Tuesday, 9 November 2021

TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2021

TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2021

The Speaker took the Chair at 2 p.m.

Karakia/Prayers

Karakia/Prayers

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

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

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

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

SPEAKER: Petitions have been delivered to the Clerk for presentation.

CLERK:

Petition of Niki Gladding on behalf of Aotearoa Water Action requesting that the House implement a moratorium on applications to take or use water for water bottling or bulk export, pending an inquiry into the industry’s effects

petition of Vince Siemer requesting that the House pass legislation mandating the Supreme Court of New Zealand publish every judgment promptly

petition of Safdar Ahmed requesting that the House urge the Government to include migrants stuck offshore as a result of the pandemic in a one-off 2021 Resident Visa pathway

petition of Xichen Sun requesting that the House urge the Government to treat PhD student visas the same as work visas in applications for the 2021 one-off Resident Visa.

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

CLERK:

Annual reports for 2020-21 for Education Payroll Limited, Gambling Commission, Heritage New Zealand, Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, Ministry of Transport, New Zealand Police, New Zealand Post, NIWA, Scion, and Waka Kotahi

Strategic Intentions for 2021-25 for the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry of Transport

Ministers’ reports on non-departmental appropriations for the year ended 30 June 2021 for Vote Business, Science and Innovation, Energy and Resources portfolio, Vote Housing and Urban Development, and Vote Social Development

Heritage New Zealand Statement of Performance Expectations 2021-22

Ministry of Social Development Statement of Intent 2021-25

New Zealand Post Integrated Report 2021

Government responses to five ACC-related petitions

interim report of the Regulations Review Committee regarding a complaint about the exemption to Maritime Rule 53.4(2)(a)

petition of Angela Mason and the referral of Vadim Chausov’s petition on solidarity with the people of Belarus.

SPEAKER: Those papers are published under the authority of the House. Select committee reports have been delivered for presentation.

CLERK:

Reports of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee on the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill and the Incorporated Societies Bill

report of the Environment Committee on the Inquiry into the Natural and Built Environments Bill: Parliamentary Paper

report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the Maritime Powers Bill

report of the Governance and Administration Committee on the Inquiry into Supplementary Order Paper 59 on the Births, Deaths, Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill

reports of the Officers of Parliament Committee on the alterations to the 2021-22 appropriations of Vote Audit and the inquiry into the appointment of an auditor for the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General

reports of the Petitions Committee on the petitions of Brook van Velden, Daniel Roberts, Doreen Senn, and Lindsay Calvi-Freeman.

SPEAKER: The bills are set down for second reading. The inquiries and the alteration report are set down for consideration. The Clerk has been informed of the introduction of bills.

CLERK:

Māori Purposes Bill, introduction

Oversight of Oranga Tamariki System and Children and Young People’s Commission Bill, introduction.

CLERK: Those bills are set down for first reading.

Obituaries

Dame Catherine Tizard

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I move, That the House express its sympathy and condolences to the family of Dame Catherine Tizard, and pay tribute to the outstanding contribution she made to this country.

The Hon Dame Catherine Tizard, known to all as Dame Cath, died in Auckland on 31 October, at the age of 90. It was with great sadness that I heard of Dame Cath’s death. She was a wonderful role model of leadership and determination, combined with a down-to-earth approach and an irrepressible sense of humour.

In 1971, Dame Cath was working as a senior tutor in zoology at Auckland University, while raising four children. At a time when it was still far from common for women to combine a career with running a family, let alone enter political life as well, Dame Cath took her first step into public life by standing in the Auckland City Council election. She was duly elected and remained a city councillor for 12 years while continuing to work for the university. Many will also remember her as a regular panel member on the hugely popular TV show Beauty and the Beast, from 1976 to 1985.

Dame Cath was elected Mayor of Auckland in 1983, the first woman to hold that position. The following year, she received the first of her four damehoods. Dame Cath remained mayor until 1990, during which she led two challenging and significant projects for Auckland: the development of Aotea Centre and securing the hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 1990.

Dame Cath had only just been re-elected for her third term as Mayor of Auckland when she was offered the role of Governor-General. She was only the third woman in the Commonwealth to be appointed Governor-General, of course the first in New Zealand. It was particularly significant that she was in the role when New Zealand commemorated the centenary of women’s suffrage in 1993.

Dame Cath was a popular Governor-General and strived to make both the role of Governor-General and Government House more accessible to New Zealanders. She instituted the first open day, allowing public access to the house and grounds. She gently dismantled some of the pomp that surrounded her role, such as discouraging curtseying and bowing to the Governor-General. She carried out her formal and ceremonial duties with serious and considered attention, and her community duties with a sense of fun and a genuine wish to engage with a diverse range of New Zealanders.

For those of us privileged enough to have known Dame Cath, or to at least have had encounters with her, they were memorable. She was wise, witty, and generous. She was a role model when the world and women needed one. She’s one of the people that normalised women in leadership in Aotearoa and we owe her much for that.

The thoughts of the Government are with Dame Cath’s family. They sacrificed much on behalf of all of us and we thank them. It is usual, of course, in New Zealand for the service of a former Governor-General to be honoured with a State funeral. At Dame Cath’s request, she will have a private funeral, and we will publicly celebrate her life with a different event that will reflect her personal wishes and those of her family.

We, of course, will announce details of that at the appropriate time. Until then, I know this House’s thoughts are with Dame Cath’s family. Rest in peace.

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

Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I’d like to acknowledge both the contribution and the passing of Dame Cath Tizard. I had the pleasure of meeting Dame Cath many times, often at civic events or events supporting the arts, and she was often in the presence of her daughter, former member of Parliament Judith Tizard.

Dame Cath was a very loyal and firm Labour supporter. She came from a part of the Waikato known as Whataroa and she went to Matamata College, as did I, but, obviously, in different years. She and I would often discuss matters such as politics in Matamata. We were both young—well, obviously, not at the same time—girls who went to college and we were probably the only ones from Labour homes in our classes, so I think she always found that quite amusing that I ended up being, as she often called it, a Tory. It’s not a term I normally use, but I’ll give her that one, just once.

She was a very great friend of former Prime Minister Helen Clark. Helen Clark has been very fulsome in her praise of the mentorship and support that she got from Dame Cath when Helen was at university, and I think it’s a great indication of her true friendship to people that she remained a close friend for many years.

My sincere condolences and those of the New Zealand National Party go to Dame Cath’s family and friends. I was thinking just before that she was not only a trailblazer, as we like to say, both as Mayor of Auckland and as Governor-General, but she was also someone who liked to see other women achieve, no matter what their political stripes, and I think that that’s one of those great assets that she had—that she could talk with anybody about anything and she was always interested in other people. May she rest in peace.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Tēnā koutou ōku hoa kaimahi. I rise with honour today to speak on behalf of the Green Party to acknowledge the passing of an incredible woman: Dame Catherine Tizard. I also greet everyone. It is a privilege to stand here—my first time back in the House after a few months—to be able to talk to this important occasion of acknowledgment as well. He maimai aroha tēnei.

[This is our expression of affection.]

Dame Tizard devoted herself to public service, both at the community and national level. During her career she broke many glass ceilings, as my colleagues have pointed out, and was a shining light across the motu that our dreams dare not be limited to the status quo. With her campaign for Auckland mayor, Dame Tizard also demonstrated that with determination and patience, one can achieve their goals. While her first tilt at the Auckland City mayoralty in 1980 failed, three years later she successfully became the city’s first female mayor.

But today, along with the many countless achievements, successes, and attributes that we should be acknowledging, I recollected that she was also an honoured patron, and honoured to be the patron of the Glenn Inquiry into domestic violence and child abuse—that was The People’s Blueprint that was announced in 2014. I was the chief panellist on that inquiry, and we launched that here in Wellington in 2014. I had had the privilege of listening firsthand to accounts around the country, and I remember speaking with Dame Cath that night at the dinner, the day before we were due to announce the launch. She said to me that as she was reading through the report and understanding a lot more about the situation of violence in our country and how unacceptable that was to her that she could not always read through the accounts because it was, of course, upsetting to her what people still continue to have to face, but that it made her even more determined to want to lend her contribution in any small or big way to the work of ending family violence and sexual violence in our country. So I thought that was an important attribute to acknowledge her for on this day.

Nō reira, he mihi aroha ki a ia, ki a Dame Cath Tizard. He mihi aroha hoki ki tōna whānau whānui—tōku mihi aroha ki a koutou. Kia ora.

[Therefore, this is a loving tribute to her, to Dame Cath Tizard. It is also an expression of sympathy to her wider family—I send my loving greetings to you. Thank you.]

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would like to join with other leaders, on behalf of ACT, in paying tribute to Dame Cath Tizard and her great life, and in offering condolences to her family who must be feeling a terrible sense of loss.

Dame Cath Tizard became mayor of our largest city in 1983. That was the year that I was born, and yet even as a small child I was keenly aware of the influence of this giant in New Zealand politics and in public life. The name Dame Cath Tizard was one that was so often heard and you kind of knew, even as a kid, it was something important. The Aotea Centre, the 1990 Commonwealth Games being held in Auckland—these were all things that, even as somebody starting primary school, you knew were important. I think that is just one insight into the size of her influence over New Zealand public affairs.

She was also someone, as others have noted, who was part of a vanguard of women who were first to make it to the top of their professions in New Zealand. To be the first woman to be a mayor of New Zealand’s largest city and, as Governor-General, the first woman to be head of State of the whole country, she was right at the front of that vanguard.

She was also a woman of science, having studied and graduated in zoology; something that I suspect she found quite useful for her role in the chat show Beauty and the Beast. She went on to say that Beauty and the Beast had helped her get prepared for her career in politics; it may well be that her degree in zoology was equally useful for this vocation.

We leave her, as a country, all the better and stronger for having had her in our midst for all of the contributions that she made. On behalf of ACT, I’d like to pay tribute to her great life and to offer our condolence to her family. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Motion agreed to.

Oral Questions

Questions to Ministers

Question No. 1—Finance

1. BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana) to the Minister of Finance: What recent reports has he seen on the New Zealand economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The resilience of the New Zealand economy has been demonstrated by last week’s Statistics New Zealand job figures for the September 2021 quarter. The data showed the unemployment rate fell from 4 percent in June to a record-equalling low of 3.4 percent in the September quarter, last seen in December 2007. The number of unemployed fell by 18,000 to 98,000. The last time it was under 100,000 was in the September 2008 quarter. The unemployment rate is now 14 percent below where it was in the pre - COVID-19 December 2019 quarter. The data also shows that the economy continued to add jobs, with 54,000 more people in employment than in the June quarter. The number of people in employment is up by 115,000 since the September 2020 quarter, when unemployment peaked at 5.3 percent.

Barbara Edmonds: What else did the report say about the state of the labour market and its impact on the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Statistics New Zealand reports job growth was driven by full-time and permanent employment. On an annual basis, the construction industry remained a strong driver of employment, while quarterly growth in professions such as health, engineering, science, and transport were all strong. With the second half of the September 2021 quarter affected by the lockdown restrictions, actual hours worked dropped 6.6 percent over the quarter as industries such as accommodation and food services and retail trade were less able to operate. The ongoing impact of the pandemic is likely to see unemployment rates move around a bit, but I believe that the balanced approach taken by the Government has supported the strong employment results that we are seeing.

Barbara Edmonds: What reactions has he seen to the employment data as an indicator of the strength of the economy?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: Economists had expected the unemployment rate would fall in the September quarter, but the figure of 3.4 percent exceeded all expectations. The result is also well below the Budget 2021 update, which forecast unemployment to be at 5.3 percent in the September 2021 quarter. Westpac’s economists said, “The September quarter labour force surveys marked another stunningly strong data point for the New Zealand economy.” ANZ said the data reinforced that the labour market has been incredibly resilient in the face of higher alert levels, and Kiwibank’s economists said, “Not a single headline metric hit a bum note.” Employment surged, unemployment fell, underemployment dropped, participation rose, and the lion’s share of the gains came from female employees. They said the demand for labour was expected to remain strong. This is a good result and a testament to the hard work of businesses and workers right across New Zealand.

David Seymour: Has the Minister of Finance seen any reports that, in the last year, wage growth went up 2.4 percent, inflation went up 4.9 percent, and does he think that might be why more and more New Zealanders are concerned about the cost of living under this Government?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: New Zealanders have always been concerned about the cost of living and the rising prices around New Zealand. I would note the member’s new found support for lifts in the minimum wage, which I’ll note for next time.

SPEAKER: Supplementary question.

David Seymour: I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker, I was rising for question No. 2.

Question No. 2—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government support package we announced on Saturday, which will see the incomes of 346,000 families increase by an average of $20 a week. The family tax credit was scheduled to have an inflation increase on 1 April next year, and we’ve invested an additional $272 million over four years so that low and middle income families can get extra support, particularly at this time. Those with family incomes less than $40,000 will benefit the most, with an average increase of $26 per week. Reducing child poverty is a priority for this Government. It’s estimated a further 6,000 children will be lifted out of poverty as a result of these changes. That’s in addition to the up to 33,000 children who’ll be lifted out of poverty by the increase in benefit levels earlier this year. This is one way we can support families during this time.

David Seymour: What has been the impact of moving Waikato, with a vaccination rate of 72 percent, to alert level 3 step 2 since last Wednesday, and why does the Prime Minister think it was justified to delay moving Auckland to the same level until tomorrow, when Auckland was at 80 percent fully vaccinated a week ago?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Simply the scale and nature of the outbreaks that both are dealing with. In the Waikato, what we are clear on is that this is an outbreak with a clearly long tail on it, and, at the present point in time, the vast bulk of those cases have been linked cases but you can see the spread through some wider parts of the Waikato that continue to emerge. Contrast that with Auckland—that has been an outbreak that has been projected to grow, we’ve been very open about that, but increasing vaccination rates give us the confidence to, regardless of that growing outbreak, continue to ease restrictions, starting with the safest restrictions first, with the ultimate goal, as we have clearly articulated, being the point at which we reach 90 percent double vaccinated, which is when we can flip into a point where business has certainty at every single level and will be able to operate at every single level.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister stand by moving Auckland to alert level 3 step 2, and, if so, why does she believe it’s safe for hairdressers and hospitality to operate in the Northland DHB, where the full vaccination rate is 68 percent, but not the Waitematā, Auckland, and Counties Manukau DHBs, where the full vaccination rate is between 81 and 87 percent?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Simply because, on average, they don’t currently have an outbreak that is sitting, on average, at about 140 to 150 cases a day.

David Seymour: Why is it safer for people to go into a supermarket and buy food for a picnic or barbecue than it is to dine al fresco at a restaurant, and will the Prime Minister visit any Auckland restaurants to explain that to them tomorrow?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: All the way through the COVID pandemic, you’ll see that we have treated hospitality differently to retail, and that’s because globally you can see that those areas where you do tend to see outbreaks and spread are in those environments that are considered to be high risk, and, very unfortunately, that has been the hospitality sector. What we’ve tried to design with the COVID protection framework is, though, an environment where we’re using the tools we have, including public health measures but also the use of vaccines to give greater certainty to those businesses so that they are able to stay open more consistently, versus the environment we’ve had in the past where we have seen closures. New Zealand has not been alone in that. I understand that in parts of Canada, they’ve only just now returned to those businesses being able to fully operate after over a year. So we are not alone in the fact that those have been treated as high-risk environments.

David Seymour: Well, why is it safe for people to get shots of cosmetic Botox in Auckland but not a haircut, and will she visit any hairdressers in Auckland tomorrow and explain that one to them?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Obviously, at this stage, you’re right that hairdressers have not been operating, because they are what is defined as close personal services. So for any service where it’s actually impossible to physically distance, the member will obviously appreciate that that increases risk. Again, I would say the same thing, that Auckland has now reached 90 percent first doses. It’s our expectation, therefore, that it’s within their sights, three weeks from that point, to be at 90 percent double doses. We’ve already said that’s the point where we’ll move into the new COVID protection framework, which will enable those businesses to operate at every level.

David Seymour: Does the Prime Minister believe that being at orange in the new COVID-19 Protection Framework, or traffic light system, will offer greater benefits than being at alert level 2, and, if so, why wouldn’t she allow Wellington, Christchurch, Otago, and Southland, which all have equal or higher vaccination rates than Counties Manukau, to move to the traffic light system when she said Auckland will, after 29 November?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Because at the time we announced it, we gave the rationale for allowing Auckland to move in that way, and that is because of the border that sits around Auckland. Because of that border, we wanted to be able to acknowledge the significant work that Aucklanders had done to reach those vaccination levels and enable them to move themselves. To answer the first part of the member’s question: yes, there are greater freedoms offered at that amber, that orange level, and that’s because those gathering limits don’t exist. But we are seeking that New Zealand, as a whole, seek to reach the highest vaccination levels we can, and we’ve set that 90 percent as a milestone for the precise reason that we have seen that we are very mobile, we move around. We want different parts of New Zealand to have that protection when we move into what, essentially, will be a place where there are greater freedoms.

David Seymour: Why is the Government still requiring international arrivals whose final destination is Auckland to go through any level of managed isolation and quarantine if they’re fully vaccinated and have tested negative for COVID-19, when over 700 people who’ve tested positive for COVID are allowed to self-isolate in Auckland; or are the University of Otago’s Nick Wilson and Michael Baker wrong when they say, “If you’re at the supermarket in Auckland, a fully vaccinated person randomly teleported from Canada is less likely to infect you than an average resident Aucklander in the aisles.”?

SPEAKER: Before the Prime Minister answers, because I’m sort of feeling generous, that question was manifestly excessive in length and while each of the legs might have just got there, overall it was not succinct. I will allow the Prime Minister to answer the question, but I want this to serve as a general warning that that length of question is not succinct enough to stay within the Speakers’ rulings.

David Seymour: A point of order, Mr Speaker—

SPEAKER: Look, I’ve just been generous to the member. If he wants to argue with me, I will rule tightly on the book.

David Seymour: Mr Speaker, I’d never argue with you.

SPEAKER: Well, that is deliberately misleading the House.

David Seymour: Perhaps. Mr Speaker, I guess my question is—and people at home will be wondering, because they will have noticed that even that question was shorter than every single answer in length, and shouldn’t there be some parity in that?

SPEAKER: Well, the member will learn one day that there is a difference between a question and an answer.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Mr Speaker, for the sake of brevity then, I refer the member to Dr Ashley Bloomfield’s response to that research that he gave yesterday. And to answer the wider question around allowing New Zealanders who are double vaccinated to isolate at home, that is exactly what we are working towards, and we already have a self-isolation pilot under way, as we speak, to enable that.

David Seymour: Who should New Zealanders listen to: Chris Hipkins, who said Aucklanders might need a time slot to leave the city; Grant Robertson, who said that idea’s impractical; or herself, the Prime Minister, who’s refused to rule the idea out?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What I can be clear on is they certainly shouldn’t listen to that member, because we would have a pandemic that would have led to mass hospitalisations and carnage if we had followed his playbook for COVID.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Will she take the advice of Professor Michael Baker, as endorsed by the leader of the ACT Party, that people leaving Auckland should have to do self-isolation every time they leave Auckland?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member is absolutely correct, that was a hard border around Auckland, essentially, where we transfer those obligations into turning Auckland almost into a quarantine seemed to be the suggestion of that research, and I think there’d be a good chunk of the population who would have a very clear view on that.

David Seymour: A point of order. Mr Speaker, I seek your guidance. I’d never endorse that part of Michael Baker’s advice. I think it is unfair of him to characterise it for me.

SPEAKER: Well, that might be the case but the member, again, knows that that is not a point of order. The member actually knows the Speakers’ rulings and the Standing Orders better than the vast majority of members in the House, and I just want to invite the member to choose to use his knowledge.

Question No. 3—Housing

3. CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) to the Minister of Housing: What action is the Government taking to get more houses built in Auckland?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing): This morning, I announced the Government is stepping in to fund much-needed infrastructure to enable more houses to be built in Auckland: our latest investment of $282 million in Government-led large-scale projects—or LSPs—from the Housing Acceleration Fund announced in March. This will enable up to 1,260 additional homes across five Auckland suburbs: Mount Roskill, Māngere, Tāmaki, Oranga, and Northcote. This is another significant investment in Tāmaki-makau-rau, which needs more investment in underlying housing infrastructure like pipes and roads. Today’s announcement enabling around 1,260 additional homes is, of course, on top of the 2,500 additional homes enabled in these areas that have already been supported by Government funding.

Camilla Belich: Why is the Government supporting Auckland Council to get infrastructure built?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: We’re stepping in with funding in these areas to fix decades of under-investment in infrastructure that will have wider benefits for the communities, including improved sewerage and flood protection. Auckland is forecast to need an additional 330,000 dwellings by 2050. Replacing ageing pipes and improving roading is essential to futureproof and grow these communities. These developments provide quality housing where it is needed most, and the investment in infrastructure unlocks the potential for future market-led development. This is a key part of our Government’s plan to address the housing crisis by increasing supply through our strategically located developments in areas where people want to live.

Camilla Belich: How else is the Government supporting local government to get houses built?

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: The Government’s $3.8 billion Housing Acceleration Fund announced in March will jump-start housing developments and will help green-light tens of thousands of house builds across Aotearoa in the short to medium term. Local government and developers have told the Government that investment in infrastructure is one of the most important contributions that central government can make to increasing housing supply. The Housing Acceleration Fund is the cornerstone of the Government’s plan to address the housing crisis. Today’s announcement invests in the enabling infrastructure that will allow these neighbourhoods to intensify and supports further private development in the places we want it: close to transport and jobs.

Question No. 4—Prime Minister

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

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes, particularly the Government’s decision to fund a new mental health wellbeing package to help Aucklanders who, as we can all understand and appreciate, have experienced the distress of ongoing restrictions over a period of many weeks. This package is part of wider work under way to address the mental wellbeing of New Zealanders during the pandemic and provides extra resources for mental health and addiction services, a targeted mental health promotion campaign, and enhanced peer support through telehealth services. The investment follows earlier announcements made in response to Delta to support mental resilience for those in the Auckland region. We understand the ongoing mental and emotional strain of lockdown in Auckland, and I thank Aucklanders for the work they’re doing to protect the team of 5 million.

Hon Judith Collins: Why are some people with COVID being forced to self-isolate in crowded emergency housing and cars, while thousands of fully vaccinated COVID-negative Kiwis are being forced to take up space in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: In response to the first part of the member’s question, I reject that. The idea that anyone is forced is utterly incorrect. There is a public health assessment that is undertaken to determine whether or not a positive case should remain in home isolation. That includes assessing the current and potential emergent health needs of the case. It includes the suitability of the current place of residence. It includes, of course, the public health risk of onward transmission, and it does take into account, also, the circumstances of the individual and whānau. Ultimately, though, those assessments are undertaken by those who work in our health system alongside the person who is COVID positive.

Hon Judith Collins: So is the Prime Minister saying that the person who is self-isolating with COVID in his car is doing so by choice?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: It is utterly wrong to suggest anyone is forced. In fact, the option of being in a facility where we have capacity is available. We have spaces available in MIQ. They are made available for the purpose of caring for individuals. I cannot speak to the specifics of the example the member has raised. We have asked the health team to look into what has happened in those circumstances because, obviously, that is not an acceptable situation, I’m sure, to anyone in this House.

Hon Judith Collins: Why are senior Cabinet Ministers disagreeing in public about whether Aucklanders will need to use allocated time slots for summer, and does this show her Government is just making it up as it goes along?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: To answer the first part of the question, they’re not.

Hon Judith Collins: Will Aucklanders have to show a negative COVID test or proof of vaccination before they can leave Auckland for Christmas?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’ve said many times in the public domain over several weeks that we will use tools available to us to give assurance to the rest of the country, if we’re able, around the protections for the rest of the country, around COVID-19, and to prevent or to slow the spread of COVID-19. So we’ve said that we are looking currently at what we can do with our land boundary. That, at the moment, would require us to be able to allow the smoothest movement possible of between 30,000 to 40,000 cars a day, and we have talked about the role of testing and vaccine certificates in that regime. There are two things we have to cover: we have given an assurance, which we stand by, that Aucklanders will be able to move for the Christmas and summer period, but at the same time, we have to, of course, give assurances to the rest of country around what we’re doing to try and slow the spread of COVID-19 in New Zealand.

Hon Judith Collins: When is she finally going to give Aucklanders some clarity on how they’re going to be allowed to travel this summer?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I indicated yesterday, we will be giving further details next week.

Hon Judith Collins: Why are Aucklanders being asked to wait yet another week when they’re already now in their 13th week of lockdown?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: New Zealand never in its history has operated a hard land boundary which would require facilitating the movement of 30,000 to 40,000 vehicles, and, of course, the use of some form of evidence in order to demonstrate the ability of an individual to move. That’s because New Zealand hasn’t experienced a pandemic of this nature since 1918. It is not part of the Government’s long-term plans that we will have hard borders of this nature, but whilst it is serving a purpose—to enable us to further slow COVID—then it’s a tool that, obviously, we’ve continued to use.

Hon Judith Collins: Does she stand by her statement yesterday that she won’t allow outdoor dining in Auckland because it wouldn’t be equitable for restaurants that didn’t have outdoor spaces, and is it her desire that all restaurant businesses should just suffer equally?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: That’s actually not an accurate reflection of what I said yesterday. I was asked a question and my response was that we hadn’t specifically looked at provision to only allow those who are able, or have consent, for outdoor dining, but I didn’t rule it out. But it is not something we’ve considered to date, and there would be some in Auckland who wouldn’t have the consent of council to operate in that way and may perceive there to be equity issues with that.

Question No. 5—COVID-19 Response

5. HELEN WHITE (Labour) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: What recent progress has been made on New Zealand’s COVID-19 vaccine programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): Over the weekend, New Zealand reached another important milestone in administering 7 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine across the country. As of last night, 3.76 million New Zealanders have received their first dose. That represents 89 percent of the eligible population across New Zealand. Over 3.3 million Kiwis have now had two doses of the vaccine, meaning that 79 percent of eligible New Zealanders are fully vaccinated. From here, every additional vaccination is another step closer to being able to transition to the new protection framework, which will mean restrictions will be able to ease for vaccinated New Zealanders.

Helen White: What recent vaccination milestones have been reached in Auckland?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I’m very pleased to say that on Sunday, Counties Manukau DHB reached 90 percent first doses, meaning that all three Auckland DHBs have now crossed that 90 percent threshold for first doses. That is a key milestone on the path to Auckland opening up again. Auckland DHB is at 95 percent for first doses and at 87 percent for second. The Waitamatā DHB is at 92 percent for first doses and 83 percent for second doses, and Counties Manukau is now at 90 percent first doses and 80 percent for second doses. Auckland will move across to the new traffic light system with fewer restrictions once all three DHBs have reached that 90 percent fully vaccinated rate, which is now well and truly within reach.

Helen White: What further work is being done to help promote uptake of the vaccine across Auckland?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: There’s been a huge amount of targeted work going across by local health providers to make sure vaccines are easily accessible and also to address the really important issue of vaccine hesitancy, and it’s good to see that that work’s paying off. In particular, I want to note the work of our Māori and Pacific providers in Counties Manukau. They are making a real difference. Getting to 90 percent first doses, in many cases, required them to literally go door to door and have individual conversations with people to address misinformation, among other things. Getting every DHB in Auckland up to the 90 percent fully vaccinated marker is now within our reach. On current daily rates, we could be there within a couple of weeks—within, potentially, two to three weeks—as long as people do return for their second dose. Everyone wants restrictions to be eased as soon as possible, and we need to keep going to get those final second doses up there so that we can start to ease those restrictions with confidence.

Helen White: What recent progress has been made around the use of a booster vaccine as part of the COVID-19 vaccine programme?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Medsafe, who are the first step in the process, gazetted the decision yesterday to approve the use of booster doses for people aged 18 and older, at least six months after the first dose. That’s the first step in the process. The next step is for the COVID-19 Technical Advisory Group and the Ministry of Health to provide advice to the Government that will help to inform the use of booster doses. That will include whether there should be any age limits, the interval between the second dose and the booster dose, and so on. We understand that the health and border workforce are particularly concerned about whether or not they’ll be needing a booster dose, and so we’re working towards providing them that reassurance as soon as we can. I would note that the trials by Pfizer had a median interval between the second dose and the booster dose of 11 months, and no New Zealanders are currently in that category.

Question No. 6—Finance

6. Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) to the Minister of Finance: How many Auckland and Waikato businesses are forced to take on debt or face closure each week as a result of level 3 restrictions?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON (Minister of Finance): The member asks a question that only individual business owners could answer. While I know that he is a fan of big Government, I personally don’t think the Government should have access to every single private business bank account. What I can tell the member is that since 17 August, the Government has supported businesses nationwide through $3.9 billion worth of support from the wage subsidy scheme and $1.4 billion through the resurgence support payment.

Hon Todd McClay: Well, why hasn’t his Government shown much more urgency in stopping the 16,751 businesses that closed in the last three months of his COVID restrictions—an increase of 123 percent compared to the same period two years ago, before COVID?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: I’m not sure exactly where the member is getting that data from. The official data from the Companies Office tells us that since the middle of August 2021, there have been 14,337 company registrations; 1,143 of which have a postcode in the Waikato, and 6,642 of which have a postcode in Auckland. In contrast, there were 8,762 company deregistrations since mid-August 2021; 659 with a postcode in Waikato, and 3,930 with a postcode in Auckland.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he still believe that less than a handful of cases were transmitted in retail settings, and, if so, why have Auckland retail businesses not been allowed to open sooner—

SPEAKER: Fewer—fewer than a handful.

Hon Todd McClay: Pardon me?

SPEAKER: Fewer than a handful.

Hon Todd McClay: Can I start again?

SPEAKER: Yeah, start again. Yes.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he still believe that less than a handful of cases were—[Laughter from members]

SPEAKER: Just go. It’s all right; just keep going—keep going.

Hon Todd McClay: Does he still believe that less than a handful of cases were transmitted in retail settings, and, if so, why were Auckland retail businesses not allowed to open sooner, avoiding the economic harm that has been done to them?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the first part of the question, that is the advice that we’ve received from health officials. In answer to the second part of the question, the Government has always been aware of accumulation of risk. We have managed that risk. We are now in a position to be able to reduce those restrictions as vaccinations increase.

Hon Todd McClay: Why have Auckland businesses had to wait until the Prime Minister visits tomorrow before the Government announces a hundred-dollar voucher scheme for hospitality, and is he aware that almost every tourism and hospitality business in the country is also struggling and also waiting?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: There are many elements to that question that I reject as being in the member’s mind only.

Hon Todd McClay: Why can a double-vaccinated hairdresser in Auckland not open but a shopkeeper who isn’t vaccinated can, and does he realise that a business that cannot open because of the Government’s COVID restrictions either has to take on debt or close?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: In answer to the latter part of the question, there are a number of businesses who have been forced to close throughout the last 20 months, and that is highly regrettable. However, that number of businesses is significantly lower than it would have been had it not been for the level of assistance that has been provided. Many businesses, rather than the two things the member says, have actually managed, through their own hard work and the support of the Government, to keep going. We should celebrate their resilience.

Hon Todd McClay: Why can 25 people in Auckland or Hamilton socialise in an outdoor space or visit a shop but an Auckland and Waikato hospitality business cannot host 25 customers seated in an outdoor space, and does he not realise that when a business can’t open because of Government rules, they either have to take on debt or close?

Hon GRANT ROBERTSON: As I said in the answer to the previous supplementary question, I do not accept the last two parts of the member’s question.

SPEAKER: I am just going to give the member the same warning as I gave to Mr Seymour as to the length of his supplementaries. Thank you.

Hon Todd McClay: Point of order, Mr Speaker. In my second supplementary, you went to correct me. I just want to make it clear that the “less than a handful of cases” was a quote from the Minister; not mine.

SPEAKER: The only thing I’ll say is that I’m pleased I wasn’t the Minister of Education responsible for his language!

Question No. 7—Social Development and Employment

7. GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth) to the Minister for Social Development and Employment: What recent reports has she seen on unemployment?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Social Development and Employment): As the Deputy Prime Minister has highlighted, last week the household labour force survey was released. It showed the national rate of unemployment to be 3.4 percent, a fall of 0.6 percentage points from the previous quarter. A highlight of the report is the increase in job security felt by New Zealanders, with 45,100 less people saying they are at risk of losing their job in the next 12 months. Alongside this, the increase in the labour force participation rate shows that 71.2 percent of New Zealanders are engaged in the labour market, a 1.1 percentage point increase. This was driven mostly by an increase in the number of women who have found employment. It is clear that the Government’s strong economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic is keeping our economy strong and New Zealanders in work.

Glen Bennett: What reports has she seen on the number of people receiving the job seeker work-ready benefit?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As of the week ending 29 October, 108,471 people were receiving a job seeker work-ready benefit, around 22,000 less than the same time last year. As expected, we saw a slight rise in the number of people accessing a job seeker work-ready benefit at the beginning of the Delta outbreak. But we now have seen six straight weeks where the number of people receiving job seeker work-ready has fallen. There are now only 1,737 additional people receiving job seeker work-ready than at the time our response began. It is very different to the sharp rise we saw during the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, and shows the strength of our labour market. It is clear that the Government’s wage subsidy has helped provide certainty to businesses and protect jobs. While we’re not out of the woods, the signs are very encouraging.

Glen Bennett: What evidence has she seen of Māori and Pacific getting into work?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: The household labour force survey shows that, over the last 12 months, Māori unemployment is down 1.9 percentage points to 6.9 percent. This was driven by 29,900 Māori moving into work over the last 12 months. For Pacific peoples, the unemployment rate was down 2.6 percentage points to 5.5 percent. This is reflected in the number of people we’re seeing come out the other end of our employment, education, and training programmes—for example, over 4,000 people through Mana in Mahi, and over 7,920 through Flexi-wage, of which 48 percent are Māori or Pacific. We’re committed to continuing to provide meaningful programmes for Māori and Pacific in order to build on this progress.

Question No. 8—COVID-19 Response

8. CHRIS BISHOP (National) to the Minister for COVID-19 Response: How many fully vaccinated people have tested positive in managed isolation and quarantine since 23 August 2021 on day 8 or later, and how many people have completed stays in managed isolation and quarantine since 23 August 2021?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister for COVID-19 Response): I’m advised that four fully vaccinated people have tested positive on day eight or later in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) since 23 August—24,124 people have been through MIQ during that time. While that number is small, it still signifies the risk that exists in overseas returnees. It also highlights the rationale for introducing a period of home isolation to mitigate the risk of transmission after someone’s seven-day stay.

SPEAKER: I’m just going to remind the visitor from Auckland to put her mask back on.

Chris Bishop: Why are over 2,350 people with COVID, or close contacts of people with COVID, allowed to isolate at home in Auckland, while fully vaccinated travellers from overseas without COVID are forced to spend 14 days in MIQ?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: They won’t be forced to spend 14 days in MIQ; they’ll be doing seven days, so those who have been arriving in MIQ this week will in fact only be doing seven days in MIQ, and they will then do three days of isolation at home.

Chris Bishop: Why do fully vaccinated travellers to New Zealand have to wait until quarter one in 2022 for MIQ to not be required for people who enter New Zealand, when the risk is, as he’s just demonstrated, very low already?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I don’t think the member can take that inference from the numbers that I’ve just given. One of the things that he needs to factor in is that this is across a relatively small number of people, and, actually, when we do move to self-isolation by default, the level of movement at the New Zealand border—the international border—is likely to be significantly higher than it is at the moment. It’s also important to note that we do not have COVID-19 spreading in the community outside of Auckland, Waikato, and a small part of Northland. When we do allow people to come in and isolate at home anywhere in New Zealand, then that will mean that at that point, there will be COVID-19 out in the New Zealand community, uncontrolled.

Chris Bishop: Does the Government have an analytical framework or set of criteria for when it may allow fully vaccinated travellers to come home to New Zealand and skip MIQ before the end of this year?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: What we’ve indicated is that our priority, at this point, is to move New Zealand on to the traffic light framework, to get that bedded in, and to recognise the fact that that is going to result in a spread of COVID-19 outside of Auckland and outside of the Waikato, and we want to make sure that we are controlling an increase in the number of COVID cases as much as possible. Once we have done that, then our next priority will be the international border, and that will be in the first quarter of next year.

Chris Bishop: What does he say to the 80,000 people who have now signed a petition to end MIQ forthwith, who represent the tens of thousands of New Zealanders keen to travel home without going through the MIQ lottery system?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I acknowledge that in a global pandemic many people have been separated from their families and the people that they care about, that we want to be able to remove the international restrictions as soon as we can, but that we want to do that in a way that is safe, and we want to manage our next phase of our COVID response such that New Zealand doesn’t end up with a large, uncontrolled outbreak of COVID-19 that could have a significant impact on the very loved ones that they want to come and see.

Question No. 9—Economic and Regional Development

9. NAISI CHEN (Labour) to the Minister for Economic and Regional Development: What announcements has he made about giving the events sector confidence to continue planning over the summer period while the country transitions to the new COVID-19 Protection Framework?

Hon STUART NASH (Minister for Economic and Regional Development): This morning, I announced a COVID-19 events transition support payment scheme to provide certainty to event organisers to continue to plan their event ahead of finalisation of the public health settings that will apply at the time of their event. The scheme will apply to all public-facing ticketed events that are not underwritten or funded elsewhere with more than 5,000 attendees and require the use of COVID-19 vaccine certificates. The scheme will pay out 90 percent of the direct costs incurred by the organiser in delivering the event and only when there is certainty that the public health settings would explicitly prevent the event taking place on the date or dates of the event.

Naisi Chen: What are the benefits of this scheme?

Hon STUART NASH: The fund is based on feedback from the events sector. They told us that they were nearing or had entered the risk window for decisions about whether to proceed with their event or cancel or postpone. This fund will give big summer festivals financial certainty to proceed. Large events are a key driver for economic and regional development, providing jobs and economic activity. But, to be blunt, it’s been a tough year. New Zealanders deserve a good summer and this Government is committed to ensuring large-scale events and festivals can be part of this.

Naisi Chen: Why is the use of vaccination certificates one of the criteria for this scheme?

Hon STUART NASH: As COVID has changed, our approach has changed too. The tool we have now that we didn’t have a year ago is vaccination. As the Prime Minister says, it provides our individual armour from death, hospitalisation, or disease itself. The reason for requiring vaccine certificates is twofold. First, we want to provide an incentive for attendees who might not yet have got their first or second dose to get vaccinated so they can attend an event, and, secondly, it is to provide protection for people once they are at the event so they can be as safe as possible in a new COVID world while enjoying summer.

Question No. 10—Disability Issues

10. JAN LOGIE (Green) to the Minister for Disability Issues: How many of the 13 principles outlined by the Access Alliance will be given effect in the proposed accessibility legislation, and which principles, if any, will not be included?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI (Minister for Disability Issues): Can I begin by acknowledging the contribution of the Access Alliance and other disabled people and whānau who have all had a part to play in this work and in improving accessibility throughout Aotearoa. We’ve worked closely with the Access Alliance during the development of our accessibility framework and have incorporated nine of their 13 principles in some way. Incorporating all 13 would take a significant period of time to introduce. We want to start making change now, and our accessibility framework is an important first step to supporting Aotearoa to progressively become more accessible.

Jan Logie: Is it true the Access Alliance worked with the Ministry of Social Development for 2½ years only for the Government to choose a legislative framework they couldn’t support?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We have been working with the Access Alliance for an extended period of time. COVID slowed down the work programme with regards to accessibility legislation. There are many facets of what we have announced that the Access Alliance do support. There are some things that they proposed that we could not support. They wanted a single regulatory framework, which we as a Government couldn’t support with regards to what we are putting forward because of the complexity that that would involve. It would mean the potential duplication of rules and legislation. It would mean that, potentially, accessibility legislation would be at odds with existing legislation. It would’ve meant that we would’ve had to look at legislation across multiple areas and potentially try and make changes. It wasn’t feasible, nor was it practical. Where we have landed with regards to an enabling framework is something that we’re comfortable with, but we’re certainly looking forward to all of the submissions that will come forward when the legislation goes to the House mid - next year.

Jan Logie: Did the Government consider the model proposed in the Law Foundation - funded research Making New Zealand Accessible: A Design for Effective Accessibility Legislation, which gave effect to most of the Access Alliance’s 13 principles?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: We considered all of the options that were in front of us, as well as the single regulatory framework that the Access Alliance had wanted, which, I think, is also reflected in the report that the member speaks about. There was also an ask for much tighter enforceable standards. Again, it would go back to the issue that I raised earlier about the potential for duplication, legislation being at odds across various sectors. So where we have landed, we are quite comfortable with. However, again, we look forward to the select committee process. That is an opportunity to look at ways in which we can improve the legislation.

Jan Logie: How will systemic change be achieved for the disabled community if there’s no independent monitoring or enforcement mechanism in the proposed framework?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: As part of the proposal, we have been very clear that we will have an Accessibility Governance Board that will have some responsibility for the monitoring of progress that we are looking to make. It will also have the potential to have quite an important impact on prospective legislation, once that legislation is in place, as well as us being given the impetus to be able to look at the existing legislation, where it creates barriers or doesn’t allow for the types of accessibility that we would expect through the legislation and what’s outlined in there once that’s in place.

Jan Logie: How will the Accessibility Governance Board hold—and I’ll quote—“the system to account to make New Zealand more accessible and equitable” without any enforcement mechanisms?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: There are a range of details that we have said from the time that we announced this that will need to be determined and worked out. The legislation is not yet in front of us; July is when we’re looking to introduce that to the House. Some of the points that the member raised are things that we need to continue to look at and work on, and we are very much committed to doing that alongside disabled people and our disability community and sector.

Jan Logie: Will the Government commit to taking disabled people’s feedback on board before it drafts the legislation to ensure that the bill actually has that power to break down the barriers to their participation in society?

Hon CARMEL SEPULONI: Certainly, but at the same time, that select committee process is going to be very important, and we also have to ensure that anything that we put before the House is practical, it is achievable, and it is something that as a Government we will actually be able to implement and enforce. So that’s certainly our focus.

Question No. 11—Education (School Operations)

11. MARJA LUBECK (Labour) to the Associate Minister of Education: What is the Government doing to support the mental health and wellbeing of students in primary and secondary schools?

Hon JAN TINETTI (Associate Minister of Education (School Operations)): Yesterday, I announced that 141 primary, intermediate, and small secondary schools throughout Aotearoa now have access to counsellors. This is the first time in New Zealand counsellors have ever been centrally-funded in schools for this age group. The primary school allocation is in addition to the additional $31.8 million that was allocated to larger secondary schools from January this year. That equates to 90 full-time teacher equivalent additional counselling staff across the country. Thanks to the $75.8 million worth of investment made by this Labour Government, a further 24,000 young people now have access to counselling support at school.

Marja Lubeck: Why are counsellors in schools needed?

Hon JAN TINETTI: This Labour Government is committed to barrier-free access to education. Kids come to school to receive a great education. This should be within the reach of every learner—where barriers to education exist, they need to be reduced. It is important to use a range of levers to help each child and young person attain their educational potential. We know that learners who are happy and healthy learn better. That is why, over the last few years, this Government has undertaken a range of work to support the wellbeing of learners in order to ensure our kids get the best start possible.

Marja Lubeck: What other mental health and wellbeing supports are available for schools?

Hon JAN TINETTI: The Government has provided a $15 million package specifically to help re-engage our Auckland students in their education, which includes an additional $1.5 million funding for counselling services for Auckland schools. The Government is also expanding the Mana Ake mental health and wellbeing programme into five additional regions. For teachers and principals, the Government has made available the workforce wellbeing COVID-19 fund that provides counselling services for the sector. We’re making sure that there are a range of measures in place to support schools through this tumultuous time.

Question No. 12—Prime Minister

12. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader of the Opposition) to the Prime Minister: Does she agree there needs to be a royal commission of inquiry into the Government’s preparation for COVID-19 Delta; if not, why not?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): I agree that there has been a need to ensure the Government’s response to COVID-19 has been fit for purpose, which explains the existence of two rapid reviews of the all-of-Government response: the Simpson-Roche review, the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group, the COVID-19 Independent Continuous Review, Improvement and Advice Group, and, of course, there are a number of technical advisory groups we’ve used to inform our response, which includes the core Technical Advisory Group chaired by Dr Ian Town, the Vaccine Technical Advisory Group, the Testing Technical Advisory Group, and the Therapeutics Technical Advisory Group, which are all serving us well. We’ve also had a rapid audit of contact tracing for COVID-19, an ombudsman review, and three reviews from the Office of the Auditor-General. I think this list demonstrates there has been scrutiny and we’ve adapted our response as a result at every stage of this pandemic. Specifically on any form of future review, I don’t disagree with the value in ensuring we learn from this experience. It is a matter of timing, though, and right now we’re better to respond to the pandemic itself than to investigate that response.

Hon Judith Collins: If she’s learnt so much from the reviews that have already been undertaken, then why is Auckland entering its 13th week of lockdown, or was that part of the plan?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I’m not sure if the member has noticed, but we are in the middle of a global pandemic, and relative to most countries, the response that has jointly been rolled out by New Zealanders has been one of the more successful ones, if your measure, of course, is your hospitalisations, your deaths, and even the impact on the economy, or, overall, the impact of restrictions over a period of going on two years. The reason that we are currently facing restrictions in Auckland is because of the pandemic and because Delta has been particularly more challenging than other variants, and no country has escaped its impacts.

Hon Judith Collins: So was it part of her Government’s plan for fewer than 20 percent of the country to be fully vaccinated when Delta made it into the New Zealand community?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member will notice that we currently have rates of vaccination that are higher than some of the countries that started vaccinating many months before us. But we have a plan which is particular to New Zealand. We want to protect New Zealanders from COVID and we want to minimise its impact on our daily lives, which means that we are using a combination of vaccines and public health measures, and we are easing into that framework carefully to, again, ensure that we don’t see our hospital system overrun—which has not, unfortunately, been the case for many other countries.

Hon Chris Hipkins: Would having Government officials and others involved in the COVID-19 response not working on the COVID-19 response but instead taking time to appear before a royal commission and give evidence to a royal commission help or hinder that response? [Interruption]

SPEAKER: Which member was it who interjected then? Which member was it? The member will stand, withdraw, and apologise. He knows what the rules are better than anyone else.

Hon Michael Woodhouse: I withdraw and apologise.

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The member is right to draw out that there would be consequence to, at this point in the response, drawing the attention of those who are critical to continuing to respond to the pandemic away to a review process. You can see we have, of course, ensured that we’ve had scrutiny through our response all the way through, but we’ve done it in such a way that we can continue to respond to the pandemic as we also vary our response and learn from every stage, because, frankly, no country in the world had a rule book for COVID-19.

Hon Judith Collins: Why is it that more than a year since the Simpson-Roche report, she still hasn’t got saliva testing right throughout the country as they recommended?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: We are using saliva testing. I’d point out, as well, that in the use of that saliva testing, of course, there are some jurisdictions, some areas, where we’ve created it as an opportunity to be used, and some have chosen to use the nasal swabs instead, but it is available and it is being used. Antigen is increasingly being used in health settings as well, and we anticipate in the future it will be used more often as part of some of our contact tracing and isolation processes for vaccinated individuals, to perhaps reduce down the need to have prolonged periods of time in isolation.

Hon Judith Collins: So was it part of her unique New Zealand plan for Māori vaccination rates to fall so far behind the rest of the country, despite multiple warnings all year that the Government needed to do more?

Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I’ve said many times in this House, it is not fair to simply create a blanket statement about Māori vaccination rates generally. In some age demographics, we have very high rates; unfortunately, in the younger cohorts, where we do have a larger part of the population, we do have higher rates where we have not yet reached our rangatahi, and we, at the moment, are doing everything we can to work alongside Māori health providers and others. Iwi and hapū have been doing an amazing job trying to drive demand, to continue to lift uptake. My recollection is, from the last time I looked, that we were at roughly 74 percent first doses, and I do expect to continue to see that increase; and for 60-plussers, I believe, over 90 percent. We want to replicate those results across the board.

Hon Judith Collins: So was it part of her plan, after all these reviews, for hundreds of thousands of fully vaccinated Kiwis to be stranded overseas because of the managed isolation and quarantine lottery of human misery, when there are now thousands of Aucklanders self-isolating at home and even in cars?

SPEAKER: Order! There’s irony in that question, and the member knows it.

Speaker’s Rulings

Face Masks—Political Logos

SPEAKER: Now, I’ve got a ruling to make, but before I make the ruling I was going to make, I want to indicate to members that it’s long been the rulings of Speakers in this House that political logos are not used as part of this House. I just want to indicate to people that the masks that they wear—and there have been some that have been on and off at different times—should not have political logos on it, and I’ve lost the member who was wearing one previously that I only noticed later. So can people take care that their masks do not include political logos.

Urgent Debates Declined

COVID-19—Public Relations in Relation to COVID-19 Vaccine

SPEAKER: I have received a letter from the Hon Judith Collins seeking to debate under Standing Order 399 the Government’s handling of public relations in relation to the purchase of the COVID-19 vaccine. This is not a particular case of recent occurrence. The application is therefore declined. I declare members’ attentions to Speakers’ rulings 204/3 and 199/5.

Sittings of the House

Sittings of the House

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Leader of the House): I move, That the sitting of the House today be extended into tomorrow morning, for the second reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill; the third reading of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill; the second reading of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2); the committee stages of the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training Amendment Bill; the third reading of the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill; the first reading and referral to select committee of the Data and Statistics Bill; the second readings of the Commerce Amendment Bill, the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill, the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill, the Incorporated Societies Bill, the Organic Products Bill, and the Financial Markets (Conduct of Institutions) Amendment Bill.

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

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bills

Moriori Claims Settlement Bill

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations): I present a legislative statement on the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. I move that the Moriori claims—

SPEAKER: No—that legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill be now read a second time.

E ngā mana, e ngā rē, rau ieriki ieriki mā. Tena kotou, tena kotou, tena kotou katoa.

[Exalted figures and voices of authority, and multitudes of leaders; acknowledgments to every one of you.]

