at a time when so many New Zealanders are doing it so very, very hard, if the Government wants to celebrate this as we want to celebrate it, it should be in place of an existing public holiday, not an additional public holiday. I’m all for people actually having choice, and I’m all for people, you know, taking time off, choosing to spend time with their families if they want. But every single member of this House that takes the time to check their inbox will be hearing from businesses who are run by mums and dads, hard-working Kiwis who are doing it tough, and they are saying to us, “We need more support. We need more help. If our businesses are to survive in Auckland or any other part of the country because of the great, great impact that COVID has had upon us, we need your help to be able to go to work and to trade more and to be able to earn money to pay our bills. We want to support our families, we want to be able to spend time with them, but we want to go back to work.”

So when we talk about, on this side of the House, the need to support business, and we say another public holiday is an additional burden upon them, we say cost—it is a burden upon them. We are talking about hard-working Kiwis or every single ethnicity and walk of life that are doing everything that this Parliament and this country are asking of them, and it is just too hard for them. And I do feel that this sends the wrong signal to those New Zealanders about how we support them to do better for themselves.

I would love us to be able to double or triple the number of public holidays we have in New Zealand so people could take more time with their families to do whatever it is that they choose to do. But we are not a wealthy country—we are not a rich country—and we need to back Kiwis to be able to back themselves to work hard. This will impose costs on businesses large and small. The large ones will bear the costs—they’ll pass it on to the consumers, who already are finding it hard to pay their bills. The small ones who are struggling as a result of the cost burden the Government has placed upon them, and the small ones that are struggling because of the significant cost and impact that COVID has had upon them, are not being done a service today; they are being done an injustice—not because they don’t deserve to celebrate Matariki; they do, just as National does, but there is a consequence to every decision we make, and the consequence of this is that, actually, for many New Zealanders, they no longer get to think about the importance of Matariki; they have to think about how it is they will survive.

RAWIRI WAITITI (Co-Leader—Te Paati Māori):

Kōkōmako, kōkōmako.

Ko te hau tapu e rite ki te kāinga ngā Matariki.

Tapa reireia koia tapa tapa koruru, a koia ngā tuku, hī auē hī.

Ko ia ka here nei te pito o te whenua ki te pito o te rangi. Ki te wāhi ngaro mō ngā manaakitanga ki runga i a tātou i tēnei rā. Tēnā koe te tuahine e Kiritapu nāu anō hoki tēnei huarahi mā tātou i tēnei rā i runga i te pire kua karangahia e whakanui nei i te kāhui o Matariki. Tēnā anō hoki koe. Nāu anō hoki tō tātou reo e karawhiua nei kia rongo nei ngā pakitara o tēnei Whare, ā, i te reo o te iwi taketake o tēnei whenua, arā ko te Iwi Māori.

Ko ia anō hoki e kīia nei ko Matariki hūpē nui, ko Matariki hao tangata. Nā runga i tērā ka tangi ki ō tātou tini mate, ngā mate huhua o te wā, ngā mate putuputu kei tēnā marae kei tēnā marae kei tēnā kāinga kei tēnā kāinga o tātou. Arā ka tiki ake i ngā kōrero a ngā mātua tīpuna, Matariki hūpē nui, Matariki hao tangata.

Te paki o Matariki tarapepe mai rā tarapepe mai rā. Ko te Kīngi Māori Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero te Tuawhitu e noho mai rā i runga i te ahurea tapu o ōna mātua tīpuna. Ko ia tērā e here nei i a ngāi tātou te Iwi Māori, arā te whakatinanatanga i te kotahitanga o ngā iwi i raro i te maru o Ihoa o ngā mano. No reira, te paki o Matariki tarapepe mai rā tarapepe mai rā ki runga o Waikato, Waikato taniwha rau he piko he taniwha. Ā, ka tiki ake anō hoki inā i te waiata a Tuini Ngāwai e kīia nei:

“Horahia e Matariki

Ki te whenua,

He māramatanga mō te motu e,

Kia tipu he puāwai hōnore mō te pani mō te rawakore e.”

Taua waiata rā e tangi ana ki ō tātou mate, ā, e mea ana anō hoki ki te hunga e noho pani ana ki te hunga e noho rawakore ana. Nō reira kei reira katoa ngā korero ā ngā mātua tīpuna e kīia nei me whakanui i a Matariki ka tika.

