Thursday, 28 October 2021

THURSDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2021

THURSDAY, 28 OCTOBER 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

ADRIAN RURAWHE (Deputy Speaker): Ā kāti rā tēnā rā tātou. Kia inoi 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.

[Well, thanks, everyone. Let us pray.

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): Today, the House adjourns until Tuesday, 9 November. In that week, legislation to be considered will include the second reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, the committee stages of the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Bill, the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill, and the Education and Training Amendment Bill, and the third reading of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. Tuesday’s sitting will be extended into Wednesday morning. Wednesday afternoon will be a members’ day.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): I thank the Leader of the House for that update. Given that it’s now more than five years and four months since the Local Government and Environment Committee referred the Kermadec Ocean Sanctuary Bill back to the House, can the House now take it that it is not the Government’s intention to pass that bill, and, if so, will it discharge it from the Order Paper?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): No, the member can’t take that inference from that. It is a shame that the last Government made such a hash of it, which means it wasn’t in a position to pass when we became the Government. But I am confident that the Ministers in charge of the bill on this side of the House are doing a much better job.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: In response to that, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Hang on, I just want to make sure that this has to do with the business of the House over the next couple of weeks, and—

Hon Michael Woodhouse: It may well do.

SPEAKER: It’s Thursday afternoon, and I don’t know whether to say we all want to go home or we’re acting up, but I just want to warn the member that we’ve had a sort of a question and a reply in a light-hearted way. If the member has a serious follow-up, then of course he can have it.

Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Point of order, Mr Speaker. An interesting description of the Leader of the House’s reply being light-hearted, but it did have an unambiguous political statement in terms of the previous Government. If that now is allowed in the Business Statement, I think that would be an interesting development.

SPEAKER: Right. Well, I think they always have been allowed. They’ve generally been allowed in response to what have been seen as less than deadly serious questions from the Opposition.

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

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

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

CLERK:

Petition of Sue Wells requesting that the House initiate an inquiry into banking services provided in rural areas

petition of Trish Castle requesting that the House repeal the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020.

SPEAKER: Those petitions stand referred to the Petitions Committee. Ministers have delivered papers.

CLERK:

Annual reports for 2020-21 of Kiwi Group Holdings, Crown Asset Management, Crown Irrigation Investments, MetService, Orillion, AssureQuality, Pāmu, Quotable Value, Meridian Energy Ltd, Airways, KiwiRail, New Zealand Railways Corporation, and Kordia

Statement of Corporate Intent 2022-24 for Pāmu

Ministers’ reports on non-departmental appropriations for the year ended 30 June 2021: Vote Business, Science and Innovation, Economic and Regional Development Portfolio and Vote Business, Science and Innovation Tourism Portfolio.

SPEAKER: I present the report of the Controller and Auditor-General entitled The Problems, Progress, and Potential of Performance Reporting. I also present reports of the Ombudsman on the unannounced inspections of the four facilities in the grounds of the Rātonga-Rua-O-Porirua Mental Health Campus under the Crimes of Torture Act 1989. Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Education and Workforce Committee on the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill and on the report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Holidays (Parent-Teacher Interview Leave) Amendment Bill

reports of the Health Committee on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, on the report of the Attorney-General under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 on the Contraception, Sterilisation, and Abortion (Safe Areas) Amendment Bill, and on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2)

interim report of the Regulations Review Committee on the COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 5) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 6) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Alert Level Requirements) Order (No 12) Amendment Order (No 7) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Required Testing) Amendment Order (No 4) 2021, COVID-19 Public Health Response (Vaccinations) Amendment Order (No 2) 2021, and COVID-19 Public Health Response (Isolation and Quarantine) Amendment Order (No 3) 2021, and

report of the Social Services and Community Committee on the briefing on the 2020 performance of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading, and the interim reports of the Regulations Review Committee are set down for consideration.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Research, Science and Innovation

1. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister of Research, Science and Innovation: What action is the Government taking to modernise New Zealand’s research, science, and innovation system?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Research, Science and Innovation): This morning, Dr Verrall and I launched the Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways green paper, marking the start of a wide-ranging and collaborative conversation about the future of New Zealand’s research and science system. Our research, science, and innovation system has served us well, especially in its response to COVID-19. Scientists and researchers have been amongst the heroes of the pandemic, but the world is a very different place now to when the system was created in the 1990s. We need to ensure that the great work of our scientists can continue, and we need a modern, future-focused research and science system that is connected, adaptable, resilient, and diverse.

Glen Bennett: How will Te Ara Paerangi incorporate Māori voices?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The 2021 Te Pūtahitanga report showed that little data exists on the scale of investment in research conducted by Māori or for the benefit of Māori. Recent research has shown Māori make up 3 percent of total research staff at Crown research institutes, and 4.8 percent of academic and university staff. We need to do better than this. A modern, future-focused research system must strengthen the role of Māori in and consider how the system achieves outcomes for Māori. We need to embed Te Tiriti across our system, better enabling mātauranga Māori in the interface between mātauranga and other forms of research, and it’s vital that we do more to remove barriers to entry in advancement of Māori as part of a thriving research system.

Glen Bennett: How can people have their say on Te Ara Paerangi?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Consultation on Te Ara Paerangi Future Pathways green paper will draw on the collective wisdom, experience, and inspiration of our researchers and research users. We need to gather a broad base of views on the performance of the current system to better understand the issues it faces and the opportunities for the future. For New Zealand’s ongoing success, prosperity, and wellbeing, it’s essential that we get this right. Consultation will be open until March 2022, and there is a number of ways New Zealanders can have their say. More information, including the full green paper, is available on the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s website.

Question No. 2—Finance

2. ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato) to the Minister of Finance: What advice, if any, has he received on the number of business closures and workers laid off as a result of the current lockdown?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): I receive a range of advice on the impact of the outbreak and the restrictions on the economy as a whole, including official advice from the Treasury. I also receive informal advice from the many interactions I have with businesses and workers in Auckland and around the country. At an aggregate level, Treasury estimate that at the current alert level settings, around 90 to 95 percent of the economy is operating at normal levels of activity. As I informed the member yesterday, official figures from the Companies Office show liquidations in the period have not been materially different to 2020 and 2019, nor have removals from the Companies Register. In terms of workers, I would note the number of people on a main benefit did increase after the lockdown began. However, it has fallen consistently since then. This week, ANZ have forecast unemployment to fall to 3.8 percent in the September quarter, and—for the benefit of the member—that includes both men and women in that 3.8 figure. I recognise that some businesses and workers are doing it tough, particularly in Auckland, and that’s why the Government has acted swiftly to put in place the economic support that we have to protect businesses, jobs, and livelihoods, with around $4.8 billion being paid out so far since 17 August. Our enhanced business package provides further support to businesses as we move to the new COVID-19 Protection Framework, and I would note that that support has been welcomed by the region’s business leaders.

Andrew Bayly: Has he seen analysis of Companies Office data widely reported in the media showing that there were 9,524 business closures in August, up 140 percent on the 3 months to July?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m aware of the data that the member is reporting, and I’d ask him to use it with some caution in light of the fact that I’m not sure that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment or the Companies Office fully support that data. However, what I can give the member is more up-to-date numbers provided by the Companies Office that the number of company removals recorded by the Companies Office to the end of September was 22,458 for the year. That compares to 22,352 in 2020, and 23,209 in 2019.

Andrew Bayly: Has he seen reports that business closures in Auckland were up almost 14 percent in September compared to last year’s monthly average, and, if so, is he inclined to revisit the answer he gave in response to my question yesterday on business closures?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: No; in answer to the second part of the question, no. I’ve just given the member on details on company removals from the Companies Office. I could also inform him that company registrations—i.e., new companies being created, in the year to the end of September 2021—were 50,513, an increase in registrations on both 2020 and 2019.

Hon Stuart Nash: Has the Government put any specific support in place to help Auckland small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) get through the Delta outbreak?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Absolutely. In addition to the wage subsidy scheme and the Resurgence Support Payment, which are now being paid in the majority to Auckland businesses, we now have the specific support delivered through the regional business partner programme and, in this case, Auckland Unlimited to Auckland businesses. That would be $50 million worth of support for advice and implementation of that advice to support businesses to adapt to the COVID era, and also $10 million to support SMEs with any mental health needs. I want to thank the member who asked the question for his role in that work.

Andrew Bayly: When he said yesterday that since the current lockdown began, liquidations have been roughly equal to the same period as in 2020, was he aware that most companies that closed for good don’t go through formal liquidation processes?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said to the member yesterday, I was using the data that we have available. I’ve given him additional data today around company removals and also around company registrations. I acknowledge this has been a tough period for many businesses in Auckland, but what the Government has done is stepped up and provided support for them. If you just take the wage subsidy scheme, we’re talking 329,153 businesses, in addition to 180,599 self-employed people. This is hard work for people in Auckland. It’s the reason why the Government has stepped up with the support we have.

Andrew Bayly: Did he try to use the formal liquidation figures yesterday to mask the real impact of the current lockdown?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Of course not.

Andrew Bayly: When he said yesterday in the House that the best thing for the country is to stick with the plan, was he referring to the plan to reconnect New Zealand announced 12 August, the Auckland roadmap plan announced 4 October, the COVID Protection Framework on 22 October, or the next plan that comes into place on 29 November?

Hon Chris Hipkins: Coming from National!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I was going to say. Coming from a party that has, as has been said in the House before, the attention of a bored cat when it comes to COVID—going in and out, changing their position—

Chris Bishop: Oh, come on!

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Mr Bishop says, “Come on!” Mr Bishop, I can update on yesterday in the House that the National Party’s now had five positions on vaccine certificates in the last few days. The plan I was referring to was indeed the COVID response framework. That is the plan that sees us through to the reconnecting New Zealanders strategy. It’s the plan that’s delivered to New Zealand one of the lowest mortality rates in the world, one of the lowest hospitalisation rates in the world, one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, and one of the highest rates of economic growth. The Government has been focused on saving lives and livelihoods—that is the plan.

Andrew Bayly: Does he now regret that he didn’t act sooner to boost support for hard-pressed Auckland businesses and to save the jobs that they provide?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: The Government acted immediately on the outbreak coming into place by putting the wage subsidy scheme in. Throughout that time, we’ve continued to tweak that support in response to Auckland businesses, and we are now in a position where we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, where we continue to provide the support that we do. We have updated our support throughout the last 20 months, and I would note that the latest update to it was received by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, saying that we had listened and provided a balanced response; by the Employers and Manufacturers Association, who said they were pleased with the support; and by Hospitality New Zealand, who were impressed by the doubling of the Resurgence Support Payment.

SPEAKER: Order! Before I call the next member, I just want to give a little bit of advice, and that is that when members interject during an answer, they do invite the Minister to go on, in a way, for longer than would normally be allowed, and that’s certainly occurred on that occasion. I would have cut the Minister off quite a lot earlier if there had not been the continuing invitations from the member who was interjecting.

Question No. 3—Agriculture

3. TEANAU TUIONO (Green) to the Minister of Agriculture: Mālō ni, Mr Speaker. What actions, if any, is he taking to address the possible environmental impact of imported PKE used as supplementary feed in Aotearoa?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development) on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture: I am advised that the Government is concerned about deforestation and is actively engaged in a range of multilateral bodies that promote and share experiences on sustainable forest management. I’m also advised that the Ministry for Primary Industries, through the Sustainable Farming Fund, contributed $415,000 towards a joint project of almost $1 million with Northland Dairy Development Trust to show farmers how they can farm without palm kernel expeller (PKE), and they’re investing in a portfolio of research into establishing evidence for regenerative farming practices.

Teanau Tuiono: Is the Minister aware of the recent report from Greenpeace Indonesia Deceased Estate: Illegal palm oil wiping out Indonesia’s national forest, and, if so, does he see continued use of PKE sourced from Indonesia as a risk to the international reputation of New Zealand agriculture?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister: I’m aware of the report. I haven’t read it, but the New Zealand Government would not support importation that has led to illegal activity in foreign nations.

Teanau Tuiono: Does the Minister agree that New Zealand, as the largest importer of PKE in the world, has a responsibility to ensure PKE used on our farms is not contributing to environmental disruption overseas through habitat loss for endangered species like orang-utan, Sumatran tigers, and elephants, and, if not, why not?

Hon STUART NASH: My understanding is that our use of PKE has dropped significantly on New Zealand farms, and also—as mentioned in my answer to the primary question—that we have actually spent close to half a million dollars to work with farmers to reduce their use of PKE.

Teanau Tuiono: Does the Minister consider that intensive farming reliant on PKE as supplementary feed and involving large feedlots such as the one recently reported on in Ashburton is consistent with this Government’s aspiration for the agricultural sector in Aotearoa?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister: again, I understand that PKE accounts for approximately 6 to 7 percent of total feed consumed by New Zealand dairy cows, and so I wouldn’t say it’s a substantial feed source at all.

Teanau Tuiono: Will the Minister seek further advice on restricting import for use of supplementary feeds like PKE to address the environmental impact of both intensive farming in New Zealand and deforestation overseas, and, if not, why not?

Hon STUART NASH: On behalf of the Minister: it’s not on the Government programme. However, markets tend to adjust to consumer expectations. That’s why I prefer Whittaker’s over Cadbury.

Question No. 4—COVID-19 Response

4. SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent announcements has he made regarding the managed isolation and quarantine system?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Today, I announced that from 14 November, managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) stays for border arrivals will be halved to seven days, followed by a short period of self-isolation at home and release once somebody has had a negative day 9 test. When the MIQ system was introduced, we didn’t have a vaccine, so every arrival posed a higher level of risk. With most people now fully vaccinated when they arrive in New Zealand, the risk profile of international arrivals has changed, so it’s time to start changing our MIQ settings. Arrivals will be tested at day zero or day one, day three, and day six or seven. A rapid antigen test and the health checks will be carried out on day seven before a person leaves MIQ, and people will get a PCR test on day nine when they are at home and they’ll have to stay at home until the result comes back. This announcement strikes the right balance, managing the current risk from overseas arrivals, while taking a significant step in the Government’s ongoing strategy to carefully reconnect New Zealand with the rest of the world.