I have the honour this afternoon of supporting the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill through its second reading. This crosses yet another very important threshold, as we all know, in the passage of these important pieces of legislation. I begin by acknowledging the work of the Moriori imi, their negotiators, and the Moriori claims settlement trust for their energy, their tenacity, and their drive that has brought us where we are today. I’d also like to thank key members of the Crown team: chief Crown negotiator Dame Fran Wilde, my ministerial colleagues, and the Crown entities who have been involved in this work for many years now.

This bill gives effect to the deed of settlement between the Crown and Moriori that was signed on 14 February 2020 on Wharekauri island. The deed of settlement acknowledges all the historical Treaty of Waitangi claims relating to Moriori—so it comprises historical redress, which records the Crown’s breaches and past injustices; the Crown apology for historical Crown actions or omissions that breached the Treaty of Waitangi and its principles, and, of course, the resulting harm that that caused to Moriori; cultural redress that acknowledges the connections to land and resources of significance to Moriori; relationship redress, which builds new connections with the Crown, local authorities, and other groups; and, finally, financial and commercial redress, which provides a strong economic base for the future.

In February 2021, after its first reading, this bill was referred to the Māori Affairs Committee, and I want to thank the committee for their very fine work on the bill. The committee called for submissions between March and April 2021 and received 55 written submissions. Of these, 43 were in support of the bill, six were in opposition, and six did not take a position. The committee also heard 13 oral submissions at Kōpinga Marae on Rēkohu, and in Wellington, over April and May 2021. I acknowledge all those who made oral submissions for their efforts and for sharing their kōrero with the Māori Affairs Committee. I particularly would like to acknowledge Hokotehi Moriori Trust for their generosity in welcoming the submitters, officials, and the committee to Kōpinga Marae for the hearings. I say to the members of that trust, thank you for the manawa reka you extended during this integral part of the legislative process.

Again, I acknowledge the work of the Māori Affairs Committee for its very robust consideration of the bill and the comments that it made on key issues raised in submissions. The committee reported back to the House on 19 August this year and recommended that the bill be passed. The committee has recommended a small number of technical amendments, as well as amendments to ensure the fair operation of matters relating to customary fisheries in line with what is in the deed of settlement with Moriori. The committee also engaged with submissions on the bill’s historical account summary, noting the connection between the historical account, the Crown acknowledgments and apology, forming part of the Moriori settlement.

The committee’s commentary also focused on key issues raised through submissions, primarily the recognition of ta rē Moriori and the protection of sites of significance. I acknowledge the committee’s position encouraging ongoing collaboration between the relevant Crown entities, Moriori, and the wider Chatham Island community to progress these important matters, and it’s my hope to see this work progress into the future.

By way of conclusion, today marks another step closer to renewing the relationship between Moriori and the Crown. I thank the members of Moriori for their continued patience and commitment to the settlement, noting that this second reading has been delayed due to the current COVID-19 outbreak. I will, of course, speak in more detail in the third reading, which is always an occasion of great celebration for the relevant iwi or imi, in whose interests the legislation is being passed. At that point, we will be able to join together with Moriori to fully celebrate the settlement. But until then, I commend this bill to House.

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

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, e rau rangatira mā, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. E ngā imi e Rēkohu, tēnā katoa, tēnā koutou.

[To those in power, to all the voices, and to all the chiefly peoples, greetings one and all. To the people of Rēkohu, greetings to you all.]

It’s an honour to speak on a bill which will hold a special place in history—finally putting the many wrongs the Moriori have suffered for many generations to right. I acknowledge that it won’t fix everything, but it is a very significant step. It is also special for me personally as the Moriori bill was the very first time I spoke in this House. Due to the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, I spoke on this before I made my maiden speech. That was a special moment for me, as the story of Moriori is something that has been of special interest to me since I was a child. As a child growing up partially in the Hawke’s Bay there was always a close connection between the Hawke’s Bay and the Chatham Islands, and it was something I was very aware of. Learning about Tommy Solomon and the history of Moriori and their unique history of peace—Nununku’s statement on peace, which Moriori abided by, was something of special significance. So it’s very special for me, personally, as well to be able to be here today.

However, I note that the pandemic is ongoing and the public health measures currently in place mean that we’re unable to be in the House for the second reading. But I certainly hope that when we get to the third reading, we’ll be able to join together to celebrate this momentous occasion for Moriori. I wish to acknowledge all of those who are watching from afar who are able to tune in today and see this. It was a great privilege for me, with the other members of the Māori Affairs Committee, to travel to the Chatham Islands, following the first reading, and to spend time with the imi Moriori, to visit and to learn more about tchakat henu—a Moriori phrase meaning tangata whenua—and to spend time with the waina pono, the original inhabitants of Rēkohu.

In particular, it was, I think, a special moment for all of us to have the hearings at Kōpinga Marae, to listen to the people. There were some contests in the terms of the historical accounts and other matters, but to have a respectful hearing on those issues and to learn more about the Chatham Islands and to spend time while we stayed on the islands, talking to various people with various perspectives. It was very interesting listening to the people there, there is some discussion between the interests of Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri of the overlapping claims, but I note that many on the islands have lineage that goes back to both Moriori, Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri, and te Pākehā. It was also special for us to spend some time on the islands, actually having a look around and learning more about the dendroglyphs, the carvings in the bark of karaka, or kōpi trees, and to spend time in the kōpi forests—those orchards for Moriori which were introduced by Moriori to the Chatham Islands and tended by them as forest, which they cultivated in groves.

We also spent some time visiting Te Ana a Nunuku, known to Moriori as Nunuku’s cave. Nunuku was a man of great significance for the people of Moriori. He outlawed fighting amongst inhabitants on the island and is responsible for introducing Kawenata Rongo o Nunuku Whenua, the Covenant of Peace of Nunuku Whenua—a significant aspect of tikanga Moriori. I think it impressed all of us, looking at the significant limestone etchings at the entrance to that cave and reflecting on the history of the island.

Credit to the many people, starting with the Moriori, who started this process back a number of decades ago. It has gone through a number of changes of Government, but there has been a commitment by numerous Governments now to progress this and I’m very pleased to be here today to make my small contribution to this. I want to give credit to Minister Little, who spoke before and is helping guide this through its final phases, and give credit also to his predecessor, Christopher Finlayson, who guided the process for a period of time before the change of Government.

Moriori’s main grievances: the Crown’s phase in the enslavement of Moriori; the failure to protect Moriori from becoming virtually landless following the 1870 Native Land Court decision to award less than 3 percent of the land of the Rēkohu to Moriori; failure to protect ta rē Moriori, that’s the language of Moriori; the role in the collection and trade of kōimi karāpuna, Moriori ancestral bones or remains; and the role in promoting myths that stigmatise Moriori as racially inferior people who became extinct. I’m proud to say that we saw there’s a real renaissance happening, both in the language of ta rē Moriori, a renaissance in the pride of the people of Moriori and their history and who they are and who they will be, going into the future. And I look forward to seeing this progress further, to its third and final reading, and to a celebration with the people of Moriori.

I’ll note, just finally, that there is more work to be done on the Chatham Islands. There are overlapping interests with the remaining Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri, and I look forward, hopefully, to being part of a further visit to the island to complete that process, when the time is right, to ensure that there is an integrated—we’ll keep that spirit of Chatham Islands, or Rēkohu, or Wharekauri among the people of the Chatham Islands so they can have a shared, prosperous, and united future. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Hon NANAIA MAHUTA (Associate Minister for Māori Development): Tēnā koutou katoa te whakakanohi mai i ngā hunga kua riro ki te pō kua riro ki te kāpunipunitanga o te wairua. Mā koutou anō rā te wawata e ora, e tipu, e rea mō ngā whakatupuranga e heke mai nei. Nō reira koutou e whāki nei i tēnei kaupapa nō Rēkohu, tēnei te mihi ana ki a koutou katoa.

[To you all, who represent those who have passed beyond the veil, those who have been taken to the gathering place of the spirits, greetings. By your efforts, the dreams of the future generations will be held safe to develop and grow. To you who have shared the details of the initiative regarding the Chatham Islands, I acknowledge and thank you all.]

I rise to make a contribution in the second reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, and I do so with the understanding that, historically, to delve into the history of the people of Rēkohu and the history would be to gain a bit of an insight into much of the misinformation that has been portrayed in relation to the Moriori people. But I want to take this time to focus on the historical Moriori Treaty claims with the Crown. I should acknowledge those who are on the Māori Affairs Committee—Tāmati Coffey, the chairperson; Arena Williams; Paul Eagle; Shanan Halbert; Joseph Mooney; Todd Muller; Teanau Tuiono; and Rawiri Waititi—because you had the opportunity to visit the people, listen to the stories, and listen to the many challenges of working through a Treaty settlement process.

This bill, as was said by the Minister for Treaty settlements, is another step in completing a commitment to the Moriori. This settlement package will finally and comprehensively settle all historical Treaty of Waitangi claims relating to Moriori. It includes a Crown apology and redress, cultural redress, and financial and commercial redress to the total of $18 million.

Moriori karāpuna, or ancestors, were the waina-pono, the original inhabitants or tangata whenua, of Rēkohu, Rangihaute, Hokorereoro—South East Island—and other nearby islands making up the Chathams. Moriori arrived some time between 1000 and 1400 CE, and all Moriori hokopapa are descended from the founding ancestor Rongomaiwhenua. Māori accounts put the number of Moriori killed in 1835-36 at around 300, or about one-sixth of the population. Those Moriori who survived the invasion were enslaved and forced to do manual labour.

In 1842, Rēkohu and the surrounding islands were annexed to New Zealand as the Chatham Islands. The Crown took no action before the late 1850s to alleviate the conditions of Moriori enslavement. Moriori sent letters and petitions to the Crown detailing their plight, including the names of those killed in the invasion and those who had subsequently died of despair. The court awarded more than 97 percent of the land to the recently arrived Māori and less than 3 percent to Moriori. This has always been a subject of historical contention.

By 1901, the Moriori population on Rēkohu had collapsed to only 31 out of a total Chatham Islands population of 418, comprising Moriori, Māori, and Europeans. At the turn of the century, several prominent Moriori elders died. Intergenerational transmission of knowledge and customs—tikane Moriori—was severely compromised.

In 1867, the Crown extended political representation to all Māori men who lived within four electoral districts. The Chatham Islands were outside all electoral districts, meaning Moriori and other Chatham Islands residents could not vote or have political representation. It wasn’t until 1922 that legislation was enacted to correct this.

This deed is the final settlement of all historical Treaty of Waitangi claims of Moriori resulting from acts or omissions by the Crown prior to 21 September 1992 and it is made up of a package that includes the range of redress that I’ve already mentioned.

What I want to share is that—notwithstanding a very complex history that has often been used to challenge tangata whenua Māori interests and perhaps their right to be called tangata whenua here in Aotearoa because of a lack of an understanding about how colonial history impacted on New Zealand—I want to, I think, draw the attention of the House to comments made by our lead negotiator, who, during his young years, was given a very huge level of responsibility to pursue the aspirations of Moriori, and that is Māui Solomon.

In an article that I found in relation to the pursuit of justice, he said these things: “There cannot be peace without justice, and justice must not only be seen to be done but must, in fact, be done. Even if it takes another 200 years to accomplish. Such was the commitment of my Moriori karāpuna to living in peace and sharing the resources of their islands, that they refused as a people to ever fight to the death again. They had developed, here on their home island, a greater respect for the sanctity of human life, and had agreed to observe the law of peace, literally through life and death. In doing so, they suffered greatly, and many died. But they did not die in vain. Their legacy of peace and hope lives on through the thousands of descendants living today—many of whom are just learning the truth. For, when all the wars and battles that have been fought, what then? Humans must learn to live in peace with one another and with their environment if we are to survive and thrive as a species. That’s the bottom line.”—and he makes his final quote—“To quote Gandhi: ‘Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.’ ”

When you read the detail of the settlement and the aspirations, and the way in which language revitalisation enables those Moriori descendants to connect to who they are and their history and their place and their sense of place going forward into the future, you know that there is great aspiration that sits behind this particular settlement.

The other thing that I’d like to add—and I’d like to commend the committee because they spent some time looking into something that was important to the Moriori but couldn’t be addressed—is in relation to Te Ana-a-Nunuku, the cave that was mentioned by Joseph Mooney, which, I understand, members of the committee visited. No Treaty settlement provides any opportunity for private land interests to be impacted on. However, I do appreciate the fact that the committee did offer some serious consideration about ways in which that site could be protected, albeit on private land, and in a way so that its national heritage can be recognised through other fora. I do hope sincerely, as this settlement goes into its final reading, that those who have the ability in so far as historical protection—the way in which the council might consider the significance of this site to the people of Rēkohu—draw on the committee’s insights as to the importance of Te Ana-a-Nunuku as another step towards rectifying our history but also restoring justice back to the Moriori people. Kia ora.

HARETE HIPANGO (National): E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā rē, rau ieriki ieriki mā. Tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Exalted figures and voices of authority, and multitudes of leaders; acknowledgments to you and all gathered here.]

This is the second reading and, as members of the House well know, the second reading is after the bill has been scrutinised and examined by the select committee. I’m always cognisant of members of the public and the people from the Chatham Islands who may be listening in to this debate this afternoon. The purpose of a second reading is for the bill to, as I say, be examined, for it to be brought back to the House for the members to consider the principles of the bill and any changes that have been recommended.

The Māori Affairs Committee, which was comprised of those members that the Hon Nanaia Mahuta has named, presided after the bill had been referred to them on 23 February 2021—this year. That was the first reading. There were 55 submissions that had been provided from interested parties. Oral evidence was heard from 12 of those submitters.

I stand here, understanding that the members of the select committee, and my colleague Joseph Mooney as a mainlander, had the distinct privilege, with our colleague Rino Tirikatene, to travel through to Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands. Oh, kāo? So Rino didn’t. We shared the privilege of travelling to other rohe within Aotearoa at the time. We spoke and we were aware that the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill was coming before us. I didn’t have the privilege of sitting on the committee at the time. However, I have read with some considerable interest—because these debates are traversing back into the history, and it’s a history that many New Zealanders are not privy to. Our childhood education didn’t talk about the history. The facts, as are presented through to the Waitangi Tribunal, come through these negotiation settlements, and here we are today presenting those facts for the record to be corrected.

The report back to the Māori Affairs Committee is dated 19 August 2021. I said there were 55 submissions, with 12 oral submissions that have been heard. This bill is about the Moriori imi, and it has been commented by Minister Mahuta that the reo of Moriori people is something that not only the people have struggled to survive themselves but have fought for the revival and the sustenance of their reo. That is something that had been addressed by the select committee, and in the select committee inquiries into that, it was revealed that, despite the plea of the Moriori people to recognise ta rē Moriori as an official language, the select committee did not have the power or the scope to be able to do that. That would require a legislative change. However, the committee had been advised or told that Te Taura Whiri has provided funding for the development of ta rē Moriori and that, through the Te Mātāwai strategy, there is provision for the sustenance of the reo. I mention that because, like the Moriori people, our language is a living being also.

Talking about a living being and on that thread of the language, I reflect that on Māori TV there’s some wonderful documentaries that come about. More recently there is one called the Chatham Islanders that screens on Māori TV on a Monday evening at 8 p.m., and episode five, I believe, screened last night. That is really just portraying to our people what life is like for Chatham Islanders, Moriori—the struggles and the hardships.

The bill itself, having been examined—there were proposed amendments from the select committee, on hearing from submissions, and that’s been outlined in the report. So the Moriori language was one of those amendments not able to make legislative change but process change, and through those relationships and blending.

The other request that has been made by one of the submitters was to amend the historical account, the summary. I’ve mentioned that these matters being spoken before the House are correcting the record and the history. The process of negotiations toward settlement and also the evidence heard before the Waitangi Tribunal is about ensuring that the historical account and the record is accurate and correct. There’s a submission that had been received from Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri raising concerns about the accuracy of the account. Undoubtedly, my colleagues who sat as members on the select committee would have given their due regard. However, they reached the decision that the account, as has been recorded in the deed of settlement through to the bill, is an accurate summary of the agreed facts between Moriori and the Crown, and therefore the committee does not recommend any changes to that.

Detailed in the committee’s report are the other amendments that have been proposed, and one of those was the, again, mention of a visit to the Chatham Islands, to Nunuku’s cave. Nunuku’s cave is of considerable heritage significance to the people, and Moriori and Chatham Islanders know that, live it, and feel it. As visitors, and I’m moving to the tourism aspect of it, I happen to have here a brochure of the Chatham Islands, and in this brochure—which again is really important because it’s how people are people of a place, and when we visit, it’s important to know the history. The accuracy of the facts have been captured in the bill, but in this brochure promoting the Chatham Islands, it talks about something I didn’t know and many New Zealanders don’t. Moriori made a conscious decision to set aside warfare and killing and to live in peace after the invasions, and this is known as Nunuku’s Law, named after the spiritual leader, or the rangatira, Nunuku Whenua, who laid down the covenant of peace over 600 years ago. That covenant remains unbroken by Moriori, despite the fact that Rēkohu, Chatham Islands, which means—Rēkohu—misty skies, having been invaded by two tribal peoples flowing from Taranaki.

Today, I reflect, it’s 9 November. On 5 November, Parihaka commemorated 140 years since the resistance and the invasion, their peaceful resistance of the invasion by colonial soldiers and their lands. So the correlation? Nunuku’s Law about peace—Nunuku’s cave had been asked by the people to be protected as a heritage site. So the select committee navigated course-ways through the different authorities as to how that could best be done, and it was decided that as important as the site is for Māori, and it’s considered an important site for all New Zealanders, it deserves to be protected and preserved. The committee seriously navigated how best for that to be done, to the point, I understand, that when committee members visited Nunuku’s cave, there was consideration about those relationships built with local authorities for that best to be done.

The second reading of this bill is about its passage through to the third reading and finally into law. The very special dynamics and relationship of the Māori Affairs Committee is that we come together, we look for solutions, ways to improve these negotiated settlements being passed into law, and that’s something very unique about the Māori Affairs Committee. The political differences are put aside to address what’s in the interest of our people who come before us. And, on that note, as a member of the National Party, this bill is commended to the House.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Can I just echo the sentiments of the previous speaker, Harete Hipango, in that when we consider Treaty settlement bills, actually, there’s been a lot of work that has gone into them prior to them actually showing up at the select committee stage. The signing of the deed of settlement actually gives us a very clear mandate about what’s been agreed to—as you well know, having previously sat on the Māori Affairs Committee, Mr Speaker.

However, tuatahi ake

Ko Rangitokona i tohe rangi

Ko Rangitokona tokona i tohe ātā

Ka tū ta pou ki ru pakira o tā rangi

Ki ru pehore o tā rangi

Ka tū ta mēmēa-a-nuku

Ka tū ta mēmēa-a-rangi

Ka tū ta kahi-a-nuku

Ka tū ta kahi-a-rangi

Ka tū ta pou

Ta pou, ka tū ta pou ta pourangi

Me rongo.

Rangitokona holds up the sky

Rangitokona props up the dawn

The pou stands against the baldness of the sky

It stands against the bareness of the sky

It stands; a thought against the earth

It stands; a thought against the sky

It stands; a wedge against the earth

It stands; a wedge against the sky

The pou stands

The pou stands - the pou of the sky

Me rongo.

It’s been an educational experience, being part of the consideration of this Treaty settlement bill, trying to wrap your head around the struggles that the Moriori imi have been through over the past hundred-or-so years has been significant. I hope that the passing of this bill, when we get to that point, helps to correct some of the historical wrongs that have been done, but also the historical record. I think that it is absolutely coincidental and perfect that next year, as we start teaching our own Aotearoa New Zealand history in our schools that this become part of that experience as well. Many of the children of New Zealand need to have that record put straight, because when I was in primary school I too heard of the Moriori becoming extinct, of them being wiped out, and, as I saw with my own eyes when we went over there as a select committee, it is absolutely not the case.

One thing that I was aware of, though, is that with the taking of the land, with the dispersement of the people, the Moriori imi aren’t actually all located on the Chatham Islands like you might expect; yes, there are some, but many have made the migration and they are now living in Christchurch or they’re living in the Hawke’s Bay or they’re living in the Wairarapa or they’re living in other parts of Aotearoa because of what happened there in that incredibly historic event, which is going to, hopefully, be taught in our schools as of next year.

Can I acknowledge the pleasure that it was to travel to te Kōpinga marae, and to the imi that welcomed us, to the Hokotehi Moriori Trust for looking after us, to Maui, to Susan, to Grace, to Thomas Lanauze, and to everybody that welcomed us with open arms, I thank you for that. I also just acknowledge the spirit in which the hearings were conducted on the marae.

I want to talk about the incredible complexity involved in this particular settlement, and it is complex because of the overlapping interests on the Chathams; arā ko Rēkohu, arā ko Wharekauri. The Moriori imi and the Ngāti Mutunga ki Wharekauri iwi have an identical area of interests which overlap 100 percent, completely encompassing the entirety of the islands. So, because of that, the Crown has sought to develop a couple of pieces of legislation and also to develop a third one to settle all the settlement interests on the Chatham Islands. The Crown has also entered into an agreement with Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri for shared redress, which is also going to be important and we should see that in a third piece of legislation. It was hoped that this legislation would actually be introduced into the House at the same time; unfortunately, that hasn’t been able to happen like that. But we hope that one day very soon, Ngāti Mutunga ki Wharekauri will also have their settlement under way here in the House, and we’ll be processing that at the same time through our Māori Affairs Committee.

Previous speakers have talked about the visit to Te Ana a Nunuku, which if anybody in this country ever gets the chance—and now is a good time—head over to the Chatham Islands; they would love to host you and look after you. And if you are privileged like we were when we went over, we got a guided tour to Te Ana a Nunuku. It is a cave with limestone carvings etched all around its entrance. They were done back in the days, they are traditional, they are historic, but, unfortunately, they have been degraded, and there has also been some graffiti as part of that.

One of the submissions that we heard through this process was a call for us to protect it as much as we could through this process. Unfortunately, it falls outside of the remit of this bill, but we did do some due diligence before we came to that conclusion. That being, we got made aware that a council’s district plan could include heritage orders to protect the heritage qualities of a particular place or structure. We sought information from the Chatham Islands Council to find out if that had been considered as a means to protecting the cave. We understand that the council’s resource management document does not protect the cave. The council said that as part of its district plan review, extensive consultation was carried out and the cave’s protection was not raised. We also understand that the council does not intend to make changes to the district plan to protect the cave.

So we sought another option out. We contacted Pouhere Taonga—Heritage New Zealand—and we asked them what they might be able to do. They told us that the cave could and should be added to the New Zealand Heritage List, and, if it was, then if it would gain a higher level of protection. So what happened there was Pouhere Taonga went off and spoke with Moriori, spoke with Ngāti Mutunga when they visited last year, and we understand that they are currently waiting for an application to have the site added to that Rārangi Kōrero—or the Heritage List. One of the things that complicates that is that there is not necessarily support from the majority landowner of the site where Te Ana a Nunuku currently sits, and for any kind of progress to be made in that area there has to be support from landowners, from imi, and from iwi. We heard through some of our submitters that, actually—I mean, one submitter talked about how it wasn’t even the right cave. That submitter talked about the fact that there was another cave there, and she believed that the other cave was Te Ana a Nunuku. So there are still issues to be cleared up there. But what we do know is that the committee saw with our own eyes the tradition, we saw with our own eyes the graffiti and the degradation, and we implore the relevant Government departments that can help in that area to be able to do so.

Speaking of help, we also spoke with some submitters who said, “You need to acknowledge ta rē Moriori.” So we went to the Māori Language Commission and we had a conversation with them. We said to them, “What do you think?” We were informed that both ta rē Moriori and te reo Māori are derived from the same proto Polynesian language. However, ta rē Moriori and its variations developed independently from te reo Māori, due to the isolation of Moriori on the Chatham Islands. We understood that it would take an Act of Parliament to make it an official language, just as te reo Māori was made an official language under the Māori Language Act 1987. We spoke with Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori—the Māori Language Commission—about what exactly they could give in terms of support to be able to revitalise ta rē Moriori, and they indicated to us that that funding would be made available to te imi Moriori if they chose to pursue it to be able to revitalise their language the way that they see fit.

During our visit, we heard the language being spoken by submitters, and we recognised the passion that Moriori have for the recognition and revitalisation of their language. We believe that it is not for our committee to determine, as part of this process, whether or not it should be reflected through the legislation, but we do agree. We agreed across the House that it should absolutely be supported, and, again, we encourage the relevant partners to work with Moriori to ensure that it is.

It has been an experience, and it’s not over yet. So to all of the submitters that came to the committee—those 13 that made oral submissions, the many more that made written submissions without being heard orally—we thank you for the time that you gave to the committee. To the Hokotehi Moriori Trust, we thank you for your manaakitanga to us as a committee, when we went over there. Also, a shout-out for the food. You can’t go off this conversation without talking about the hospitality via the kai. There was plenty of crayfish. There was plenty of paua. It was a very plentiful occasion. But, actually, what it showed was that the future looks bright for our imi Moriori. For that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): E te Pīka, me rongo.

Ko Rangitokona i tohe rangi

Ko Rangitokona tokona i tohe ātā

Ka tū ta pou ki ru pakira o tā rangi

Ki ru pehore o tā rangi

Ka to ta mēmēa-a-nuku

Ka tū ta mēmēa-a-rangi

Ka tū ta kahi-a-nuku

Ka tū ta kahi-a-rangi

Ka tū ta pou

Ta pou, ka tū ta pou ta pourangi

Nōku te whiwhi te tū ki te tautoko ngā kōrero i horahia i te Whare i tēnei wā, mā runga i te whakaae ki ngā kaikōrero katoa. Tērā te āhua o te komiti i haere ngātahi ki Rēkohu. Heoi, me mihi au ki te hau kāinga ki a rātou nei karāpuna, ko rātou anō ngā waina pono o te Rēkohu. He maha ngā mea i ākona e au i a au i tae ā-tinana ki tērā moutere o rātou. I rongo au i te wairua, i rongo au i te mauri.

I tētahi wā e noho ana mātou ki tētahi ngahere me te kī atu ētahi o mātou, mātou ko Rawiri Waititi me te mea atu “Ehara tēnei i Aotearoa; ehara tēnei i Niu Tīreni. He wairua anō tēnei takiwā, he reo anō tēnei takiwā.” Nā te taiao i whai āhua o tātou nei reo katoa. He reo anō nō te moana, he reo anō nō ngā maunga, he reo anō nō ngā awa, he reo anō nō te kohu. Tērā te mea tuatahi i ākona e au i te wā i tae atu au. Ko te Rēkohu te reo o te kohu. I a tātou i tae atu ki raro, i heke iho ki roto i te kohu i mōhio kē mātou kei wāhi kē atu mātou.

Nō reira, me mihi atu ki ngā imi. Tautoko ana ngā mihi ki te Ohu o Hokotehi nā rātou i karangahia ki a mātou ki te haere ki tō rātou nei marae, te Kōpinga, ki te noho ki runga i te ngākau māhaki, te ngākau humarie ki te whakarongo ki ā rātou nei pūrākau.

Ko tētahi o ngā pūrākau i tau ki a au, ki taku ngākau ko ō rātou nei karāpuna i tae mai ki Rēkohu i hipa atu i Te Wai Pounamu, i hipa atu i Te Ika a Māui i tae tōtika mai i Poronēhia. Nā runga i tērā, tērā te take i rerekē tō rātou nei rē i a tātou e noho tangata whenua nei ki Aotearoa nei. I a au e whakaaro ki tērā o ngā āhua i harikoa au i te mea ko tērā o ngā pito o te tapawhā o te Poronēhia kāore anō kia tae atu au. Me te mōhio ko tētahi ki te nōta o tātou nei whānau ko te kanaka Maoli ki te raki, o tātou whānau anō ki Rapa Nui ki te rāwhiti, anā anō o tātou nei whānau e noho taketake ana ki ō rātou nei moutere ki Rēkohu. Nā runga i tērā, nā taku nei tae atu ki ērā atu o ngā moutere, ehara i te mea he tauhou te wairua, he tauhou te mauri, heoi anō i rongo au i te mauri i te mea i rongo au i tērā mauri ki ētahi atu o ngā moutere i tae ā-tinana au ki roto o Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa. Nō reira kei te mihi atu ki ērā pūrākau i ahu mai i ō rātou nei karapuna, i ahu mai ki ō rātou nei whakatupuranga ki tēnei wā.

Ki a rātou mā i tae mai ki te Kōpinga marae, otirā ki te tukanga katoa o tēnei whiringa pire—i tae rima tekau mā rima ngā tono: whā tekau mā toru i tautoko; ono kāore i te tautoko; ono kāore i te tautoko rānei, kāore i te whakaae rānei, i te whakahē rānei. Heoi anō i a au e whakarongo ana ki ngā kōrero ki te Kōpinga marae, ahakoa i tae mai ngā kupu ki te taringa, arā anō te māramatanga i tae anō ki te ngākau, e tae anō ki te manawa. Ki tāku nei e pērā ana ki ō tātou ngā mema katoa o tō mātou nei komiti i tae ā-tinana atu ki reira. Me mihi atu au ki ngā mema i haere ki Rēkohu, ā, i harikoa ana te mana whenua, i harikoa ana te hunau o Rēkohu ki te kite ki tō rātou nei mema Pāremata, a Paul Eagle. I a mātou i te pōwhiri i mea atu tētahi, “Arā anō, kua tau te īkara.”—“The eagle has landed.” Nō reira me mihi atu ki tērā mema.

Tautoko katoa i mahi tahi ana mātou ki roto i ngā tukanga katoa i tērā komiti, heoi anō kotahi anō te raru i puta i te komiti i a tātou i taua wā. I tētahi pō i taupatupatu te Waikato Chiefs me te Canterbury Crusaders te āhua nei, heoi i te otinga atu tērā whakataukī i rangona rongonui i a Nui Tīreni whānui: “Rugby was the winner at the end of the day.”

He nui ngā kaupapa noa ki roto i te rahinga o tēnei pire. I whakapau kaha mātou ki te tirohia me pēhea ka aro ērā āhuatanga ki roto i ngā waeture o ngā kaunihera, ki roto i ngā kaupapa here o te tae atu ki ngā tari Kāwanatanga, me pēhea rānei ki te kuhu tērā āhuatanga ki roto i tēnei pire.

Te tuatahi ko te reo, te rē, te rē kaharea, te reo o te kohu, te reo o te Moriori, me pēhea ka ora ai tērā āhuatanga nā rātou. Ko ētahi mea atu he mita, ko ētahi mea atu he reo. Heoi mēnā ka kōrero koe ki te rē, te reo ki te ngākau o te tangata ki roto i te arero o te tipuna, kei tērā tangata, ā, he reo tūturu anō tērā. Nō reira, me mihi atu au ki a Kiwa Hammond. I a ia i haere mai ki tō mātou nei taha ki Rēkohu me te whāngaihia ngā kōrero mō tōna taha Moriori hei ako i a mātou hei ākona tātou katoa ki tērā ō ngā āhuatanga.

Ko tētahi atu āhuatanga anō me whakanunui ki roto i ngā pūnaha mātauranga. Te tūmanako ka tutuki tērā āhuatanga ki roto i te marau hītori ka puta ake nei ki roto i ngā tau tata nei, kia tika ngā kōrero mō ō tātou nei whānau imi Moriori i te mea i whakaako i ērā kōrero i roto i ngā hītori nā runga i te hē, nā runga i te tūkino o te ngākau o ērā iwi taketake, te imi o Moriori.

Tētahi atu anō kia mōhio tēnei mea te hokopapa, arā me te whakapapa nā runga i te mea ko te hokopapa te whakapapa anō tērā te pūtake o tō tātou nei ao Māori, otirā ko tēnei te pūtake o tō tātou nei ao Poronēhia. Tērā te whanaungatanga i waenga i a tātou katoa ahakoa he hokopapa atu ki te nōta ki te kanaka Maoli, otirā ki te rāwhiti ki te Rapa Nui, te pū o Poronēhia o ō tātou nei whānau ki Tahiti, otirā ki ngā imi Moriori. Nō reira, he nui ngā kōrero i puta i tō mātou nei haerenga, i tō mātou nei taenga atu ki Rēkohu.

Heoi anō me whai ara anō kia pakari ai o tō rātou nei ara rē, tō rātou nei ara whakarite o tō rātou nei kōrero tuku iho i ō rātou nei karāpuna ki a rātou anō. He aha ai? Kia pakari ai rātou i roto i tēnei ao hurihuri e noho nei tātou i tēnei wā. Nā runga i tēnā, nā runga i te kotahitanga o tō mātou nei komiti i haere tahi ai ki Rēkohu kei te whakaae mātou nā te Pāti Kākāriki ki tēnei rauna o tēnei pire.

[To the Speaker, in peace.

Rangitokona holds up the sky

Rangitokona props up the dawn

The pou stands against the baldness of the sky

It stands against the bareness of the sky

It stands; a thought against the Earth

It stands; a thought against the Sky

It stands; a wedge against the Earth

It stands; a wedge against the sky

The pou, the pou stands, the pou of the sky

I am fortunate to stand here to support the speeches made around this house at this time, and to be in agreement with all the speakers. That was the feeling of the committee that went together to the Chatham Islands. Accordingly, I have to acknowledge our hosts and their ancestors. They themselves are their original inhabitants of the Chatham Islands. I learnt many things by going in person to their islands. I felt the spirit and I felt the life force.

At one time we were sitting in a forest and Rawiri Waititi said to me, “This isn’t Aotearoa; this isn’t New Zealand. This place has its own spirit and it has its own language”. All of our languages take their characteristics from the environment. There is a language of the sea, there is another language from the mountains, a language of the rivers, and there is another language from the mist. That was the first thing I learnt when I went there. Rēkohu is the language of the mist. When we went down, when we descended into the mist we knew then that we were in a different place.

Therefore, I must acknowledge the tribes. I support the acknowledgments to the Hokotehi Moriori Trust who invited us to their marae, te Kōpinga, to sit with a humble and peaceful heart to listen to their stories.

One of the stories that spoke to my heart was about their ancestors, that they bypassed the South Island and the North Island of New Zealand and went directly to Rēkohu from Polynesia. This is the reason why their language is different from ours, the people of the land in Aotearoa. As I was thinking about that, I was pleased, because it was one of the four corners of Polynesia that I hadn’t visited. With the knowledge that not only are the Hawaiian people from the north part of our family, along with those of Rapa Nui in the East, but also those who are indigenous to the Chatham Islands. Because of that, when I arrived at those islands, it wasn’t as if I was a stranger to the spirit or to the life-force, because I had felt that before in some of the islands I had visited in the Pacific. Therefore, I acknowledge those stories that have been carried down from the ancestors to today’s generation.

To all those who came to te Kōpinga marae, and also to all the processes involved in this select committee—we had 55 submissions: 43 were in support; six were against; six were neither for nor against. However, as I was listening to the stories at te Kōpinga marae, the words not only reached my ears but an insight and enlightenment touched my heart. I think this was the same experience for all of the members who went there in person. I would like to acknowledge the members who went to Rēkohu. The local tribes were pleased and the brothers and sisters in the Chatham Islands were also pleased to see their member of Parliament, Paul Eagle. While we were at the pōwhiri somebody said “Look over there. The eagle has landed.” Therefore, I greet that member.

Everyone supported our collaborative work and all the processes of that committee. However, there was one disturbance that affected the committee while we were there. One night, the Waikato Chiefs were playing the Canterbury Crusaders it seemed, and at the end we heard that proverb which is famously heard throughout New Zealand: “Rugby was the winner at the end of the day”.

There are many common issues throughout this bill. We spent a lot of time trying to see how we could get those issues embedded in council bylaws, and in the policies of Government departments and how to embed them in this bill.

First is the language of the Moriori and its survival. Some say it’s a dialect and some say it is a language. However, when you speak to someone’s heart in the language, in the tongue of their ancestors, to that person, yes, it’s a real language. So I must acknowledge Kiwa Hammond, who came to Rēkohu to sit with us and tell us about his Moriori side to educate us about those aspects.

Another aspect needs to be commemorated by the education system. Hopefully, that will be achieved in the new history curriculum due to appear in the next year or so, so that the histories of our family of Moriori tribes can be corrected, because their stories have been taught incorrectly in the past with negative consequences for those indigenous people, the Moriori.

Another thing is to understand that genealogy is the foundation of our Māori world and beyond that. It is the foundation of the world of Polynesia. These are the relationships between us all, whether we link back to Hawaii in the north, to Rapa Nui in the east, to the centre of Polynesia in Tahiti, or to the Moriori. Therefore, there were many stories that emerged during our visit to Rēkohu.

Accordingly, we must find ways for them to strengthen their language, to collate their oral histories, passed down from the ancestors. Why? To strengthen them in this changing world where we all now live. On that basis and in the spirit of the unity of our committee who went together to Rēkohu, we of the Green Party support this reading of this bill.]

DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in support of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. ACT has long supported the Treaty settlement process. It comes from a belief in property rights, justice, and the rule of law, that where it can be established, through a fairly lengthy process—and it is a very thorough process that the Waitangi Tribunal goes through with claimants, and the Office of Treaty Settlements goes through in trying to propose redress for claims, and then Parliament and select committees debate a bill; a very lengthy process—it’s right and proper for any country to put right wrongs that have happened in its past.

This particular bill, the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, I think is one that, actually, a lot of people might find interesting, because there has been such a popular—although completely incorrect—mythology around who the Moriori people are and what role they’ve played in the history of New Zealand. I myself was somebody who grew up and went to a primary school and was subjected to edition after edition of the School Journal in our primary school library, all neatly packed into their boxes, year after year, and the School Journal—I have to say, somewhat earlier than the times I was at school—has been responsible for all sorts of mythology carried through New Zealand culture over the last century or so. It told a story that I suspect many New Zealanders probably still believe to be true, which goes something like this: that the Moriori were the original inhabitants of New Zealand before Māori and were, effectively, pushed out of New Zealand, or at least the main North and South Island part of New Zealand, to reside in the Chatham Islands. That has been used for various purposes and had many various arguments based upon it over a long period of time.

But as clause 8 of this bill recounts, this actual story was somewhat different, and I think it’s very helpful that Parliament is passing a very short and abridged version of the history but nonetheless a factual one, that during the select committee process has been challenged by others, and the select committee has decided that, actually, they are going to maintain the historical account that they themselves had received. It goes something like: the Moriori arrived in the Chathams around about 1000 to 1400 AD. They lived for about 400 to 800 years in what is said to be a peaceful and harmonious way—although it is a pretty exposed sort of a part of the world out there, but nevertheless set about a sustainable society. It wasn’t until the late 1800s, with the arrival of English ships, that they made contact again with what you might call the outside world. It wasn’t until 1835 that they were again made contact with by the Māori people, or at least representatives of two iwi, who, effectively, colonised the Chatham Islands, some would argue—and certainly in this account—taking advantage of historic Moriori pacifism.

The overall results of this were devastating, and it’s a very sad story that occurred in the years to come. The Māori Land Court, established by the Crown, actually decided to award about 97 percent of all land in the Chathams not to Moriori but to those who had more recently arrived and done considerable violence against them. Now, it’s not the first or the last people to be upset about a court case outcome, but this was particularly egregious, I think most people would say. There were any number of injustices. When the Electoral Act said that there was a franchise with four Māori seats, the country was divided into four districts, but for some time the Chatham Islands were actually excluded—literally geographically excluded—from the franchise. The Chatham Islands were outside any electorate, and this wasn’t resolved, I think, until around about 1922, it says here. So, again, one injustice after another.

The result of this is that by the turn of the century, a population of around 2,000 Moriori who had lived pre-1835 had been reduced to only 31, and at about that time a lot of elders passed on. It seemed that the Moriori culture might be erased from the surface of the Earth by this series of events. It’s a great tribute to those survivors who have gone on to rebuild the culture and to re-establish its identity, to fight back against the myths of the School Journal, and to actually establish identity and some rights, and this legislation, which acknowledges that history, issues an apology from the Crown, is a big part of that.

It’s particularly ironic, some of the violations of rights—you know, those people who were enslaved by the arrival of Māori iwi in the mid to late 1830s, this happened at a time when the British Crown in England had just famously, under the leadership of William Wilberforce, outlawed the slave trade. It was a time when the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840, said that people would have their rights and duties secured, their taonga—and surely that means self-ownership of their own bodies—protected by the Crown, and the Crown really failed to uphold people’s basic rights in their law and order within New Zealand, allowing one group of people to be subjugated by another group of citizens. So, given that that was what the British Crown was standing for at the time and what actually happened, I think the apology in this legislation is very appropriate.

Of course, it goes on: where possible, and with the confines of Treaty settlements, given that Treaty settlements do not award privately held property to other people, it goes on to give back what is possible, to give some claims over customary fishing rights and restore something like what those people in the Chathams might’ve had, had it not been for that failure, but also acknowledging that much has happened in that time. Of course, there won’t be, ever, a full cultural or commercial redress of these rights.

So that is the story of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. I think it’s a very worthwhile milestone. It’s a very important story in New Zealand history. It’s one that has been subject to so much mythology by so many New Zealanders over such a long period of time. I think the pursuit of truth, universal human rights, justice, and property rights that this legislation exists in is a very worthy thing that the ACT Party is very happy to support. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Paul Little.

Paul Eagle: Tēnā koe—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Oh, beg your pardon—beg your pardon. Apologies; I call Paul Eagle.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): I didn’t hear what you said, so there we are—we’re even-stevens. But kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s my pleasure to speak on the second reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill.

E ngā mana, e ngā re, rau ieriki-ieriki mā. Tēnā kotou, tēnā kotou, tēnā kotou katoa. E te imi e Rēkohu, tēnā kotou.

[Exalted figures and voices of authority, and multitudes of leaders. Acknowledgments to each and every one of you. To the people of Rēkohu, you are acknowledged.]

It is a pleasure to be here as the member for the Chatham Islands / Rēkohu / Wharekauri with my colleague Rino Tirikatene as the Māori electorate MP. Together, with all of you in this House, we represent the Chatham Islanders and do our best, and this has been quite a process. I say this because we are progressing it through the House, and I know that the Moriori people would like it done faster, but I offer the apology in terms of the timing because of COVID-19.

I want to just say that I had the honour of being on the Chatham Islands in February last year. We were at Kōpinga Marae and signing the deed of settlement, and I remember it well. It’s a very fine whare for those who have been there, and in front of the two pou that had the names of many of those who had perished in the 19th century from those islands. It was a privilege to be with the Hon Andrew Little, the Treaty negotiations Ministers; other Ministers; other members of Parliament; and to be representing the Government and embraced by their manawarekatanga. It is with pleasure that we are now at the second reading.

I’m part of the Māori Affairs Committee, and we’ve heard today that the select committee travelled to the Chathams to undertake the submissions, and that in itself each time—and we’ve heard how members described their journeys of understanding and their knowledge of the imi and how it fits in terms of the context of Māori, tauiwi, Pākehā, and others, who come now to form what is the Chatham Island people.

But I want to just refer directly to some of the submissions, and one of those is from Maui Solomon, the chief negotiator for the settlement. He has put in a tireless amount of work, and that’s reflected in his submission. He reminds us that “The original claim petition for justice for Moriori was filed by Hirawanu Tapu and 30 rangata matua with the Governor, Sir George Grey, in June 1862. No response to that petition has survived, but eight years later in 1870, the Native Land Court was established on Rēkohu and Moriori were robbed”—using his words—“of 98 percent of all their land, including highly valued outlying Islands. And some 126 years later the modern day claim was filed. Hearings took place in 1994-95 and the Waitangi Tribunal report ‘Rēkohu’ was released in 2001. This report largely vindicated and upheld all the claims that Moriori had made. The main finding was that [to quote] ‘the main relief by far is due to the Moriori people’. Negotiations commenced [way back] in 2004”—and I can understand some of Maui Solomon’s stress at waiting—“and were halted again in 2008 [as] … the Crown reprioritised its claims settlement agenda. Negotiations recommenced in 2016 and a Deed of Settlement”—as I said at the start—“was signed in February 2020.” And can I acknowledge, again, Maui Solomon for really his life’s work to seek justice for Moriori and to honour his karapuna by telling their story and returning to Moriori their place in the world.

I want to just acknowledge the negotiating team: Tom Lanauze, Paul Solomon, Grace LeGros, and claims manager Susan Thorpe for their efforts—and on the Crown side, the Hon Dame Fran Wilde, who had some task in bringing this together, but if she was here today, and the people of Moriori, they would certainly celebrate this long, long journey. And so can I also acknowledge other Ministers in addition to Minister Little: the Hon Christopher Finlayson and the Hon Eugenie Sage as the conservation Minister, who over some time helped pull together the redress. And this is just one part of three settlements that will happen on island. We’ve heard references to Ngāti Mutunga o Wharekauri. There is a third and that is the shared redress, where Moriori and Mutunga will work together with the Crown and the detail of how things are put together will come forward into what’s known as a shared redress. There were a number of ministries involved, Crown agencies represented, and they remain active today, working on making sure that the deed is delivered.

I want to just pick up on a couple of other submissions that were made. We’ve heard strong references to the place of the Moriori reo, the language, ta rē Moriori, and the desire to have that recognised as an official language. One submission came from Erin King, who is of Moriori descent, an employee of the Ministry of Education, and she spoke vividly about her children’s desire to reclaim their heritage and understand at least some Moriori language so they, being Canterbury-, Christchurch-based, could learn and not wait. I don’t think she gave her age, but I was assessing—like myself, it took many, many years for the education system to truly integrate te reo Māori into the system. Her hope was that there would be the same acknowledgment to Moriori, and that account was accurate. So there are some similarities there. I felt for her, and it was good to hear those concerns being put at the feet of her children as part of her journey of discovery.

And that’s the great thing about the claims settlement process. I know other iwi have said, when these Treaty settlements proceed, they go through, they act as a process that allows those who may not have connected to their iwi for a million reasons, but these are the vehicle or the mechanism that allow a stronger connection.

Less so as part of this is we did get a submission from the New Zealand Rock Lobster Industry Council and the Paua Industry Council. Fisheries is a big economic and tourism driver for the island. They put through a submission and said, “Look, we have looked at the provisions of the bill.”, and, in terms of the primary industries protocol and the rāhui areas and the new customary fishing regulations in respect of clauses, they had something to say on that. They were endorsed, much to their surprise, I must say, but my workings with them on island—and I know that my colleague Rino Tirikatene also agrees—means that they reflect the reality and ensure that Moriori and all Chatham Islanders will benefit.

There is a whole lot more that could be said around this process. We are at the second reading. I’m really looking forward to the third reading and the imi Moriori sitting in this House—

Hon Simon Bridges: And those rock lobsters.

PAUL EAGLE: And just maybe we’ll have some crayfish, and the member for Tauranga and I can celebrate. Kia ora. Me rongo.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member’s time has expired. I call Nicola Willis—five minutes.

NICOLA WILLIS (National): Thank you, Madam Speaker. E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā iwi, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa. National supports this bill, as it gives effect to the deed of settlement that settles the historic claims of Moriori, and it records the acknowledgments and an apology by the Crown to Moriori. In this contribution, I want to acknowledge the history behind this settlement and those who have contributed to us being at the second reading.

I acknowledge Paul Eagle, the member in this House with perhaps the most familiarity with the Chatham Islands. Madam Speaker, you referred to him as “Paul Little” accidentally, and I’d say that that’s because he’s put such great efforts into his health of late. But I would also like to acknowledge the Crown negotiator, the Rt Hon Dame Fran Wilde, and the preceding National Party efforts to get this negotiation going: Minister Chris Finlayson, who in 2016 kicked this off again after an unsuccessful period of negotiation from 2004 to 2008; former Prime Minister the Rt Hon Sir John Key, who in 2017 signed the agreement in principle; and today the Hon Andrew Little, who has brought this bill to the House. I make those acknowledgments noting that these sorts of agreements, I think, carry particular weight in this House due to the fact that parties across the House have contributed to them and stand by them.

In this particular case, there is a long history. We could look to 1988 when the Moriori claims were first formally filed, but I think Moriori would rightfully say that we need to go back to 1862, which was when Moriori representatives first wrote to Governor George Grey seeking release from enslavement and return of their lands. So it has been a long time getting here today—more than 158 years. The redress which the Crown offers today and which National stands in support of is an apology. It does include cultural and commercial redress of lands, of money, but, I think, perhaps most importantly, it’s an agreement of a corrected historical account of the history of the Moriori and the historic breaches that they have been subjugated to.

Other speakers have mentioned the School Journal history, which so wrongly articulated the history of the Moriori people, and, I think, for myself it wasn’t until I read Michael King’s history of New Zealand that I saw just how wrong and harmful that myth that Moriori were somehow an inferior race of people that had been driven out of New Zealand and away on to the Chatham Islands was. In fact, Moriori had lived in Rēkohu, the Chatham Islands, undisturbed for centuries until Pākehā came in 1791, and it was in 1835 that they were displaced by Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, who came not in peace but in war and who enslaved large numbers of Moriori and wiped out about a sixth of the population. At that time, the Moriori stood strong in their culture, which was one of peace. They adhered to what they called Nunuku’s Law, and they didn’t fight back. While there is honour in that, obviously much damage was done, and in 1870 that wrong was compounded by the Native Land Court handing recognition of all of those lands away from the Moriori.

So National supports this bill—for the apologies it contains, for the correcting of the historic record, for the acknowledgment of Moriori as tangata whenua in the Chatham Islands, and for redress for those grievances. And, finally, we acknowledge the efforts of all who’ve helped bring this agreement into being and all those leaders who have fought for this moment. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I call Willow-Jean Prime—five-minute call.

WILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour—Northland): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. He Hōnore tēnei mōku te tū i tēnei ahiahi ki te whakakī i te wā o Te Paati Māori kāhore i konei i tēnei ahiahi.

Engari e tū ana ahau ki te tautoko i tēnei kaupapa. E tautoko ana te Rōpū Reipa i tēnei pire. Kua noho au ki te whakarongo ki ngā kōrero o ngā kaikōrero katoa i roto i tēnei Whare i tēnei ahiahi. E mihi ki a koutou katoa ngā kaikōrero.