Anā anō ki tētahi o ngā waiata e here nei ana i a tātou te Iwi Māori:

“Ko Matariki te whetū e arataki e

Ka tutuki noa ki te mutunga

Puritia ngā tohutohu o te wā

Kia manawanui kia rangimārie.”

Ko taua waiata rā, arā, e kīia nei e here nei anō hoki ki te kotahitanga. Me kotahi tēnei Whare i runga i ngā hiahiatanga o te Iwi Māori. Ka roa nei tātou e takahia nei e tāmi nei i tēnei Whare, ā, ka heipū nei i tenei kaupapa ki runga i a tātou, ā, ko ētahi kei te mataku. Kei te mataku i ngā āhuatanga Māori katoa kua horapa nei ki mua i te aroaro. Ko Matariki tētahi, ko Aotearoa tētahi. Ko te Iwi Māori tēnei e ngunguru nei.

Ā, ka mihi atu anō hoki au, ā, kia kaha ki a Rāhui Kātene, arā ki te whanaunga, a Rino, i tōia mai tēnei pire ki roto i te Whare i te tau 2009. Ko ia, arā, ko tātou. Ahakoa ko tēnei taha i tērā taima ko te mea nui ko te Iwi Māori e ngunguru nei. Ā, i tēnei rā ko koe tērā e Kiritapu te Iwi Māori e ngunguru nei tēnei ka tautoko.

Inā ngā kōrero, ā, tika tonu a Hone Harawira i taua whaikōrero rā i te ngarohanga o Rāhui i tēnei Whare, “Nā Matariki tātou o te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa e here ai.” Arā, ki roto i te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa ki Hāmoa ko Matali’i, ki Tahiti ko Matari’i, ki Hawaii ko Makali’i, ki Rarotanga ki Aotearoa nei ko Matariki. Nō reira ehara tēnei i te aukati i ngā iwi e whakanui ana i wērā atu o ngā kāhui whetū. Pai noa, whakanuia.

Inā ngā kōrero a te waiata a Rikirangi Gage:

“Āio ki runga he āio ukiuki”

Te whiti te marama. Tīramarama ana he ika i te rangi a Matariki, tū mai rā. Kia ora tātou.

[Matariki connects the earthly realm to the celestial realm. I give thanks for the protections of the heavens today. To my sister Kiritapu, greetings to you for opening the way for us today under the bill that calls us to celebrate the star cluster Matariki. Thank you again for also letting our language rain down, to be heard by the walls of this House, the language of the indigenous people of this land—that is, the Māori people.

Matariki is also known as Matariki of those in mourning, Matariki of the taken. Because of this we mourn the many deaths, the innumerable deaths, and the frequent deaths on each and every marae and in each and every home of ours. I bring up the words of the ancestors, Matariki of those in mourning, Matariki of the taken.

Let the story of Matariki continue to reverberate. The Māori King Tūheitia Pōtatau Te Wherowhero VII lives under the sacred culture of his ancestors. It is he who binds the Māori tribes together, there is the embodiment of the unity of the Māori tribes under the protection of the Lord God. Therefore, let the story of Matariki continue to reverberate upon Waikato, Waikato of a hundred chiefs. At every bend a leader can be found. And I also bring up the song by Tuini Ngāwai, which says:

“Spread your light oh Matariki

On to Mother Earth

As a guiding light for this land

May an honourable bloom grow for the poor, for the needy.”

That song mourns our dead, and it also speaks to the poor and needy. Therefore it completely embodies the words of our ancestors that tell us that it is only right that we should celebrate Matariki.

Here is another song that binds us together as Māori:

“Matariki is the star that guides us

To pursue our aspirations to fruition

Take heed of the signs before us

So that we may be resolute and at peace.”

That song also tells of the bonds of unity. This House should unite under the desires of Māori. For so long we have been trampled on and oppressed in this House, and, when we look at this issue directly some people are frightened. They are frightened of everything Māori that is placed before them. Matariki is one, Aotearoa is another. This is Māori continuing to make themselves heard.

I also acknowledge the courage of Rāhui Kātene, through her relative Rino over there, who brought this bill to the House in 2009. Although it came from this side at that time, the main thing is that this is Māori continuing to make themselves heard. And, today, you, Kiritapu, were the voice of Māori continuing to make themselves heard and I support you.