Sarah Pallett: What impact will these changes have on MIQ capacity?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The evolution of MIQ will initially free up more than 1,500 rooms per month. These spaces will enable us to do two things. They’ll allow rooms to continue to support the Auckland outbreak, and some additional Managed Isolation Allocation System (MIAS) rooms will be available for release. Modelling for the number of rooms needed for those high-risk community cases isn’t yet conclusive to be able to say for certain exactly how many rooms will be made available through MIAS vouchers for international travellers, but there certainly will be some. It does, however, indicate that the direction that we’re heading in will see fewer restrictions at the border for people coming into New Zealand who are lower risk, such as those who are fully vaccinated and have up-to-date negative COVID-19 test results.

Sarah Pallett: How does today’s announcement fit into the Government’s wider reconnecting New Zealand strategy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Shortened stays in MIQ were part of our international reconnecting plan that we announced just shortly prior to the current Delta outbreak in Auckland. The second stage of our plan will see New Zealanders move towards having more vaccinated people able to self-isolate at home instead of in MIQ. That option will be made available to increasing numbers of fully vaccinated travellers in the first quarter of 2022. Our priority at this stage is to carefully transition to the new traffic light system first, and bed that in before adding the additional risk of international arrivals immediately entering the community. When the COVID-19 Protection Framework is bedded in, 90 percent of eligible New Zealanders will be fully vaccinated, so we’ll have a higher level of confidence than we do right now of allowing international arrivals to go straight into the community.

Question No. 5—COVID-19 Response

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

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yes. In particular, I stand by our action to shorten managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) stays to seven days, followed by a short period of self-isolation at home, which strikes the right balance between managing risk from overseas arrivals while taking a significant step to reconnecting New Zealand to the rest of the world.

Chris Bishop: Is it correct that a prototype for the travel health pass will be ready by 26 November and why will it only be a prototype on 26 November?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There’s two things the member may be referring to. One is the health certificate, which is used domestically. The other is international travel documentation used for the purposes of leaving and entering New Zealand. One of the reasons that things around the international space are less certain is that an international standard for that has not yet been reached. It is important that whatever system we adopt here in New Zealand is interoperable with systems being adopted by other countries. We are working closely with Australia and the EU in particular around making sure that the system that we’re putting in place is interoperable with their system, because it is in all of our best interests for there to be a good degree of transferability around health passes, vaccination, and testing results for the purposes of international travel.

Chris Bishop: Why do doubly vaccinated, negatively tested Kiwis overseas have to wait until the first quarter of 2022 before they can begin isolating at home after arriving into New Zealand?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We have to recognise, as I said yesterday, our international border operates across the country, not just in Auckland. Outside of Auckland, at the moment, we do not have significant numbers of COVID-19 cases. We are dealing with some very localised and relatively contained outbreaks at the moment. But having travellers arriving straight into New Zealand and able to freely move about the country to isolate at home would significantly increase risk in the current context. That’s not going to be the case for much longer. As we get to the point where we have a significant number of New Zealanders vaccinated—above 90 percent—and we move to the traffic light framework, then the risk profile will be different.

Chris Bishop: Has the Government commissioned a business case looking at the construction of purpose-built managed isolation facilities, and, if so, what are the terms and time lines of this work?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: A number of different things have been going on in the MIQ space around what our longer-term capacity needs might be in the MIQ space. Of course, those continue to change, and I would note that if we had commissioned purpose-built MIQ facilities when the member started agitating for that, we could potentially be cutting the ribbon on them right at the point where they’re no longer needed.

Chris Bishop: Point of order. That was a very specific question, which I do not believe was addressed. He just said there was a bunch of work going on. My question was whether or not the Government had commissioned a business case looking at the construction of purpose-built MIQ.

SPEAKER: I think the first part of it was specific enough to be addressed.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: We continue to investigate a range of options. Business cases are being prepared for a variety of different scenarios around the future needs of MIQ.

Chris Bishop: Does New Zealand’s agreement with Pfizer for the COVID-19 vaccine entitle us to order paediatric doses, and have we done so?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: The advice that I’ve had is yes—the answer to the first part of the question is yes. The answer to the second part of the question is Pfizer are certainly—in our discussions with Pfizer, they know that we wish to have access to those vaccines. At this point, we don’t have a confirmed timetable for the delivery of those.

Chris Bishop: So is it correct to say that our contract with Pfizer allows us to order paediatric doses of the Pfizer vaccine, but we haven’t done so yet?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No, that would be an overly simplistic way of thinking about things. In an international market for vaccines at the moment, one doesn’t just simply email out an order and say, “Here’s what I want and when I want it.” There is some discussion that is required with the suppliers, who at the moment are facing unprecedented international demand and do have a limited capacity to supply. But the series of agreements that we’ve had with Pfizer have always envisaged that when a paediatric dose was made available or developed, if a paediatric dose was made available, then New Zealand would want to have access to that.

Question No. 6—Health

6. JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata) to the Minister of Health: What announcements has he made about improvements at Timaru Hospital?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): On Friday last week, I visited Timaru Hospital, where I announced the next stage of improvements to child and maternity facilities. The improvements are part of the South Canterbury hospital’s four-year refurbishment project and will create a new hub for children’s and women’s care on a single floor within the hospital. This next stage will include a new transitional care unit. This project has been enabled by $2 million in funding from the Government, provided in the New Zealand Upgrade Programme’s health infrastructure package from January 2020.

Jo Luxton: What outcomes is the Minister expecting from the improvements at Timaru Hospital?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The refurbishment of maternity, paediatrics, and a new transitional care unit will improve access to healthcare, bringing services closer to home for many families, and provide a better working environment for the staff to deliver greater care for mums and babies. The new purpose-built transitional care unit will mean pre-term babies that are born at 34 weeks will not have to be transferred to Canterbury District Health Board and that the women of South Canterbury can remain in their homes and community.

Jo Luxton: When can we expect these improvements to Timaru Hospital?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: This portion of the project is part of a full hospital refurbishment and maintenance programme over the next three to five years. Construction began on the child and maternity improvements in May 2021, and will see an additional birthing room and assessment unit built and will allow the ward to provide facilities for a range of birthing experiences, including those requiring extra medical assistance. These improvements are on track to be completed by August 2022.

Question No. 7—COVID-19 Response

7. BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT) to the Minister for COVID19 Response: Does he stand by his statement that “It’s going to reach the stage where cases in the community will present a bigger risk to us than cases coming across the border, who are effectively in the position of ending up being close contacts rather than actual cases”?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Yes, and I note that while this is currently the case in Auckland, Kiwis returning home from overseas continue to pose a risk to other regions around New Zealand that are COVID-free at this point. It’s worth reiterating that the reason the Government has border measures in place at the moment is to protect all New Zealanders. Managed isolation and quarantine has, and continues to do that. The Government will continue to take a science- and facts-based approach to reducing barriers for returning Kiwis coming from abroad while maintaining safety here at home. One of the purposes of the announcements that I made today was to signal the work currently under way to find safe pathways for vaccinated travellers to enter New Zealand in greater numbers.

Brooke van Velden: Why should a double-vaccinated New Zealander currently overseas carrying a negative pre-departure test result not be allowed to self-isolate when hundreds of positive COVID-19 cases in New Zealand currently are?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Because all of those cases are currently restricted to Auckland. We don’t intend to restrict international arrivals into New Zealand to only Auckland.

Brooke van Velden: Would it not be safer to allow overseas New Zealanders who are double vaccinated and tested negative to self-isolate in Auckland than it is to allow positive cases of COVID-19 to self-isolate in Auckland, as is current Government policy?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: As I indicated, the Government does not intend to restrict international arrivals into New Zealand to only the Auckland region.

Brooke van Velden: Is the reason the Government won’t allow New Zealanders overseas who are vaccinated to come home and self-isolate because the Government does not trust them?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No—absolutely not. In fact, I think all New Zealanders want to see us able to reconnect with the people we care about from around the world. I acknowledge that no one wants to see border restrictions in place any longer than they need to be. My message to all New Zealanders is that they have a role to play here. The sooner we get to those higher rates of vaccination, the sooner the risk across the country is lower and the sooner we will be able to see more people coming into the country.

Question No. 8—Local Government

8. TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour) to the Minister of Local Government: What alternative models, if any, did officials consider, and why were they not accepted as possible solutions, to address the level of underinvestment in Three Waters infrastructure?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): The Government has been investigating options for addressing the significant challenges facing councils in delivering three waters services for four years, using the best of international and local expertise. We’ve robustly tested the options, with oversight and guidance of a joint central local government steering committee. This includes assessing options such as central government funding for the status quo; sector-led, shared-service delivery and regional models; introducing a national centralised fund similar to the New Zealand Transport Agency - type model; and relying on regulatory reform alone. None of these models adequately achieved the Government’s rationale for reform, which is safe, reliable drinking water; better environmental performance of waste-water and stormwater services; efficient, sustainable, resilient, and accountable multi-regional water and sewerage services, making it affordable for future generations; balance sheet separation; and leveraging the advantage of scale for asset management and waters infrastructure investment. In terms of how many entities is best, the Water Industry Commission for Scotland assessed 30 different aggregation scenarios, ranging from one to 16 entities. For example, we did consider a regional model based on regional council boundaries. This option, however, would have perpetuated significant cost variations across the country, including disadvantaging rural regions.

Tāmati Coffey: Is scale the sole determinant of a successful solution to the three waters challenge in the New Zealand context?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: No. Scale is important for improving the financing capacity of water entities for achieving improvements and operating in capital efficiency and for helping to make the cost of infrastructure upgrades in small communities affordable. However, the full benefits of reform cannot be achieved by scale alone. The ability of new water service entities to perform effectively and efficiently also requires effective, professional, independent governance arrangements and the ability to attract and retain appropriately skilled management and workforce; the establishment of an economic and consumer protection regulation; clear, ongoing national policy direction for the three waters sector, aligning Te Mana o te Wai aspirations and water services entities with access to the necessary finance to make the required investments over time. The model that we’ve settled upon as a Government will deliver on these goals whilst striking a balance on scale, which delivers increased efficiencies while keeping the entities responsive.

Tāmati Coffey: Why was the council-controlled organisations (CCO) model an unviable option for addressing three waters?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: The CCO model was considered by the Department of Internal Affairs, but was ruled out for a number of reasons. CCOs are unlikely to be viewed as sufficiently separate from local government to achieve balance sheet separation from councils. As such, they would continue to be constrained in their ability to borrow to fund the infrastructure deficit, in much the same way as Watercare is currently limited in its ability to borrow due to debt constraints faced by Auckland Council. This is a key reason why the household water charges in Auckland are proposed to double over the next few years, as increased investment needs to be paid for through water charges rather than being funded with debt and paid for over the lifetime of the assets. Establishing CCOs requires the agreement of all councils, with each required to engage separately with its constituents. This would take time and create uncertainty. Wellington Water provides a good example of how different councils’ views on priorities and charging has limited its ability to plan and invest strategically across the whole network.

Tāmati Coffey: Has she seen any evidence to support claims that the Government’s preferred model is inconsistent with the Public Finance Act?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I’ve not received any advice to indicate the Government’s preferred model is inconsistent with the Public Finance Act. Treasury has been regularly consulted as the reform processes unfolded and have not raised any concerns to this end. The reforms will create entities that are structurally separated from local councils and the New Zealand Government, have financial and operational autonomy, and borrow in their own right. As such, there would be no explicit liability for the debt of the water services entities recorded on the Crown’s or the local authorities’ balance sheets. The Government has not committed to providing a Crown guarantee to the water service entities. However, it has agreed to make available to water service entities a liquidity facility, accessible under certain conditions on similar terms to the liquidity facility enjoyed by the Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA). Standard and Poor’s advise there would be no changes to their credit ratings or outlooks for the New Zealand sovereign or the LGFA under the proposed reform scenarios.

Question No. 9—Local Government

9. NICOLA WILLIS (National) to the Minister of Local Government: What is her response to the many criticisms of her announcement that the Three Waters reforms will be mandated, amalgamating council water assets into four new water entities?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Minister of Local Government): I continue to stress the whole reason for these reforms are two decades of under-investment in waters infrastructure. Increased drinking water and environmental standards and constrained council balance sheets means councils will not be able to respond with forecast costs of waters infrastructure investment estimated to be between $120 billion to $185 billion over the next 30 years. Ultimately, ratepayers will suffer if these issues are not resolved. I’ve not seen any alternative put forward by the member’s party that would deliver safe drinking water, ensure value for money from the estimated $180 billion investment needed over 30 years, and keep our beaches swimmable.

Nicola Willis: Has she seen the front page of today’s Wairarapa Times-Age—[Holds up newspaper headlining with the quote “A deceitful, lying pack of bastards”]—and, if so, does she think her approach to three waters reform has built trust and goodwill with local government?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: I’ve seen a number of comments from a number of elected officials which I, frankly, believe are biased and shameful. Much of the information is making claims that are simply not true or accurate in relation to these reforms.

Nicola Willis: Does she think it was biased and shameful of Auckland Mayor Phil Goff to say that Aucklanders would have little benefit from these reforms and would only have a minority voice on an oversight committee?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Aucklanders are already facing within the next couple of years a doubling of their water bills under the existing system, and under the existing system Auckland is faced with a constrained balance sheet where Watercare has to defer investment into waters infrastructure. The mayor knows it; that member may not. However, the truth remains: Auckland’s still gets advantage from being a part of these reforms.