Tino pai te rongo i ngā kōrero e pā ana ki tēnei pire nā te mea ehara ahau i te mema i runga i te Komiti Māori, ahakoa ētahi tāima he kairīwhi ahau mō ētahi o ngā mema o te Komiti Māori. Kāhore ahau i noho i roto i te komiti i te wā e kōrero ana e pā ki tēnei pire, i te wā hoki i haere rātou ki Rēkohu, nō reira e mihi ana ki a koutou. Engari ko te mihi nui ki te imi o Rēkohu, nā rātou i whakapau kaha kia tae mai ki tēnei wā, arā ki te pānuitanga tuarua o tēnei pire i roto i te Whare.

E mihi ana ki te Minita, arā ko Anaru Iti, ki te Heamana o te Komiti Māori, arā ko Tāmati Coffey ki ngā mema o te takiwā o Rēkohu, arā ko taku whanaunga a Rino Tirikatene, te mema Māori mō tērā motu me te hoa a Paul Eagle anō hoki. Nō reira, e mihi ana ki ngā mema o te komiti o tēnei taha o tērā taha hoki. I mau mai te kaupapa ki roto i te Whare i tēnei ahiahi. E mihi ana mō tō ripoata.

Tino harikoa ana ahau kua tae mai ki tēnei wā o te pānuitanga tuarua o tēnei pire. Engari, ko te mea nui, ko te mea tuatoru. Nō reira, i runga i tēnā ka waiho aku kōrero i konei. Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great honour for me to stand and fill in for Te Paati Māori who couldn’t be here today.

I stand in support of this initiative. The Labour Party supports this bill. I have sat and listened to the words of all the speakers in the House this afternoon, and wish to thank all of them.

It was good to hear the speeches about this bill, because I am not a member of the Māori Affairs Committee, although at times I have deputised for various members. I wasn’t sitting on the committee when this bill was discussed or at the time that they went to Rēkohu, but I wish to thank you all. However, the biggest acknowledgment must go to the people of the Chatham Islands who have worked tirelessly to get to this point, that is, the second reading of this bill in the House.

I want to acknowledge the Minister, Andrew Little; the chair of the Māori Affairs Committee, Tāmati Coffey; and the members of Parliament for the Chatham Islands—over there, my relation Rino Tirikatene, the Māori member for that island, and here, my friend Paul Eagle. So I acknowledge the members of the committee from both sides of the House. This initiative has been brought to the House this afternoon. I thank you for your report.

I’m very pleased that we have got to this point of the second reading of this bill, but the main thing is the third reading. Therefore, on the basis of that I will leave my speech there. Thank you, Madam Speaker.]

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. Ki a koutou katoa i roto i tēnei Whare, ka mihi atu rā ki a koutou. Pai ki te kite i a koutou i tēnei wā ā-kanohi, arā ka mihi atu ki a koutou anō. Arā ka mihi au ki ngā tāngata o Tāmaki-makau-rau i tēnei wā, ngā kaiārahi o tēnei mate, arā ka mihi atu ki a koutou. Ka hoki au ki ngā tāngata Moriori o tēnei kaupapa. Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Madam Speaker, greetings. To everyone in this House, greetings to you all. It is good to see you in person so I can greet you once again. I also want to acknowledge the leaders in Auckland during these troubled times. I now return to the subject under discussion, the Moriori people. Greetings one and all.]

Madam Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak this afternoon. On reflection, over this year I’ve had the opportunity to follow my own whānau, in the Mōkai Pātea claim. It’s not until you come so close to home and a claim and you follow it through and you become informed and more informed about your own history that you understand the nawe—the hurt—of the past, but particularly the sadness of loss of your story, your reo, and your culture, and the hurt that that’s created amongst your people.

I want to acknowledge, this afternoon, Maui Solomon. I remember very vividly the whānau when they sat up here in the first reading. I remember vividly the pōwhiri when our Minister Andrew Little welcomed the whānau. They shared their stories and they validated their existence and corrected the past. Maui said, “Moriori are not Māori. We have similarities to Māori, but we’re the indigenous people of Rēkohu with our own language, our own customs, our own traditions, and, most importantly, we have a 600-year history of peacemaking, peacekeeping, that is probably unparalleled anywhere in the world.” That speaks largely to the Moriori people.

Today is an acknowledgment of them, and I acknowledge them at home and watching, hopefully, on Parliament TV, a very, very special day, and, no doubt, they would otherwise be here with us. Today does validate their existence, and it’s a very important day to acknowledge them as the indigenous people of the Chathams and the waina pono.

I speak out loud this afternoon on their behalf to acknowledge their grievance. Their main grievance is here with our Crown. The failure to intervene to end the enslavement of Moriori—failure to protect Moriori from becoming virtually landless, following an 1870 Native Land Court decision to award less than 3 percent of the land on Rēkohu to the Moriori. Failure to protect their language—ta rē Moriori—the grievance and the role in the collection and trade of kōimi karāpuna, the Moriori ancestral bones or remains, that were completely ignored. The role in promoting myth that stigmatised Moriori as racially inferior people that became extinct. I, like others, and as we acknowledge here in the House, grew up to understand that the Moriori people did not exist, and that’s a sad, sad outcome for the culture and identity of particularly the young people, the tamariki, the rangatahi, that grow up wanting to know their identity.

Can I acknowledge our Minister Andrew Little for the work that him and his team have done on this particular bill, the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. It’s been my privilege, actually, to sit alongside my Māori Affairs Committee—Joseph Mooney across the House, Todd Muller, Teanau Tuiono, and my own colleagues, the chair of our committee, Tāmati Coffey. Can I also acknowledge our tuahine, who has been part of this journey to reviewing this bill, Arena Williams, who is still with our whānau in Tāmaki-makau-rau.

I wasn’t able to join our select committee to head over to the Chathams when they visited to hear these particular submissions. That was disappointing, because they all spoke highly of the hospitality and manaakitanga of these particular people. They all came back with a couple of notches on their belts to make way for the beautiful kai that they had over on the islands at that particular time. But I also understand that they got to get their steps up as they went and saw the historic sites, the meaningful sites, to the Moriori people over on the Chathams.

It was remiss of me to not acknowledge our MP for Rongotai. It’s a little bit of a hoot this afternoon that we called him “Paul Little”. He’s no little man, but he’s got a big heart for our Chathams and the people over there. He’s been instrumental in helping us as a select committee to both understand the needs of the Moriori people but also the stories of Ngāti Mutunga and the debate that has happened over there. Indeed, it’s important to resolve those particular issues.

But today is an opportunity for us to resolve the grievance that is Moriori, the Moriori people alone. I look back to one of the submissions that I did hear online, a well-known old boy of a good Māori Catholic boarding school in the Northcote area, named Patrick Nicholas, a very good man who resides in Tauranga Moana, but has whakapapa, I understand, over to the Moriori people. He too shared his stories and the importance of this particular claim, going through, that we recognised both the history, the language, the culture, but also enabled Moriori to rebuild themselves for a very prosperous future.

He asked us to consider in particular, and recommended, that the Government initiatives on wider education of the Moriori history and culture is recognised, invested in, and that we continue to work hard to give them the best hand up to revitalise their language and culture for them. I too acknowledge the work that we have done with the curriculum development of New Zealand histories being taught in our school. But I also acknowledge that there’s a lot more work to do to ensure that Moriori stories are encompassed in the curriculum that our young people learn. They are part of our history and we want to ensure that we include that. Patrick also recommended that we support cultural revitalisations, and we acknowledge the very taonga in the historic cave that is very important to the Moriori people. And there’s plenty of work to do that.

Of course, our Labour Party, in our manifesto, acknowledges that we would like to settle historical Treaty claims with the Crown. We’re committed to that piece of work, and it’s been my honour, as part of the Māori Affairs Committee, to hear both this bill but also some of the others, like Ngāti Rangitihi. It’s an interesting story, and, as we look to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this particular bill, we acknowledge the grievance, the hurt, but, more importantly, in the second reading, that we take another step forward to enhancing the future for the Moriori people, for their mokopuna, and, most of all, for the future of their stories, their language, and their culture. Nō reira, e mihi ana ki a koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Therefore, greetings to you. Greetings, one and all.]

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Other members in this House have, in their contributions, acknowledged the local member of Parliament for the Chatham Islands, Mr Paul Eagle. I was very recently at a gentleman’s club in Wellington for dinner, and the waiter came up to me and said, “It’s so good to have you back, Mr Eagle.” I think that’s a reflection on the fact that I’ve grown and he’s shrunk, and it’s an insult to both of us, frankly. But that’s the way it goes.

It’s very good to speak on this bill, the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill, as a lawyer. I say that, because, I suppose, not just lawyers but certainly as lawyers—and I say a lawyer; I no longer have a practicing certificate, but once upon a time I did for several years—we perceive ourselves as righting wrongs and fighting against injustice. This bill is very much in that category; it rights wrongs and—it’s not too much to say—gross historical injustices, in this instance, in relation to the Moriori people. It does that in three ways: it acknowledges the injustice with an apology, and with apology redress it does that; in cultural redress, and I’m not going to go through all of that as it’s in the bill and indeed in the explanatory note in the bill; and it does that through commercial and financial redress of $18 million. As, I think I, basically, always say when I speak on Treaty settlement bills, we can and do acknowledge that that $18 million is a very small—I suppose, in a sense—token of the injustice. And that’s how it has to be, because, in truth, in modern society today, we can’t fully recompense for the harms done; in fact, if we did, we’d create other injustices in the process of doing that by taking back lands and doing all manner of those sorts of things, which wouldn’t be practical either. But, nevertheless, there is redress of a sort, even if it is not anywhere near full in a real sense of that.

Today is a part of the story, and an important part of the story, in the history of the Moriori people. We learnt, and I agree with, I think, the member Shanan Halbert made the point that the stigma and the myths that there have been around the Moriori people, we learnt wrong. I can’t actually remember exactly what I thought as a young kid growing up, but I know we had these stories about Moriori people. I think one of them was, as has been said, that Moriori people were extinct, and, nevertheless, I think one thing we did learn which is positive—and which is true as set out in the notes to this bill—is that the Moriori have always been, for many hundreds of years on the Chatham Islands, a peaceable people and an egalitarian people without class distinctions, the way that both Western society has had, and, frankly, that much of Māori culture has also had. If we cast forward from the 100 years of Moriori in the Chathams, in the 1830s, many were slaughtered and enslaved by iwi. In light of that history of peace—pacifism of a sort—little resistance, tragically, I suppose, in a sense, was given.

The Crown, in response to that then, in the decades that followed, certainly into the 1860s, possibly a bit beyond that, I think I’m right to say, did nothing to free those enslaved people. That was despite the Crown having—I suppose to use the fancy legal words, maybe not quite right in this context—a fiduciary duty, because the Chathams was part of the Realm of New Zealand held by the Crown. As other speakers have said, what’s also true is the Native Land Court added insult to injury by holding in judgment that nearly all of that land was iwi’s, 97 percent—not Moriori land, which was wrong and which was, as the result of, as I say, the enslavement of Moriori people. The number the notes tell us—amazing to think, probably the same number of members of Parliament in this House at this current time—of Moriori people fell to 31 people. That’s not to mention the other injustices; I’ve talked about the teaching we learnt, the wrong teaching of the inferiority of Moriori people. It’s a tragic tale, and a shame, actually, for New Zealand. Albeit today, the good news is that this House, through this bill, as it makes its way through the process that we have in this House, rights those wrongs, deals with those injustices, and, of course, National, as has been made clear, supports this bill.

I want to say a couple of other things. Firstly, National has always, consistently, over time, supported and, indeed, started, really, under the Bolger years, the Treaty process of righting historical grievances. So we support this unequivocally. We have, as I say, a proud history on the historical grievances, and I would say—and I don’t want to be overly political today in this debate—to the Minister Andrew Little and to his colleagues, actually their record some four years in of progressing Treaty settlements isn’t that fast, isn’t that flash, and I say to them, actually, they should be not only motivated but outcomes-oriented when it comes to historical Treaty settlements. Chris Finlayson, Doug Graham, and other Treaty and Māori ministers in National certainly have been.

It’s a different position when it comes to some of the contemporary work we see from this Government, where, actually, Ministers seem to be very motivated, and I’m not going to go into the various details around things that are happening, but we worry in the National Party that some of the things that are happening from this Government in a contemporary sense are not right and we will look back and see them as divisive in this country of ours, New Zealand. We want to see policies—when it comes to Māori, Moriori, New Zealanders—that are sustainable, that are unified, that are commensurate with a multicultural liberal democracy, which is absolutely what we are.

I’m, like other members—I don’t know exactly what will happen—looking forward to the celebrations at the third reading. I hope that Andrew Little, or, if it’s not him, Rino Tirikatene, or, if it’s not him, Paul Eagle, will make sure there is some of that fabulous kai moana from the Chathams. I’ve been on the Māori Affairs Committee for a term. I’m not going to lie and say I miss it massively, but I do miss travelling around our country, ending up on marae, experiencing and enjoying local delicacies, and I know from my colleague Todd Muller what a wonderful time it was on the Chathams, actually, as members heard submissions on this bill; I’m sure heartfelt submissions and I’m sure, as I’ve said, tragic submissions, but, in amongst that, meeting with the people, experiencing what is a wonderful part of this country.

So let’s hope this bill progresses smoothly, swiftly, that the injustices are put to bed—as it were—through this bill, and that the celebration is fitting to, in a sense, meet and be commensurate with the injustices that have occurred over the years.

RINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. E te imi Moriori, tēnā koutou e mātakitaki mai nei, ngā uri o ngā tūpuna rongonui, o Rongomaiwhenua me Rongomaitere, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa. E tū ake au ki te tautoko i tēnei pire, te Pire Whakatau Kerēme a Te Imi Moriori i tēnei pānuitanga tuarua. Nō reira, huri rauna i tō tātou Whare, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tātou katoa.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker. Greetings to all in the House. To the Moriori people who are watching, the descendants of their famous ancestors, Rongomaiwhenua and Rongomaitere, greetings to you all. I stand today to support this bill, the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill second reading. Therefore, to all corners of this House, greetings, greetings, greetings one and all.]

I’m delighted to speak as the last speaker in this second reading of the Moriori Claims Settlement Bill. Just at the outset, I just want to state that I’m very pleased that I have never been mistaken for either Simon Bridges or Paul Eagle. I have pretty distinct Ngāi Tahu southern features—I don’t tend to be mistaken. But I am delighted to add my tautoko and endorsement to the further passage of this bill. As we have with every Treaty settlement, it’s a very significant piece of legislation in healing, in a way, the injustices of the past, acknowledging those, and also an opportunity for the Crown to make amends and to start a new relationship. And that’s what is embodied in all the Treaty settlements, with a hope for the future.

I’m pleased that I was a former member of Māori Affairs Committee, too—former chair in the last Parliament. I do want to apologise to Harete Hipango. She was correct. We were on the Chatham Islands, her and I and colleagues, for the actual signing of the deed, which took place in February 2020.

Harete Hipango: I wasn’t.

RINO TIRIKATENE: Oh, you weren’t there?

Harete Hipango: I’d like to have been.

RINO TIRIKATENE: Ha, ha! But anyway, I was there that day, but I wasn’t there, obviously, when the committee went down to hear submissions. But this is an historic occasion for a people that is now being recognised—further recognised, I guess—through this legislation. As we know, there have been tragic circumstances with the history, and I don’t want to, really, traverse that, because I know it’s been well covered in the contributions thus far.

But I do want to acknowledge the work of the Moriori whānau, in particular under the leadership of Maui Solomon, who I first met, it would have been around, over 35 years ago now, in the mid-1980s, when he was really starting his crusade to fight for recognition for the Moriori people. I was a young lad, but I was fortunate to be able to actually have a very full appreciation of the beauty of the Chatham Islands and also the wonderful Moriori people. The unveiling by the late Rt Hon Prime Minister David Lange of the statue of Maui’s grandfather, the late Tommy Solomon, who was the last full-blooded Moriori, which is there up in Manukau in the Chatham Islands. I think that really is like a pou which really signalled the start of the great deal of work that Maui and all of the Moriori whānau have been doing over those 35-plus years, to get to this point.

It hasn’t just come to a completion here; there have been numerous landmark achievements along the way, whether it’s in the Māori fisheries settlement and the recognition of the Moriori and the iwi of the Chatham Islands in the Māori fisheries settlements, all the way through now to addressing the historical treaty settlements, in particular with Moriori. So there’s been a lot of work that has gone on, and I’m so pleased that we’ve come to this stage of the bill whereby we are just rounding the corner and we’re about to enter into the home straight.

I want to acknowledge the great work of the Māori Affairs Committee under the chairmanship of my colleague Tāmati Coffey. Just reading the report of the committee, it’s wonderful to see that the committee didn’t just look at the actual black and white letters of the bill but they actually listened to the submissions and they took on board the issues that were raised, which were beyond the scope of the bill, but they inquired and they’ve made necessary investigations into things such as revitalisation of ta rē Moriori and also a protection of historical sacred areas like Te Ana a Nunuku. So I want to acknowledge the committee for going above and beyond in their examination of this bill, and I’m sure that has been appreciated not only by this House but by the whānau of te imi Moriori as well.

I, coming from the South—and I do want to acknowledge my colleague Paul Eagle; great member for Rongotai and the Chatham Islands. So much so that he pretty much carries the load for me over there most of the time. I’ve got a very vast area that goes beyond that, not least of which is the great Te Wai Pounamu, Rakiura, and also Te Upoko o Te Ika, as well. But I want to just talk to the fisheries-related amendments that were made in this bill. I work closely and support, as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Oceans and Fisheries, and I want to acknowledge the committee for the amendments that have been made on the basis of the submissions that were made—not all, obviously, but there were some very helpful submissions made on behalf of the lobster and pāua industry associations, in particular around adding a consultation requirement on the creation of a rāhui. I think it’s very important these days that consultation takes place, and so to have that prescribed in the legislation, I think, is the right thing to do and I commend that. Likewise, just the alignment of this bill with the Secondary Legislation Act, which is very important too, in terms of the treatment of by-laws and the review of such in this House. So I want to acknowledge the amendments that have been made to do that, because, as we know, the Chatham Islands are renowned for their kaimoana, I guess—the bounty of the sea and the land.

I was just looking at the stats—yeah, 135 jobs or a third of the employment on the islands is generated by the fishing industry. That generates, roughly, 40 percent of the total GDP, which is around $18.5 million dollars—and that that was from a few years ago, so I’m pretty sure that, given the prices that have now been ever-increasing for those luxury items like lobster and pāua, those numbers are going even higher. So that is a major contributor, but what I take heart from is that Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga are major quota owners on the island as well, owning about 16 percent of pāua and 11 percent of rock lobster. And, if you throw in the ownership that Māori have by virtue of Moana, which looks after the settlement on behalf of all Māori, that is a significant Māori-owned industry and very much locally supported and locally owned there on the Chathams as well.

I know my colleague Joseph Mooney will be talking about the hākari that was presented to the select committee when they were hearing submissions. All I can say is that, yes, the kaimoana is abundant and is very large in size on the Chatham Islands, but it’s probably about on par to the turtle-sized pāuas and lobsters that Paul Mooney and I have down in Ruapuke and in Fiordland as well—and equally contributing to our GDP as a nation. So this is a wonderful bill. I do acknowledge, again, te imi Moriori. This is a significant step forward and I’m really looking forward to the remaining stages, and, hopefully, we could usher those through before the end of the calendar year, or very soon. I support this bill. Kia ora tātou.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Associate Minister of Health): I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I move, That the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

This bill enables the director-general to direct local authorities to fluoridate their water supply. By having a consistent decision maker with access to the best scientific evidence, we will promote fluoridation across the country. It may be a surprise to members of the public who live in parts of the country where fluoride is already routinely used and has been for decades that only half of our population has access to this important public health measure; the other half lives in parts of the country where the water is not fluoridated. By passing this bill, we anticipate over time that the proportion will rise from 50 percent to 80 percent.

This bill is important, because dental health, in a way, is such a simple thing. If you enjoy good oral health, you probably take it for granted, but it matters so much to people who struggle with the consequences of dental caries, pain, procedures, and, in some cases, disfigurement. There is unequivocal evidence that fluoridation of drinking water prevents tooth decay. We know that it probably close to halves or reduces by maybe 40 percent the lifetime risk of tooth decay for children and adolescents who are exposed to fluoride when they’re young. It still makes an important contribution to the dental health of adults, probably reducing rates of tooth decay in adults by about 30 percent.

The science of fluoride was first established in the 1950s, and it is widely recommended by health authorities worldwide—the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control. It is used, as I said, in half of New Zealand, in Australia, in North America, in the United Kingdom, in Singapore. It has been recommended for a long time by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and our Prime Minister’s Chief Science Adviser, Dame Juliet Gerrard, recently updated the scientific evidence and produced a report showing that fluoride is still overwhelmingly beneficial and safe in terms of preventing dental caries.

In my work on this bill, I sought the views from dentists across the country who are widely in support of fluoridation. I heard from a dentist in Nelson Hospital who remarked, “I see it on a daily basis, the unnecessary pain and suffering children continue to endure for one simple reason: they live in a non-fluoridated area. It is absolutely heartbreaking removing teeth from young children, some as young as 18 months, still in nappies.” Indeed, that dentist’s experience is not uncommon. Tooth decay is not just something that sends you to the dental clinic; it sends many children to hospital. In 2019, 6,270 children under the age of 14 were admitted to our hospitals for an operation, and the young children, they need an anaesthetic because they cannot sit still to have their teeth extracted. So it is a big moment and negative consequences as a result of lack of fluoridation for these young people.

A dentist in the Hawke’s Bay wrote to me: “When community water fluoridation ceased in the Hawke’s Bay, there was a clear rise in tooth decay rates, particularly among Māori five-year-olds. It highlighted the benefit of water fluoridation in reducing inequalities.” We know that is true. A study from a couple of years back on the dental records of New Zealand year 8 children found that three-quarters of Māori children from regions without fluoridation have dental caries. Another dentist from Auckland who was locuming in Wānaka, where the water is not fluoridated, said, “Seeing the state of mouths of some teenagers in Wānaka almost made me cry. I know they have a lifetime of massive dental bills in front of them to maintain their teeth, and some of them will be in dentures before too long.” This bill will create a consistent national decision maker that will end the current patchwork of different approaches that exist across our country.

Now, this bill entered the House in 2016, and it was first considered by the select committee in 2017. This Government has altered the bill by Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) in line with a longstanding Labour policy that the Director-General of Health should be the decision maker in regards to these matters. I want to thank the select committee for their consideration of the SOP and their very helpful feedback, including the addition that the Director of Public Health should be consulted on any decisions made by the director-general. I also want to thank members of this House from all parties for their support of this bill at the second reading. This is our opportunity to comment on the bill now in its final form.

I also want to thank those in our community who have advocated for fluoridation for years. This includes some important individuals: Dr Martin Lee from Canterbury DHB; Dr Robin Whyman, the chief medical officer from Hawke’s Bay DHB; and Professor Murray Thomson from the University of Otago. There are many groups that have tirelessly advocated for fluoridation: the New Zealand Medical Association, Te Ao Mārama, the New Zealand Dental Association. In fact, Te Ao Mārama—the New Zealand Māori Dental Association—and the New Zealand Dental Association have advocated for fluoridation since the 1950s. I hope they take heart in the passing of this bill today. I must also mention the great work and advocacy for fluoridation of the New Zealand School and Community Oral Health Services Society.

As I mentioned, this bill will set up a nationally consistent decision-making process. Local factors will be taken into account, including the oral health of the population and the feasibility of fluoridation, the implementation readiness at each locality. But we will not be relitigating the science of fluoridation in every district in the country. The science of fluoridation is settled, just like the science of seatbelts and the science of vaccination. That isn’t to say locally-led action doesn’t have an important role in public health. It absolutely does, as we have seen through the Vaxathon, and it’s important in building healthy environments, for example as we could to promote smoking cessation. But, too often, devolution of public health functions has led to an abdication of Government responsibility for public health. Devolved fluoridation asks councils to evaluate technical health information and sometimes disinformation without the resources to do so. Many local authorities submitted in favour of this bill because they felt they were being asked to make a technical decision they were poorly equipped to take. This bill reflects the Government’s commitment to protecting the health of New Zealanders. This is about taking responsibility.

As Associate Minister of Health with a specific focus on public health, I am proud to be part of a Government that has led a world-class COVID-19 response; that has supported improved screening for women for cervical cancer and breast screening, with $110 million announced in Budget 2021; with a commitment to eliminate hepatitis C; and by mandating the addition of folate to flour to prevent neural tube defects. This is why the Government is cementing strong public health leadership through our reforms of the health and disability system. We will have a public health agency at the heart of our Ministry of Health, a strengthened role for the Director of Public Health, and strengthened expert advice to Ministers.

This bill will protect New Zealanders’ oral health. It will prevent pain, suffering, and disfigurement. It will save New Zealanders costly private dental treatments. It will free up our hospital resources for other needs. This is why we promote public health legislation: to make a positive difference in the lives of New Zealanders, to keep our people well so that they can pursue their aspirations for a full and healthy life.

To conclude on a personal note, in my maiden speech I identified action on fluoride and folate as two priority public health issues I aim to address in my time in Parliament, I am very proud to be able to address both within my first year as Minister. I look forward to seeing over time the improvement this will make to the health of our communities. I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to. I will say that I’ve just broken a tooth, and it’s a pity fluoride didn’t come a lot earlier.

Dr SHANE RETI (Deputy Leader—National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this bill, and National will be supporting this bill. Before I get into some of the details, just to respond to some of the Labour Party manifesto on dental healthcare, which I’ve just heard: where are the 20 mobile dental clinics that were promised in Budget 2021? If we’re so enamoured and convinced that dental health is important, where are they? The failed campaign promise.

Anyway, let’s talk to this bill. I do support—and we do support—fluoride. We believe in the science that supports fluoride. I think if we look across the health spectrum, if we look on a cost per people touched for benefit sort of ratio, it’s almost hard to go past fluoridation. There might be things that you could do in other parts of the food chain per se, but I’ve always found and always believed that fluoridation is one of those really effective mechanisms that can touch the most number of people in a good way. I can understand why district councils for many years have said that they were a poor fit to be injecting fluoride into the water. As has been said, they were sort of thinking, “This is a health response. We aren’t the specialists in health and yet we’re going to bear the responsibilities for things that might go wrong in areas that we don’t have domain expertise.”, and for a large number of councils, this was the reason why they didn’t fluoridate. So in 2016, we said, “Yes, look, we agree. Why don’t we shift that decision making to DHBs, where we’ve got that combination of elected people offering a community voice and appointed people bringing Government policy?” Sort of looking for that blend of both, understanding the sensitivities of fluoridation and fluoride in the water in communities. We thought that was a sensible place to put it.

Fluoride and fluoridation is important to Northland, we have one of the worst areas for dental decay. There’s been no fluoride in Northland over 20 years, apart from two years: 2007 to 2009 in Kaikohe and Kaitāia. I have a role to play in that story, so I’ll share it with the House. I was appointed to the Northland DHB and, at that point, there were 12 health needs that we were required to address and report to—that we had to go out and do a health needs assessment. I looked across all those responsibilities and said, “Well, I can’t do all of them. What would you choose?”, and so I chose Māori health to be good at, I chose the financial health of health systems, and I chose dental health as well. Of course, at this point in time, Northland has no fluoridation. So I arranged to meet at a council meeting with Far North District Council and proposed to them in the meeting that it was time to do a citizen’s referendum on fluoridation in their region.

The council chair heard me out—this is in a full council meeting—and says to me, “OK, Shane. We understand what you’re saying, but our reality is we’re not a wealthy council. We couldn’t afford to do a citizen’s referendum.” So what I then did was take out my personal cheque book, signed it and put the cheque on the table and said, “Now what’s the hurdle?” They said, “Let me just understand this. Are you saying that you’ll underwrite it?” And I said, “Yes, I will.” They said, “Do you know that’s going to be tens of thousands of dollars?” I said, “No, I don’t, but it is what it is.” They said, “OK, let’s just be clear here. What would happen is you would need to go out and get a balanced opinion from those for fluoride and those against. You need to present that evidence and then, if you did that, what we’d do is we’d put that in with the next rate demand. You’d need to organise the barcoding so when it came back, the analysis could—you’d need to do all of that.” I said, “Yeah, OK. I’m up for that.”

So I learnt more about barcoding that year than I really care to know. But that was what I needed to do. It went out to citizen’s referendum and the people of Kaikohe and Kaitāia said, “Yes.” Not by much, by a margin of about 56, 57 percent, as I recall. But it was statistically significant. So Far North District Council said, “We’re going to inject the fluoride in Kaikohe between October 2007 and September 2009 at the Taraire Hills and Monument Hill injection sites and at the Kaitāia supply 2007 to 2009, as well. I was particularly proud to have maybe just made a small difference there.

I tried the same with the Whangārei District Council and maybe got a bit too cute, because I made my proposal to the council, a binding proposal, as it went before council. It was looking really good up to 30 minutes before the council meeting and then Mayor Craig Brown realised that if they sign that off, they’re in deep trouble. They were going to be committed to what I was trying to sign them through to and so he stood it down and Whangārei council decided not to proceed. So it was the Far North for two years where I had a little bit of involvement to inject fluoride into their water.

I understand the sensitivities for communities that, for some, this is something that they don’t believe in and that doesn’t work, and they feel aggrieved that it’s placed into their water supply. So this was part of our thinking to pass it to DHBs where there was community representation. This bill removes that and places that with the director-general, and I understand the imperative for that, the imperative to more effectively implement across DHBs. The reality is that if it had have been just at a DHB level, there was probably some DHBs who would have said no, actually. That’s the indications we had. If we really believe this is an effective public health mechanism, it needs to be widely deployed so I can understand the imperative that places it with the director-general. I would still reflect—and this was the intent of the Supplementary Order Paper in my name—that we should still take the community view into account as best as we can. While I understand that the director-general does need to take into account the oral health of the population, the feasibility, the readiness to start, and the cost, at the end of the day, that Supplementary Order Paper was looking for a bit more than that from whatever becomes DHBs or replaces them, whatever that community contribution would be. I still think the community should have a say a bit more than what I’m seeing in this bill, and I hope that can be figured out. I hope that the director-general has got a bit more discretion to reach out further than what I’m interpreting the legislation as saying.

At the end of the day, I believe this will improve the implementation of fluoride across New Zealand. I believe in science. I think it will benefit people, and I think we can improve oral health statistics by taking measures of this type. That’s the sort of thing that here, in the National Party, we want to be a part of, and so we are supporting this bill. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Every year we’ve got thousands of children going into hospital with dental caries, and many of them are actually having quite painful multiple extractions for decayed teeth. When I used to monitor child health in my previous role, what we used to see was huge inequality, so Māori and Pasifika children and those from the poorer areas had much higher rates of decayed, filled, and missing teeth. The issue is that if you look at and say, “Well, can it just be individual responsibility?”, the problem we’ve got is, if you look at the 2018-19 health survey, what they found is that less than 60 percent of children are brushing their teeth at least twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste. So if you’re relying on behaviour change alone to address these inequalities, you’re not going to get very far.

What this bill originally, when it was introduced, aimed to do was transfer that decision making to the DHBs, for them to assess and then direct to councils around fluoridation, but with the upcoming health reforms in the middle of next year, it looks like what will be happening is that the functions of DHBs will then come under Health New Zealand and be merged into Health New Zealand. What the Supplementary Order Paper that Dr Ayesha Verrall introduced at the committee stage would mean is that that decision-making power transfer to the Director-General of Health. I think what that’s going to do is make sure we have a nationally consistent approach and a streamlined approach, because at the moment what we’ve got is only 54 percent of the population have access to fluoridated water, and that hasn’t changed much in the last 15 years. So what we’re going to do by having the director-general make those decisions is have a much more public health - focused, evidence-based decision-making process.

So this is a really important bill, and it has the potential to significantly improve the oral health status of New Zealand children. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This bill has had a—I was going to say “tortuous” journey but it actually hasn’t; it’s just a long journey to the third reading. I remember the discussion starting around fluoride soon after I became an MP in 2014, and I think it would be fair to say, and, Mr Speaker, you will remember—

SPEAKER: Soon after I became an MP in the 1980s, but anyway.

CHRIS BISHOP: I became an MP in 2014, but I was going to say, sir, that you will remember for a long time it was an issue that people didn’t really want to touch, because it was seen as a kind of hot-button, red flag issue—you know, not so much the third rail but something that was best left alone. In 2014, the last National Government, under then associate health Minister Peter Dunne, introduced legislation and it was sent to the select committee in December 2016, almost five years ago. The select committee report back was actually in May 2017, which is four and a half years ago, and it sat on the Order Paper for the entirety of the last Parliament.

That always surprised me, because although we had a minority Labour Government that relied on the Greens and New Zealand First for support, there was a clear majority in the Parliament to pass the legislation between Labour and National. There was a clear majority, and I always used to sit there and look at the Order Paper and think: why is the Government not advancing this quite sensible piece of legislation that will make a difference to oral health of young people? It just never happened and I don’t really understand why. Maybe the Government was afraid that if they put the bill up, National would kind of do a backflip and decide not to support it. And I see the former Minister of Health is nodding vehemently at me, which I, frankly, don’t understand because, you know, National supported the legislation as a sensible—in fact we introduced it, so it’d be a pretty strange thing for National having introduced the legislation to then turn around and not support it. Maybe he just couldn’t get the numbers with the Greens and New Zealand First. I mean, the Greens have historically been hostile to fluoride, I know, so it’ll be intriguing to see which way they vote on the third reading of this legislation.

But anyway, we are where we are, and it was interesting to hear the Associate Minister of Health in charge of the bill note that she wanted to do two things when she came into Parliament. One was folate, which again was a very vexed issue, going back to the last Government—in fact the first term of the last Government back in 2008, 2009, and I think it even extended into 2010. Well, that’s been ticked off. And the second issue that she identified was fluoride. So, clearly, Ayesha Verrall, the associate Minister, has got the Midas touch, because she’s sort of come into Parliament as a new MP and as someone who has done what very few people have done before her, which is become an MP and become a Minister contemporaneously. In fact, I think I think I’m right in saying that she would have been sworn in as a member of the Executive Council even before she was sworn in as an MP. The last person to do that, I think, was Steven Joyce before that; so very unusual to do that. And within the space of just over a year, she’s ticked them off. So, job done! Ayesha Verrall can now leave Parliament and hand it over to somebody else. So job done, but we’ll wait and see what happens next.

Look, fluoridation is something that I think any reasonable person, when they look at the science and the evidence, should support. It’s interesting that we are debating this legislation on a day in which there are large protests at Parliament on the forecourt in relation to—it’s hard to summarise exactly what the protests are about on the forecourt, but I think it’d be fair to say that science and the science of vaccination is part and parcel of those protests. I just want to send the message, I suppose, that to be guided by science is fundamentally important in relation to COVID-19, but it’s equally as important when it comes to things like fluoridation and public health, and in that regard, the science of fluoridation is very clear.

If you read the evidence that went before the Health Committee in the last Parliament, as I have done, and the evidence in the departmental disclosure statement that the Government has put on the table now for four or five years, it is very clear that the benefits of fluoridation are manifest and it makes a difference. That is why when you compare the water supplies in New Zealand that are fluoridated in comparison to the water supplies that are unfluoridated, you can see the difference that fluoridation makes.

Now, sir, you and I will both know that the area of Pētone in Lower Hutt—it is going to be interesting to see what happens to Pito-one, which is where I live, which is one of the unfluoridated parts—Pētone and Korokoro. In fact, I think I’m right in saying—and I’m sure that Mr Speaker will correct me if I’m wrong—it’s the only unfluoridated water supply in the Lower Hutt area. Historically, in Pētone, fluoridation has been a real hot-button issue. In fact, it’s been very controversial, and so it will be intriguing to see what happens once this bill passes into law with Pētone.

My sense—and, again, Mr Speaker I’m sure will correct me if I’m wrong. My sense is actually that we’re 20 years on from the big debate—

SPEAKER: The hippies can’t afford the houses any more.

CHRIS BISHOP: Ha, ha! The Speaker said to me, “The hippies can’t afford the houses any more.” Having recently got a Government valuation on my house in Pētone, I suspect that’s right. And my sense is that actually Mr Speaker’s right. Times have moved on. The deep battles of the 1990s and the early 2000s in Pētone will probably not happen any more. But it will be intriguing. I’m sure Max Stewart will write me various furious emails about it and other things.

I think that what’s happened in Pētone and what I suspect is going to happen in Pētone, I think actually also reflects quite a shift in public sentiment in relation to fluoridation generally, which is that there is now more of an appreciation about the clear benefits of it. I will admit that the libertarian in me says I don’t like the idea of the Government kind of mass medicating on a mass scale through compulsion, that the libertarian in me finds that, you know, a bit of an affront, but on the other hand the benefits of doing so are clear. And the other thing is that in the end, you are making decisions, in particular, for young people when it comes to oral health decisions that they largely can’t make for themselves. So there is a clear community benefit and that is ultimately why we are supporting the bill.

Now, there was a bit of back and forth around the powers of the director-general. I agree with the comments of my colleague, Dr Reti, in regards to Supplementary Order Paper 79 that he put up. In the end, National wants to see more water supplies fluoridated. That will be, I am sure, the effect of this bill—to take it away from local councils, which sometimes struggle to grapple with the complexities of the issues and the science behind it, and frankly, it’s not really their core job either. Their core job is parks, rubbish collection—again, a very vexed issue at the moment in Lower Hutt. But, the fundamentals. Their job is not really to deal with things like fluoridation. And so I think having it taken off their hands is a sensible move, probably overdue, and we look forward to the bill passing into law. Thank you, Sir.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. As a new member of Parliament I’m not always aware of the history of some of these bills, as the previous speaker, Chris Bishop, has been able to very informatively regale us with this afternoon, but it has nevertheless been a privilege to be part of the current parliamentary Health Committee, which has sought to build on the previous work of the members of the last two Parliaments. And yes, this bill was first introduced in 2016, so it has been a long time in the making, but I think it’s now a robust piece of legislation that seeks to significantly reduce tooth decay in New Zealand. As we’ve heard, tooth decay is painful, it is costly, prohibitively so for a lot of our vulnerable communities, and it’s largely preventable. And, as they say, prevention is the best medicine.

So currently, as several other people have commented, we have this piecemeal sort of regimen and fluoridation network at the moment. So this bill goes a long way to improving that and to increasing the sort of protection that can be afforded to all New Zealanders. I do want to take the opportunity to thank the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, for her work, as has been discussed, in actually prioritising and therefore shepherding this bill through. In particular, at this third reading stage for the Supplementary Order Paper that’s in her name, which confers the decision-making responsibility to the director-general rather than the individual DHBs—which obviously has practical implications, but is also a means by which to confer much more consistency. It is worth, I think, re-emphasising that the director-general consults, and is obliged to consult, extensively when making those decisions, particularly on public health.

So it has been a long process, but it’s satisfying for myself and for my colleagues on the Health Committee, and for a great many health advocates, to see this bill progress through to its third and final reading. So I have no hesitation to commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā koe. I stand to support the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill in its final reading. I would like to thank the Minister the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall for engaging with us to respond to the concerns that we have raised. It would not surprise anybody here that the use of fluoridation is a hotly debated topic inside the Greens, but it is also around the country. It’s kind of amusing—funny not funny—that the protest outside is not for fluoridation; it’s about vaccinations, but there are several parallels.

So firstly, the submitters, when they spoke to us, raised issues about whether fluoridation is safe, whether it’s safe to drink it. We certainly support, along with most of the submitters and our Minister of Health, that, yes, we know that it has significant health benefits and it is safe for us. We do believe in making a decision based on science and good evidence, so we think that that is absolutely being done in this case. We did hear things like “fluoridation causes a lack of intelligence”, and we feel that that casts quite significant aspersions on all the cities—Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, and Dunedin—who have been fluoridated—85 percent, I think, of the 2.5 million people who have access to fluoridated water in this country. We hope, though, that through this bill that the ministry will continue to connect with those communities in ways that helps address the misinformation that they receive.

People spoke about their wish not to have forced vaccination, that they can’t not have this. And we do actually have in our laws that we can refuse medication, and if the main reason for having fluoridation is for health benefits, then that is one way of looking at it. So we very much support people having access to non-fluoridated water, somewhere, reasonably. My colleague Mr Bishop spoke about that one tap in the Hutt, and all of us in Wellington, me and all my friends, used to drive out to fill up all our water bottles to have non-fluoridated water. For a lot of people it’s not a concern for them, but for some, this is really, really significant. So the right not to do that, but also that these are council supplies that are affected by this.

We heard from many people in small areas, on marae, iwi, rural people who have their own wells who help service a few houses around them, but they’re not affected by this. Absolutely we support the goal to improve the health, particularly of Māori people. A lot of stuff happens in our name—that a lot of people will get vaccinated because Māori have got poor health disparities. We hope to see those disparities get addressed. We hope for all the great things that are proposed for a new Māori health authority, a new health system. We know that that will take a long time.

So some submitters, along with us, saying, “Is fluoridation the best way to improve the oral health of Māori and of children?” Many submitters agreed that no, it’s not. They made other suggestions about dedicated programmes, resourcing of more midwives that reflect the ethnicity and range of mothers and birth parents who are having children, more resources going out to support those whānau when they take that baby home, support over time—so all of those things that are really not consistent and not available across our country. And as we were waiting for Te Ao Mārama, the Māori dental association—did not know there was such a thing. But when they spoke, I was quite surprised to hear them say, in the absence of all of those things—services for Māori—fluoridation is all we’ve got. That is a sad indictment, really, on our health system. So until we build up all of those programmes and exciting things the Minister referred to, then we are supporting that this—what I would hope is a stopgap, I would hope that people have more choice around this.

Of course, we do agree that this is a health decision. Councils and people who submitted said of course, this should be made, and DHBs are being disbanded; it needs to go somewhere. So we support it going to the director-general. We know we have an eminently sensible director-general at the moment. We expect that all the ones moving forward will also be. We do think, though, that that’s a lot of power for one person, and we hope and look forward to ways in which the communities who can no longer go and talk to their local DHB board members, who can’t talk to their local councils have some way of making their views known when the decision is made by the director-general and a council is required to fluoridate.

We’re quite pleased, then, that part of the bill has been amended to ensure that the director-general seeks the advice of the director of public health, because we think they’ve got a whole other range of expertise that then they can bring to the table. We would expect that the director-general may probably already do that this way, but this makes sure that that happens. We do agree with a consistent and national approach, and with that said, we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill at its third reading. And it’s my pleasure to rise on behalf of ACT today because it’s the first time I’ve spoken on this particular bill. David Seymour did do our previous speech in the second reading, but it has had a remarkable time in Parliament—taking years to get to this place. And I note that it’s taken three terms to finally get to the third reading, because this bill was introduced all the way back in 2016. So this is not a new idea. Fluoridating our water supply across New Zealand is not a new idea, and it was raised previously under the Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne under the National Government while National’s Minister of Health Jonathan Coleman was in charge at that time. So it is my pleasure to rise on behalf of this bill today.

But as introduced, the bill was a little bit different to what we have currently before us. As introduced, it enabled the DHBs, rather than the local authorities, to decide whether community water should be fluoridated. And at the time when I was reading through the Hansard on what happened back down in 2016, they stated that it would be of a benefit to 1.4 million New Zealanders who don’t currently have fluoridated water supplied to their homes. Peter Dunne at the time said the single most important initiative to improving dental health, particularly child dental health, would be putting in place a scheme like they suggested under this bill to remove that power from the local authorities.

I do want to point to a few of the benefits—if you’ll let me, Mr Speaker—about fluoride, because when I was sitting on the Health Committee to look into the inquiry, we did hear from a lot of people who weren’t convinced about the science based on fluoride, rather than what the particular aspect of this was. And I do want to make the point very clear that the science is settled on fluoride and the benefit to dental health. Many people do not realise that we have naturally occurring fluoride in water supplies. New Zealand, however, has a lower amount of naturally occurring fluoride than in other countries. So we have around 0.2 parts per million of fluoride that naturally occurs in our water supplies. It’s not much—it’s a very, very small amount. But if we look at what happens on average around the world, there are actually countries where you have 10 parts per million. So you look at how big that difference is: 0.2 versus 10 parts per million, and the World Health Organization suggests and recommends that we increase the number of those parts per million in our water supply because it does have a benefit to dental health.

In 2014, the Chief Science Advisor said there was compelling evidence that it provides better benefits for dental health. In particular, a report into fluoridation in areas of New Zealand versus areas without fluoridation back in 2014 showed that there was a 48 percent reduction in hospital emissions for the treatment of tooth decay in people aged zero to four. So our youngest, most vulnerable people who can’t brush their teeth for themselves or are just getting used to brushing their teeth for themselves have a reduction of 48 percent if they’re able to have fluoride in water reticulated services. And it’s also gone on to show that 40 percent—that is how different your chances of having a lifetime incident of tooth decay decrease by if you have fluoride in your water supply. So the science is settled. Fluoride is good for your teeth and it’s good for long-term health, not just for small infants but over the course of your life.

The regulatory impact statement at the time the bill was introduced showed those downstream consequences. Children with poorer teeth health are more likely to experience dental pain and, as a consequence, miss schooling, which leads to long-term deprivation. We know that in 2013, when they looked at the evidence of fluoride, 40 percent of all five-year-old children in this country had already experienced dental decay; it is one of the leading causes of avoidable hospitalisation. The Ministry of Health commissioned a report that was referenced in that regulatory impact statement that said that fluoridating water across New Zealand would actually lead to cost savings of $600 million over the course of the next 20 years, and that was versus a cost of around $144 million, so it is clear that the benefits of fluoridation throughout New Zealand were to the benefit of all New Zealanders.

But this bill in particular is slightly different to the one that they were referencing back then, and that’s because it wants to now change the person in charge of this to the Director-General of Health, rather than through the DHBs. And I take the point that it is a very serious reform that the Government is hoping to achieve by removing the DHBs, and so this is a change that needed to be done, because you can’t possibly have the DHBs in charge of fluoridation in New Zealand if they don’t exist. So I can see the dilemma that the Government is therein. We could talk to whether that reform would be a good thing or it would be implemented properly another day, but I do need to make the point that my colleague Elizabeth Kerekere has made already today, which is that it is a lot of power for one person to hold over local communities.

We do acknowledge that the Health Committee did make a change that went through that also ensured that the Director-General of Health must consult with the Director of Public Health, which is a good thing because it is a lot of power to have. And I know that there will be reservations across New Zealand for putting that power in place, but I also want to note that while there are a lot of benefits for fluoride in the water reducing a lot of dental decay in New Zealand, we can’t pretend that this will solve the whole problem. We also need to point to a very salient issue, which is, simply, personal responsibility. This bill won’t do everything to reduce dental decay in New Zealand. It will do a lot but we do need more parental responsibility that people are looking after their children, giving them the care that they need, looking after their tooth health, because that helps give children the best start to life. We see that through the hospitalisations that can be decreased. So this is not going to solve all of the problems—it will solve a lot of it, but there’s still a lot more that we can do in general.

So in conclusion, there is 60 years of evidence that fluoride in water is good for dental health. And while we do have reservations that the Director-General of Health has been put in charge of this particular piece of legislation, on balance we must support this law, because fluoride is the right thing to do. This is about the health of our children, this is about making sure that they have the best start to life possible, and we must ensure that people who are currently suffering do actually have the ability to have fluoride in their water to stop ongoing hospitalisations and stop a whole other generation of children missing school and having their teeth pulled out in horrible circumstances because their parents couldn’t do the right thing by them. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise as a member of the Health Committee in support of this piece of legislation. I just want to acknowledge and thank Dr Liz Craig, the clerks and officials, and everybody who worked so hard on this piece of legislation—with particular mention to the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, who, as Mr Bishop pointed out earlier, has had a huge amount of success in achieving her aim of passing this bill and also of achieving the goal of introducing folate. But let me reassure Mr Bishop that she’s only just getting started; she isn’t done yet.

So we’ve seen that this gives the Director-General of Health the power to direct a local authority to fluoridate the water, and that’s what this piece of legislation was about. But we had 2,384 submissions, but only 93 of those actually discussed the change that was proposed in this piece of legislation, and that gave me cause for significant concern. The reason for my concern was the amount of misinformation that was actually present in some of those submissions.

I’d just like to add to the previous speaker, Brooke van Velden from the ACT Party, when she was reassuring us that fluoride is naturally present in the water. It’s not only naturally present in our water, but it’s a naturally occurring mineral. It’s in grapes and tea and potatoes and spinach and wine. So I’ve probably got really good levels of fluoride from the spinach, obviously. And what it does is it actually is a bit of a magic mineral. It actually remineralises teeth and it protects them from decay. And as we’ve heard before, the science is actually settled. It really is. The science is settled, the evidence is compelling. This magic mineral helps reduce tooth decay, and it’s something that we urgently need in all of our communities, but particularly those who are experiencing deprivation, living in poverty. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): Mr Speaker, it’s a real pleasure to rise and take a short call on this bill, the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. It’s the first time I’ve spoken in this House for several months, and so—

SPEAKER: Welcome back.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —it’s nice to be back, and I appreciate that in your own, inimical style, you’ll correct me—

SPEAKER: I understand your garden’s been going well.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: I heard that too, yeah. I saw yours—it looked great. Also, can I acknowledge Minister Verrall and congratulate her on getting this job done—it’s certainly made a lot easier by not having New Zealand First in a coalition agreement—and can I also acknowledge my colleague Dr Shane Reti, who I think has been very passionate at a personal level over many, many years around this subject.

As we know, this is about transferring powers around fluoridation from local government into the DHBs. That was the plan until the DHBs have been disbanded, and now it’s being directed to the Director-General of Health to take sole responsibility for that. Of course, that is part of a broader centralisation and control agenda that we see with this Government, whether it be around vocational education, whether it be around three waters, or whether it be around the Resource Management Act and planning reform, and, I would put it to you, the initial COVID response as well. But it is disappointing for that reason that we didn’t get Government support for our amendment, which was, fundamentally, to make sure that the director-general would actually engage with local health officials before making that directive. But, having said all of that, it’s important that we take the rot out of the system, we get to the root of the cause, and we actually support this bill, because it is an outstanding bill that will, most importantly, generate great outcomes for our young people across New Zealand.