Then there was the speech made by Hone Harawira when Rāhui left this House, where he accurately stated, “Matariki binds all the peoples of the Pacific.” In the Pacific, in Samoa, it is Matali’i, in Tahiti it is Matari’i, in Hawaii it is Makali’i, in Rarotanga and here in Aotearoa it is Matariki. This is not to prevent other peoples who wish to celebrate other star clusters. That’s fine, celebrate them.

Here are the words of the song by Rikirangi Gage:

“There is peace above, an ancient peace.”

The moon shines, a cluster glimmers in the sky—it is Matariki rising there. Greetings, everyone.]

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Can I just acknowledge everyone who has spoken on this bill so far, and to my colleague Minister Allan for shepherding this through. Congratulations, and finally we are here.

So I’m delighted to take this call on Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki, the Matariki bill. I wanted to just reflect on how we got here and I wanted to acknowledge those who have helped get here. Fortunately, I saw the Minister in the building one evening and she asked me politely, “Could you please go and accept two petitions from a person from ActionStation?” I knew who ActionStation were. They are a brilliant community organising—well, campaigning—and activist group for all sorts of social justice responses. I didn’t quite know then that it was going to be to accept a petition from Laura O’Connell Rapira, the manager, who had, with Lewis Holden, collected 30,000 signatures. It was a cold Wellington night. We were at Te Papa, because in Wellington here we take action, and they were outside enjoying the light show that was very much activating Matariki for Wellingtonians, visitors at the time, and those who had come down, really, to learn more.

But in meeting Laura, she profusely explained the need for Matariki to me. I’m used to working with both hostile and gentle constituents, so I let her go and listened. She didn’t know that she did not need to preach to me at all because it reminded me of two years prior when we had already been talking as a Labour Māori caucus about this. For me, personally, when I was on the Wellington City Council, former Mayor Justin Lester had come to me saying, “Hey, what do you reckon we look at activating Matariki in a way that’s never been done?”, and I thought, “Explain?” He said, “How about we pull the fireworks from Guy Fawkes night to Matariki?”, and I thought, he’s a Pākehā mid-30s male who’s come to me in a vulnerable manner, I would say, but also courageous and bold, in terms of saying, “What do you think? Should we do it? Should we send the first signal up to say, ‘If we do it, maybe this would be the start for Government to consider making Matariki a public holiday.’?”

We had a wee chinwag, a few laughs, about which holiday we should replace, and we decided amongst us that Queen’s Birthday was the worst. Why? Because it’s not her birthday, anyway. Two, we thought the Monday in early June is pretty miserable, and we thought, “Why did she allocate her southern subjects this miserable day? Does she not like us?” We were not sure. And, worst of all, there are no presents on this day. No one exchanges anything. There’s no cakes. People aren’t really open. And we thought, “Hold on a minute. We need a new day. We need to do this properly.” So we thought while some will take an economic view, and that has been explained, while some have an environmental awareness—and I can say ActionStation certainly does—here it was about culture, identity, and nationhood.

On that side of the House, they talked flags; on this side we were looking for something far more authentic, indigenous, and something that celebrated Te Ao Māori. This, I believe, is it. Fireworks mid-year on Matariki did not have the consequences that those who are against it, or are against anything different, had warned us about—those who had said this will not look good, this will not reflect well, this does not come with rationale, purpose, and a whole range of other things. But what it did come with was, as I said, courage. It came with the notion that we were underpinning Aotearoa New Zealand with a celebration of our unique identity, and as a bicultural nation.

So this was the start. So I will be for ever proud of being part of this petition that the Minister allowed me to do, but it also fulfilled for me personally a journey first started by Justin Lester and his understanding of saying, “We must do things different. It’s time for change.”, and for him to take that bold step and do something that activated the capital city to run the risks and do the things that were a bit different—a bit different—that led to today and helped in terms of engagement. Sometimes it’s about trialling things and doing things to see how they roll, and this should just be expected. For those in Opposition, it is surprising but then it really isn’t.