Nicola Willis: Does she think it was biased and shameful for Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel to say the reforms have “robbed communities of a voice”, and, if so, why?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Communities have had the opportunity to have a say through their councils on this issue, and over the last four years I have been engaged with councils, through their executive, through zone meetings, to ensure that they have good line of sight and understanding of what the problem is that we’re trying to fix. Under the current system, most ratepayers only have the long-term plan to have a say on anything that’s happening in their council in so far as water infrastructure investment, once in a triennium. What they will have in this process is an opportunity to continue to engage through the joint working group that I have established and through the parliamentary process now that will legislate an outcome that will ensure that all communities will benefit.

Hon Grant Robertson: Why didn’t the Minister take the easy option of doing nothing to rectify the decades of underinvestment in New Zealand’s water assets?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Because members on that side of the House did it and we got nowhere, and that led to a frail system. Unfortunately, I’m not the kind of Minister that will kick the can down the road on a hard issue. It’s important to address the substantial challenges facing local government of deferred investment in water’s infrastructure. [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. There is now too much interjection. While this is a contentious matter as to the method of sorting it, it’s also a serious matter, as members in Wellington and the Hawke’s Bay know well, and I want to hear the answers. Has the Minister finished? The Hon Dr Megan Woods.

Hon Dr Megan Woods: Have those decades of doing nothing, including from members from the opposite side of the House, contributed—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member’s just sort of took her own—

Matt Doocey: What an embarrassment.

SPEAKER: Who said that? Well, when I am making a ruling, describing me in that way is totally inappropriate. The member will stand, withdraw and apologise.

Matt Doocey: I withdraw and apologise.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: Point of order, Mr Speaker. While the request was entirely appropriate, I don’t think it would be fair to say that the—there was no use of the second person, and it shouldn’t be implied that the comment was directed at the Speaker.

SPEAKER: Well, I was on my feet when the comment was made. That is the only assumption that can be taken from it, and the member is lucky to be in the House.

Nicola Willis: What is her answer to Waimate Mayor Craig Rowley, who says that under her Government’s model his council would be paid only $2 million for $10 million worth of assets, and how is that not theft?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Members need to be aware—and I; it may be remiss of not having clarified it—that councils will not lose control of their assets. They will continue to own their assets alongside a group of other councils under the water service entities. But let’s be very clear: when assets transfer to these water service entities, so does debt and liability. So, in order to get a full picture of what we are talking about here, we must understand that it is about assets, debt, and liability transferring to the water service entities so we can have a more cohesive, financially sustainable method of investing in waters infrastructure, because there are serious long-term challenges.

Nicola Willis: Will ratepayers be able to vote out decision makers on water entities if they don’t deliver, and, if not, how will these decision makers be accountable to local communities?

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA: Under the current system, ratepayers do that every three years. Under the system that I’m promoting, there is an opportunity for ratepayers to have a greater say in the benefits to them as consumers through consumer panels and economic regulation, and I think, ultimately, what ratepayers want to know is that the quality of the services that they are receiving is such that they can rely on clean water coming out of the taps; ensuring that dirty water doesn’t go into streams, lakes, and harbours; and ensuring that we have a world-class waters infrastructure network that can underpin housing, regional economic development—

SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume her seat. Nicola Willis will apologise to the House. She knows what she did was out of order then.

Nicola Willis: I withdraw and apologise.

Question No. 10—Emergency Management

10. RACHEL BROOKING (Labour) to the Minister for Emergency Management: What reports has she seen on the New Zealand ShakeOut national earthquake drill and tsunami hikoi?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister for Emergency Management): This morning, the annual ShakeOut national earthquake drill and tsunami event took place at 9.30 a.m. I was delighted to join the enthusiastic students of Thorndon primary school for the drill earlier today, and it was great to see colleagues here on the parliamentary precinct get involved as well. I’ve seen a report that over 660,000 participants from across the country joined us in practising the ShakeOut drill, and the lifesaving actions of drop, cover, and hold, and long or strong, get gone.

Rachel Brooking: Why is it so important that we practise these actions?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: All of New Zealand is at risk of earthquakes, and all of our coastline is at risk of tsunamis. We can’t predict when one will happen or where we will be, but we can protect ourselves and our whānau by practising what to do. In addition to the destructive Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes, most recently, on 5 March this year, New Zealand experienced three tsunamis in one morning. ShakeOut aims to make the drop, cover, hold action seem second nature, while giving us a chance to practise our tsunami evacuation routes. It’s also not too late to give it a go. You can try the drill with your whānau at a time that suits you in the next two weeks, to be included in the numbers participating—or even in the House right now, sir.

SPEAKER: I’m tempted to put the member under her desk now.

Rachel Brooking: What else can Kiwis do to be prepared for emergencies such as earthquakes or tsunamis?

Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN: Aside from knowing the potentially lifesaving actions of drop, cover, hold, and long or strong, get gone, the most important thing that we can do is to have a chat with our whānau, our mates, our flatmates, and make a plan. Think about what you’ll do if you’re separated, if you have no power or water, if you’re stuck at home or have to evacuate, who might need your help, and who can help you. Also, it’s important to factor in COVID-19 to your preparedness plans. So make sure you have masks, hand sanitiser in your grab bag, and if you have to evacuate, make sure you exercise physical distancing as much as possible.

Question No. 11—Health

11. MATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri) to the Minister of Health: Is he satisfied that spending $486 million to restructure the health system is better value for money than using it to respond to frontline health workers’ concerns that there is insufficient capacity in public hospitals to manage COVID-19?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): Yes. I’m satisfied that this investment over a period of four years is value for money alongside the other Budget 2021 announcements for health, which included $2.7 billion for front-line funding, $516 million for digital and IT infrastructure, $200 million extra for Pharmac, and $100 million to improve road and air ambulances. No one wants to continue with a health system that offers inconsistent services across the country seeing some New Zealanders missing out and that sees growing inequity of access and outcomes. The reality is there is a cost to change. The Budget 2021 allocation to fund this much-needed change includes around $126 million for the Māori Health Authority to expand and improve front-line services.

Matt Doocey: Is he comfortable with 1,000 surgeries a week being cancelled, and, if not, why has he spent the last year focusing on the disruptive health restructure instead of increasing hospital capacity?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I have indicated, this Government has put record funding into the health system. So, by way of comparison, we are, this financial year alone, spending $7.6 billion more per year on health than in the final year of the previous Government. The previous Government increased spending in health over the full term of its Government—nine years—by $3.2 billion. The previous Government spent, roughly, $1 billion on capital expenditure in health during the full term of its Government. This Government now has a build programme worth $6 billion under way, with a further nearly half a million dollars in IT. The member will remember the graph; the graph tells the story. That party in Government underfunds health.

Matt Doocey: What is his response to ICU specialist Dr Paul Young, who, as Stuff recently reported, “went on the public record to call BS on the minister’s [ICU] numbers.”?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I refer that member to the answer to the question I gave to his colleague last week, and that is that Dr Young either misunderstood or misinterpreted what I had said. So this Government, since last year, in response to the pandemic, has worked with DHBs to ensure that they can release additional ICU or high dependency unit (HDU) capacity, or ICU- or HDU-level care, for people who need it. So whereas before the pandemic, there were, roughly, 243 ICU beds—that is to say, beds in a designated ICU ward—actually, there are other beds in other parts of hospitals such as in post-operative recovery that can be converted immediately into ICU- or HDU-level care, and that increases ICU- or HDU-level care to somewhere between 320 and 340 beds across the nation.

Matt Doocey: So how many severe COVID cases do our hospitals have capacity to handle without having to reduce services elsewhere?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: As I’ve just said, the hospitals can increase their total ICU- and HDU-level care capacity to between 320 and 340 beds. They can, by deferring or delaying or cancelling other hospital-level care, increase that to up to 550 beds. That is the advice of DHBs to the Ministry of Health, and that has also been overseen by intensive care specialists who have accepted that it is possible to make those conversions to increase that capacity to provide the care that is needed for those who need it in response to COVID-19.

Matt Doocey: In light of that response of an awareness of delaying planned care, why is the Minister continuing with a restructure in the middle of a pandemic?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: The country has seen what has happened to our health system largely because of successive years of underfunding by the previous Government—successive years of underfunding by the previous Government—operational funding and capital funding, and after a review by the health and disability system review and by the Waitangi Tribunal that says we have extraordinary levels of inequity, New Zealanders want change. As I get around the hospital network, as I get around the health sector, everybody is saying to me, “Can we just get on with the change? This is the stuff we need.” If you have a look and see how DHBs are behaving now in response to the pandemic, collaborating with each other in a way they have not before, drawing on the resources of others from right across the country to assist in the epicentre of the outbreak—which is Auckland at the moment—already senior clinicians and senior health leaders are starting to think as if they are part of a nationwide system, which is what we want.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Can the Minister confirm that DHBs have a longstanding practice of, where necessary, rescheduling planned care where there is a surge in demand for ICU such as in winter, when there can be a surge in demand for ICU as a result of influenza?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Yes, I can confirm the standard hospital planning is to accept that there are seasonal fluctuations in demand, and so the extent of planned care for, particularly, the winter months is always reduced in anticipation of people coming in with seasonal infections such as flu, such as RSV and what have you—as we’ve seen this year—and DHBs are continuing to do that. But I am confident that with the planning that DHBs have done, with the support of the Ministry of Health, our hospital system is in good shape to respond to the COVID pandemic but also, as a response to the $282,500 million that the Government put into hospitals last year specifically for planned care catch-up, that they will be able to, over time, catch up the care that many patients have experienced a further delay in.

Matt Doocey: Why does the Minister refuse to name one health outcome that will be improved in the first year of this restructure?

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Well, I’m not quite sure what the member is referring to. I’ve never failed to state that we will see greater equity of access to healthcare and health outcomes than we are seeing at present. But the combination of Health New Zealand operating a nationwide health system in conjunction with the Māori Health Authority, with its ability to commission services, and with both to cooperate with each other, will significantly improve access to healthcare and significantly improve health outcomes. The reality is New Zealanders are waiting and have waited far too long for it, and don’t want to wait much longer.

Bills

COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill

Third Reading

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill. By way of explanation, normally they have to be presented by, I think, 11 o’clock in the morning, but the bill was still going through its committee stage at that point.

SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I move that the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill be now read—

SPEAKER: No, no—sorry. I then have to say that the legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I move, That the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

New Zealand’s been dealing with the challenges posed by COVID-19 for over a year and a half now; in fact, we’ll be heading in very shortly to two years of dealing with COVID-19 and the disruption that it causes. COVID-19 has wrought a huge amount of disruption around the world, and New Zealand has actually been reasonably fortunate in that we’ve experienced less disruption than many of the other countries that we usually compare ourselves to when it comes to international measures. We’ve had fewer days of restrictions than many other countries, we have had an overall better economic response to COVID-19 than many other countries, and, of course, our public health response has stood head and shoulders above those of many other countries, and I think New Zealanders can rightly be proud of that. But the restrictions that are put in place around COVID-19 do, from time to time, create significant challenges that make it difficult for New Zealanders—for individuals, for companies, and others—to comply with rules and laws as they exist. This bill, the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill, deals with many of those challenges, and I’ll highlight a few examples. Many of the changes here are non-controversial.

So, for example, if we think about the changes to the Gambling Act to allow class 3 operators to offer lottery tickets by email or phone and to accept payments online and to issue those tickets electronically, this provision’s being extended for three years, recognising that the way those tickets were previously sold hasn’t been possible, often, in the COVID-19 environment. Organisations like Coastguard New Zealand and the Heart Foundation that rely on the sale of those lottery tickets for their bread and butter—in order to continue to exist, they needed a provision to be able to continue to raise money, to continue to fund-raise, for that really vital community work that they do, even when they can’t sell tickets face to face, as they have been doing previously. So those sorts of changes make a great deal of sense.

Greater use of the High Court can be made to ease the backlog in District Courts. Court rules can be more easily modified to respond to the circumstances of COVID-19. The coroners can hold hearings remotely. These are pragmatic decisions that recognise that we can’t necessarily meet face to face when we’re dealing with outbreaks of COVID-19 and when we have restrictions in place, but we still need some of those essential public services to be able to function.

Other provisions help with administration such as the extension of statutory deadlines, the ability to use electronic signatures, and the ability to serve electronically infringement and reminder notices under the Land Transport Act. These things all make a difference and allow New Zealand to continue to function while we deal with a global pandemic.

I do want to thank all of those who have been involved in putting this legislation together. It has had a longish gestation period, but, of course, it particularly responds to the most recent outbreak that we are dealing with in Auckland. So our thanks to all the Ministers and all the officials who have worked through that, and a particular acknowledgment to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, who considered the bill under a tight time frame and reported it back to the House.

Just to pick up two issues that provoked the most attention. The provisions around commercial contracts: this bill offers respite to businesses under pressure because of the restrictions that have been imposed by higher alert levels. It supports a process through which commercial tenants and landlords can reach agreement about lowering the rent while businesses are operating under restrictions or if they’ve closed down completely. I want to emphasise here that many, many landlords and many tenants have already agreed to these sorts of provisions. A number of refinements were made during the committee stage, such as ensuring that the lessee being unable to gain access to the property should be taken into account, and the resulting rent reductions will apply from the start of the current Delta outbreak in August.