I left Pētone, Jackson Street—Unilever—and I went overseas for 16 years, and I remember leaving London and arriving in Chicago and you are dazzled by the bright lights of people smiling in America with their gleaming white teeth. They make jokes about poor British teeth and the condition of them, but the reality is that our situation here in New Zealand hasn’t been much better, if we’re really honest.

I remember as a kid getting called and waiting in dread for the loudspeaker to come over to say, “Chris Luxon, can you please go to the dental nurse.” in what we knew as the murder house. Away they’d go on your teeth and there would be multiple fillings in each tooth, and I don’t know whether they got pleasure from it, but I certainly know that I didn’t. But, actually, sadly, it hasn’t improved much over that time.

When you think, as many of my colleagues have alluded to, that 12 percent of under-14-year-olds have had a tooth pulled—100,000 kids—and it’s actually 17 percent of kids that are Māori and Pasifika, it impacts people in the more challenged and deprived situations more than anyone else, and those are really sobering and staggering statistics that we need to do something about. So it is awesome that we are coming together in this House to be able to support this bill and do exactly that.

Incredibly, this is a bill that will deliver outcomes, and that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to get outcomes for the New Zealand people and this is one of those ones that I think gets disproportionate outcomes and delivers for an extra 1.5 million people, and it will, obviously, save us a lot of money in our public health system. So it is a win-win-win kind of scenario.

I do want to acknowledge what Dr Kerekere said about the rampant misinformation that has been taking place around this debate. The National Party is backing the science of fluoridation—no doubt about it. We have 60 years of history, we have a Royal Society of New Zealand report on it, we have our Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor’s advice on it, and I want the public to know that it’s incredibly safe. It’s completely safe and reasonable that we are doing this.

So it’s good that this is being signed into law. It’s probably taken a bit longer than it needed to, but it’s great that we’re getting it done. It’s good that we’re doing it in a bipartisan way, and I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s probably a privilege for me to be able to take this call on the bill: I come from a customer services sort of perspective, because yesterday I just had a tooth extracted. It’s healing up quite nicely, with a bit of saltwater rinse. But, you know, as I lay back on the dentist chair for 45 minutes—as the great dentist Dr Evonne from Champion Dental Centre in Porirua, as she was tugging and pulling at my tooth—I just thought to myself, how could have I prevented this? Probably, not having the amount of children I had probably would have helped. A lot of the preventative dental work that I probably should have done when I was a little bit younger, you know, I just thought: put it off, the dental costs. Put off the dental costs, because we were growing our family, so we couldn’t afford it at the time. We were fortunate that through the community services card we had access to emergency dental help at the time. But a lot of the prevention that could have been done for me probably could have saved me 45 minutes of pain that I suffered afterwards—because I didn’t feel pain at the time, but then afterwards I started feeling it and having to take Panadol to help numb it.

But for me, this bill is about prevention. It’s preventing the harm that could happen, particularly, to our children, who, I know from experience, don’t brush their teeth very well. Children, you know, sometimes miss those spots, and they have to be taught the “Happy Birthday” song—that’s how long you brush your teeth for. But for some of our children, they don’t have that guidance, or, for some of our children, there are other factors. Particularly for Māori and Pacific children and people living in high-deprivation areas, they experience worse oral health outcomes than the rest of New Zealand.

So I congratulate the Minister, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, on being able to bring this bill through the House. I’d like to thank the members of the Ministry of Health that helped the Minister with this—the officials—as well as across the House for their support of this important bill. I commend this bill to the House.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Look, I’m happy to rise and take a short call at this third reading. It’s really quite supportive to hear across the House that there is going to be a level of support for it.

I reflect on the contribution from the Minister, and I do want to acknowledge and congratulate her on her achievements, but the stats that she talked about speak for themselves. But then listening to my colleague Barbara Edmonds reflect on the, I guess, inequitable levels in terms of dental health and hygiene, and the considerations thereof for Māori and Pasifika members of our community. Whether you are a teacher, someone from education, whether you are from health, whether you’re from social sector, we all have our own experiences of young people having dental issues that, fundamentally, are avoidable.

I also reflect on the contribution of Dr Reti, and think about my time around council tables, where, actually, the number of occasions where we had, you know, certainly in Palmerston North, people that would come from Tauranga to talk about fluoride for our local community, others that have different views, politicising something that is clearly a public health and a preventative form of an opportunity, there is something that I think this bill speaks to. Because, effectively, it removes those concerns and places them adequately with the Director-General of Health.

I think that this is an opportunity where, you know, the councils around our community have many, many factors that weigh on their minds and removing discussion when it comes to fluoridation of drinking water supply is one where it adequately sits with the Ministry of Health. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: Well, members, under the new Standing Orders, the time has come for me to leave the chair for kai time. The House is suspended for the dinner break, and someone will come back here at 7 o’clock. Thank you.

Sitting suspended from 5.55 p.m. to 7 p.m.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, before the dinner break we were debating the third reading of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill. It’s the National Party call—call No. 11.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking first in a session. So it is a great honour. I am pleased to be rising and speaking in support of the Health (Fluoridation of Drinking Water) Amendment Bill.

I was on the Health Committee that heard the submitters to this bill I was very, very pleased that the oral health clinical leader and deputy chief medical officer of the Southern DHB, Tim Mackay, was one of the submitters who spoke very, very strongly as an advocate for fluoride being added to drinking water. I’ve known Tim for many years, he has operated on our youngest daughter, who has a disability and is a frequent user of the DHB dental services. Tim and I have spoken often about how difficult it is for the patients he sees and how heartbreaking it is for someone like him to seem many of these patients.

Particularly for disabled young people and adults, their teeth being in good order is something really, really difficult to achieve. I think one of our colleagues talked about trying to get young people to brush their teeth for the duration of “Happy Birthday”. Well, as someone who regularly has to brush my daughter’s teeth, getting halfway through “Happy Birthday” would be a major achievement. I think my colleague Ian McKelvie and I have talked often that for people living with a disability, having their teeth and their feet in good order is actually a really, really significant thing. It is significant for everyone, but for anyone with a disability, it’s actually really critical to their quality of life.

So, over the years, Tim Mackay and I have talked about the disabled people he has coming in to have their teeth dealt with, but also some of the very, very young children that come in and have to make use of the DHB dental services. As you sit—I was going to say in the “waiting room”, but in a DHB, it’s not; it’s a waiting corridor—in the waiting corridor, you can just look along the corridor and see how many young children are suffering in terrible pain, and nearly all of them and nearly all of those that are there with a disability are going to have to be operated on under anaesthetic. So not only is it a major thing for them but it is also a major cost. So I can see how it’s going to be incredibly useful in terms of prevention of some of these young people and people with disabilities coming into the DHB dental care.

There were numerous submitters to this. As my colleague Dr Reti has pointed out earlier: look, it is a really sensitive area for many communities and many individuals. We saw that in the submissions, and, of course, there were a number from the anti-fluoridation groups. But it is really important that we treat their fear and scepticism, because it’s real and genuine to them. So it’s really important that we acknowledge that and that we speak strongly about the scientific evidence and the scientific consensus that is strongly in favour of fluoridation.

So the 2014 report by Sir David Skegg of Otago University, and also Sir Peter Gluckman, concluded that there is compelling evidence that fluoridation of water at the established and recommended levels produces broad benefits for the dental health of New Zealanders. It is important that we keep pushing those scientific facts out there to try and ease people through the concerns.

Now, clearly, my parents were well ahead of themselves, because as a youngster I was on bore water, and my parents every night, before we went to bed, gave us all fluoride tablets. That certainly paid dividends for me and my siblings. So, along with the scientific evidence, we have now got many, many years of being able to see the benefits of fluoridation.

And, certainly, there’s enormous room for us to be able to make improvements, and, often, in the health area, the improvements are incremental. But when we look at only about 50 percent of people in New Zealand having access to fluoridated water, we can see how quite major improvements in oral health and reduced tooth decay would be able to come about by having greater numbers of our population having access to fluoridated water. It is interesting that it is not only children and adolescents living with fluoridated drinking water, but it also seems to lower that whole lifetime incidence of tooth decay right through out adult lives. So to be able to make such a difference in a whole population is incredibly important for us.

I know that some of our colleagues have talked about the $600 million savings, both to the public purse but also to private consumers. Yes, that’s incredibly important, but I would have to say that the thought of young people not suffering through that terrible agony of tooth decay, and also people with disabilities not having to suffer through that—and often you’re talking about people who are non-verbal, and so they can’t necessarily tell you the pain that they are in.

It was interesting to note that the bill doesn’t mandate the use of fluoride. I think that, given today’s protests outside, it’s really important for us to make that clear: it doesn’t mandate it but it places the decision-making power in the hands of the director-general. And, of course, the Supplementary Order Paper that had been tabled by Dr Shane Reti would have also required an extensive amount of consultation with local health officials, had that gone through. I hope that the Government will still see the value, even though they didn’t support the Supplementary Order Paper, that they will still want to see some level of consultation at the local level where people like Tim Mackay, who are on the ground and are amongst the people that need it most, will be able to give sensible advice.

So not only is it not mandating but it also is not preventing local authorities that might want to fluoridate drinking water. They certainly should still have that option of being able to do that without the Director-General of Health being the one to initiate it. I think those two options are worth pointing out within the bill—that it is important for us to see that this is a level of choice for local communities to be able to have their say.

So we’re very pleased to be supporting a bill that is going to make a widespread and significant difference to the health of not only our young people but, also, adults. It is a bill that will have significant health benefits, not just incremental. Therefore, I’m very pleased to commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): It’s a pleasure to speak in this House again after a long absence in Auckland. I wanted to bring a little story to you today about this bill, just to close off this debate, because I grew up in one of the families that perhaps our Green friend was talking about, where people were extremely sceptical about these things. My parents decided that the option that they would take over fluoridation was to drink the water off the top of the house, so they put in a tank. Now, that was because they came from a background where they were sceptical of these things because so many things that had happened in their lifetime had really shaken them. One, of course, was there’d been thalidomide. There were all sorts of issues which had come up. So they were legitimately cynical about such things, but the result was that most of my family—I didn’t because I didn’t like the taste—drank the water off the roof, which was actually an asbestos roof.

So these are the kinds of things that happen in a vacuum of knowledge. What has happened in recent years is that we have filled a vacuum of knowledge in this area. What was an area where people were sceptical because it wasn’t tested, they have actually been reassured, and we have extremely good science in this area. Yes, I do speak at a time very mindful that we’ve had protesters outside today who maybe came up with those kinds of reasons for why they were cynical. What I would say is what’s happening here is a very important thing, because this piece of law puts the information in the right hands, and it lets somebody depoliticise a subject that might have quite a lot of emotion and irrationality attached to it. It isn’t without checks and balances, but somebody with the proper knowledge who can look at the proper situation will cast a look at the situation before them, and it’s very likely that as a result, there’ll be equality in our country. We will have an equal provision of a proactive health stance when it is absolutely valuable and valid, and that is what Governments should do. They lead, they put into the right hands the right information and the right power.

This law does that beautifully, and so I am extremely proud to stand as the last speaker on this bill, because this is going to actually make a real difference to our children. I commend the Minister and the select committee for having made this great effort, but I also commend every party in this House for coming to this same conclusion and actually joining so it is no longer a political football. A lot more people will have a pain-free existence but also better health into the future. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2)

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I present a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just a minute. I’m just checking with the Minister. Was that circulated before the deadline at 11? If it wasn’t, you can move it, but you have to seek leave to—

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I signed it off first thing this morning and understood it had been lodged but, if it hasn’t been, then I’ll seek leave to present it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, if that’s your—it’s just that it’s not on my list, so we weren’t expecting it. So if you move it again, I’ll—

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I present—

Matt Doocey: Point of order. Apologies to the Minister. Could we just clarify what we are seeking leave for? It would be helpful.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, at the moment, nothing. It’s just that, clearly—

Matt Doocey: You pointed out to the Minister he’ll need to seek leave. I wasn’t sure myself. It would be helpful for the other parties if you could clarify your instruction to the Minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, OK, so when a Minister presents a legislative statement, that has to be distributed by 11 a.m. each morning. I haven’t got it on my list and I’m just asking if that was correct. Can I ask the Clerk to reconfirm that with me? Has that been properly received? OK, we’ll check. Because if it has been received, then we don’t need to seek leave. Otherwise we do.

I can confirm that it was received and my sheet in front of me is incorrect.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Thank you, Mr Speaker. In light of that, I’ve just been advised that it was apparently lodged at 10.55 a.m.; I like to meet deadlines. I move that the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We’ll do the legislative statement first.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: Oh, you want that. Sorry. From the top. I present a legislative statement on the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2).

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

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: I move, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

This is a reasonably simple bill as part of the Government’s policy to treat drug consumption primarily as a health issue. It is about making sure people can get access to good, accurate, and appropriate advice on drugs that they may be intending to, or are about to, consume so that they can make informed decisions, and also, for some, an opportunity to get at least some interim advice on the risks they may be taking with the consumption of the substances in their possession.

What the bill does is establish a licensing system for drug-checking service providers. We have an interim arrangement at the moment. This will set up a permanent arrangement under which the director-general can issue licences under certain conditions or once certain conditions are met. This means that those drug-checking service providers can operate with legal certainty and Parliament and the public can have certainty that their services are fit for purpose.

I acknowledge the work of the Health Committee on the bill. I see they’ve made a number of recommendations for change, and I welcome those. I support those recommendations. There’s a number of elements that the committee has suggested could do with change. One of those is a matter that was intended to appear in regulations in the original draft bill but will now appear in the statute—will now appear in the bill itself—such as the provisions for suspending or cancelling a licence and appeal provisions. I think that is the appropriate place for those sorts of provisions to be. It’ll provide greater clarity and certainly, I think, to those in this field about what is required and what they must do to maintain their licence. It will also now include requirements for licence holders and failure to meet these requirements will be a breach of their licence conditions and may result in the licence being cancelled.

Some of these requirements include that harm-reduction advice is to be compulsory. So anybody who surrenders a substance to be tested by the drug-testing agency must get advice. That advice must be appropriate and accurate. So, for example, a drug-testing service in giving advice could not say that taking drugs is risk-free, because it never is, but they will tailor that advice to make it appropriate in the circumstances. If a person shows an indication of consuming alcohol at the same time as another substance, the advice can be: do not use this substance and take alcohol. That is about making sure that people’s experience is a safe one. It’s ultimately about keeping people safe and giving people good, reasonable, and accurate advice. One of the requirements is that the advice is tailored to the person and for people for whom their drug consumption appears to be problematic, it’s an opportunity to engage in a conversation about that and, ideally, to refer them to appropriate services if the person is prepared to accept that their consumption is problematic.

The bill now requires drug-checking services, who are licensed, to train their staff, to have properly trained staff, and also to make sure that any substances that they do retain are safely and securely stored pending destruction. And in handling all issues, obviously the service is to ensure personal privacy is maintained.

So I think the changes that the committee has proposed are good changes, are sensible changes, and they serve the interests of the bill very well. As I said before, the purpose of this bill is to accept a reality of a chunk of our population who are drug users, but who may be using substances the genuineness of or the validity of they just don’t know. This is an opportunity for them to check that.

I see from the reporting back to the House that the National Party has a view that this condones drug use, and I say it does not—it does not. The reality is, as I said, there is a group of people in our community, a cohort, and this will apply to any generation that happens at any time in the life of this great country of ours—there will be people who consume substances legal or illegal, and sometimes they will have substances they really don’t know what the substance actually is. They are the people who we do want to avail themselves of this service so that they do know what they are consuming and have the opportunity to get advice about the safe or otherwise consumption of it. That’s about de-risking that practice of some people.

So to the extent that the National Party argues in their minority view that it condones drug use and that there is no evidence that measures of this nature that the bill is setting up support harm reduction, I simply invite the National Party to look at the evidence. The evaluation done by a Victoria University health professor on the practice of the drug-testing services last summer showed that a significant number of people who used those services changed their behaviour as a result; either didn’t consume a substance, moderated their consumption of the substance, or didn’t take undue risk. That kept those people safe. This is about accepting the reality of humanity that people do this. We wanted to keep them safe. This bill does that.

I’m thankful for the work of the select committee. I look forward to the ongoing passage of the bill through the House. And, on that note, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Hon SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga): The National Party opposes this bill. I wish it wasn’t so in some ways, because this is a well-intentioned bill. And I accept, I think, actually, the Hon Andrew Little is a person who is well-intentioned and wants to, and I think—there might be one or two notable exceptions—basically all members of this House want to. I’m not going to rehearse the various arguments that I made at first reading on this bill in any great length. I will just briefly recap though. This is well-intentioned, as I said. It’s in line with the zeitgeist of the time, the fashion, the fads of public health—

Ginny Andersen: That’s a big word.

Hon SIMON BRIDGES: —and the do-gooders all around the place. Well, you can spell it for me later, member over there—let’s see how she goes. It’s in line with all of that, but, actually, I defy this House to come up with studies that show it is actually, in reality, an evidence-based law.

See, Andrew Little, he refers to the Victoria one. That is literally the only one in The New Zealand Herald, in Stuff, on RNZ, and that he can refer to. By the way, it is a self-selecting sample study. It’s not remotely scientific in terms of the kind of studies internationally from Australia, the United Kingdom, and Europe that I’ve referred to, both in the earlier bill which passed this—against National Party wishes temporarily—or this one. Even on that self-selecting sample though, I just make this point, because they go on so much about evidence without actually citing any of it. Even on that self-selecting sample, and there’s something like 90 pages in that report, there is a lot of evidence, or so-called evidence, that goes the way of the National Party view on this.

You see, pill testing provides a false confidence that somehow MDMA—because, fundamentally, that’s the illicit drug we’re talking about when we talk about pill testing—is safe. And so what happens? Well, as we’ve seen in Australia and the United Kingdom and Europe and other parts of the world, use goes up. And with that—surprise, surprise—fatalities, deaths, also go up as well. And the cruel irony of all of that is it’s not the additives that we are making legal in terms of the pill testing in this bill, it’s not them that kills people; it’s the substance itself without the additives. Yes, sometimes with alcohol; yes, sometimes with too much water, all of those things, but in the end it’s not the additives. And so there’s a false confidence, use goes up, and more deaths occur.

See, the Labour Party also says, because it’s fashionable and it sounds good, right—and I go along with that, actually, as I’ll come back to—in large part that this is a health issue. It’s about harm reduction. Well, of course it is—of course it is—but it’s also a criminal issue, and the Labour Party fails spectacularly to understand that fundamental point. They lost a referendum with the wacky Greens on legalising cannabis a year or two ago, and they don’t seem to respect that referendum and that New Zealanders decided—yep, not by much, but nevertheless a majority of New Zealanders and a big turnout—that this was also a criminal matter. And they keep marching on with their soft approach despite that.

Today, I want to make some additional points, actually, about this bill and about where we’re heading, because I think, personally, there’s something a bit slippery about the way the Labour Party in Government is treating this issue about the bad faith that they have shown. Firstly, they said this was just about music festivals, and that got the media on side and everyone thought that was good. Now though we find this legislation’s actually about legalising pill testing everywhere—not just festivals; everywhere. They never said that—they never said that anywhere—it would be everywhere, but that is what they have done. And call me old-fashioned, but I just have this small, technical view that you should kind of campaign on what you’re going to do, rather than do it and get the acquiescence afterwards.

Then here’s the kicker—and this is the challenge, by the way, to the ACT Party: are the ACT Party trendy, urban wokesters, or are they actually the party of the heritage of libertarians and the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers that they say they are, because here’s the next thing that Andrew Little has done with one sign of the pen: he’s now made it so that taxpayers pay for the pleasure of all this testing. There’s no user pays; it’s the taxpayers of New Zealand that are going to pay. And I say to the ACT Party, you’re going to have to decide sooner or later if you’re urban wokesters or if you’re going to go after the farmers’ votes and the various other votes in provincial New Zealand, because you’re not going to be able to for too much longer try and play both sides of the fence. And I tell you something for myself, I for one don’t want to pay, as a taxpayer, for all the legal testing of illicit drugs that’s going to be happening up and down New Zealand as a result of this bill. And I think there’s a lot of New Zealanders, regardless of their views on drugs, that also won’t want to be publicly funding this. How about this old-fashioned principle, user pays? You want it tested, pay yourself. Don’t make other New Zealanders pay for it.

So I say New Zealanders—despite this never being campaigned on, despite in the first reading the Minister never saying so—are going to see through this bill and through the changes Andrew Little is making, a situation where pill testing is coming everywhere. It’ll be on K Road, it’ll be on Courtenay Place, it’ll be outside the bars and the clubs. They never said that but that’s what’s going to happen. And, by the way, the cost will be on the taxpayer. Andrew Little says it started at $800,000. Well, how many ICU beds would that buy? How many booster shots for New Zealanders, when we can get them, would that buy? How many police officers, given the very real issues we have with not enough bobbies on the beat, would that purchase? But, by the way, that $800,000, that’s just the start. It will be—you bet my bottom dollar—by the end of this term, millions of dollars in funding of pill testing. So I say, actually, the Government didn’t campaign on any of that; not only that, it hasn’t post-election said any of that upfront from the start, even though I reckon that was probably the plan from the start. They’ve gone from just music festivals, to anywhere, everywhere, whenever they want, and the taxpayer is paying for it all. First it was just the legalising of testing at festivals, I say, then everywhere, and now taxpayers are paying for it, although they lost the referendum.

Finally, I want to come back to what matters: it is harm reduction, actually. Yeah, criminal matters as well. I actually think most New Zealanders—and we know that from the referendum—think that it should be a matter for the courts as well, but harm reduction, certainly, when we think of our children, is what matters. Every New Zealand wants to see that, but it’s critical for New Zealanders to realise that even with testing, pills can never be guaranteed as safe. It is a false confidence. In a very recent—I’ve got it here—coroner’s report, I think it’s the last several weeks, actually, that it’s become public, it’s made clear MDMA can cause respiratory depression, somnolence, cardiac arrhythmia, coma, and increases the risk of sudden death. Like I say, no use of MDMA is safe, despite the false confidence that many, often young, New Zealanders will have as the result of the passage of this bill. What I’m saying may not be fashionable. It may not be—here’s the big word again, Ginny Andersen—the zeitgeist of the times, but I reckon I’ll be proven right. I’m not up for this bill. More testing will result in more use and, in the end, more deaths in New Zealand from this soft-headed, soft-on-crime, soft-on-drugs Government. National will be voting against this bill.

Dr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. So last summer, KnowYourStuff found that only 68 percent of the samples that they tested were actually what the person expected. What they found is that that was actually much lower than in previous years. But they also found that 68 percent of the people that had the substance that turned out to be not what they thought it was then said that they wouldn’t take the substance as a result.

So what this is about is about harm reduction, and it’s also about making sure that drug-checking services can operate with legal certainty. So as a Health Committee, we received 56 written submissions on this bill and we heard 11 oral submissions. I’d just like to say thank you to all of those who submitted because it did result in some changes being recommended to the bill. And one of the ones that we did change as a result was making harm reduction advice mandatory, because, previously, in the bill that was introduced, 35DB stated: “The functions of a service provider are to do 1 or more of the following:” and, basically, harm reduction advice was listed only as one of the things that could be done. When you think about it, actually, the drug substance checking—part of it’s the physical checking of the substance, but much, much more important is the advice that’s given, particularly if the substance turns out not to be what the person thought it was. So, basically, what the committee felt was that that should be mandatory and so we’ve added another section, 35DDF, which actually requires if you have tested a substance that you do give that harm reduction advice.

We did a range of other changes and some of them focused around the collection and use of personal information and also about the admissibility of test results in court proceedings. We also made some recommendations around shifting elements of the licensing system from regulations into the main bill. But, basically, just summing it up, this is a really important bill, and I think what it will do is it will significantly help to reduce drug-related harm and create that legal certainty for substance-checking services in New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak in opposition of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I was a member of the Health Committee that heard the submissions that my colleague Dr Craig spoke of then. The recommendations from the Health Committee were obviously not unanimous. The bill that was introduced was introduced as an omnibus bill that aims to minimise harm from controlled drugs and psychoactive substances. The thought was that it would do this by allowing services to check the composition of those drugs and substances. But, as we have said numerous times on this side of the House, we are yet to see the evidence that that actually contributes to harm reduction.

Of course, the bill is similar to the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Act 2020, which was brought in specifically, as we were told at the time, for festivals for that 2020-2021 summer. But now, of course, it is not limited to festivals at all. My colleague Simon Bridges talked about how it might be outside nightclubs and other venues. But also what needs to be made very clear is that the bill now allows testing anywhere. It includes mobile services, and, in fact, the Health Committee said that they considered it might help improve access to drug checking, particularly in rural areas. So we shouldn’t for one minute think that it might be limited to outside festivals or inside festivals or outside nightclubs. In fact, it could be rolling up to a town near you, to the centre of small rural towns, the playgrounds, any of the areas in a small rural town. It is specifically noted that it is to allow mobile checking services in vehicles.

So there are a number of things that we are concerned about in here, and I’m sure it will be characterised, as my colleague Simon Bridges said, that, you know, we’re old-fashioned and a bit conservative. But I would hope that the vast majority of New Zealanders want to see harm reduction. We want to genuinely see harm reduction for those taking illicit drugs. It’s how to get there, to that goal, that we differ in. This Government keeps telling us that legalising pill testing will reduce drug-related harm, but we’re not seeing the evidence except for one study which was, as my colleague said, self-selection. So you would expect to see a bit more than that. We can remain concerned that where the Crown looks as if we are condoning the use of substances, either implicitly or explicitly, it sends a really bad signal to the people of this country. So we certainly don’t believe that the harm reduction has been shown yet.

But what we do know about this bill is that it will protect drug dealers from being prosecuted for supplying illicit drugs, because the results of drug testing would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings. We believe that legalising pill testing is not going to keep people safe and that it will encourage more people to consume harmful drugs. As I said, we all want to see harm reduction, but it’s absolutely critical for New Zealanders to understand that testing doesn’t make pills safe. My colleague talked about the recent coroner’s report that made it very clear that MDMA can cause respiratory depression, sleepiness, cardiac arrhythmia, coma, and increase the risk of sudden death. Now, the Labour Government keeps telling us that pill testing will help users make smarter choices. The problem is, there are no smart choices around deciding to take MDMA or ecstasy. It’s just either a very dumb or a dumb choice. It’s not a smarter choice. If Labour’s aim is to reduce drug-related harm, then why are they not waiting for the evidence and going out to the people and making sure that the people know the evidence is there, that it won’t create greater consumption of drugs?

So Labour deciding to fund it. This is a difficult one when our health budget is so stretched and people are missing out on hip and knee replacements, missing out on getting timely cancer testing and treatment. In the Invercargill hospital, in our district health board area, to get a hip replacement you wait until you have 70 points, that’s 20 points more than if you were in the Canterbury region. So do we tell those people waiting that health dollars are going to have to now go into drug testing instead of trying to bring down their waiting time for hip or knee replacements? Do we have to tell all the people that have to wait for admission to hospital in Invercargill longer because we are 90 beds short and two theatres short that this Government’s priority is to spend health dollars on drug testing?

So I spent time talking to a rural GP recently. I’m going out to speak to him more. This GP is at his wits’ end. He has not had a locum there for a number of years. He is working over 60 hours a week. He is concerned that he is going to burn out. But if he burns out and leaves the rural town, they will have no medical services. So this Labour Government has not increased the intake into medical school in the entire four years they have been in Government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’m going to ask the member to relate her comments to the bill, which she hasn’t done so far.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Thank you—thank you. I will. Because the reason, when I sent a written question to the Minister, why this Government had not increased the intake into medical school, was because it’s expensive to train medical students. So my concern, is that this Government is showing that their priority for health funding is not on reducing waiting times for serious operations, is not on ensuring that hospitals have the right number of beds or theatres, is not on training more medical students, but is instead on spending money on drug testing.

Now, we all want to see—we all want to see—reduction in harm. But, actually, we would like to see the money spent on more education so that young people are not wanting to experiment with drugs, we would like to see more money spent on services and care for those with addiction and mental health issues, we would like to see more focus on tougher sentences for dealers, because we want to see health money focused on health issues. So this side of the House sees that a priority is to do the very things we’ve talked about: getting waiting lists down, getting the right number of beds, getting ICU beds ready, training more doctors, getting better services and care for people with addictions, and educating people on not using drugs rather than testing and making them feel falsely safe. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN (Labour—Banks Peninsula): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Excuse me while I get over that pot-kettle-black feeling that I’ve just risen to. Look, the majority of submitters strongly supported this bill, and I’d like to share a submission which is characteristic of these, and perhaps sums up how I think most New Zealanders feel about this issue: “Drug and substance checking has proven to reduce harm and change behaviours. We believe this bill, and the system it will create will reduce drug related harm for young New Zealanders.” The submitter was none other than the Young Nats. If the members opposite won’t listen to the wealth of evidence from an array of experts, of which there is, despite the protestations across the floor or the quite unusual reliance on one particular piece of work which bears no real relevance, or the sentiments of the general public, perhaps they should or could listen to those they see as the future of their very own party.

The select committee process included several amendments to make improvements to the bill; most of those have been discussed. But the gestalt of that is that that will undoubtedly reduce hesitancy and increase the number of people who are willing to utilise what actually could be a life-saving service. So this bill acknowledges the reality that people actually, on occasion, will use illicit drugs, regardless of the potential health or potential legal ramifications, so it takes important steps to provide for informed decision-making and for better health outcomes. I have no hesitation to commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Tēnā koe e te Māngai. I rise to speak on behalf of my colleague Chlöe Swarbrick, who has guided this bill through the Health Committee, and also co-founded the Cross-Party Mental Health and Addictions Wellbeing Group here in Parliament. We consider this creates a very, very good framework for drug checking, and we congratulate the Government on progressing this work.

So the Greens have a long, illustrious whakapapa on improving and trying to improve the laws around drugs and substance abuse, including to legalise cannabis for medicinal and recreational use, and improving the Government’s synthetic response. This included obtaining funding for community-based treatment, including the safe after-hours space, Haven, in Auckland Central—a collaboration between Lifewise and Odyssey. We consider legalising drug checking supports a health-based, harm-reduction approach to drug use. The Greens campaigned on this in 2018, which included presenting a 6,000-strong petition to the House.

So this omnibus bill, as we’ve heard, amends the part of the Misuse of Drugs Act where it’s illegal to knowingly provide a location where people are consuming substances. So it enables drug-checking services to operate with the legal certainty to give and receive drugs from a drug-checking service. It does this by allowing the Director-General of Health to allow certain providers to be gazetted to operate these drug-checking services. They cannot be prosecuted, and it enables them to maintain the privacy of those who they check—this is quite a core part.

Importantly, not only is it events-based but it can be static, one-off events, and in vehicles. As summer nears and the people of Tai Rāwhiti are wondering whether Rhythm and Vines is going to go ahead, and we’re going to be inundated with predominantly young people from around the country, safety is a really key issue, and the use of drugs, of course, massively increases over that time. So we see that this bill will allow that legal drug-checking at these summer events and then into pride weeks, pride parties, O-Weeks, and a range of things that are happening.

We want to do a shout-out to KnowYourStuff NZ and the NZ Drug Foundation. They’ve worked with the Greens, and, I’m sure, other parties as well over the years. Their research shows us that, consistently, people will change their drug behaviours and be less risky when they know what is in the substance that they have. Green policy commits us to supporting measures that enhance people’s capacity for informed choice, which is what this drug checking does.

Since this is predominantly focused on young people, I point to Mana Taiohi, the Te Tiriti o Waitangi - based principles of youth development. One of those principles states, and I quote, “being empowered by rich and diverse mātauranga informs both young people and people who work with young people towards personal growth. Young people actively participate in making meaning of information and are supported to holistically make positive choices for them and their whānau.” This is the core of the bill, I feel—making sure that these predominately young people make good choices based on good information without getting judged or penalised.

What this bill probably doesn’t recognise is that its application to some of these summer events—largely ticketed events—could be criticised as focusing on recreational, middle-class, and predominantly Pākehā drug use, rather than the more problematic drug issues that some of the people in this House have raised, which disproportionately affects lower-income communities of colour. Dealing with drugs, we think, should be a health, education, housing, and social issue, with solutions based on evidence and with the insight of local communities.

We think this is clearly reinforced by the Government’s own commissioned reviews. He Ara Oranga recommended decriminalising users, and Turuki! Turuki!, the Safe and Effective Justice Programme Advisory Group review went even further and said legally regulating certain substances. For now, though, Māori are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement for personal drug use and they’re criminalised from a young age. We would hope to see that the compassionate, non-judgmental nature of this bill is applied wherever drugs are available, and especially to young people, regardless of where they come from and whether they can afford to buy those festival tickets. Along with the complete restructure of our health and mental health systems, we look forward to an overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act. In the meantime, this is good progress, and we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

BROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the second reading of the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). I’m going to keep my speech short and fairly simple, because there are clearly two arguments, one in favour and one against this particular type of law change. On the one hand, we’ve heard from people who are saying that changing the status quo will increase risk and increase drug harm in society because there might be young people who weren’t going to take drugs who will now take drugs, knowing that they can check what the substance in them is. The other argument is that this will reduce adverse effects and reduce drug harm because people will make an informed choice, knowing what is in the drug that they’ll be taking. I think there are merits to both of those types of arguments, but the ACT Party says our starting point for this law should be asking the question of: should Parliament prohibit New Zealanders voluntarily helping each other? I don’t believe that it should. ACT says that we should never stop people voluntarily helping each other.

When we look at those two arguments weighed up against each other—whether the status quo is acceptable because it stops or reduces drug harm reduction because people don’t take those drugs, versus the risk of people having an adverse effect because they are going to take them and they don’t know what’s in it—ACT falls on the side of informed choice and that people will take drugs when they don’t know what’s in them. It can only be of a benefit that we are allowing people who are going to take those drugs to make an informed choice, because it clearly reduces risk. It’s clear that the greater risk is people taking pills when they don’t know what’s in them. ACT lives in the real world. We understand the reality that young people will go to festivals, they will want to rebel, and they will want to take drugs. We need to make sure that if that is the world that we’re living in, we are doing the best that we can to reduce the risk to our young people.

Every summer—and it happens without fail—young New Zealanders go up and down New Zealand to festivals, they go to concerts, and they’re offered pills, sometimes by friends, people that they trust, and sometimes by people that they’ve never met before. It might not be a comfortable thought to have that it could be your child going off to a festival and taking something when you’ve instilled in them since they were a child: don’t take things from strangers, or, you know, don’t take drugs. But there is the chance that it could be your child that decides, “You know what? This summer is the summer that I’m going to rebel.” To anyone, I would say that it is greater risk not to allow these types of facilities—these volunteers wanting to help our young New Zealanders, to keep them safe from harm—to go ahead. It is better for parents to know that if their child is going to a festival, these facilities exist so that people can make an informed choice and could be saved from taking an action that could harm them because they don’t know what’s in those drugs.

When we come to what’s happened during the select committee process, I acknowledge that this bill is slightly different to when it first was introduced and that there have been a few changes, because it now provides that a function of a drug-checking provider is to give information and harm reduction advice. That’s a mandatory step that the select committee recommended, and I think that’s a good thing. Not only are they checking your drugs, they’re giving you information to make you more knowledgeable for next time. That can only be good. They’ve also made it clearer that providers could only possess drugs for as long as reasonably necessary to perform their function, and increased the penalty for carrying out drug checking without a licence.

I think those are all very good changes, but, I think, this bill, if we look at what the heart of it is, is about allowing volunteers to help New Zealand keep other New Zealanders safe through informed choice. It’s about making sure that young New Zealanders can make that informed choice. If we are seeing people going to festivals, even though it’s unclear whether we’ll have any festivals going on under COVID environments during the summer, for the future going forward, it makes it clear that young New Zealanders will have more access to informed choice and reduce harm, reduce drug harm, from taking pills where they don’t know what that substance is. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

SARAH PALLETT (Labour—Ilam): Thank you so much, Mr Speaker. I rise as a member of the Health Committee in strong support of this piece of legislation. I’d just like to reiterate that standing here, our starting point and our finish point is that the safest option is always, always not to take the substance. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re not talking about giving people carte blanche here. But the reality is, is that people do take drugs—#notallpeople—and, clearly, nobody on the other side of the House here.

People die because they have taken a far more dangerous substance than they intended. This whole conversation is reminding me, somewhat bizarrely and unfortunately, of the arguments we heard around the Needle Exchange Programme, which has been hugely successful in New Zealand and has resulted in a massive reduction in the risk of people catching HIV or hepatitis C, with millions of dollars of health spending saved. This legislation will enable us to do the same thing. It will enable us to save money on accidentally causing hospitalisation because people are taking something they didn’t expect to take. Now, I’m not suggesting for one second that MDMA is safe to take, but there are more dangerous substances that are more dangerous to the system, especially if taken in combination.

Now, we know that the youth wing of the National Party is in support of this legislation. The young New Zealand First members are also in support of this legislation—I didn’t actually know that was a thing but I completely commend them for political engagement—they say that it’s the duty of Government to protect its people, and this is what this does. This piece of legislation will enable people to take fewer drugs, to dispose of or decide not to mix their drugs, and they will be given that opportunity, as we heard, for health advice to be given. In the UK, there was a 95 percent reduction in hospitalisation after they introduced legislation. This is a pragmatic piece of legislation. It substantially reduces harm and I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Chris Penk—five minutes.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to be back in the House of Parliament and an even greater pleasure to be able to remove my mask to speak.

I rise, as others have within the National Party, to oppose the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) for the reasons that colleagues have set out. Of course, at this reading it’s appropriate to look at the work of the select committee. It seems as though those members examined the bill in good faith, and they’ve made a number of amendments that it seems were able to be supported across the House, or across the Health Committee in terms of different parties’ MPs. So I think there’s something positive to say at the outset in the sense that the bill is able to be improved, notwithstanding that we’ve decided, ultimately, on this side of the House—or at least our part of this side of the House—not to support it.

I think that, among various points that could be made about the good intentions that will not be matched and the possibility of counter-productive measures to attempt to provide safety and certainty which may have the opposite effect of providing false confidence, I did want to actually skip ahead to the offence provisions that the select committee has turned its collective mind to. We see that a couple of proposed new sections have offence provisions for the legislation, and the select committee discussed, it seems from their report—I was not fortunate enough to be a member of the select committee—the fact that the fines in relation to a couple of different offences were set at the same in the first reading of the bill—namely, $5,000.

The two offences were, roughly speaking—excuse the wording—something along the lines of providing services without a licence, or providing services in a way that wasn’t consistent with the terms of the licence. So the select committee was wondering if it wouldn’t provide an incentive for outfits to get a licence in the first place if they’re going to get a fine either way, whether or not they were licensed, if they were not providing the services correctly.

The first observation I would like to make is that $5,000 is not a great deal of money if a service is making some money by performing certain activities. I take at face value the report of the select committee that a number of the providers aren’t large-scale, commercial operations, and, indeed, they might be volunteers in some cases. However, there’s nothing in the legislation to say that an outfit can’t conduct these activities for profit. There’s nothing to say that they can’t be paid by the music festival operators, other operators, or other proprietors, or, indeed, by the taxpayer, as others on this side of the House have made the point. So even with the fine increased to some $20,000 in respect of unlicensed drug-checking, it seems to me as though a reasonably half-hearted attempt is being made to regulate, if that’s the intention of the legislation—to regulate and to regularise—an activity that is currently legal. It’s relatively toothless at that level, that quantum of penalty, I would suggest.

We’ve also seen the discussion about advice around harm reduction. It’s interesting that the first reading of the bill, or the bill as introduced to the House originally, didn’t make mandatory the giving of advice about harm reduction by those who were doing the checking. If this is the whole reasoning behind the bill and behind the efforts more generally of the Government to reduce harm, it seems extraordinary that it’s an afterthought having to be added by a select committee that advice about the harmful nature of these drugs and their additions must be provided by those who are conducting the checking. So I’m just surprised that the good intentions were not backed in the first place either at the first reading or, indeed, in the predecessor version of the bill—the temporary one that expires after 12 months—to actually require that information on harm reduction advice be accurate and appropriate or, indeed, provided at all.

So that at least is a positive amendment made by the select committee. There are a couple of others, but overall, still, we have a piece of legislation that reflects good intentions not backed by reality—not understanding the adverse, unintended consequences—and the reality, not only at music festivals but, potentially, all around the motu. We oppose this bill still at this, the second reading.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill will save lives. That is the fact of it. This bill enables a regulated testing regime to be introduced in this country. We know that there will be people that would have taken drugs, they got them tested, found out it’s not what they thought it was, and did not take it. That is all this will do. It doesn’t legalise drugs, it accepts a reality of life: people do what they shouldn’t do, it’s just the way it is. I don’t want people to take drugs, I hate drugs. I’ve never taken party pills in my life. I don’t want my mates to take it I don’t want my family to take it, I don’t want anyone to take it, but they do. People do what they shouldn’t do.

We warned National not to elect Judith Collins. They knew it wouldn’t work, but they did it anyway. People do what they shouldn’t do. The fact is, if we took the National Party’s view, and said that education is the key, and we told people not to take drugs, and they took drugs anyway and they died from it, what is the natural conclusion? “We told you not to do it, that’s your fault.” We don’t accept that, on this side of the House. We accept the reality that people are going to go to music festivals, they’re going to take drugs—and we’re not talking about dopeheads, we’re not talking about no-hopers; we’re actually talking about people across society. Many of them are well respected, they will go to music festivals, and they will intend to consume party pills. They will take the pragmatic approach—not this judgment view that the National Party takes—they will go and get their drugs tested. We still don’t want them to take it if it’s deemed to be what they thought it was, but if they’re going to anyway, for the love of God, let’s make sure it isn’t what they think is in there. Let’s make sure that, at the very least, we know that it’s not going to kill them. We don’t want them to take it, but if they’re going to do it anyway, for God’s sake, let’s just make sure it’s safe.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Such a pleasure to follow my colleague in support, because Mr McAnulty has given simplicity of an explanation, and a very good one at that. As a member of the Health Committee, I have to say that I joined the Health Committee at the tail end of these considerations and so, none the less, it is important that I do acknowledge the work of colleagues on that particular committee who have made some workable and sensible changes to the bill.

This bill amends existing legislation and it does many things, but I’ll just briefly touch on two. The first is, essentially, it establishes a licensing regime for drug- and substance-checking services, and within that, it includes the provision of appeal, opportunities that sit primarily within the legislation rather than in the regs, but also it identifies processes for the provision of services being free, and also, actually, the importance and significance of the storage of particular substances and drugs and that they be secure. So it is important, in my view, that they sit within the legislation rather than in regulations.

The second thing that this legislation does is it enables licensed service providers to do things legally. We’ve heard in the House this evening that it’s around checking the composition of the drug or the substance, when that happens it is possible for the service providers to, effectively, be operating short and foul of the law. So this will provide a legal opportunity to ensure that while those substances and drugs are with the service provider that they are not in breach of legislation. Those are only two examples of what this bill proposes to do. It’s sensible, it’s real, and on that basis, I commend it to the House.

SIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on this bill, the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2). The National Party continues to oppose this piece of legislation. We’ve heard from the members on the Government side who talk about how this bill is simply just helping people with the decisions that they’re already making and helping them to make better choices. The reality, though, is that this piece of legislation sends a very different message. This Government announced this piece of legislation saying, “We want to make sure that drug-checking services or drug-testing services are available at music festivals.” Well, this piece of legislation takes that proposition much, much further. Nothing in this bill that we have before us here tonight limits the idea, limits the proposition, that this Government put to New Zealanders that drug-testing services should be made only available at music festivals. This piece of legislation widens that service right out across all of New Zealand and opens it up to be a much wider service. This is a bill which sends a much different message than what this Government is trying to purport that it sends and one which sends a message of drug taking being something that is OK and which the Government is then going to provide services around the checking of those services.

We heard the member opposite stand up and talk about how people change their decisions based upon the information that they’re given, and the research that they like to use is a research paper put together by the Victoria University. It surveyed a number of people who used the KnowYourStuff NZ drug-checking services. They say, “Well, the majority of people changed their mind based on the information they’ve got.” When you drill down into the numbers, about 80 percent of people who responded to that survey—a self-selected survey, by the way—would take the drug even if the drug was partially, only partially, consistent with what was presumed to be in the substance.

That brings me to the next point, which is the fact that the reality is, by the evidence which has been presented to the committee and which is well available, made available online and from many researchers around the world, that, actually, it’s not just the impurities in these drugs but it’s, in fact, also the drugs themselves which cause the problem. A University of New South Wales study of 392 ecstasy deaths in Australia between 2001 and 2016 found no deaths from impurities or contaminants in drugs, and no deaths from other deadly drugs such as paramethoxyamphetamine or NBOMe cut with the MDMA in a pill. The issue here is not the impurities; the issue here is the actual substance. So what this bill is doing is it’s giving a false confidence to the young person who goes and gets that that pill tested which he thinks is MDMA and gets given a tick of approval by this drug-checking service to say, “Yep, that’s MDMA.”, and he goes ahead and takes that MDMA, and, in fact, that is the drug which is actually causing much of the misery that we are seeing and much of the harm. Instead of reducing harm, this is giving young people a false assurance about the harm that they are actually taking upon themselves.

What this bill also does is it does a number of other things. It sets up a regime for regulating these substances. It sets up a bunch of regulations and guidelines. It, effectively, says these substance-checking services can be made available anywhere in New Zealand, except, I think, in suburban areas. That’s basically the only exception. That’s pretty broad—that’s very, very broad. It’s much broader than what we’ve seen under other pieces of legislation passed by this Parliament—for example, the Psychoactive Substances Act, which limited quite heavily where those substances were able to be sold under the regulations in that system. This is a very broad service which I think many New Zealanders will be very concerned about.

It doesn’t define, as the ACT Party seems to be thinking, that this is a bunch of voluntary people going and helping their neighbours. It doesn’t stop this from being something which is funded by a music festival or funded by the Government. In fact, we’ve actually now seen the Government putting hundreds of thousands of dollars behind these services—taxpayer funds. This is no longer just a few neighbours getting together to try and help a few other people; this is the Government paying for this, and it also means that this is the taxpayer supporting the message behind what this bill is now pushing.

The reality is this bill will fail to address the issue that it is trying to achieve. The Government has not been able to provide solid evidence to prove that this is actually going to reduce harm. The baseline data is based upon a Victoria University report which was based upon self-selection of people who decided to fill out a survey. That’s something which I would’ve thought this Government would’ve used a far more evidence-based approach than a self-selected - based survey, which I think is something which will not be providing the right evidence to prove that this actually reduces harm.

The other point I’d like to make is around the way that this bill ensures that the inadmissibility of the evidence which is provided to the substance checkers—of course, someone comes along with their drugs and they ask for them to be checked, and that checking service and the information provided is, under this piece of legislation, not able to be used in a court of law. Now, that may be understandable when it comes, potentially, to issues around personal use, but there’s a big issue here in regards to the fact that there are people who not only use drugs but there are people who supply drugs, and there will be some people who supply drugs who will be looking to get their substances checked to be able to say they’ve got the Government tick of approval for the selling of their substances. That is something which not only could be falsely applied but is something which I think will be seen more and more with the people who peddle illicit substances through our community, seeking to provide some form of tick of approval by the New Zealand Government to say that the substances that they are peddling, the misery that they are causing, not only whether it’s at a festival or at an event but through our society and through our communities and to our most vulnerable—who are often the ones forgotten when we are passing legislation like this. They will be thinking that the Government has given a tick of approval to the substances that they are purchasing.

So this is a piece of legislation the National Party has a number of very serious concerns about. We did not support it to the committee, we do not see that the evidence has been provided through the select committee process by submitters to argue that this should be supported, and so we will not be supporting this through further stages. Thank you very much, Madam Speaker.

MARJA LUBECK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s good to be able to be back in the House, and good to be able to take a short call on this bill. I’d like to start off by thanking the Health Committee for their work on this bill. But I also wanted to take a moment to specifically talk about the harm reduction aspects in the recommendations made in this bill, because, from the previous speeches I’ve heard from the other side, it is very clear that the National Party speakers haven’t been able to get their head around what the harm reduction actually means, and how important it is. I’ve heard the “soft on crime”, I’ve heard the “lack of evidence” slogans—Mr Bridges started it, Mr Brown repeated it—but what they ignore and what they fail to acknowledge is that some countries, for over 25 years, have had research done on harm reduction—for example, in the Netherlands they’ve been testing illegal drugs for over 25 years. And people may be surprised to hear that, in the Netherlands, drugs are, in fact, still illegal. But what they have done as a country, they have decided that they would take a harm reduction approach when it came to keeping people safe—and it has saved lives.

They set up, back in 1992, what is called the Drugs Information and Monitoring System. It was the very first pill-testing organisation in all of Europe. In fact, what it is now, it is actually an integral part of the public health response in the Netherlands. So an example of how it’s saved lives: in 2008, there was a mass warning issued all over the Netherlands and over Belgium—via TV, radio, and internet messaging—about a batch of pink pills that had Superman logos on them, because, with pill testing, it was discovered that these particular pink pills had a toxic compound in them. As a result, no deaths were reported in the Netherlands.

So, Mr Brown, I may correct you here; people did change their mind and didn’t take these pills. However, in the UK, at the same time, there was no pill-testing service, and four young people died as a result from consuming these pills. So I guess we need to acknowledge that a lack of knowledge can kill people. So what this bill does is it gives people the opportunity to seek advice on the risk of taking drugs. It gives advice on how some of those risks can be reduced. So these changes and this bill are a reflection of this Government’s policy to treat drug consumption as a health issue and allow people to access advice that they can have confidence in, so that they can make their informed decisions as a result.