So can I say as a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, it is a good select committee. We will consider this. I’m hoping for lots of submissions, but in many ways I’m not expecting them, because the journey of Kiwis understanding about Matariki, how it fits into our identity as a nation, I believe is well understood, much better understood. The timing is right. I’m here to fully tautoko Minister Allan. Her work will be part of its journey. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupō): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I do rise to speak in what has been mostly a respectful debate about Matariki. It’s always great when you have an occasion on a Thursday afternoon when the House is unanimous around intent. The unfortunate reality, though, is that we will be opposing this bill, and I want to get to that in a moment.

I think it is important when we think about identity and where we are now as a nation, our appreciation, our understanding, our recognition, and value of Te Ao Māori, that to have a Matariki Day, I think, is a really important step and one that National fully embraces. If I think about when I first came into this House compared to now, and about each Matariki day, the way and the volume of activity around Matariki has definitely grown. I think back to one of my colleagues, the Hon Hekia Parata, sending Matariki cards, and that was part of the sort of growing recognition that for a significant part of New Zealand, this is part of our evolution. And as my colleague the Hon Todd McClay talked about, there wouldn’t be a school in New Zealand now that doesn’t celebrate it, doesn’t acknowledge it, and doesn’t recognise it and build it into part of their learnings. So the National Party does agree that we should have Matariki as a national annual public holiday, so we applaud ActionStation for showing how a petition can lead to a law change.

The unfortunate thing, though—and this is where we do deviate in terms of our support—is the fact that it is an additional public holiday. What National would like to see is that it replaces an existing public holiday, and members before me have explored the options of which possible day that could be, and I’m sure as the submission process is undertaken there will be a lot of people who express differing views on which public holiday should be replaced. In the National Party we think that Labour Day is a good occasion that could be an easy replacement, but given that this is the first reading, my invitation would be for members of the public to have their say and engage on which public holiday they would like to see this replace, because we see there isn’t a need for an additional day, and so instead, from our perspective, it would be a replacement as opposed to an additional day.

The other thing that I think is important is that early on in my time as the MP for Taupō, as an electorate we sort of kicked off across the wider Waikato this inquiry in terms of why it is that the Waikato celebrates Auckland Anniversary Day, a bit similar to my colleague who spoke before about Rotorua—why do they celebrate Auckland Anniversary Day? So we dug into the history of it and there was a move and there was a mood to look at how we could actually separate ourselves from Auckland Anniversary Day and have our own anniversary day and what that would take. It was a really interesting process in terms of which laws we would need to change and how that would work.

The point, though, is there wasn’t a uniform agreement as to what date we would move it to. But what did come up was that there were some in the community who actually thought that Matariki would be a good option. Another one was more local in terms of commemoration of local land wars and that that might be a more appropriate anniversary for the Waikato. We didn’t get it over the line. I think if there was sufficient agreement about what that date would be it would’ve been easier. So I think this process will also be interesting in terms of the range of views there will be around what possible day it would replace.

The other thing that I want to look at, though, is the issue of timing. I think that’s where it’s particularly challenging right now. I looked back at some of the comments that have been made around the announcement of this public holiday by Labour. Stuart Nash in particular last year, in the lead-up to the election, talked about the fact that it wouldn’t be introduced—it was a Labour pledge—in 2021 because businesses were still recovering from COVID-19. So it could’ve been in place for July 2021, so we could have been celebrating it this year but the decision was to delay it until July 2022 so that businesses had time to adapt and to recover from COVID-19, and this is what Stuart Nash has said in an interview last year.

So one question, one comment: I do think is appropriate to put in this House today is: is 2022 still a priority when the Government wants it to be an additional day as opposed to a replacement given the carnage that businesses up and down New Zealand are experiencing today with the latest COVID lockdowns? Each and every day the examples of businesses hanging on for dear life are devastating. I do think that it is a bit rich of the Government in terms of timing to be introducing this bill now at a time when businesses definitely aren’t thriving out there. They’re not looking forward to extra public holidays; they’re just worried about how to keep the doors open. And, unfortunately, there’s too many that I’ve spoken to who won’t keep the doors open.