The bill also looks after the interests of residential tenants. Amendments are being made to the Residential Tenancies Act to enable tenants to stay in their rental homes during COVID-19 alert level periods where people are not allowed to move houses. So it helps to stop the spread of the virus in that way, and it allows people to comply with any restrictions that might be put in place. The amendments also may make it clear what notice periods apply after the termination restrictions are lifted. Refinements made at the committee stage include creating a penalty for the issuing of a termination notice that a landlord is not entitled to issue.

Finally, there were some provisions around the Local Government Act and local government elections that do warrant mentioning. When the bill was first being put together, we were planning, we were considering, we had contingency that we were putting in place for if we were still dealing with COVID-19 response next year, as we have had to do over the last two years. It’s now become apparent as we continue to progress our response that with higher rates of vaccination, we will be in a position to manage COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 outbreaks differently to the way we’ve managed them before. It’s, therefore, the Government’s view that the existing provisions within the Local Government Act should be sufficient in the event that there does need to be any shift in local government elections.

Having said that, we always have to be mindful that the situation can change. We could find ourselves dealing with a breakthrough variant, for example, that’s resistant to vaccines. In that case, we would come back to the House if we needed to have any further legislative provisions to enable us to deal with that, so we don’t think that the local government provisions are necessary at this point. That’s why, during the committee stage, the Government put forward a Supplementary Order Paper that removed those provisions.

So, overall, this is a good bill that deals with many, many pragmatic issues that help people to deal with the impacts of restrictions flowing from COVID-19, and I commend it to the House.

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

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Well, it’s been an interesting 24 or 36 hours dealing with this omnibus piece of legislation. It seems like only a few hours ago that we were dealing with the committee stage, and, of course, that is true—it was only a few hours ago, as I now look at the clock. I think that’s a reflection of the speed with which this has gone through the Parliament, a speed with which I would take issue.

Now, I’m not opposed to omnibus pieces of legislation wholesale, obviously, because sometimes you do need, as a legislative body, to make a whole lot of changes to a bunch of different pieces of legislation all at the same time. But, generally, it’s a good idea to do that in a thorough and comprehensive way, and, unfortunately, when it comes to this piece of legislation, that was not the case: just a couple of weeks at select committee, sent to the Finance and Expenditure Committee—a slightly odd committee to send it to. In fairness to the Government, it’s not at all clear what committee was the right one because, of course, it is an omnibus piece of legislation, but the Finance and Expenditure Committee is good enough, I suppose.

Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, thank you.

CHRIS BISHOP: The chair sometimes comes under a little bit of heat from this side of the House, but it’s got the heavy hitters from the National Opposition on it, and so we accept the finance committee—

Anna Lorck: Really—where? Oh, who’s that?

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, don’t get me started on Anna Lorck’s contributions, which are so famous they’ve made their way to other members of other committees, like myself on the Health Committee. But word of your exploits on the finance committee, Ms Lorck, precede you, my friend—don’t worry about that.

Anyway, the finance committee looked at the bill and, as an example of how little time there was for the committee to consider the bill, they didn’t send back a bar 2 bill; they sent back a bar 1. So all of the changes that had to be made, which we just made a few hours ago, had to be made by dint of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that the Government put on the floor of the House, and the SOP’s as long as the bill, so that’s never a great sign. I’ve seen that happen before—in fact, I think it happened in the last Government that I was a backbencher in—and it was never a great sign when the Minister turned up with some massive SOP, going, “Oh, I just need to make the changes at the committee stage”. It’s evidence, normally, that something has gone a little bit awry, and, in this case, evidence of a rushed process.

So that’s the first point I want to make—that the process was wrong—and, actually, the Government had more than enough time to get its ducks in a row on some of these changes well before now. Most of them are uncontroversial. The changes to Department of Internal Affairs legislation to do with charities—I mean, no one’s going to object to that. It’s all very sensible. I would describe it as rats and mice—just stuff that’s very eminently sensible, but it deserves a good going over.

But there are two particular things that the National Party objected to, and you might remember, Mr Speaker, in the first reading we said, “Look, it’s a tough one, but on balance we’ll send it to committee to kick it around a bit.”, but we’re really concerned about the local electoral changes and the property law changes, which were retrospective in effect. It got sent to the committee, and the good news is we’ve had a partial victory. It’s a happy day, actually, over this side, because the changes we’ve been pushing for in relation to managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—we’ve had a partial victory on that, because seven days is now going to be the norm for MIQ. That’s good. That’s good for double-vaccinated travellers coming home to New Zealand, and we’ve been pushing for that for some weeks, so that’s good news.

The other thing is that the Government has given up when it comes to giving themselves the power to delay local elections into—I was going to say into eternity. It wasn’t quite that bad; it was at least for the next year after an election. The Government gave up on that idea, so that’s good news.

But it’s very unclear, and we’re still actually yet to find out, how this happened in the first place. We’ve just had reference to it from the Minister in his third reading speech. It actually begs more questions than gives answers, because he said that under the old strategy, the elimination strategy—this is the strategy that the Government put all of their eggs in the basket on and has now given up on—the Government had to retain the power to delay local body elections. OK, maybe that’s true, although, frankly, I doubt it, because local body elections are done using postal voting, and if anyone’s been to a local body candidates’ meeting recently, it would be fair to say they don’t enjoy widespread turnouts from the community.

However—however—I’m willing to make a prediction: the local body elections next year, that are now definitely going to be held next year because of three waters, are going to enjoy record turnouts, and I can tell Labour members opposite that the councils and the Government’s representatives in those councils are going to endure some heat from ratepayers. I haven’t been around politics too long—seven years as an MP—but this issue has the potential to be a real powder keg; in fact, it already is. I think we’re up to 68,000 signatures on the taxpayers’ petition, I think we’ve got 55,000 on our petition, and you just have to look at the front page of the Wairarapa Times-Age this morning. Gee, Kieran McAnulty—I like him; he’s a good guy. But if I was him, I’d be very worried.

Anyway, I digress. The point is we could have had local body elections even under very straitened scenarios, and we did not see the case, on this side of the House, for a very broad, sweeping power that the Government was seeking to give itself. We asked why that was the case, and a lot of people asked why it was the case, and to give credit to Minister Chris Hipkins—who, despite the back and forth from this side of the House, and in the spirit of a Thursday afternoon, I will say, generally, is a competent Minister. To be fair to Chris Hipkins, he’s recognised that—

Hon Member: Compliments coming thick and fast.

CHRIS BISHOP: Well, it’s very rare, actually, that you see a Minister who says, “Oh, actually, I got that wrong.” I mean, how often do you see that? Normally, with the Labour Government, it’s black is blue and white is red, and all the rest of it—they just never accept they were wrong. But, in fairness to Chris Hipkins, he turned up here last night at the committee of the whole House stage, and he said, “Yep, we had an elimination strategy; now we don’t. We thought we needed the power to delay local body elections, and now we don’t, so we’ve removed it from the bill.” I mean, that is a good thing to do. I give credit to him.

It’s very rare that you see that, and, actually, the last time I can remember a Government Minister doing that through an SOP at the committee of the whole House stage was actually the Hon Simon Power, in 2009, who sat there and watched. I think it was something to do with the remote sittings of courts, or something—audiovisual equipment—he sat there and listened to the debate and said, “Well, actually, that’s right.”, and he turned up and he just removed it from the bill. It’s very rare, so I give credit to Chris Hipkins.

Anyway, that’s enough of being nice. Let me talk about the really stupid part of the bill, and that is the property law changes, because that’s the reason we’re opposing the bill on this side of the House. We had an extended back and forth with the Minister in the chair, Kris Faafoi, today in the committee stage, and I think it would be fair to say he doesn’t really understand what the bill does, which is worrying, for the Minister of Justice, and he can’t really explain what it does beyond that he thinks it might make a difference at the margins. Maybe that’s true, and there’s probably a marginal group of people for whom it will make some sort of difference. I think that the solution outlined by Andrew Bayly, National’s shadow Treasurer, is far more preferable, and I suspect he’s going to talk about that in his contribution.

So maybe it will make a difference at the margins, but here’s what it comes at the cost of—and this is a really important point. Yes, maybe there’s a couple of people who will benefit from it, but I tell you who’ll be the long-term loser from the provision, and that’s the people of New Zealand more generally, and that’s the legal environment within which we operate, because Governments should not just go around legislating to overturn contracts retrospectively. I just emphasise for the House: retrospective law is bad—I can’t believe I’m having to kind of spell it out. Retrospective law is terrible. Criminal law is the worst, but retrospective law is, generally, bad. Laws that interfere in the sanctity of contracts are bad. They’re bad because they undermine the principle of legal certainty and they undermine the rule of law and they make it hard for people to make decisions in a legal context, knowing that those decisions might not be overturned by the legislature later. That is central to a market economy.

Now, I know some members opposite have expressed misgivings about the whole nature of a market economy, but at the moment that’s what we have, and it’s not changing any time soon, thankfully. But we need to have a market economy based on the principles of the rule of law, and the reason the National Party is opposing this legislation now that we’ve got rid of the stupid provision around local election law is, essentially, wholly because of the changes to the Property Law Act. It is misguided legislation, it is ill-conceived, it is unprincipled, and it is wrong, and for those reasons we will oppose it. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Kia ora. Thank you, Mr Speaker. Just a couple of comments, really. I’m perplexed by Mr Bishop, who seems to think there’s no precedent in the law for looking back and adjusting contractual arrangements in the light of extreme circumstances. It’s worth just remembering that in the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, there is already—which had, in fact, been there for a long time, in the Frustrated Contracts Act 2008—a provision that says that when it’s impossible to perform a contract—I’ll read it: “the court may, if it considers it just to do so having regard to all the circumstances, allow the party to retain or recover the whole or any part of the money that was paid or [is] payable.” So there you go; you have it.

All this clause does is say that in commercial leases where it’s impossible to perform—where the landlord cannot provide free access in quiet enjoyment to the premises—then the parties are the first to put their heads together and try and sort it out, but, if not, they can go and get it arbitrated. Nothing surprising about this at all. The parties never turned their mind when they created a lease to a global pandemic. What we are doing here is saying, “Well, look, don’t worry. We’ll think about that for you. We think the appropriate thing to do is, in all the circumstances, take everything into account and arrive at a just and reasonable resolution where an appropriate amount is paid. Nothing surprising there—common sense, good business. I commend it to the House.

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Well, it’s a pleasure to be talking in the third reading of the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I want to talk about Schedule 6, rental arrangements. Here we are 18 months later from when COVID first hit New Zealand, and the Government is finally acting—finally acting—in a speedy manner. Then, of course, who’s front-footing it? That dynamic and energetic Minister Kris Faafoi. He’s the one leading the charge on this.

I think we just need to put it in context. Earlier, I asked the Minister of Finance about what’s happening with industry and how many businesses we’ve lost. We’ve lost just over 9,500 businesses in the last month, and that’s up 140 percent—140 percent—in the three months to July. We are starting to see absolute devastation in our small businesses in places like Auckland and the Waikato. This is not something that we’re sleepwalking along to. This is happening now, and this is the worst thing about this: this is the same idea that the previous Government talked about introducing under the Hon Andrew Little—the same proposition—and New Zealand First ruled it out, and they ruled it out for good reason. It will not work. It is not the right thing to do.

This morning, in the committee of the whole House, we saw a Minister who really does not understand business. He talked about revenue, and that’s the test that has been put into this bill, but the real issue, as we tried to point out to him, is it’s about cash when you are a small business. “Do I have enough cash to pay my rent? Do I have enough cash to pay my wages?”—and that’s the problem.

In Auckland, we’re now, what, into the 11th week, going into the 12th week tomorrow, in one of the longest lockdowns that that city has been in. Compared to all the other cities in the world, Auckland is now touching one of the places that has been in the longest lockdown, and no one plans, in their right mind, to have a Government tell them, “You cannot trade for 26 weeks.” No one can envisage that.

Now, some people are lucky because they have other resources, but in our plan that we announced last week, I did a case on a hairdresser. She was lucky because her landlord had done the right thing and given her a 50 percent discount on the rent. She was lucky, and I’ve got to acknowledge there have been many, many generous landlords, but I can tell you that if she hadn’t had that write-off of that rent, she would have lost $100,000. That was $100,000—she was telling me how she’s borrowing against her house to try and keep her staff on her pay book so that they had a job when ultimately, at some time in the future, they can come back to work. That’s the real reality of what’s going on.

This piece of legislation that will come into force today will mean that if you’ve got a dispute and if you’ve been having a dispute between the landlord and the tenant, then you are having a dispute. This piece of legislation’s not going to change it. The only thing that this legislation requires is that if you want to take the matter up, the other party—it might be the lessee, it might be the lessor—has to respond within 10 days. Yeah, well, they might respond, but they might respond with the same response they gave last time: “Naff off!” There’s no obligation to actually deal.

Then they use this weird and wonderful term called “fair proportion”, and there is no real substance to that new proposition other than talking about revenue drop. Not even a criterion about what might be a sufficient revenue drop. So if you have a 25 percent revenue drop, do you get a 25 percent reduction in your rent—well, do you?

Hon Member: Who knows?

ANDREW BAYLY: Who knows? There’s no clear bounds around it, and that is the issue with this definition—that is the issue. You’re already in disputing parties, and just because they have to respond to each other within 10 days doesn’t actually make it any better.

So then they talked about arbitration. Well, at least when Andrew Little tried to introduce it last term, they did put some money towards arbitration disputes, because these are the type of businesses that are going to crash in the next few weeks. Even the increased resurgence payment doesn’t come into effect. You can’t even apply for it until three weeks after Grant Robertson made the announcement. In those three weeks, we’re going to see more small businesses go to the wall, and, here we are, we’ve got this clause. “Oh, let’s go and I’ll write you a nice letter.”, you get a grumpy letter back from the other party saying, “Naff off!” OK, what’s your choice? “Oh well, maybe we’ll go to mediation, or maybe let’s go to arbitration.” Well, guess what! Did Minister Faafoi talk about a sped-up arbitration process? No.