It’s this evidence-based harm reduction approach that will ultimately save lives. So what this Government doesn’t do, it doesn’t kick the can down the road, like Hon Nanaia Mahuta always says. I’d like to commend the Hon Andrew Little for his mahi on this bill, which will save lives. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Drug and Substance Checking Legislation Bill (No 2) be now read a second time.

Ayes 87

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

Noes 33

New Zealand National 33.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training Amendment Bill.

House in Committee

House in Committee

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members, the House is in committee on the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill and the Education and Training Amendment Bill. Before we move to the substantive consideration of the bill, I note that the Business Committee has determined that the powers of this committee are to be extended to permit consideration of proposed amendments in the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper 68, relating to functions involving professional leadership by the Teaching Council.

Bills

Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Teaching Council fees and costs

CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): We come first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 6, “Teaching Council fees and costs”. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Mr Chair, and if I could begin by introducing the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that you just mentioned that the Business Committee agreed to allow the Government to introduce, as it sits slightly outside of the original scope of this bill, but it does respond to many of the issues that were raised during the select committee process, and so I thank members across the House for allowing the Government to progress with this particular change.

By way of history, this all stems from the establishment of what was then the Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand, back in about 2015. It replaced what was then called the Teachers Council. It had an extended remit, so a wider range of powers than the previous Teachers Council, and it also introduced some new and more stringent disciplinary procedures for the council to follow in dealing with members of the profession whom there were complaints against.

Ultimately, the council was renamed to the Teaching Council by the current Government in response to some concerns when the Education Council was established by the profession, though they wanted the word “teacher” or “teaching” in the title, and we restored elected representation to that council. Other than that, the council has remained pretty much as it was established by that 2015 series of legislative changes.

The council was provided top-up funding by the then Government in 2015 to transition to new arrangements and to establish itself and to deal with some of the longstanding issues that the council had faced, including the fact that it had never been in surplus, I think, for its entire existence; it had always run at a deficit. The transitional funding, as announced by the previous Government through the Budget process, was to allow for that transition to the point where the council would become self-sufficient; it would pay for its functions out of its fees—the fees that it would charge the teaching profession for the purposes of registration.

Our Government extended the transitional support that was provided, and that transitional support would have run out—except we extended it again. Then, the council went through a process of determining what fee they wanted to affix. They determined that they would move from a three-year fee to a one-year fee. The fee would go up, recognising that the council had additional costs that it needed to meet. There’d been inflationary pressures. The council had never been particularly living within its means even before the purposes of the council were changed. The profession took a judicial review against the fees and that courts found that the council had made mistakes in the way that it set the fees; it set the fees under the 2015 law, but the courts found that those fees had been inappropriately set, and so the court set those fees aside. What that means is the council then reverts back to the fees that existed prior to the 2020 fee setting. The challenge there is that those fees were also set under the law that the courts had found was problematic, in the sense that the council was charging for all of its functions, when the courts found that the legislation only allowed it to charge for some of its functions. So the council was left in a position which was untenable, because potentially all of the fees that it’d collected since 2015 could have been drawn into question, and, at that point, the council was in some serious difficulty.

So the legislation, as introduced, did two main things. First of all, it validated the previous fees collected under the 2015 law change—not the fees that were overturned by the courts; they remain overturned by the courts. The second thing that it does is it allowed the council to credit fees that were paid towards the one-year registration fee against the reverted-to three-year registration fee, and that’s to avoid, effectively, a circular arrangement, where people who paid their one-year fee get that money back, and they then have to pay the higher three-year registration fee pretty much straight away. It means they will just have to pay the top-up in order to get that three-year registration fee.

The council will now have to go back and start re-consulting on its fees, and they will have to do that in accordance with the law. Of course, if they mess that up again, they’re also subject to judicial review again. But this law change absolutely clarifies what they can and can’t charge fees for.

The SOP that I introduced makes it clear that the leadership functions that the council has, and these are leadership functions that were inserted by the 2015 law change, cannot be paid for through teacher registration fees or levies. If the Government asks the Teaching Council to take on additional leadership roles, then the Government of the day—whomever that is—should pay for that separately, and teachers should not pay for that through their fees. So I think that responds to a lot of the criticism.

In terms of the quantum of the fee increase, I do intend to bring forward further legislation to the House that deals with the increased costs arising from those changed disciplinary functions and disciplinary processes that were introduced in 2015. It is clear, now, that the inability of the council to effectively triage complaints, the fact that they have to send a much-greater number of the complaints to a formal disciplinary tribunal hearing, has resulted in a significant escalation in cost; it has resulted in the need for the council to employ significantly more staff to deal with those complaints, and that is not necessarily going to increase the robustness of those processes—in fact, there is a real concern that we’re putting people through an unnecessary trauma, when they shouldn’t have to necessarily go through that process. So further legislation is coming on that, and that will further address the levy and fee concerns that the profession have been raising.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s great to be back here in the land of the free, after such a long time in Auckland. This is my first opportunity to speak in the House since returning, and I’m very conscious of the many hundreds of thousands of people in the queen city who have been locked up for a very long period of time, missing out on the opportunity to live their normal lives and for their children to be educated properly at school. So these are very sort of concerning times for many Aucklanders, but it’s good to be here back in the debating chamber, talking about issues that matter. And this piece of legislation’s quite a narrow one, trying to deal with a particular set of circumstances that have occurred with the Teaching Council.

Our fundamental point is—and the Minister has outlined the background to this—the new role of the Teaching Council from 2015, the setting up of the higher fees, the challenge by the unions, and the court ruling that has left them in a bit of a pickle. And, ultimately, the Government, really, had a couple of choices: they could ram through legislation to deal with the situation to keep the money flowing—which is what they’ve done under urgency, with a very truncated select committee process—or they could have continued the additional funding that has been carried on for a number of years now to the council, and given themselves more time to have a more fuller and proper process to work out how we can get this situation sorted out more effectively. So our opposition to this legislation is based on the fact that we don’t automatically just give a tick to urgent legislation rammed through the House under a short process.

It’s been quite interesting, because we’ve been left very much on the side of the PPTA, which is not necessarily our usual position. And we’ve heard many, many submissions of members coming in. The most notable being one teacher who said, “Well, as far as I can see, this bill has all come about because the Teaching Council is short of money—well, I’m short of money, and I’m a bit worried about how I’m paying my bills, and I’m irritated by the fact that we’re fixing their shortage of money, but I’m short of money. And the bills are piling up, the energy’s more expensive, my gas is taking more to get into the tank, my broccoli is more expensive than it ever was before, and lo and behold, next thing, these geezers want to put up the price of my teacher’s registration and I’m annoyed about it. Why should this Government be ramming through, under urgent legislation, a fix to enable them to get away with their big spending ways?”

Of course, there seems to have been an enormous amount of confusion about just what the Teaching Council is funding and what they’re paying for. And so, quite naturally, a lot of teachers have seen the enormous amount of energy, effort, and expense being led by the Teaching Council on unteaching racism and on leadership, and they’ve naturally wondered, “Well, are my fees going to this?” And the Minister is quite correct in pointing out that it’s important to separate those two, but when we looked at the legislation that was introduced, it didn’t really separate it very carefully, and the powers of the council were very broad, and what they were looking at was very broad around leadership and in the sector as a whole. And so, notwithstanding all the promises made that the council would be very focused on the registration matters, which it is ultimately appropriate to be paid for by the profession, it was extending more broadly and more broadly. And so teachers would look at the fact that the wage bill of the Teaching Council had gone from about $5 million a year to $8 million—so it had gone from about $5.3 million in 2016 to $8.2 million in 2020—and they’re wondering to themselves, “Well, is this organisation, is this council, getting elephantiasis, and are we having to pay for it?” And so that’s where we’ve come from: a concern about the—[Bell rung] Sorry, I was just getting into my rhythm and it all came to an end very quickly.

So, anyway, as I was saying, the functions of the Teaching Council are to provide leadership to the education profession and to enhance the status of education leaders and to identify and disseminate the best practices of educational leadership. Now, that all sounds very good, and everybody’s pleased to see that, and if we take a step back and ask ourselves, “Well, what are we trying to achieve here with the Teaching Council?”, I think all New Zealand parents want to know—

Hon Chris Hipkins: 10 minutes of my life I’m never going to get back.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —that the teaching profession as a whole are drawing in the best people—the Minister made some comment; I didn’t quite pick it up.

Hon Chris Hipkins: I said this is 10 minutes of my life I’m never going to get back.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Ah, well, and I’m sure the Minister could have put it to so much better use!

Hon Chris Hipkins: Yes, I really could have.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yeah, yeah. And yet there is this messy, irritating process called democracy, whereby the Opposition of the day does get the opportunity to have a look at what the Government is proposing, and asking ourselves, “Have they got it right and have the proper processes been followed?”

And what I think a lot of New Zealanders mightn’t appreciate is the process that we generally have is that when Government wants to change the law, it introduces a bill and then it sends it off to a select committee, whereby the Parliament and members of the public can have their say about it—so just to remind people who are tuning into this debate and this conversation: what happened was that the Government rammed it through at very high speed and gave the profession and everybody involved very little time to actually sift through the issues properly. And the key issue at debate in this whole thing is: what should be paid for by teachers personally and what should be paid for by the State?

Actually, in the last campaign, the National Party campaigned on the Government picking up the bill for the full registration, which was a very generous policy. I think there is a reasonable argument that the profession, the teachers, should actually pay for the professional certification and qualification of teachers, as many other professional bodies do. So, ultimately, we have no argument with that. Where the real argument is is how far that extends. And if it’s coming to complicated public relations campaigns about unteaching racism, or leadership, and all those sorts of things, then far fewer people agree with that.

Now, the issue is that the Government may fund these through the Teaching Council, but the overheads and the apparatus continues to grow and gets bigger and more expensive. And so teachers are quite fairly and rightly concerned that the spending and the focus of the Teaching Council is properly narrow and focused on them and their requirements. What we saw through the whole select committee process and the submissions that we heard was a real absence of trust by many, many teachers—and not just one or two; many, many teachers—about how this has been carried out by the Government. And, as I say, referring to the young teacher, out of frustration, saying that this is all about dealing with the Teaching Council’s shortage of money, “Well, I’m short of money, and I don’t want to have to pay higher fees than I need to. And I want to be reassured by this Minister and this Government that there will be proper arrangements in place.”

Now, the Minister has admitted that it needs to be looked at more thoroughly and more legislation is going to be coming down the track, so he had a simple choice: he could have done the job properly and extended transitional funding for a little bit longer so that the job could be done properly, but instead he’s just rammed through urgent legislation to deal with it in the short term, without giving the profession the proper opportunity to have their say. And on that basis, we’re worried about that and we want to delve into the details over the next little while. Thank you, Madam Chair.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I’m hoping the Minister won’t regret my minutes, and he won’t be asking for them back. I’ve got many questions. But, first of all, I would like to acknowledge the teachers—particularly the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA), who did take the court case, through frustration, in terms of the, I would say, breakdown of the relationship between them and the teachers affiliated with the PPTA and the Teaching Council as well—and also the concerns that came up through the select committee process from the rank and file early childhood education teachers, and questions around what that might mean for relief teachers as well and whether the 10 years’ worth of fees might all of a sudden get dumped on them.

What I heard from the select committee process was that everybody understands that it’s really important to have an independent teaching council, and that it’s best that it is paid for by the profession itself; it was just a matter of how and when we could get to that place where that relationship actually develops in a way that actually embraces all of that. I don’t think we’ve got there just yet.

I’m happy about the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP). It shows that the Minister has been listening and there is nudging movement towards getting some of that clarity, I think, which is essential in terms of the relationship. But, as I said in my second reading speech on this bill, a good relationship is a boil-up, not a fry-up—you’ve got to take a bit of time, you’ve got to give it the right ingredients, you’ve got to check in with it.

Hon Member: You’ve done that one before.

TEANAU TUIONO: I know, that’s why I said it was the second reading speech; I’m glad the member over there was listening. But the basis of a good relationship is, of course, trust as well.

So I have a bunch of questions around trying to find the clarity in terms of what the SOP means, and maybe that is within the bill itself, from the Minister’s perspective. The first set of questions I have is around this leadership provision, because that was one of the things that really came out of the select committee process, as well—teachers didn’t want to pay for it, there were concerns about the way that the Teaching Council itself was operating. So I wonder if the Minister could give me some clarity around what those leadership functions are. So, for example, I have three examples here: is it to provide leadership to teachers and directions for the education profession; (2) to enhance the status of teachers and education leaders; and (3) to identify and disseminate best practice in teaching and leadership and foster the education profession’s continued development in light of research and evidence of changes in society and technology? So it’s about: are they all there; are they yeah; are they nah; are they yeah, nah, bro? So I would like to begin by sort of getting some clarity on those leadership provisions at this particular point in time.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a question for the Minister around the speed of this bill, but I just want to start by saying that the Minister jokes about wanting his 10 minutes back, but there were a number of submitters who would have given anything for their five or 10 minutes in front of the select committee, but they didn’t get it because this bill was raced through at breakneck speed.

My question to the Minister is this. He explained in his first reading speech—which I went back and read—about how he extended the Government subsidy to the Teaching Council shortly after they took office to recognise some of the changes that were made, including reinstating elections to the council. My question is: why did the Minister not do that again, reinstate transitional funding—and my colleague Paul Goldsmith talked about this—to cover the council for a period that would have allowed a more full and proper select committee process in order to allow for some of those unhappy stakeholders—and they were very unhappy—to have their say?. I mean, even given the short time frame, we heard from a lot of submitters. But we know there were hundreds more who didn’t get to have their say, and the one comment from all of those submitters, or a great proportion of those submitters that came to the select committee or appeared on Zoom, who were visibly angry and upset at the way that this bill was being rammed through—the one thing that they all said was “Why is this being rammed through so quickly? Why is this not a full process?”

I asked the Minister why it was that he couldn’t have extended that funding, given the level of mistrust that the teaching profession have with the Teaching Council, and now the level of anger and angst against the Government for seemingly covering everything up and pushing it through quickly without allowing people to have their say. So my specific question to the Minister is: why didn’t he reinstate and extend that transitional cover to allow even for an extra week or two for people to come to grips with the bill and have their say at select committee, just to create maybe a little bit of goodwill between the teachers and the Government again, which has been severely dented and, I would say, in some cases, lost, from some of the speeches that we heard?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): If I could just quickly respond to those two points. In terms of why we didn’t just continue with the transitional funding: in fact, the Government did continue to provide transitional funding to the Teaching Council because they have had to revert back to the fee that existed previously. The issue was that without this bill, and without this bill being progressed quickly, all of the fees that the council have collected since they came into existence in 2015 could potentially have to be refunded. So we wouldn’t just be providing transitional funding but, in fact, we’d be leaving the council in a position where even with transitional funding they would be insolvent. So that is the reason why the bill is being progressed very quickly.

In terms of the question from the Greens around leadership, I think there is an important need—and the Supplementary Order Paper I think, that I’ve put forward, 68, does clarify this more. There’s an important need to differentiate between the leadership functions that the council needs to undertake in order to fulfil its core functions and those leadership functions that may be additional. So if I give an example that one of the core functions of the council is teacher registration. So they set the standards for teacher registration and then they have a process in place for registering teachers. In the process of doing that, they need to demonstrate to teachers how they can actually meet the registered teacher criteria, and, in doing so, that is a leadership function. So they’re disseminating best practice. They’re saying that in order to become a registered teacher or in order to maintain your teacher registration, these are the sorts of things that you need to do. That is, in itself, a leadership function. I think most people in the profession would believe that that is a legitimate role for the Teaching Council, including secondary school teachers.

On the other hand, there’s the wider leadership functions, which we are now talking with them about. That includes things like professional development or leadership development for aspiring professional leaders within the education system. The profession’s view, and I think it’s one that’s been well articulated, is that they shouldn’t have to pay for that through their teacher registration fees. The Government’s never been of the view that they should; in fact, we’ve always been clear that if we ask them to undertake those functions, that the Government should pay for those separately, and that’s always been our intention. So Supplementary Order Paper 68 absolutely clarifies that and makes that clear.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you very much for that answer, Minister. I’ve got a couple of other questions as well. I guess I’m one of those people that the last time I really got into maths was seventh form—I did calculus, then I did first year at university, and then I went to law school and threw away my maths books. But I know that some of the teachers will get lost, and I have gotten lost around, like, the movement between the fees, between this, that, and the other as well. So trying to get that clarity around that is really, really important, and, as I’ve been saying for a while, when you have that clarity, that helps us to build that relationship, which has broken down, I feel, between the profession and the Teaching Council.

But on that, a couple more questions: given that the Teaching Council does not intend to fulfil its legislative functions without a substantial fees increase, how will the Government mitigate the financial burden to teachers? I’m thinking of probably the early childhood education teacher that zoomed in and says, “Look, I’ve got to budget down to the last dollar.”, and if all of a sudden the fees bump up, you know, tenfold or fivefold or whatever, that’s going to seriously impact that teacher, particularly new teachers, particularly a relief teacher who has to pay for the registration fee as well. So that’s a question around what kind of support there could be for teachers in those circumstances.

My second question is: instead of allowing the Teaching Council to charge levies, as well as fees, why does the Government not fund those aspects that are for the public good, such as the disciplinary functions, instead of making more teachers pay for a process the vast majority will never need?

Third question is: why does this legislation seek to expand the Teaching Council’s fee-setting powers to cover all of its expanded functions, when the submissions to the Education and Workforce Committee were very clear that teachers want to remove these expanded functions and not pay for them? I think you talked a little bit about that in terms of the leadership functions as well, but if you could give us a bit more clarity on that, I would appreciate that.

And, fourthly, there is that breakdown of trust between the profession and Teaching Council, so it would be good to get some clarity and some answers about what the Minister intends to actually rebuild that trust, because I think we need that. We need to have that trust between all the different bodies that make our school system work as well. If it’s because there is a lack of faith within the council’s leadership layer, what will the Minister do at that particular point? Are you looking at reforming it, asking for resignations, or doing something else as well? So there’s a number of questions there that I have asked. Thank you.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I would just encourage members to be careful when they talk about the breakdown in the relationship between the teaching profession and the Teaching Council because of the inherent assumption in that, that all of the teaching profession think the same when it comes to the Teaching Council, because they don’t. As a result of this legislation, one of the things that we did do was actually talk to the profession about where some of the leadership functions that the council have at the moment should set, including considering whether, in fact, we should remove them completely. We received representations from the NZEI opposing that, from principal groups clearly opposing that, from advocates for Māori teachers opposing that, and about the only organisation in favour of that was the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA). Now, I acknowledge the PPTA have opposed the council’s existence in its current form from when it was introduced and when it was established in 2015, and that’s a long-held in principle position by the PPTA, and I respect that position. I don’t happen to agree with it, and all of those other organisations that I just mentioned also don’t agree with that.

In terms of the fees that the council will now have to consult on, I make a couple of observations. The first of which is that the council has been in a position where the fees collected have not covered its core functions, even prior to when the council was established. So its predecessor organisation, the Teachers Council, was also in a position where the fees it was collecting were insufficient to meet its statutory responsibilities. So a fee increase has been coming for over a decade now and one of the challenges, of course, is that successive Governments—I’m responsible for this; my predecessors, Nikki Kaye and Hekia Parata, were also responsible for this—have continued to defer that. The challenge is that the longer you defer that, the bigger the increase becomes when it eventually happens.

So what I think we have to do is benchmark what’s a reasonable fee increase. So we can look at other comparable professions and, actually, the fees currently charged by the Teaching Council are actually significantly lower than they are for other comparable professions in terms of the fees that they pay for their regulatory bodies. What can we do to help keep those costs down? Well, I think we can do two things. The first is what we’re doing in this bill, which is to make it very clear that additional leadership functions that the council may take on should be paid for by central government and not paid for by fees or levies. The second is to look at those disciplinary functions again and say, “Are all of these processes as good as they could be?”, because there’s no question in all of the advice that I’ve had from both the Ministry of Education and the council directly that those changes to the disciplinary processes have accounted for a significant increase in the Teaching Council’s structural costs, and so we can have another look at those. I think we all agree that robust disciplinary processes within the teaching profession are vital. If we have people in the profession who are not upholding the standards of the profession when they are dealing with young, vulnerable children, then absolutely there should be robust disciplinary processes to deal with that.

Having said that, it does seem to be that those processes have now become so stringent that they’re capturing relatively minor transgressions that shouldn’t be going to a disciplinary tribunal proceeding where other means may well be able to deal with those complaints. So I think we will look at that and we’ll bring forward further legislation to the House, and that will have an impact on the fees.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Just because we have been talking about the submissions, I want to make it clear that there were 1,033 submissions, and that was in a very short space of time that those submissions came in. Teachers had to do it during term time and most were in lockdown during that time, so it was a significant effort from those teachers. I think my Green Party colleague and I, listening to them, were shocked with just how disappointed and angry the teachers were.

And so my question to the Minister in the chair, the Hon Chris Hipkins, is around his Supplementary Order Paper 68 and his comments around clause 4(2), “(2) The functions that the Teaching Council may perform with the written approval of the Minister … as follows:”, and the three comments there around the leadership training. Can the Minister just clarify whether that addresses the submissions of many of the teachers—that they explicitly stated they did not want the Teaching Council to be involved in professional development provision for them? And so is the Minister saying that this leadership training will not be any subject-specific professional development? And also, the functions that the council may perform with the written approval of the Minister seem to be quite an operational matter that the Minister is prepared to put his finger in the pie of, and does he think that getting down into that operational level is a sensible thing for him to be doing and likely to fill the teachers with confidence in the council, if they have to be going to him for approval? Would it not be much better that he ruled that provision out, specifically when the submissions asked for that provision of professional development training to be left out?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Very briefly, in terms of answers to those last contributions in terms of professional development, I think the member Penny Simmonds just asked the question about whether or not it was the Government’s intention to transfer professional development functions to the council and, therefore, require teachers to pay for those. No, is the absolute, categorical answer to that.

In fact, one of the first things I did when I became the Minister of Education was to stop the programme of work that had been put in place under the last Government to transfer the administration of teacher professional development from the Ministry of Education to the Teaching Council. That was in train when I became the Minister, and I stopped that. It is not this Government’s intention to do that. I do note that it was the last Government’s intention to do that—the previous National Government—and that was something that this Government has stopped.

In terms of the changes around leadership function and the question of “Will they satisfy all of the submitters?”, the answer is that is a little bit yes and a little bit no. In terms of a little bit yes, it says to them that if the council is taking on additional leadership functions, then they won’t have to pay for it through their fees and levies—I think they’ll be happy with that. In terms of whether the council should have any additional leadership functions at all, the profession is divided on that. So the Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) submitters, or the largely PPTA submitters, who made contributions to the select committee would prefer that the council didn’t undertake any leadership functions at all, and the very strong feedback from other representatives of the profession—and I’ve just mentioned them; the NZEI, a variety of principal groups, and a variety of groups representing Māori teachers—have been very clear that they think that they should.

TEANAU TUIONO (Green): Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just wondering if the Minister could drill down a bit more around his comments around helping teachers to mitigate that financial burden. And I was wondering around comments around what that might mean for new teachers, relief teachers, and early childhood education teachers, and whether you are going to do something different there or whether it’s just going to be broad-brush. I’d like some clarification in those spaces.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I think one of the most regrettable things about this is that the Government did provide funding to allow the Teaching Council to move to more regular instalments, because more regular instalments are easier for people to pay than a big lump sum every three years. One of the challenges around this particular court case is that the funding in order to transition to that yearly fee—recognising that if the council moves to a yearly fee, for the first two years they have less revenue because of the period of time it takes for them to build up the annual fee collection to the point where it would be at if they were collecting the three-year fee all at once. So we provided them some bridging funding to overcome that gap that moving to an annual registration would create. Unfortunately, some of that funding will have been used to bridge the gap that’s now been created by the fact that they’ve had to revert back to the lower fee. So we’ll continue to talk to them about that. But I think the provision allowing for them to charge a yearly fee, rather than a three-yearly fee, is the main thing that I think will help teachers, because they won’t have that big outlay in the same way.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the Minister’s amendments to Part 1 set out on Supplementary Order Paper 68 be agreed to.

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Amendments agreed to.

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

Ayes 75

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

Noes 45

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10; Te Paati Māori 2.

Part 1 as amended agreed to.

Part 2 Validations and other transitional provisions

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clause 7, which amends Schedule 1 of the principal Act—“Validations and other transitional provisions”. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): I have to remove my mask and so forth—thank you, Madam Chair. Look, the primary sort of issue in this legislation, as we’ve traversed, and our primary concern on this side of the Chamber, is the speed with which it has been rushed through this House. I suppose the question that we have that the Minister was touching on in Part 1 is the fact that it is his assurance to the profession that things will be more tightly constrained and limited. But the problem is with Supplementary Order Paper 68, that he brought in and that we just sort of dealt with, is that the Teaching Council can do a whole lot of stuff if they get written permission from the Minister. So that doesn’t necessarily tighten things dramatically.

So, when we come to Part 2, we’ve got the Schedule included, which sort of goes through the details of the mechanisms to fix up the problem it would solve, it doesn’t resolve the fundamental issue that we have with this, that the teachers themselves, concerned about the extra levies and fees that they have to pay, are wanting to have a decent debate about where that boundary lies between registration, certification, and doing what the Minister quite rightly said. Everybody agrees it is important to ensure that every pupil and student and school can feel confident that the teachers that are in the classroom have been through a proper process and that difficulties and breaches in terms of basic sort of teacher requirements can be dealt with effectively so that we can all have confidence in the quality of the teachers that we’re dealing with—all those things everybody understands. But it’s the drift into these other issues that has been the concern for many teachers, and how they pay for it. So all we’ve been asking for through this legislation and through this debate and from this Minister is a proper opportunity to deal with that in a timely fashion.

So when we come to Part 2 and the changes made to Schedule 1 in the principal Act—and we’ll come to the question of the introduction of levies as well as fees, and what’s the difference between a levy and a fee, and why are we adding that to the mix as well as costs, and what can they do with the permission of the Minister, and what can they not do without the permission of the Minister? All this, frankly, the profession hasn’t had the opportunity to talk about it in the detail that it requires. So the only question I have for the Minister is: why did he accept the line that this legislation needs to be urgently run through the House right now, rather than extending the period of time that traditional funding—and, yes, I accept that there may have been some risk of further challenge to the previous fees, but that was not guaranteed in any way, shape, or form; it’s a risk, but it’s not something that’s guaranteed—and done the job properly, once and for all, rather than this two-step process?

It’s not something that is going to fundamentally alter the basis of education in this country. It’s not the most important issue that we have to face by any stretch, particularly when more than 200,000 students in Auckland still are not face to face in the classroom—haven’t been for 12 weeks. I mean, it’s very strange to understand how the House can move with urgency to deal with an issue like this, and yet we seem to be taking our time when it comes to actually getting the schools reopened in Auckland. But that’s a debate for another day. But I’d be very interested to hear once more from the Minister on this topic.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Just very briefly, as I indicated previously, the reason for the urgency is that, in relation to Part 2, this validates the fees that were collected since 2015—I note, when National was in Government. Without the validation allowed for in Part 2, the Teaching Council potentially never would have collected a valid fee in its entire existence. So this resets the clock for them. It does not overturn the decision of the court.

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Part 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we move now to the Schedule, for which there is no debate.

The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 68 in the name of the Hon Chris Hipkins to the Schedule be agreed to.

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Amendments agreed to.

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Schedule as amended agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Well, the only point I want to make—and it’s an obvious one—is that we don’t agree with the urgency of the commencement, because we don’t agree that the whole thing should have been done quite so quickly. People watching this might say, “Why does he keep banging on about this?” and “Why is it important?” and “The Minister is a very busy man and he has, it’s fair to say, a number of issues that he needs to deal with—for example, when are the people of Auckland going to get their freedoms back and when are we going to be able to get our kids back to school?” and a whole lot of things—and so he’s got a lot of things to deal with, and it must be very irritating for him to have to sort of go through these tedious processes.

But the simple point I’m try to make is: effectively, as a Parliament, what we’re doing here is coming to fix a problem that a previous Parliament did in passing legislation. One of the issues that all of us as legislators learn in our time in Parliament is that a certain percentage of time, maybe almost half the time, legislation passed in this House doesn’t achieve what it set out to achieve. In fact, in our haste to pass legislation, we don’t get the words quite right. That’s why it is so important to, whenever we possibly can—

Hon Chris Hipkins: I remember giving this speech!

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —go through the processes. The hardened, cynical Minister remembers making these speeches, and now we’re on the other side, he’s in favour of speed. With speed, as our friends in the police often say, the bigger crash and the bigger the mess. That’s why it’s important to take your time on these things and listen to the Minister’s good friends in the New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association and in the union, and hear their cry. You know, at bass, the cry was a question of trust and it was a question of concern about the cost of living, fundamentally, and being irritated at the prospect of the council being able to turn the wheels of Government in order to fix their little financial problem, and a sense that the teachers who were struggling to make ends meet were looking at the potential of higher levies, fees, and costs.

So my question to the Minister is: why the great hurry? Why the commencement date coming on the date that it comes in—I can’t currently put my finger on it, but it’s not far off—and the date at which it achieves the Royal assent? Maybe he could explain himself on that matter before we set this bill on its way.

ERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to echo the sentiments of the previous speaker, Paul Goldsmith. Look, the Minister is probably getting a bit exasperated as to why we’re, as a previous speaker said, banging on about this. But he hasn’t managed yet to explain to us why he wasn’t able to give this bill at least another couple of weeks. What pressing matter was there that was so pressing that wouldn’t allow him to push this out just for one or two weeks? We’re not asking for a number of weeks more than that, but just a couple more weeks for those teachers, as Penny mentioned earlier, who were in the middle of lockdown, who were teaching—it was term time—to be able to get their thoughts on paper or appear in front of the select committee.

So why the great haste, I guess, in terms of this particular part that we’re talking about, the commencement date—why the great haste? What pressing matter was there, what imminent threat was there, that the Minister couldn’t have given the bill an extra couple of weeks and pushed the commencement date out just a couple of weeks? He hasn’t been able to answer that. All he’s told us is that he had to do it for a number of other reasons, but no specific date that he was working to—any particular thing that was going to happen.

So I would like the Minister to specifically answer the question why we weren’t able to get at least an extra couple of weeks. Given that teachers only had just under two weeks, I believe it was, to get their thoughts down—in fact, it may have been shorter than that—and why they were so angry. So why was it that we couldn’t have even had an extra week or two? What was it that the Minister was working to? What threat was there?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): As I’ve indicated, the reason for the expedited process through the House was to give the Teaching Council certainty around the fees that it’s collected since 2015, when it was established under the previous Government. I would note that once this bill has been passed, they will be able to go back and consult with the profession about what the fees should be in the future. The appropriate place for the members of the teaching profession to direct their feedback on what the fees should be is not to the Government—we don’t set the fees—it is to the council.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Thank you, Madam Chair. Does the Minister believe that the way in which the bill has been rushed through is going to add to the concerns of the teachers that we heard—

Dr Duncan Webb: Not the title clause.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Sorry?

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member has the call—the member has the call.

PENNY SIMMONDS: Oh, thank you—that the teachers showed their concern about the consultation not being real, that the Minister has stepped in when the courts have flagged that the consultation wasn’t real. And does he believe that this is going to resolve or create an even worse division between the teachers and the Teaching Council in terms of a lack of trust, lack of faith, and concern that the consultation, when the Teaching Council does undertake it, will be nothing other than a sham—as we have seen with numerous changes to the Education Act, under this Minister, where a consultation has taken place and submissions have been received, and the Minister has decided that 29 percent of the submissions for it is an overwhelming majority. Does he think that he might be perpetuating a feeling amongst educators, be it at compulsory or tertiary or, indeed, early childhood level, that the Minister is not genuinely interested in consultation with the sector?

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Clause 1 agreed to.

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Clause 2 agreed to.

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

Ayes 65

New Zealand Labour 65.

Noes 55

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

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported with amendment.

Bills

Education and Training Amendment Bill

In Committee

Part 1 Substantive amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we come now to the Education and Training Amendment Bill. We move first to Part 1. This is the debate on clauses 4 to 13. Those are the substantive amendments to this bill. The question is that Part 1 stand part.

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): I’ll keep my contribution to this one very, very brief. This is a largely technical bill that deals with a variety of issues in the Education and Training Act. I think the fact that the select committee reported it back without amendment, in a unanimous recommendation that it be passed, I think, signifies that it’s not particularly controversial. So I’m certainly happy to have any discussions or debates with members about it.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): This legislation—I suppose there are a couple of points I wanted to make, and a couple of questions for the Minister. So what we have here is a sort of a mop-up bill. Every now and again the Government brings in a piece of legislation to fix a few little problems in the legislation and when we run through them—and most of them are reasonably uncontroversial, so I’m sure the people of New Zealand will be relieved to know that we are going to clarify that former teachers are not automatically enabled to use physical restraint in schools, but they first must be approved to use physical restraint at school by the school that employs them. And that, I’m sure, is a relief to a lot of people. And these are the sorts of tidy-ups that are brought through in legislation in this way.

The fundamental question I have is given that he’s gone to all the trouble to bring in legislation, why couldn’t he have done something a little more useful with the opportunity that he had to deal with, say, for example, the truancy crisis that we have in this country right here, right now, where on an average day across the country only three out of five kids are attending school regularly? There are many schools and schools that I’ve been to, schools that I’ve visited, where the regular attendance is only 15 percent—15 percent, not 50, not 90, but 15 percent. So, you know, we’ve got real, real issues in our education system, the most dramatic element of which is the fact that the kids just aren’t turning up on a regular basis.

There are legislative elements to that, and I could go on at great length about a lot of them. I’m mindful of the fact that this is a very busy Minister who’s got a lot of problems on his plate and he needs to get on with it. But we’re left here with legislation that is being brought through, fixing a few things, tweaking the odd thing, and a real missed opportunity by this Government to actually do some useful stuff that would have made a bit of difference and helped give the kids that we have in this country the opportunity that education provides. And you’re never going to—

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Can I just invite the member to speak to issues that are contained within this bill.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Yes.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Thank you.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I’m very happy to do that, Madam Chair, but I suppose I was talking about the opportunity cost and the sense of, yes, they’ve done this, but why didn’t they do that.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Can I invite the member to speak to matters that are contained in the bill.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Quite right.

Hon Willie Jackson: Sit down, Goldie.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I’m not going to take the invitation from the Hon Willie Jackson to sit down, because I have more to say. The question that I had for the Minister is: in clause 4, an amendment has been made saying that, “The Minister and the Minister for Māori Crown Relations: Te Arawhiti may, for the purpose of providing equitable outcomes for … students, jointly issue a statement”. And I suppose the question I have is that I would like the Minister to explain exactly what he means by “equitable outcomes for students”.

Hon Willie Jackson: What do you think? What do you reckon?

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: Well, it will be interesting to hear, because I think most people can understand the concept of equitable opportunities for all New Zealanders to get a good education and to learn, and we recognise the immense diversity within humanity: different people’s priorities, different people’s enthusiasm, things that they value, things that they don’t, different attitudes and different abilities, and they do lead to different outcomes. I’m just curious to hear from the Minister exactly what he means by “equitable outcomes for students”. And then maybe we can ask a bit more about how he plans to achieve that.

PENNY SIMMONDS (National—Invercargill): Madam Chair, thank you. I would like to ask the Minister a question relating to clauses 5 to 7, which relate to the use of physical restraint at registered schools, including by teachers. The amendment stated that—it clarifies that only persons holding a teaching position can use physical restraint, in accordance with the provisions. I would surmise that in many instances, the person that might well be dealing with a student that might need to be physically restrained would be teachers’ aides. And so can the Minister tell us whether that actually then excludes teacher’s aides? Is it only including teachers, and so what will occur for teachers’ aides, who are most likely to be the ones dealing with, perhaps, students that might need that restraint?

Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Thank you, Madam Chair. I would refer, perhaps, the member to clause 7, which talks about authorised staff members at the registered schools. So, if a teacher-aide is an authorised staff member, then the guidance around physical restraint would apply to them. The issue that we’re dealing with here is a replacement of just the word “teachers” with “persons holding a teaching position,”. It means that the person has to be the teacher within that school. If a parent, for example, who happened to be a teacher was visiting the school, it would not be appropriate for them to be using physical restraint. So it is simply just a question of clarity around to whom the provisions should apply.

Part 1 agreed to.

Part 2 Other amendments

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clause 14 and the Schedule, and other amendments. The question is that Part 2 stand part.

Part 2 agreed to.

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): We’ll move on to the Schedule. The question is that the Schedule stand part.

Schedule agreed to.

Clauses 1 to 3

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, we come now to the final debate, on clauses 1 to 3. This is the debate on the title, commencement, and principal Act. The question is that Clause 1 stand part.

Clause 1 agreed to.

Clause 2 agreed to.

Clause 3 agreed to.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

Report of Committee of the Whole House

Report of Committee of the Whole House

CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Education and Training (Teaching Council Fees, Levies, and Costs) Amendment Bill and reports it with amendment. The committee has also considered the Education and Training Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

Bills

Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment) on behalf of the Minister of Transport: I present a legislative statement on the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill.

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

Hon DAVID PARKER: I move, That the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Mr Speaker, members of the House, members will be aware the Government is committed, which I think this is a commitment we share across the House, to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from transport, and to reduce shipping emissions, particulate emissions, for example. In doing so, this will contribute towards New Zealand meeting its emission goals and helping the world do better.

Shipping is a major contributor of noxious emissions to the atmosphere, particularly sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter. These affect both human health and the environment. Passing this bill will enable us to reduce these emissions and implement greenhouse gas emission reduction measures. It does this by aligning our domestic legislation under the Maritime Transport Act 1994 with the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, MARPOL annex VI. New Zealand’s accession to MARPOL annex VI will also strengthen New Zealand’s ability to play a credible role in negotiations at the International Maritime Organization to both push for global ambition and improve New Zealand’s ability to protect its trade and economic interests.

We expect all of the associated rules and regulations to be in place by the end of this year, which will enable the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to deposit the instrument of accession with the International Maritime Organization for the new requirements to come into force three months later, which is estimated to be in March 2022. I commend this bill to the House.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): It’s a real pleasure to take a call on this bill, the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill. I’ve just come in from Auckland, and it’s great to be back in the House and to be able to remember what I’m supposed to be doing here after many months away. So, apologies for that, but I’m sure it will come flooding back. But this is a very good, common-sense bill. We support the bill, as we have right from the beginning, as the National Party. It is a positive step towards a much cleaner environment, we’re removing marine pollution, particularly around ports and harbours, and it’s just a very common-sense bill.

We discussed it a lot in our select committee, with an illustrious group of people around there, and we were all in violent agreement. I think we spoke to probably eight stakeholders—

Greg O’Connor: Even more illustrious now.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: Yeah, exactly. But, obviously, the MARPOL bill, we know what it’s about: it’s about marine pollution, and it’s about an agreement to reduce global marine pollution across the world. We were a signatory to it back in 1998. I think we’ve signed four of the six annexes; this is our fifth, and those different annexes are covering different aspects of marine pollution. Of course, 97 percent of the world’s shipping tonnage has actually signed up to it already—I think 94 countries, by memory—and it’s important that we play our part. We’ve probably been a bit slow, bit overdue, but we’re there now and we’re keen to do it.

Annex VI, as the Minister talked about, does limit air pollution from ships around ports and harbours, specifically nitrous oxide, sulphur oxides, and particulate matter. Of course, that’s really important because that has negative health effects around cardiovascular and respiratory disease, lungs, and general weakening of immunity. This legislation will give the powers to conduct inspections audits to ensure compliance. Of course, the way that shipping companies do that compliance is they’ve got two options: one is to install scrubbers, which are, sort of, very complicated exhaust gas treatment devices, and that’s frankly not realistic for the New Zealand shipping fleet. The other way is, obviously, to adopt low sulphur fuels and limit sulphur to 0.5 percent. Those fuels, of course, aren’t produced in New Zealand—Refining New Zealand doesn’t produce them, won’t produce them—and so we’ll be importing that fuel into New Zealand and making sure that we’ve got improved port reception facilities as well.

We had a good select committee process, and the good thing was that all our stakeholders, all the submitters that we talked to, were very much on board. As I said, we had eight submissions; I think two oral submissions, and, importantly, there were just some definitional changes that were of very minor consequence.

So this is a bill that’s hard to talk much longer on, suffice to say that we are very pleased to support this bill and commend it to the House.

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

GREG O’CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I can only agree with the previous speaker, as the chairman of the same select committee, the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, which was much the poorer for the lack of those two members in the back row there, I might say. But they did their bit and it certainly helped us get this piece of legislation through.

Just to put this in perspective, a cruise ship—and it must seem a long time since we’ve looked out of the windows and seen a cruise ship coming in here. But one cruise ship coming into Wellington Harbour is the equivalent of 200,000 extra cars driving on an average day around Wellington—just to give you some idea of what a piece of legislation like this is meant to deal with. It does ensure that when these ships arrive, what they have traditionally done is they’ve used high sulphur fuel, which is 3.5 percent by mass, and that will now be required to be 0.5 percent. Why, you might ask. Well, it’s all about price. Obviously, the higher sulphur fuel is considerably cheaper than the lower sulphur fuel. So the scrubbers that are required, once they’re in New Zealand waters, to cleanse it—those scrubbers will actually literally take the sulphur out of it, and once they arrive in New Zealand, they’re required to cleanse it.

So the important part about this legislation is that it does align us now. If we’re going to take our part—and I note that we are at COP26, over in Glasgow, at the moment—and if we’re going to be credible on the world stage when we’re talking about all aspects of pollution of the environment, we’ve got to make sure that we are doing our bit. We ascribed to this and we signed up to this legislation. This now completes our obligations, and we can hold our heads high and know that we are doing what we should be doing, along with the rest of the world, in relation to the marine fuels. So I have no hesitation commending this to the House.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I, too, join with colleagues from across the Chamber in supporting this piece of legislation. It’s been a long time coming. New Zealand—it’s fair to say, I think—could be accurately referred to as an outlier, in terms of our speed at which we have confirmed the arrangements under this protocol. In fact, I did a little of research earlier this evening—I didn’t sit on the select committee, so I wasn’t privy to the submissions that were made, and I see that the select committee records show that there were only eight submissions and only two were heard orally by the committee. But I did a little bit of research and I see that there have been a number of academics who have been literally badgering successive Governments over a long number of years to sign up to this protocol and for New Zealand to be playing our role, in terms of our international obligations.

There is a Dr Bevan Marten, from Victoria University, who’s written a number of very good papers on why New Zealand should have formalised the MARPOL Annex IV provisions far earlier than we have. In amongst it, he says—and this was back in 2016—that “The global conversation around the amount of pollutants that enter [the] earth’s atmosphere is impossible to ignore, and shipping-related emissions are no exception.” We, of course, by virtue of our position on the globe, rely probably more so than just about any other nation in the world on reliable shipping networks between ourselves and the rest of the world. We are literally surrounded by the largest moat in the world, so shipping plays a huge part in our ability to be functioning as a prosperous First World economy.

Pretty much everything that we need to import into New Zealand that obviously doesn’t come by air has to come, by definition, by sea, unless my colleague Maureen Pugh does a good swimming job across the Tasman.

Maureen Pugh: Probably not.

Hon SCOTT SIMPSON: Probably not? OK. So there are pretty much only the two ways of getting product in and out of New Zealand: air and by sea. The vast bulk of volume is by sea. We also haven’t had the benefit of an international fleet of vessels that are flagged under our New Zealand flag. So for many years, this was an issue that we sort of coat-tailed on the rest of the world with.

Most other countries, I think it’s something like 95 percent of countries, have actually already signed up years ago to this MARPOL annex—years and years ago. Most of the vessels that actually visit here to deliver goods or to take them away from our mostly primary production sectors are actually already complying. So one of the roadblocks has actually been the impact that this change will have on our domestic coastal shipping around the country.

I’m particularly reminded of the very good work of a former member of this House Annabel Young, who ended up being, for a long period of time, the executive director of the New Zealand Shipping Federation. She used to take every possible opportunity to lobby members of this House and this Parliament and previous Parliaments about the impacts that the acceptance and the confirmation of this annex would have on the coastal shipping arrangements around New Zealand.

Because international vessels are mostly compliant, it’s our local ones that haven’t been. Part of the reason that they haven’t been is, of course, cost. I’ve heard other speakers this evening indicate that one of the reasons is that the lower - sulphur oxide diesel is more expensive because the refinery up at Marsden Point doesn’t produce it and it has to be imported, and therefore there is a knock-on cost effect. So if we have our coastal shipping having to buy bunker fuel at a higher price, then we actually all end up paying for that one way or another, because of the cost of the goods that are shipped around the coast of New Zealand—eventually, sooner or later, we as consumers all pay for that. But I would argue that in matters such as this where we are taking cognisance of our place as a global citizen and a good world citizen, we should be prepared and willing—if necessary—to pay the price for a better environment outcome, even if, in terms of global impact, the changes here in New Zealand will be actually very small. Those changes send a significant message to the world that we are taking our responsibilities seriously, albeit late.

So we do support this piece of legislation. One of the things that also comes up quite often when people are talking about this fuel, and the changes, and the low sulphur fuel, is people sometimes make the mistake of assuming that just because most international shipping and our coastal shipping is fuelled by diesel, it’s similar to the same kind of diesel that you might put into a tractor or a domestic vehicle. They could not be more dissimilar. In the 2016 paper that I referred to earlier, by Dr Bevan Marten from Victoria University, he makes the very good point that “The vast majority, (95 %) of the world’s shipping fleet, runs on diesel. However, the diesel used in ships (usually referred to as bunker oil) is much lower quality than is used in road vehicles. Bunker fuel is much cheaper as it is virtually a waste product of the standard oil refining process. It is a cross between a solid and a liquid that is too thick for road vehicles—it is literally ‘the bottom of the barrel.’”

So people see the impacts of this bottom-of-the-barrel, thick, sludgy bunker diesel that is used for fuelling the vessels that we’re talking about, and they see it most regularly and obviously when they are looking at vessels that are sort of parked up, that are in ports—Auckland, Tauranga, Lyttelton—and these vessels are often kind of idling to keep the things going. You’ll see the black smoke coming, literally, out of the funnels. I’ve seen it here in Wellington on a still day when the harbour will be smudged with a black air line across the harbour that comes—and Paul Eagle, I think he’s seen the same thing. It’s quite disturbing when it is obvious and literally putting a black smudge across the pristine air of Wellington. Now, I know that Wellington doesn’t actually have too many clear still days, but when it does happen, it’s very marked, it’s very obvious, and it’s very apparent to even the casual observer—the obvious air pollution impact that this heavy diesel bunker fuel has.

So this is a piece of legislation that has been a long time coming. I think the Transport and Infrastructure Committee, from what I’ve read and the reports I’ve heard, have done good work. This will, I think, save our face, to a degree, because we have been so slow. I noticed also that one of the concerns that the shipping federation has had is that, well, if the fuel is not coming from Marsden Point, then we’re going to have to import it, and that will be expensive, the logistics of it will be complicated, and how will the New Zealand coastal fleet actually get to it? Well, I was delighted to see that, back in May of this year, the ports of Auckland and BP have actually entered into a commercial partnership to secure low sulphur fuel for oil suppliers for shipping through the Port of Auckland. And it seems that the ports of Auckland—they have a subsidiary called Seafuels, and in their commercial partner BP, they’ve reached an agreement to use the bunker barge Awanuia to deliver MARPOL-compliant very low sulphur fuel for the marine market in Auckland, and be serviced out of the Auckland port. So that’s an agreement that will help overcome the logistical challenges that some were concerned about in terms of this piece of legislation that we’re considering here tonight. The markets sort of solved the problem, as often the market does. So they’ve seen a commercial opportunity, they understand the imperatives, they understand that there is a market for low sulphur bunker fuel, and they’ve sought a way forward to do it. So I commend the ports of Auckland and BP for taking the initiative and for getting ahead of this piece of legislation. And good on them. I hope it works well for them.

So congratulations to the House—I think unanimity across the House tonight. We on the National Party side of the House, we support this legislation and do commend it, even though it is belatedly, to the House.

PAUL EAGLE (Labour—Rongotai): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. Look, can I just endorse all of those who have spoken. There is whole-of-House support for this bill. Just one thing: there was talk about Wellington not having beautiful days, and it just seems to be that we have beautiful days when MPs from outside of Wellington aren’t in Wellington! But every other day, I can assure you is beautiful, hot, and Hawaii-like. But that is for another bill.

Now, if I could just focus on the bill. This is part of this Government’s commitment to tackle climate change [Interruption] There you are; I knew they’d wake up, put it that way. It is also our contribution to making shipping more environmentally sustainable—the industry and the way that we do it. I did note that the previous speaker, the Hon Scott Simpson, did start to talk about coastal shipping, and that will be a big push in terms of adhering and achieving what MARPOL is intended for.

So I’m not going to say too much more. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon MARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): Thank you, Madam Speaker. In the closing minutes of the House tonight, the Green Party is supporting this bill, the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill. And I’ll try and make sure my short contribution is worthy, considering that this is my first day back in the House in over three months, and today I had to ask three people what bill we were on in this House. I also voted wrong and had to go back and correct that, and then I also missed a whole bill voting. So I’ve set my standard really well! This contribution is going to be amazing by comparison.

So this bill, of course, addresses the impacts of shipping emissions by bringing us up to the world standard Annex VI of the international convention. And as everyone has said, it is long overdue. I think it was colleague Mr Simpson who said that, actually, the majority of other countries are already there. He said 95 percent—it’s even more than that: 97 percent of global freight capacity are already signed up to the convention. So we were lagging well behind in an almost embarrassing state. It’s about time and it’s good that we’re bringing this bill tonight in the House, because this is about our climate protection for our future and for our mokopuna. It’s about our beautiful country also, and we know what it’s like to have so many of our cities hugging the shore—our towns and cities around the country on our shorelines—and it’s not uncommon, unfortunately, to see giant plumes of smoke intruding from ships into our beautiful, beautiful landscapes.