I had a meeting on Monday with one of the regional economic development agencies, and the increase in requests of the local economic development agencies for information about how to wind up a business have massively grown compared to the first lockdown for COVID last year, and that’s my final point—the cumulative effect. So there are two cumulative effects I want to talk about. The first is—as my colleague the Hon Scott Simpson has been leading the charge on—the number of changes to employment relations, the number of additional costs that will come on to businesses in the employment relations space alone, is really significant. With any one of those, people think: “Oh, one extra public holiday, big deal.” It is the cumulative effect—extra sick leave, changes to parental leave, changes to potentially giving leave for teacher interviews. It’s the cumulative effect that makes it incredibly challenging for businesses to cope.

And now, with the latest Delta outbreak, we have a cumulative effect of businesses who are literally hanging on for dear life, day to day. And there doesn’t seem to have been a recognition by the Government that there is a cumulative impact of lockdowns for Auckland. We’re up to number five. This one, is think, is cutting the deepest. Businesses had reserves last year. They chewed through those pretty quickly. The wage subsidy is great but that only covers some of the costs of keeping people in jobs. The reality is that if you don’t have businesses, you don’t have jobs. So while Matariki itself is fantastic to celebrate, and we think it would be a great addition, something incredibly unique to New Zealand—and I think we should be doing more of those things—but not when the cost is borne by some. That’s why we think a really sensible practical way to solve this issue would be to replace an existing public holiday. We propose the Labour Day holiday, but I’m sure the New Zealand public will want to have their say on this themselves.

So we agree with the intent. We don’t agree with it being an additional holiday, and we’re really concerned about the timing, given the amount of pressure businesses are already under, and we don’t think the Government has taken any consideration whatsoever of the cumulative effect of the changes they are making and the burdens they are putting on small businesses, who are our economy. They are our employers. They are the lifeblood of bringing incomes into each and every household, and the cumulative effect of this latest devastating Delta lockdown is causing carnage on business every day.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam, Speaker. It’s with a sense of pride, actually, that I stand and take a call on this the Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill. Can I just take this moment also to acknowledge my friend and colleague the Hon Kiritapu Allan for bringing this piece of legislation to the House.

We’ve heard varying views and opinions across the House today, and one of those has been talking about the cost to business. And yes, there is a cost to business and that is without a doubt. But there are also, as my colleague Rino Tirikatene mentioned, benefits as well. If I think about businesses who have struggled through COVID, and particularly hospitality businesses, tourism businesses, they’ve done it really hard and they continue to do it hard. I think that a public holiday in the middle of winter when everyone’s a bit tired and a bit cranky will actually be a really good time for family, whānau to come together, to travel around the country, to visit those places, those hospitality places, to stay at motels and hotels, and spend money on our domestic tourism.

We’ve heard about different public holidays that we have where many of us have no idea, actually, what the purpose of them was or where they originated from and things like that. We’ve heard members opposite say that we should replace one with this if we bring this piece of legislation in. I think it’ll be interesting to hear from the public when they come and make their submissions, and I do encourage members of the public to come along and make their submissions known.

But this is a holiday that will be unique to us, unique to us as New Zealanders, and it will be held to recognise Te Ao Māori. This is something that we can all, as New Zealanders, celebrate in. I think that it will be really advantageous to us to have this as a public holiday. It will be a time for family and whānau to come together, to spend time together, and, actually, to get around the country to see how beautiful New Zealand is. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, Au kia pānui tuatahitia Te Pire mō Te Hararei Tūmatanui o Te Kāhui o Matariki, Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill i tēnei wā.

That the Te Pire mō te Hararei Tūmatanui o te Kāhui o Matariki/Te Kāhui o Matariki Public Holiday Bill be now read a first time

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

[.]

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Māori Affairs Committee.

Bills

Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 28 September.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to say a few words on this bill, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. I think it is fitting, given this week is Mental Health Awareness Week, that we progress this bill. It is a bill that updates outdated aspects of 30-year-old legislation. The bill seeks, essentially, to improve the protection of individual rights and the safety both of patients and the public by enabling a more effective application of the Mental Health Act. One of the ways in which it does that is by eliminating indefinite treatment orders. I think, when we think about the way we’ve conceived and we’ve conceptualised mental health over the last 30 years, we’d all agree that basic human rights and our idea of that within the environment of mental health have changed. Basic human rights should be afforded to all New Zealanders, regardless of their circumstances, and this principle should inform the legislation that we make in this House.