Did he talk about financial support to those parties like the small businesses who don’t have any more cash to take the proceedings, because if anyone’s had anything to do with arbitration, it actually costs money. And, by the way, you’ve got to prepare your case, and that’s at a time when small-business owners, the mums and dads and their key staff, are all incredibly stressed—absolutely stressed to the max. “Where am I going to get my money tomorrow to pay my wages?”

No one else is getting a free ride on this, and I hear Dr Duncan Webb scoffing. I tell you what, I’ve just come back from Auckland. I came down last week. I can tell you that every day in my electorate—every day—I got, on average, a hundred calls from concerned constituents. Many of them were related to small-business owners—every day, without fail, a hundred people contacting me, either by phone or email, asking for help during this lockdown. Unfortunately, most people down in this area haven’t seen that degree of pressure, mental stress, and this is the one remaining aspect that should have been dealt with by our Government and it should have been dealt with back last year. But here we are, 18 months later, and you finally front up with this bill that will not help. Where’s the cash? Well, the cash—this is the socialisation of the cost of a Government-imposed lockdown, where the Labour Government is saying to landlords, “You’re all wealthy. You can do it. You should pay for it. You pick up the tab.”

Well, actually, it’s a Labour Government - imposed lockdown as a result of a poor, slow roll-out of the vaccine and poor managed isolation and quarantine facilities. Nothing to do with a small-business owner, a hairdresser, or those types of people who’ve gone about doing all the right stuff. Many of them are double vaccinated now, and yet here we are with a piece of legislation that doesn’t help them one iota, because most people will not have the time, the money, or even the mental capacity to take on their landlord, if they have to, and go to arbitration. That’s why, when they put up the 40 million bucks last time for the arbitration, no one took it up—no one took it up. So here we are.

This is an insensitive piece of legislation. This shows a Government that does not understand small business. I am really, really concerned, and I just think it’s that lack of care and real understanding about how small businesses operate. The mums and dads and their key staff, and they’re all families. They’re not workers and things like that in this esoteric concept; they’re people that get on with each other, who work together—families—and they’re all going broke. A lot of them are going broke: 9,500.

I’ll be interested to see how many go broke next month, and I’ll tell you what, what’s going to happen is that most of them are hoping they can get through to Christmas. Most of them are hoping that the Government’s going to open up the country, hoping they’re going to get a Christmas where they can get a bit of money in, but in the middle of January, they’ve going to pay their first round of provisional tax, then they’ve got to pay more in March, and then in April, that’s when the road will hit, because those companies will fall over because they don’t have cash.

What the Government should have done is the support payment that we put forward two months ago and given these people cash to get them through the process. And only now the resurgence payment—oh, it’s going to happen in two weeks’ time, when they, finally, can make their first application. That will be a month after the announcement.

It’s such a waste of people’s lives. That’s the most damaging thing about this bill—I’m ashamed.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): The one thing that Andrew Bayly got right in his speech was the need for cash flow for small business, and what this bill does is it provides that cash flow through providing a fair proportion of rent. I do not understand how the National Party can sit there on one hand and say that they want to support business, they want to support people through this really difficult time—especially businesses in Auckland—and, at the same time, take away what rent relief might be available to them through the changes to the Property Law Act.

This is not anti-landlord. This is about getting fair rent and about being able to imply into contracts the assumptions that were not considered by either party when they went into the contract because the situation was so unforeseeable. How many businesses knew that the law would require them not to be in business? Many, many of them did not, and they are the ones who came to us at select committee and said, “Please, can you make this meaningful for us, and not only can you give us rent relief but backdate it so that it goes back to a meaningful date of the beginning of the lockdown, so that the legislation is not a toothless tiger?” All credit to our Minister for listening to the select committee and introducing the Supplementary Order Paper and listening to the many, many small businesses and businesses in New Zealand that operate on thin margins, and saying, “Yes, we will backdate it because these circumstances are so unusual that the law justifies us in doing it.”

This is not disregard or the flick of a pen, as Mr Bishop would have had you believe in the committee stage. This has been a very considered process by a hard-working select committee who have listened to what retailers want, who have listened to what hospitality want, who want to be fair to landlords and to tenants, and who, like every other New Zealander, I’m sure, want us, the team of 5 million, to get through this together, to be able to see Christmas together, and to be able to keep our businesses operating. That is what the property law amendment schedule does, and I commend this to the House.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party is supporting the legislation. On balance, we think that most of the proposals are sensible and carry on with a pretty good approach to managing COVID—I mean, very good last year. Obviously, in recent times, the approach has slightly changed and the Green Party has put out our own position statement on COVID response, one that we think would ensure that we are protecting our communities and the health of our people, and really upholding that the most vulnerable people need to be at the forefront of our mind during a global pandemic.

We are happy at one change in particular that the Government picked up. My colleague Chlöe Swarbrick put forward two amendments around the commercial tenancies provisions, and one was that it would be backdated to the beginning of the current outbreak in August 2021, which the Government did pick up. We would have liked to see the Government go further and backdate it to March 2020 so that the initial lockdown and any others—there’s been a few level 3 lockdowns in Auckland over the past year—could be considered as well.

We also are disappointed that the Government didn’t choose to just go ahead and move on ensuring that New Zealanders residing overseas have their voting rights protected during this time, when they’ve had a significantly reduced ability to return to New Zealand. I know the Minister has said they’re open to hearing from the Justice Committee about it. I’m really pleased that, I believe, the ACT Party and the National Party both voted in favour of that amendment, which is a really good sign that there could be across the House a consensus that we need to change this law so that we’re not disenfranchising New Zealanders who probably will have a constrained ability to return home for some time. Even after we’ve reduced the need for managed isolation, there will still be reduced capacity in air travel and much higher prices for air travel, and not everybody can afford to travel all the way back to New Zealand, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t New Zealand citizens who are very engaged and passionate and care about the future of this country and want to be able to exercise their democratic right to vote in local government and central government elections.

Finally, we were disappointed that the Government didn’t go further and reintroduce the rent freeze during level 3 and level 4. It’s been an incredibly long lockdown for people in Auckland, and this is following intense increases in rent prices that have happened over the past year. We think that, ultimately, the changes to the Residential Tenancies Act have not gone far enough to protect renters, and particularly in this period where we’re trying to catch up on providing additional supply to meet need and demand for housing, it’s really important that the Government is doing everything it can to protect people’s right to secure, affordable housing, and a rental freeze at the very least during a level 3 or level 4 lockdown would be reasonable. I know the Minister spoke to this and said that people can go look at flats at level 3, but, really, is that something we want to be encouraging people to do?

We’re still in a situation of constrained housing supply. In fact, emergency housing and transitional housing have been at the—our failure to house all of our people here in Aotearoa New Zealand has been a major factor in the spread of the virus that we’re currently seeing in Auckland. So I think, as a society, we’d all be better off if we sorted this out.

Rent freeze and rent controls are simple tools that can ensure that people are able to afford rent and that they don’t have to constantly be moving around or getting shifted out of housing into transitional housing, into emergency housing, into their cars—wherever they may be. All of that makes it harder for us to manage the virus, and so, obviously, we would like to see the Government go much further in those areas and we will continue to champion that.

Just one last point about the kind of absolutely inconsistent position of National, where they’re complaining about the Government having too much debt and then promising to spend more money on things. It really doesn’t make much sense, because here they are, they’re saying, “Oh, we should be building purpose-built MIQ facilities. We should be massively investing in the health system.”—I completely agree. Increasing the ICU beds—yes. Increasing the staff—yes. All of those things require Government funds and Government funds are reliant to some extent on taxation, and we’d like to see progressive taxation, and to say that it’s socialising the losses—no. Actually, what they’re advocating is, precisely, privatising the benefits and socialising the losses of this pandemic, but I guess it’s not surprising that their position is so incoherent. They don’t know if they support vaccine certificates or not. I mean, it’s really interesting. I guess they have a lot of people in their caucus who have different opinions about things and, ultimately, they don’t have a coherent vision for a society in New Zealand where we can provide the basics to everyone, where we can ensure that people live good lives, where we’re providing social services, and we’re allowing for people to do the things that matter most to them, because, ultimately, their ideology and the best interests—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member needs to come back to the bill. It’s not a general speech.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: I understand what you’re saying, Mr Speaker, and I was just trying to point out the philosophical inconsistencies in some of the arguments we’ve heard from the other side of the House, which I think is worth raising in the debate because those arguments have been raised in the debate. But when it comes to the bill, we’re disappointed the Government didn’t go further in some of these areas to look after our people. But we are supporting the bill.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise today in opposition to the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill. I do so, on behalf of the ACT Party, for two main reasons: firstly, because of the actual content of the bill, and, secondly, because of the process that it’s gone through.

This bill in particular shows the real reason why Parliament needs the ACT Party. Only one month ago, the Government brought this bill to the House and only ACT was the only party to vote against it. Only ACT was the party that said that we cannot possibly support this based on our principles, and that’s because the ACT Party stands firmly in favour of having a country where we know that our laws are reliable, where we know what our laws actually say on any given day, and where we have the rule of law upheld—where we know that we have property rights and we know what those rights are. This bill violates that.

We are proud to constantly stand opposed to this bill. We need more people in Parliament who are consistent on their principles that rushing law through Parliament is the wrong thing to do, and especially that rushing through retrospective legislation that interferes with private contracts is the wrong thing to do. I’m glad that our friends over here in the National Party have come on board, but it would have been great to have them alongside us in that first reading. I’m glad they’ve come on board, though.

This bill—not all of it is bad. It does actually point to a few things that are common-sense changes. There are a range of initiatives here that we actually have no problem with, and that’s because they adequately look at the situation a lot of New Zealanders faced themselves under lockdown. It’s really hard to do some of the most basic tasks under a lockdown. If you think of a few examples, one is the Heart Foundation’s fundraisers, which they can’t do in person, and so there needed to be some changes to be able to enable them to do those online, and I think that’s a good change to make. The second example was the High Court. We’re changing some of the rules around the courts to ensure that some of the workload could be shifted from the District Court to the High Court, and I think that’s a good thing to do. Another was some changes to e-signatures. Those are some common-sense changes.

Well, just this morning we had the committee of the whole House—doesn’t feel that long ago because it’s not—and that’s what’s happening when you have rushed law. But we saw some massive changes go through. As Chris Bishop pointed out before, they were pretty much the same size as the original bill—the number of changes that were put forward by the Minister in charge of this legislation—and I think that shows why it’s so wrong to rush through laws, because you can get so much wrong if you’re rushing it through Parliament.

But I’m very glad to see that one of the amendments that was put forward is a removal of a provision that was in the original bill which would have delayed the local body elections, and I just have to question why that was even in there. Does anybody from the Labour Party know why that was in there? Complete silence. No one—none at all—and it’s because, potentially, this Government is just too addicted to power. It just started to put so many things into an omnibus bill. It thought, “Here’s a great chance. Maybe one day this is something that we’d like to get through.” But, alas, the ACT Party was there to point out that it should never have been there in the first place, and we are glad to show them that it was wrong and that it should have been removed.

That’s what happens when you have too much power with a majority Government who wants to rush through legislation, and it shows the importance of having an Opposition with principles that’s willing to stand up for New Zealanders’ rights. They just cannot justify why that was there in the original bill.

The main reason why we oppose this bill is because of the property law changes that were set out in it. Normally, when you pass a law in New Zealand, you can’t be done for it if you broke the law in the past. This says that that sort of principle doesn’t matter. What the Government is now saying is that it doesn’t matter when you signed a commercial lease contract, the law says that there’s now a new law. It doesn’t matter what you agreed to in the past, there’s now a new law and you just have to follow the law that we’ve currently just done. It’s called retrospective legislation, and it’s a dangerous precedent to set in the New Zealand Parliament. What the Government is saying is that “You think that your rights are secure, but now we’re telling you that they’re not.”, and the ACT Party believes in the rule of law and we believe that that should be upheld.

The second part that we opposed was the rushed law, and that’s because we believe in due process. So, for context for anybody watching, usually a law has a six-month select committee process. This was done within a few weeks. We had a shortened select committee, which meant that people who would be affected by this law didn’t have the time to make a submission to the select committee. They didn’t have the time to read through all of the impacts that this law—all of the different changes that were put in this one law—could have on their lives to make an acceptable viewpoint stated in a select committee process. I think people should be allowed to voice their views in Parliament but also have the time to be even able to articulate that.

There was also no regulatory impact statement because it was rushed through so fast. That’s another problem. We didn’t have the basic checks and balances of what were the costs, what were the benefits—how do we weigh up the costs versus the benefits? That’s never a good way to make a law if you can’t do that.

So, in summary, the ACT Party opposes this flawed piece of legislation because of the way it was passed through Parliament without due process and because of the property law changes. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

ANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as an active member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I also rise as a business owner, a small-business owner. There’s been a lot of talk in the House today about how hard it is for small business. What this bill does is support small businesses when they’re faced with the real struggle of having to pay rent when they can’t get into the building.

I look back on COVID-19, when it first hit, and I was a business with a landlord that immediately dropped the rent by half. There were many businesses in Hawke’s Bay where that happened, and those businesses and those landlords and tenants did that, without exception. What we are talking about today is those businesses with landlords and tenancies that do not have an agreement, who cannot work together to make it fair and reasonable. This is what the difference is in this bill that will absolutely matter to helping small businesses get through the hard times that they face, especially in Auckland right now.