So just a very quick contribution to support this bill and that the Greens believe that, yet again, Aotearoa can be at the forefront of pushing for global reductions in emissions, including through shipping emissions. So, pleased to commend this bill to the House.

SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party supports this bill. There will be environmental benefits, but unlike some of the more confused members of the House who believe this bill will actually reduce carbon emissions and help the climate, it’s not a bill about carbon emissions; it’s about reducing pollution. That’s sulphur dioxides.

There are real benefits to reducing sulphur dioxides. We’ve heard about air pollution, human health—but there’s a cost. There is a significant cost that New Zealand coastal shippers will bear and that our ports will bear as they have to build infrastructure to cope with the additional bunkering fuel requirements, the storage requirements, but also to cope with the discharges that this bill requires them to take care of when visiting ships visit ports and they’re required to receive whatever’s in the bilges from the ships. It’s been described as sediment. I’m sure it is a very toxic and harmful substance, so it’s good that these substances will be cared for, but there is a cost and there is also an issue with the supply chain.

These fuels are not manufactured in New Zealand. While it’s gratifying to hear that the private sector, in conjunction with a well-managed port at the Port of Auckland, has come to an agreement to provide some fuel storage, there are many other major ports around New Zealand where coastal ships call and where they often need to refuel. So this infrastructure will need to be replicated at other ports around New Zealand, potentially Timaru and Lyttelton, Wellington, Napier, for example. Each one of these ports will require its own fuel storage facilities. They all come with a cost. Those costs will, of course, be passed on to the consumer, and that is at a time of rising inflation when inflation is outstripping wages. We’ve seen the statistics today. We know that New Zealanders’ wages are not keeping up with the cost of living. This will add another cost.

There’s also an issue of the coastal ships themselves. New Zealand only has a few dozen of these ships, and most of them are specialist vessels that carry products like cement from port to port. That takes thousands and thousands of the equivalent truckloads off the road. But it does mean that we are heavily reliant on these ships as part of our supply chain. Some of the companies that provide these shipping services have bought new ships recently, in the past few years. These ships have a 30- to 40-year asset life.

Now, not all of them are compliant, although most are, and what these regulations mean is they will have to either retrofit some type of filter system or they will need to purchase a lower sulphur fuel. But they will actually have to modify the engines and increase the level of maintenance and the cost associated with that because they’ll no longer have the benefit of sulphur in the fuel. Sulphur is in fact a lubricant in the fuel. It has a positive benefit for engines, which is why sulphur has been in diesel as well as bunker fuel, because it actually reduces the amount of maintenance and wear and tear on these engines. So there will be an additional cost and there will be additional maintenance required to ships as they have to convert.

All of these costs flows through to the consumer. They flow through to the person buying goods at the supermarket. They flow through to the construction sector, which depends on cement and other materials that are carted by coastal shipping around New Zealand. The cost to shippers has not been quantified, but it can be absolutely certain that it will flow through.

Then there is the cost to the ports themselves of providing the extra tankage and complying with rules that are included in this piece of legislation where officials might direct a port to provide tank storage or other receiving facilities for liquid waste and sludges that are removed from ships now. Currently, ports around New Zealand are severely constrained for space. Their infrastructure, in many cases, is marginal. In many cases, they are owned by local government publicly, and they don’t have the capital that they need to actually invest in modernising their ports. This is not a situation where you can go back to your shareholders and say, “We need to build another wharf. It’s $100 million. Pony up with the money, but guess what! Your rate of return’s going to be 6 or 8 percent over the next few decades.” They have to go back to the shareholder, being a council in many cases—a regional council or a city council—and beg elected members to give them the capital that could otherwise be spent on water infrastructure or roads or libraries or pools, and so on.

So there is a cost coming to ports, which are already capital constrained. As with so many other pieces of legislation which express good intentions, this piece of legislation actually will have an environmental benefit. They come at a cost. While we must accept that there are trade-offs between environmental benefits and costs, and that sometimes Government regulation is required so that business actually internalises the environmental effects as a cost, rather than externalises those costs to the environment. So there is a place for Government regulation where there are no other incentives that will work effectively. But at the same time that these costs are being imposed, businesses are expected to face a raft of other costs, whether they be extra public holidays that the business sector did not ask for but are expect to pay for, whether they are extra taxes and duties and levies, such as fuel excise duty.

So the shipping companies that operate these vessels, that bring goods to our ports, that allow us to build homes and infrastructure, that bring goods to supermarkets, to the DIY store—all of these costs flow through. At a time when the cost of living is going through the roof, where wages are not keeping up with inflation, the Government needs to seriously consider how they reduce the cost on ordinary working people. As they impose new regulations on one part of the economy, how do they offset that with reduced costs in other parts of the economy? But that has not been a consideration for this Government. In my short time in Parliament—nearly a year—thinking about how to make New Zealand people’s lives better every day that ACT MPs come to the House, I haven’t seen a single piece of legislation introduced by this Government that reduces costs to working families and reduces costs to business. It’s all cost on cost on cost.

Hon David Parker: National Policy Statement on Urban Development.

SIMON COURT: And that member, the Hon David Parker, he also knows this, as the Minister of Revenue, responsible for taxing New Zealanders. He’s well aware. How much extra tax has this Government collected? Billions and billions and billions of dollars in the last year. So that member knows full well that what I’m saying is true—it is cost on cost on cost. So if we’re going to accept environmental regulations that have some benefit but come at a cost, then the Government must consider what opportunities there are to actually reduce the cost to business. So we haven’t seen that in the short time I’ve been in Parliament. In fact, I think, like most New Zealanders, the ACT Party has absolutely no trust and confidence that this Government knows how to wind-back the cost dial, only how to increase it, because they believe that people have an unlimited ability to pay—deep, deep pockets. That’s not true. All of these additional costs flow through to the consumer when you go to Bunnings Warehouse, when you go to Mitre 10, when your builder says, “The cost of the concrete slab for your new house is going up because the shipping costs are going up at a time of international supply chain pressures.” We know where to pin these extra costs—that’s on this Government.

Now, ACT will support this bill, because reducing pollution is the right thing to do. But when it comes at a cost, and the Government has an opportunity to reduce costs in other parts of the economy, that’s what they should do. Madam Speaker, thank you very much.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members, the House is suspended, and I’ll resume the chair at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning for the extended sitting. Good evening.

Debate interrupted.

Sitting suspended from 10.03 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Wednesday)

TUESDAY, 9 NOVEMBER 2021

(continued on Wednesday, 10 November 2021)

Bills

Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill

Third Reading

Debate resumed.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Kāti rā, tēnā rā tātou katoa. The House is resumed for the extended sitting. Members, last evening, we were debating the third reading of the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill. We’d just completed call No. 7, so it’s call No. 8.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā rawa atu ki a koe.

[To the Speaker, warm greetings.]

Mōrena to the House, and thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak briefly this morning on a piece of work that our Transport and Infrastructure Committee has been working on, the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill. It’s taken a little while to get through the House, and, as I heard the number of speeches late last night, every party acknowledged the time that it’s taken to get this quite minor piece of work into legislation, to have it updated. I was pipped at the post, I think, late last night by the ACT Party member who attempted to blast this side of the House and then went on to support the bill. So I’ll put it down to lateness in the House, my friend, but good on you.

This particular bill is really about supporting the work of this Government. We know, particularly as Aucklanders, that transport makes up 47 percent of emissions into our climate, and, as we continue to work hard to create the change that we want to see, we need to break down each part of our transport sector. So, today, this bill is about reducing the adverse public health effects of marine air pollution on communities close to ports and harbours, and I look to the Waitematā in Auckland, a local Auckland port, and this is the type of work that we need to continue to proceed with. The need for change is now. So, without further ado, it’s an easier round for us this morning, and I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members, this is a split call. I call Chris Penk—five minutes.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill—just pausing on the “annex VI”, getting my Roman numerals correct there. It’s interesting and enjoyable to be back in the House. I won’t stray far from the bill, but I am wearing blue and white today, a little bit of a coincidence in terms of being a parochial Aucklander! I’m delighted, none the less, to be in Wellington for this particular purpose.

So the maritime transport area, in general, is extremely important to New Zealand and, indeed, the world. Our place in the world is oftentimes defined by our isolation, in geographical terms, from the rest of that. That would be to place a negative construction on what is also a great opportunity in the sense that we are insulated from some of the worst effects of some of the environmental and other challenges of the world. But we also have a great opportunity as a small land nation but a large maritime nation.

Maritime transport is hugely important to us, and should be hugely important to us. It’s largely been the subject of bipartisan consensus to legislate in these matters. I note that what we’re doing today is having the Parliament agree with the Government, in that we’re passing domestic law to give effect to international obligations. So the Government of the day, the executive thereof, has signed up New Zealand—over the course of a number of years, I should emphasise—to protocols, conventions indeed, in this space. So it’s appropriate that the Parliament provides some means by which that law, that obligation that we have on the international stage, can be effective and effected here in New Zealand. Of course, by “New Zealand” I mean not only the territorial landmass of New Zealand, if you’ll excuse the tautology, but New Zealand as a whole, more generally, including, of course, its territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, and, arguably, New Zealand flagged ships further afield.

So the bill itself, as others have canvassed, does a number of things that give effect to those maritime protection rules—maritime protection, of course, being reduced to the portmanteau word “MARPOL”, as it’s known in international legal terms. This is the ability to conduct inspections and audits to ensure compliance with those requirements. If we didn’t give explicit authority in our law to allow inspections and so forth, we’d have difficulty with more general prohibitions on search and seizure, or intrusion more generally. That would be problematic. So it’s appropriate for the Parliament to turn its mind to how we can legitimate activities that we do want to take place in order to meet various aims.

The aims include the protection of trade, economic interests, and also the environment. So I don’t think it’s problematic to view the legislation as doing a number of different things, not necessarily in conflict—although I would, of course, acknowledge that any time there are extra regulations or rules that apply to any sector, then, of course, there is a burden of compliance for that. That’s not a reason, in balance, to reject the legislation or to reject the idea of oversight and compliance in this space, but I do note it and say that it’s fair to acknowledge that, for those who are most directly affected by it, including that requirement to use low-sulphur fuels, it is a major change being introduced across the globe.

I note that the impetus for the bill includes not only the environment, in the sense of the ecology of that magnificent place that is the ocean and ocean-adjacent environments, but also in relation to human health. So we’ve talked previously, and no doubt the select committee spoke, notwithstanding that I wasn’t there, but I understand they discussed the importance of a clean-air environment, such that negative health effects aren’t caused unduly by emissions and other difficulties that are caused when we have, obviously, vessels being powered in the way that they generally are, albeit that there’s new technology coming on and available.

So a number of different things to like about the legislation; certainly very necessary in this space for international reasons and on the domestic stage. I commend the bill to the House.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill makes sense. It’s got broad support across the House, and I don’t see any reason to delay its passing. I commend it to the House.

TERISA NGOBI (Labour—Ōtaki): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege and an honour to take a call in the House today on this maritime bill, as the member for Ōtaki and also as a member of the Transport and Infrastructure Committee.

Not only have we heard our Prime Minister talk about the fact that we are in a climate crisis but she’s also about “Let’s do something about it.”, and that is what this bill does. We know we need to act now. It is our responsibility to be kaitiaki to Papatūānuku, to te ao—the world, the planet—and to make sure that we leave this world in the best place possible for our tamariki, our mokopuna, and our mokopuna to come, and that is what this bill does. This bill looks to reduce the carbon emissions, which, like my colleague Mr Halbert said, 47 percent of transportation carbon emissions are made up of.

We also know that shipping contributes to these emissions, putting out pollution such as sulphur and nitrogen. This isn’t just bad for our environment; this is also bad for the health of people, especially those that live near the harbour—our communities. This Government is committed to climate change. We’re not just committed; we’re actually putting it into action. That is what this bill is: this is part of our mahi to make sure we look after our planet, look after our people, and for that I commend this bill to the House.

Andrew Bayly: One minute 40!

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, that last speech was—I think I heard Mr Bayly say—one minute 48. That was actually almost a record for what I’ve heard from the other speakers from Labour this morning. So I just wanted to start off on this Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill by saying that the member Shanan Halbert said before that the ACT MP stood up last night, supported the bill, and then blasted the other side of the House. I would suggest—

Shanan Halbert: Other way round.

BARBARA KURIGER: No, it was that way around. So, now, Mr Halbert, you might want to check what you said. Look, I have every reason why the ACT member would want to blast the other side of the House, and we’re supporting the bill this morning. I also have a few points to make to the other side of the House.

While Mr Halbert was speaking, he actually made a point in his speech of saying, on this bill, that “It’s an easy round for us this morning”. I would actually contest that a party who stood up in this House and decided to declare a climate emergency, paying lip-service to something that is around improving the climate and the environment is quite a disgrace. So it’s easy to say one thing and do something else.

It’s also quite interesting when you look through this bill that we’re looking at a Labour Government over there who not only declared a climate emergency but will tell you on various occasions that they’re focused on the ocean and they’re focused on everything being better. Where’s the Kermadec bill to follow this one? That would be a really nice bill to put up, Mr Halbert, if you really are concerned about the oceans.

But, anyway, back to this bill. So National does support this bill. It represents a relatively minor, yet positive, step forward towards a shipping sector that’s cleaner and healthier for people and the environment. And, of course, we on the National side of the House realise that New Zealand needs to play its part in the mitigation of climate change—play our part, right? I’m not a fan, and neither is the National caucus, of the over-commitments that this Government is currently making for our country.

I wonder what’s actually going to happen, now that they’ve passed this very clean Maritime Transport (MARPOL Annex VI) Amendment Bill, to the coal that they’re bringing into the country on ships, to support our energy environment, because they have no transition. It’s not a just transition. It’s not a transition at all. It’s just a mishmash of ideas. So these ships are now currently actually bringing more coal into New Zealand in 2021, in three months, than what they brought into New Zealand in the whole of 2016 and 2017. That is a Government that has all the words to support their view on climate change, but no action.

So this bill is a continuation of the work of successive Governments since New Zealand first signed up to MARPOL in 1998. A majority of stakeholders supported the bill and New Zealand acceding to Annex VI. However, there is a recognition that there will be economic implications and effect on businesses, particularly domestic shipping operators, who will be affected by this requirement to use the low-sulphur fuels. So every time we make a decision: on one hand there’s the environment, on the other hand there’s the economics, and then there’s the social factors that go with everything. Sometimes I don’t think the Government gets this energy trilemma right in any shape or form.

There is one thing that’s been noticeable in the long length of time since this bill has been in process: the cruise ship industry, due to COVID, has had a very—well, there’s been a real damper put on cruise ships. So when I look at some of the other annexes that have been supported by this, there’s Annex V, which talks about garbage. I would say that for cruise ships, despite the fact that people can have lovely holidays on them, there is actually quite a lot of garbage that’s actually associated with those cruise ships, and quite a lot of waste comes off them. So it was good to see that clause that’s in there to ensure that that’s actually handled correctly, because we have a problem in New Zealand with landfills, and I don’t think the Government’s got its mind clearly around that. There’s a lot that we could do around waste-to-energy, while we’re on the topic of climate change.

So 94 other countries are party to Annex VI, and that represents 97 percent of world shipping tonnage. So this is one area where the world’s, in a climate change and environmental space, largely on the same page. That’s a good thing. We know there’s a talkfest going on at the moment in Glasgow, and while we’re all interested in making a difference to climate change, we can’t see some of the shallow promises that are going on around the world making a big difference. We have to get some real wins on the board. But in this case, 94 other countries are already party to it. That must be really disappointing for a Government that seems to contend that they lead the world on everything. They lead the world on COVID, until they don’t.

In terms of—

Shanan Halbert: Go back to MARPOL.

BARBARA KURIGER: —net zero readiness—this is about the climate, Mr Halbert; this is about why we’re doing this in these ships, OK? This is about the climate. On the Net Zero Readiness Index, New Zealand, in the KPMG report that came out last week or the week before, was ranked ninth. So we do have some work to do, and this bill—the MARPOL bill, Mr Halbert—is a very small part of actually keeping up our place. But I will notice in that report that our agricultural industries featured at No. 1 for net zero readiness compared to other countries in the world. I think if the Prime Minister and the Government want to stand up and display our first-in-the-world, perhaps the Prime Minister would like to stand up and announce that one.

So Annex VI, given that the Government decided this was an easy round and they weren’t going to do any work on it this morning, just as it’s the third reading of the bill, and I suspect that the last speaker, who will also come from the Government, will decide that this is an easy round, talking on the MARPOL bill—it’s so important to them, marine pollution, that they can’t actually give it any time in the House this morning—I just would like to remind the public, at the end of this bill, that Annex VI requires signatory countries to meet a number of obligations, including: limiting the amount of sulphur content in all ship fuel to 0.5 percent, requiring certain diesel engines to comply with nitrous oxide emission standards, requiring certain ship board incinerators to meet performance standards, banning the incineration of certain substances, ensuring that all ships with a mass of 400 gigatonnes or more meet energy-efficiency requirements, and ensuring port reception facilities for residues and waste are available.

So the New Zealand Shipping Federation has noticed that there will be a likely higher impact on fuel prices and difficulty of sourcing supply. I would also note that, in the time that this bill has been taking to go round and round and come back to here, the proposal to turn Marsden Point from a refinery into a terminal is not going to help our energy security in this country, and I’ve seen no other proposals from this Government around what they might like to do with Marsden Point at the point that it becomes a terminal.

We’re sitting down here—not only do we already have ships bringing fuel into the country but we have a range of products that come in here—we know we’re a little country at the bottom of the world, and what I would like to make special mention of this morning is Kotahi. That was an arrangement that was put together between Fonterra and Silver Fern Farms back in 2010, and I would note that if that arrangement hadn’t been in place, we would have struggled a lot more around COVID in terms of getting our trade out, and we know that trade is the thing that’s keeping this country going at the moment. It’s either the trade that we’re putting out of this country from agriculture and horticulture, or the other part of it is the amount of money that the Government’s decided to borrow and spend on stupid things. So, with that, I’m going to commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

HELEN WHITE (Labour): Mōrena. It’s lovely to be here from Auckland. I’m going to take an Auckland perspective on this bill because I am based in a city that has a port and it’s going to make a very big difference to it.

So, in this situation, we’re really talking about air pollution, and this bill will contribute to the reduction of that. What that actually means for people is significant in a city like mine, because it’s people who live in the city—and increasingly we’ve got apartments in the city with a range of people and incomes in the city—who are actually the people who breathe in the pollution that is caused by the sulphur that will now be treated and actually banned. So we’re going to have a situation where we’re cleaning up our air in our biggest city, and we’re going to have a situation where we clean it up in particular places, like Picton, which actually catch that air just because of their geography.

It’s going to make a huge difference to things like asthma and lung conditions. It’s going to help our disabled; it’s going to help our vulnerable. It’s going to help people like pregnant women. That’s an incredibly important thing to do. I’m not surprised that everybody in this House understands that and has prioritised it over the cost of introducing such a system, because, quite frankly, this should have happened a very long time ago. So I am absolutely thrilled to be here, representing our biggest city, knowing it will make a difference.

I just want to spend the last few minutes—seconds actually—talking about the issue of the marine itself, because we live on this beautiful harbour in Auckland, and that harbour will also be protected by this. It will be a system which means that the boats that come in are actually having their waste captured and it won’t be going into our harbour. So it’s not just us; it’s also the environment that we are actually in. It’s our actual marine environment, and that is the second real benefactor of this bill. So I congratulate the select committee for doing its job admirably, and I congratulate the House for all agreeing that this is an important piece of legislation. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Bills

Data and Statistics Bill

First Reading

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Statistics): I present a legislative statement on the Data and Statistics Bill.

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

Hon Dr DAVID CLARK: I move, That the Data and Statistics Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill.

It is with great anticipation that I stand here before you all today to begin the debate on the Data and Statistics Bill. Data and statistics have the power to change people’s lives. They can drive innovation; they can contribute to economic, social, cultural progress, environmental progress. Individuals, communities, and businesses use data and statistics to shape our world. I’m excited. Data and statistics can be used for many, many purposes, including to understand what’s going on for Māori, for iwi, for hapū in their particular situations. We know, for example, that Māori need to be more involved in data for our country’s future prosperity and wellbeing. Robust, impartial data can give insights that ground effective democracy and decision making, and they can also ensure that we have accountability. These things are all critical for a high-functioning democracy. Accessible, high-quality data and statistics mean everyone can participate in Government.

This bill today replaces the Statistics Act of 1975. This is an historic occasion, making sure we have modern, fit for purpose legislation that can be used to drive the changes we are seeing, to make sure that they’re underpinned by good ethical frameworks. As data becomes more ubiquitous, as it becomes used in different ways, we need the tools and modern legislation to make sure we can continue to drive change in this country that is evidence based and that can hold Governments to account for the changes that they make.

For more than 40 years, that previous Act has done its duty, and it has done a good job. It’s underpinned high trust in Government, a focus on high-quality statistics, the independence of the Government Statistician, and so forth, but this Act was written before personal computers were widespread, before social media, before the cultural changes that technology continues to drive. So while that legislation has stood us in good stead, it’s time to make sure we’ve got a new bill here, that will turn into an Act, that reflects Aotearoa’s evolving aspirations.

So there are a number of key issues that this bill sets out to resolve. The 1975 Act makes no reference to data at all. It lacks the flexibility to respond to the changes in data and digital that we are seeing. It does not provide the kinds of tools we need to boost the supply and quality of administrative data—so, this is data that’s collected for other purposes, often: for registrations, service delivery, transactions, recordkeeping. That data is becoming increasingly important and is used more widely, but the tools are not in the Act to take advantage of it to the full extent. The current Act is completely silent on the Crown-Māori relationship. It doesn’t take seriously the responsibility of the Crown to meet its obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Finally, the existing Act, because of its age, makes for challenges in interpretation. It doesn’t anticipate many of the situations we find ourselves in today.

So the new Data and Statistics Bill strengthens and futureproofs our data collection framework for official statistics. It recognises the Crown’s responsibility to provide relevant, reliable, and accessible data reflecting Māori, iwi, and hapū interests, and it modernises the framework for accessing data and research. We think these key objectives are captured in the bill, and, like the old bill, it’s also strong on protection safeguards to make sure that data is used appropriately and that people who would misuse data are held to account.

Administrative data has become more and more important. It’s becoming increasingly critical because it is getting harder to ascertain the statistics by traditional methods, and particularly from some communities. So, globally, there is a move towards collecting administrative data and using it to complement the data that’s collected by more traditional methods through surveys. At the same time as it’s becoming harder to collect the data, the data is more in demand. So we have an increased need for data. We’re seeing exponential growth in the use of data to support decisions around complex environmental changes, economic changes, and, indeed, to support wellbeing issues. So there’s a need for relevant legislation that supports those changes we’re observing in society. Supported by the right framework, we could counter data challenges by realising the exciting potential for innovation and growth in statistical products and services that support that policy and investment.

The bill does play its role in strengthening the support for the Government Statistician as the main producer of official statistics and supports Stats New Zealand to become a data-first agency, an administrative data-first agency. It also provides for the Statistician to make mandatory requests for certain types of data, in certain formats as well. So these are all the tools that will support a modern data collection framework.

The bill also requires review of census. It requires that the Government Statistician take responsibility for the operation of each census. There are new statutory obligations on public sector agencies designed to improve data quality, to make sure Statistics New Zealand is informed of any changes in their collection methods, and so forth. It also clarifies that the Government Statistician can authorise departments and other agencies to collect data on their behalf, and that goes also for Māori and iwi organisations. For many Māori, data is a taonga, and the ability to collect timely data can improve and advance economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing. So the bill gives powers to the Government Statistician to, effectively, work with Māori to work out what the best way is to give effect to the Crown’s responsibility under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the Treaty of Waitangi and to recognise Māori interests along the way as the Statistician performs his or her functions.

Under the bill, it’s also a requirement for the Government Statistician to foster the building of capability and capacity in Māori communities. This is a significant and important and meaningful change, and the Statistician is obliged to find opportunities to meaningfully engage with Māori and meaningfully build that capacity and capability. At this point, I do want to also acknowledge the Data Iwi Leaders Group, who provided meaningful and useful contributions on early versions of this bill. I continue to work with them both through my role with the Department of Internal Affairs and looking at the coming digital strategy as well as in my role as Minister of Statistics, and I do want to acknowledge the work of the Data Iwi Leaders Group.

There are protections around access to data, the transparency of who’s using data, which researchers can access it, and also a requirement to judge whether the use of data is in the public interest. That is all a responsibility for the Government Statistician. Those tests are out there to look at the likely benefits of research, any harms that can be caused. There are protections around the anonymisation of data and so on, and there are additional protections around the use of our data by overseas-based researchers. Also, requirements around the publication of data to make sure that the benefits of using that data are shared with the wider public so that the public gets the benefit of the data that’s collected on their behalf using the taxpayer funds, the funds the Government administers, to collect censuses, to collect all that other data, and to process it.

There are, of course, appropriate protections around privacy. We can’t have a conversation in 2021 about the use of data without thinking about privacy concerns. It’s imperative that data which is extremely sensitive by nature is appropriately protected, and this bill has protections in place that govern the collection, the management, and the use of data by Statistics New Zealand and by other people that might work also with that data. So there are strong protections in place that provide the protection to people whose data is in the system. There are accountabilities for those who would use the data, to make sure that there’s not the identification of anybody that shouldn’t be identified in that process, and there is a penalties regime which is updated in the bill.

The Data and Statistics Bill is a crucial enabler for ensuring transparency and trust in Aotearoa and in supporting the decisions we make to make sure that we have progress, to make sure that we have better environmental, economic, and cultural progress in this country. I’m very excited to be updating the Statistics Act of 1975, delighted to bring this bill to this House, and I trust members of this House will enjoy the debate and support this wonderful bill.

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

ANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be talking on the Data and Statistics Bill. And I just wonder: is this as good as it gets for this former Minister of Health? And now we’re talking about these lofty issues of data and statistics! I look across the other side and I see the Minister there and I know he’s doing a good job. I look beside him and I see his other colleague, Mr Kris Faafoi, and I’m just asking myself: which is the most reforming of these Ministers, these powerhouses of the Labour Party who are just going to change New Zealand for ever? I’m just not sure which one it’s going to be! I can see Mr Penk giving me the old—anyway, anyway, turning to the bill.

Wow, I’m so glad you got through 10 minutes, Minister. That was an impressive array of trying to work out what this bill actually does. So I’m looking forward to the other considerations from the Labour members, because hopefully you’re going to have to read something before you can stand up, because there ain’t much in this bill. There’s probably two or three issues, which I’ll pick up on, but you are right: it does repeal the Statistics Act of 1975. Well done. Well done, Minister. But what does it actually do? Well, that’s where you start to wonder: what’s the big leap forward?

Well, let’s start about the purpose statement. OK, it recognises the Crown’s responsibility to consider and provide for Māori interests in data and stats—and I’m going to talk about that in a minute. It “enables more effective system leadership”. I’ll just say that again: “enables more effective system leadership”. What does that mean? That’s a great statement written by someone, but, honestly, effective system leadership in stats—oh wow; “strengthens and future-proofs the framework for collecting data for official statistics”—well, I sort of get the concept of that; “modernises the framework for accessing data for research”—yeah, good; “continues to provide appropriate safeguards and protections”—oh gee, I hope that happens, because what was the last little data breach we had just the other day? ACC was that, Mr Watts?

Simon Watts: The DHBs.

ANDREW BAYLY: Oh, the DHBs as well? OK, so they’re all very lofty statements.

So I see the issue around Māori is what, I think, is the main part of this bill, and this is about the Crown recognising its Tiriti o Waitangi relationships and responsibilities. So it’s perhaps just worth noting what these are. It is saying, “recognising the interests of Māori, including (iwi and hapū) in the collection of data, the production of statistics, and access to and use of data for research as tools for furthering Māori economic, social, cultural, and environmental wellbeing”—well, that’s good—“in the way in which data is collected, managed and used for the production of official statistics and research.” I presume that is in relation to Māori, but it’s unclear.

“The Bill includes principles for engaging with Māori including that it must be early and meaningful”—mm-hmm—“should include early discussion of the most effective ways of engaging, and should include consideration of opportunities for partnering. The Bill places duties on the Government Statistician to recognise and respect the Crown’s responsibility to give effect to te Tiriti o Waitangi … by recognising the interests of Māori when performing their functions under this Act; and build and maintain Stats NZ’s capability and capacity to understand te Tiriti o Waitangi … and the perspectives of Māori”. I would have thought there was already an existing obligation—and, presumably, is it in hand? And “engage with Māori about collecting data, producing official statistics, and using data”—and I presume what is not clear is whether that is data for Māori or for all New Zealanders.

And, finally, “foster the capability and capacity of Māori to collect and use data for statistics and research, and engage with the Government Statistician”—I presume, again, for Māori. And “engage with Māori when preparing the multi-year data and statistics work programme; … before determining how the census of population”—and I presume it’s the New Zealand population, and it’s unclear—“and dwellings will be taken and what data will be collected; … before providing written standards.”

So my first question is—the concept of Māori in this is an interesting one, and I understand what the Minister just said; he’s been relying on a data iwi leadership group, which is good. Is that going to be the group that Stats New Zealand consults with when it’s doing this Tiriti o Waitangi responsibility; or how does the Statistician go about consulting with Māori? Because, as we all know, there are many groups of Māori, and it’s unclear what that process is. The objectives are clear, but it’s certainly not clear about how that might take place. I note there’s no mention in this for any representation of Māori to be specified, and, in that light, I don’t know what reference or skills or authority the data iwi leadership group actually is that has been providing input to this bill. So that would be an area, no doubt, that many people are going to be very interested in seeing, to make sure that it is fully representative and that it is fit for purpose, as the bill loves to talk about.

The other thing is that the bill provides for greater oversight and influence on the data system by the Statistician through the establishment of a multi-year data and statistical programme. I’ve got to ask myself: if they haven’t got that already—and I’ve met the new CEO of Stats New Zealand and I’m very impressed with him—if it hasn’t got a four-year, multi-year data and statistical programme already in place, I’d be horrified. But, apparently, this bill provides for it. We’d be most concerned, wouldn’t we, all of us in this Parliament, including the Labour members, if we didn’t have it. It also gives the Statistician, apparently, powers to issue standards. Wow, that’s new! I thought they would issue standards and they have been issuing standards. And, of course, there’s a requirement for agencies to provide information on data and statistics in the form that Stats New Zealand actually requires it—that’s well covered in Part 3; that looks OK.

What it does say is that Stats will be required “to conduct a review of the operation of each census” within 12 months of operation. I already thought that there was an obligation for a review of census, and I remember the Hon James Shaw when he was the census Minister, in the lead-up to the most disastrous census that we’ve had in New Zealand, leading up to the 2017 election. The call for a review of that census was a howler—a howler—because it was such a poor census. So I already thought the Statistician had a right or an obligation to do that. Whether it’s a 12-month—if that’s the new bit in this bill, this reforming bill—well, that’ll be interesting, but I suspect it was already there. No doubt the Governance and Administration Committee is going to have a wonderful time looking at this.

The bill also proposes to remove barriers in eight statutes “that prohibit or restrict the provision of data to the Government Statistician.” Well, that’s interesting. The Citizenship Act, the Commodity Levies Act, the Education and Training Act, the Electoral Act—wow. Well, apart from that, the only other major part is that the bill is going to provide “additional safeguards when overseas-based researchers access data.” So I suppose this gives rise to “What is data?” We want to make sure that the data that Stats New Zealand collects is for the public good. If it’s not, whether it’s for Māori, or whether it’s for commercial enterprises, or whether it’s someone looking to invest in New Zealand, that should be of a public nature. So it’d be interesting to see how this is interpreted and what is meant by the legislation, because if this ends up being restrictive unnecessarily, then that will be an issue which, hopefully, again, the Government’s Governance and Administration Committee will need to turn its mind to. Unfortunately, I don’t sit on that committee.

But it has been a very useful session coming here at 9.30 in the morning to talk about this absolutely reforming bill to be passed under urgency. Just—

Hon Member: Revolutionary.

ANDREW BAYLY: Absolutely, I just can’t wait. Maybe Mr Faafoi has got another one for us this morning, but, well, what a waste of time. Why wouldn’t we be in select committee doing something much more productive.

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

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): What a disappointment that the member’s time has expired! I was enjoying that so much as a member of the Governance and Administration Committee! Just like the Minister, I am extremely excited about the bill, and I want to acknowledge him for all the work he has done to bring it here. But there are a few pieces of information I might draw the previous speaker attention to—

Hon Member: Like we’re not in urgency.

RACHEL BOYACK: Particularly that we’re not in urgency. But specifically I want to talk a little bit about the work with the data iwi leaders around the work we are doing as a Government with Māori leaders to improve collection of data that affects Māori. If the previous speaker, Andrew Bayly, had actually looked at some of the work of the Governance and Administration Committee or looked at some of the work of the Associate Minister of Statistics, he may have actually found out that there is information in the public domain about the specific work, such as the work of Te Whata, an online—oh, look. He’s left. He doesn’t want to hear about it. [Interruption] I withdraw and apologise.

Look, this is an important bill, because over the last few months we’ve seen the importance of data and statistics, and I do actually want to acknowledge that in relation to Māori. We’ve seen the importance of that data in the roll-out of the vaccine, and our DHBs, particularly in my area, are heavily reliant on that data in terms of knowing where to put specific resource. I know that tonight they’re actually putting out our new bus to go and reach some of our Māori communities in Nelson, and they use specific data and statistics in order to inform that work. It’s incredibly important and very, very exciting to see that we are reforming this piece of legislation.

There are a couple of other things I just want to point out, having actually read the bill, particularly around the importance of privacy. It’s incredibly important in this day and age, as other speakers have pointed out, that people have trust and confidence in the data that Government collects and that Government then uses to inform decisions. One of the things I am pleased to see is that the bill continues to put in place techniques to strengthen the use of that data.

So we are very excited on this side of the House to be looking at this bill and having it go to select committee. I am looking forward to a significant number of submissions coming through from the public that I’m sure we will take time to read and digest, and I encourage members of the public, people who have an interest in this area, to please submit on this so that we can ensure the bill that comes through is as strong as possible for our communities. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Oh, hang on. Let’s take this valuable piece of kit off. [Member removes face mask] I’ve got rid of that.

Now, data and statistics—I listened to the Minister, the Hon Dr David Clark, describing the reason this bill was changed from the “Statistics Bill” to the “Data and Statistics Bill”, but just before I get on to that, for the benefit of the cricket tragics on the other side of the House, of course, we’re playing in the semi-final of the Twenty20 World Cup in the morning. For those who haven’t thought about statistics, one of the most fascinating things about cricket is statistics. Actually, it’s one of the reasons that we watch cricket and that we follow the likes of Kane Williamson so closely, because, in fact, his statistics are as good as any. And, of course, I just thought I would show you, McAnulty, this tie, which I probably picked up in some nefarious place. But it’s a very useful tie—it’s a cricket tie. Of course, there’s the cricket tragic Kiri Allan; a tragic cricketer! But, just to get back to the bill, I do think that cricket really epitomises the use of statistics. If you look at the history of the sport, now I’ve got on to it, you can go right back to W.G. Grace. In fact, his statistics were as good as any of the modern era. So it’s really fascinating to go back and look at statistics.

But I want to get on to this bill. I listened to the Minister discussing the difference between statistics and data. So I thought I would look it up, and I found some very interesting things out. So statistics is the discipline that concerns the collection, organisation, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. So I’m not sure why we need to change the name of the bill, because it, effectively, is the same. But the other interesting thing I found out was that data is information collected by a census or an organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be proved to be meaningful. Now, that’s a very interesting description of what data is, because I took that to mean, effectively, you can effectively use poor data and make it into something useful. I’ve watched this Government in the last few months using a lot of this data, I’ve watched our health industry use a lot of this data, and I’ve never really understood where it all comes from. But it just shows how you can collect data and you can get very different results with what you started off to get.

Anyway, back to the real issue or essence of this bill. It repeals the 1975 Act, which was the Statistics Act, and replaces it, effectively, with the Data and Statistics Bill. I’ve got to say that I’m fully in support of the collection of data and statistics, but there’s a few issues I want to raise with respect to that, because I think there is a great deal of concern in New Zealand at the moment around the collection of data, and the accuracy of that, and the collection of statistics, and the accuracy of that, in many, many ways. You see, I think if you look at the way we collect statistics, or data, it’s most important that we do that in a manner that those people providing the information can trust, because if they don’t trust it, they won’t fill the information in correctly. I think also we’ve got to be very careful, when collecting and when deciding what to collect, that we collect information that is not going to, firstly, put people off supplying the correct information, that’s not going to frighten people or—not frighten, that’s a bad word—but not going to, I guess, disincentivise people from participating in society in New Zealand, that’s not going to disincentivise people from investing in New Zealand.

I think we’ve seen instances in recent times where we haven’t done this particularly well. I’ll refer to the last census, and I don’t want to get into criticising anyone as a result of the last census, but if you think about collecting data on Lambton Quay and then collecting data in, for example, Hakiaha St in Taumarunui, which is the Lambton Quay of Taumarunui, if you think about collecting data in those two places, it’s a very different set of principles you need to use to collect it. Because the things that are available on Lambton Quay and the methods you can use on Lambton Quay to collect data are totally different than they are in the main street of Raetihi or, as I said, Taumarunui. That was the problem we struck, and we strike, with a whole lot of things in this Parliament. We think that what happens on Lambton Quay can happen everywhere else in New Zealand, and it, frankly, can’t. The reason it can’t is because we don’t have either the connectivity or the facilities or even, in fact, the education to make the same things happen in other parts of New Zealand that happen in the main street.

One of the problems I think with—probably most countries in the world have the same problem. One of the problems we have with the organisation of our bureaucracy is that it’s based in a town or a city that has access to everything, and they think automatically that everyone has access to everything. That, frankly, is totally incorrect. I think one of the real problems we’ve got in New Zealand at the moment—and, I’m sure, in the world—is that the rapid increase and availability of technology and the take up of technology is just so different in parts of New Zealand than it is in other parts of New Zealand. Of course, when you go to make a thing like, for example, collecting data purely electronically, it’s just not going to work.

If I go back in my life and I think of the first kind of statistics forms I would have filled out—quite aside from what I was meant to fill out at school and probably didn’t, for the very same reason I was talking about earlier, in that unless you trust the person you’re going to supply the data to, you’re not going to supply the correct data to them or the correct statistics to them. But, to go back, the first statistics forms I really had to fill out were farming statistics forms, and it’s really quite interesting when you look at what you fill out and how you go about filling it out, because if you don’t actually draw on accurate information, you get vast differences from year to year as to what you provide. It amazes me that that Statistics New Zealand have never investigated that. Well, I suppose they have, but they’re probably not allowed to use it because the way the Act’s formulated. But if you don’t supply relatively consistent information, then you get some very big distortions in what happens. So it’s very easy for us to collect inaccurate, basically, information that you cannot any longer trust.

I think the other issue that interests me in this bill is that we are dealing with the Crown-Māori relations stuff, and the manner in which we deal with that and the manner in which we collect the information with respect to that has never been more apparent that it’s flawed than in recent times with the vaccination situation we’ve got in New Zealand, and the fact that we didn’t use—well, either we didn’t have the information or we didn’t use the information we had to plan that particularly well. We’ve only got to look at parts of my electorate right now, the Rangitīkei electorate, and see the vast difference in vaccination rates between some parts of it and other parts of it, to see that we’ve clearly not used the information we knew and the challenges that we knew would come as a result of that information particularly well. That’s how it is, and I guess that, hopefully, this bill will help to patch some of that up. But it also points out some great difficulties. I think, again, if we look at what’s going on in society in New Zealand right now, unless we can trust and have implicit trust in what’s going to happen to the information we provide and we actually value the result of providing that information, then it’s not going to be provided accurately. It’s very difficult for the Government unless it can ensure it has the trust of the people. It’s going to be very difficult for Governments to collect information that’s useful to it.

This bill is coming to—I can’t say it’s the best select committee in the House, because I’ve always said the Primary Production Committee is the best committee in the House, but it’s very close to it, Rachel, isn’t it? Very close to it. So it’s coming to the Governance and Administration Committee, and we’ll look forward to the challenge of the submissions on it. I just hope that people realise how important, actually, the gathering of statistics and, as the Minister said, data is. I think data is automatically collected actually by something up there, but statistics have certainly got to be supplied. So I’ll look forward to it coming to the select committee. I hope we do get a lot of submissions, and I think we probably will, given the challenges that we’ve seen with the collection of statistics and data in New Zealand in the last year or two, even given the recent publicity the Inland Revenue’s had about how they’re going to collect a bit of information they want. They don’t know what information they want, interestingly, but nonetheless, they’re going to collect it anyway!

So I think that’s the point I make about having trust in the collection of information: unless we actually know what it’s going to be used for and are confident in the end use of that, it’s very difficult to collect it accurately. I’d just go back to the population statistics and my time on a council where you see the projections going forward. Unless you can trust those projections, it’s very difficult to make good decisions going forward. So, I look forward to this bill making its way through the House. I look forward to the submissions on it—I think they’ll be very interesting—and I look forward to it going to a very good select committee, and those people on it will utilise it very well. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Mr Chair—oh, Mr Speaker, sorry.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Naisi Chen.

NAISI CHEN: Thank you, Mr Speaker. That shows how long I haven’t contributed in this House, but it’s great to be back.

Can I just say that this bill is hugely exciting, and I think from the contributions we’ve heard from the other side, we actually haven’t understood—I don’t think the other side has understood—this modern-day, 21st century approach to data. They still seem to think that data is still collected—yes, statistics still may be collected face to face and door to door, but today, in the 21st century, we are collecting data at a whole different level.

So that’s why, first of all, can I extend an invitation to all of the experts here in Aotearoa New Zealand on data, our data scientists, our experts in the IT field: please come and make a submission to one of the best select committees in this place—the Governance and Administration Committee—and please could you tell our chair a thing or two about how data is actually collected.

This is the month—or, I guess, two weeks ago—that Facebook announced their new change to the metaverse, although they’ve signalled that this change will be fully eventualised in 10 years’ time. But it signals that we are in a very different time already. Being in this different time, we need to make sure that our laws and legislation actually keep up with regulating things. I know that critics of Facebook’s new rebranding are saying that they’re very sceptical of why they’re rebranding to the metaverse, and some of them would say that it’s because they wanted to get away from all the scandals of their data breaches. This is why it’s so important for this House today to start to discuss all of these frameworks so that we can actually regulate the way that data is used in New Zealand for the good of our people.

During the Super Saturday campaign, we realised how important it was to have timely and accurate data so that we could put our resources into the most critical areas so that we could actually benefit all the people of New Zealand, to have that equity lens. Could I also commend the Associate Minister of Statistics, the Hon Meka Whaitiri, for her work in modernising this Treaty relationship so that we use our data for the good of our Māori people as well. It’s bringing this into modern-day New Zealand. On that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koutou. Thank you for this opportunity to stand in support of the Data and Statistics Bill, which was largely developed by the Hon James Shaw when he was the Minister of Statistics in the last term.

After such exuberant speeches from the Government, I’m still going to say that this is actually exciting for me as well. I was genuinely surprised that I didn’t have to fight anyone in my caucus to get the statistics portfolio. This bill repeals and replaces the Statistics Act, which, of course, was very much out of date. It carries over those provisions that still apply in today’s world but brings everything into line with how the world operates now. And since, of course, the old Act is paper based, clarifying how we use digital access and the way that data is collected now, I think, will make the lives of the staff at Stats New Zealand very, very much easier. We are pleased to see that this bill introduces numerous new provisions to ensure our statistics are collected, produced, and disseminated in line with best international principles and practices.

It’s long been said that Māori are the most studied people in the world. However, when I’ve travelled around and worked with indigenous peoples in different places, they have a similar saying, and that is because studying the natives is a core part of colonisation across the globe, and even today the bulk of statistics on Māori are deficit-based: how much less educated we are; how much less healthy; how much more convicted; how many more of us in prison; and right now, how many of us are not vaccinated and how many do we need to reach 90 percent in each DHB?

We’re supportive of the bill more explicitly adding the recognition of the Crown’s obligations to Te Tiriti o Waitangi—that obligates them to serve Māori interests. We hope this means moving away from that deficit model and building on the work that Stats New Zealand have already done around Māori identity and the prevalence of te reo Māori, to look at all the ways that Māori culture and therefore Māori people actually benefit this country. The goal of engaging with Māori early and meaningfully is a good model for every law and every practice in every Government department.

We note the explicit clarification of the Government Statistician’s professional independence. This is essential because, as any researcher knows, the quality of the data is everything. It cannot be subject to the machinations of the Government of the day. There are specific provisions accounting for the anonymisation of data—again, anything that’s going for public release. People should be protected—their data, their personal information protected. Those frameworks for safe sharing: we have seen data breaches across different Government departments, and once information starts being shared in addition to that, then the chance for breaches just multiplies.

We note that the Minister of Statistics will no longer need to approve the survey work of other agencies. We really support this. We don’t think that that kind of micromanagement is necessary. We think that if a good process is set up, then the senior officials in any agency should be able to get on with the work. Needing a set data is critical to be assured of the quality of the information being shared, we absolutely agree with, especially when other decisions on funding will be made as a result of it.

In terms of privacy, we really support the transparency requirements on Government agencies to publish information on any data sharing. We should know where information is moving, and then, having done that, if people are using it for independent research and publication, that should be made clear as well so we know where that information is moving and what’s happened to it. Our main concern is around ethical considerations around State collection and use of data generally, to protect against profiling or other unethical modes of use, and, again, that’s to protect the privacy of the people whose data we’re collecting.

We very much oppose unwarranted information-sharing between State databases. While statistics are different, this concern links to those wider privacy concerns that we have. The guarantee of safety is important if we want people to share their personal information. We note that in the next census, for the first time, new questions will be in place to learn more about people who are trans, intersex, and non-binary. We want our people in our rainbow communities to trust that their information will be safe so we can actually have real data about the numbers, the prevalence, and the issues facing different parts of our communities. Government agencies have not always been there for rainbow communities, and we want to trust that this time they will be. We are relieved that the Privacy Commissioner has not raised any concerns on this draft bill, but we see a key role for him in continuing to work with those agencies as we implement this new legislation.

So the bill appears to strengthen the processes that govern data and State collection of that, and it requires them to balance the benefits of that data collection, and what they might use it for, with the cultural and ethical considerations that affect the communities and the people they gather it from. Nō reira, we commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Morning, Madam Speaker. The Data and Statistics Bill—what a wonderful piece of legislation; the exuberant sharing by the various members of this House and the political machinations of the Minister David Clark. My colleagues were, as you can well imagine, bursting with enthusiasm to take this off me. I think that might almost be a derogatory offering. But, going back through history, we know the importance of sharing language, collating language, numeracy. It was part of our history. It’s how we collated and shared history and referred back to it. You can go back to the Greco-Roman period, where it was put on limestone tablets and papyrus, for the Roman era. The Rosetta Stone—I don’t know if anyone here is conducive with history—

Todd Muller: Yes.

MARK CAMERON: —but it was a way of—well, there you go; Mr Muller is acutely aware of it. But, more recently, it’s modernisation, digitisation, and the sharing and storing of that has allowed us to access any manner of various parts of history and how they’re stored. More recently, it’s important that New Zealanders have confidence in the way that data is collected. It’s particularly important because sometimes people are forgotten—and, you know, we see it all the time. We have 60,000 students chronically absent from school—data; statistics. There you have it. We have an extra 70,000 people absent on the job seeker benefit since Labour came into power—data; statistics. This is how we use it every day.

Sadly, we have two Ministers that are absent in representing rural communities, stored through data and statistics. But the data also shows a curious thing: ACT is not absent. ACT received 13,000 votes back in 2017, and four years later, we are somewhere currently polling at about half a million—data and statistics.

Hon Member: That’s right.

MARK CAMERON: There you go. I think the bill is quite succinct. I think it’s been well canvassed in this House. It’s a 45-year reboot of a piece of legislation to come in line with modernisation and digitisation. Currently, there are constraints, and I think we would all understand that, based on the advent of modern technology and how we use it. The ability to coalesce, collate, collect, and store data—I think we’d all agree that’s changed, and how we analyse it; how we use it. It was well canvassed by the Green member.

Health statistics, ethnic statistics, understanding those that are disadvantaged in society, crime stats and the runaway problem with crime across New Zealand. But there are some concerns the ACT Party has raised. There are people that perhaps are reluctant to share their information. The bill makes direct amendments to the Official Information Act. Well, arguably, it excludes the term “official information”. Well, we’re trying to ascertain the premise for that. What is the clause for? The explanatory note doesn’t say. What is the information in this clause trying to protect?

I just want to go through the bill in part. The unintended impacts—the data and statistics systems rely on the collection and use of information, including personal and commercially sensitive business information. Now, arguably, that speaks to intellectual property (IP) and how IP is potentially collated and potentially shared into governmental departments, etc. Now, suffice it to say, there will be people worried by that. The former includes identifying information for Māori and Pasifika communities. Equally so, people may be concerned about their privacy being eroded and how their information is shared. People with disabilities—arguably, this is deeply important if we are going to get a handle on helping that part of our community.

This bill will not be able to address all the risks, and I think that’s duly noted, related to the Government agencies and their management and their use of data. And, unfortunately, we have seen data breaches more often than not recently. It will also not speak directly to address security and quality and consistency of coverage of data collected and what governmental departments have use to it. Now, the ACT Party has been very clear. We actually support this legislation. We know the important nature of the use of data and statistics in New Zealand. I noticed the ruckus applause, but it’s actually something that’s quite important, and I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL (Labour—New Lynn): Madam Speaker, it’s great to be back in the House. I’ve been away for 13 weeks, less one day, as you can tell by the length of my Auckland hair.

I’m a little dismayed by the suggestion that some of us in this House might not know our history. The previous speaker, Mark Cameron, clearly got a few things mixed up. The Rosetta Stone, of course, was incredibly important not because of data but because it provided the capacity to learn how to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, and it was actually about a decree from the priest of a particular temple in Memphis about supporting the king—nothing to do with data per se. The earliest written records we have are, in fact, accounting records—accounting records—not data records in particular.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! A chocolate fish to that member.

Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So, you know, whatever, from that speaker.

I was, however, a little surprised by the curious lack of enthusiasm for this bill from Mr Andrew Bayly. Now, on this side of the House, we are excited about this bill and we’re looking forward to it coming to the Governance and Administration Committee. But I guess, in terms of Mr Bayly not being so excited about this bill, that might be expected from a party which, in their opening-up plan, couldn’t get the unemployment rate right—only had the Māori unemployment rate. May I suggest to Mr Andrew Bayly that data is, in fact, very, very important. Actually, I know that the speakers on the other side of the House agree with that too.

This will be an interesting bill to examine. I am particularly concerned with looking at the issues around data sovereignty and the interaction of the Treaty with the collection of data, and I’m sure we will enjoy examining it in the select committee. I commend this bill to the House.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Well, what a pleasure it is to be back in the House after 85 days in lockdown in Auckland, and I tell you what, I’m looking forward to giving a few key statistics during this speech about the issues that our fellow Aucklanders are facing.

I’m going to be talking about the Data and Statistics Bill, first reading. I, obviously, rise on behalf of National as the MP for North Shore, in Auckland. National supports this bill. This bill is to replace the Act that was put in place in 1975. I must say I’ve had a look at a few of the key statistics from 1975. Footrot Flats obviously was a key element and a key show there, and I was sort of wondering, looking across the other side, who’s a Wal and who’s our Aunt Dolly, but I won’t get into the detail on that. Also, National, a key statistic in 1975, won the election. So I think we’ll just ponder on that for a little while. Statistics, obviously in those days, were all hard copy and computers were just coming on line; so you can imagine the need to replace this Act is—obviously, things have moved on. But look, good statistics are essential for good policy—we know that—and are a key element in terms of driving a number of our decisions.

In terms of the three provisions within the bill that I wanted to touch on, obviously, the Crown responsibility is to consider and also to provide for Māori interests—is a key element that’s in here. Obviously, in 1975, for those who remember a little bit of their key statistics, it was the year in which the Waitangi Tribunal was actually established. So I think it is quite appropriate that that is being reflected as well. Obviously, the bill also looks at adding in additional safeguards and protections into the bill. Obviously, around confidentiality, we’ve seen the sort of catastrophic failures by this Government, particularly down in the Waikato and other Government departments, which have just been blatantly releasing our personal information and other details and other statistics and information, which obviously this bill covers, into the public domain. So confidentiality, and some enforcement for that, is really important. The last aspect is, obviously, that this bill will introduce a new framework for the collection of data, which will also allow some mandatory requests of that data.

I wanted to get back to a few other key statistics, particularly in Auckland City, because obviously we’re all down here and life is normal, but life is not normal in Auckland or in the Waikato for our fellow constituents. Auckland business closures, a statistic that this bill will obviously cover, have increased by 13.8 percent, according to Statistics New Zealand, in the month of September. Obviously, they are significant numbers. Statistics New Zealand also release information around the Consumers Price Index, which is, obviously, the measure of inflation, up 4.9 percent—a key statistic in regards to cost of living as well. So that’s a key aspect that, obviously, has been under this Government’s watch.

But look, National supports the better collection and publication of analysis of data and statistics, obviously. And obviously, this is really important, I guess, to take into account some of those industry trends. I think if you took a straw poll of where Aucklanders sit today, and I’m looking down at Chris Penk, because I know that, in his constituency, if you took a statistical survey of those constituents about how happy they are to be in lockdown under this Government, I think you’d find the statistical significance, of course, of those findings would be around zero percent. That’s how happy they are in regards to where they are at the moment and the critical need for change in that regard. Anything will be too slow for the people of Auckland.

I also wanted to refer back to some other key statistics that, obviously, this type of bill would look to, hopefully, cover. That is the fact that 100 percent of hair salons in Auckland are closed. Just a reminder: 100 percent of those remain closed even though you can still go and get your Botox. But obviously, in regards to this bill, in regards to the statistics that would be carrying, that also means that 100 percent of the revenue that those businesses collect is no longer there as well, and that’s a significant impact, obviously on all those members.

Obviously, this bill has a number of other elements that we won’t have, sadly, enough time to cover in this short speech. But I wanted to just reinforce that National will be supporting this bill and we’re looking forward to going through to the select committee process, where I’m sure we will receive a large number of submissions and contributions to what will be an absolutely important topic.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This is a bill where, once again, it’s getting support from across the House. We’re starting to get into a situation where people are using this to spout out interesting pieces of information. This is not contentious. It’s needed, it’s long overdue, let’s just get on with it.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m delighted to rise in support of this bill. It’s not often in this House that one gets to seriously nerd out on the subject of data and statistics, but in my past life I was a qualitative researcher, as well as a Family Court practitioner. Data and statistics are my bag. So I can fully appreciate Dr Elizabeth Kerekere’s enthusiasm for the post in the Greens, and I can fully appreciate the enthusiasm of Deborah Russell, another academic.

I want to quote a paper from the Ministry of Justice published just before the Labour-led coalition took over. They said, “Data provides an objective view based on real experience. It helps us see how things actually work and not how we think they work or should work. Better data helps us understand what the problem is, the catalyst behind it, and what the solution could be. Simply put, it’s a three-step process: data to insights to action.”—something we saw all too clearly when we repealed the subsequent child legislation, which had absolutely no empirical basis for it.

What I want to highlight now is the constant and heartfelt call of all people in my previous position as a researcher, because of the paucity of Government data, which is why I’m so delighted to see this bill. There is an urgent move—need, said one set of researchers from Otago University—an urgent need to improve data about who uses our courts, whether or not they’re represented, and how their cases proceed. Without this information, we are unable to design a justice system that responds to the needs of those who are using the courts and protects its important public functions. This bill matters.

Finally, I close with a quote from the Hon Stuart Nash—via Oscar Wilde, I believe—and I return to our friend on the ACT benches. This ACT gentleman has used statistics “like a drunk man uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination.” I look forward to the use for illumination, for analysis, and for solutions. I commend this bill to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise to speak on the Data and Statistics Bill. This is a bill that the National Party supports, one which modernises an Act which goes back some time and takes into account the significant advances that have happened since 1975, when the original Act came into force.

We need good data to make good decisions. For example, the faster cancer treatment target of 90 percent has been achieved 94.9 percent of the time in the Canterbury District Health Board; it has been achieved only 64.9 percent of the time in the Southern District Health Board. This is the worst in the country. Families and hard-working oncologists shouldn’t be let down by a health system that is under-resourced in our region. And this is why statistics matter, why we need good statistics, so we can ensure we get the right resourcing for our health system.

Why does it matter? There’s a gentleman who lives just around the corner from me by the name of Jeremy MacGillivray, who I met about a year ago, who has just passed away. He’s another young Southerner and parent who had a lengthy delay getting diagnosis and treatment, and he has unfortunately left this Earth sooner than he probably should have because we don’t have adequate resourcing in our region. An 18-month delay in diagnosing Jeremy with bowel cancer most likely cost him his life. He’s a dad, a husband—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can the member bring us back to the bill,

JOSEPH MOONEY: This is, Madam Speaker. I’m just speaking to why this bill matters and why we need good data to inform the decisions that are made, to inform policy, and inform the Government. I’ll just say that, in 2017, Jeremy started waking with stomach cramps and asked to be checked for bowel cancer because the disease had claimed his grandfather. His request was declined because of his age, lack of symptoms, and because a direct relative—a parent or sibling—had not had the disease. After diagnosis, he was told of an 18-week wait for chemotherapy. Unfortunately, it took too long. So that’s why this bill is very, very important.

The bill is one we do support; we support the better collection, publication, and analysis of data and statistics to quickly identify trends and tailor solutions. I’ll just say again briefly why that matters: in the Southern District Health Board, the current threshold of access for the orthopaedic triage process is painfully elevated due to the completely unacknowledged lack of resources from the Ministry of Health, and it has meant that patients are unable to be seen because of a lack of resourcing. We have a hospital in Southland that is short 90 beds and two theatres presently for the present needs of the region. The population is, I’m pleased to say, growing, but for our existing needs we just don’t have enough theatres, we don’t have enough beds, we don’t have enough health staff. And that’s why we need this collection and publication and analysis of data and statistics to ensure that the Government actually has the proper information, publishes that information to the public, so the public understands what is needed and the Government understands what is needed to provide the proper resourcing. Using granular data to tailor wraparound support services is at the heart of National’s approach and, for example, our social investment approach to governance.

New Zealand needs to make sure that our data collection methods and our statistical analysis are keeping up with modern technology and the standards that are set internationally. We need to ensure, as well, that data across agencies is collected in similar ways and presented in ways that can be easily comparable so that analysis of data is easily done. That’s why, at the beginning of my speech, I referred to the Canterbury District Health Board having a 94.9 percent achievement in terms of the faster cancer screening targets, but the Southern District Health Board having a woeful 64.9 percent approach.

So we very much support this. We look forward to the Government bringing this bill in and we look forward to the relevant information being provided to the public as well, because it’s important that this information is widely disseminated so that the public actually understands what is happening in their regions and what their region needs. And it’s only with the provision of appropriate data and appropriately packaged data—so it’s easily accessible—that people can understand that information. So I’ll finish my contribution there and say that this is a good step and the National Party is in support of this bill.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s wonderful to hear the enthusiasm and the energy from this side of the House this morning, and particularly the passion that sits behind the Data and Statistics Bill. It’s my pleasure this morning to speak very briefly on this to commend it to the House.

This bill replaces the Statistics Act 1975, because we know that times have changed, that our internet systems have got broader and we use them, in particular, every day. I remember well, back in the day, that my first platform, I think, that I used was Bebo, which was fantastic at that particular time, and look how far we have progressed, my friends.

But can I acknowledge the work of Minister Clark for this particular bill, but also my tuahine the Hon Meka Whaitiri for the work that she has done on protecting Māori data, working in a meaningful way with both iwi and also Māori rōpū to ensure that we acquire the right data.

At this particular time, what I’ve seen while I’ve been sitting in Auckland in lockdown is the tremendous work of our health workers on the front line, that have been backed by data to go down every street, to go down every community, to ensure that we vaccinate as many people as possible. That highlights the importance of data and the work that we do today; and bills like this that remove barriers from us accessing that data, to inform best practice; and to develop the right solutions for the empowerment of our communities, of our people of Aoteroa, and also of our most vulnerable groups like Māori and Pacific. So without further ado, I commend this bill to House.

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

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is, That the Data and Statistics Bill be considered by the Governance and Administration Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Bills

Commerce Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 19 October.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): When we last debated this bill, we—I would like to now call a five-minute call. No? Would anyone care to take a call? A five-minute call previously allocated to the Māori Party.

KIERAN McANULTY (Labour—Wairarapa): All right, then. Yeah, we were just hoping that—no one seemed to want to speak on this; we normally go to a vote. So I’m happy to speak up and say we commend this bill to the House.

JOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): I rise on behalf of the National Party to speak in respect of the Commerce Amendment Bill. This bill will amend the Commerce Act 1986 to ensure that it better fulfils its purpose of promoting competition. In particular, the bill strengthens the prohibition against the misuse of market power in section 36 of the Act.

It also aligns the rules for trans-Tasman markets, it prohibits the misuse of market power in New Zealand markets, and it strengthens and clarifies prohibitions in that respect. It has similar prohibitions against Australian or trans-Tasman firms with substantial market power taking advantage of that power in a New Zealand market. For example, it can result in a firm based in Australia being treated more leniently, in the way section 36A currently sits, than for firms based in New Zealand for identical conduct—that would affect New Zealand markets.

The bill changes the Commerce Commission’s authorisation powers as well. In some instances, anti-competitive conduct might be in the public interest. For example, it might be where competing businesses work together to aid in dealing with the effects of COVID-19. In these instances, it may be desirable to allow that behaviour, even though it might otherwise contravene the Act.

There are a number of changes which are in here. The National Party does have concerns about some parts of it. The National Party remains concerned about the effect on pro-competitive behaviour of the changes to an effects-based test under section 36 and the repeal of intellectual property safe harbours. National is concerned about the effect on pro-competitive behaviour that those changes could have, and the potential for resulting detrimental outcomes for consumers.

In terms of section 36, the bill changes competition rules for dominant market players from the intention to be anti-competitive to business decisions that have the unintended consequence of altering competition in the market. The National Party believes that this test should be amended from “intent (purpose), effect, or likely effect” to be anti-competitive to “intent (purpose), or likely effect”. The removal of the “effect” condition limits the restrictions to foreseeable consequences of commercial actions. As drafted, firms with market power risk liability for unforeseeable future consequences, leading to overly conservative decision-making on their part. This is likely to deter competitive conduct, to the detriment of consumers in the long term. We note that the regulatory impact assessment prepared by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment supports this view.

It’s really important in bills of this nature to get the balance right so that we don’t have firms taking overly conservative decision-making, because we live in a dynamic world, as COVID-19 has made all too apparent. We have seen our borders closed for a very considerable period of time, and we need people to take risks in business to actually take advantage of the opportunities to look for new ways of doing things and to create new business opportunities for themselves, which is ultimately good for the country.

I just note that there is another concern that the National Party has in terms of the legitimate business justification. A legitimate business justification defence, in our view, should be included in section 36 of the Act, consistent with international precedent. While the Commerce Commission has assured us that they’ll not pursue proceedings against standard commercial conduct, this should be specified in the bill. The commission may not bring proceedings against legitimate businesses, but it does not preclude third parties from doing so.

The National Party opposes the repeal of the intellectual property safe harbours which are proposed in this bill. Businesses require confidence to invest in and license their intellectual property. So intellectual property rights have no intrinsic value; rather, the value lies in their statutory rights, that allow for the enforcement of intellectual property. Repealing certain safe harbours in this bill will make New Zealand an outlier internationally, discouraging investment in intellectual property and research and development, and will have a chilling effect on pro-competitive licensing of intellectual property to competitors and other third parties.

I’ll just make the comment here that this is an incredibly important area for New Zealand to compete in, with the weightless export potential for this market. It’s something where we should really be carefully ensuring that we create the relevant statutory regime that will support the development of intellectual property and that will encourage research and development. Increasingly, we see, for example, with matters around climate change and how to respond to that, that we need some intelligent thinking and we need some people who are taking a chance. I saw recently a speech by Mr Callaghan from about 10 years ago, where he noted that New Zealand is incredibly good at doing odd things. We have businesses where New Zealanders come up with ideas which are outliers that no one else has thought of, and this is the classic number eight wire thinking that is hardwired into our DNA. New Zealanders will look at something and find an opportunity that no one else has noticed, and they will do it very, very well, and sell it to the world markets. We don’t want to see a chilling effect on that innovation—that number eight wire spirit—but, rather, we want to encourage it, and unfortunately this bill undermines that.

So there are a number of concerns that we have in respect of this bill, but I think I’ll leave my comments there. Thank you for the opportunity.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise in this House to support this bill and to commend this bill to the House because, unlike what the previous speaker has mentioned, in order to protect in New Zealand the innovation that we have here in this country, and to protect that good old “start in your garage” kind of mentality, we actually need really good competition law in our economy. We need to make sure that the smaller players don’t get bullied by the bigger players. We need to make sure that this economy is fair for everyone when they’re entering into it.

I would like to quote the chair of our Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, Jamie Strange, who said that competition breeds innovation, and that is exactly why we are legislating this bill. It’s because we need to make sure that New Zealand has a healthy competition environment within our economy.

Through the inquiries that we’ve done into supermarkets and the ones that we’ve announced for the building supply sector, we know that in a small economy like New Zealand, competition sometimes can be crowded out because of the lack of players or the small amount of players that we have in the small population and the market size that we have. So that’s why it’s super crucial that we get this bill right so that we make sure that we protect the smaller players, we protect the consumers, and we make sure that this economy still runs in the way that we want, which is for everyone to have a fair go so that everyone can achieve the wellbeing to live in this place.

I want to thank my select committee colleagues for the work that we’ve done together, collectively, on this bill and to thank the Minister for accepting our recommendations in terms of speeding up the delay that we had in the implementation of this bill. This was exactly something that the submitters had said to us, and this is us listening to the submitters and making sure that the implementation period for the transition of this bill is not only prudent in terms of giving time for everyone to adjust but also, at the same time, so that we actually make sure that we get the effect of this bill in the way that we want it to be. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill

Second Reading

Debate resumed from 12 August.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): This debate was interrupted at the last session, and ACT have the next call.

IAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you, Madam Speaker. The great thing about a five-minute call is that by the time you get this thing off [Refers to face mask], a minute’s gone. It doesn’t actually give me a great deal of pleasure to speak on this bill, and the reason for that I’ll enunciate in the short time I’ve got. I’ve spent a lot of my life looking around farms in New Zealand, being part of the farming community of New Zealand, and I’ve had the privilege of visiting many of our iconic high country farms in the South Island in my time on this Earth. I think that some of them are magnificent. One of the problems with this bill is it’s trying to, effectively, reinstate or reverse something that started to occur some 170-odd years ago. No matter how we try to reverse things that have happened in the past, they can’t be reversed unless we reverse them with human invention. So you can’t expect things to just go back to how they were when they’ve been, effectively, changed by, I guess, human method or whatever we use to do things. So we change things as we go along, and history sometimes proves that some of the changes we made weren’t necessarily ideal. If that happens, then we can at least make an attempt, I guess, to put things back in as best a state as we can, but unless we use modern science and technology, human intervention, we can’t achieve that.

But to get back to the real issue around this bill, the people who took up these—I guess I’d call them property rights or leases, some of them 160 and 170 years ago, some families did, and still hold them today. They took them up in good faith, and the Government put them out there in good faith. In fact, I remember in my time even being part of a lease a little bit like this—different leases in the North Island. The North Island didn’t have the same kind of pastoral lease as the South Island did, but, none the less, we did have what were called 99-year leases. They did expire; these ones don’t. So, effectively, when these were taken up, they were seen as property rights, and those people were seen to have the care of that land—I guess they could’ve foreseen that it would be for ever.

We’ve had a few goes at interfering in this process in New Zealand’s history, and I think all of them have been unfortunate. But I think that one of the issues that we should consider as a Parliament when we’re dealing with issues like what, effectively, is here called the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill is that people who have what could be termed property rights or the right to occupy and to operate land for profitable reasons or whatever can reasonably be expected to look after that land in a manner that’s fully sustainable. The problem here is that we’re interfering in a process, and, in my view, negatively interfering in a process, because we’re putting constrictions on people who entered this process, as I said, sometimes, 170-odd years ago, in good faith and with a view to being there for ever.

When you hold land, you’re not going to hold it with a view to undermining its future potential, or, in fact, undermining its value to New Zealand either, for that matter. As I said earlier, the fact that we’ve changed the very nature of a lot of this land, sometimes 170-odd years ago—or even much longer ago than that, actually, because for ever we’ve been using land for different reasons in New Zealand. I accept that we need to make provision to, I guess, as best we can, ensure the sustainability of all types of business in New Zealand, particularly agriculture because that’s our keep, but at the same time we need to take those people with us and take them with us in a manner that they can see a future in and that they’re confident that they and their partnership, in this case with the Government, will operate in a manner that’s sustainable.

So I think it’s very disappointing that we’ve gone again into this area and tried to—I’m not sure what we’re trying to set out to achieve here, actually, because when you talk to those landholders, and, as I said, almost all of them without exception are extraordinarily capable, very talented people who have a love of that land and of the environment they live in, that you seldom see matched elsewhere in New Zealand—and I think it’s pretty special.

I don’t have long to speak on this bill, but I do think it’s a great shame to have gone down this path with this bill, and we certainly can’t support that. I’m sure that this very issue will come back to this Parliament again in the future one day, because it certainly hasn’t been—

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

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Thank you, and I take a call on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill, and I want to thank our very capable and well-versed Minister, the Hon Damien O’Connor, for bringing this to the House. I also want to say thank you to our select committee, which I was not part of, but I want to say thank you so much for the work that they did in the Environment Committee on this, and to all the members from across the House.

Just in noting in looking at what went on there, 161 submissions. There were 59 submitters who gave oral evidence to this piece of legislation, which really is about amending the Crown Pastoral Land Act 1998 and the Land Act 1948. Now this is around the 1.2 million hectares of Crown pastoral land; about 5 percent of New Zealand’s total land area. That’s ours, it’s the Crown, it’s us as a nation, and we want to do our best to look after that. So, therefore, I commend this bill to the House.

ANGIE WARREN-CLARK (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a real delight to speak on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill. I want to acknowledge how enjoyable this bill was to work on. As a member of the Environment Committee, we had the pleasure of being hosted by the High Country Accord. Absolutely, for those of us who have been born on farms in rural communities and grown up in rural communities, their commitment to their farming practices, their sustainability, and their intergenerational connection to their land resonated with many of us. It was certainly an enjoyable time to hear from them.

This bill, essentially, ends tenure review—the 1.2 million hectares of land, or 5 percent of New Zealand, the tenure review will cease. Tenure review was around changing land from these leases into fee simple land which then was able to be sold. What this bill has done is put in a whole series of protections for the owners of the land, which is the Crown, their relationship with tangata whenua, and also ensured that the high country farmers were able to be protected and had certainty. It ensures the permitted discretionary of prohibited acts on-farm are clearly identified.

This bill, quite simply, has come at a time when we need to ensure that we do everything in our greatest powers to protect and support our land. The high country farmers do this, and this bill supports them to continue. Thank you.

BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, the member Glen Bennett just said it all when he said it’s our land. That typifies the Labour Government in that everything is about them; everything is about centralisation, with no thought for the people that have been on this land for a very long time.

The second thing that Glen Bennett said was that their esteemed Minister Damien O’Connor had brought this to the House. Well, I was here for the first reading of this bill, and I remember I spoke in slot No. 4, and what was really interesting, I heard Eugenie Sage get up and speak on the bill. Then I heard Damien O’Connor get up and speak on the bill, and they told two different stories about what this meant. And I was really regretting that I’d taken speech slot No. 4. I would have rather been No. 6, because I was waiting to see what Mark Patterson was going to say, from a New Zealand First perspective, because he had a different view altogether and was saying, “Well, we’ll see what happens with this.” Unfortunately, for the farmers, Mark Patterson would have been a good advocate.

This thing is wrong, wrong, wrong. The bill is an omnibus bill that amends the Crown Pastoral Land Act and the Land Act 1948. What it seeks to achieve is the following outcomes: “maintaining or enhancing inherent values across the Crown pastoral estate for present and future generations, while providing for ongoing pastoral farming of pastoral land”. What on earth does this Government think that the farmers are doing now? We have a zero readiness report here, which none of the Government members are choosing to talk about, which was done by KPMG last week or the week before, and while New Zealand is actually ninth in the world out of 32 countries, on this table, agriculture is sitting at number one. And where do you actually hear anyone on the Government side of the House talking about that? You don’t. It seems to be a big feature of this Government to want to lead the world in COVID response—well, that’s all gone wrong. That’s all totally gone wrong—not leading the world. Nobody even knows what the traffic lights mean anymore.

So this bill seeks to end tenure review and improve. It says, “the way Crown pastoral land is administered and regulated.” Well, there goes that word “regulated”, because there’s that many regulations around now that people are still trying to work out which ones work and which ones don’t work. And “The bill aims to ensure that the department administers Crown pastoral land in a way that maintains or enhances the … inherent values that arise from ecological, landscape, cultural, heritage, and scientific attributes or characteristics, while providing for ongoing pastoral farming.” It says, “The bill does not seek to change leaseholders’ tenure, right to pasturage, quiet enjoyment of the leasehold properties”. Well, I can tell you there’s been no quiet enjoyment of these leasehold properties since this Government’s tried to take over, take the power, and take everything away from the enjoyment that these leaseholders have had for many, many, many years.

So it’s talking about “Redesigning regulatory system to”—theoretically—“deliver improved Crown pastoral land outcomes.” So I’m going to read that again, because maybe the person who’s speaking next on the other side of the House—so, “Redesigning regulatory system to”—theoretically—“deliver improved Crown pastoral land outcomes.” So what is this theoretical delivery that’s going to do something any better than the farmers can do? I mean, I was at a catchment recently, not in this particular area, but talking about land improvement, and these people had to have six different entities to work through their catchments, and they had to report back to the Ministry for Primary Industries and the Ministry for the Environment, which is fair enough—no one minds accountability. But they had to report back to each one quarterly at different times of the year. So tell me how theory and box-ticking actually gets the boots on and gets anything done?

There’s a classification of activities here intended to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the decision-making process. Under the bullet points, permitted pastoral activity, leaseholders may undertake these activities without applying for a consent. Then you turn over the page: discretionary pastoral activities—leaseholders must apply for a consent to undertake these activities. So this is going to turn into a “What do I apply for consent for? What is going to be the thing that I’m allowed to do that’s going to continue my quiet enjoyment of my leasehold property?” And then we come to prohibited pastoral activities, and leaseholders may not.

Now, I know how the lines get blurred between some of these things, and I can see a lot of the people that are going to win out of these are going to be the lawyers and the people who are going to be challenging what’s discretionary; what’s prohibited. All of that sort of stuff.

Then we come to the statutory decision-making process, “the application of an effects-based test aimed at both assessing the level of adverse effects of an activity and minimising those effects as far as possible”. So this is an effects-based test. Who knows what theory that’s going to be based on?

“A pastoral farming test to establish whether an activity that has more than minor adverse effects on inherent values” and “a final decision-making stage where the Commissioner can carry out a range of further considerations before approving the application in full or in part, with or without conditions, or declining it.” So, you know, there’s going to be a pastoral farming test. Pastoral farming, generally, in our book, involves having animals on pasture, and we know that there are some things that happen with pastoral farming that can have some effects, and we’re working on those as an industry, and nobody would dispute that we need to make some changes.

Then you get to the final decision making where the commissioner can, you know, make a range of further considerations. Nobody’s talking about what these further considerations are, before approving or declining. So this talks about “Increasing transparency, accountability, and public involvement”. Now, this really annoys me. The Crown is going to take this over. We’re going to have the most open and transparent Government, who tell nobody anything, saying that this will increase transparency, accountability, and public involvement. I don’t think so. I think the minute that the Government signs off on this bill, it’ll probably be the last we get any transparency and accountability. It’ll all be tied up behind the doors, and no one will ever hear anything about it ever again from this Government. They’re not talking to our mayors during COVID. They’re not open and transparent during anything.

So this bill is a really bad move. National opposes this bill, in its absolute entirety. It should be ripped up. It should never be allowed to happen, and while it says it seeks to provide stronger and clearer accountability and transparency in the department’s administration of Crown pastoral land, I have no faith in the system to deliver anything better than what those good farmers have been delivering for generations and who should be able to carry on doing it for generations.

We strongly oppose the introduction of a new infringement regime, which confers to the commissioner additional enforcement powers. So these people who are going about, you know, their quiet enjoyment of their leasehold properties are all of a sudden bound to the introduction of new infringement regimes where people will walk in with their clipboards and tick the boxes. Nobody minds having accountability, but another set of regulations is something that these farmers do not need. Section 100GA is too heavy handed—reinforcing, monitoring, and policing of Crown pastoral leaseholders, insinuating they are to blame for the position of the high country, is where they have done their best to look after the land. I had a firsthand look at the weekend and they’ve done a good job. This bill is rubbish. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Dr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): I rise very briefly. I have listened closely to the words of my colleagues. I could not have said it better than Angie Warren-Clark, therefore I will not attempt to, other than to say I commend this bill to the House.

TĀMATI COFFEY (Labour): Thank you, Madam Speaker. This was a difficult bill for somebody that doesn’t hang about on high country stations to get their head around, but actually, it’s really important. I want to refer to a couple of the submissions, namely the one from Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, who came to the committee and said to us that they thought that as we’re refreshing this framework, as we’re putting in some standards and some monitoring systems for what Crown pastoral lands actually entail, what they wanted was for the partnership that they signed up to through their settlement, through the Treaty—they wanted their partnership honoured through this process.

So one of the things that they said was that they wanted to be able to access some of this, the Crown pastoral land, that is out on lease. They wanted to be able to acknowledge some of the wāhi tapu involved in those spaces, some of the places where they go to gather their kai, some of the ancestral lands, some of the very special water bodies that run across some of these Crown pastoral lease lands as well. So what we’ve gone and done as a committee is that we’ve understood that the Crown does in fact have an obligation to recognise and respect its responsibility to give effect to the principles of te Tiriti o Waitangi. And so for that reason, we’ve gone and reformed the purpose of this Act to reflect that.

One of the other changes that we made in the submissions process was also to just call out the iwi that are directly involved in this. There was, in the initial drafting, just general references to “Māori”, but actually, we know that it’s not just general references. We knew that Ngāi Tahu are giant stakeholders in this. There’s also other iwi that wanted themselves listed in this too: Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō, Ngāti Kuia, Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāti Kōata, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama ki Te Tau Ihu, Te Ātiawa o Te Waka-a-Māui, and Ngāti Toa Rangatira as well. So for that reason, we made those amendments, and I think that our Māori submitters should be very supportive of the efforts that we’ve made in that respect. I commend it to the House.

MARK CAMERON (ACT): Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the second reading of the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill.

Well, here we go again: more virtue; no ideas. The Minister for Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) should get off his ideological hobby horse and actually ride a real one. I’m sure many in the high country would offer him one if he actually took off his high-vis coat for more than five minutes and spent time on a farm in New Zealand. This bill has completely eroded farmer morale. There is further angst and, frankly, anger. High country farmers and landowners will see their heritage and their history irreversibly changed.

Now, I just want to, if I may, quote the Minister. When he was asked in question time about his position—and I quote—“Does he stand by his statement on the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill, made before his appointment to the Land Information portfolio”—he quotes—“My primary focus has been to ensure that the bill recognises that Crown pastoral lands supports a prosperous high country pastoral farming industry and I’m confident that this new regime proposed by the Minister will ensure that sustainable pastoral farming on Crown land will continue to thrive”. Well, gracious me, what does that mean if you’re one of those farmers? I’ve just come back from there, and they’re disgraced.

This bill seeks to remove a perpetual 33-year lease. This is generational. It will change the whole construct of existing legislation, this new omnibus bill. For the context of those happening to listen at home, it speaks to pursuing better environmental outcomes on Crown land. Well, gracious me, these people are doing that. They are moving the wilding pines, they are mitigating the pest damage, they are controlling the goats, and on and on it goes. But this Government, they don’t care. It’s all virtue. Jobs for Nature—we don’t even know what the full-time equivalents are there when they’re asked for in the House.

So many took an affront to this legislation being in front of the Environment Committee, and the Minister at the time saw prudence and gave it over to Minister O’Connor. Arguably, many have asked why it wasn’t in front of the Primary Production Committee. After all, it affects my kind of people, Barbara’s kind of people, people on this side of the House—farmers. Ultimately, it’s farmers that are affected. They are the leaders of environmental protection in the high country.

The report back from the Environment Committee made several suggested changes. The bill seeks to end tenure review. As previously mentioned, it amends clause 2, introducing monitoring and enforcement regimes. Well, haven’t we got enough regulation in New Zealand?

The dairy sector is all too often lauded on the other side of the House, and the primary sector, by the Minister of Finance, and here we are with more regulations, more red tape, and more “You can’t go outside and do anything.” Notably, the provisions relating to a penalty regime come into effect six months after Royal assent. They’re not even sure of the issues they’re trying to address in the bill.

The crux of my debate is that this erodes totally the relationship between the Crown and 150 years of farmer-Crown relationship. There has been significant capital investment by farmers down in this Crown pastoral land, to the sum of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars adding to community productivity and wellbeing. These are families. These are the local schools. Every day, farming in New Zealand gets a little bit harder, and this is a prime example of that.

If I can just contextualise, we’re talking about environmental concerns. In July 2021, Stuff ran an article, “Losing the war on wilding pines”. In context, wilding pines are increasing across the country annually by approximately 5 percent. They cover 1.8 million hectares, and that increases by a further 90,000 hectares a year. Who’s removing these? They are the farmers—these are the very people you seem to deride.

If I can quote Jess Cocks, who lives on Mt Nicholas station, she notes that “This bill has been formed with the lack of active consultation with lessees. It does not recognise the 127 completed and implemented tenure reviews that have achieved good outcomes for all concerned.” She goes on: “There is also a contractual obligation on behalf of the Crown that is being overlooked. This Government routinely overlooks the very part of the primary sector that has kept the country and the economy going.”

The ACT Party notes overwhelmingly that submitters were in two camps: those in LINZ’s camp, and the rest of us—the farming community. Currently, there are approximately 165 to 170 lessees. Now, arguably, those on that side of the House will say that it’s a small number. Well, gracious me, they are real people. They are communities. They are families. They are schoolchildren going to the local schools. Their whole family construct will change. The community will erode.

The current Act allows for certain activities like pastoral farming for cattle, deer, and sheep grazing. Well, what an onerous thing! What environmental degradation this seeks to fix, when these are the very people that arrest the problem.

There are limitations on soil activities and burn-offs. Well, the farmers already acknowledge that. I am one, and I’m acutely aware of my environmental footprint.

I’ll close up with a quote to make the other side of the House actually acknowledge what the concept of family in rural New Zealand is all about. Caroline Tamblyn said, “I have worked as a LINZ contractor for 12 years doing pastoral lease consents, valuations, and tenure review.” She goes on: “I no longer work as a contractor and have no connections to pastoral leases. I have submitted on this so-called land reform bill because I disagree with the adversarial approach to removing longstanding property rights. It’s deliberate sabotage of good working relationships between the Crown and farmers of New Zealand.”

I and the ACT Party unequivocally oppose this bill. It totally fails to acknowledge the private property rights and the significant investment in high country communities. ACT stands with National on this side of the House, and we support farmers and rural New Zealand.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I call Stuart Smith—five minutes.

STUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and I welcome the opportunity to get—albeit at short notice—this short call on this bill. I had the pleasure of sitting on the select committee during the hearing of the evidence on this bill and to attend a meeting and a field trip, as it were, down in Central Otago, where we particularly went to the Branches Station, which I think was phenomenal. The owners of that station were very moving in their discussions with us. I thought that was a day that, actually, when we all travelled together with the whole select committee, we travelled back on the boat back to Wanaka after being at—what was the name?

Hon Member: Minaret.

STUART SMITH: Sorry. We travelled back into Wānaka, and it was from Minaret Station. It was a phenomenal time for us all, and I think it moved us all. Unfortunately, the select committee members from the other side were only doing what they were told, and, of course, they had to ram it through, even though they knew in their heart of hearts it was the wrong thing to do.

Having said that, we did all that, it was a great day. We learnt a lot, but I had the pleasure and the honour of actually taking a couple of my colleagues with me through my part of the electorate, Joseph Mooney being one of them, where we drove up the Awatere Valley up to Muller Station, which is right next door to the historic Molesworth Station. And we saw firsthand—actually, how good the Ford Ranger was when I drove it round through some rivers and around the farm tracks. But we saw firsthand how those farmers are managing the noxious weeds. And so in South Marlborough, there is a significant issue with wilding pines and Pinus contorta. And it is really making inroads into and across that Awatere Valley and the upper area there. However, what we saw on the Muller Station is the Satterthwaites, Steve and Mary Satterthwaite are doing a fantastic job. Because merino wethers are being run on their property, and they eat the little seedling pines as they come through. They don’t get them all, but there’s only a few they don’t get, and they can spot spray them from a helicopter, the ones that get too big for them to eat.

However, when we went on to Molesworth Station right next door, they run cattle, they don’t run sheep. Cattle won’t eat the wilding pines. It is going to get away and it’s going to become a significant environmental issue, not just for the fact that we’ve got this noxious weed going to actually choke the land out—in parts of South Marlborough, it is impenetrable. You cannot walk through those trees. But when it gets to Molesworth, it will become almost impossible to control and it will be a significant fire risk.

Joseph Mooney: It already is.

STUART SMITH: It already is, as Joseph Mooney just said. It is already a significant issue.

But we went through from there up to the Lakes Station in North Canterbury to see that property. And it’s right on Lake Sumner virtually, and it’s a beautiful high country place. Similar issues. What we’re seeing is quite different stations that are run differently. As we saw down in Otago, different farms and different land requires different management. What the takeaway was: these people know the land. These people know how to manage it. Unfortunately, best intentions and all, Department of Conservation (DOC) don’t. DOC don’t know how to deal with it, DOC are stretched anyway—not to say they are not genuine in their concern for the land. They simply aren’t capable.

So what we’re seeing here with this bill is adding layers of bureaucracy on top of people that are already dealing with bureaucracy and being snowed under—and sometimes literally snowed under—with all of these compliance issues that will make no difference, no difference to the outcome for the land. It will make it worse, if anything. These people are doing what’s best for them and what’s best for the land, because those things are the same. They know that the land is what they live off and they therefore are not going to make decisions that will impact on the long-term viability of their farm and their rights. And I think this is a travesty, this bill. I think it’s a shame and it’s a shame the other members had their hands tied and had to support it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.

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

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Amendments agreed to.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Crown Pastoral Land Reform Bill be now read a second time.

Ayes 77

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

Noes 43

New Zealand National 33; ACT New Zealand 10.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill

Second Reading

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Housing) on behalf of the Minister for the Public Service: I move that the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill be now read a second time.

The education—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry, we understood that there was a legislative statement.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Sorry, yes, the legislative statement. I present a legislative statement on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill.

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

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: So if you can move that.

Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I now move, That the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill be now read a second time.

The Education and Workforce Committee have considered the bill and reported it back with the proposed amendments. I accept the committee’s commentary and proposed amendments. Most of the amendments have been made in response to issues raised by submitters or questions from the committee. I’d like to acknowledge the work that both submitters and the committee have put into improving this bill.

This bill has had cross-party support both at introduction and through the select committee process. All political parties in Parliament understand the importance of protecting people who raise concerns about serious wrongdoing that they see in or by their organisations. I wish to acknowledge the differing view put forward in the select committee report by the Green Party of Aotearoa. Several of the issues that the Green Party raised were already in our programme for future work on the protected disclosures regime, while others have come to our attention as a result of submissions heard through the committee process.

Some of these issues will require a further consultation and policy process. The appropriate way forward will depend on the effect of the major changes in this bill or developments in other areas of law and practice. For example, the redress available to a discloser who experiences retaliation or victimisation is through the personal grievance and/or human rights complaint mechanism. Submitters have pointed out that both of these are challenging to use, and take too long. We can’t fix these processes through the legislation. If we establish something separate for protected disclosures, it might have exactly the same issues.

The biggest change between the Act and the bill is that whistleblowers will be able to disclose directly to an appropriate authority outside of their organisation. This is a huge change from the series of gates and hurdles in the current legislation, and I expect it to make a big difference to those who are disclosing. This bill also rewrites the Act so that it is much easier to follow and spells out things that the Act is largely silent on, such as what receivers of a disclosure are expected to do.

Having said that, I intend to progress some issues raised by submitters, or noted by the committee, through a Supplementary Order Paper before this bill is passed. I expect that Supplementary Order Paper to include: making it clearer that serious wrongdoing includes things that create serious risk to the health and/or safety of individuals, and improving protection for supporting disclosers and disclosures made under a duty of some kind. I also expect that the issues not addressed through the Supplementary Order Paper will form part of a planned policy work programme that will continue alongside the implementation of this bill. I commend this bill to the House.

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

Hon MARK MITCHELL (National—Whangaparāoa): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my pleasure to stand and take a call on this, the second reading of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. Can I just support the Minister’s comments and acknowledge the Education and Workforce Committee that worked on this. I wasn’t a member of the select committee, so I can’t speak in great detail in terms of the work that has been done, but I have looked at the recommendations and the work that they did around those recommendations and acknowledge those as being very good. And, of course, reiterating the Minister’s comments, there is further work to be done in refining this bill to ultimately make sure that whistleblowers are afforded the correct protection and a speedy and efficient process which they can have confidence in to be able to bring information forward.

Can I just, very quickly, talk a little bit about my personal experience in this and why I support this bill and the work that’s being done on this bill and, fundamentally, why it is so important. Because New Zealand, we can be rightfully proud of the fact that we lead in most measures around the world as being the least corrupt country in the world. The reason for that is that we’ve got to be able to have good, safe mechanisms in terms of people being able to report poor behaviour or illegal behaviour inside the workplace. I was lucky enough to be on the C-suite in the management board of a big global logistics company—in 120 countries, with over 33,000 employees—and part of my role was to run the security and risk management for those employees, for the property and the assets of the company. Very lucky to have had a very progressive chief executive officer in Tarek Sultan, who recognised that making sure that employees were looked after and their welfare was cared for—right across 120 countries—had to be a sharp focus. That meant making sure that when you are working in different countries, where a business practice that may be accepted in one country would be seen as unacceptable in another country, meant a very robust system global system in which employees could come forward and report anything that they felt was not appropriate or legal.

So I became very aware of the fact that there’s lots of risks and challenges around that. One of them is that undeniable risk that an employee or a person can weaponise that system and they can take a personal grievance or disagreement with someone inside the organisation, and they can use the systems available to them to try and weaponise it and try and create problems for that person. I think this bill has been very good in clearly outlining and stating what the threshold is in terms of the type of complaint that can be received and actioned and, to some extent, it does mitigate the risk of that. But the overriding concern and the overriding issue that must be addressed in a bill like this—and it has done a good job of it—is ensuring that someone can, with confidence, step forward and make a complaint if they’re seeing poor behaviour or even illegal behaviour happening inside the organisation that they’re working for. Let’s not pretend that that is an easy thing to do. It’s not. It is often a very difficult thing to do, especially when there is often a power imbalance and the bad behaviour may be coming from a manager or a senior manager.

So I think this bill has been very clear in terms of outlining the steps that can be taken for an employee to have the confidence to actually step forward, make a disclosure, know that they’re going to be protected and that there’s the robust protections around them in terms of anonymity and that the complaint is going to be taken seriously and it’s going to be responded to in a timely manner. And I think that the 20 days, although that sounds a long time, actually I think that it is fair in terms of being able to initiate an initial investigation in terms of starting to substantiate and get a feel for exactly what the complaint is and the content contained within that complaint.

I think that the big thing for me, and what has been addressed, is the meaning of “serious wrongdoing”. Because, you could argue that something that one person considers is a serious wrongdoing someone else might feel is a bit more trivial and less serious. So I think that in legislation like this, it’s very important to be able to lay that out clearly. And it’s obvious that the select committee, along with some very good submissions that were made, had this highlighted and they really turned their mind to it. They have gone through and they have made some very good changes to section 10. If I’m just able to very quickly run through that, the meaning of serious wrongdoing. So, in this Act, serious wrongdoing includes one or more of the following by or in any organisation. And, of course, subsection (a) was changed; a very good change that made it much, much clearer and more simple. It went from “an unlawful, a corrupt, or an irregular use of public funds or public resources” to just “an offence”. So that means an offence has to be established. And I think that when you’re talking about the protections that this legislation is going to wrap around a whistleblower, or someone that’s bringing something forward, that, of course, is the first issue that must be established.

Section 10(b), “a serious risk to public health, or public safety, or the environment.” They’ve gone through it in a very good way—and can I acknowledge the advisers that have worked on this and obviously worked alongside the committee in terms of, I think, that they’ve made very clear and very succinct changes consistent with the comments that the Minister made around trying to make the Act a little more simpler to understand and to interpret. So actually, even someone that may not have a legal background or legal training can pick up the Act and have a look at it. If you’re an employee and you’re wrestling with trying to bring something forward, you can actually look at that. I think that would give them a large level of confidence that they understand what the intent of the Act is, the protections that they would get, and what’s incumbent upon them, and the process and the road map that they need to use to actually progress and come forward and make a complaint. So I just want to acknowledge the committee and the advisers on their work there in terms of making those changes around the meaning of serious wrongdoing. To me, that’s the heart of the legislation, really, because if that definition isn’t clear, then actually you could end up with a whole lot of complaints that actually could bog the system down and it could almost be counterintuitive in terms of what you’re trying to achieve through a piece of legislation like this.

“Discloser’s entitlement to protection”. This is extremely important in terms of being able to instil the confidence in people to be able to come forward and make that complaint. And, like I said, in my own experience in dealing with an internal system whereby we had a confidential hotline that was available to all employees globally, that they could come forward and disclose poor behaviour, or even illegal behaviour—and we did have plenty of disclosures like that, and a lot of them were upheld and it meant that we had to take internal action. But you also had to work with external partners as well to take action on that. I dealt with things as simple as passive-aggressive behaviour and targeting within the workplace on someone that was trying to do the right thing and put their hand up and highlight something that was not going right, right through to serious threats of violence against employees and their family members for coming forward and wanting to disclose poor behaviour or illegal behaviour in the workplace. So the “discloser’s entitlement to protection” is extremely important in this bill: “A discloser is entitled to protection under this Act for a protected disclosure made (in accordance with the section) to their organisation or to an appropriate authority.”

I think the other thing that the Minister highlighted and I agree entirely with is that there’s very clear avenues outside the organisation that an employee can follow as well if they’ve lost complete confidence in terms of how their complaint is going to be dealt with. And I think that that’s a very good part of the legislation. I know that it appears that there’s still going to be some refining around that and how that’s going to work, but I think that that’s critically important for an employee: to have a different pathway to be able to use to bring forward a serious issue or disclosure and have confidence in that process.

So I’d just like to say again that although I didn’t sit on the committee, I want to acknowledge all the committee members that are in the House today for the work that they have done on this bill. I think that it is a very good and an important piece of legislation, not only to provide employees with the confidence to be able to come forward and report bad behaviour or illegal behaviour and harmful behaviour, but also in making sure that we can continue to be a country that can be proud of having very low levels of corruption inside our public service. We should continue to work and protect that and provide the tools necessary to ensure that that proud legacy that we have as a country can remain for a long time moving forward. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on this, the second reading of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. I also want to acknowledge my colleague across the floor there, Mark Mitchell, for his contribution and making it quite clear that we as a Parliament are working together on something that’s really important. It’s around protecting people who should speak up, but often are fearful of that for whatever reasons, as was mentioned before, maybe a power imbalance.

I look at this piece of legislation and it’s replacing legislation from the year 2000, which is 21 years ago, and I was thinking just before about the way that the culture and the values of a business organisation in the 1950s are quite different to what it was in the 1980s, which was quite different to what it was in the year 2000, when this initial piece of legislation and the Act was brought in, which was actually world leading at the time. So 21 years later, it seems only fit as our culture, as our values of businesses and organisations change for us to come to this place to pass legislation and do it together as a whole Parliament.

I also want to say thank you as well to the Education and Workforce Committee for your hard work on this legislation, to the chair, Marja Lubeck, and for the constructive work to look at amendments, listening to what was said by submitters, and to come to a place where changes are being made.

This bill ensures that New Zealanders have strong standards and processes for disclosing serious wrongdoing in the workplace. This is critical in maintaining our nation’s reputation for our high standards of integrity, of openness, and of transparency, and I look forward to this passing through the House.

CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I also have some pleasure rising to discuss the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. Other colleagues have noted that it’s an important area of work. Important for the protection not only of the individuals who would make such disclosure but our confidence in the systems in which they are working and holding to account and being made robust. So I feel it’s absolutely important and right that speakers on both sides of the House, from the Minister onwards, have emphasized the protection that will extend personally to the discloser, but also the overall effect of allowing us to have confidence in the systems that they are operating to protect in that way.

The legislative statement talks about the public interest being promoted, and that’s a little bit of a sense of what I was trying to express there. I think it’s really important to acknowledge the importance of that phrase “public interest”, things that are important or of interest to the public, but not, in a sense, of merely being interesting or the subject of scandal or gossip for the sake of it. These are very specifically matters that are in the interests of the public to protect the institutions, the organisations, the application of public funds, and the welfare of those affected by the systems and processes in the first place. So I think, it’s probably just worth also adding on that quite high level, if I may before proceeding, that hopefully the existence of such legislation also provides a bit of a deterrent effect. It’s to be hoped that the fact that a person can make such a disclosure would give someone who was engaging in serious wrongdoing pause in relation to whether that would be a good idea or the matter might come to light under this legislation, and, therefore, they might do the right thing, even if for the wrong reasons.

In that spirit, I note that public sector organisations remain included, but they are not the only entities that are included within the ambit of the bill. I say “remain” because, of course, there is already legislation on our books at the moment. We have the Protected Disclosures Act 2000, which is operating in a pretty similar space. But I think it’s timely that the Government is updating that law effectively. Technically, this is not an amendment bill. There have been enough changes to warrant it being called its own piece of legislation. But in the semantic space, so to speak, the meaning, the content, the thrust is very much along the lines of what we already have. So it’s in the nature of an evolution for our public service and, indeed, other entities in New Zealand that we continue to think about how we can protect those who would blow the whistle on serious wrongdoing.

I’ve been using that phrase “serious wrongdoing”, and I hope it’s the correct one in accordance to the legislation, because that was certainly my intent. Indeed, it is, thankfully. So clause 10, it’s the meaning of “serious wrongdoing”, and that’s, as Mr Mitchell has pointed out, a list of different ways in which activity could be classed as being worthy of the protection of a whistleblower. I won’t go through all those but suffice to say they’re pretty broad, and I think that’s appropriate. So risk, for example, to public health, public safety, or the environment, and the maintenance of law and serious risks to that, along with various other ones, do indicate that the legislature is wanting to be very broad in the way that this will provide protection going forward. So for the sake of the record, in the way that the Hansard is occasionally used by the courts or by those working in the law to understand the meaning or the intent of the legislation, I would say, you know, for what it’s worth from me, an Opposition member of the House who didn’t sit on the select committee, that the intent, none the less, is pretty clear in what they’ve provided to us in the House on reporting back, that a very broad sense of serious wrongdoing is intended. We do expect and hope that the benefit of the doubt will go to someone who feels compelled to speak up, compelled in the good sense, not the ugly sense, feels compelled to speak up about something that is going wrong that is, in their view, serious wrongdoing because we do intend for them to have that protection, again, both for themselves and for the organisation as a whole and our confidence in these systems and processes.