I’d like to just take a moment to read out a quote from one of the 53 submissions that we received on this bill, relating to this specific sort of aspect of it. The submitter said, “I’ve been under the compulsory treatment order for the last five years. Medication has caused bad side effects that affects my ability to work. I have been stable the whole time but when I asked my doctor how long I will be under the compulsory treatment order? He said that I would be on it for years and years and years. This has caused me to feel trapped and extremely powerless. Eliminating the indefinite treatment order gives me hope that one day I will get my life back.” So, again, this reiterates the principle that we are talking about.

This legislation is another step on the journey towards what I believe is a fairer society for all, and, as such, I have no hesitation to commend this bill to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it’s a real pleasure to stand and speak in support of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill in this second reading. I had the privilege of sitting on the Health Committee, listening to the submissions, reading the submissions—the 53 submissions—and listening to the oral evidence given by 15 submitters here in Wellington and by video conference. There were both organisations submitting but also individuals, such as the submission that the speaker from the other side of the House quoted from, and they were heartfelt submissions and very sobering submissions that made us realise just how important this work is that we do here.

So this bill has three main parts to it, as the speaker before me, Dr Tracey McLellan, touched on: eliminating the indefinite treatment orders; and, secondly, minimising the risk of harm to patient or public when transporting forensic patients who are special patients, as defined under the Act; and also an amendment to the audiovisual link, and that carries on from what appeared to be successful use of audiovisual technology in the COVID-19 response in 2020. I’d like to also acknowledge the officials that were involved in these amendments: the Director of Mental Health and his team. I’d have to say, they were incredibly respectful and incredibly generous in their time that they gave us, talking through how things operated. I was enormously impressed with how they dealt with us in the select committee and also with the issues that were brought up by the submitters, so I absolutely want to acknowledge them.

As the previous speaker said, the indefinite treatment orders were an issue that many wanted to submit on. One of the submitters criticised the indefinite treatment orders as a breach of human rights; and, indeed, at a very individual level, we can tell from the submission that the member from the other side of the House read out how incredibly difficult it is for individuals that are under one of these orders. So it really is life-changing for a number of these people. There were some submissions about the length of time to review the compulsory treatment orders at the end of each 12 month period for the duration of the order. Some submitters thought that, perhaps, six-monthly would be more appropriate but, on balance, we stuck with the 12 month review period, but we thank those that took the time to explain why they thought perhaps the six months might be more appropriate.

The bill seeks to minimise the risk of harm to the patient and public and also the staff that are involved in transporting patients. This is a very sensitive area where obviously we want to ensure that the minimum of restraint is used that is necessary, but there are times when forms of restraint have to be used both for the patient’s safety and also for the safety of staff and public. So this was a welcome change in the bill.

The audiovisual link amendment was one that exercised quite a lot of discussion. It’s interesting how things have changed since COVID. Things that we might never have considered appropriate by video conference have now become mainstream, and the audiovisual link submissions talked about the concern around whether this might become the default position and whether there might be a temptation to just always think that that is the mode that should be used. And while we acknowledged and many of the submitters acknowledged how valuable it might be for family members or caregivers of a patient to be able to be present by audio or video link, they wanted to be sure that it would be done with the preference and best interests of the patient or the proposed patient and in a manner which removed barriers for in-person attendance in a way that was productive rather than restrictive. So we were very pleased that we were able to debate that.

I would like to read from one of the submissions. This person said, “As someone who has been admitted to three psychiatric hospitals during my youth, I feel like my comments and recommendations here may be of use”, and they certainly were. “I definitely agree with having someone there that is familiar with you and your life when the mental health assessment is read out.” He goes on to say, “someone familiar should be invited to listen and support the patient receiving care. I had no familiar face or even a familiar voice when I was admitted to any of the psychiatric hospitals I’ve been to”. And so if the use of audiovisual equipment enables much better support for the patient, then of course we should be trying to adopt that technology.

The amendment to the bill comes within a broader setting of the work programme to repeal and replace the Mental Health Act, and many of the submitters commented on that. Many of the submitters commented on their concern that perhaps they didn’t see the context of these bill amendments within the wider repeal that was occurring. Some submitters were concerned at the time that was being taken for that full and wider repeal and replacement of the Mental Health Act to occur. And so we need to be very mindful that while many of the submitters were pleased to see these amendments, they were also eager and, in fact, quite forceful in their encouragement that this wider repeal and replacement of the Mental Health Act should occur.