I would also like to acknowledge the hard work of my select committee colleague Helen White, who cannot be in the House today but who has contributed enormously to helping with this legislation, zooming into the meetings and listening to the contributions that have been made by submitters. That is one of the things that’s been really tough for people during this lockdown. But it’s important that we work together and it’s important that when we do need to move through legislation that can have an immediate impact, an important impact that we’ve heard about today from businesses. That’s why I support and commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. Joseph Mooney—five minutes.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise on behalf of the National Party to oppose this bill. The history of this bill is worth repeating to some degree in the brief time that will take. It was introduced with less than 24 hours’ notice to Parliament on 28 September and had its first reading the next day, on 29 September, under urgency.

The National Party, I’m glad to say—Mr Chris Bishop, in particular—raised a critical point about the Local Electoral Act, pointing out that it was going to give the Government the ability to roll over the local elections for the better part of two years. We heard a description from Chris Hipkins yesterday about why they had done that. He said that at the time, a couple of months ago, there was an elimination strategy and the Government needed to have that power. But the National Party raised this issue, and one thing I can give the Government credit for is that they scrapped it. They didn’t give us a good reason for why they scrapped it; they just said that things were different to a couple of months ago.

Well, yes, things are different. Auckland’s been in lockdown for 12 weeks. Local businesses haven’t been able to operate for 12 weeks. People have been stuck at home. The South Island has been at level 2. National Party members from the South Island wrote to the Government and asked for the rationale and the reasoning behind it.

Maureen Pugh: Got an answer?

JOSEPH MOONEY: We haven’t. Maureen Pugh says, “Have we got an answer?” The answer is no, we have not had an answer. The Government has been obfuscating and you might ask the question why. That’s a very good question—a very good question—that I think we may have got some illumination from the media yesterday, who ran a story saying that the Government only began planning for the Delta outbreak in late July, just weeks before the virus escaped managed isolation and quarantine in August.

So what was the Government doing all this time? It’s not as if it was a surprise that Delta was circulating around the world; in fact, we’d been given warning in June. A gentleman from Sydney had come to Wellington, spent the weekend having a lovely time in Wellington going to some great cafes, I understand, and other places, and, as a result, Wellington was locked down and it went into level 2. So the Government had fair warning, but it wasn’t until the next month—late July—that the Government started planning, and this goes to this COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill, which is a misnomer, because the COVID-19 response was completely lacking in respect of Delta from this Government.

That’s why they rushed through a change to delay the local body elections, despite them being postal voting, and then had to get rid of it yesterday. Well, it’s not in the bill that we’re voting on this afternoon. It just shows the haphazard nature that the Government has taken and the lack of planning that the Government has had in respect of this bill, in respect of planning for Delta, and in respect of managing Delta. They’re just making it up as they go along. It’s not good enough, and it was illustrative in the Supplementary Order Paper, which was as big as the bill. I looked through what we’re looking at this afternoon to vote on, and it’s filled with zigzags—crossed out. It’s just a huge amount that’s been crossed out.

So the Government rushed in a change on 28 September, then they’ve gone and rushed this through under urgency, and then rushed it through again yesterday evening and today in committee stage and haven’t answered a number of significant, important questions. We are now voting on a bill that is substantially different from what was initially proposed, and there hasn’t been a good reason given for why that is.

This is emblematic of other things that the Government is doing, like with the three waters. I’m sure members opposite have had a number of emails coming into their inboxes from unhappy constituents who are asking “What on earth is the Government doing?” It’s just rushing stuff through without consulting with its communities properly. The Government needs to take a step back and actually think about listening to its electorate.

There’s another matter in this bill, the Criminal Procedure Act. I asked Minister Kris Faafoi about the jury backlogs that are building in the Waikato and Auckland districts, and he couldn’t give me those numbers. I mean, that’s a pretty important thing. I asked one of my colleagues and friends in Auckland, and he said, “Well, look, the trials are being put out to 2023 now, yet none of them can go ahead under level 3, so who knows how long that’s going to take?” I would suggest that the Minister probably needs to get that information, and maybe we’ll have some better law coming before the House than this bill that we have before us this afternoon.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call Greg O’Connor, is this part of a split call?

Dr Duncan Webb: No.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK. Greg O’Connor—10 minutes.

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you, Mr Speaker. One thing I think everyone in this House, and probably everyone in New Zealand, will agree is that this COVID-19 pandemic will change the way the world and New Zealand works. I think it’ll be something that historians in the future will look back on in the same way we look on the plague in Europe, perhaps the wars—events that had a considerable impact on the way the world works. When students in New Zealand in perhaps 50 or 100 years’ time are looking for somewhere as evidence—almost a time capsule of this time—they will look at a bill, this bill, because right in the middle of this pandemic, it really looks at all those factors that influence lives of ordinary New Zealanders. What this piece of legislation does is it ensures that life can go on and life will go on better for the provisions that go through, even if it’s something as small as being able to do mail raffles, or electronic raffles, so that our charities can keep going.

Also, historically, I think there will be those who have businesses that will survive because they will be enabled through rent relief to continue to exist. I think Mr Bayly probably gave us the best example of why this is good legislation, particularly that which relates to rents, because he talked about the hairdresser who, because she was able to negotiate a 50 percent reduction in her rent, will survive. Now, Mr Bayly was at the select committee where we heard from a gentleman who runs an Airbnb in Auckland. Not only did his landlord not discuss or reduce his rent but they actually increased it. Not only is that gentleman looking at losing his business; he’s also looking at losing his home because he has personal guarantees. That’s the personal face of this.

So, look at this legislation. See it as an enabler to enable large numbers in New Zealand to continue to exist at a time during a pandemic that history will show will vastly and significantly change the way in which New Zealanders and many around the world live their lives. For that reason, I commend this to the House.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): I stand in opposition to the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill.

Now, in this Parliament we often have debates on bills where the matters at stake are practical. They are about mechanisms and details were our work is almost workmanlike in the sense that we are making small corrections to improve the way that things happen. It was that expectation that National brought to this bill at first reading, where we believed that it would contain a series of measures that would practically address some of the issues that arise during the heightened public health response in a pandemic.

So we took to that role in good faith, but what we found in this bill was not a small, mechanical issue. It’s not just a small, practical matter that we have an issue of disagreement on. It is a fundamental breach of the very principle of contract law and the way in which the State enters a private contract, and it is for that reason—that matter of very important principle—that National must oppose this legislation.

Let me tell you what it actually does. What it does is it sets an implied clause in commercial leases retrospectively. So for commercial leases that exist between a landlord and their tenant in a private contract which the landlord and the tenant, the two parties in the contract, have agreed to, have studied, and have signed up to, this bill allows the hand of the State to reach into that contract retrospectively and alter the terms of that contract. Now, we on this side of the House find this a very serious matter because, actually, commerce in this country and commerce throughout the world operates on the basis that people can settle on private contracts between parties, that they can do so within the legislative framework, and that they can conduct business accordingly.

It is a very serious step for the Government to decide that it will retrospectively go back in time and enter the hand of the State to alter the terms of a contract agreed between two parties. We on this side of the House take issue with that, not only in this specific instance—to which I will come—but we take issue with it because of the precedent it sets and the chilling effect we think it has on business, on endeavour, and on enterprise, and the chilling effect it has in terms of people’s certainty under contract law when the Government shows a willingness to retrospectively go and alter the terms of contract. We stand proudly in defence of the sanctity of private contract.

So what does it actually do? The hand of the State enters to set this implied clause in commercial leases to require a rent adjustment where a tenant can’t gain access to their premises to do business. It then requires that where this is the case, a rent adjustment is required for a “fair proportion of the rent”. Of course, the bill creates a whole new box of uncertainty because “fair proportion of the rent” is not defined, and as anyone will appreciate, what that is is as long as a piece of string. It depends utterly on the circumstances of the parties who are affected. So there is no end to dispute promised by this bill, but simply the opening of doors into more dispute, and the bill specifically provides that any dispute must then be referred for arbitration, unless parties can agree to mediation or contract. It makes a grand assumption that the State is better placed to decide how the parties to a contract resolve their difficulties than those parties are themselves, and we take issue with that.

Given the matters of principle at stake, it was very fair for the House to have asked—and this did occur during the select committee process and it did occur during the readings of this bill—well, what’s been the analysis of why this change should be required and why is this the option that the Government has landed on. Various speakers have raised this Act, and it is well-known in the public realm that the Government did consider a change of this sort last year during lockdown. It considered it, it looked at it, and there was a very strong response at that time by another governing party and by members of the New Zealand public, who warned the Government that taking such a step would be chilling and wrong.

So now we ask ourselves what has changed this year. Has there been new analysis brought to bear? Has there been a more detailed cost-benefit assessment? Has there been a better understanding of the regulatory nuance of this? Has there been new information brought to bear upon this decision? I regret to inform this House that that is absolutely not the case. This decision has been made in a vacuum in which the Minister has, essentially, put his finger in the air and said, “I think it feels like a good idea.’, and I give you proof of that.

The first thing is this: there has been no regulatory impact analysis of this provision in the bill, and it is an absolutely standard procedure that where a matter like this happens in a bill, we give the good officials of our Government the opportunity to analyse the regulatory impact it will have. We had none on the Table for this change, and I would venture that if we were to have such analysis on the Table, it would say, “Minister, Minister, Minister, think not just of the impacts this will have for those in current lease arrangements, but think of the impact this will have across broader society in terms of people’s willingness to enter these contracts in the future and the terms on which they do them.”

But the second thing we know is that there has been no cost-benefit analysis of this change. Well, why is that? The Ministry of Justice have been very candid about why that analysis has not occurred, and they have said that it couldn’t actually occur because the size and the scale of the problem this change seeks to remedy is not known. No one actually knows the size and the scale of the problem that the Minister has decided is so significant that he is prepared to enter the hand of the State into a private contract retrospectively, but the Ministry of Justice can’t even assess the size nor the scale of the problem. It is based on media reports, they say.

The third piece of information we have about the context in which this decision has been made is that we’ve had a very small mention of the fact that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade had been asked for their input in order to consider New Zealand’s international obligations as they relate to this change. I do ask that members of the House, and particularly those of the governing party, reflect upon that—that we are in this House debating a change to our law that is so significant in terms of the precedent it sets and in terms of the message it sends that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has had to be asked how it affects our international obligations.

I put it to you that the reason they have been asked, in my opinion, is because it is well understood that when we trade with other countries and when we do business with other countries, they look to us to see whether we have good rule of law, they look to us to see whether we uphold private contract, and they look to us to see whether the State appropriately separates itself out from commercial endeavours. Would it be any wonder if someone wanting to do business with New Zealand in the future would look twice now if they knew of this provision, because what it shows is a willingness by this Government to insert itself into the private contractual affairs of independent businesses, and that is very concerning indeed. It shows a willingness to do things that are undermining a very significant principle, which we take significant issue with.

Yes, there are absolutely landlords and tenants in very difficult situations in New Zealand right now, and that is why National has put forward a constructive policy which would allow them to get rent relief without undermining the sanctity of private contract. We oppose this bill.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I rise to take a brief call on this bill, which is designed to respond to the emergency circumstances in which we now live.

There are two sorts of people in an emergency, and it kind of sorts the two out into two piles. There’s the ones who catastrophise, run in circles, can’t come up with a coherent plan, and generally blame everyone else while demanding certainty in inherently uncertain circumstances, and then there are those who look at the situation and make the pragmatic decisions necessary—the ordinary, boring, pragmatic decisions—that mean society can keep functioning in difficult times. It’s pretty clear that the people on this side of the House are the latter sort of people.

We are making sensible decisions here that will enable ordinary Kiwis to continue with their lives. We are making ordinary decisions to enable commercial tenants to continue to operate and have short-term, emergency measures to enable them to deal with the very few landlords who are unreasonable. We are enabling residential tenants to deal with the very few of their landlords who might want to terminate tenancies in the middle of lockdown in level 4. We are enabling courts to continue to operate. We are enabling the police force to continue to operate fines and simple, simple, straightforward ordinary things that may not be glamorous. It may not enable one to shout loudly and claim “Disaster!” and that the sky is falling, but, by my God, it does enable New Zealand to keep working in an emergency pandemic situation, and I firmly commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for was called for on the question, That the COVID-19 Response (Management Measures) Legislation Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 75

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed from 27 October.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the second reading of this bill, I talked about Facebook and the internal research that they produce, which I want to remind us of again. It’s said that it’s easier to inspire people to anger than to other emotions and our social media platforms understand this and know that using anger, using rage, using offensive material is a way to get clicks and engage our communities. That’s why this piece of legislation is really, really important—and it’s amending legislation from 1993. Now, back in 1993, I’m sure few of us here had internet in our homes, let alone the internet in our pockets, where publishing videos or film was a far harder process than just clicking the live button on your phone. So that’s hence why we need this legislation and we need it quickly. The tragic events of March 15 and what was able to be done and achieved there is why we have to talk about this and pass this legislation today.

I want to thank the Hon Jan Tinetti for making sure this comes into law; also, we’re remembering the Hon Tracey Martin in terms of bringing this to the House originally. I have nothing more to say, really, other than to actually read out the title, which I haven’t done yet because it takes a little while. So I want to commend this to the House: the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It took me two hours to get a call from you this morning—two minutes this afternoon! Ha, ha! This bill—

Greg O’Connor: It’ll take you two days next time.

IAN McKELVIE: Ha, ha! Well, there shouldn’t be interjections from the opposite side of the House, Madam Speaker, because this morning I was walking across the pedestrian crossing in the half dark, and, in the mirage of the half dark, I saw what I thought was an offensive item for a start, but it wasn’t at all. It was Greg O’Connor. Ha, ha! But to be quite serious—

Greg O’Connor: I thought you were having a heart attack.

IAN McKELVIE: Ha, ha! Close to it—close to it. I’ve been wearing this mask all day. Back to the bill, Madam Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, good.