I think it’s worthwhile that the internal procedures for public sector organisations do receive a bit of attention. There is a specific requirement in this legislation that the principles of natural justice must be upheld, or complied with, in fact. I think that’s really appropriate. In a way, it’s, perhaps, a matter that should go without saying. But, of course, that’s risking an assumption that would be leading to confusion, potentially. Just to be clear, we should have a system and a process followed where someone speaks up, they blow the whistle, they are taken seriously, and all of those who are involved or potentially affected have the right and the ability to speak to that matter, because, of course, by doing that, we have the best possible chance for the benefit of all involved, and, again, the system as a whole to understand the truth of the matter and where that lies. So the principle of natural justice, including the right to be heard, is a major aspect of that. I congratulate the Minister and also the select committee who have tuned their mind very specifically to that matter, of course.

One item I did want to highlight, more along the lines of something that I was less certain about, and I don’t mean that as a criticism, it’s genuinely something that I’m just trying to work through and understand, but I feel I might as well place on the record. Clause 12 has been renamed, presumably by the select committee in their proposal and report back, from the phrase “What receiver should do” to the following, “Guidance: what receiver should do”. While the title of a clause doesn’t necessarily change its meaning, it merely gives a guide, I think it’s interesting that it’s within 20 working days of receiving a protected disclosure that the receiver of the disclosure should do a number of different things. The language is almost mandatory. The thing is that they should do is to acknowledge receipt, for example, consider, check, deal with, and so on. But it doesn’t say that they must. I presume it’s that slight walking back from being completely prescriptive that the select committee intends by saying that those things should happen as opposed to that they must happen, and hence, the title of that section is specifically and explicitly “guidance” as opposed to something mandatory, as a process. So I found that interesting. No doubt others might have a view on that. I note that, of course, we have committee of the whole House stage of the bill. So if I have the pleasure of being able to participate in that, that will be a question that I ask genuinely of the Minister, to understand what she or whoever colleague is in the chair can provide by way of guidance in that regard.

I think the other point that I would make before I resume my seat is just something that looks, I guess, like a bit of a technical point, but actually, I think, pretty important. Again, I give kudos to the select committee for working through this detail. It’s clause 13. It’s talking about the “Discloser’s entitlement to disclose further”. Originally in the bill, the disclosure might be to the Minister or ombudsman. But, actually, what the select committee has suggested, I think sensibly, is that if the disclosure is in relation to serious wrongdoing by an Officer of Parliament or the office of the Officer of Parliament, then it wouldn’t be appropriate for that to be reported to the Minister. The Minister is, of course, part of executive Government, and there could be—well, it would be more appropriate for the Speaker who, of course, represents the House of Parliament, the legislative branch, as opposed to the Government of the day. So just a little bit of separation there. But that doesn’t mean, of course, that disclosures to the ombudsman wouldn’t be protected in some way because they do add a subsection which talks about disclosure to the ombudsman not being limited, elsewhere in the bill.

Final one I would just add, having said that previously but still having a minute left on the clock, and I wouldn’t want to deprive anyone of the opportunity for every second of 10 minutes. I’ve come down here after 85 days, you will allow me the extra minute, Mr Speaker, is in relation to intelligence and security information. This is really important because not only in the very obvious sense that sensitive information, perhaps of a national security nature, invariably classified or having some sort of marker of needing to be kept tight and secret, but also in the sense that there’s very much a culture in the defence force, appropriately, mostly, that there is a hierarchy and lawful commands must be obeyed and so forth. But this bill is really trying to wrestle with the tension that exists between that sort of hierarchical nature of such an organisation but, on the other hand, not wanting individuals or the organisation to be disadvantaged by hesitation for calling out genuine bad behaviour or wrongdoing. So that’s something, obviously, that we should continue to consider and grapple with as it continues through the House. But in the meantime, I support this bill. We commend it to the House.

RACHEL BOYACK (Labour—Nelson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the second reading of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. I just want to take a short moment to speak about a particular aspect of the select committee’s report, which was comprehensive, and I want to acknowledge the work done by the Education and Workforce Committee.

As the Minister mentioned earlier, there is a particular area that is going to be reflected in the bill through a Supplementary Order Paper which relates to health and safety. This is an area that I take quite a bit of interest in, having worked in this area before entering Parliament. I think that this element of the bill and the Supplementary Order Paper that will come will actually assist in ensuring that we can enhance workplace health and safety, particularly within the public sector and areas that may have significant areas of safety risk.

One of the challenges we sometimes face with our existing health and safety law is around the ability for employees to use some of the elements within that law, such Provisional Improvement Notices. We are starting to see more workers take up those opportunities. But in my view, having seen some of those Provisional Improvement Notices be used and sometimes then go through quite a long process over something that’s quite serious, it’s my view that having an extra layer, an extra option for employees to raise significant health and safety matters through this bill particularly when there may be real risk to people’s lives and their wellbeing, I think will be incredibly helpful. So I’m looking forward to seeing the Supplementary Order Paper introduced by the Minister and the next stages of this bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

JAN LOGIE (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise to speak on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill for the Green Party. We are supporting this piece of legislation. It is long overdue. The initial piece of legislation was written in 2000, and since that time we’ve had some really high-profile cases that have disturbed us as a country. Certain members of our Public Service in particular, I think, are the memorable cases, because I think it goes to our sense of the integrity of our entire Public Service when people have managed to commit fraud despite flags having been raised by their colleagues at early stages of their offending, and that they had managed to carry on for a significant period of time because our existing legislation from 2000 was not working effectively.

It was in 2018 that the Public Service started a process of reviewing the legislation, in the wake, I think, of a particular case. They were working across the Public Service and with the private sector collaboratively for 3½ years, thinking about what was needed to get an effective protected disclosure regime. What we know is that this is a really critical and central piece of legislation in terms of ensuring integrity and safety for staff and for the confidence of the public in our Public Service and our businesses.

The Greens are supporting this bill but we also have a differing view following the select committee process, because, frankly, we are disappointed that after all of that work, right across the Public Service and with the private sector, what we’ve got in effect is a tidying up of the existing scheme, which is out of step with the research on what the best protected disclosure schemes are around the world. We really would have loved to have seen us bring in best practice, and we were given really clear evidence from Professor Michael Macaulay at the School of Government, who is an expert on this and has looked at systems right across the world and provided the committee and the Government with advice on what we would need to do to have the best practice system in place, and, sadly, it’s not this.

I heard Minister Woods in her opening speech acknowledge our differing view and say that these things are in the work programme and that other things have been raised at the select committee and will be followed up later. I want to reflect the frustration from the Public Service Association (PSA), representing the Public Service workers right across the country, that all of their input has not been picked up already. They see this as an urgent issue, and are, frankly—and I don’t think it is mischaracterising it to say—frustrated at the slow pace of change. I really want to bring into this discussion the fact that through the select committee process we heard submissions from people who had made protected disclosures, and had had—and it is no overstatement to say—their lives absolutely destroyed. They had been vilified in their workplace. Lies had been spread about them. They had lost their jobs and their reputations were damned right across their industry and community. And some of those people had then, years later, gone through the system to be proven right. So it wasn’t just a case of, “We’re taking their word on it.” They had eventually managed to get confirmation of their rightness of raising that concern.

But justice delayed—I think, is a timely kind of saying—is justice denied. There is no point in being validated years later after your life has been destroyed, and that is what we are trying to fix with this legislation. It goes partway to doing that, the ability to make the complaint outside of your agency in the first instance is critically important, because people do have that knowledge, in relationships with their colleagues, to in some instances be able to know if it’s not going to be safe to raise the matter internally. We have to trust that knowledge and enable them to take it outside of the agency in that first instance.

Also, it does create more of a requirement to think about how you protect that person who is raising the complaint. But this is where a lot of our concern is—that there is not enough detail around that. We’re told that it’s being done but we were wanting this done in terms of the public sector in the first instance, because of the importance of that for the work of the Government, for all of our resources as a country, our collective resource being used through the Public Service, as well as our amazing international reputation in terms of transparency and integrity. We want to maintain that. So what we were recommending, which was not our brilliant idea—it never is, really; it was coming from the experts, and Professor Macaulay in particular as well as the PSA—was the requirement for the public sector to have dedicated support persons for all people making disclosures, a little bit like we have privacy officers right across the public sector. It’s not a particularly difficult thing to require. We have a precedent for doing it. It can be done within the organisational structure, but it puts a system in place with somebody who has training and focus on actually just supporting that person, because doing a protected disclosure is a difficult thing. That is never going to be an easy situation. Those people need to know that they will have support.

There should be a requirement for risk assessment to be done when people are talking about notifying of a protected disclosure or taking it—an assessment of the risk to them to be able to take whatever relevant actions are necessary to protect them from any retribution. There should be an appropriate triaging for disclosures, consistent investigative protocols, and a communication strategy that offers data on disclosures as well as just the processes. That’s about giving people the confidence that the system will work for them, because, as we know, the reason for this legislation is that the history shows that it does not.

I would also say that the work that’s been going on in terms of this Parliament and the Francis review, in terms of cleaning up our act to make sure that this is a safe workplace for every person, and the struggle of getting that actual change in behaviour and making this a safe workplace, shows us the difficulty of that work. I suspect we should bring a bit more of that experience into our sense of urgency and the need for detail and depth to this work. Skirting over the surface will not deliver the change that we need, and education and training should be mandatory for all staff as well as appropriate and transparent remediation strategy.

I note that the Minister said—because we were calling for a specific agency, which was the advice that was given to the select committee, because in cases where retribution happens to people raising protected disclosures, our systems are failing them. As I mentioned earlier, the process and the time line for being able to get consideration and redress, or a decision, is just so long that it actively is causing harm and preventing people from raising issues. To say that a specific agency might just replicate that problem—I actually don’t buy that. I think that’s actually how you design the agency, and you can quite easily avoid that. So we support this bill but with disappointment.

CHRIS BAILLIE (ACT): I rise on behalf of ACT to take a short call in support of the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill, a bill that’s been around a while, well before my time here, and it replaces the Protected Disclosures Act, which, by all accounts, wasn’t used very often. A report review by the State Services Commission in 2017 found a number of reasons why the organisations and the disclosers were confused about when to use the Act. The processes, both internally and externally, were very confusing, and the fear of speaking up was very relevant and the disclosers lacked the confidence in the protections that were available to them.

The bill seeks to ensure that those three things are remedied, and that employees and the organisations are familiar with the Act and know when to use it, that the disclosers know who to report to and understand that support is available when they do make these disclosures, that the organisations know what is expected of them and they have the skills and put in place the skills and competencies for their organisation to handle those things effectively, and that the disclosers have a lot of confidence in the protections that are available to them.

The threshold of serious wrongdoing is a high one, and rightly so. There should be no confusion with what is serious wrongdoing and those issues that would be dealt with with a personal grievance process. New Zealand has quite a rigorous personal grievance process as it is, and the divide must be clear.

ACT believes this bill strikes a good balance with disclosers reporting issues and being confident they’ll be dealt with appropriately and protected—they will be protected—and the potential for false or vexatious complaints is dealt with in the bill as well, and any intentional abuse of the bill should be dealt with and treated very seriously. A review after five years will show any flaws or unintended consequences that can be sorted out then.

This is a good bill that addresses the issues. It should give confidence to disclosers of suspected wrongdoing. They’ll be better informed of who and when to report the serious wrongdoing, and the organisations will have things in place to actually deal with these complaints. This can only raise public confidence in the transparency and integrity of Government, and we support this bill. Thank you.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I am a big fan of those brave souls we call whistleblowers. As a former journalist, when I was freelancing for Campbell Live, we got some of the most important stories thanks to whistleblowers. There were stories about mental health patients who had been sprayed with pepper spray inappropriately. There were stories of cruelty to animals from circus workers, including small monkeys on tiny chains locked up in their cages for days on end with inadequate food. More recently, we’ve had Russell McVeagh have its Me Too moment thanks to whistleblowers, and in this House we’ve heard stories about ACC that brave people have dared to bring forward. Internationally, Facebook has had the lid lifted on the fanning of flames of ethnic bias and prejudice and on creating political tension. So whistleblowers are incredibly important. What I think this legislation does is it gives people the option to not necessarily have to take that giant leap to the media but to know they are safe going through a process where they can keep their identity and their privacy, and where there is the right to natural justice, the right to be heard, as raised by Chris Penk.

For me at the heart of this bill is the deterrent element: that this helps strengthen the culture of transparency, of good workplaces where bad behaviour doesn’t happen. There’s plenty of research to show that one of the considerations that leads to good behaviour is people’s fear of getting caught. So the cultural element of this, of increasing the security for whistleblowers and therefore deterring those who might behave badly, whether it’s misappropriating funds, or bullying, or other bad behaviour, is really important. For that reason, I think this is a great bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is a split call. I call Simon Watts.

SIMON WATTS (National—North Shore): Mr Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity this morning to talk on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill, second reading. I obviously rise on behalf of National and as the MP for North Shore. Two speeches in the last hour—well, it’s good to be back in the House. The purpose of this bill, obviously, is to replace the disclosure bill of 2000. Obviously, a huge amount has changed since that point. But this bill covers two key aspects, obviously in terms of its updates. One is around changing the definition of serious wrongdoing, which is really important and also strengthens some of the disclosure elements within this bill, and I’m going to go into a little bit of that detail this morning.

Obviously, as I said, a lot has changed in 20 years. Actually, a lot has changed in Auckland in the last 85 days, but I’ll come back to that later on today. National support a secure and effective mechanism for individuals to make disclosures within that. It is a hugely important aspect and it is a hugely important process in which people need to be able to make disclosures to highlight serious wrongdoings. It is without doubt that the current bill in place at the moment that this will replace does not have the thresholds at a high enough level in order to meet requirements, and that’s why it is so important that this bill comes into play. I must say, while this bill doesn’t vastly change the regime, it does, importantly, I think, simplify and make it easier for that process. And I tell you what, we are all about simplicity on this side of the House, and keeping things simple.

I think we heard before from the Hon Mark Mitchell his personal experience—and, obviously, my background and experience in working for one of the largest banks overseas and also within the district health board system in New Zealand. I, like Mark, have seen a number of examples of individuals within both of those systems who have come forward, who have taken a risk—a personal risk, I think—in order to disclose wrongdoings and serious wrongdoings. I think one cannot underestimate the confidence and the concerns that those individuals have when they make a disclosure like that, and having a system in place in order to protect them is so critically important and obviously why National support this bill.

A couple of other aspects of why National is supportive—obviously, those protections encourage others to make disclosures, which is really, really important. We also want to make sure that the bill, or the legislation, gives assurances to those that make disclosures that they are not going to be unduly impacted by making that disclosure. Lastly, in terms of the key reasons why we support it, it is because it is well known that effective disclosure mechanisms, processes, and procedures actually are one of the most effective ways in order to get identification of corrupt practices and behaviours. We’re lucky enough here in New Zealand to have a country that is very much good in that regard, but, of course, as we know, that’s not the case around the world.

Actually, the previous speaker mentioned a couple of real life examples, and obviously ACC is a very timely example that was given around the privacy breaches of personal information. Personal injuries, individuals’ photos of their injuries, on Snapchat would not have been brought to light without someone making some disclosures of which this type of bill covers. I think the other aspect as well is around Oranga Tamariki, around some of the Newshub investigations that occurred earlier this year, which highlighted the critical nature or the critical importance of whistleblowing in terms of highlighting some of the key areas of corruption and issues around that.

I want to acknowledge the Education and Workforce Committee, who did an absolutely sterling job—sterling job—on this bill. They did a really, really good performance.

I want to finish with a personal disclosure that won’t be covered under this Act but I think is important for me to state in this House, and that is this weekend the Thames Valley Swamp Foxes are playing South Canterbury in the Meads Cup final. My disclosure to this House is that I expect them to win and the Hon Scott Simpson and Tim van de Molen, who are sitting at home and aren’t able, will obviously be pleased with that. I commend this bill to the House.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you Mr Speaker. It’s good to be able to take a call on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill that’s being read now a second time.

This bill is overdue. New Zealand has always been a world leader in the area of protection for whistleblowers. The 2000 Act was one of the first in the world to actually be put in by any country in the world. This current law is 20 years old and that leads to two possible outcomes: one, is people don’t know how to use the Act and to apply it, or, two, they don’t feel safe using it.

On the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, we are consistently at the top and generally first equal with Denmark; even Finland, Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands—they all follow us. But in 2014, our rating slipped down one, and at the time Transparency International warned us and said if action was not taken to keep pace in areas such as access to information and environmental protection, further downgrades in the survey were likely to occur. So employees who uncover serious misconduct, fraud, and corruption in public and private workplaces need protection. This Act needed to be updated, so I commend this bill to the House.

Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Tēnā koe e te Mana Whakawā. I mean, it’s hard to follow such an excellent speech from Barbara Edmonds but I guess the point I would make is that whistleblowing is—the barriers to it have always been cultural. Even if the rules are in place for whistleblowing, we know that we need to shift the culture of an organisation to make whistleblowing an acceptable thing to do, that the default position of the company needs to be that we respect and, in fact, we want people to make those disclosures. This goes some way towards that, although ultimately it’s up to the organisations—public sector and private—as well.

It is good that it sets out the entities to whom the disclosure should be made, which is one of the things this legislation does—because that’s always been one of the difficult things, to know to whom should I disclose. And, of course, to make it clear exactly what is a disclosable wrong-doing—just giving more tools in the tool kit so that people understand exactly what triggers the protections, how it works, and who to go to, because once we get that right, a culture of disclosure, a culture of not tolerating wrong-doing within an organisation wherever it might be, will be engendered. As my colleague said, we have been world leaders in disclosure and in corporate responsibility. We have lagged behind, this bill catches us up, and I commend it to the House.

SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and taking what will be a relatively quick call in this House to acknowledge my fellow Aucklanders on day 85 of the continued lockdown—85 long days, which despite the slight rule changes, bringing us to level π, I think it is now—3.14786—fundamentally, they’re still struggling. So this bill’s not going to help them, strictly, unless, of course, there’s more people within the civil service who would like to blow the whistle on this Government and the various activities that they are up to. Therefore, this is a good bill. This is actually, probably, one of the small aspects where you could say this is indicative of an open and transparent Government.

Why is this good? It’s fundamentally updating a piece of law which has been on the books—I think it’s important for people to understand we have had protections for whistleblowers before. There is existing law. But, like so many laws, it gets out of date, and this piece of legislation is timely. It sounds like it’s got support from across the House, which is not a complete surprise. First and foremost, it makes the law more accessible. It’s always going to be difficult to create a piece of legislation that is, if you will, in complete, plain English. We are dealing with legal concepts, ultimately. But this does make the law more accessible.

It doesn’t so much encourage whistle-blowing—I don’t think that’s actually the place of this legislature—but it makes the pathway easier. It explains the reasons of why and how someone can, if you will, blow the whistle. It’s expanding some of the areas which are protected. It describes quite clearly the pathways: who they can speak to and otherwise. Importantly, I think, the bill also makes very clear that if the whistleblower is wrong, and that will happen from time to time, they will still be protected.

I think a small point, as well—but it also illustrates where the previous legislation was outdated, and probably wrongly conceived, ultimately—is that the whistleblower under this new proposed legislation doesn’t have to quote the legislation specifically. What that shows is the previous—or, rather, the current—legislation is relatively prescriptive. You almost have to go through a rubric, a formula, to be protected. This is much more open and generous, and I think that is prudent.

So it’s a positive piece of legislation, as I said a little bit earlier. I hope it does attract the attention—well, it has attracted the attention of all the House—the support of all the House. It’s an encouragement, fundamentally, to people in New Zealand to speak up when they see things happening that shouldn’t be happening. I think it was actually Ingrid Leary who was speaking earlier who referenced several occasions, in both the public and the private sector, when people have stood up and spoken. Perhaps in these times, when our systems are under more pressure than ever—I renew that call at the start for those, particularly, in the civil service to speak up when they see things happening that they’re not comfortable with so that we as a democracy can grow stronger. With that, on this 85th day of lockdown in Auckland, I commend the bill to the House.

SPEAKER: I welcome the member to the Chamber.

TANGI UTIKERE (Labour—Palmerston North): Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to rise and take what, I think, is the final call on the Protected Disclosures (Protection of Whistleblowers) Bill. I just want to reflect on the contributions in the House already today, one in particular is around that this is not an omnibus bill in the pure sense, and it’s certainly not an amendment bill; in actual fact, it is a replacement for a piece of legislation that is not working—and that has been the case for 20-odd years.

I also reflect on the contribution of my colleague the MP for Mana, Barbara Edmonds, who talked about the fact that the particular change in this bill, in terms of its approach, is two-pronged. The first is around ensuring that people are actually able to know how to engage with the process, to use a particular Act; but, secondly, actually, those that are going to engage with this process—and an important one at that—feel safe being able to do so. I really can’t underscore enough the significance of the importance and safety that those that wish to speak out in the workplace, whether it be in the private sector or in the public sector, feel empowered to be able to do exactly that, because this is about protection for those in the workplace who identify some wrongdoing and wish to speak out. It is protection for whistleblowers, in that regard.

Colleagues around the House have referred to the fact that New Zealand as a country is world leading in terms of transparency, anti-corruption, that sense of openness, and integrity. So that fits quite nicely, I would suggest, with this particular bill.

This bill does relate to activities and conduct within the private sector but also within the public sector, as well, around the potential to expose fraudulent or criminal activities, and actually ensuring that that serious misconduct, whether it be in private or in public sector or spaces, is able to be disclosed by individuals within the workplace, without fear of it being an unsafe opportunity to do so, and also, actually, that when individuals feel as though they can make those disclosures, that actually they’re not going to be treated unfairly or with a threat of dismissal as a result of that. That’s something that they deserve.

I want to acknowledge the work of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. I know that they, in considering this bill, have identified a number of matters, I won’t go into a lot of detail around that, but I thank them for their work. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Bills

Incorporated Societies Bill

Second Reading

Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health) on behalf of the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs: I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Incorporated Societies Bill.

SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon ANDREW LITTLE: On behalf of the Minister, I move, That the Incorporated Societies Bill be now read a second time.

The Incorporated Societies Act, as it currently is, is a vital piece of legislation that supports civil society. It supports our liberal democratic ways that we have in this country. But it was enacted in 1908, which is well more than 100 years ago, more than 110 years ago, and it was well overdue for reconsideration. And so I’m very grateful, on behalf of the Minister, for the work that the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee have done on the Incorporated Societies Bill to refashion the framework that we have for incorporated societies in this country.

There are literally thousands, tens of thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands of organisations representing all sorts of interests and endeavours in life. The reason we have this legislative framework is to protect the members, but, actually, also to protect those on the committees, those wielding the extent of executive power within those incorporated societies, so that they can make decisions free from the risk of personal liability, although not responsibility. We need a piece of legislation that makes sure that it reflects the modern mores of both accountability and responsibility, but allows people to get on and do those things that they enjoy doing when they come together with like-minded citizens to do that.

The select committee has made a number of changes. There was considerable support for the rewriting of the legislation, but the bill, in its current form, prohibits incorporated societies from being carried on for financial gain, and, of course, that continues. Under clause 23 of the bill, the society is deemed to be carried on for financial gain if members distribute any gain or profit or assets that they have, and, of course, that is an absolute no-no for an incorporated society. I know that one of the things I was very keen to see is a change in the law—because it’s not unusual for different groups of people in different parts of the country to form together for the same activity and then for those groups in different parts of the country to want to come together, and the ability to amalgamate different incorporated societies all with the same object and with the same activity to come together without falling afoul of tax laws. This provision about benefiting members has been very important, and that is now provided for in the bill. Some societies who submitted on the bill were concerned that the way this non - profit-making clause was drafted might prevent them offering hardship grants or scholarships and what have you, and so it has been amended to make sure that those sorts of benefits, even if they benefit a member, are legitimate in the pursuit of the objects of the particular society.

Another area is umbrella societies, or federations, perhaps—national organisations whose members are themselves different societies, and there may be a need for some cash that goes to the national organisation to go to some of the regional organisations or the federated members. And so that is not prohibited in this—members being able to gain financially as part of an incorporated society.

The second set of changes relate to the financial reporting of incorporated societies. Under the bill, societies that qualify as being small would benefit from that exemption. I know, for most members of incorporated societies, the prospect of an annual general meeting is the highlight of the calendar year! And being able to go through the accounts and find out how the executive committee has spent the money, how they’ve raised the money, where the money has gone, which loans have been taken out, what loans have been repaid—these are all vital matters in the lives of many people and in the life of our communities and societies. I think the provisions for this in the bill have been modernised, are now relevant to the 21st century and to what it means to be in an incorporated society in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 21st century.

The select committee has recommended lifting the thresholds for the exemption to qualify as small and therefore not required to produce these audited accounts. This will mean that hundreds of amateur sports clubs, in particular, around the country won’t be required to hire an accountant and pay the associated fees. And I know, being involved in the periphery in a fledgling sport—the sport of floorball—in New Zealand where little societies are coming together now to form these teams, and are doing a great job, but they are of a size that it just does not make sense to have to go out and pay an accountant to present accounts. In every group of 10 or 20 people in New Zealand, there’s usually somebody who is sufficiently mathematically inclined and accounting-concepts literate to be able to pull together a set of relevant accounts that gives people an idea about what money’s been spent and how it’s been spent and where the money is.

So those changes have been made. Altogether, I think, we can see that we are now developing, this House is now developing, a piece of incorporated societies legislation that is relevant to the 21st century, that will, I think, engender great excitement, great hope, and great confidence in people being able to come together and enjoy their like-minded activities with each other and benefit New Zealand as a whole. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

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

Hon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Yeah, Mr Speaker, thank you very much. National will be supporting this legislation, in part because of the significant changes that were made during the select committee process to make sure that it wasn’t an onerous or overbearing cost through bureaucracy on incorporated societies, particularly the small ones. We had to strike a balance between making sure that incorporated societies were meeting their obligations to their members, but, at the same time, the cost of meeting that obligation in some cases, as the legislation was originally drafted, might well have been greater than the income or expenditure of that incorporated society, and that would defeat the purpose of this.

We’re all for accountability, but reasonable accountability when one considers that there is a vast range of societies that have incorporated with different interests. An example of this is the rugby union, with income of over $150 million a year. The New Zealand Rugby Union is an incorporated society, right down to the Bank’s Peninsula War Memorial Society, that had an income in the 2016 year of around $5,000. And without the changes that were pushed for by National and the committee, that, I must say, took some persuading of the Government and the Minister, but I’m very pleased that we were able to have a meeting of the minds to set these costs aside. In the case of the Banks Peninsula War Memorial Society, much of that expenditure would have been eaten up, or doubled, in fact, when it came to them having to account.

The Minister, when he spoke, was talking about umbrella organisations and bodies and how they might have members all over the country, and they might want to pay money out to them, and this now is allowed. Of course, to be very clear, what he didn’t say is he was talking about unions, and the unions were given a carve-out in the original legislation. They came before the committee and they made the case to the committee, and the Government decided to keep that in. Look, if it is good enough for a union to have a carve-out when it comes to their responsibilities under the incorporated societies, to be provided by the Labour Government, it is probably likely to be OK for that carve-out to be given to other organisations as well. But, sadly, it doesn’t appear, if one reads the legislation, that that’s what’s happened here.

So I just want to be very, very clear: in the Minister introducing this, saying that the Government has done a good job in ensuring that, you know, where different bodies of people around the country that come together occasionally want to be able to pass money on to others are not caught by any income tax rules, he was talking about unions, the very unions that are affiliated to the Labour Party.

Hon Andrew Little: The member’s wrong about that.

Hon TODD McCLAY: Well, he says we’re wrong, but there goes the anger of a former union leader, who, in this case, was reading from his notes but didn’t read all of the bill as the committee went through.

There are around 23,000 incorporated societies in New Zealand, not hundreds of thousands, as the Minister suggested. Of those, though, around 10,000, or slightly more, are also charities. So there was a balancing act needed between the responsibilities and obligations of a society that is under the Charities Act but also falls under this Act. In fact, the committee, all members, spent a lot of time considering this, and I think we got the balance right. We got the balance right, whereas we tried to line up responsibilities, particularly around reporting, but took the position that if an organisation is a charity, they have the benefit of being completely tax-free, whereas incorporated societies, through their donations or other income, are not, and, therefore, for charities, there is a greater necessity to report than some of the smaller, incorporated societies under this Act. I think, again, that we got that balance right.

The final point I’d make is, as I alluded to earlier, the need to make sure that this legislation wasn’t overly bureaucratic or costly upon smaller societies, and the legislation, as drafted and agreed by Cabinet, said that an incorporated society that in any one of any two years had more than $10,000 worth of expenditure or held $30,000 worth of assets would have to account to a higher standard than those below. Generally, it means if you had below $10,000 worth of expenditure, or no assets above $30,000, it was almost cash accounting. We’re talking about some of the smaller societies in New Zealand. We took quite some time in committee to question officials on this. In fact, the report back of the bill was pushed back, at least the deliberation of the bill in committee was pushed back a number of times to get this right.

National came forward to make the case that, actually, we thought the threshold could be higher, and I would like to thank all members of the committee and the Minister for taking the time to work through this, because we landed in a position where all members of the committee agreed. And, in essence, it is that if in a consecutive two years an incorporated society has more than $50,000 worth of expenditure, not income but expenditure, they must report to a higher standard. And we got rid of the asset test, and the reason for this is, actually, if you have a fixed asset, a building, actually, the incorporated society itself, or its executive, has to go through many processes before it can make changes. If there was a society that owned its own war memorial hall, with a value of over $30,000, say, as a capital value, but it had that $5,000 worth of expenditure each year, they would have had to report to a higher standard, which would have cost them $3,000 or maybe $4,000. So we refocused this and said, “Where is a capital asset not a liquid asset?” There is no threshold, and $50,000 worth of expenditure or liquid asset—i.e., if they had money in the bank—then they would have to report. I think that balance is about right.

I’d like to thank all members of the committee for bearing with us, because we did extend this week after week after week, and sent the officials away to do more work and get more advice for us, and, finally, to recognise the chair of the committee, who worked very hard on the Minister, and, I think, persuaded him—persuaded the Minister that Cabinet maybe had not received all of the information it should have, or the officials had been overzealous in trying to capture every single problem that might be out there, and in their desire, or search, to catch the one, they were burdening, you know, maybe 15,000 incorporated societies with greater costs, but no greater accountability to its members.

So to the chair, Jamie Strange, who worked very, very hard on this and continued to badger the Minister—he did a good job. And what I would say to the Prime Minister, if she’s listening in Auckland on her private visit up there at the moment, if the current Minister is destined for greater things, Jamie Strange would be a great person to take his place as a Minister. Jamie, I hope I haven’t ruined your career there. Thank you.

NAISI CHEN (Labour): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise proudly on behalf of the Labour side in terms of supporting this Incorporated Societies Bill in the second reading. Could I just start by thanking the member who has just resumed his seat, the Hon Todd McClay, for all of the constructive conversations and the rigorous debate that we’ve had in the select committee process on this bill. Like he has mentioned, we’ve had many, many, many, many conversations about where this line should fall. I guess it’s, for me, a balance of practical considerations in terms of which incorporated societies should be reporting and what type of reporting they should be doing. I’ve now learnt a lot more about accrual accounting and cash accounting than I would care to think. I appreciate my flatmate, who is a chartered accountant, and I don’t think we’d ever have imagined we would spend our lockdown debating this issue—but thank you, Martin.

Like the Minister has mentioned today as well, unions are not a cover. Every single incorporated society who wishes to provide scholarships for their members is largely encouraged to do so. Every incorporated society that has that will can do so now under this bill, and I’m proud of that change.

As has been mentioned, there are almost 24,000 incorporated societies in this nation, and they definitely are a really integral and important part of the make-up of the fabric of our society. I really enjoyed hearing from the submitters on this bill because it just has made me realise how important it is to get this bill right, and hence the long time that we took in deliberating. It’s because of incorporated societies that we are a healthier society, that we are a better regulated society, that we are a better organised society, and that we are a more community-based society. I’m really proud of the fact that this bill and this update of this bill will make sure that not only do we modernise the legislation but we also make provision for the times when things do get hard—and, unavoidably, some of these volunteering organisations might. So to be able to talk through those problems and have somewhere for people to complain and then to resolve those issues is inherently important. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

MAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I too stand in support of this bill, the Incorporated Societies Bill. It has been encouraging to hear the commentary from across the House around this bill but I thought, in order to put it into context, to remind the House that, actually, the bill that this is replacing was originally passed in 1908. We are talking 113 years ago, so, obviously, this is well overdue for a bit of a rewrite. But I thought, to put it in context around the society that the legislators were living in, that I would have a look at what was going on in 1908 and come up with some of the highlights from that era.

The main trunk railway line opened in that year, which was a massive undertaking in this country. We also got our first Olympic gold medal in London—sorry, it was a bronze, but it was our first Olympic medal—

Hon Member: In what sport?

MAUREEN PUGH: He was a walker, Harry Kerr. But one of the most significant—

SPEAKER: Walking for Australia.

MAUREEN PUGH: Pardon?

SPEAKER: Walking for Australia—Australasia, I think.

MAUREEN PUGH: Oh, OK. Thank you. I’m impressed by that. But one of the most significant—

SPEAKER: I can’t remember it directly, just to be clear.

MAUREEN PUGH: I hope that’s coming off my time! Thank you for that helpful interjection, Mr Speaker! I was going to go on to say that one of the most significant events that happened in West Coast - Tasman was the Blackball miners’ strike that happened in that year. At that time, it was the longest strike in New Zealand’s history; 11 weeks it lasted. And then, when we went on to the biggest strike, actually, Blackball was the last of those unions to go back to work as well. So they’re famous for digging their toes in.

Now, Ernest Rutherford, also, you know, the father of nuclear physics, was awarded his Nobel Prize for chemistry. A huge achievement for this country was the population growth: we reached 1 million people in 1908. And, of course, we had a general election that year and, no surprise, back in 1908, no women were elected. In fact, 25 years it took for our first woman to be elected. So in terms of the Incorporated Societies Bill, we have come a long way and, without dragging and kicking this piece of legislation to the select committee, it has, I think, reached a really good outcome.

As many of the speakers have said, one of the main aims, of course, is to make sure that it’s not a huge encumbrance on some of our smaller organisations. I did not sit on the select committee, but I do have a great interest in this bill because, of course, it impacts on many of the volunteer organisations across the country. And, as we all know, those organisations and the volunteers that keep them going are simply that: they are volunteers. And some of the huge, you know, administration burden that many of them face was always front of mind, obviously, for the select committee to make sure that we didn’t actually drive people out of being willing volunteers into some of these organisations.

It was probably coincidental that this bill is 113 years old and the select committee received 113 submissions, so one for every year of its existence. And that’s certainly no reflection on the number of organisations that this bill will impact on. So in terms of some of the select committee feedback, they obviously cover a wide variety, and I’ve picked out a couple that were of particular interest to me. Of course, Volunteering New Zealand had some really good submissions—ideas and feedback—that, obviously, the committee has taken heed of. But another one that’s probably, as Todd McClay mentioned before, you know, some of those smaller organisations—but we also have societies that are umbrella organisations for other smaller groups, and they’re very important to the structures as well. One is the New Zealand Federation of Motoring Clubs, and I didn’t realise this until I read their submission, but they actually also are an umbrella group for the hot-rod clubs around New Zealand, of which I have a particular interest. But we have a whole lot of others that we know are core to our communities. We have our sports clubs—you know, our rugby and cricket and league—but we also have other, you know, recreational groups that look after reserves or parks and, you know, even the astronomical association put in a submission. But then we have the bigger ones like Federated Farmers and the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association all having an interest in what is in this legislation.

Now, in the original bill there were quite a few gaps, and a lot of those gaps have been filled over time through case law. But, of course, with a lot of very small organisations and societies, taking something to court to get an outcome was not always possible, simply because of the cost of going down that path. But also, as I mentioned before, many of them are operated by volunteers, and that’s not what they got involved in the organisation for. So it is imperative that we, as legislators, put in place these types of laws that will fill the gaps that have not been filled in the case law over time.

I did take note that speakers have talked about grants—hardship grants, scholarship grants—that incorporated societies can make, and I was particularly helped out by a local group in my own hometown where they managed a couple of scholarship grants for me. So to have that clarified in this is extremely helpful from their point of view as well.

But one of the things that this bill does make really clear is around the declaration of conflicts of interest and making sure that they are well recorded. I did note that one example that was used around the use of grants from these societies, and being really clear about conflict of interest—the terrible example that I read was around, you know, one particular small sports club that sold a building worth $350,000 and distributed the income from that to their members and then, of course, were found to be wanting in their decision. It took a court case to actually find that the decisions were not quite kosher, and they had to try, then, and recover that $350,000 from the individuals that had received it and, sadly, two of those individuals had to declare bankruptcy as a consequence of that.

So, very important that we do have those rules and protections in place, not just for the society but perhaps for those recipients of some of those grants. I’m very pleased to hear that the threshold for payments has been lifted to $50,000. I was concerned about the asset value because, of course, they are fluctuating and, you know, having to account for depreciation, perhaps, would have been cumbersome. So that is a very good outcome for that, and my understanding is that that now sits in regulation outside of the bill so that we don’t have to change the legislation in order to adjust those levels, because we don’t know what $50,000 might mean in five years or so. You know, the rate of inflation, it could be worth the same as an ice cream in five years. So, very good to see that has the flexibility, outside of legislation, to be adjusted.

But just in closing, I’d like to just have a note to the Government that it’s very important that the changes to this regulation are communicated well to the societies across the country. We want to make sure that they are well informed about their new rights and obligations, and it’s incumbent on us to make sure that the information is clear, that it’s distributed well, because we need them to carry on in the roles that they are doing, because it’s so valuable to us as a country. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

GLEN BENNETT (Labour—New Plymouth): Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I rise in support of the Incorporated Societies Bill, and I thank Maureen Pugh for her contribution, her history lesson. Riveting—electrifying, in fact, that speech. Thank you so much. I was hoping for maybe some reflection on some of your members in 1908, and what they were doing at that time, but we didn’t get time for that. That’s OK.

I was on the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, and we work well together. I did hear the Hon Todd McClay saying that they had to fight for that threshold to change, but I know my colleagues on this side fought for it, too. In fact, I think we led the charge on that to ensure that we got it right.

When we first embarked with our advisers on this piece of legislation, I vividly remember them talking about the 1908 legislation. They said it was very much around the birth and the death of a society, but there was nothing about the life, which is where it has been complicated over the years. So, very much, this change in legislation, this bringing it into the 21st century, is around the birth, the life, and, if it needs to be, the death of an incorporated society. We’ve worked hard and will continue to work hard as a committee. Also, I want to acknowledge Jamie Strange, the chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.

Incorporated societies, as we’ve heard, can take anything from a $2,000 or $3,000 community group through to millions and millions of dollars. I really want to acknowledge them, because I know many of them—many of them—are volunteer organisations, are community playgroups, are potters’ groups, and are groups that support their local community. So, in finishing my speech today, I just want to say thank you to all of our volunteers, who support and keep our nation running. I commend this bill to the House.

Dr ELIZABETH KEREKERE (Green): Kia ora. After starting the day with data and statistics, it’s very exciting to stand here again so soon to talk about another kaupapa close to my heart, which is community organising and the legal structures that support it. Much as case law has built up around this ancient bill, over 23,000 tangata whenua community and voluntary organisations will breathe easier with this significant update. So, many thanks to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee for your work in bringing this to the House.

The Greens envisage a strong and independent tangata whenua community and voluntary sector that contributes in ecologically and socially sustainable ways to enhance our social, environmental, cultural, physical, mental, spiritual, and economic wellbeing. We need good laws that will help sustain that and not constrain it. We’re pleased that the bill clarifies that an incorporated society may express its tikanga, its kawa, and its culture in its constitution. We note that the Law Commission’s report of 2013 recommended this, but, of course, what’s eight years waiting in the scale of 113? While Tikanga may not have been specifically excluded, as a person who’s written and edited many, many constitutions over the years, it was always very clear that that stuff was additional; it was never core to our legal documents in our legal entity.

The Greens have principles of appropriate decision-making and non-violence written into our charter, so we particularly welcome that this bill would clearly lay out the requirements around addressing conflicts of interest and dispute resolution, because many people are conflict-averse, and passive-aggression is not uncommon—or maybe that’s just the committees and boards that I have been on! We hope this criteria will help every organisation who has struggled to address those issues without training in conflict resolution or restorative practices, and without the law insisting that proper processes be in place for it.

Finally, we wish to address financial reporting–the bugbear of every treasurer everywhere. The Greens welcome, absolutely, standardising transparent and clearer financial reporting, especially for those organisations with assets but low cash flow. We note that that change will help up to 60 percent of the sector, including iwi and hapū organisations where our marae might be worth $1 million or $2 million but there’s only $20,000 or $30,000 in the bank. The many, many thousands of volunteers who could do without the unnecessary paperwork will thank us for that alone. I look forward to this bill coming into effect, and I commend it to the House. Kia ora.

DAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you to the Minister Mr Little for his Obamaesque explanation of this bill about hope and change and, you know, modernisation. The bill itself is like a Jeffrey Archer novel. It’s got six parts, 41,000 words; it’s almost like a novel. I’ve never seen the ministry of business development—I wish they’d concentrate on foreign direct investment by the way—produce something that’s so technocratic around what is a very important part of New Zealand society. I’m convinced, given the number of submissions, that only 1 percent of the societies actually replied, that the Government hasn’t brought along the organisations because (a) they either don’t understand the law; secondly, they’ve got no experience to review it in their organisations; and, thirdly, they’re just missing the nuances of what is probably something that should have went to the social and wellbeing committee as well as the technocrats.

So there’s, sort of, three questions around the duties of officers in managing those conflicts. We’re really pleased that the committee has managed to make those amendments. But it’s still a very financial-orientated solution to what is a law that originally had 11,000 words, which is a lot smaller. So how you bridge that gap between local chess clubs and the New Zealand Rugby Union and Federated Farmers is a challenge I still don’t think we’ve met. If you look, there’s four years now to introduce this and get people deregistered and form new societies, which is going to be very painful out there. Some of us may be here to see it, and some of us maybe not. But we believe, at the ACT Party, that keeping it simple, while it should have been the basis of this bill, and it’s become something of a monster for something that, I don’t think, societies are going to really understand.

So congratulations to the committee for getting this through. We will support the bill out of probity and modernisation. But there are some unintended consequences here that I don’t think we’ve really thought through. Thank you.

BARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a privilege, actually, to take a call on the Incorporated Societies Bill. Thank you to the member across the House, Maureen Pugh, who took us through a history lesson as to what was happening in 1908. It was actually really clear that this is a really old, old piece of legislation.

Throughout my community work, I’ve been involved in a number of incorporated societies, including the mighty Northern United Rugby Union Club or norths, as we know them in Porirua, and also established tag clubs for rugby league tag. But the benefit was, when I was drafting constitutions for some of these clubs, that I’ve had a background in law and I’ve had a background in accounting. So I was able to ensure that there were dispute resolution clauses to ensure, when the society wound up, where those assets were going to and then being able to actually help our treasurers put together the reporting for it. But that was done because we had someone who specialised in that area. Not all incorporated societies have that ability. Not all incorporated societies have lawyers, accountants, or CEOs of other charitable organisations on their boards, and some of them do amazing work in our community. So it’s really good to see that this bill fills in some of those gaps, such as disputes resolution.

I commend the committee for some of the recommendations that they’ve put forward, and I hope to see them come through, particularly around the societies that qualify as small. It’s good to see that the asset threshold was lifted, because if you think about, say, a small rugby club, they probably own all the jerseys. The jerseys probably cost $100 per jersey. So if you’ve got 10 teams, you’re already, you know, over a certain threshold, you’ve got the gear bags, you’ve got the balls, you’ve got the cones, and then possibly they might have a building—already they’re over that $30,000 asset threshold. So it’s really good to see that the committee listened to submitters and lifted that up. So, on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON (National—Botany): It’s a real privilege, also, to take a short call on this Incorporated Societies Bill. I do want to acknowledge the Minister. I want to acknowledge the select committee. I wasn’t part of that, but having read the reports, this is obviously all really good stuff and common-sense things to be doing.

We talked about it before. There’s 23,000 incorporated societies across New Zealand. They range from large ones like New Zealand Rugby, right down to one like the Banks Peninsula War Memorial, where I actually spend a lot of time on devotion, on the way to Akaroa each year at the campground there. They only have $5,000 or $6,000 worth of revenue each year. And you can see the amazing work that these small and large organisations do all across New Zealand, when you travel around, and it’s all staffed by people who are wonderful volunteers.

Mr Speaker, I want to put it to you—I know you’re a gardener, but if you’re actually free on 6 March in 2022, next year, beautiful sunny day, we have something out in Botany, in East Auckland, called the Brit & Euro Car Club. It was started by a Renaissance man, a bit like yourself, Richard Waugh. He’s a Methodist minister. He’s also an aviation historian. He’s the chaplain for the Erebus victims and families, and he’s also started this car club, and it’s basically just for British and Euro cars. I myself have a 1966 Riley Elf, and I would like to get it up there. It’s red, but I’d like to get it painted blue at some point. But that aside, you can see the mighty Escort, you can see—

SPEAKER: No, keep it original.

CHRISTOPHER LUXON: —sorry—the Rolls-Royce. But it’s an incredible event, and it started off just a few years back, and Richard and the team formed an incorporated society, and they’ve now got 1,200 exhibitors there. They had over 10,000 people come from all over Auckland to come and see this last year, phenomenal activity for the local community and just a wonderful event. In fact, my colleague Naisi Chen was there as well, and I think you could testify to how good an event it actually was.

But as we said, these rules are very outdated. We got a great history lesson from Maureen Pugh. Again, the Speaker was right, yet again. There were three New Zealanders in that 1908 team that was an Australasian team—not just a New Zealand team or an Australian team; an Australasian team. Thankfully, we have stopped doing that now. There’s nothing worse than being part of Australia, I would put it to you all!

But what I’d say is it’s been outdated, and probably the only criticism I’d say is it’s taken us a long time to get this really basic, common-sense thing done. We started the conversation in 2015; we’re now sitting here in 2021. It will be a slow implementation. And I’ll just put it to you, if you’re out there doing community work as a community organiser or you’re in a business world, maybe six years to get something done like this wouldn’t be kind of acceptable, but it is fair that we have a modern law, it’s fit for purpose, it’s up to scratch, and it’s actually really helpful for all those volunteers that are deeply involved in it.

At the heart of it, this bill is doing something, I think, quite important. It’s distinguishing between the really large incorporated societies and the much smaller ones, and it’s actually changing the cost and compliance burden and obligations that are on each of them and making it proportionate. I think that’s a really fantastic thing. So you see the large organisations, yes, they should be compliant with generally accepted accounting practice laws and principles, but, actually, smaller ones have much less compliance as a result. We’ve got smaller society thresholds. There was a good conversation around that from both sides of the House around why that’s been a very good thing, having operating expenses and also revenue less than $50,000 to distinguish you as a small society. And it’s important because those societies lack those resources and expertise that make that compliance so difficult.

So it is really a fantastic bill. It’s going to make a big difference to so many people and so many volunteers—the people who wake up, get out each morning, and decide they want to make their community a better place. And we all know we’ll get the community and the country we ultimately deserve, but it requires each of us as citizens to step up, and we see citizens stepping up and volunteering in this way. This is an incredibly good bill for New Zealand. It’s a great piece of legislation that’s going to deliver fantastic outcomes.

I do want to say, before I commend the bill to this House, that I do want to state in this House that I am backing the Thames Valley Swamp Foxes, who are playing South Canterbury in Timaru this weekend. I think they’ll win big. They are well coached. They’ve got a great team around them, and I’m looking forward—they’re playing in the Meads Cup and it’s the final this weekend, so I wish them all the very best. And, on that note, I support and commend this bill to the House.

SHANAN HALBERT (Labour—Northcote): Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s my honour to speak again in the House this morning, and, in this particular instance, on the Incorporated Societies Bill. Can I start by acknowledging the wonderful organisations at the heart of our communities—whether that be in sport or in social service—that this particular bill relates to.

I had the privilege over the last three years to lead out the Birkdale Beach Haven community incorporated society. It’s a wonderful organisation where we’ve worked very, very hard to build a governance model and a team of members and staff that reflect our community, that the initiatives that we roll out meet the needs and are responsive to our diverse and growing community on the North Shore of Auckland, but most of all that we continue the kaupapa to have community-led arrangements and initiatives happening in our local backyard, and particularly for our tamariki locally. So I love that particular project.

But when I think back to some of the work that we do, and it tends to be AGM month at the moment, and, like other MPs, you’ve probably attended a number over the last two weeks as everyone geared up for Zoom AGMs when the green light went by.

But this particular bill supports organisations like mine and other incorporated societies to have a much clearer view in terms of what they need to achieve, what they need to report on, and recognition of who they are in modern age. When I go back to the ages of 1908 and we talk about pounds and schillings in this outdated bill, I am quite grateful that we are updating this particular piece of work. I know that it has limitations for our incorporated societies currently, because they are small in many instances, but many of them want to modernise and we want to ensure that we are removing the barriers that we need to in this particular instance.

So this bill replaces the very outdated Incorporated Societies Act of 1908. It is aimed to be fit for purpose and to be modern. I also want to acknowledge not only the 24,000 incorporated societies across Aotearoa but also organisations like our local marae. I acknowledge what member Kerekere said—that many of our marae have assets in the millions but not much cash in the bank. So let’s make it as easy as possible, as simple for volunteers to manage these societies, with the efficiencies we need. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

SPEAKER: Members, we’ve reached the time where we’d normally go to lunch, but I can see that Mr O’Connor is very keen to speak. If he was, I could take leave for this bill to be completed before we do break for the day. Do people want to do that or do they want to wait in anticipation for Mr O’Connor?

Simon O’Connor: I’m more interested in lunch.

SPEAKER: Sorry?

Simon O’Connor: My enthusiasm is more for lunch than speaking.

SPEAKER: OK. Well, I will declare this day completed. The House stands adjourned until 2 o’clock today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.57 p.m. (Wednesday).