Perhaps, just turning our minds to more general thoughts around the mental health of New Zealanders—we know what an incredibly important issue this is for us. Certainly Mental Health Awareness Week brings that to the fore, but the fact that we are in COVID lockdowns again also brings it to the fore. We are seeing skyrocketing numbers of at-risk New Zealanders who are finding it increasingly hard and difficult to get the support they need from mental health services. We know that waiting times for children to access services have ballooned. The number of children having to wait over two months to see a counsellor has almost doubled in the past three years. The Government came to power promising great things around mental health, around child poverty, and around housing, and you would have to say that scrutiny of the Government’s actions on these key issues does not bode well for this Government.

This week an independent review was released. The independent review, interestingly, was undertaken by Grant Robertson, so you would have to say there is a great deal of defensiveness and concern about any daylight being shone on the outcomes of mental health in this Government. So while it has been pleasing to be part of the select committee that scrutinised and, I think, improved this bill—particularly around things that we spoke about in terms of reporting, around the use of audiovisual and reporting, around the use of restraint—there are certainly much broader, much wider issues around the mental health area that need to be addressed and hopefully will be addressed in the repeal and replace of the Mental Health Act in the fullness of time, and I hope that I am able to be part of hearing the submissions on that, because we do definitely need to hear from the people that are most impacted. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr GAURAV SHARMA (Labour—Hamilton West): It’s a pleasure of mine, on Mental Health Awareness Week, to speak on the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. As part of the Health Committee, we got quite a few submissions from across the board, and it was good to see people who not only were consumers of the mental health system but also who were the providers. It was great to see a very comprehensive discussion on the amendments that are proposed in this bill.

Some of the key things that the bill proposes, first of all, is eliminating the indefinite treatment orders and making them 12 months before they get reviewed again—at least—which is a big step, because for a lot of people, about 2,500 to 3,000 people a year, they can be on these indefinite treatment orders for a long time without actually having a review, so this makes a huge difference to that.

In addition to that, the one that I was quite pleased to see was the inclusion of AV—audiovisual—links to be able to provide a link for the family members and support services to be part of that assessment when they can’t be there face to face. But it was good to also see that there was a discussion around it, because some people were worried about the fact that it shouldn’t become the default way of doing things, because, technically, there should be people available face to face. But it is good to know that there is that option available, at least in these times when we are going through COVID.

So as a bill that has been thoroughly looked at through the Health Committee and has had a lot of people give input into it, I would highly recommend this bill to the House and I look forward to the next round of conversation on this bill. Thank you.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. It’s a pleasure to rise in support of this bill, the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill, during Mental Health Awareness Week. Take time to kōrero. Mā te kōrero, ka ora. I rise on behalf of our spokesperson for mental health, Chlöe Swarbrick, who is one of many holding it down for the rest of us in Tāmaki-makau-rau. Ngā mihi mahana ki a rātou katoa.

This bill came through the Health Committee; so I was privy to the submissions made. And, like many of the submitters, we look forward to the Government implementing the recommendations made from its own inquiry into mental health and addiction, in the report He Ara Oranga—in particular, the full repeal and replacement of the Mental Health Act that the Government has committed to. We understand there’s a huge job already going on with the full reform of the health system; so, in the meantime, this discrete piece of the work makes progress on some key areas.

Our outdated mental health system has a legacy of pathologising particular people. We’ve seen this in the hearings for the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Bill and Births, Deaths, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill, where we are still experiencing the homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and interphobia that is the legacy of rainbow identities being misdiagnosed as mental disorders. It is not our diverse genders, sexualities, and sex characteristics that leads to anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide; it is the discrimination against us. Rainbow groups such as Te Ngākau Kahukura, OutLine, InsideOUT, RainbowYOUTH, Gender Minorities Aotearoa, and PATHA have all identified the rise in mental health concerns just in the last few weeks because of those hearings, as anti-trans lobbyists use this national platform and their considerable privilege to deny the humanity of our takatāpui, trans, non-binary, and intersex whānau and to spread hate and misinformation against some of the most marginalised people in our communities. Until we amend the Human Rights Act, though, and sort out some hate speech laws, there’s little to stop them doing so.