IAN McKELVIE: —and I have to take a call on the third reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, which fortunately will morph into, I think, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act in due course. But this bill, we opposed at first reading and we oppose it for a number of reasons: one, that there were some quite significant concerns, and, actually, we weren’t the only party in the House to oppose it, about the way it was put together and, I guess, the security of people’s information and how exactly we would go about securing people’s integrity or the ability of them to preserve their integrity and, at the same time, being able to access and stop instantly, a little bit like the film censor, things that we didn’t like.

It wasn’t until the Minister—and I wasn’t part of the select committee on this—clarified in the committee stage exactly what this bill is aiming to stop in the form of objectionable material that it became very clear that this bill—and there will be more bills to follow this because this is a very challenging area for us. And I think Glen Bennett said a minute ago that what was around in 1993 when this bill was first passed, when the forerunner of this bill was first passed, we didn’t even have a cellphone in our pocket. We probably didn’t even have a cellphone, actually. So life’s just changed so dramatically in the time since that was introduced, and it’s continued to change and it’s changing so rapidly that this Parliament is going to have to keep a very close watch in the future on what goes on with the use of technology, the publication of offensive material, and the way it’s used either to attract attention, good or bad. I think it’s a very serious issue that in the future, as I said, we’re going to have to look at much more seriously.

So the bill, effectively, gives what, I guess, might have been called the censor the ability to cancel this sort of publication of offensive material instantly and make a pretty reasonable judgment on what that is. And I think that having gone through the select committee stage and through the committee stage, we’ve got to a point with this bill where I think it preserves the integrity of the original idea, and it also preserves people’s ability to keep their privacy and maintain some form of personal security, I suppose. So that was the very challenging part of the bill, to ensure that we don’t incriminate people that shouldn’t be incriminated for whatever offence we perceive they might have committed.

I think the worry of this is that objectionable material and the definition of it changes from time to time. Certainly, in my lifetime, if you think about what we might have termed objectionable material 50 years ago, we couldn’t imagine what might become objectionable material now and most of the stuff that’s used as objectionable material now. In fact, the forerunner of this bill, you wouldn’t have even imagined it 50 years ago, so it’s very difficult to imagine what might come in the future.

So our position on this bill changed a lot from the first reading through the committee stage and now to the third reading, and Melissa Lee would have to take a lot of the credit for that. She worked very hard on this bill from a National Party perspective, as did the select committee, and, in fact, the Minister also instigated some changes to the bill, which I think enabled the bulk of the Parliament to support it. One of the things about supporting or not supporting stuff in this place is that it’s very easy to not support things for a pedantic reason. Usually that pedantic reason doesn’t stand up in the long term. Sometimes it does, of course. So the very difficult part of that judgment is to actually judge what a good reason to oppose a bill is and what’s not, and we, certainly in the National Party, in the end couldn’t find a good reason to oppose this bill. I’m sure it will do what it set out to do. It’ll enable the removal of objectionable material by the chief censor where it’s necessary, and it will also, I think, preserve people’s integrity as it goes along.

So, I think, having said that, I’m happy to commend the bill to the House, and I’m sure that when it gets to be instigated, it will actually do more good than harm in our community. As I said before, these topics are very difficult to deal with and they’re going to continue to be difficult to deal with and they will be challenging for this House. They will be challenging for Ministers going forward, and I think that that it’s just how it’s going to be. So I commend the bill to the House.

JO LUXTON (Labour—Rangitata): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I consider it a real privilege to be standing here and taking a call in the third reading of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. I do so as parent of a then 15-year-old young boy who happened to see the horrific footage that went around the internet after the terrible events of March 15 a couple of years ago.

I’d really like to acknowledge the select committee that worked on this piece of legislation, and also acknowledge Minister Tinetti who has shepherded this bill through the House, and, as she did earlier, I think it’s important to also acknowledge the Hon Tracey Martin, who worked on this bill and brought this bill about.

I think what we’ve seen here has been a really good collaboration between parties around the House, and the Minister has been extremely good at interacting with the select committee and hearing concerns of all those parties involved, and she has worked very collaboratively with them all. I have no hesitation in commending this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. I was hoping that the bill had gotten its short name by now. I think during the committee of the whole House, the Minister said it was going to end up being called the “classifications bill”. But, yeah, the Greens will be supporting the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill—it’s Thursday afternoon; I may as well read it all out—and I think we’ve landed in a good place with this bill. For us, the main reason why we were not supportive in the first reading was those concerns around the internet filter—but just sort of acknowledging that and also congratulating the Minister and the select committee for dragging this legislation out from 1993 and making it workable in 2021.

This legislation when it was originally put together was during the time of VHS video cassettes, I guess, and then these new things came along, which were called DVDs, and when I talk to my children about those things, they find it really, really hard to believe. They always kind of sort of think that videos have always shown up on our phones and on computers, and so on and so forth, because they’re digital natives and that is the world that they are living in. But we still have objectionable content—and I did appreciate the speeches made in the first reading as well and also the discussions during the committee of the whole House, because I wasn’t on the select committee. But just to hear that it was about trying to empower the censor to use the tools that are available in terms of the horrific events that happened with the live streaming of the killing of our Muslim whānau down in Christchurch and being able to give them those tools to actually act efficiently and quickly—and in that sort of case we support the censor to be able to do that.

The objectives are to ensure that the Government and internet service providers and online content hosts can swiftly and consistently take action against objectionable material—and that’s the role of the chief censor. Just to acknowledge that the bar for determining objectionable content is already really, really high and it is a job of the chief censor to apply the test, and in that legal test the chief censor already takes into account freedom of expression and so that once a publication or, in this case, a potentially live streamed video is considered objectionable, it will give them the power to actually take it down and that’s a good thing.

There were some discussions around some “safe harbour” clauses as well, and I understand that the select committee came to a good place with those as well—for me, acknowledging the other speeches around the House, that when we can sort of see the greater good in the work that we do around the Parliament, we can arrive at some near consensus positions, if not strong majority positions, on these really, really important issues.

I was just reflecting on the discussions we had during the committee of the whole House, because even though the internet filter has now been removed—because how could that be set up anyway to actually do the job that we actually want it to do and then, of course, looking at how those rights could be balanced properly and appropriately. For me, it actually opened up a whole space, and that’s something I think—when the original intent was around what the internet filter could do or should be doing, which was about, of course, minimising harm, we’ve moved into a particular place where algorithms are actually running our lives now in really insidious ways from people that topple down rabbit holes because of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and the fact that different social media, in particular at Facebook—there was a whistleblower just recently who, with internal papers, showed that actually keeping us on those social media platforms and making us continually engage in negative behaviour often, that’s the motive for them because that’s how they get their money as well.

So we have moved this Act from 1993 and made it usable and workable in terms of the very real potential harm that is out there as well. I just acknowledge what the speaker before me talked about when her son had actually seen that live stream as well, and I know with all the parents around the House that is something I worry about and I am sure that we all worry about—that we will also need to, I think, eventually step into that space and sort of really take a look about what the algorithm is because that is something that I feel, in terms of the discussions that we’ve had around the House about this particular bill, will need more attention.

So for me, it’s a reminder that freedom of speech does not mean freedom of reach. I think that there is no right to algorithmic amplification: with the algorithm there’s thousands and thousands of bits of content on there but about a hundred of them will only show up on your newsfeed as well. Who determines what that is? Who determines the prioritisation? You can find whatever you want to on the internet but who prioritises the way that we access our media? Of course, those of us around the House in many ways have to dance to the tunes of their algorithm, so do the journalists as well, and so those engagements kind of lock us into particular behaviours as well. Some of those behaviours, I think, kind of keep us in really circular arguments here in Parliament as well and by keeping us within those circular arguments that actually distracts from the real mahi that we need to actually be doing as well.

So those are some of my reflections. I commend the Minister and the select committee for dragging this legislation into the 21st century, but by dragging it into the 21st century, opening up the consideration that there are a whole lot of other issues that we need to be focusing on and really investigating and really interrogating because the intention of the amendment, of course, is to minimise harm—minimise harm particularly to our children but also to vulnerable communities and allowing social media giants and techno-megalomaniacs to profit on negative engagement online is something that we should be really, really mindful of as this bill passages through the House. On that, we support this bill.

NICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m not going to start off by saying the full name of this bill, because I did that already in the second reading, so I’ve done my bit there. But I would like to begin my speech first of all by acknowledging the victims of the 15 March 2019 mosque terror attack, and also those people that were affected by the live streaming of that event. I’d also like to acknowledge the work of the select committee and the way that they interacted with the other parties, especially in getting rid of the filter from this Act, because that was one of the things that the ACT Party were very conscious of. Again, I’d just like to appreciate the work of the National Party and Melissa Lee in getting that through. But, nevertheless, the ACT Party still opposes this bill, and the reason why is because it comes down to our freedoms. It’s not just about freedom to reach; it’s also about freedom to speak. It’s about freedom of thought and it’s about freedom to be able to share some of the things that happen.

Now, while I realise that some of this is objectionable, I think that when we start using or utilising bits of legislation to, in a way, filter what we do see anyway, then it becomes an issue, and we start to remove some of those freedoms from our democratic society. ACT think that this is important. We are worried about that, and that’s part of the reason why we oppose this bill. My good friend—my good relative next to me—Mr Ian McKelvie said that the National Party found no reason to oppose this, but we have found a few.

I’d like to start off by talking about restrictions that we’ve already seen in publication, and actually specifically go back to the 15 March terror attack. The terrorist at that stage had released a manifesto. I actually read that manifesto before it became a censored item. And what was revealing for those within the firearms community is how the terrorist had actually detailed what he expected to happen as a result of his terror attack. And, as it is, everything that he expected to happen in regard to firearm owners actually played out. I think it’s important that people should have been given the opportunity to actually see that and be able to react to that as well, because that’s one tick for him. That was one win for him, and he did not deserve any wins at all. But the rest of New Zealand are left to say, “Well, actually, we don’t know what he wanted because we’re not allowed to read it.”

So I think it’s really important that people are given the freedom to choose. But, again, we have to balance this on being mindful about what is objectionable. And so in that respect, I understand exactly what the Government and the Opposition party are trying to do. That balance, of course, is quite fine. But when we start eroding our freedoms in that way, then I think it’s a slippery slope.

In the committee of the whole House stage, I raised questions regarding new section 132C(1)(b), and that was about the sharing of live streaming events. So while the ACT Party can say if there’s an objectionable live streaming taking place, we understand the ability to charge and possibly convict a person who is live streaming, but subparagraph (b) there actually talks about the crime of live streaming and then sharing that live stream. And when I looked up what is “objectionable”, for the purposes of this particular Act, it is a publication that if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good, then we understand exactly what “objectionable” is.

But the scenario that I have for you is: think of a situation where perhaps, say, there was an illegal car rally that was taking place, and somebody was live streaming it and people were sharing off that live stream. And during that car rally, which ended up being criminal because it occurred during lockdown, a poor person gets crushed between two cars, and the police end up getting their car bottled. Now, at that stage the person sharing, perhaps the person live streaming, may not actually realise that the event that they are sharing or live streaming has become an objectionable event. Now, the law itself and the Minister had expressed and read out to me that the person is committing an offence if they are “knowing or have reasonable cause to believe that the content is objectionable;”—well, they may not know that at the time—but, more importantly, the Minister said “and”, as opposed to section 132C(1)(b)(ii) “with the intent of promoting or encouraging criminal acts or acts of terrorism.” So, when we have an objectionable event, such as a crime taking place, the intent of promoting or encouraging criminal acts could be easily obtained in the scenario that I just gave you, because if we’re doing loss of traction burnouts or something like that, that is a criminal event, and therefore it becomes a criminal act. So it actually meets the criteria. And the select committee themselves have made the point that the intent is really hard to ascertain and describe. So I think that there’s a flaw there, and I think that it actually opens up an area for innocent people to be prosecuted. So we do have these major concerns about what this means.

So, to wind this up, the ACT Party think it’s really important that we continue to allow people their freedom of speech, their freedom of thought, their freedom to share, and that it should not be compromised by the thought police. There is concern about whether or not people will know something is objectionable—whether they may know it when they see it. We just don’t think that this sort of thing is clear enough for the citizens of New Zealand to be able to successfully abide by. We think there needed to be a better balance, and we also believe that peoples’ rights to a democratic way of life is essential, so the ACT Party will be opposing this bill.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise, not to be outdone by my Green Party colleague, to speak in favour of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill—did it!

Levity aside, I can’t describe the horror that I felt during the dreadful unfolding of the Christchurch terror attacks on March 15th, and to imagine that at the time people were watching that event unfolding in front of them on their devices is almost beyond comprehension. And it’s because of that that we stand here today.

I’d like to acknowledge that it wasn’t simply bystanders, those of us that were in lockdown, not knowing what was happening, with sirens all around. Knowing that something terrible was occurring but not knowing what it was was actually better than knowing what it was, because those images were coming through to our smartphones.

I don’t know whether we’re able to ever comprehend what it must have been like for Sara Qasem, who actually saw that footage of her father being brutally murdered. It’s understandable that this live streaming event wasn’t captured by the legislation in place at the time. It’s understandable because technology moves so quickly; technology overtook legislation. But it obviously became clear that we needed to do something, and we needed to do something swiftly and effectively in order for that material to be taken down quickly, and for it to be permanently removed. I don’t buy the slippery slope argument, I’m afraid; I think that we can be really clear at some points when objectionable material is present. I don’t think there’s an argument. I think we’re not stupid, and I don’t think that people who are prosecuting these offences are stupid either.