Māori, of course, have always been a target, and in specific ways, as our spirituality and ability to communicate with our ancestors, one of many parts of our culture, was misdiagnosed as a mental disorder. Because of the disproportionate impact of institutional racism against tangata whenua, He Ara Oranga acknowledged the importance of using Māori health models such as Te Whare Tapa Whā, amongst many, and reconceptualising mental health provision: Taha hinengaro, our psychological and mental wellbeing; taha tinana, our bodily integrity; taha whānau, our relationships and connections to the families of both our birth and our choosing; and taha wairua, our spirituality, our interconnectedness with all things in the universe. None of these is separate; they are all intertwined.

So mental health and wellbeing is impacted on by many factors: whether someone has a warm, dry home that is accessible and affordable, with security of tenure; whether they have enough income to live in dignity, with food security; whether they are free from violence and harm; whether they have access to the healthcare and support that they need, when they need it. The mental health system cannot create mental wellbeing for our people by itself; it must work with other Government and community organisations, must work with whānau, hapū, iwi, Māori collectives and providers. It should not be up to the police to be part of the front line in dealing with the crisis of mental health. Someone who is suicidal should not have to spend the night in jail because there is nowhere else for them to go.

So, number one: this bill eliminates, as my colleagues have said, indefinite treatment orders by requiring the courts to review an order at the end of 12 months. Māori are currently four times more likely to be placed under this Act than non-Māori, and three times more likely to be under these indefinite orders. So this one thing alone will have a huge, huge impact on us.

Number two: minimising the risk of harm when special patients are being transported. This is really, really important for making sure that the least restrictive option is used, to prevent harm and protect people who are involved in this process, and we support this with the expectation that staff are properly trained in de-escalation and control and restraint techniques to do this properly, and also to identify, if transport can’t be done safely, that there are alternatives.

So, of course, number three: if COVID did anything, it showed us how much of our lives can actually be done online. This enables consultations and assessments to be done online, but also for whānau to join, because they can’t always be there in person, for lots of different reasons. So that makes part of that participation more accessible. So we really support the COVID sunset clause being removed. We do agree with our colleagues who have earlier said that this needs to be monitored. Kanohi ki te kanohi, face to face, is always the preference—always—and so it’s really important for transparency that it is recorded why, in any circumstance that face to face is not used, and why audiovisual link is used for the best interests of those patients.

Finally, number four: improves the administrative efficiency of the Act, because, if we must have laws, it seems a very low bar that we would want them to be efficient.

So, in conclusion, we look forward to the overhaul of the entire mental health and addictions Act, and in the meantime this is progress and we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I was unsure whether I’d get the final call on the last sitting day, but here we are.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the second reading of the Mental Health (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Amendment Bill. I want to take the time to acknowledge that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week and, if I may, just ask everybody to please check in with family and friends that you may never suspect could be suffering from a mental health challenge, because it could be your conversation, today or any other day, that is the conversation that helps pull them from a dark place. We know that there are many people who struggle every day, up and down New Zealand, with mental health issues. Whether it’s from mild anxiety or whether it’s from serious post-traumatic stress disorder or sexual violence trauma that they may never have told anybody about, there are people who suffer in silence and I think they need to be acknowledged.

But we also need to acknowledge that there’s a continuum of care in New Zealand for mental health, and I think this bill goes to show some of that more serious side to New Zealand that we don’t necessarily see. This is talking about people who have had indefinite treatment orders, and this bill seeks to change that by allowing treatment orders to be reviewed every 12 months. I think that’s important, and that’s why the ACT Party supports this bill, because we believe in the inherent right and dignity of every New Zealander. We wish to see people having safe and humane treatment. I note that the legislative statement notes that the mental health and addiction report He Ara Oranga highlighted that this Act was not consistent with international rights commitments, so it’s very important for us to bring our laws in line with our human rights.

I want to acknowledge the submitters who took the time to submit to the select committee on this legislation. I know it’s not easy for people to express to Parliament, to politicians, to people of the public their thoughts, especially when it comes to their own mental health. I want to thank the members who did so, because that helped to show to the members of the committee the real-life stories and the people that will be affected by this law change. I will keep my speech short, but I commend it to the House, thank you.

[Member stands to seek the call]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Apologies to the member. This debate is interrupted and is set down for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 19 October. Good afternoon.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.57 p.m.