This legislation will allow the chief censor to make interim classification assessments, and also for inspectors to issue take-down notices. I’d like to just actually acknowledge my colleague across the way here, Barbara Kuriger, who thanked the censors for their work. It must be appallingly difficult and trying and distressing work at times. But it’s them that sometimes have to make these decisions, and they have to watch this content and they have to be exposed, day after day, time after time, to the endless tide of offensive and objectionable material that this legislation is being put in place to deal with.

And so it’s not with pleasure but great contentment that this bill will achieve something that we urgently need to achieve that I commend it to the House. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Joseph Mooney—five-minute call.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise to speak on behalf of the National Party on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. It’s quite a mouthful but it’s quite simple in what it’s trying to achieve. The events of 15 March 2019 shocked the country, and, in particular, one of the things that folks wanted to try and do something about was to make sure no one could inadvertently watch horrific content like that online. All of us will have heard stories of young people being inadvertently exposed to watching those horrific events unfold. So this bill endeavours to do something about that.

National did not support the first reading of this bill, as it overreached. It had an internet filter in it which all parties, apart from Labour, were very concerned about, but we’re pleased to see that that has now been taken out of this bill, and, as a consequence, National, although we still have concerns that it doesn’t necessarily quite strike the right balance, feels that it does more good than harm, as my colleague Ian McKelvie said. As a result we are in support of it.

The main ways in which this bill changes things is it will criminalise the act of knowingly live streaming objectionable content. It allows the chief censor to make interim classification amendments. That will enable the chief censor to make an interim classification in an urgent situation for content that is likely to be objectionable, and it’s obvious where that concept has been drawn from in respect of those fast-moving events back on 15 March 2019. It allows take-down notices to be issued requiring the removal of objectionable online content. So it allows authorised inspectors to be able to issue take-down notices for online content hosts to remove objectionable material on their sites, and it comes with a potential civil pecuniary penalty of up to $200,000 if the online content host does not comply with an issued take-down notice.

The final key provision is that it clarifies that “safe harbour” provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 will not apply to objectionable online content. So that will close a loophole by ensuring that “safe harbour” provisions in the Harmful Digital Communications Act will not apply to objectionable material online. We are pleased that the internet filter that we spoke about before has been removed. That was a massive deal for the National Party and something that we could never have supported. It was also the key concern of many objectors to the bill, including human rights groups and tech experts. There is a fundamental issue that this bill deals with, and I acknowledge my colleague Ms McKee’s points about free speech. This is a fundamental issue that we’re dealing with at the moment with technology running far ahead of policy makers in terms of designing new platforms, and policy makers are trying to figure out how to get the balance right in terms of managing the different interests in the community.

So we have free speech. We have the tech companies who are focused on user engagement, but user engagement often involves echo chambers and it often involves the promotion or the support of quite negative content. People are entitled to be negative if they wish, but the question is where that line is drawn, and we feel that this bill has largely got that right in this respect, although there will be ongoing issues that we’re going to have to deal with. There has a been a storm developing around the globe over the Facebook papers recently, and the papers have indicated that the social media giant has been privately and meticulously tracking real-world harms exacerbated by its platforms and ignoring warnings from its employees about the risk of its own decisions, and allegations that it’s exposing vulnerable communities around the world to a cocktail of dangerous content.

This is a huge challenge that we need to try and balance, and we have so many of our young people and middle-aged and elderly people on sites including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter, and I can certainly say there’s a lot of negative people who like to attack people from either side of the divide in politics.

In summation, National does support this bill.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): It is a real privilege to be able to stand and speak to this really important bill, particularly for the people of my electorate, Taieri, and people in Dunedin who were directly impacted by the events of March 15 2019. There were people in my electorate who found out during the court case that the killer in that attack had been watching their children actually go to the mosque school over the road. There were people who knew that other people around New Zealand and, in fact, around the world, had viewed the events in Christchurch on the internet. I have to say that when we are talking about freedom of speech, any reasonable person would say that that is a really objectionable thing to have witnessed either in real life or on the media platforms. So terrorists live streaming those actions is one such heinous action that we don’t want to see, and there are others like that that are available to people who like to peddle evil, who have bad intentions, now that the technology is available to them.

So this is a good day for my community, for particularly the former refugees in my community who have been impacted in a way where they want to know they can go out into the community and feel safe. So this legislation doesn’t just have the impact of stopping the broadcast; it actually has the further impact of allowing people from groups who have felt insecure to have greater security as they go about their business as residents and citizens of our beautiful country.

What this bill has also done is raise a global debate, and a long overdue one, as my colleague over on the other side of the House—Joseph Mooney—has raised really eloquently, about where the balance of freedoms lie now that the technologies have changed. It is one thing to say that we need freedom of speech, but what the democratisation of social media has allowed is for the impact of harm to be much greater than it was. So I think it is really important that this bill is now giving Internal Affairs the regulatory tools to combat the spread of material that promotes violent extremism. And, of course, live streaming wasn’t even considered when the current legislation was enacted.

Just an acknowledgment to the Minister for having the foresight to send the filtering provision to the select committee to enable further debate. I think that was a really good thing to do; to be able to test, if you like, the waters of where some of the thinking is overwhelming, where the submissions came back to say that the filtering provisions shouldn’t be there. However, that is not to rule out some kind of voluntary mechanism, and I hope that the debate and the thinking around that continues.

So it is a good day, as I say, for the people of Taieri, for Dunedin. We will all feel a lot more secure knowing that our communities and our children will not be exposed to the terrible, terrible things that members of our community endured in New Zealand, both at the time of the terror attack but also with the live streaming that occurred and made the impacts of that event even more devastating around New Zealand and around the world.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise with great satisfaction to take a call on the final reading of the—not to be outdone by any of my colleagues—Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, a title worthy of the great Margaret Mahy, that great Poet Laureate of Christchurch. The reference is apt: not only was she the great wordsmith of Christchurch but also she was a writer, and the point of this bill is to update the Act to take into account more than writing.

I well remember the moment I heard that the appalling news of the Christchurch massacre; I remember thinking that it must be some domestic murder gone wrong because I could not—no domestic murder goes right, of course—but I remember thinking it must be domestic-related because I could not take into account to my head that it could be a terrorist incident in New Zealand. How far we have all had to come since that day. But what I remember, driving home after school with my children in the car, was hearing that it was being live streamed, that the streaming was available freely, and wondering whether my teenagers were going to get hold of it or had already got hold of it. Luckily, they had not. But the fact remains that, with the law as it was at that stage, we had no ability to stop the live streaming of that atrocious event. This bill will give us the power to fill that hole in our powers, to control the spread of hate and the spread of horror.

I remember when I was entering a new job, and I’m not a lawyer any more, but at the time, I was a prosecutor, and I remember Mike Smith, the Whangārei Crown prosecutor, saying to me, “I’m going to ask you to do the porn cases, but my very strong suggestion is you never, ever, ever look at the images of child pornography because you will never, ever get them out of your head.” Luckily, I never had to take a porn case, but the trauma that we saw in the community after the Christchurch massacre as a result of people inadvertently or naively exposed to that appalling site is well known. So, again, it is an excellent move that we are making today to withdraw that licence from terrorists and those who support and facilitate terrorism.

For those who are concerned that this bill might go too far, for those who are concerned that it takes too much liberty, I would just point out the fact that, actually, all it does is change the range of mediums that we are able to control; it does not change the message. It does not change the nature of the definition of “objectionable”. And on that note, soberly and with great satisfaction, I commend this bill to the House.

NICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you, Madam Speaker. With the passage of this bill, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill, we will be dragging an analogue law into the digital age. Many people have canvassed today the genesis of this bill and I think we Cantabrians, particularly those of us living in Christchurch at the time, are vastly in support of the intention of the bill. The 15th of March 2019 was a day that I think changed our innocent little city forever, and for the murderous actions of the terrorist to be live streamed on Facebook took a common murder beyond the realm of comprehension for most people, I think, and it was indeed rightly termed a terrorist atrocity.

This bill was viewed as a necessity borne out of that horrific day, and I see the ongoing ramifications in my own electorate, where a number of widows of people who were killed that day have actually moved. So I do see the ongoing impact of that. While I myself didn’t see the live streaming of the attack, I did actually see the live streaming of the police officers that took the terrorist down, and we did discuss this at length in the select committee as to the range, I suppose, of what might be deemed as objectionable material. There was murder on one stream and there was the shooting and the live stream take down of a terrorist in another stream. So that was discussed at length and, as the Minister made very clear in her second and third readings, “objectionable material” is very, very clearly defined in the law and I think that that is a very good thing.

So, with the passage of this bill, we are moving the law into a rapidly evolving area. It addresses a legislative and regulatory gap to the current online content regulations, as has been discussed by many. It does make the live streaming of objectionable content a specific criminal offence. We’ve talked a lot about terrorist attacks, but it does also include the live streaming of other objectionable materials like child sex exploitation instances. It will give the chief censor an ability to make very swift interim time-limited classification assessments that will last up to 20 days. Where we do have reservations as a party, however, is that it does put an extraordinary amount of power into the hands of the Classification Office. And while we, obviously, maintain that these are exemplary people doing an exemplary job, it does put a vast amount of responsibility on to them, because this law, effectively, lets the buck stop with them.

It will also authorise an Inspector of Publications, which is, effectively, the police, to issue take-down notices, and they’re aligned with the current powers of seizure of objectionable materials and publications. But we are concerned again with the very nature of this in how effective it may be, given we’re talking about live streaming, given we’re operating in an environment in a digital world where the use of VPNs—or virtual private networks—are widespread, mirror websites are widespread, and the very nature of trying to enforce a local digital-based law on to a global community.

It will also impose a penalty regime for convictions of up to 14 years’ imprisonment or $200,000 fines, and it will create future mechanisms for the Crown to potentially create web filters as and when the technology becomes available. I think it’s been widely canvassed today that we as a party opposed this at its first reading because of the internet filter provision. We did think it was too much of an overreach, and while we do, I think, live in an age where the cancel culture is rife, there is a very fine line to walk between reducing harm and protecting our freedoms of choice, our freedom of thought, and our freedom of speech. We did think that that web filtering tool was going to be extremely blunt and would have been a breach of many of those important democratic rights.

So I think the comments of my colleague in ACT Nicole McKee were very pertinent, very valid. My concern, as I’ve outlined, has not been so much with potential breaches of freedoms but actually the practical application of how this is going to work. It’s a well-intentioned bill, but it’s going to be really hard to enforce. The very nature of live streaming is that it is instant. And while the chief censor can issue an interim classification, while the police can issue a take-down notice, harm will be done by the very nature of the instantaneousness of a live stream. So Governments of the future are going to have to be very, very watchful of that.

The Government is granting—or we as a Parliament, I suppose, are granting the Government enormous powers here. The chief censor will have enormous powers. They must be treaded lightly. The ability for the issuing of take-down notices was an enormous concern for the submitters that came and spoke to us about this bill, and, obviously, we as a party at the time. But I do acknowledge the Minister for taking on those concerns and for removing the provision of a web filter, and I do acknowledge that she is prepared to look at how technologies will evolve in future. So we do then stand and commend this bill to the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): It’s a pleasure to take the last call on the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill. It was also a privilege to sit on the select committee that considered this bill, and I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Minister, but also acknowledging my select committee colleagues, in particular the previous chair and deputy chair Barbara Kuriger and Tangi Utikere, who are no longer with us on that committee, and also, our colleague from across the House Melissa Lee, who between us we did ask many questions of officials. This was complex and technical legislation, and Melissa, in particular, made a very robust and useful contribution, and I just want to acknowledge her here, because it would have been wonderful to have her here to speak today; I know she would have liked to. I want to particularly thank officials, because we asked many, many technical questions of them, and they were very, very useful as we considered the bill and made some changes along the way.

The purpose of the bill has been well-canvassed; I think we can all remember where we were on March 15 and the impact of not only those terrible events that occurred that day but the live streaming and the impact of the live streaming on those who saw that live stream, and the impact of that that continues.

I do just want to respond to some comments made by the ACT Party today, because there were some questions around this in the committee of the whole House, as well, and I just wanted to make a few comments around the use of the term “objectionable”, because that was something that submitters did raise some concern around. But I think it’s actually important that the context of that definition is put in place so that we can understand it some more. The meaning of “objectionable” states that, “A publication is objectionable if it describes, depicts, expresses, or otherwise deals with matters such as sex, horror, crime, cruelty, or violence in such a manner that the availability of the publication is like to be injurious to the public good.” When talking specifically about the sex component, the definition goes on to state that, “The publication is or contains one or more visual images of one or more children or young persons who are nude or partially nude.”

The point I want to make around “objectionable” is the threshold to meet that objectionable test is very, very high, and this definition is already, as others have pointed out, listed in statute. There’s no amendment to what objectionable means. There’s no addition to it. It’s already outlined in the law. It has a very, very high threshold, and as the Minister mentioned in her response last night, in section 132C(1)(b)(ii) of the—I could say the whole bill but I won’t—it requires an intent. It requires an intent of that party to know that what they are putting into the public domain is objectionable. So I do take some issue around the comments from the ACT Party that this is somehow impacting on democratic life. In my view, the objectionable incidents of March 15, they should be no part of our democratic life. So, on that note, I really want to just ensure that it’s made clear to the public that there’s no harm to us by having the use of the word “objectionable” in there.

In finishing, I want to acknowledge the victims of the March 15 mosque attack; remember those as we pass this law tonight. It is a historic night. Al salam alaikum. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification (Urgent Interim Classification of Publications and Prevention of Online Harm) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Ayes 110

New Zealand Labour 65; New Zealand National 33; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Noes 10

ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Before I adjourn the House, I just want to commend members of this House for what has been a wonderful moment in this House, a wonderful debate. I commend you all for your contributions. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 November.

The House adjourned at 4.58 p.m.